Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-09-26
SIBERIAN TRANSPORTATION.

| legacies: Torture, the knout and rams
| portation. The eighteenth century abol-
| ished torture. the nineteenth the knout
and the first day of the twentieth GEN.
fury will be the last day Of a penal sys-
TEN based on transportation" These
are the words of an official report of the
Russian council Of the empire, as quoted
by NJ. Solomon, director-in-chie of the
prison administration of Russia, In an
article contributed to the New York In
dependent for September Goth. The in
tention of the paper is to give the i'm
preston that Russia has at last abolished
| the system of transportation, hui a care
full examination reveals the fact that
there is still room for work for the
twenty-frst century, for in such mat
tiers it seems that the empire of the ear
takes just one step in every ndr
| years.
h news that by the edict of June
1925 da old style, % new style) trans
| p~ortation as a punishment for crime Is
to be replaced by imprisonment under
conditions similar to that obtaining" in
| other modern countries, is an
| ment of world wide Importance. 1t is not
| an entirely certain thing that our mod
| ern pathological methods are completely
| successful. Criminals are not always
reformed, and first offenders are not al
ways brought back to ways of virtue and
~uprightness. But there is nothing else
in the annals of modern criminology so
utterly reprehensible as a system. as the
plan of transportation maintained by
Russia for over three hundred and fifty
years.
A few years ago the civilized parts of
Europe and America were profoundly
interested because they were profoundly
shocked by the revelations made by the
American George Kennan concerning the
horrors of the exile system. Terrible as
were the statements published by him.
Mr.. KEENAN, in private conversation said
| that he had not begun to describe the
facts. No one but a Zola or a Rabelais
would put into written language, for re-
fined taste Of modern readers, the ex-
IRENE incidents of brutality and vulgar
ity of which he was cognisant. To listen
TO what he had to say of matters not
mentioned in his writings. as has the
writer of his article, was to become a
thorough convert to the opinions he ex-
pressed.
The terrible accusation made by Mr..
KEENAN, against the a~utocracy of the
Russians, was too strong to be fully &C
| cepted in it's entirety by the mass of the
American people. Yet the dispassionate
article of the Russian official is to the
thoughtful reader. strong confirmation
of the worst that Mr.. KEENAN, has claim
ed. M. Salomon's account is intended to
eulogize the present car, and can not
be expected to make a bad case for his
country. Yet listen to what he says. He
reports tina in 1898 he was ordered. with
other prison officials, "to viA-t the prin-
cipal places Of transportation and of
convict labor, and to collect information
concerning the execution of sentence. the
situation of prisoners from a moral and
economical point of view and the influ-
ence which they exercise upon the popu-
lation of Siberia" After his resume of
statistics he remarks: '"These figures are
eloquent, but I might cite others which
are still more eloquent, for I have seen
that panorama of misery and of moral
d~egradation; 1 have seen it unroll before
me from the mountains of the Ural to
the waves of the Pacific. I will only
cite one telling fact. While the number
of transported persons represent five per
cent. of the population of Siberia they
represent IS per cent. of the population
of the prisons of that country"
1t has only been within the last Gen.
fury tina ccurate statistics have been
kept of the number Of persons trans
ported. But adding to the figures OBJ
tainable, estimates for the years during
which figures are lacking, it appears
that within one hundred years, nearly
one million human beings have been
carried to that hopeless abode of misery.
OF this number about $1,000 were wives
n 40. 600 We're children of men who had
been condemned, as the merciful prac-
tice of the government is to allow such
members Of their families as desire to
the exiles, to do so at the
expense of the state. There are now In
Siberia about 800, 900 persons who have
been victims of the transportation sys-
tenn. OF this number, M. Solomon esti-
mates that about one-third are hopeless
and desperate criminals. These spend
their time in the summer in the forests,
which are retreats to which they With
draw from exploits of murder and high
~waymanship, while in the winter they
manage to secure lodgings in the local
prisons. Another third are vagabonds,
who occasionally indulge in work. About
80, 900 are steady farmers, and the re-
naming 10000 are laDoferS, LOT whom
there would be some hope under reason
ably favorable conditions.
When we consider that many of the
exiles are, or rather were, men of intelli-
gence and private morality, whose fault
was to be dissatisfied with a government
that is far from perfect, the effect of
their enforced colonization in Russia's
great province is seen to be appalling.
Blu one would infer from NJ. Salomon's
account that the proportion of political
victims is much smaller than in reality
is the case. He says that of late years
about 100 persons are annually trans
ported for political or religious offenses,
about 43O for ~vagabondage and an aver
age of 1870 for crime. That is that the
proportion of political offenders is about
one in thirty-eight. This Is probably
true of late years, and may be true of