Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-04
Witte One of Three Remark
able Men Of the Empire.
MASTER OF FINANCE
DOUBLED THE REVENUES OF HIS
COUNTRY.
Hated by Certain Members Of the
by the Conservatives.
From Harper's Weekly.

ASSAuOS HldHy Aucu VI literary tdlSIt
which, in the cases Of Turguenefr and Dos
toyevskiy, amounted to genius, and one
general OF exceptional capacity. Skobeleff,
contemporary Russia has produced three
men who not only have made profound
impression on their fellow-countrymen. but
occupy conspicuous places in the eyes of
the world. We refer, of course to Tolstoi
Pobiedonostseff and White. To portrayal
of these three personalities Senator Bever-
iGge has devoted a chapter of his recent
book. The Russian Advance, to which
events have given peculiar timeliness and
value. 1t is the last-named of the three, or,
TO give him the title conferred upon him a
Few years ago, Count White, who is now
brought into the foreground by his selec-
tior for the thankless and almost impracI-
cable task of ending upon terms endurable
by his nations dignity and pride a war
which he opposed from the beginning, and
which has brought Russia nothing but dis
grace.
Whether the ex-minister Of finance and
present president Of the committee Of min
listers is descended from those brothers De
Witt, who, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, played SO memorable and so trag-
ical a part in the history of the Neither
lands, we know not; but If such lineage be
his. he is, of course. entitled by inheritance
to the nobiliary particle. What we do know
Is that early in the nineteenth century there
came to Russia from Holland an emigrant
of that name, one of whose descendants,
some decades later, we find settled at Tifiis
in Transcaucasia. where. beginning as
storekeeper, he gradually acquired sufficient
capital to do sort Of banking business.
At the Head Of the Railways
There, rather more than fifty years ago,
his son Sergius born. Having received
fair education, the boy obtained subor-
dinate clerkship in one of the departments
lo
by step, until he came to be known in his
vocation as one of the most competent rail-
road men in Russia. He first attracted the
attention of the government, and of the
Car Alexander II himself by relieving the
congestion which threatened to disable the
Russian army in the last war with Turkey.
Invited after the war to assume practical
control Of an important railway system, he
evinced SO much sagacity in the matter of
railway tariffs that he was transferred TO
the government service. being placed at The
head Of the railroad department of the
ministry of finance.
In this new position he exhibitor SO much
ability that in the course of few months
he was appointed by the car minister of
ways and communications, and only year
highest-if not essentially the very highest
offices in the empire, that of minister Of
finance.
Minister of Finance.
What he accomplished in this post consti-
tutes one of the most important chapters
in the economical history of modern Russia.
He found the country suffering from an al
most incessant dread Of deficit In the i'm
rerial exchequer, due partly to gross finan-
cial mismanagement and partly to official
blindness to new sources of revenue: while
al the same time the productive energies of
the people were choked by the constantly
n mo rro1 q tnY
on the contracted field for agricultural en-
ployment. He relieved the glut Of the
labor market caused by the excess OF sup
ply over demand by encouraging the estab-
lishment of native manufactures on great
scale. and thus providing an outlet for the
activities Of the surplus of the peasant
population. He returned the national
finances, first, by putting an end to embez-
element and watefulness and by introduce
ing rigorous system of accounting and
auditing; and, secondly, by multiplying the
empires fiscal resources.
State Ownership Of Railways.
He caused the state to become the owner
of the larger part of the railways in Eu-
ropean Russia, and saw to it that they
were managed at a profit instead of at
loss. The Trans-Siberian railway is his
work. 1t was he, also, who brought about
the government monopoly of the manu-
facture and sale of vodka, the national al
coholic beverage, monopoly whereby not
only has an immense income been procured
for the treasury, but the quality of the
commodity has been signally improved,
while inebriety has been greatly lessened
by the official regulations with regard to
the quantity purchasable by an individual
and the place Of consumption. The old
vodka shop, which was breeding place of
restitution, vice and insanity, has almost
disappeared.
AS the Russian instinct of gregariousness
had to be satisfied, the tea house has grad
ually taken the place of the vanished pub
lie house. 1t was the desire of M. de White
to make the importation and sale of tea
also a government monopoly. but this plan
had not been carried out at the time Of his
removal from the ministry of finance re-
moval due to the rancorouS enmity Of the
grand ducal coterie. to the members of
which his busnesslike methods, sturdy in
dependence of character and absolute in
compatibility had given great offense.
Established the Gold Standard.
To have doubled the national revenue
from indirect taxation would have sufficed
in almost any country to make the reputa-
ton of q secretary of the treasury; but
this feat did not by any means exhaust the
list of the services rendered by M. de White
in the capacity of finance minister. He 1t
was who established the gold standard in
Russia and who made the paper currency
redeemable at par by amassing an i'm
mense quantity of gold In the imperial
bank. 1t is no fault of his that during the
last seventeen months Russia has been
borrower on the stock exchanges OF the
world and that her own reserves of gold
are suspected of having been depleted to a
considera BILE extent.
So far as he could exercise his influence.
after he was Kicked upstairs from the
ministry of finance to the presidency of the
committee of ministers. he exerted it against
the encroachments of the Yalu Lumber
Company on Korean territory, and against
the delay in the evacuation of Manchuria,
foreseeing that these proceedings would
provoke Japan to war, and recognizing that
for a contest at the eastern end of Asia
Russia was unprepared. the railway around
the southern end of Lake Baikal not hav-
ing been constructed.
To Repair What he Tried to Avert.
The fact THAI. his Cassandralike prophecies
have been fulfilled to the letter has not