Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1893 — THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY.

Some Interesting; Information Concerning the Colossal Enterprise. Cyrus Adams in X. Y. Sun. On the Pacific coast of Siberia in 1891 the Czarewitch turned the first sod of the great Trans-Siberian Railroad. The work was pushed from both ends of the line last year. From Vladivostock (Empress of the Orient), whose sanguine inhabitants delight to think that their little town will yet become another Constantinople, the line has already been carried up the Ussuri branch of the Amur River, nearlyffQQmiles. At-the-wqst end of- the— line track laying is advancing slowly toward: Omsk, and 1897 has been proclaimed as the year when the longest railroad in the world, 4,650 miles iff length, shall be completed, though it is more likely that it will only be under good headway then, nnd that at least a decade will elapse before the last nail is driven. It is estimated by the Russian officials in

charge that the entire road will cost 350,000,000 roubles, about one-tenth of which they say will be expended every year until the great work is finished, ten years from now. As a business venture the western part of the line may undoubtedly be made profitable; but no one knows whether the whole line can ever be made to pay its operating expenses and a fair return on the enormous capital invested. The extreme western section of the line now building starts from the little town of Tchelvabinsh. on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains. The town is already connected, or is soon to be joined by rail, with the two Russian lines that push through the heart of the iron mining region of the south and central Urals. Fi-om this town the road is extending southeast toward Omsk, 495 miles away, the capital of western Siberia. Good things are often far to seek, and so the Siberian road toward the land of promise must, at the outset, push across the barren and almost useless waste, skirting for nearly half the way to Omsk the northern edge of the salt steppe of Akmolinsk (White Tomb), the home of the Siberian cattle plague, and wide areas utterly destitute of timber and sweet surface water. North of this barren region and along the railroad line between Omsk and Mariinsk ’fend in the wide areas around Tjumen, Kurgan, Jalutorvsk, Tobolsk, Barnaul and BtlSk is a portion of western Siberia that will, in time, become a garden. In area it is as large as France, and it is capable of supplying as large a population. The policy of the government todqy is to encourage and facilitate the removaT'of the superfluous population from those parts of Russia that are most likely to suffer from failure of crops and consequent famine. The fertile areas of western Siberia ne6d this surplus labor, and the Czar’s government urgently seeks by means of the hundreds of thousands of toilers who can now hardly keep soul and body together in Russia to

bring these millions of acres under cultivation. Emigration from the mother land to these great wheat fields cannot now be carried on upon a large scale because of the cost and difficulty in reaching them; and yet from 1885 to 1891 188,000 people left Russia'to make new homes in this part of Siberia, and that in spite pf the fact that they have as yet very limited facilities for sending their produce, to exterior markets. What the country needs is large colonization, and this cau come only when the western section of the great Siberian road is completed. It is proposed simultaneously with the building of the road through this great fertile area to colonize a strip of land from thirty to seventy-five miles wide on both sides of the' line; and this project brings into view a striking difference between the' Trans-Asian railroad and our own i transcontinental lines. The Siberian railroad will have no great trade centers on the borders of the Pacific, at least for years to come, and, without colonists to fill up the fertile regions of western Siberia, the railroad cannot be justified on practical, economic grounds. The development of western Siberia is about the only element of undoubted practicability in the whole scheme. In the government, of Tomsk, a ... 'V. . .. Ik-

branch line south of themain line to Barnaul and Bisk “in ihe mining regions of the Altai mountains, will afford the road another important aspect. There are practical men who bqjieve that gold mining will be developed here that will compare favorably with that of California, Australia and the Transvaal. However that may be, there is a great deal of the precious metal in the Altai mountains, and the railroad will give an enormous impetus to this valuable part of Russia’s domain, which never can be properly developed until steam communication joins it with the European system of railroads. We see. therefore, that that part of the fatlroatr which ends toward the east akor near K rasitojarslLhaa . roost practical ends in view in the development of colonization, agriculture and mining. The total trade of Vladivostock amounts to only 7,000,000 roubles a year, showing that Russia’s seaport on the Pacific as yet. cut® only ah insignificant figure in the trade of European Russia with its Asiatic territories. East of Ivrasnojarsk there seems no prospect for many years of developing trade that will add largely to the receipts of the road. In the first place, the most, serious problems of building the line are found cast of Krasnoyarsk. The only important bridges to bp built through western Siberia are those crossing the Irtysch, Ob. and Yenissei rivers. There are some areas of good soil between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia, but, western Siberia is so much nearer markets and affords to colonization schemes such superior inducements that there is no prospect of anything but a very sparse settlement of the eastern plains for many years to come. There is on the southeast shores of"-Lake Baikal and in the valley of the Selenga river, which is the warmest district in all Siberia, and has been called “the Siberian Italy,” a region of surpassing fertility, From Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean the road will present great engineering difficult^ 1 -', and is destined always to be almost void of population. There is no cheerful financial outlook for this part of the route, embracing about half of its total length. Besides the Pacific sea trade, which Russia hopes to stimulate by means of the Siberian railroad, it also proposes to build a branch line from Kiachta to the Siberian road, in the hope that this will again revive the caravan trade from north China.

It is questionable, however, whether Russia will be able, to afford advantages in the way of cheap freight rates that will enable her to compete successfully with the present well established trade routes to Asia. It is, besides, very doubtful if she can make much headway in competition with European and American powers, that have left her far behind in the struggle for the trade of south Asia. Russian writers also seem to overlook the fact that their Pacific port of Vladivostock is closed by ice several months in the year. In fact, as a highway for the world’s trade the present prospects for the Siberian railroad do not seem flattering, and, figure as they may, publicists of Russia have not succeeded in convincing the economists of other nations that the trans-Asian railroad can be made to pay. I shall not discuss hero the military and political aspects of the enterprise; but it is really upon these features of the scheme aione, upon the necessity of consolidating her empire and facilitating the defence of her Pacific coast possessions, that Russia can at present justify the expenditure of' the enormous, agiount. of treasure’ which she proposes to put in her trans-Asian railroad. The western half of the road,' therefore, is an economic necessity whose development is required by the needs of a large and very valuable part of Russia’s territorial possessions. The eastern half of the road is probably destined to make the whole unprofitable as a commercial enterprise, and can be justified only upon grounds of political and military expediency.

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD.