The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1892-12-29

bug leather factories, and at every steamboat
landing, when / sailed down this big stream.
/ found peasants who were peddling their
wares. Some were selling leather coats and
carpet sacks, others had soap for SALE and
everywhere / was offered knit goods and lace.
At Moscow they make nearly everything un-
der the sun, from wire and goldleaf to
spectacles and bronze castings They turn
out thousands of looking glasses. vast deal
of papier-mache ware, very fair article of
clocks, and all sorts of cotton goods.
II is wonderful how the peasants learn new
trades, and when Russia is opened up to
civilization, these hundred million people
will be one of the manufacturing Nations Of
the world. 1t is now only % years since a
peasant introduced the making of wsll-cloeks
into one of these Russian villages, and there
are now large number of families engaged
in the industry, and they turn out thousands
of dollars worth of clocks every year 1t is
the same with other things, and Russia, under
the stimulus OF its protective tariff, may yet
become a manufacturing Nation. Already
there Is a great iron industry in the UTal
Mountains. j found at lula thousands of
men and women working in the factories
there, and other manufacturing establishments
are springing up here and there all over the
country.
The Russia of to-day, however. is an agri-
cultural country, and the Russians are O
Nation Of villagers There are 500. 600 little
towns scattered all over this Russian Empire,
and it Is the people who live in these who
make up the great Russian race We hear a
great deal about the Gar and the Russian no.
biiity, but only one man in hundred here
is noble, and hardly one man in thousand
is an official The real Russia is peasant
Russia; the men who live in these matched
huts, budding together with their wives and
children like so many cattle, are the Russians
Of the future. There are but few large cities.
st. Petersburg has million people. Moscow
has something like 500. 000 Warsaw is not
much bigger than Cincinnati. and I doubt
whether there are % cities in the Russian
Empire which have more than so 600 popu-
latiOn.
You can travel for hours along the Russian
railroads, and not see city of any size. but
you will see peasant villages scattered every
where over the landscape, and these villages
everywhere look the same There is a little
difference according to the character of the
country as to the materials out of which they
are built. But that is all The log cabin OF
the North and the matched mud Int of the
South are of about the same size and they
| straggle in the same way along the wide street,
with no change OF architecture and without
outside decoration. There is no paint wasted
upon them. There are no gardens in front oil
them nor big barns behind them, and side
walks and gaslamps are unknown. There is
not fence in the village and the houses stand
alone upon the landscape.
/ The country about them is usually acri.
| cultural, but there are no fences TO divide the
| fields, and the little brown matched villages
/ of the south look more like haystacks than
| human habitations. Some of the larger O,
| these villages may have churches, and there
| is usually white brick or wood church some.
| where in their vicinity; bu. as for town halls
and village councii-chambers, these are miss
ing, and the ordinary village stores are kept in
huts much like those in which the people live
/ The public meetings Of the village--and
! there are many of these-are held on thu
grass-grown roads between the houses, and il
is on this grass that the peasant girls dance
at night with their lovers. and that the people
SIT and chat upon holiday. The chicken:
and the sheep wander here and there through
the settlement, and the hogs root their wa,
along the road. II there srs trees in the vii