Bisbee daily review., 1906-12-13
THOUSANDS ARE PRESSING IN
 RUSSIA
f amine in Many Provinces Is Causing Peasants Fightful Suffering - Relief Funds Are Stolen by Officers.

ST. PETERSBURG, Dec. l2.-The acute political unrest in Russia has di.
 verted the attention os the world from
 the fearful economic conditions pre-
 vauins throughout large areas of the empire, involving horrors and suffer
 ings among peasants vastly greater than the oppression of even the most ruthless administration exterminators. In 6en provinces in central and |eoutheesteru Russia the cumulative |evils of three successive bad harvests afflict the peasant population. who are TOW at the starving point. The Stoly- pin government is doing its best to cover up the horrors by optimistic tales of improving times, but the dread ful fact remains that nearly six mil hon Russians are panic-stricken and on the verge of starvation. Nearly + two millions are actually suffering from direet bangs of hunger
 Conditions are worst in the province of Simbirsk, but they are nearly as bad in Orel, Yoronej. Ala and Perm. Noth- ing sensible has yet been done by the government officials in St. Petersburg, while the local officials are at logger heads, each accusing the other of pec- ulation and stupidity. The railways which should forward grain to the famine districts are completely disor- ganized. and hundreds of wagon-loads of rye and wheat have been lying rot ting at way stations for months Details of the famine suf.erings are Iheartrending. The aged and the chil- dren suffer most. In one village in Simbirsk Province small quantity of grain arrived from some charitable per son for the children. They stormed the house where the meal was being doled out and cried and moaned, but there was not enough to feed one Twentieth of them. In other districts mothers threw themselves on their
 knees before the district officials and begged for bread offering anything. Themselves. all they have or ever will
 have If only their weeping children
 be fed
 There are villages of 5000 and 4.000
 inhabitants where there is literally no
 rye or wheat to be had at any price,
 where the villagers are gazing. fam
 ished and broken-hearted. at approach. ing death.
 | AiAASNip hy kA&uo anu SSoiuut uis-
 eases are rapidly decimating them. The
 mortality among the young children is Iespecially appalling. Pigs food, dis eusting offal and refuse of all sorts, chaff. dirty straw-all have been con. sumed by the peasants. dying of star. vation.
 A government inspector travelling
 through the province of Riazan says
 be saw districts where the people,
 mere skeletons, were moving about
 bolloweyed. fever-stricken, with rage
 burning their hearts against a govern.
 ment so inapt and heartless.
 i The children are out over the frozen steppes. where it1is already piervin'
 cold. gathering herbs and licorice
 plants for food. There is a sort oi
 birch tree with swedish bark, which | the peasants are drying and grindins i to mix with their scant remnants oi
 rye meal.
 With the famine and all that il i brings in its train. the people are for getting their moral instincts. Peas
 ants with meal or grain of some sort 1 have frequently been offered the wiye.
 or daughters of starving neighbors ir
 exchange for some of it, while stories
 are rife of rich proprietors who are
 using the existing needs of the peas ants to secure girls from theirparents