Mr. Smith to Mr. Wharton.
St. Petersburg, October 22, 1891. (Received November 7.)
Sir: I find in the Journal de St. Petersburg a statement of the extent of the famine and destitution prevailing in a portion of Russia which is, perhaps, the most trustworthy and exact now attainable. It combines the information presented in various Russian newspapers and the estimates of several official authorities, and may thus be regarded as embodying the conclusions accepted in Russia itself! Without translating the immaterial parts of the article I proceed to give the essential statements.
The great question of the moment, says the Journal, is to know the extent of the calamity. The estimates made by the different branches of the administration differ sensibly among themselves. Thus the department of tariffs has decided to grant an abatement for the transport of grains in twenty provinces and six districts of two other provinces. The minister of domains furnishes firewood gratuitously from the forests of the State in twenty provinces, while the list of regions afflicted as made by the minister of the interior counts only thirteen provinces entire and twenty-three districts of eight others. These thirteen provinces are Nizhnee-Novgorod, Simbeersk, Saratov, Oofa, Penza, Toola, Kazan, Samara, Orenboorg, Tambov, Riazan, Voronezh, and Viatka. The region thus indicated is an immense section lying east and south of Moscow, in the very heart of Russia, stretching for a long distance on the Volga, covering an extent north and south of not less than 400 or 500 miles and a still greater distance east and west. The number of people involved can not be accurately given, for the census is neither recent nor precise. According to the data of the central bureau of statistics, the masculine population of the thirteen provinces amounted in 1878 to 8,763,000. The increase since is estimated at 14 per cent, and, adding the females, the total population is now placed at about 20,000,000 souls.
But public assistance is not contemplated and is not necessary for all. It has in view only the peasants who have the average amount of [Page 747] land and those who, not possessing land, have no longer regular work. According to the estimates of Prof. Khodsky, who takes as a standard the lot of ground given to the former serfs, the number of peasants moderately possessed of land varies through the thirteen provinces from 25 to 88 per cent. I do not stop to give the figures in detail of the several provinces, which would encumber this dispatch, but present only the aggregates. From these data the conclusion is reached that the number of people who have need of assistance reaches 13,728,000. This number includes from 6,000,000 to 7,000,000, counting families, who lack work and who require aid. The relief thus demanded is estimated at 30 pounds of bread per month for each person, and it must continue through the ten months which intervene before the gathering of next year’s harvests. In the aggregate it is calculated that the equivalent of 45,000,000 to 50,000,000 poods of rye will be required to meet the demands of the needy in the desolated provinces—reduced to English pounds, from 1,700,000,000 to 1,900,000,000. At the present price of the grain this supply, with the cost of transportation, involves an expenditure of 50,000,000 rubles, or more than $25,000,000. In some quarters the estimates are sometimes two and even three times higher. These figures give an idea of the extent of the calamity. It should be added that the Government and that all classes of society are contributing most liberally for the emergency.
I have, etc.,