Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 213, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1915 — RICH IN URGES [ARTICLE]

RICH IN URGES

Russia Faces Indefinite Future of - Warfare Undismayed. z “The Most Powerful Country of the Future” Was Just Finding Itself When War Broke OutWealth Untouched. Washington, D. C. —With the greatest wholesale destruction of treasure in all history taking place, with war-wrought economic losses piling up In such stupendous aggregates as no panic ever caused, the question as to how long each of the belligerents can stand the fearful strain upon its resources is becoming as important and fully as interesting as are any of those more stirring questions growing out of the purely military phase of the world-war. In a bulletin just issued, the National Geographic society sketches the pre-war economic condition of Russia, which, having expended $3,500,000,000, having lost hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign trade, and cities and provinces worth hundreds of millions more, is facing an indefinite future of warfare undismayed, confident. The bulletin reads: “Commercial and industrial revolution were stirring in Russia before the war; the work of opening its magnificent domain was being rapidly carried forward; plans for developing its al--most unlimited resources were in process of confident organization; modern cities were springing up like mushrooms in rich Siberia; textile, metal and other industries were laying firm foundations, and foreign trade had been brought up to about $1,500,000,000. What has been called ‘the most powerful country in the future’ was finding Itself, and was preparing to enter upon the centuries of expansion that it will need to exhaust the possibilities of its boundless natural wealth.

“About two and one-half times larger than the United States, with an area of 8,650,000 square miles and a population of 170,000,000, which is increasing at the rate of 3,000,000 a year. Russia’s natural resources resemble those of this country, and are proportionate. It has nearly 900,000,000 acres of forest —compared with the 50,400,000 acres of the United States —much of which, even now, is carefully administered, and which, one day, will be the world’s first source of timber. It has 250,000,000 acres of land under cultivation, while this country has a cultivated area of about twice as great; but Russia can expand her farm lands twenty-fold and still leave virgin land to the future. It can become the granary and the stock farm of the world.

"Scarcely two score years have passed since Russia began with serious purpose, the task of her internal development. Progress, during the first thirty years of this period was hesitant. In the last decade, however, It has doubled its foreign trade, pf which 56 per cent is exports; still this foreign commerce is less than half that of the United States. But Russia before the war had scarcely begun to gather steam for the prosecution of her tasks. There remain hundreds of millions of-acres of fat lands to be brought under the plow; tens of thousands of factory plants to build; rich mines to be opened; great railway and canal systems to be built; millions of home-builders to be moved into Siberia, the silver East of the czar’s empire, and many millions of illiterates to be educated to a higher standard of life and efficiency. “Russia is a vast storehouse of raw materials, and must for many years remain a purchaser of machinery and manufactured goods in increasing quantities. Yet the mills of Russia consume >130,000,000 worth of raw cotton annually, and Russian Iron and steel rails have already found their way into competition in the markets of the world. Germany bought more from Russia than any other three countries, end sold to the Russians about half of all their imports. These two empires did a tremendous, thriving business with one another before the war, and a great stream of German capital-flowed into the northern

empire for investment. England, Holland, Austria-Hungary and Italy, in the order named, followed Germany in business with the Russians. German trade promotion was thoroughly organized throughout the land, and in Riga, Petrograd and Moscow names of thousands of German firms could be seen. “Russia, as are but few other great nations, is self-sustaining in the matter of raw materials; but the Muscovite empire is dependent upon the factories of other lands for every step that it may take in the upward scale; it is even dependent upon foreign manufactures'to maintain standards in its wide-sweeping territory as high as they are today. There is fabulous riches awaiting transmutation by Russian industry, but Russian industry has hardly passed the birth."