Arizona republican., 1904-11-14
Graft in Russia.


 John Foster Carr writes for one of the November magazines a terrible indictment of the Russian empire. Some of the things which he tells are we'll nigh unbelievable, but he states them with a definiteness and a confi- \ dence which indicate that he knows what he is talking about He says that Russia can be summed up in the statement that it is an empire of graft in high places. He charges that the population is systematically robbed by the nobles, the landowners, the mer- chants, the church and the bureau crats. Everyone in place of power gratis to the limit of his opportunity. An admiral buying coal in foreign ports will have the bill made out in larger figures than he has paid and rake in the overcharge. Russia has paid for her great Siberian railroad twice over on account of the rake off" No contract is let at home which does not pay the officials a commis- sion. Ut is said" declares MT. Carr, that fully 75 per cent of the large Red Cross fund has been stolen. The magnificently equipped hospital train which the czarina sent to the east was footed between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Not thing of value was left in it."
 MT. Carr tells in detail how the church, the merchants and the off cials have developed a system of graft which is openly recognized. treated with tolerance, even thought of with respect" The bureaucrats get in their work by multiplying tEe departments of government. Tt is seriously assert ed," he says, that there are more clerks on the pay roll of the office for dog licenses than there are dogs in St. Petersburg" But the biggest graft CTS are the grand dukes. consisting of three uncles and a brother-in-law of the czar. That we may understand the reason of their almost uncontest- cd rule of the empire, MT. Carr gives us this picture of the czar:
 "Diminutive and insignificant, when he stands up at full height he must peer up to see the eyes of a woman. He has an inborn weakness which ap- breaches effeminacy. His voice squeaks in a high falsetto. His edu- cation has been grievously neglected, for he has been bred entirely by wo- men. The czar of all the Russias is weak and vacillating. frightened by signs and Omens."
 Returning to the grand dukes-a band of royal vultures, he calls them MT. Carr declares that they and their understrappers sell and barter privi- leges which ought to be free. steal from the public crib, and wreck as they please the national prosperity. They are all corrupt and so shame less that they are not affected by for eign scandal at their acts. The three grand ducal uncles are the trustees of a fund that has been collected to erect a church as a memorial of Alex ander II. Work was begun twenty two years ago. The money has been subscribed several times over by the nation. Nobody expects that it will be completed this generation, and yet the embedding trustees are the sons of the murdered czar. One leads a notorious ly profligate and absolute life. The second, the head of a fleet, is a pa trOn of the actresses at the French theater. One of his mistresses lately acted as a go-between in a deal for the purchase of foreign ships. The third is military governor of Moscow, and chief Jew-baiter of the family He is so rabid an anti-Semite that he will not allow a Jew to pass the night in Moscow. The royal do- main embraces a territory twenty five times the extent of Ohio. To the royal family also belong most of the mines of gold and silver, the rich out put of which would supply no small part of the money needed for educa- tion and ultimate recovery. But. in want and in debt the grand dukes en- gineered the famous lumber conces- sion on the Yalu; secured the czar's consent; got him to invest in the spec ulation; and, finally, as a direct re- suit of their intrigue, embroi!ed Rus sia in a war with Japan"
 Summing up his bitter article, the author declares that one-tenth of the Russian population gobbIe up every thing the other nine-tenths can make, and his picture is of a nation seem ingly mighty, but which, in fact, is feeble and fast weakening.