Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-09-08

burned 70 aSneS the door - closed ana the
shack is excessively hot. Black SCOT covers
everything An unbearable stencil pervades
the room. Dirt II everywhere, for soap IL
an unknown luxury Splinters of rich pine
wood stuck In the wall serve the purpose
of lamps or candles.
The diet Of this family consists of black
bread. soup and potatoes twice a day. The
bread is baked every two weeks in enor-
nous Ioaves weighing fifteen or twenty
pounds and shaped like conical sweet po-
tatO hills. with circular base Of about
foot and a half. After the bread is
baked and put away 1t gets very hard and
has to be cut with an ak. The potatoes,
when the family is fortunate to have any.
are dumped loose onto the table. as they
would be thrown to hogs. A great earth
enware pot filed with soup stands in the
middle Of the table. and all the family eat
of 1t with their wooden spoons. The soup
consists Of cabbage or beets boiled In water
mixed with hemp grease, into which mix
ture is immersed chunks OF coarse black
bread of rye and barley mixed. The grain
is ground at home in a hand mill Twice
year there Is meat or fowl, at Christmas
and Easter.
1t happens not infrequently that there II
neither cabbage nor potatoes: then the Fam
lily subsists on the bread soaked In not wa
ter. When the bread fails there Is starva-
ton and death from famine. a condition
which fifty millions Of peasants are now
facing.
Inc nut nave Deen QcSCTiUitiS SOhoacSS
of one room only, with the average d.
mansions of sixteen by eighteen feet. Here,
along with the average family OF seven per-
sons, may be found calves. pigs and fowls.
Here they eat and sleep; here children are
born and reared, and here they die.
The dress of the peasant and his family
is made of a coarse. heavy fabric OF tow
or cotton. The man wears his shirt out
side of his brooches, an old Chinese custom
Imported into Russia by the Tartars. In the
winter sheepskin coat, with the wool on
the inside, is worn. The shoes are made
Of flexible, tough ash bark covering the sole
and sides, but not the top of the foot. The
foot and ankles and lower legs are over
laid with rags, and the "shoe" and rags
are secured to the foot with more rags.
The peasant raises grain and vegetables
and hemp. The most of this he Sells starv-
ing himself and family. The two great
drawbacks to profitable agriculture are the
primitive methods employed and the great
lack OF live stock, which has resulted from
by the government policy Of cutting of the
timber for revenue The lack of live sock
means the lack of manure and the ex,
haustion of the soil. With Asiatic greed
and imbecility, the government puts tax
on all foreign fertilizers.
Never Out Of Debt.
The moujik feels rich when he has few
roubles in his pocket. He never gets out of
debt to the government, nor Is he ever able
mortgaged from the beginning, and he is
in every sense. except in name, slave,
chained to the soil for the benefit of autoc-
racy. His holding is too small to support
him. and II 1t were larger he could not cul-
tivate it with his cumbersome and anti
auated utensils.
On top of all this comes his taxes to the
state: and, worse than this. the taxes which
he has to pay to the priest in the way Of
gifts and labor. The priest makes his reg
ular rounds to take up these collections, and
woe be to the poor peasant who does not
respond to the demand. 1t is not surprising
that the peasant browns his sorrow In
vodka whenever he has the copecks to buy
1t with; and 1t is chiefly from the revenue
on this liquor that the noble Russian aris-
tocracy live in splendor and luxury.
The foregoing sketch is not an overdrawn
picture of the condition Of the average Rus
sian peasant, and there are fifty mil
lions Of human beings in this state in the
heart of Russia. Now. who Is to blame for
this extreme poverty and degradation Pri-
marily the car. directly and indirectly those
servants of the car who execute what they
call his WILL but which may be. and often
is. their own pleasure. This appalling con-
dition is the result Of the idiotic ideas Of the
rulers. who insist that the people must be
governed from above and not from below;
who crush every show Of independence In
the individual: who watch the subject dis.
trustfuIly, and hedge him in by hundred
bylaws. and who inspire fear and hatred
by their arrogance and despotism..
Meanwhile, the Bureaucracy. seeing its APP
preaching doom, seeks to save itself from
destruction by engendering and fostering
religious and caste hatred In the minds Of
the masses. Race has been stirred against
faEe, religion against religion and there is
neither mercy nor deeency in the: Slaughter.
In nearly every province; OF Russia there
are organized bands of assassins, MAIN
tanned by the police authorities to stir up
hatred and strife. The Let's against the
Lithuanians. the Films against the Ger
mans. the Armenans against the Mussul-
mans, the Russians against the Georgians,
and all against the Jews. So chaos reigns
supreme. and blood soddens the streets and
highways of Russia from the Baltic to Oh
onetz and from N0vaia Zemlia to the Cas-
plan sea. But the people are now getting
together, and are turning with one accord
to rend the men who have bounded them
on and who have despoiled them.