St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1899-07-26
The Siberian Railroad.

The st. Petersburg correspondent Of
the London Times writes Interestingly
of the great Siberian railroad under date
of March 80.
The latest official report inspires a
much more optimist view of the Siberian
railway and the country through which
it runs than the one hitherto prevailing
here. Like most other new railways
through little-known and undeveloped
regions, it is rapidly creating the condi-
tions necessary to it's existence. Besides
more than third of a million tons Of
surplus corn in the Altai mining district,
where only five per cent of the available
agricultural land has been brought under
cultivation, there is now an annual sur
plus production of Cd, 500 tons of wheat
in the fertile steppe country opened up
by the western section of the railway,
where only FIVE years ago it was neces-
sary to purchase over 96,77O tons a
year from other districts for local con-
sumption. There is thus abundance and
to spare on the further side Of the Urals,
while on this side, ] 900 miles nearer to
Moscow, the peasants have been suffer-
ing from the direst want for the last two
or three years. But nowhere, perhaps,
are figures more deceptive than in Rus
STA, as Sir F. Law proved in his very able
report on the great Russian famine of
1891, when statistics showed a surplus
production of grain for the whole OF
European Russia in that year of 693, 900
tons, without taking into account con-
siderable stocks from previous years on
the one hand and the exports abroad on
the other. A great question for the inn
mediate future is how to place prohta-
bly, what promises to become enormous
production of grain in Western Siberia
upon the foreign market without preju-
dice to the agriculture of European
Russia.
The vast mineral wealth of Siberia,
which fresh expectation continues to
discover in ever increasing quantities,
will also yield to the attraction of the
railway. New cornfelds are being opened
up. The yearly transport of coal to the
Ural iron mines is already estimated at
100000 tons. The government has de-
cided, on the advice of M. Witte, to take
over the celebrated magnetic mountain"
of iron ore on the property of the Oren'
burg Cossacks, and to lease it in separate
lots for exploration to private capitalists
This deposit is supposed to be the richest
of the kind in the world, and the most
tempting offers of rent have already beer
made to the Cossack authorities, but the
government is of the opinion that any
single lessee of this mountain for 9e
years could monopolize the iron industry
OF the country. Well-known English
companies, as well as Russians. have
already turned their attention to thu
district.
1t is officially estimated that the com
mercial traffic of the Siberian railway
within the next five years will reacl
1882 ,255 tons year. and this estimat
is made irrespective of any consideration
of the probable through traffic when tn
line is completed to the Pacific. Russian
are confident that, as far as concern
traffic between the West and the ia
East, the locomotives will eventual.
conquer the steamship, and some of tn
most serious and enterprising men in tn
United States are preparing to elias
hands with them across the water
The idea is only a natural one for tn
greatest land power of the world, which
with more than 20, 900 miles of railwa
now open, has added nearly half of thi
total length within the last eight years
and whose railway locomotives al
already invading China and approachin
the gates of India.