The real growth and development of Russia are within. Her increasing foreign trade is only a sign of what is taking place in a gigantic and largely unexploited empire. Education is spreading slowly but effectively among the people; millions of acres of virgin land yield annually to the plow; railroads are steadily pushing into new territory; population is being transferred from the densely settled areas to the open spaces of Siberia at the rate of a quarter of a million every year. The land and the forests are being held by Russia for Russians, and settlement is a requisite of purchase. Manufacturing plants are increasing apace, and factories of all descriptions, ranging from the mills of Moscow, one of which, a cotton mill, employs nearly 20,000 people, to the smaller establishments of the eastern-frontier cities, are all sharing in the benefits of the increasing purchasing power of the Russian unit.
The needs of the Russian people are not greater than their country can supply in time, but they are far beyond what is now being produced to supply them, or will be for many years to come. Hence they are faring abroad for markets for their raw materials, for raw materials to supply deficiencies of home production, and for the vast supplies of machinery and other manufactured goods needed to meet the demands of interior expansion and modernization now in progress and as yet only in its beginning.
It is concerning this country and this people, and at such a time, that the Congress of the United States has seen fit to denounce a long-existent treaty of trade and friendship and create a situation the outcome of which can only be to the serious detriment of the American people in their political prestige abroad and to their loss industrially, commercially, and financially. This action on the part of the United States Government came as a complete surprise and no little of a shock to the people of Russia, from the highest official in the Government to the most modest Russian vendor or purchaser of American wares. To the not inconsiderable group of adventurous Americans who have entered Russia in the last few years and built up great and profitable businesses in importing American goods or representing American financial institutions it brought bewilderment and consternation. The Russian Government, confident that it retains the right to adjust its domestic laws and economies as may be deemed best for the Russian people, or right or wrong, according to their own judgment or wishes, looks for a reason for what is deemed in St. Petersburg as unwarranted interference from without. It is recalled that within a recent year fewer than a score of naturalized Americans were refused permission to visit Russia, and these for serious political or economic reasons, while hundreds of Russians were refused admission to the United States on rulings from the immigration authorities, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Russian subjects whom no steamship company would accept as passengers for America, knowing that, by reason of discrimination against the Asiatic races, they would be denied. The Russian Government’s official attitude toward this action on the part of the United States Government is one of contemptuous resentment; contemptuous because it is believed that American politicians yielded to anti-Russian influences for purely selfish reasons; resentment because they find from their point of view no just cause for thus destroying in offhand manner the extremely friendly and profitable relations between two great nations—relations which have become a unique and historical example of long-continuing, unbroken, and even undisturbed friendship. The diplomatic position in St. Petersburg is simple. The Russian Government maintains in effect that the United States has chosen to denounce the treaty, hence it rests with the United States to ask for a new convention. In the meantime the United States has been dismissed from the official mind except that so far as governmental influence is concerned it is now actively anti-American. No American bids to furnish steel for the great Russian navy to be built will be considered—because they are American. The present treaty expires December 31, 1912. After that date, unless some new arrangement is made, all American imports will be subjected to a heavy surtax or increase of customs dues. American life insurance companies are carrying policies in Russia amounting to nearly $100,000,000. To do this business they are compelled to maintain a cash reserve in Russian banks amounting in the case of a single New York company to about $20,000,000. After the thirty-first of December, through the antagonism which would result from the absence of a treaty, American financial institutions might be subjected to such restrictions as would make business in Russia impossible. In 1911 the Russian farmers bought $27,000,000 worth of imported agricultural machinery, mostly American.
From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood
RUSSIAN PEASANT WOMEN WORKING IN A SALT MINE
The prospect of a tariff discrimination against such an industry as this is viewed with anything but equanimity by those who have spent laborious years bringing it to its present stage of development. American figures of exports to Russia are of small value as showing the real state of trade between the two countries. According to the figures compiled at Washington, the direct exports to Russia in 1909 amounted to about $30,000,000. In 1911 they were $52,000,000, a growth of eighty per cent. The truth is that more than twice this value is the real measure of American sales to Russia. Over one half of the trade is indirect, American goods being shipped to England, Germany, France, Denmark, Holland, and other countries, and credited as sales thereto, whereas they are immediately reshipped to Russia, and in fact were bought originally on the trade-account of that country. Estimates as to the real amount of American sales to Russia vary from $90,000,000 to $190,000,000, and the latter figure is probably nearer the mark.
From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood
BUNDLING WHEAT FOR EXPORT AT ODESSA, THE GREAT SEAPORT OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA