Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1891 — Barbarity in Siberia, [ARTICLE]

Barbarity in Siberia,

United Press. The Czarewitch having recovered from the injuries inflicted by the Japanese assassin, is to go through the course mapped out when he started from Russia. The Ui’suli railway, the easternmost section of the proposed transsiberian line has already been completed three hundred miles from Vladivostock and the Czarwitch will ride over it for that distance in a train specially equipped for his use and will formally inaugurate it. The railway is chiefly tne product of convict labor and largely that of women who ai-e pushed on to work by brutal seveiity on the part of the guards. A letter from Tokio, Japan, giving the story of a prisoner recently escaped from Siberia, says the women employed to dig and remove the dirt on this line are perishing by scores. They are selected for the work without reghrd to manual experience, and political prisoners, some of them of refinement and delicate, are made to * use the pick and shovel. If they show weakness they are mercilessly whipped. Women arriving in eastern Siberia in the convict trains are at the mercy of guards, and those who refuse to submit to anything required of them are detailed to work on the railway. It is likely that these matters will be carefully covered during the journey of the Czarewitch, although to make a pretense of official liberality a fewspecially favored convicts will be permitted to present addresses and petitions for pardon. The Czarewitch will also go through the form of investigating the condition of prisoners and exiles, and the mines and prisons have for several months been undergoing preparations for his inspection. One reason for this is that ne may be able to make a favorable report to his mother, who is said to be very much touched by the stories of Siberian cruelty and suffering. An odd title for a fair held in England in aid of a convalescent home is “A Dream of Health for Sick Chil drea.”