It is Russia for the Russians now in the East, and all foreign Chinamen have been given notice to go home. They are being ousted from Russian towns, and no longer outnumber the Russians in the construction work in progress everywhere. Thousands of Russian soldiers line the railroad from Europe to the Sea of Japan, and in northern Manchuria, ostensibly a Chinese possession, fifty thousand Russian troops guard the right of way and the small towns or groups of houses which cluster about every railway station. These soldiers are in reality only the pioneers of the home-builders who are en route.
From the inception of the enterprise the locomotives of the Siberian railroads have burned wood, but the wood-burner is now doomed. The great strata of coal which underlies the extreme eastern part of Siberia is soon to be extensively worked, and with the expiration of the present fuel contracts on the railroads coal will be substituted. Westward from Vladivostok for hundreds of miles there is as yet virtually no human settlement, though the country is as promising, as fertile, and as inviting to the plow as were the millions of acres of the Dakotas prior to their settlement.
From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood
RUSSIAN PEASANTS IN THE HAY-FIELDS
The word “Siberia” has always called to the mind great stretches of bleak or snow-covered landscape, intense cold, and human suffering and privation. It has figured in truth, in art, and in fiction as the scene of heart-breaking cruelties to chained gangs of prisoners, criminals, and exiles. Packs of ravening wolves sought out the lonely traveler, and to be sent to Siberia was to leave the world behind. There is still enough reality in these tales to serve as a foundation of truth in the telling, but this is not the Siberia of the Russian emigrant, farmer, and trader. It is the five thousand miles which lie east and west between latitudes 40° and 60° north toward which his ambitions lead. A new United States lies within these boundaries. The fertile plain, the broad valley, the virgin forest, and the massive mountain-range of this region all lie within the temperate zone. Cold in winter, warm in summer, the seasons regular and normal the year round, this is the Siberia traversed by the Russian Trans-Continental Railroad, and which is destined as time goes on to play a part, constantly increasing in importance and seriousness, in the economics of the world. The productive power of this region is limited only by the degree of development attained, and its absorptive power will be of equally heroic measure. Cities and towns of no inconsiderable size are rapidly appearing at the most central points of the new settlement, and in many ways their life and appearance is reminiscent of the boom days of Western America. Novonikolaesevsk in ten years has achieved a population of over 50,000. Omsk, Petropavlovsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Nikolaievsk, Vladivostok, and others are as modern, as bustling, as prosperous, and are growing as rapidly as if they were situated west of the Missouri.
Nearly all of these prosperous towns are built on the banks of magnificent rivers, the names of which in some cases are familiar only to students of geography. These great and numerous streams constitute a system of natural waterways invaluable in the development of the country. In summer they are navigable for steamers of considerable size, and in winter they are highways of travel for vehicles. Their sources lie in the hearts of the great forests to the north, and their quick-flowing currents bear upon them rafts of timber of great size. The inland trade of Siberia has grown in ten years from $30,000,000 to $75,000,000, and in one province alone, that of Akmolinsk, there are held 105 yearly fairs, at which over $50,000,000 worth of merchandise changes hands.
Government revenues increase only gradually, and with great and varied areas to be served in national utilities make progress seemingly slow. In the matter of posts and telegraphs an unusual state exists, for on the operations of this branch of the Government in 1911 a profit of $17,000,000, or fifty-one per cent., was recorded. In 1912 the profit was reduced to thirty-one per cent., showing that the service was extended and improved. It would be better that the entire profit were wiped out through extensions of facilities, for now there is only one post-office for every ten thousand people, and in the Moscow province, with a population of over 4,000,000, there are only eleven sub-post-offices. As shown by an annual decrease in the surplus, it is probable that the Russian post-office budget will in time balance itself or show a deficit, as is the rule in other countries. Labor legislation is coming in Russia much along the same lines that now prevail in Germany.
The status of the Russian laborer is not very different from that of his brother in other European countries. His wages are somewhat lower in many occupations, but in the large industrial centers of European Russia conditions are much the same as elsewhere. Of all the labor-strikes recorded of 1911, twenty-five per cent. were determined favorably to the strikers, and forty per cent. were compromised as between employer and employed. Nearly $500,000,000 is now on deposit in the Russian savings-banks, and if the population of outlying territory, where there are no banks, be deducted, the showing per capita is on all fours with that of many other countries where consideration for the interests of the wage-workers is much older in its application to national affairs. As it is, there are nearly eight million depositors, or more than in any other country excepting the United States, England, or Germany. In 1911 the foreign trade of Russia across the Black Sea and Finnish borders, together with the trade across the eastern boundaries by land and sea, amounted to over $1,400,000,000. During the five years 1901 to 1905 the total foreign trade amounted to about $350,000,000 annually. In the five years 1906-10 the annual average was $980,000,000, and in 1911 it was, as stated, over $1,400,000,000. The following figures illustrate the growth of the foreign commerce account in the last ten years expressed in millions of dollars:
RUSSIAN FOREIGN TRADE