The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1898-11-11
BRING REFORM TO RUSSIA
YANKEE INFLUENCE IS FELT
THERE,
william T. Stead. Writing from ST.
Petersburg, Tells Of Western
Enterprise There.

'When Sir Robert MOrier, one OF the
ablest British ambassadors, was trans
ferred from the court of Madrid to the
capital Of Russia, he remarked on his
arrival, I have come from a country
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 it's rast
in a vain effort to contend with the
forces of the present, while Russia is
eXhausting the resources of the present
in order to be able to cope with the
immense possibilities of the future.
Zone hundred years 6 one of the
aides-de-camp of the then emperor,
falling into conversation with an Amer
lean, asked him to what COUNT he be-
longed, and was told America. Amer
lea, America said the aide-de-camp,
where is American
Al American traveller recently re-
turned from Siberia gravely assured
me that all the war news he could
find in the Orenburg papers were brief
reprints of kilograms describing the
war which vas raging between Spain
and England
"The small but highly cultivated mi
nority which forms Russian society,
the larger group which forms the ad-
ministration, n the officers Of the
army and navy, are, of course. keenly
alive to the evolution of events in
America.
"There is NJ. PObyedonostseff, who is
universally regarded as a kind Of lay
pope and prosecutor general through
out Russia. No milder-mannered man
closed a conventicle or doomed a CHS
matte to exile. He is keenly alive to
tho mnrir1n aNn11tinn or &C he
thinks it. degradation.
"To him Boss Croker is a kind of
somber portent Of the doom that awaits
parliamentaryism or representative
government. In his Reflections of a
Russian Statesman which has just
made it's appearance in English, he eX-
presses profound alarm at the probable
co triumph Of the Roman Catholic re-
ligion in the United States.
"Prince Khilkoff pronounced Hill
koff), minister of ways and communi-
cations, is known as the 'American.'
He served some time in a. American
railway shop: 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 re-
peat in Siberia the great industrial de-
velopment that the Americans achieved
in the last fifty years west of the Mis-
sissippi.
AT the foreign Office Count Moura-
Vieff, bluff, cynical, Bismarckian in his
ambitions, though not in his capacity,
has kept a careful eye upon the devel-
opment 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 lowers lay not
much sympathy with states that are
moribund, and Spain had few sympa-
ls-@ o,,or~ Tho in 0Nc ~ tho
car. But the Spanish war interested
them but little. 1t was waged, as it
were, in a distant planet. Astronomers
might watch it, but it was not the bust
ness Of the average man
"Americans are coming we'll to the
front in Russia, as they are discover
ing more and more what an immense
and undeveloped 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 accomplished in the closing CEN
fury.
mo one adequately realizes the i'm
mense agricultural resources of the i'm
mense prairie through which the car
and Prince Khilkoff are running an
iron highway, 5000 miles long. Amer
cans are supplying many of the rails,
American engineers are everywhere.
One American is experimenting the
construction of new steel works neal
st. Petersburg. Bates dredges 90 to
deepen the Volga. the Dnieper, the Don,
and I know not how many Russian
rivers besides.
'"The representative Of Messrs.
Worthington is laying down 200 miles
of eight-inch piping in the trans-Cas-
pian region, through which the Roths-
child oil combination will pump pc
troleum by means of four pumping sta-
tions. all of which will be supplied with
the latest American pumps.
''The other day I met an American
geologist and engineer. who having
quit the post of city engineer in a
great American city, had Deer spend,
ing the summer examining the gold
mines of northern Siberia, and before
the day was over I stumbled on another
who a been reporting on copper
mines in the Khirgis steppes.
1.-THE testimony of these Americans
was favorable to the labor value OF the
Siberian workman. The Russian is DO
Gle, quick to learn and does quite as
good work as any but the skilled Ia
borer in the states. AS a craftsman
he is a 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 had
had the training of the skilled artisan.
'"There is manifest in certain quar-
ters A. suspicion that after a time the
cordiality of Russian and American
friendship may undergo some little
change. The American element in the
country is a little yeast leavening the
Russian mass With American ideas;
there have been ,heard-to 10. observe that
they had no use foE. arczars: q, ,rase
which seems almost pure, American.
No greater contrast could be conceived
than that between the feverish, news