Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1917 — Siberia, Far From Being Barren Waste, Can Support Population of 800,000,000. [ARTICLE]

Siberia, Far From Being Barren Waste, Can Support Population of 800,000,000.

Stories of the westward flight of Siberian exiles, following the revolution and the release of about 100,000 prisoners who have been held by the Russian government in Siberia, gave a somewhat wrong impression of Siberia. These prisoners have for the most part been held in eastern and northeastern Siberia, the cold regions. They have worked in mines under heartless overseers. Many of them, were exiled without trial, and most of them were political prisoners, sentenced after a perfunctory trial by government officials who took their orders and meted out justice accordingly. Naturally the news of the successful revolution and the release of the exiles resulted In a scramble to get home. But it should not be inferred from this that Siberia will within a short time be deserted, observes the Indianapolis News. To the west is a vast region into, which, in the ten years preceding the war. some 3,000,000 Russians went of their own accord. The total population of western Siberia is now 9.000,000, while the population of the rest of Siberia is only ?,500,000. —*< ——•» Although there are many rich deposits of gold, silvei;, copper, iron and coal in western Siberia, iron mines are not worked much because of the lack of transportation facilities. It is chiefly at present an agricultural region, attracting Russian farmers who seek better and cheaper land, as American farmers once went: west Tn search of better opportunities. A British trade agent, writing in the British Export Gazette, says this district will support a population of 800,000.000, but at the present rate of colonization It will be many years before the population becomes as large as that of European Russia, or one-fourth of the British, agent’s estimate. ~