Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1891-10-03 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

THE FAMINE IN RUSSIA,  FRIGHTFUL MISERY AND RUIN. The latest despatches from the interior of Russia are more alarming, telegraphs a correspondent of the• Daily Telegraph at St. Petersburg. The August frosts have completely destroyed the barley crops, which constitute the staple food in Archangel, and in the extreme north the rains have annihilated crops. In Novgorod even potatoes are dearer than. apples, and no fodder can be obtained for cattle. Horses are offered for sale for 2s. or 35., and colts, for 3d. per head. The straw in the thatched roofs of houses is being utilised for fodder. Cattle are  dying in numbers on the roadsides. The Government regulations, made with a view to assisting peasants, are producing more harm than good. Complete confusion prevails, in consequence of the various Ministers contradicting orders issued. The  authorities are beginning to refuse material aid to peasants, and even to supply them with seed corn; hence, immense tracts of land are lying in a state of waste, and fears are entertained that a scarcity of corn will be felt next year. Again, the cattleplague has broken out in several places, and in the Soogorvsky district the peasants attacked the veterinary surgeons who intended to destroy infected cattle. A skirmish has taken place, and several persons were wounded. The clergy are suffering terrible hardships, and in some parts they are joining the army of beggars. Women are selling themselves to support their children. No work is to be had even on the Volga. Everything is in a state of stagmrtion. A large deficit is expected in the budg, t, and, to make matters worse, the million loads of rye promised by the governor of a neightmuring province by way of loan to the suffering Russian district, and on which the Ministry relied, are not forthcoming. They do not exist. This discovery is causing great consternation. The famine is expected to reach its acme in November. Even now the peasants are indignant at the attitude taken up by the Government and the apparent indifference of the Czar, who has not yet contributed to relieve their wants. From Saratoff, Samara, and Vyatka resolutions of the peasants have been received by the Ministry, in which the peasants declare that if the Czar will not support them now in their need they must take the law into their own hands. They add that they have supported the Czar and his "tshinovks" in luxury long enough. Telegrams just received announce that partial risings are taking place in the governments of Yekaterinoslaw, Nijni-Novogorod, and Kazan. Another correspondent of the Telegraph, in a letter from St. Petersburg, says: It is no easy matter to convey to English readers a correct idea of what the Russian people are now undergoing. Distress denotes in Russia an order of phenomena specifically different from what it means in England. Life in an English workhouse would be heaven to many a poor Russian, who dies of sheer hunger without venturing to aspire to such relative comfort as it affords. For the corn spirited away by ghoulish speculators—mainly Orthodox Christians, not Jews —are substituted articles of diet the consumption of which seems explicable only on the hypothesis that man's digestive powers are as ample as those of the ostrich. Bread made of straw chopped fine, bran, and an admixture of rye is a godsend, to obtain svhich thousands of human beings would sell their very souls. Powdered tree-bark, flavoured with ground peas, is esteemed an excellent food by men who work as if their bodies were made of some incorruptthle metal. "Huneer bread," made of dried dung, tree-bark, powdered peas and goosefoot, is not only not spurned, but greedily grabbed up—nay, fought for—with as much eagerness and bitterness as if it were ambrosia of the gods. "What are we to do?" is the cry now waxing shriller.and louder as the season advances, and the outlook becomes proportionately bleak. The peasant-boards have forwarded official reports to the Ministry, pointing out the necessity of wiping out taxes and arroarS, and affirming that, in addition to this serious Sacrifice, the Government will have to provide ways and means for keeping the people alive for 14 months longer. If this be a fair statement of facts—and it is embodied in official documents drawn up by command of the Minister—it simply means that it will require a vast amount of selfcontrol and ingenious manceuvring on the part of the Government to keep from repudiating the imperial debts. For the number of the destitute is legion, and is increasing day by day. Suicide has become so rife since the famine began that the journals have drawn attention to this; but the data are still incomplete, for the motives are in most -saes suppressed, and the fact itself in many. Millions are suffering from want in its myriad forms, hundreds of thousands are tortured by the pangs of actual hunger, and no man can say how many have died, are dying, or will yet die, victims of the famine.