Russia 



59 



ful minister of the empire. Many 

 others might be named to illustrate the 

 same truth of high individual advance- 

 ment without title or favor and solely 

 on merit. Russia has ministers, but no 

 ministry. There is no united, coher- 

 ent, responsible governing body. Each 

 minister acts only for himself and is re- 

 sponsible only to the Emperor. Often- 

 times ministers antagonize and intrigue 

 against each other. Witte and Plehve 

 were at swords' points. Thus the bu- 

 reaucracy lacks unity, cooperation, and 

 efficiency. It is disorganized and dis- 

 cordant. Sometimes an individual min- 

 ister shows tremendous energy in the 

 administration of his department, but 

 the coordinated work which gives 

 united force and strength is missing. 



Below the chiefs the system has the 

 vice of venality. It is this which has 

 sapped the strength of the navy and 

 impaired the efficiency of the army. It 

 is this which has provided the gun of 

 inferior range and imparted structural 

 weakness to the battleship. Russia has 

 prodigious resources and almost un- 

 limited power, if it can be made avail- 

 able. She has the giant's strength, but 

 the giant's strength enfeebled by a 

 vicious system and an improvident 

 sloth. There is personal valor and 

 symptomatic defect. There is the bril- 

 liant dash of the daring MakarofT, but 

 a strange paralysis and fatality of the 

 fleet. There is the skillful generalship 

 of Kuropatkin, with the patience of 

 Fabius and the fight of Marius, but a 

 want of preparation which leaves him 

 always with inferior numbers. There 

 is the intrepid courage of the heroic 

 Stoessel and his fire-tried troops at Port 

 Arthur, which has excited the admira- 

 tion of the world, but there is at the 

 same time the lack of equipment which 

 crippled his defense. The fighting 

 quality and the latent power are there, 

 but reconstruction is needed to bring 

 the fruits. 



In some directions Russia has made 



remarkable advances in recent years. 

 The energetic and far-reaching policy 

 of Witte as Finance Minister, with its 

 striking results, has been the subject of 

 great praise and great criticism. It 

 had two central and fundamental con- 

 ceptions. The first was to make Russia 

 wholly self-sustaining and industrially 

 great by a system which should protect 

 and foster her own manufactures. The 

 second was to concentrate all power and 

 control in the hands of the government 

 by substituting state for local taxation, 

 by the promotion of state ownership of 

 railroads, and by the creation of great 

 state monopolies, like those in spirits, 

 drugs, and kindred articles. The fruits 

 have been tremendous, though possibly 

 in some directions open to question. 



The industrial progress of Russia in 

 the face of serious obstacles has been 

 signal. Within ten years the number 

 of hands employed increased from 

 1,318,048 to 2,098,262 and the value 

 of the output more than doubled. The 

 chief industries are textiles and mines 

 and metals. Cotton manufactures have 

 been rapidly developed. The consump- 

 tion of cotton has increased in little 

 more than a decade from 117,000,000 

 kilograms to 257,000,000, and the num- 

 ber of spindles in operation is about 

 7,000,000. In iron manufacture Rus- 

 sia holds the fourth, place among the 

 nations, ranking next to Germany and 

 ahead of France. From 1892 to 1900 

 the annual production of metallic arti- 

 cles rose in value from 142,000,000 

 roubles to 276,000,000. 



The advance was so rapid that after 

 1900 there was a reaction, followed by 

 an industrial crisis. In his report on 

 the budget for 1902, M. Witte ascribed 

 the depression to a succession of bad 

 harvests and a withdrawal of foreign 

 capital, caused by the Boer war and the 

 resulting stringency in the European 

 money markets. Doubtless also the 

 extraordinary development had engen- 

 dered speculation and overproduction. 



