RUSSIAN RECRUITING.
It is a common observation in the mouths of men who are estimating Russia's military strength that, although short of money, she has at least a boundless supply of men; but this idea, though plausible at first sight, is utterly erroneous. A few years ago the confidence of the Russian optimists in their "inexhaustible numbers" was rudely shaken by the discovery that in a single year, out of eighty-four thousand conscripts sent up to the various recruiting centres, no fewer than forty-four thousand were rejected as unfitted for service by disease or other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. The government took the alarm, and gave orders for the immediate formation of a medical commission and the thorough investigation of the sanitary condition of the population at large. This was promptly done, and the result startled all Russia with the announcement that her strength was barely one-half what it had previously been supposed to be.
Nor is this by any means an over-statement of the case. In European Russia the weakness in productive ages is such that whereas in Great Britain the proportion of persons alive between the ages of fifteen and sixty is 548 in the thousand, and in Belgium 518, in Russia it barely reaches 265. It is computed that in the government of Pultava alone, by no means a populous district, not less than one hundred thousand persons are absolutely disabled by various chronic complaints. Out of the forty-nine millions of the laboring class, the "raw material" of the Russian army, fully fifty per cent. are practically unfit to serve. The statistics of the average duration of human life are even more terribly significant. In England and Northern Germany, according to the best authorities, every man lives, on an average, about 40 years; in Southern Germany, 38 years; and in France, 36. In Russia, on the other hand, the average, even in the healthiest regions (i.e. the north and west), varies from 27 to 22 years. Along the banks of the Volga and in the south-east provinces generally, where the conditions of life are less favorable, the proportion falls as low as 20 years, while in the governments of Perm, Viatka and Orenburg it is only 15.
In whatever way this glaring evil may be explained away by native apologists, it really springs from two very simple causes—insufficient wages and popular ignorance. The miserably low scale of wages among the artisans of the great towns has long since become proverbial, but in the agricultural districts matters are even worse. The ordinary wages of the Russian "field-hand" are as follows: Laborers by the day, 37½ kopecks (about 25 cents) per diem; by the month, 23 kopecks (15 cents); by the season, 17 kopecks (11 cents); in harvest, 75 kopecks (half a dollar). For this pittance the peasants toil from twelve to fifteen, and often sixteen, hours a day; and, thanks to their insufficient food, the constant strain soon begins to tell. A few seasons of such overwork and their strength breaks down altogether, while, instead of the substantial diet needed to recruit it, their scanty fare is still further diminished by the countless fasts of the Greek Church, occurring twice, or even thrice, a week. Hence, upon the first outbreak of fever or cholera the poor creatures perish helplessly, thousands upon thousands, while the St. Petersburg fashionables, yawning over the printed death-roll, languidly wonder why the lower classes are so careless of their health. Nor are the calamities entailed by superstition less deplorable than those which spring from poverty. Those who have seen, in the villages of the interior, new-born infants plunged in ice-cold water which it would be thought sacrilege to warm; children of four and five running about on a bitter day in the fall of the year with no clothing but a light linen shirt; cholera-stricken peasants refusing the medicines offered them; and women employed in hard field-labor three days after their confinement,—can easily credit the statement, frightful as it is, that at least fifty, and in some cases eighty-three, per cent. of the children born in the provinces die in their infancy, and that the population of certain districts has diminished fully one-third during the past generation.
D.K.