The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1890-12-07
PATERNALIsM AGAIN.

a beautiful illustration of paternalism
carried out to its extreme limits is now af-
forded by the latest action of the Russian
Government. Everybody who has heard
much of Russian affairs believes that their
administration is honeycombed with cor
ruption. 1t has been said that not an army
nor navy contract is given out in which
the Cover me gets the worth of its money
1t has now occurred to the heads of the
C0mmiSsariat Department that this system
of peculation would be checked il the Gov
ernmtnt became its own purveyor. Accord
ingly the War Department has bought large
tracts of land in Western Russia. and is
planting them with grain, vegetables and
fruits, and stocking them with cattle; it
further proposes to set up lour-mils, bak-
cries, slaughter houses and canneries to
prepare the crops and the meat for immedi-
ate use as food. The Army of the West
viii thus cease to be dependent on contract
ors for supplies; it will draw them from the
Government granaries and food depots
there will be no chance for any contractor
to make fortune by supplying inferior
bread and poor beef, and the troops will at
last get wholesome provisions. The Rus
sian Government proposes to become its own
butcher and baker
1t is evident that the old proYerb about
the shoemaker and his last has passed out of
memory at ST. Petersburg. II does not seem
to be understood on the banks of the Neva
that success is in proportion to skill. The
business of the Russian soldier is to fight.
If lie is taken from the drills and exercises
which are necessary to keep him in good
fighting condition to grow wheat and tur-
nips. to tend cattle, to cultivate fruit, to
manage fiour-mills and canneries, to run
slaughter-hOuses and bake bread his eff
cheney as a soldier will certainly suffer, aud he
will prob ably make failure of his civil pur-
suits. 1t constantly happens that in pro-
longed campaigns Generals put the territory
surrounding their camps under cultivation
so as TO secure reserve of food. But the
plan has never commended itself as an
economical measure. The best and cheap
est bread can always be got from those
whose business it is to make bread. the
worst and dearest from those who know
nothing of bread-making and who take to it
in the intervals of another occupation.
1t is physically possible for a man to pro-
vide for all his wants. A lawyer can, if he
tries, make his own clothes, grow his own
food, make his own furniture and spin the
blankets under which he sleeps. But neither
the clothes, nor the food, nor the furniture
nor the blankets will be as good as similar
articles which he can buy in the stores, and
they will cost him, if he reckons what the
value of his time would have been If he had
devoted it to his profession, far more than
the store-keeper would charge him.
1t is reasonably certain that the Russian
Commissariat Department will turn out
worse food even than that which the con-
tractors supply, and it is sure to cost more.
The true cure for the evils under which the
Gar chafes is not to launch the Govern
ment in a business which il was not in
tended to pursue and for which it is not
equipped, but to make war on corruption in
the civil and military service. That will be
a serious undertaking. but it can be accom-
plished with time and patience. Some years
ago the sums stolen by the officials at Odes-
sa became so large that the attention of the
Emperor was drawn to them, and he cleo
trlfed the officials by appointing an Ameri-
can to the post of Controller of Supplies in
that department. The new appointee had
no difficulty in detecting the steals and in
reporting the criminals to st. Petersburg.
Some of them were sent to Siberia But the
American got such pregnant hints tn at the
climate of Odessa would prove fatal to his
health If he stayed there that he resigned
his past, and the Emperor abandoned his
campaign against the thieves, finding as
Mr.. Lincoln did on another occasion, that
he had but little infiue nee with his own ad.
mini stration