The record-union., 1898-10-30

Which the Gear is Running an
Iron Highway.
Correspondence of the Associated Press)
LONDON, Oct. 20.-William T. Stead,
writing from ST. Petersburg, says:
When Sir Robert Morier, one of the
ablest of the British ambassadors, was
transferred from the court of Madrid to
the capital of Russia he remarked on
his arrival, i have come from a coun-
try which lives in the past to a country
which lives in the future
Since then many years have gone by.
Spain has almost used up its past in
vain effort to contend with the forces
of the present, while Russia is exhaust
ing the resources of the present in or
der to be able to cope with the immense
possibilities of the future Russia is
the greatest aggregate of white men
ever compacted into a State unit since
the world began. The English-speaking
family alone exceeds in numbers the
Russian, but they know no one political
allegiance such as that which binds all
the Russians to the throne of Nicho-
las II.
One hundred and twenty millions of
men constitute a world in themselves
large enough to absorb their energies
ana monopoliZe their attention The in
dlnerence of the Russians as to what
passes beyond. their frontiers is phe-
nomenal. Fifteen years ago one of the
aides de camp of the then Emperor,
railing into conversation with an Am
erican, asked him to what country he
belonged, and was told America
America, America" said the aide de
camp. Where is America?
An American traveller recently re-
turned from Siberia gravely assured me
that all the war news he could find in
the Orenberg papers were brief reprints
OF kilograms describing the war which
was raging between Spain and Eng
land The Russian peasantry are not
apt to make fine distinctions Mankind
for them, it has often been said, con-
sists only of two great divisions-the
Russians. or speaking men, and the
non-Russians, or those who cannot
speak
There is NJ. Pobyedonostreff. who is
universally regarded as a kind of lay
Pope and prosecutor general through
out Russia. No milder hammered man
ever doomed a schismatic to exile. He
is keenly alive to the American evolu-
ton, or. as he thinks it, degradation.
To him Boss Croker is a kind of
somber portent of the doom that
awaits Parliamentarism or representa-
tive government In his Reflections of
a Russian Statesman which has just
made its appearance in English, he ex-
presses profound alarm at the prob
ri nh Of ba
lie religion in the United States.
Prince Khikloff pronounced Hill
kofD, Minister of War and Communi-
cations, is known as the American.
He served some years in an American
railway shop, and he wears his beard
in the traditional American fashion: his
letters are written on a typewriter and
he is simply burning with a desire to
repeat in Siberia the great industrial
development that the Americans
achieved in the last fifty years west of
the Mississippi
AT the Foreign Office Count Moura-
vieff, bluff, cynical, Bismarckian in his
ambitions, though not in his capacity
has kept careful eye upon the devel-
opments of American ambitions. While
scrupulously preserving the most rigid
neutrality during the war, he had a
bias in sentiment toward the United
States. Great and growing Powers
have not much sympathy with States
that are moribund. and Spain has few
sympathiZers among the Ministers OF
the Czar. But the Spanish war inter
ested them but little. 1t was waged as
1t were, IN distant planet Astrono-
mers might watch it, but it was not
the business of the average man.
Americans are coming well to the
front in Russia, as they are discovering
more and more what an immense and
undeyeloped field the lands of the Car
offer to Western enterprise. Russia is
but at the beginning of a new epoch
of industrial development Before the
next century closes she hopes to have
achieved a progress as great as that
which the United States has achieved
in the closing century. No one ade-
quately realizes the immense agricult-
ural resources of the immense prairie
through which the Gar and Prince
Khilkoff are running an iron highway
5000 miles long. Americans are supply
ing many of the rails, American en-
gineers are everywhere. One American
is experimenting the construction OF
new steel works near st. petersburg
Bates dredgers are 10 deepen the Vol
ga. the Dneiper, the Don and l know
not how many Russian rivers beside
The representative of Messrs. Worth
ington is laying down 200 miles Of
eight-inch piping in the trans-Caspiar
region, through which the Rothschilds
Oil combination will pump petroleum
by means of our pumping stations. al
or which will be supplied with the lat
est American pumps
The eother day I met an American ge-
ologist and engineer who having quit
the post of City Engineer in great
American city, has been spending the
summer examining the gold mines OF
Northern Siberia, and before the day
was over | stumbled on another who
had been reporting on copper mines in
the klrgi Steppes. The testimony OF
these Americans was favorable to the
labor value of the Siberian workman
The Russian is docile, quick to learn
and does quite as good work as the
skilled laborer in the States. As a
craftsman he is past master with his
only tool, the AK. and my American
friends seemed to think that he would
be equally deft with other tools if he