Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1902 — FANATICS IN A FRENZY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FANATICS IN A FRENZY.

Religious Sect in a Crazy Search for tlie Messiah. The Russian religious sect known aa Doukhobors; or “spirit wrestlers, who have been marching through Manitoba in search of the Messiah, are reported to be in a terrible plight. The pilgrims are falling from exhaustion and lilinger, but the religious frenzy that lias kept them up has not abated with tlie majority. No action has yet been taken by the government lo stay the progress of the wild march. This fanatical sect originated in Russia in the middle of the eighteenth cenutry. It was borne in on the crest of a wave of reaction from sumptuous Greek formalism toward Russian puritanism. In 1894 all privileges were withdrawn on the ground that the fanatics had become disturbers of tlie peace. With the aid of the Empress they procured leave to emigrate. A colony 8,000 strong, accompanied by Sergius Tolstoi, son of the novelist, emigrated to Manitoba. The novelist contributed materially to their

emigration. The Canadian government gave them a bonus of $5 per head and an additional $1.50 for settlement. To each family was allotted a farm of 100 acres. Shelter was provided for them at public cost until their houses were built. For a time their pacific disposition. simplicity and thrift combined to make them prosperous mid content. Their creed is austere. They use neither flesh meat, wine nor tobacco. They recognize no authority in church or state except <%rist as they interpret his teachings. Not more than 5 pir cent of tin- colony could read or write cn arrival. But they have given elementary instruction to all their children, whom they rear to manual labor. Their communal system broke down last \car under tlie test of the novel conditions of new world life. Their opposition to any but a vegetarian diet rendered them poor cattle raisers. They fell into poverty. which became aggravated by a revival of fanaticism whose avowed purpose is to convert the world to their ideas. They are now on their way to Winnipeg, levying vegetarian subsistence as they go. With curious inhumanly, after the fashion of the pagan Greeks, they have abandoned the aged, the infant and the decrepit and left them a butden to the villages on their route. As scurvy lias frequently attacked the Doukhobors, whether in community or on the road, the towns which they have entered are in dread of epidemics. Insanity has seized a number of the most zealous of tlie migrant fanatics and their companions resist every attempt to detach the maniacs from the multitude.

TYPES OF DOUKHOBORS.