Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-08-14
ITS REPUBLICAN FEATURES
A Mighty Peasantry Just Beginning
To Know Its Strength.
ENOUGH LAND TOFEED TIE WORLD
It Will Soon Become a Nation of Small
Property Holdings.
A PEOPLE OF WONDERFUL PHYsIQUEs
tcoRREsPoNDENcE OF THE DISPATCH

tCoRREsPONDENCE OF THE DISPATCH
TAMBoFF, RUSSIA, July 81
Iwrite this letter in the heart of the
great black plain of Russia. am two days
ride bv rail south of Moscow, in the ragged
little city of Tambof, and 1 have been trav-
cling for days through some of the richest
lands on the face of Gods green earth.
This black plain extends from Poland far
into Siberia 1t is as fat as floor, as rich
as guano and as black as your hat. Its soil
is made up of decomposed vegetable matter,
and it makes me think of the richest fields
of Kansas, which Senator Ingalls, once told
me were so good that you could thrust your
arm down into them up to the shoulder and
pull out from the bottom handfuls of black
earth as rich as that of the valley of the
Nile.
This soil of the black plain is an almost
natural manure. 1t pulverizes easily and it
ranges all the way from three to five feet
deep. 1t is the garden of Russia, and it has
been called the granary of Europe. For hun
dreds of wears it has produced the richest of
crops with no scientific farming, and to-day
lit is loaded with grain which has been pro-
duced by sowing the seed after merely
scratching its surface with wooden piows
Completes With Our Own Farm Land.
This plain is of vast extent and it could if
half cultivated, supply all Europe with food.
and it forms the greatest competition of the
United States In the markets of the world
to-day. 1t comprises, l am told, nearly S00,
600 square miles, or more than twice the
area of the Atlantic States from Maine to
Florida, and more than the aggregate area
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wis
consin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North
and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and
Kentucky. AT present only a small pro-
portion of it is fsrmed, and the great Rus
sian Empire is by all odds the most unde-
veloped country on the earth to-day. If the
conditions here were the same as they are in
the United States in respect to government
and the rights of property all the emigra-
tion Of Europe would pour into Russia and
Siberia and the markets and financial con-
dition of all the world would be changed.
In order to get any idea of the Russian
empire and its people one must get out of
the cities and travel off into the country.
The Russia of to-day is an agricultural
country, and it is among the peasants that
you find the elements that are to affect the
world IN the future. There are more than
100, 000, 900 of these peasants, and it is an
interesting study to look at them and the
vast areas of land they have to work with.
Russia in Europe is an empire in itself I
have already travelled weeks in going over
a small part of it, and its magnificent dis
tances are like those of the United States
Lack of Water Caused the Famine.
Russia is we'll watered, and great rivers
cut their way through the land, giving her
irrigation and transportation facilities. The
irrigation is as yet only begun, but the
rivers and canals have for generations
formed almost the only means of shipping
goods throughout the country. 1t is won
derful how cheap freights are and how far
reaching this water communication is. The
Volga is as big as the Mississippi, and it is