chapter 16 (New York, Dutton and Company).

{565}

RUSSIA: A. D. 1902. The Political Awakening of the Common People. Ideas of the Stundists. Peasants taking Possession of the Granaries. Floggings and Butcheries in Progress.

"The discontented crowds are unarmed, their only weapons are, so far, shouts, banners and martyrdom for Liberty, while the auto-bureaucratic regime meets these with the infliction of wounds and death. Still there are features in this uneven struggle which are of very ill-omen for auto-bureaucracy. Such is, in the first place, the hearty compact between the factory workers and the masses of the towns on the one hand, and the forward elements of the classes, mainly represented by students of the different higher educational institutions, on the other. Secondly, there is the persistency with which the cries ‘Down with Autocracy!’ ‘Long live Liberty,’ are now resounding throughout the Empire of the Tzars. The shooters are invariably beaten down, even shot down, as we shall see later on; but the cry is raised again and again. Revolutions are, unfortunately, not accomplished by shouts alone; but does not the Tzar’s Government take all possible pains to teach the population this simple truth? …

"Merciless wholesale flogging goes on in the Poltava province. Rifles have also been used; and a number of women and children have been wounded and several peasants shot dead. One of the bodies had fourteen bullets in it. In the Kharkov province ‘peace and order’ has been enforced with a still greater ‘respect to uniform and arms.’ The soldiers themselves state that the number of blows doled out with the bundles of birch to the peasants amounted at times to 250 per person. When fleeing from the torture eight peasants hit on a patrol. The commanding officer being drunk ordered ‘fire!’ and all the eight unarmed and helpless victims fell dead!

"But do these ‘energetic measures’ produce the desired effect? In the village of Kourlak, Province of Voronezh, the same merciless flogging was to be administered to all its inhabitants. When the thirty-seventh peasant received his portion of the torture, the villagers, after consultation, declared that they submitted. But they collected carefully _all_ the birch-bundles which served for the execution. ‘ They will be of use to us,’ said the peasants, ‘when _we_ shall flog _you!_’ All the official explanations given them by the authorities on this occasion led them to the conclusion that the administration acknowledged the righteousness of their claims on the land, and flogged them only for using wrong means for its recovery;—that therefore they would soon have the upper hand over the officials and landlords, and would then flog them in their turn.

"Nor does the movement in the Poltava Province (see above, Russia. A. D. 1901-1904) show any sign of abatement. According to the latest private information, which dates from the last day of April, the peasant movement there does not at all bear the character of devastation; although the landlords are undoubtedly ruined by the quiet doings of the villagers. There is no pillaging. The peasants, headed by their elective elders, open the granaries of the landlords and distribute the grain among themselves according to the needs of each family (the well-to-do receiving nothing), while the remaining grain, if any, is transferred to the communal stores. Part of this appropriated grain has already been used by the peasants for sowing their own fields, as well as those they have appropriated from the gentry. As soon as the troops are marched into the rebellious locality, they take possession of the appropriated grain still remaining in the communal granaries, and return it to its former owners. But as soon as the soldiery, after wholesale flogging of the peasantry, leave the locality, the peasants again take possession of the landlords’ grain. The prison at Poltava is crammed with peasants and students, and yet clandestine manifestoes are published with the regularity of the local official paper, and are distributed even among the soldiery. …

"The present peasant movement is not confined to the three provinces already mentioned. In these it originated simply on the ground of starvation, and similar events are reported from the provinces of Koursk, Ekaterinoslav and Podolia; also in those of Tomsk, Tobolsk, etc., in distant Siberia, where governmental grain stores suffered the fate of the landlords’ granaries in Europe. But the tension of the peasants’ spirit, their utter distrust of the present Government, and their readiness to take justice into their own hands may be said to be universal throughout the Empire.

"At the beginning of the Social Democratic movement in Russia no hopes of the Russian peasant were cherished by its leaders. But powerful agrarian organisations have since sprung up."

_Felix Volkhovsky, The Russian Awakening (Contemporary Review, June, 1902)._

RUSSIA: A. D. 1902. Russo-Chinese Treaty concerning Tibet.

See (in this Volume) TIBET: A. D. 1902.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1903 (April). The Massacre of Jews at Kishineff.

The British Vice-Consul at Odessa, Mr. Bosanquet, visited Kishineff in July, to learn the facts of the barbarous attack on the Jewish population of that town, which had been made by a mob in the previous April. The following particulars are taken from his official report, published soon afterward as a Parliamentary Paper:

"The riots began on Easter Sunday (O. S.), (the 19th April, N. S.), in the afternoon, in the eastern extremity of the town … and on that day were confined to the ordinary acts of a turbulent crowd—_e. g._, the smashing of windows and door-panels in Jewish houses. The area of Sunday’s disturbance was comparatively small." Early the next morning they began afresh in the same quarter, and spread to other parts of the town. "They were directed entirely against the Jews." "Monday was the day when the worst crimes were committed, and these were perpetrated by bands of rioters in different parts of the town. Many people believe the riots to be the work of organized companies."

"Besides the murders committed, the interiors of houses were utterly dismantled, pillows ripped up, Jewish Scriptures torn, floors destroyed, and furniture thrown into the street; while at an early stage wine was broached, that which was not drunk pouring into the street. The local authorities took no effective step to stop the riots, which continued unabated till 4 P. M., or later, the soldiers meanwhile being passive, if not sympathetic, spectators, and the police contenting themselves with the arrest of minor criminals; then the Governor, who had remained at home giving orders by telephone, which were disregarded, at length ventured to sign the necessary order for the troops to be employed. {566} The only case I heard of in which the latter used their weapons occurred shortly after the issue of the Governor’s order, when a Christian boy, pursuing a Jew with a stone, and refusing to desist, was knocked down and bayoneted by soldiers. An eye-witness of the scene related the facts to me. This boy (with one doubtful exception) was the only Christian killed in the disturbances. If resolute action had been taken by the authorities, it is believed that the riots could have been checked at an early stage. The more usual opinion seems to be that all the murders occurred on Monday. It is certain that none were perpetrated on Sunday, and very doubtful whether any took place after the order to employ the troops had come into effect. The disorders did not entirely cease, as next day (21st April) houses in the outskirts were pillaged; but, roughly speaking, the riots may be said to have ended on Monday. Some students are said to have taken part in the riots."

"Apparently a feeling existed among the lower classes that the Jews ought not to be in a majority at Kishineff. The fact is that they form about 50 per cent. of the population, which amounts to some 115,000 inhabitants, the other half consisting two-thirds of Moldavians, and after them of Russians, Greeks, Armenians, Poles, Germans, &c."

The victims of these melancholy occurrences are officially estimated at 41 Jews killed, or who died subsequently of wounds, 3 severely, and 300 slightly, wounded. Among the killed was one child accidentality suffocated by its mother. The deaths are placed by another (Jewish) authority at 43, including 2 young children, and by some even as high as 47, but this figure seems to include persons who died from shock, and not directly from violence. The official estimate of deaths is identical with the figure communicated to me at the Jewish hospital.

"Three hundred and eight persons have already been convicted of thefts and other minor offenses [in connection with the riots], and have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from one week to three months. … The accused still awaiting trial number 360. … Of the above prisoners 260 are accused of participation in the riots without actual violence and are out on bail in sums ranging from 200 to 300 roubles. Those in this category who are found guilty will be sentenced to imprisonment without hard labour in the Maison Correctionnelle, where the discipline is more severe than in prison. The remaining 100 are charged with murder in addition to other crimes, and those found guilty will be transported to undergo penal servitude in the Island of Sakhalin."

RUSSIA: A. D. 1903 (May-October). Intrigues against Opening Ports in Manchuria to Foreign Trade.

See (in this Volume) CHINA: A. D. 1903 (May-October).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1903-1904. Concert with Austria-Hungary in submitting the Mürzsteg Programme of Reform in Macedonia to Turkey.

See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1903-1904.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1904 (February-July). Opening of the War with Japan. Battles at the Yalu. First operations in Manchuria. First movements against Port Arthur.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (FEBRUARY-JULY).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1904 (July-September). War with Japan: Japanese Success in Manchuria. The great battle of Liao-Yang.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1904-1905. Reforming attempts of Prince Mirsky. Meeting of Zemstvo presidents. The Revolutionary Workman. Father Gapon. The Appeal to the Tsar. The answering Massacre of "Bloody Sunday." Assassination of Grand Duke Sergius. Witte’s practical premiership. The Call of the First Duma. The General Strike on the Railways. The Great General Strike. The Ukase of October 30, called the Constitution of Russia. Beginning of Reaction. The Postal Strike. Fatal Rising at Moscow.

The hated Plehve was succeeded by Prince Svyatopolk Mirsky, a broad-minded statesman, who began earnest efforts to set the government on a different course. One of the first measures of the prince was to win authority from the Tsar for a meeting of the presidents of the zemstvos, or provincial councils, which are bodies of a considerably representative character, exercising a limited power in their rural districts over matters of sanitation, public roads, and common schools. Ostensibly, the meeting was to concert measures of relief for the wounded in the war with Japan; but everybody knew that political questions could not escape discussion if such a meeting was held.

All the interests that uphold autocracy, aristocracy, and bureaucracy in Russia were quick to scent danger, and had no difficulty in persuading the weak-willed sovereign to recall his consent to the meeting. In his feeble, half-way manner of doing things, he forbade it as a public assembly, but allowed its members to meet unofficially and privately, in November, with no publication of their discussions or acts. They adopted resolutions setting forth a bold demand for a representation of the people in their government, and these were laid before the Tsar. He gave a public reply to them on the 26th of December, ignoring the demand for representative institutions, declaring that the government must remain autocratic, but making vague promises of reform in the laws, with especial assurances of liberty to the press and in religion; but everything granted must flow by gracious favor from the autocracy, through the channels of the bureaucracy, where it could not by any possibility run true and clear. The words of the Tsar, vague as they were, produced some encouragement, and a feeling of trust in his good intentions; but the effect was soon destroyed.

It was at about this time that Prince Trubetskoi, in authority at Moscow, addressed a letter to Prince Mirsky, from which the following was published in translation soon after:

"Through this letter I wish to explain myself to you, and ask you not to refuse me the privilege of representing to the Emperor, most humbly, the motives which prompted me to give the zemstvo permission to assert itself. According to public opinion, in which I concur unreservedly, Russia is, at present, facing an epoch of anarchy and revolutionary movement. What is going on is, by far, no mere agitation by the youth. The youth stands forth only as a reflection of the general state prevailing in society. This state is most dangerous and terrible for our entire country, as well as for all of us, and particularly so for the holy person of the Emperor. It is, therefore, the duty of every truly loyal subject to ward off the disastrous calamity with any and all means at his disposal. {567} A short time ago, I had the good fortune to be received by the Emperor, and to tell him, straightforwardly and truly, to the best of my effort and knowledge, about the present state of society. I endeavored to explain to him that what is going on is not a riot, but a revolution; that the Russian people is thus being drawn into a revolution, which it does not desire, and which can be forestalled by the Emperor. Yet there is but one way out of it, just one, and that is by the Emperor placing confidence in the strength of society and of the masses. In the depths of my soul I am firmly convinced that if the Emperor only wanted to confidently group these powers around himself, Russia would free itself from all the terrors of the impending disturbance, and would support its Czar, his will, and his absolute sovereignty. In view of the state of mind of all the people, who are filled with fear and horror over the things referred to above, it is really beyond human power to refuse them to speak about that which is vexing and tormenting everybody so fearfully."

"The opening of the next year (1905) was marked by the appearance of a new element in revolution. Certainly, there had been strikes and riots in the great cities before; there had been peasant risings and other forms of economic agitation in various parts. But as a whole the revolutionary movement as such had been inspired, directed, and even carried out by the educated classes—the students, the journalists, the doctors, barristers, and other professional men. It had been almost limited to that great division of society which in Russia is called ‘The Intelligence.’ … It was ‘the Intelligence’ who hitherto had fought for the revolution. … At length the first-fruits of their toilsome propaganda, continued through forty years, were seen, and the revolutionary workman appeared.

"He was ushered in by Father George Gapon, at that time a rather simple-hearted priest, with a rather childlike faith in God and the Tsar, and a certain genius for organization. His personal hold upon the working classes was probably due to their astonishment that a priest should take any interest in their affairs, outside their fees. … Father Gapon, with his thin line of genius for organization, had gathered the workmen’s groups or trade unions of St. Petersburg into a fairly compact body, called ‘The Russian Workmen’s Union,’ of which he was President as well as founder. In the third week in January the men at the Putiloff iron works struck because two of their number had been dismissed for belonging to their union. At once the Neva iron and ship-building works, the Petroffsky cotton works, the Alexander engine works, the Thornton cloth works, and other great factories on the banks of the river or upon the industrial islands joined in the strike, and in two days some 100,000 work-people were ‘out.’

"With his rather childlike faith in God and the Tsar, Father Gapon organized a dutiful appeal of the Russian workmen to the tender-hearted autocrat whose benevolence was only thwarted by evil counsellors and his ignorance of the truth. The petition ran, in part, as follows:—

"‘We workmen come to you for truth and protection. We have reached the extreme limits of endurance. We have been exploited, and shall continue to be exploited under your bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has brought the country to the verge of ruin and by a shameful war is bringing it to its downfall. We have no voice in the heavy burdens imposed on us. We do not even know for whom or why this money is wrung from the impoverished people, and we do not know how it is expended. This is contrary to the Divine laws, and renders life impossible. It is better that we should all perish, we workmen and all Russia. Then good luck to the capitalists and exploiters of the poor, the corrupt officials and robbers of the Russian people!

"‘Throw down the wall that separates you from your people. Russia is too great and her needs are too various for officials to rule. National representation is essential, for the people alone know their own needs. Direct that elections for a constituent assembly be held by general secret ballot. That is our chief petition. Everything is contained in that. If you do not reply to our prayer, we will die in this square before your palace. We have nowhere else to go. Only two paths are open to us—to liberty and happiness or to the grave. Should our lives serve as the offering of suffering Russia, we shall not regret the sacrifice, but endure it willingly.’

"On the morning of Sunday, January 22, 1905, about 15,000 working men and women formed into a procession to carry this petition to the Tsar in his Winter Palace upon the great square of government buildings. They were all in their Sunday clothes; many peasants had come up from the country in their best embroideries; they took their children with them. In front marched Father Gapon and two other priests wearing vestments. With them went the ikons, or holy pictures of shining brass and silver, and a portrait of the Tsar. As the procession moved along, they sang, ‘God save our people. God give our orthodox Tsar the victory.’

"So the Russian workmen made their last appeal to the autocrat whom they called their father. They would lay their griefs before him, they would see him face to face, they would hear his comforting words. But the father of his people had disappeared into space. As the procession entered the square, the soldiers fired volley after volley upon them from three sides. The estimate of the killed and wounded was about 1500. That Sunday—January 9th in Russian style—is known as Bloody Sunday or Vladimir’s Day, after the Grand Duke Vladimir who was supposed to have given the orders. Next morning Father Gapon wrote to his Union: ‘There is no Tsar now. Innocent blood has flowed between him and the people.’"

_Henry W. Nevinson, The Dawn in Russia, Introduction. (Harper’s, New York)._

If the atrocity of the 9th of January was intended to terrorize and paralyze the opposition to absolutism it failed. It maddened the more violent revolutionists, and increasingly desperate enterprises of assassination were provoked. The provocation was made greater by the appointment of Trepoff, notorious for brutality of temper, to a newly created office, of Governor-General of St. Petersburg. On the 17th of February the Grand Duke Sergius, uncle to the Tsar, Governor-General of Moscow, and conspicuously heartless and foul in his exercise of power, was assassinated as he drove through the streets. Strikes and riotous outbreaks were of constant occurrence in the industrial cities, especially violent in Warsaw, Lodz, and other Polish towns.

{568}

The Tsar issued a piteous manifesto on the 3d of March, appealing for a "rally round the throne" by all "who, true to Russia’s past, honestly and conscientiously have a care for all the affairs of the state such as we have ourselves." On the same day he published a rescript in which he said: "I am resolved henceforth, with the help of God, to convene the worthiest men, possessing the confidence of the people and elected by them, to participate in the elaboration and consideration of legislative measures." But, even if this expressed the personal disposition of the weak-willed sovereign, it promised nothing to correspond to it in the action of government; as was shown by the promotion of Trepoff to be Assistant-Minister of the Interior and Chief of Police. Prince Mirsky, baffled in his undertakings and hopeless of good from his service, had resigned the Ministry of the Interior, and his successor, M. Buliguine, held the office but a short time. M. Serguei Yulievitch Witte, former Minister of Finance, and latterly President of the Imperial Ministers, now acquired a substantial premiership in the administration, which does not seem to have belonged to his office before. Nothing of satisfaction came from the December promises of reformed law. Bureaucratic commissions were understood to be working on measures to make good the Tsar’s word, but months passed with no result. There were fitful relaxations of the censorship of the press, so capricious that no editor could know what he might and might not say.

In April, religious liberty was proclaimed, with special rights and privileges reserved to the Russian orthodox church. M. Witte had advocated a separation of the church from the state; but that was beyond hope. There must, however, have been an important weakening of church influence in the government, since the long despotic procurator-general of the Holy Synod, M. Pobiedonostzeff, resigned before the close of the year.

Early in the summer the heads of provincial zemstvos held another meeting, and discussed the popular demand for a constitutional and representative government without restraint. Then the Czar gave them a friendly audience, and declared to them that "the admission of elected representatives to works of state will be regularly accomplished"; but this was followed speedily by an official explanation that his majesty’s remarks must not be understood as containing "any indication of the possibility of modifying the fundamental law of the empire." This was to check an eager leaping of the public mind to high hopes.

On the 19th of August the long wavering imperial mind seemed brought to a definite intention at last, in a proclamation which summoned a national assembly, or duma, to meet "not later than the middle of January, 1906."

"The Empire of Russia," said the Tsar in his preamble, "is formed and strengthened by the indestructible solidarity of the Tsar with the people and the people with the Tsar. The concord and union of the people and the Tsar are a great moral force, which has created Russia in the course of centuries by protecting her from all misfortunes and all attacks, and has constituted up to the present time a pledge of unity, independence, integrity, material well-being, and intellectual development. Autocratic Tsars, our ancestors, constantly had that object in view, and the time has come to follow out their good intentions, and to summon elected representatives from the whole of Russia to take a constant and active part in the elaboration of laws, attaching for this purpose to the higher state institutions a special consultative body, entrusted with the preliminary elaboration and discussion of measures, and with the examination of the state budget. It is for this reason that, while preserving the fundamental law regarding autocratic power, we have deemed it well to form a State Duma, and to approve regulations for the elections to this Duma."

By the terms of the call it will be seen, "the fundamental law regarding autocratic power" was preserved with care. And, said the proclamation, "we reserve to ourselves entirely the care of perfecting the organization of the duma." It was to have no power to initiate legislation, but only to discuss and pass judgment upon measures brought before it by the ministers of the Tsar, who thus held fast to the substance of his autocratic power.

The Duma was to consist of 412 members, representing 50 governments and the military province of the Don, and only 28 members representing towns. It was to be elected for five years, unless dissolved sooner by the Tsar. Its meetings were to be secret, except as the president, in his discretion, might admit the reporters of the Press.

The limited functions proposed for the Duma, and the indefinite prescription of procedure in its election, left not much in the Tsar’s project of a national assembly to satisfy the nation. In September a large meeting of representatives of the zemstvos, from all parts of the Empire, was held privately at Moscow, and it was there agreed that they should exert themselves to secure as many seats in the coming Duma as possible, with a view to making it instrumental in the movement for something better. The ultimate aim of present endeavor was defined in a programme which included: a representative national legislature; a systematic budget system; freedom of conscience, speech, press, meeting and association; inviolability of person and home; equal rights of all citizens; equal responsibility of all officials and citizens under the law; the abolition of passports.

In October, on the 21st, the workingmen organized their first great general strike, on the railways, which paralyzed travel and traffic, except as the government could operate some military trains. The strikers made bold demands, presented to Witte on the 24th: "The claims of the working classes," they said, "must be settled by laws constituted by the will of the people and sanctioned by all Russia. The only solution is to announce political guarantees for freedom and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, elected by direct, universal and secret suffrage. Otherwise the country will be forced into rebellion." Witte replied: "A Constituent Assembly is for the present impossible. {569} Universal suffrage would, in fact, only give preëminence to the richest classes, because they could influence all the voting by their money. Liberty of the press and of public meeting will be granted very shortly. I am myself strongly opposed to all persecution and bloodshed, and I am willing to support the greatest amount of liberty possible. … But there is not in the entire world a single cultivated man who is in favor of universal suffrage." Two days after receiving this reply the Council of Labor Delegates, or "Strike Committee," declared a general strike of workmen throughout Russia, and about a million workingmen are said to have taken the risk of starvation by dropping work.

No doubt it was that evidence of determination in the revolutionary spirit of the country which drew from the Tsar, on the 30th of October, the famous ukase which was characterized hastily at the time as "the Magna Charta of Russia," "the surrender of autocracy," the founding of constitutional government. In reality, the document was no more than an injunction to the ministers of the autocrat to carry out his "absolute will" in certain matters, most of which were set forth with characteristic vagueness of terms. The following is a translation of the entire manifesto, as communicated to the Government of the United States from its embassy at St. Petersburg:

By the grace of God we, Nicholas Second, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Tsar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc.

The rioting and agitation in the capitals and in many localities of our Empire has filled our heart with great and deep affliction. The welfare of the Russian Emperor is united with the welfare of the people, and its troubles are his troubles. The agitation which has broken out may bring confusion among the people and threaten the entirety and unity of our Empire.

The solemn vow of the imperial service commands us, with all the strength of intelligence and of our power, to endeavor to stop as quickly as possible agitations so dangerous to the Empire. In ordering the competent authorities to take measures to avert the disorders, the troubles, and violence, and to guard peaceful people who are eager to fulfill quietly the duties placed upon them, we have found it necessary, in order to insure the proper execution of the general measures marked out by us, to unify the action of the supreme government.

We lay upon the government the fulfillment of our absolute will:

1. To grant to the population the inviolable basis of free citizenship, on the ground of actual inviolable personality, freedom of conscience, speech, meeting, and unions;

2. Without stopping the intended elections for the State Duma, to include now in the participation of the Duma as far as possible, in view of the corresponding short term which remains before the convocation of the Duma, those classes of the population which up to now were entirely deprived of the right to vote and to allow in future the further development of the element of a general right of election which is to be established by new legislation; and

3. To establish as an inviolable rule that no law shall take effect without its confirmation by the State Duma and that the persons elected by the population should be guaranteed the possibility of actual control over the legal activity of the persons appointed by us.

We call on all the true sons of Russia to remember their duties toward their fatherland, to assist in combating these unheard-of agitations, and together with us to unite all their strength in establishing quietness and peace in their country.

Given in Peterhof on the 17th day of October in the year of our Lord 1905 and the eleventh year of our reign.

(Signed in his own hand.) NICHOLAS.

At the same time, the ministers of the autocrat were enjoined to "abstain from any interference in the elections of the duma;" they were to "maintain the prestige of the duma and confidence in its labors, and not resist its decisions so long as they are not inconsistent with the historic greatness of Russia." In the exercise of executive power they should embody "(1) straightforwardness and sincerity in the confirmation of civil liberty;" "(2), a tendency toward the abolition of exclusive laws;" "(3), the coordination of the activity of all the organs of government;" "(4), the avoidance of repressive measures in respect to proceedings which do not openly menace society or the state."

These orders and injunctions from the autocracy to the bureaucracy were to be the constitution of government for which Russia had made demands. They did not satisfy the demand—or satisfied only the small party who were afterwards called "Octobrists," because they asked for no more than was granted in this ukase of October 30, 1905. The general strike was not called off, but demands for a Constituent Assembly were reiterated persistently. Agitation was kept alive, and with it the murderous warfare waged by revolutionists against high officials and the police. At the same time, reactionary officials and army officers, enraged by what the Tsar had done, stirred up mobs in various parts of the country to attack the Jews, and add to the state of public disorder, thus furnishing arguments for a fresh resort to repressive measures by the military arm. Presently there were serious outbreaks of mutiny in army and navy, at Odessa, Kronstadt, and Sevastopol, and all the foundations of public order seemed really, for a time, to be breaking up.

It is evident there was serious alarm in the circles of the autocracy. Pobiedonostzeff, the bigoted Procurator of the Holy Synod, and Trepoff, the savage head of the police, resigned. On the 4th of November an amnesty to political offenders was proclaimed, and the ancient liberties of Finland were restored, by a decree which abolished that of February, 1899 (see, in Volume VI., FINLAND), and that also annulled a later military law, of 1901, by which the Finnish army had been put on the Russian footing.

These signs of yielding to the claims "of the nation soon gave place, however, to symptoms on the reactionary side of revived courage and obstinacy among the keepers and masters of the Tsar’s mind and will. A manifesto on the 12th of November declared that reforms would not be possible till the country was quieted. Another on the 13th proclaimed martial law in Poland; whereat the "strike committee" called another strike in sympathy with Poland. {570} On the 14th Witte published an appeal to the workmen, saying: "Brothers! Workmen! Go back to your work and cease from disorder. Have pity on your wives and children, and turn a deaf ear to mischievous counsels. The Tsar commands us to devote special attention to the labor question, and to that end has appointed a Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which will establish just relations between masters and men. Only give us time, and I will do all that is possible for you. Pay attention to the advice of a man who loves you and wishes you well." The renewed strike was not successful. Not many of the workingmen would face the suffering from non-employment which they had gone through already. The attempt was ended on the 20th; but the Committee which called it, in annulling the order, enjoined the workers of the Empire to organize "for the final encounter between all Russia and the bloody monarchy now dragging out its last days."

Meantime, on the 17th, the Tsar sought to conciliate the peasants by reducing for one year the payments on land that were due under the land distribution which went with emancipation in 1861, and remitting them entirely after January, 1907.

See (in Volume IV.) SLAVERY, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN: RUSSIA.

On the 20th of November a Peasants’ Congress of 300 delegates met in Moscow and formulated demands for the nationalization of land and for a constituent assembly. The delegates were arrested. An alarming mutiny in the fleet and army at Sevastopol broke out on the 26th, but it was soon suppressed. Two days later the whole body of employees in the postal and telegraphic service at Moscow began a most troublesome strike, which spread from there and was continued for some weeks. Mr. Nevinson, who was in Moscow at the time, describes it in one of his chapters:

"In those happy weeks when freedom still was young and living, two things ruled the country—speech and the strike, the word and the blow. The strike was everywhere felt. No letter or telegram went or came. Each town in Russia was isolated, and the whole Empire stood severed from the world. … In Moscow the cooks struck, and paraded the streets with songs never heard in the drawing-room. The waiters struck, and heavy proprietors lumbered about with their own plates and dishes. The nursemaids struck for Sundays out. The housemaids struck for rooms with windows, instead of cupboards under the stairs, or sections from the water closets. Schoolboys struck for more democratic masters and pleasanter lessons. Teachers struck for higher pay. … But at the back of the strikes and all the revolutionary movement lay the motive force of speech. … After these centuries of suppression, all Russia was revelling in a spiritual debauch of words."

On the 6th of December General Sakharoff, formerly Minister of War and now Governor-General of a district on the Volga, was shot by a woman, to avenge the sufferings he had caused to the peasants. On the 7th the Strike Committee called on the workpeople to withdraw their money from the savings-banks; and, a little later, a joint manifesto, issued by that committee and committees of Peasants, Social Democrats, and Social Revolutionists, appealed generally to the people, not only to withdraw money from the savings banks, but "to refuse to pay taxes, or to take bank-notes, or to subscribe to loans," as a means of crippling the government financially. All papers which published this manifesto were suppressed and their editors arrested.

Then, in the last twelve days of December, came the fatal rising at Moscow, which the government, forewarned by its spies, precipitated, while the revolutionists’ preparations were but half made, and which it crushed mercilessly, with ease. From a diary of the occurrences of these tragical days at Moscow, given in the report of the resident American Consul to Ambassador Meyer, at St. Petersburg, the following entries are taken:

"_December_ 24. Barricades were continually built during days and nights. The revolutionists were in hope that about 20,000 or 30,000 workmen from the factories in the suburbs would enter the city and join them, but this was not accomplished, as the military forces were sufficient to prevent this. The revolutionists spread a rumor amongst the workmen that the soldiers were in sympathy with the strikers and that they would not fire on the mob and would join their ranks, but this rumor turned out to be untrue, as the troops were loyal to the Government. …

"_December_ 27. At 6 o’clock P. M. the house where the chief of the secret police, Mr. Voilochenkoff, resides, was surrounded by a revolutionary party and by their insistent demands the front door was opened. Six men rushed into his apartments and arrested the chief, and read the death sentence of the revolutionary party to him. His wife and three children pleaded to the revolutionists for mercy, but the revolutionists would not listen to their pleading, and they gave Mr. Voilochenkoff a short time to prepare for death and then took him out into a side street where he was shot to death, and his body left in the street. Disturbances and shooting were carried on in the different parts of the city, and new barricades erected.

"_December_ 31. The troops bombarded the large Prochoroff spinning mills, where a large number of revolutionists made their last stand. Many houses in the vicinity of the mill were either burnt down or wrecked by cannon balls. Many of the revolutionists and strikers were killed, wounded, or captured and the weapons confiscated. The general strike has been called off."

This was practically the end of the abortive rising. On the 5th of January, 1906, Ambassador Meyer wrote to the State Department at Washington:

"In my cable of December 25 I stated that although fighting had been stubborn and gatling guns had been used, I believed that the estimates so far given out as to loss of life were much exaggerated. It appears now that I was correct in my surmise, for in a semi-official statement given by one of the papers, from statistics taken at all the hospitals and accident bureaus, the deaths were given as about 750 and the wounded as a little over a thousand.

"I am glad to state that as yet I have heard of no injuries occurring to American citizens in Moscow; in fact in all these disturbances that have taken place in the various cities the revolutionists and strikers have refrained in all instances from attacking foreign consulates, and I believe this also applies to the property of foreign individuals."

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On the 29th of January Ambassador Meyer wrote to Washington: "The revolutionary party seems to have spent its force for the time being. Instead of aiding reforms, they have greatly hampered them. By the attempted capture of Moscow, by their riots and rebellions in other parts of the country, followed by destruction of life and property, they have forced the Government into repression and reactionary methods in order to restore law and order. All this has necessarily caused a delay in the classification of the newly enfranchised voters and has given an excuse for a continued waste of precious time due to bureaucratic formality.

"Some of the factions are finally waking up to the necessity of giving attention to registration and a better comprehension of the coming elections. The Constitutional-Democratic party have decided by a large majority to take part in the elections and the Douma. The Social Democrats have also decided to participate. On the other hand, the Russian Social-Revolutionaries, at their first meeting in Finland, lately, voted in favor of a boycott of the elections.

"At its last meeting, the Constitutional-Democratic party, in view of obstacles to free election campaigning which the local authorities are using against all opposing parties, voted to protest against the government policy, which in any way impeded free elections to the Imperial Douma, and further urged the most energetic participation of its members in the approaching elections.

"At a meeting of the marshals of the nobility, held at Moscow last week, the following resolutions were adopted: 1.That the final settlement of the agrarian question should be made the first task of the Douma. 2. That in deciding the agrarian question, it should be based on the principle of inviolability of private property."

RUSSIA: A. D. 1904-1905. War with Japan: Siege and Surrender of Port Arthur.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST) and 1904-1905 (MAY-JANUARY)

RUSSIA: A. D. 1904-1905 (October-May).--War with Japan: Voyage of the Baltic Fleet. Its Destruction in the Battle of Tsushima.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904-1905 (OCTOBER-MAY).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1904-1905 (September-March). War with Japan: Campaign in Manchuria. From the Battle of Liao-Yang to the end of the Battle of Mukden.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904-1905 (SEPTEMBER-MARCH).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1904-1909. General Consequences in Europe of the Weakening of Russian Prestige and Power by the Russo-Japanese War.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1904-1909.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1905. Action with other Powers in forcing Financial Reforms in Macedonia on Turkey.

See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1905-1908.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1905 (February-November). Naval Mutiny. Army Revolt. Peasant Risings. Conflict in the Caucasus.

The most serious of the revolutionary outbreaks of the year was that of mutiny in the navy. "Already in February the sailors of the Black Sea fleet, instigated by the revolutionary propaganda, had burned down the barracks at Sebastopol and assaulted their officers, and on June 27 the crew of the ‘Kniaz Potemkin,’ the principal battle-ship of the Black Sea fleet, mutinied at sea while the squadron of which it formed part was manoeuvring, and killed nearly all its officers. The mutineers were in league with the working men at Odessa, who at the same time invaded the harbor, and, accompanied by a riotous mob, plundered and burnt in all directions. Property of immense value was consumed, and some of the troops refused to fire on the rioters. Ultimately fresh troops were brought up, the ‘Kniaz Potemkin’ sailed away to the Roumanian port of Constanza, where it was surrendered to the Roumanian authorities, who gave up the ship to the Russians, and the crew was landed and disarmed. The crew of another battle-ship, the ‘Georgei Pobiedonosets,’ took part in the mutiny, but surrendered to the Russian authorities at Odessa. Riots also took place at the same time at the seaports of Reval, Riga, Libau, and Kronstadt, where the dockers were joined by the navy men and struck for an increase of wages. … On July 10 Count Schouvaloff, Prefect of Police at Moscow, was assassinated, and a general strike was proclaimed at Minsk. … In the Baltic provinces the peasants, who are Letts, constantly attacked the landed proprietors, who are German in race and speech; many of the latter were killed, the municipal buildings at Reval, Riga and Mittau were sacked. … In September the conflict which had been going on between the Tartars and the Armenians in the Caucasus culminated in a series of horrible massacres, accompanied by much destruction of property. At Baku most of the naphtha wells were destroyed by incendiary fires, and very much of the oil industry was ruined. The Tartars, carrying green banners, proclaimed a holy war against the Armenians, many thousands of whom were killed. … On November 25 an organized revolt took place of the soldiers, sailors and workmen of Sebastopol. There was no rioting, but several officers were killed, and for some days the town was in the hands of the rebels. The revolt was only suppressed on November 30, when a regular battle took place between the rebels and 20,000 troops that had been brought up against them. Forts and loyal ships fired on mutinous ships, and the barracks held by the rebels had to be bombarded before they were forced to surrender. … Other mutinies of troops took place at the same time at Warsaw and in other places."

_The Annual Register 1905, pages 313-323._

RUSSIA: A. D. 1905 (April-August). The Tsar’s Decree of Religious Liberty. Minister Witte’s enlightened Memorial. The Emptiness of Results.

Early in May, 1905, there was announcement that the Tsar, on the morning of the Russian Easter Day, had published a decree proclaiming absolute religious liberty to all his subjects. Previous tolerance of all religions in Russia had been subject to important limitations. No member of the state church could leave it to enter another without losing all his civil rights, and no church other than the Orthodox could proselyte. Furthermore, when members of the Russian Church and those of any other church married, it was necessary to have the ceremony performed by an Orthodox priest, and the law insisted that the children of such marriages be brought up in the Orthodox faith. These restrictions were particularly hard on the Old Believers, as they are called,—a body which separated from the Orthodox Church two and a half centuries ago and has suffered all kinds of persecution. The new ukase recognized the various orders of priesthood among the Old Believers, and gave them the right to celebrate marriage. To all the dissenting sects—Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, and others—is accorded the right to erect houses of worship without restriction.

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The Tsar’s decree of entire religious freedom was known soon to have been the fruit of a remarkably broad minded memorial addressed to him by M. Witte, the President of his Council of Ministers, and a translation of that memorial was published in the May issue of _The Contemporary Review_. It pictured a state of paralysis in the Russian Church, consequent on its bondage to the State. "Both the ecclesiastical and the secular press," said the writer, "remark with equal emphasis upon the prevailing lukewarmness of the inner life of the Church,—upon the alienation of the flock, particularly of the educated classes of society, from its spiritual guides; the absence in sermons of a living word; the lack of pastoral activity on the part of the clergy, who in the majority of instances confine themselves to the conduct of divine service and the fulfillment of ritual observances; the entire collapse of the ecclesiastical parish community, with its educational and benevolent institutions; the red-tapism in the conduct of diocesan or consistorial business, and the narrowly bureaucratic character of the institutions grouped about the Synod. It was from Dostoyevski that we first heard that word of evil omen, ‘The Russian Church is suffering from paralysis.’"

This condition M. Witte attributes to the position in which the Church was placed by Peter the Great. "The chief aim of the ecclesiastical reforms of Peter I. was to reduce the Church to the level of a mere government institution pursuing purely political ends. And, as a matter of fact, the government of the Church speedily became merely one of the numerous wheels of the complicated government machine. On the soil of an ecclesiastical government robbed by bureaucratism of all personal elements the dry scholastic life-shunning school arose spontaneously. This policy of coercing the mind of the Church, though it may have been attended for the moment by a certain measure of political gain, subsequently inflicted a terrible loss. Hence that decline in ecclesiastical life with which we now have to deal."

The wise President of the Tsar’s Council made so much impression on the mind of his master as to draw from him the ukase of general religious freedom; but three months later, in the August number of _The American Review of Reviews_, Dr. E. J. Dillon, whose intimate knowledge of Russian affairs is well known, described how effectually the decree had been smothered by the bureaucracy, which is stronger than the Tsar. He wrote: "The most welcome of all the concessions emanating from the throne was that which Nicholas II. bestowed upon his subjects last Easter Sunday. Inspired and drafted by M. Witte, it was at first spoken of as liberty of conscience, but was soon afterward seen to amount to nothing more than religious toleration. And since then the bureaucracy has touched and killed it."

RUSSIA: A. D. 1905 (June-October). Ending of the War with Japan. Mediation by the President cf the United States. The Peace Treaty of Portsmouth.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1905 (JUNE-OCTOBER).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1905-1907. The Recent Russian Political Parties.

As explained by Mr. Maurice Baring in his interesting book entitled _A Year in Russia_, the crystallization of political parties in Russia began after the issue of the Manifesto of October, 1905. The most important was that of the Constitutional Democrats, nicknamed the "Cadets," a name formed from the letters "K. D." Similarly the party called Social Revolutionaries are nicknamed "S. R’s." and the Social Democrats "S. D’s." The party of the Constitutional Democrats was the product of a combination of Zemstvo members who had previously been united in a "League of Liberation" with the professional classes, whom Professor Milioukov had brought together in a "Union of Unions," which represented the great mass of educated Russia—the "Intelligenzia." This combination of the professional class with the Zemstvoists, who had more political experience than others could enjoy in Russia, was mainly the important work of Professor Milioukov.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1906. The First Duma. Election of Representatives. Its Conflict with the Government and its Dissolution. Rise of M. Stolypin. The Instigated Massacres (Pogroms).

In January, 1906, when the Duma promised by the Tsar on the 19th of the previous August should have met, the conditions in the country were such that the Government dared not permit the meeting to be held, and it was postponed without date. After some weeks a more submissive state of order was restored, and the meeting was appointed for the 10th of the following May. The elections were held in March, and Ambassador Meyer described the system on which they were conducted in an extended despatch to the State Department at Washington, from which the following is borrowed:

"The total number of members of the Duma, when the elections shall have finally been completed, will be 501. The elections are, however, not carried on the same day throughout the country. Governors and vice-governors, prefects of cities and their lieutenants cannot vote in their departments, nor can members of the army or navy who are on active service, or persons doing police duty in governments or cities when elections are taking place.

"The voters are divided into classes, and that it may be more clearly shown I have made the following table;

Peasants.

Clergy Cities not in special list Volosts Workmen -------------------------> Delegates -> Electors -> Duma Members

Landed proprietors and special cities. -------------------------------------> Electors -> Duma Members

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"From this it will be seen that the peasants are in a class by themselves and, as a matter of fact, in the present elections are not given an opportunity of expression, as it is the volosts (elected at the mir, in most instances, before the Duma was even granted) that choose the delegates. The volosts, workmen, clergy (not lauded proprietors), voters of cities (not in special list), and class C of lauded proprietors, all choose delegates. These delegates, in turn, select electors, as do also landed proprietors, and qualified voters of cities on the special list. The electors vote for Duma members in their appropriate electoral college, and their choice is confined to a member of their own body. Therefore in every instance, in order to become a member of the Duma, a candidate must be an elector and previous to that a delegate, except in the case of landed proprietors and voters of special cities. …

"It is noticeable that the large cities in European Russia are limited to one member of the Duma, with the exception of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the former having an allotment of four and the latter of six.

"There is an exceptional provision with regard to the procedure of the peasant electors. … Elections to the Duma, with the exception cited as to the privilege of peasant electors, are finally effected in the governments and territories by the government electoral college, and in the cities by the municipal electoral college."

Mr. Meyer reported further that an imperial manifesto had announced that the Council of the Empire would in future "consist of an equal number of elective members and members nominated by the Emperor. It will be convoked annually by an imperial ukase at the same time with the Duma. The two assemblies will have equal legislative powers, and each can exercise the same initiative in introducing bills or interrogations. Every bill must be passed by both houses before being sent to the Tsar for his signature and approval. The elected members of the Council will be eligible for nine years, a third being reelected every three years." Of the 98 elective members of the Council (one half of the body), 18 were to be chosen from the nobles, 50 from the zemstvo of each government, 6 from the Orthodox Church, 6 from the universities, 12 from the representatives of the Council of Commerce and Industry, and 6 from representatives of the Polish landed proprietors.

On the 7th of April Ambassador Meyer wrote to Washington concerning the result of the elections: "The success of the Constitutional Democrats has made a great impression on the Government and created considerable nervousness. Witte is really anxious to resign and go out of the country for a much-needed rest. But he assured a mutual friend that he would stay and serve the Emperor as long as His Majesty desired. The elections so far have impressed upon his mind the want of confidence which exists among the people as to his administration. As he is without any supporters among the elected members of the Duma, it is difficult to believe that the Emperor will be able or even desirous of having him continue to serve as premier after the Duma is organized."

This anticipation proved correct. M. Witte had withdrawn from the ministerial premiership when the Duma assembled on the 10th of May, and M. Goremykin had taken his place.

There was conflict between the Duma and the Government from the moment that the former adopted its reply to the opening speech of the Tsar. With unanimity it demanded general amnesty for past political offenses, abolition of the death penalty, suspension of martial law, full civil liberty, universal suffrage, abolition of the council of the empire, a review of the fundamental law, responsibility of ministers and right of interpellation, a forced expropriation of land, and a guarantee of rights to trade unions.

M. Stolypin, Minister of the Interior, now coming to the front of ministerial leadership, made his first speech in the Duma on the 21st of June, and was assailed with cries of "Murderer" and "Assassin" when he defended illegal acts of police officials and provincial governors, in the suppression of disorder, and declared his determination to maintain order. Among the replies to him was one by Prince Urussoff, former Assistant Minister of the Interior, who made a powerful attack on the sinister methods of the Government—the "policy of massacre," as he named it—declaring that massacres were always organized by secret forces. "Any investigation," he said, "of the so-called ‘pogroms’ (massacres) will bring the investigator face to face with the following certain symptoms; they are identical in all cases; Firstly, a massacre is always preceded by reports of its preparation, accompanied by the circulation of appeals exciting the population and of one constant kind in form and substance. They are accompanied by a certain kind of stormy petrels in the person of little known representatives of the dregs of the population. Then, too, the cause of the massacre as officially announced is afterwards always without exception found to be false. Furthermore, in these massacres there is always to be found a certain similarity of plan which gives these actions the character of chance. The murderers act on the assumption of some kind of right, as though conscious that they will not be punished, and only continue to act as long as this confidence remains unshaken—after which the massacre stops extraordinarily quickly and easily."

What Prince Urussoff had intimated, as to the instigation of the massacres from high circles was declared most distinctly and positively, three years later, by Prince Kropotkin, in a letter to the London _Times_ of July 29, 1909. He wrote: "Something which never has happened anywhere in Western Europe happened then in Russia, as M. Obninsky, a member of the first Duma, says in a terrible book of statistics he has published in 1906 at Moscow, under the title, ‘A Half-Year of the Russian Revolution.’ In a hundred different cities men of the so-called ‘Black Hundreds’ came together on some public square, received there the benediction of the clergy, sent telegrams to the Palace circles in St. Petersburg, received answers from them, and then went on killing the Jews, the Armenians, the Poles, the Russian members of the Zemstvos, and Russian ‘Intellectuals’ altogether, under the protection of the military, the local police, and the local governors.

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"For some time I could not believe that such _pogroms_ could have been organized from St. Petersburg by the authorities. Now the evidence is overwhelming. We know that proclamations inciting to _pogroms_ were printed by the gendarmes in the Secret Police offices, we know from the revelations of these gendarmes themselves that men and officers were sent to the provinces with proclamations and arms to organize the pogroms; and we know how the leaders of the Union of Russian Men were petted and given money by the Tsar and how they organized murders, wholesale and retail, with the aid of members of the Secret Police; and here is the net result which I have before me in a long, very long, list compiled by the Law Review _Pravo_.

"This list is simply horrifying. The Constitution manifesto was signed on October 30. The same day took place the _pogrom_ at Tver; the Zemstvo house was burnt, and 24 persons were wounded. At Moscow, November 2, 30 wounded; Odessa, October 31-November 3, more than 1,000 killed and 5,000 wounded; Kieff, October 31, 150 killed, 100 wounded; Tomsk, November 3, 150 killed and burned, 76 heavily wounded (all these, by the way, and many others are Russian towns); Minsk, 100 killed, 400 wounded; Tiflis, November 2, more than 100 killed; and so on, and so on. … The result of similar campaigns in different parts of Russia for twelve months only in 1905-1906 was—killed, more than 14,000; executed, about 1,000; wounded and partly died from wounds, about 20,000; arrested and imprisoned, mostly without judgment, 75,000. This last figure was given in the Duma by Professor Kovalevsky on May 2, 1906, in the presence of M. Stolypin, who did not contest it."

On the 22d of July the Duma was dissolved by imperial command, and the following manifesto to the people was published by the Autocrat on the following day:

"Persons selected by the people were called to the legislature. Trusting in the goodness of God, believing in the happy and grand future of our people, we were expecting from their labors the happiness and interest of the country. Great reforms had been indicated by us in all that concerns the life of the people, and our greatest care, which is to substitute education for the ignorance of the people and to lessen the difficulties of its life by improving the conditions under which it cultivates the ground, was foremost. A painful ordeal was reserved to our hopes. The elected of the nation, instead of turning their attention to legislative labors, have entered a field that was closed to them, and have begun to investigate the doings of authorities established by us, to indicate to us the imperfections of fundamental laws that can only be altered by our imperial will, and to commit illegal acts, such as the appeal addressed to the people of the Duma.

"The peasants, dazed by these disorders, without waiting for the legal improvement to their position, gave themselves up, in a great number of governments, to pillage and theft, refusing to submit to the law or to legal authorities. …

"By dissolving the actual Duma of the Empire we testify to our unalterable intention of maintaining, in all their force, the laws concerning the establishment of that institution, and, consequently, we have fixed, by our ukase given to the ruling Senate on the 8th July instant, the convocation of the new Duma on the 20th of February, 1907."

About two hundred members of the dissolved Duma went immediately from St. Petersburg to Viborg, in Finland, and held a meeting there, from which they published an address to the "Citizens of all the Russias," signed by one hundred and sixty of their number, protesting against the opposition which the Duma had encountered from the Government in all its undertakings, and practically refusing submission to its dissolution. "In the place of the present Duma," they said, "the Government promises to convoke a new one in seven months. … For seven months the Government will act as it likes, will wrestle with the movement of the people in order to obtain a submissive and desirable Duma, and if it succeeds in entirely crushing the movement of the people it will not convoke any Duma at all. Citizens, stand firmly by the trampled rights of the representatives of the people. Stand for the Duma of the Empire. Russia must not remain one day without representatives from the people. We have the means of obtaining this. The Government has not the right without our consent to collect taxes from the people, nor to call the people to military service, and therefore, now, when the Government has dissolved the Duma of the Empire, it is your right to refuse to supply it with soldiers or money. If the Government, in order to secure resources, makes loans, such loans, made without consent of the representatives of the people, will henceforth be invalid, and the Russian people will not recognize them and will not pay for them. Consequently, until the representatives of the people are convoked, do not pay a kopeck into the treasury nor send a man to the army. Be firm in your refusal; stand for your rights, all as one man. Against the united and absolute will of the people no power whatever can resist. Citizens, in this compulsory but inevitable struggle your representatives will be with you."

This proved to be futile action. The Government was prompt in arresting and imprisoning most of the signers of the appeal to the people, and none of them was allowed to be returned to the Second Duma when the new elections were held. Pending that election, some very substantial gifts of imperial favor were made to the peasants, to win their good will, but nothing appears to have been remembered of the October injunctions of the Tsar concerning the "confirmation of civil liberty." In August, 4,500,000 acres of crown lauds were transferred by an imperial ukase to the Peasants’ Bank, for sale to the peasants on easy terms; and on the 18th of October another ukase released them to a large extent from the restraints of the communal system, and decreed the equality of all citizens before the law. The following is part of the text of this important decree, as communicated in translation to the American government by Ambassador Meyer, and published in the report of 1906 on Foreign Relations.

"The Czar orders, on the basis of the fundamental law of 1906, that the following reforms be made:

"1. To accord all Russian subjects, without distinction of origin, with exception of the aborigines, equal rights with regard to the state service with persons of noble blood, and at the same time to abolish all special privileges of dress due either to official position or to the origin of the wearer.

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"2. Peasants and members of other classes formerly taxable are freed (a) from the presentation of discharge papers on entering an educational institution or the civil service; further, from personal payment in kind and the performance of communal duties during the whole time the persons in question may be either in the educational institution or civil service; (_b_) from the necessity of demanding for entry into holy orders or a monastery the permission of the commune.

"3. The compulsory exclusion of peasant and other classes formally taxable from the following ranks and careers is abolished; (_a_) From entering the civil service; (_b_) from receiving rank; (_c_) from receiving orders and other distinctions; (_d_) from attaining learned grades and honors; (_e_) from completing educational courses and particularly from winning higher class rights.

"In all these cases the persons in question are allowed to retain all the rights arising from their connections with their commune, as well as the responsibilities thereof, until they have freely withdrawn from the commune or entered into other corporations of standing. With regard to the legal standing of the persons in question, there shall serve as a basis the regulations of the rank or profession which these persons have won."

See, also, below, RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (APRIL).

Meantime, extensive plans of insurrection, with naval and military mutiny, in five cities, had been formed and had miscarried. The outbreak was premature at Sveaborg, late in July, and the sailors who started it were quickly overcome. The same failure occurred at Kronstadt, where the revolutionists and mutinous troops took Fort Constantine and the arsenal, but found no ammunition in the latter, and were defenseless when surrounded by loyal forces. At Libau, Odessa, and Sevastopol the intended rising was given up.

On the 25th of August a desperate plot of wholesale murder, intended to include M. Stolypin among its victims, was carried out by the explosion of a horribly destructive bomb at the country house of that Minister, on Aptekarsky Island. M. Stolypin was holding a reception, and the rooms were crowded with officials and others, when four conspirators, three of them dressed as gendarmes, drove up boldly, and were able, either to enter the house with a bomb or to throw it through a window. The effect of the explosion was so horribly destructive that the house was torn to pieces and thirty people were killed outright or injured mortally, besides an equal number that received curable wounds. Two of the Minister’s children were among the latter, and he himself received slight injuries. The Governor of Penza, M. Koshoff, who stood near him, was instantly killed. Two of the assassins were among the killed and the other two were wounded and captured. On the following day a young woman of the terrorist organization slew General Min, at Peterhof railway station, by shots from a revolver. He had been active in suppressing the insurrection at Moscow.

In October Ambassador Meyer, after a trip into Poland and to Odessa, reported as the result of his observations:

"On the whole, the revolutionary movement, for the time being, has lost its momentum. A year ago it was on the crest of the wave. Then a strike could be ordered and put in force without any difficulty, but now the workmen refuse to be used for political purposes or respond to the whims of the agitator. The present conditions are liable to continue until the next Duma, March 5. Yesterday, which was the first anniversary of October 17 (Russian Style), it had to be given out by some of the revolutionists that there would be strikes, uprisings, and agitations throughout the country. But the day passed off quietly. Mr. Stolypin is facing with much courage and resolution the stupendous task which confronts him. He is endeavoring to deal fairly, while at the same time it is necessary to reestablish law and order."

On the 21st of December Count Alexei Ignatieff was assassinated at Tver, while attending a meeting of the provincial zemstvo, the assassin stating that he had acted under orders of the Socialist revolutionary committee.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1906 (April). Invitation of the Nations to a Second Peace Conference by the Tsar.

See (in this Volume) WAR, THE REVOLT AGAINST; A. D. 1907.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1906 (April). At the Algeciras Conference on the Morocco Question.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE A. D. 1905-1906.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1907 (August). Convention with Great Britain containing Arrangements on the subject of Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.

See EUROPE: A. D. 1907 (AUGUST).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1907. The Second Duma and its Early Dissolution. Increase of Radicalism among its Members. The New Electoral Law, under which a "Workable" Third Duma was elected. M. Stolypin’s Policy.

The promise that a second Duma would be summoned to meet in March, 1907, was fulfilled. Between the 21st of January and the end of February elections were held, with results that were exceedingly disappointing and irritating to the imperial government. It strove hard, by arbitrary measures and vigorous working of its police, to suppress the Constitutional Democrats,—the party which it fears the most. It pursued their leaders into exile or imprisonment, broke up their meetings, harassed them so in the canvass and the election that the return of deputies by the party was reduced from 185 in the First Duma to 108; but, on the other hand, the Socialist representation in the Second Duma was raised above that in the First from 17 to 77, and the Octobrists elected 31 deputies, gaining 18 more seats than they had filled before. On the whole, as a consequence, the Second Duma held more radicalism in its make-up, with less intelligence, than the First.

Its meetings were opened on the 6th of March, and soon gave evidence that the antagonisms in the body were too extreme for any influential political work. In June M. Stolypin accused most of the Socialist members of being parties to the revolutionary propaganda in the army and navy, and demanded their suspension by the Duma. It refused to suspend them without an investigation of the truth of the charge, and appointed a committee to receive such evidence as the government could bring. Thereupon the Tsar, by a manifesto published on the 16th of June, dissolved the Second Duma as summarily as he had dissolved the First, ordered new elections, to begin on the 14th of September, and summoned the Third Duma, then elected, to meet on November 14th.

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At the same time a new electoral law was proclaimed, in flagrant violation of the so-called Constitution of October 30, 1905, which had declared, as an "immutable rule," established by the "inflexible will" of the Tsar, that "no law can ever come into force without the approval of the State Duma." The new law was planned carefully and skilfully to disfranchise great numbers in the classes of people which autocracy fears; to add weight to the votes of the classes on which it leans; to diminish the representation of industrial cities, as well as of non-Russian districts,—Poland, Siberia, etc.,—and, generally, to make a farce of the pretended concession of representative and constitutional government which the autocratic court had been playing for the amusement of the country during the past two years.

The new electoral law accomplished its purpose of securing a Duma that would keep workable relations with M. Stolypin. A very intelligent English publicist, Dr. Dillon, who discusses Foreign Politics every month in the _Contemporary Review_, whose views are broadly liberal as a rule, and whose acquaintance with Russian affairs seems to be specially intimate, inclines to justify the measure on this practical ground, or, rather, to accept it as approved by this result. When the make-up of the Third Duma had become known he wrote, in the _Contemporary Review_ of December, 1907, as follows:

"M. Stolypin’s electoral law has been criticised severely. And, to be frank, one must admit that from the point of view of men who advocate universal manhood suffrage it is a mere mockery. For it suspended the right of election in some places, arbitrarily lessened the number of representatives in certain provinces, created groups of electors, and authorised Government officials to decide how they should be formed; in a word, it is a means of manipulating the elections for the avowed purpose of having a certain stamp of men returned and another type of men eliminated. To say that the Chamber which has resulted from these expedients is not the elect of the nation is, of course, a truism. It is not, and was not, meant to be this. … The data respecting the intellectual and social status of the newly elected are still very defective and untrustworthy. But so far as they go, they show that among the men who are about to rescue Russia from ruin there are:—

Members of the nobility 157 Priests 51 Merchants 22 Peasants 77 Petty tradesmen 6 Working-men 15 Honorary burghers 8 Ex-officers 20 Officials 56 Zemstvo workers 27 Employees of municipalities 23 Marshals of nobility 36 Cantonal elders and secretaries 21 Men who have been educated in high schools 167 Men who have been educated in intermediate schools 82 Men who have been educated in primary schools 61 Members educated at home 23 Between the ages of 25-30 19 Between the ages of 30-40 81 Between the ages of 40-50 87 Between the ages of 50-00 47 Between the ages of 60-70 13 Between the ages of 70-80 l Members of the Second Duma 59 Members of the First Duma 7 Members of the Council of the Empire 3

A month later the same writer said:

"The Third Duma is already a month old, and has as yet done no work, has not even organised itself. Festina lente is evidently its maxim, with the accent on the second word. Debates there have been not a few, but they were as the noise of sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. The first discussion took place on the motion to thank the Tsar for the October Manifesto, which created the Legislative Chamber. A great majority of the deputies—including the Constitutional Democrats, who are adjusting themselves to their environment—were in favour of expressing their gratitude, but they could not agree how to call the institution for which they felt grateful. Some wanted to name it a Constitution, others ‘a renovated order of things.’ If it is a Constitution, then there is no Autocrat, the Octobrists argued, and consequently that title of the Emperor must be dropped. ‘If we are bent on thanking the Tsar,’ replied the Conservatives, ‘let us do it with a good grace. Whatever name we may give to the present _régime_, the title of the ruler has undergone no change. He was an Autocrat when he ascended the throne, and he is an Autocrat to day. Proofs? They are as plentiful as blackberries.’ …

"But the Constitutionalists—and among them the Octobrists favoured by M. Stolypin—insisted. ‘By the Manifesto,’ they argued, ‘the Tsar limited his authority and curtailed his prerogatives. Thus it is no longer in his power to issue laws without the approval of the Duma; neither can he abrogate any of the Organic Statutes.’ ‘You are mistaken,’ answered the Monarchists. ‘Have the Organic Statutes not been already altered? Has the "immutable" electoral franchise not been changed?’ … But the Octobrists stood their ground, and the address was voted with a flaw in the Tsar’s title. That was the work of one whole day and part of a night—an unlucky day—the 13th November Russian style. In this way the Duma offered the Sovereign a pot of honey mingled with wormwood. The Premier was upset, the Tsar offended, and the Monarchists indignant. ‘This, then,’ the Monarchists exclaimed, ‘is M. Stolypin’s Duma, the areopagus which is to prescribe remedies for the Russian nation now at death’s door?’

"Three days later came the Premier in a _quos ego_ mood. And he was at his best. Ever since his first appearance as a public orator, M. Stolypin has kept the high place he then won. His eloquence, like his character, is manly, and his utterance impressive. His look, his accents, his gestures, betoken sincerity, and his manner is warm with the heat of subdued enthusiasm. On this historic day he simply electrified the House, captivated his adversaries, and extorted applause from his bitter enemies. And yet he was battling with the Duma, swimming against the current. He spoke of the Autocratic power and of the Autocratic Sovereign, and had the satisfaction of being interrupted by enthusiastic cheers. …

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"Happily M. Stolypin is a man of steadfast purpose rather than brilliant intellect, for his moral qualities may stand him in better stead, during the revolutionary crisis than would rare mental gifts. At bottom his temper is Liberal rather than Conservative, and mainly for that reason he would seem to have been chosen to be sexton of the old epoch and harbinger of the new. …

"No fair-minded man can doubt the sincerity of M. Stolypin’s Liberalism. It has withstood the test of time and the pressure of unfavourable circumstance. His faith in Liberal specifics is so firm that he declines to diagnose any diseases that call for more drastic remedies. … M. Stolypin is at present the only influential politician in Russia who is working efficaciously for the Liberal cause. He is systematically removing hindrances to Constitutionalism which are most formidable at the outset. …

"But the greatest service which any Minister could render a cause was performed by M. Stolypin for Liberalism at a time when it depended on him either to lay the groundwork for a Constitutional fabric or to establish firm Monarchical government. And for that service he deserves, and may yet receive, a public monument from Democratic Russia. He advised the Tsar to summon the Third Duma soon after the Second, and to issue no laws in the meanwhile. That was really the turning point in the history of Russia’s Constitution, the _magnum opus_ of M. Stolypin’s political life. And he followed it up with a step more extraordinary and decisive still. He himself had recourse to the Autocratic power which it is the tendency of his policy to annihilate, and he used it for the purpose of destroying Autocracy. That surely was a _coup de maître_ which entitled the Minister to the undying gratitude of all Liberal Russia. But not a Liberal uttered a word of thanks. This deadly blow was struck at the Autocracy in the following way:

"The Electoral Law opened the portals of the Duma chiefly to Democrats and other irreconcilable enemies of the Monarchy, and so long as it remained in force, no Duma acceptable to the Government was possible. Yet it could not be abrogated. For, together with the Organic Statutes, it had been declared part of the unchangeable Constitution. The Tsar’s hands, therefore, were tied, his word was pledged, and the result was a deadlock. Autocratic power could not be wielded anew without effecting a perilous _coup d'état_. Well, the Premier advised the Crown to seize once more the sword of the Autocracy, and with it to hew off the branch on which the Autocrat was sitting. That was the true significance of the measure against which the enemies of the Autocracy still cry out. For the object directly aimed at and immediately attained by this _coup d'état_ was the creation of the Octobrist Party, whose first work in the Duma was to declare that the Autocracy had gone forever."

_E. J. Dillon, Foreign Affairs (Contemporary Renew, January, 1908)._

RUSSIA: A. D. 1907 (November). Treaty with Great Britain, France, Germany, and Norway, guaranteeing the Integrity of Norway.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1907-1908.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1907-1909. Action in Persia during the Constitutional Revolution.

See (in this Volume) PERSIA.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908. Evasion of the Conscription.

See (in this Volume) WAR, THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1908.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908. North Sea and Baltic Agreements.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1908.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908. Proxy Parliamentary Vote given to Women of Property.

See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908. Policy of Prussia in her Polish Provinces dictated by her relations to Russia.

See (in this Volume) GERMANY: A. D. 1908 (JANUARY).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908 (September). Withdrawal from Intervention in Macedonia.

See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1908 (JULY-DECEMBER).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908-1909. Attitude toward the Austrian Annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Was the Government coerced by German Threats?

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1908-1909 (OCTOBER-MARCH).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908-1909. Exercise of Disputed Authority in Northern Manchuria. The Kharbin question.

See (in this Volume) CHINA: A. D. 1909 (MAY).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1908-1909. Measures for the Destruction of the Constitutional Autonomy of Finland.

See (in this Volume) RUSSIA: A. D. 1908-1909.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909. Oppressions continued. Executions, Imprisonment, Exile, Torture, Persecution.

On the 1st of August, 1909, a letter was addressed to the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs by one hundred and eighty men of distinction in Great Britain,—Members of Parliament, Peers, Bishops and other clergymen, University professors, authors, editors,—asking the Government to exert such influence as might be possible with that of Russia, to induce a relaxation of the system of repression still maintained in that unhappy country, and to ameliorate the dreadful barbarities which go with imprisonment there. "We know," said these memorialists, "how slow has been our own progress in the past, and how many points in our present condition are open to independent criticism. We are conscious of the difficulties that attend all reforms, and we desire that no feeling of impatience should cause us to withhold our sympathy from every sincere attempt to promote good government among a friendly people.

"It is in no spirit of ungenerous remonstrance that we are constrained to observe that for four years a system of repression has been maintained in Russia, which has not relaxed its severity though the evidences of any organized revolutionary movement have dwindled and disappeared. There has recently been an announcement of some relaxation in particular districts, but the greater portion of the Empire remains, in time of peace, under some form of martial law. The number of capital sentences on civilians for the period between October, 1905, and December, 1908, has reached 4,002, and the number of executions was officially stated to be 2,118. These sentences were passed, moreover, not by ordinary civil process, but by exceptional military Courts. The number of persons in exile in Siberia and Northern Russia, mostly punished without trial by administrative process, under a system of exile, which involves much physical suffering and privation, was officially reckoned in October last at 74,000.

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"The number of persons exiled without trial under administrative decree cannot be realized without a serious protest, but the evidence which has reached us through the Press, from trustworthy witnesses, and above all from the reports of the debates in the Duma, has persuaded us that the sufferings of those who remain in prison justify, nay, require, a stronger remonstrance. Over 180,000 persons—a total which has more than doubled since 1905—criminals and political offenders, are crowded together in prisons built to hold 107,000. In most of these prisons epidemic diseases, and especially typhus, are prevalent; the sick and the whole lie together—their fetters even in cases of fever are not removed. In some prisons the warders systematically beat and maltreat the sick and the whole alike. There is also evidence of more deliberate tortures, employed to punish the defiant or to extract confession from the suspect.

"Such excesses would move our indignation were all the victims ordinary criminals. We desire to base our protest on the ground of simple humanity; but it is none the less important to remember that many of these prisoners, if guilty at all, are suffering for acts or words which in any constitutional country would be lawful, or even praiseworthy.

"Our object in addressing you is to draw your attention to these facts and to place on record the impression which we have formed of them. That no direct intervention is possible we fully realize, nor do we wish to enlarge the area of international controversy. But there are probably means by which a friendly Government may exert an influence to ameliorate the lot of those who are suffering under the evils which we have described. The infliction of such wrongs upon Russians and the indignation which they excite among ourselves, are relevant and important factors in our mutual relations, of which the two Governments should be fully informed."

Later and more specific facts, illustrative of the arbitrary and barbarous oppression under which the Russian people are still suffering, were given in _The Outlook_ of October 9, 1909, from which the following is taken:

"In the first seven months of 1909 military courts sentenced 841 persons to death in Russia and up to the 1st of August 381 of the persons so sentenced had been hanged or shot. Nearly all were civil or political offenders, who, in a constitutional country, would have been tried with proper legal forms and guarantees in the regular civil tribunals. In these same seven months the publishers of 109 periodicals in Russia were fined in the aggregate sum of 54,425 rubles for publishing news or expressing opinions obnoxious to the Government, and in addition to these pecuniary punishments whole editions of papers and magazines were seized and destroyed, printing offices were closed, editors were arrested and employees were exiled—all by administrative process. In the month of June, 1909, three newspapers were suppressed altogether, and in August, 1909, the St. Petersburg journal Reitch (Speech), the organ of the Constitutional Democrats, was fined 500 rubles for printing a signed article entitled ‘Suicide in the Army,’ which was based wholly on reports of the Ministry of War.

"On the 28th of May, 1909, Mr. Selden, a St. Petersburg publisher, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in a fortress for publishing one of Count Tolstoy’s books, and on the 17th of August, 1909, the Count’s private secretary, Mr. N. N. Gusef, was exiled by administrative process to the province of Perm for distributing the venerable author’s brochure entitled ‘Thou Shalt Do No Murder.’ In July, 1909, Mr. W. Bogoras, author of Volume eleven of the Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History (one of the Volumes containing the scientific results of the Jessup North Pacific Expedition), was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for describing the beating of citizens of Tver by dragoons in 1905, a thing that he had personally witnessed. …

"In August, 1909, the ‘Authors’ and Scientists’ Mutual Benefit Society,’ a benevolent organization which had been in existence for eighteen years, which had eight hundred members, and which included most of the writers and scholars of Russia, was suppressed by order of Premier Stolypin, for the ostensible reason that it had given pecuniary aid to an indigent author named Vitashefski—a man of advanced age who had once, twenty years earlier, been sent to Siberia for political crime. It is believed, however, that the real reason for the suppression of the Society is the fact that most of its members are liberals. The existing Government is extremely intolerant toward social organizations that take an independent or critical attitude toward the reactionary policy now in force. On the 21st of July, 1909, the severest form of martial law, the so-called ‘law of extraordinary defense,’ was proclaimed in St. Petersburg for the seventh consecutive time. The city has been under some form of martial law ever since the assassination of Alexander II. in 1881. Almost the only encouraging feature of the present situation in Russia is the fact that the members of the Duma are still allowed to talk, and the newspapers are still permitted to publish verbatim reports of the debates. The lower house of the so-called Parliament has no independent power, and no real control even over the finances of the Empire; but it can criticise, interpellate the Czar’s Ministers, and promote to some extent the political education of the people.

"Three years ago Premier Stolypin defined his policy as ‘progressive reform, with the restoration of order.’ He has partly restored order, by hanging, imprisoning, or exiling to Siberia a large part of the disorderly population; but his reforms have ‘progressed’ as the land-crab is popularly supposed to walk—backward. Whether he is wholly to blame for the reactionary policy that he is enforcing, or whether he acts more or less under compulsion, we shall not know, perhaps, until he retires from office and follows the example of General Kuropatkin and General Linevitch by writing his memoirs."

On the trial, in May, of M. Selden, for publishing and distributing Count Tolstoi’s pamphlets, "Thou shalt not Kill," "A Letter to Liberals," "Christianity and Patriotism," the venerable writer addressed a note to the court, challenging the prosecution of himself, instead of the publisher. "As these pamphlets," he wrote, "were written by me and published by one of my friends, not only with my consent but at my desire, M. Selden taking a purely passive part in the affair, all the measures which are being taken against M. Selden should logically and in equity be directed against me, especially because I have repeatedly declared, and now declare again, that I consider it my duty to my conscience to disseminate, so far as lies in my power, the pamphlets in question as well as my other works, and shall continue doing so as long as I am able. I feel constrained to inform you of this, and ask you to take whatever measures may devolve from my present statement."

{579}

But the magistrate did not venture to institute proceedings against the principal in the offense, and the Government took no notice of the challenge.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909. Revived Censorship of the Press. Its Stupidity. Gains for Free Speech notwithstanding.

"At the present time, the liberties granted less than four years ago are mutilated. The censor is busy once more. The Russian journalist is again compelled to practice the arts of half-meaning, insinuation, and innuendo, which made his predecessors of a generation ago marvels of subtle expression. But that is only when a writer would say everything he wants to say. Undoubtedly, the range of the permissible has grown immensely since the early days of even Nicholas II. To write of labor wars, of conspiracies, of constitutional liberties, Russian newspapers need no longer confine themselves to telegraphic reports of foreign strikes, conspiracies, and constitutions. They need only print what the radicals in the Duma utter. Not even the full Duma’s reports may be privileged at present, but, after all, the Russian censor is a stupid fellow. The censorship, like the autocracy in general, is inefficient, spasmodic, allowing to-day what it prohibited yesterday, or even allowing in one column what it strikes out from another. St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1890 had eleven daily papers, and twenty weeklies. In 1900 the number had risen to twenty-four dailies and thirty-three weeklies. In all Russia there were then 287 periodical publications. In August, 1905, the number had risen to 1,630, of which St. Petersburg alone had 534. There were fifty daily papers at St. Petersburg and twenty-five at Moscow in those short days of freedom, when the pent-up speech of ages burst out in Russia. This, of course, was inflation. Periodicals were born and died with the rising and setting of the sun. The numerical strength of the press must be far smaller now. But much that was gained for freedom of speech in those stormy days has not been lost."

_New York Evening Post, March 23, 1909._

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (January-July). Dark Secrets of the Russian Police and Spy System brought to Light.

The first in a series of startling disclosures of the dark secrets of the Russian espionage and police system was made in January, 1909, when it came to public knowledge that the head and front of the Revolutionary Socialists of the Empire, one Azeff by name, had been discovered by his associates to be a secret agent of the police; had been tried and condemned by a tribunal of their party, at Paris, and had escaped into some hiding place, with avenging emissaries in pursuit, to take his life. A little later it appeared that a former Director of the Police in the Department of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, M. Lopukhin, had been arrested for treason, on the charge of having betrayed Azeff to the Revolutionists, by making known to them the double part that the latter played, as a so-called _agent provocateur_, drawing them into criminal plots of which he kept the police informed.

The preliminary trial of Lopukhin occurred in April, and it was stated in the indictment then published that Azeff had penetrated into the very centre of the Social Revolutionary machinations, and that part of his great services to the Secret Police were rendered during the period that M. Lopukhin occupied the post of Director of the Police Department in the Ministry of the Interior—_i.e._, from May, 1902, to March, 1905. It was affirmed that M. Lopukhin not only knew of the existence and activity of Azeff, but met the latter more than once both at his (M. Lopukhin's) house and at one of the conspiratorial headquarters in St. Petersburg. The indictment paid a warm tribute to Azeff’s ability in so long maintaining his connexion with the police without awakening the suspicions of the Social Revolutionaries as to his true character. It was eventually remarked, however, that the plots in which Azeff was concerned invariably failed, whereas many of the others succeeded, and accusations of treachery began to be levelled against him. In October, 1908, a commission of inquiry was appointed by the Social Revolutionaries in Paris to inquire into the charges brought against Azeff. Burtzeff, editor of a revolutionary organ, stated before this tribunal that he had seen M. Lopukhin, who had informed him of Azeff’s relations with the Russian police.

M. Lopukhin, on his trial, admitted having given this information to Burtzeff, but explained that it was in consequence of what the latter had told him of the revolutionist designs, including a pending plot against the life of the Tsar. He then felt it his duty to unmask Azeff, lest the murders which might otherwise have followed should lie on his conscience, and when the revolutionaries came to him for confirmation of what he had told Burtzeff he found it impossible to retract his words. He was convicted, however, on the 13th of May, and sentenced to five years of imprisonment at hard labor, with the loss of civil rights. The sentence was mitigated subsequently, and he was sent to exile at Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, his family being allowed to accompany him.

Prince Urussoff, whose bold speech in the First Duma on the instigation of massacres is quoted from above (A. D. 1906), is a brother-in-law of M. Lopukhin, and derived from him, no doubt, the information on which he spoke.

In July, a new disclosure of the character of the Russian secret service police was made, as revolting as that in the Azeff case. A personage known as M. Harting, chief of that Russian service in Paris, and so favorably regarded in the French capital that he was about to be made an officer of the Legion of Honor, was discovered to have been the leader of a plot to assassinate the Tsar Alexander III. in 1890, during that monarch’s visit to Paris; that he then bore the name of Landesen; that he had escaped arrest and was condemned by default to imprisonment for five years; that he subsequently, under the new name, secured secret service employment in the Russian police. All this was quickly proved to be fact by the French Government, and officially announced.

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RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (April). The Agrarian Law.

On the basis of the decree relative to the communes which is partly described above (see A. D. 1906), a law was brought into force by the Government in 1906, known as the law of November 9, which supposedly was provisional and subject to ultimate ratification by the Duma. Writing of it in the New York _Evening Post_ of May 28, 1909, S. N. Harper says:

"This law of November 9 aims directly at the destruction of the commune. Before this law a two-thirds vote of the commune was necessary for the granting of the petition of a member to divide out. Now a local police official, whom by the way another project of reform abolishes as irresponsible and a source of abuse, can override the vote of a commune and grant the petition. A peasant who divides out receives that portion which he is using if there has been no redistribution for twenty-four years. If there has been a redistribution within twenty-four years, he receives what he would receive on the basis of a new redistribution—what this would be is again decided by the official. As we saw, no equitable reckoning is possible here.

"The peasant can sell this land which he receives from the commune, for it is now his private property. In one province which I visited this summer, in over one-half of the cases of dividing out the peasant had sold his land immediately—usually to the village ‘fist’—the prosperous village usurer and boss who holds his neighbors in his fist."

The law was operative for more than two years before it received the sanction of the Duma, in April, 1909. Of the parliamentary enactment then given to it the above writer says:

"The outcome of the debates was certain. It had been secured by the change of the electoral law for the third Duma, whereby the landed gentry had been given the predominant vote. … No more important than the vote of this assembly is the attitude of the country at large toward this law. The landed gentry are naturally for this measure. The village system is a source of danger to them. The law will establish ‘peasant’ landlords, whose interests will be much the same as theirs. But the peasants have shown quite plainly their hostile attitude toward this law. Only those peasants who are economically provided for and those who, for one reason or another, have become mere hangers-on of the local police officials are in favor of the law. It is these that have taken advantage of the law, with the support of the local official. But they have done so in spite of the protest of the other peasants, only their economic position making it possible, and their friend the official has not been able to prevent, therefore, the other peasants from giving a violent character to their protest. Those who have insisted on dividing out have in many instances been burned out the next week."

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (April-July). Advance of Russian Troops into Persia.

See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1908-1909.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (May). New Russo-Chinese Agreement, establishing Municipalities on the Line of the Chinese Eastern Railway.

See (in this Volume) CHINA: A. D. 1909 (MAY).

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (June). "Dreadnought" building.

See (in this Volume) WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: NAVAL: RUSSIAN.

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (June). Stringent Orthodoxy of the Tsar.

A Press despatch from St. Petersburg, June 4, 1909, reported:

"Premier Stolypin spoke in the Duma to-day in defence of the government’s draft of a law dealing with the matter of changing from one faith to another and against the modifications removing all restrictions introduced in committee. He said that the Emperor, as head of the Orthodox Church, could not suffer backsliding from the orthodox to non-Christian beliefs, and that if such amendments were incorporated the bill would be vetoed. Continuing he defined the relations between church and state. He conceded that the church enjoyed full independence in matters of creed and dogma, but insisted on state control. The speech was a brilliant effort, but it fell upon cold ears, and brought out no applause. The premier, for the first time in the history of the third Duma, found himself fighting for a lost cause before an adverse house."

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (October-November). Differing Accounts of Political Conditions, of the work of the Duma, and of the Disposition of the Government.

The last weeks of 1909 brought from observers in Russia quite differing impressions and representations of the existing political conditions. Late in October a St. Petersburg correspondent of _The Evening Post_, New York, wrote:

"Stolypin has given Russia a packed Duma, the predominant party in which is elected by 130,000 rural gentry, who were unable to get many more than a dozen members into the first two Dumas. As might have been expected, this Duma has done nothing for Russia. Its Land law has not been accepted by the peasantry, its Religions law remains a dead letter, because, according to the premier, the Tsar refuses to sign it. There will be a deficit of about one hundred million in the new budget, and the country is faced by bankruptcy.

"But, to return to the Duma, it has been proved during the last session that the people have no control over the purse, thanks to a ‘rule’ made by Count Witte before the meeting of the first Legislature. This ‘rule’ says that if the Duma and the Council of Empire fail to agree on the budget, then the figures of the former year’s budget remain in force. As the Council of Empire (or Russian upper house) must always have a reactionary and bureaucratic majority, the Duma has no control of the national expenditure and never can have. This was brought home very forcibly to the lower house during the last session, when a humble suggestion which it made about including a sum of 350 million rubles in the extraordinary expenditure account was rejected by the Council of Empire, which thus taught the Duma that it has no control over even the most important loan operations. When the Duma (with the strong approval of even such conservative papers as the _Novoe Vremya_) refused to sanction the naval budget until the notoriously corrupt Ministry of Marine—the ministry accountable for Tsushima—had been reformed, the government laughed at it, and got the necessary money over the deputies’ heads."

Two weeks later than the above another St. Petersburg correspondent was writing to London:

"To judge from to-day’s proceedings the present session of the Duma bids fair to surpass the most sanguine hopes. Having disposed of the last of the Agrarian Bills and of the First Offenders Act, the Duma began the debate on the Bill reforming the local Courts. This measure represents the foundation of all political reform in Russia.

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"The Duma Committee, after 35 sittings, adopted a proposal considerably extending the scope of the Government Bill besides providing for the re-establishment of elective justices of the peace, introduced in 1804, but repealed in 1889 in favour of the arbitrary jurisdiction of the Communal Court and the Zemsky Natchalnik--both long ago discredited institutions. Just as the Agrarian reforms are calculated to promote the private ownership of land and respect for the rights of property, so the reform of the local Courts will inculcate respect for the law.

"The details of the Bill may possibly give rise to differences with the Government and the Upper House, but its substantial features will be doubtless retained in the ultimate form which will receive the Imperial sanction."

The writer of this had communicated to his journal, a few days previously, the following report of an interview with "a leading member of the Government," and apparently gave credit to the sentiment it expressed. Said the Minister interviewed:

"You ask me what are the Government’s intentions regarding Poland. I can only repeat what I said before the Joint Commission on the Polish Municipal Reform Bill, which is to be laid before the Duma. We have decided to give Poland the full benefits of local government consistent with the interests of the Empire, but not autonomy. We cannot trust the Poles to that extent. We shall introduce a Bill creating a separate province of Holm, where the great majority of the population is of Russian stock, and extend to it the system of mixed Russian and Polish _Zemstvos_ to be introduced in the south-western provinces.

"I am satisfied with the progress of agrarian reform. You have seen from the speech of M. Krivoshein in the Duma that one million peasant households (about 5,000,000 souls) have already abandoned the communal system.

"The continuance of executions is, I know, a source of criticism. You know that the Emperor has given orders that death sentences should be confirmed only in the worst cases. Unhappily, I know of no constitutional method for putting down revolution. Russia is so vast. It has taken a long time to bring all the guilty to trial. I am also criticized for the arbitrary acts of our local authorities, but, I ask you, does the Government derive any interest from these arbitrary acts?

"Political reforms? Yes, they have been delayed. But what, for instance, is the good of hurrying through a Bill on the liberty of the person until we have first reformed the local Courts?

"You have heard and read the statements that the Octobrists have quarrelled with the Government; you have also been told that Russia is on the eve of a reaction. Believe neither. The Octobrists are taking a more advanced position. That is as it should be. It is better for the Duma and by no means disagreeable to the Government."

RUSSIA: A. D. 1909 (December). Assassination of the Chief of the Secret Police.

On the 22d of December Colonel Karpoff, Chief of the Secret Police, was killed by an infernal machine at a suburban lodging occupied by a certain Voskresensky, who is supposed to be a revolutionary and a police spy like Azeff.

----------RUSSIA: End--------

RUSSO-CHINESE BANK.

See (in this Volume) CHINA: A. D. 1901-1902.

RUTHERFORD, Professor Ernest.

See (in this Volume) SCIENCE, RECENT: RADIUM; also NOBEL PRIZES.

RYAN, Thomas F.: Investing in a Concession in the Congo State.

See (in this Volume) CONGO STATE: A. D. 1906-1909.

RYAN, Thomas F.: Purchase of Controlling Stock of Equitable Life Assurance Society.

See (in this Volume) INSURANCE, LIFE.

RYAN, Thomas F.: Sale of interests to Morgan & Co.

See (in this Volume) FINANCE AND TRADE: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909-1910.

S.

SADR AZAM, The.

See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1905-1907.

SAGASTA, Praxedes Mateo: Prime Minister of Spain. His Death.

See (in this Volume) SPAIN: A. D. 1901-1904.

SAGE FOUNDATION, The: For the Improvement of Social and Living Conditions in the United States.

See (in this Volume) SOCIAL BETTERMENT: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1907.

SAGE, Mrs. Russell: Gift to Yale University.

See (in this Volume) EDUCATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1910.

ST. GOTHARD RAILWAY: Acquisition by the Swiss Government.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: SWITZERLAND.

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: A. D. 1900-1904. The Unearthing of Thievery and Corruption by Attorney Folk. Prosecutions, Confessions and Convictions.

See (in this Volume) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: A. D. 1904. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

Except the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago, in 1893, the most important of the industrial exhibitions that have been organized in America was that of 1904, at St. Louis, which commemorated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase from France. The Exposition was opened on the 30th of April and closed December 1st. An estimated total of $44,500,000 was expended upon it in structures and management, of which sum about $22,000,000 was raised by the Exposition Company. The remainder was the expenditure of governments, Federal, State and Foreign, and of concessionaires. The total attendance, from first to last, was 18,741,073. The receipts fell far short of the expenditure, and subscribers to the undertaking can have had no returns; but the public gain from it was very great. About sixty foreign countries and colonies and nearly every State and Territory of the Union were represented in the exhibits.

{582}

A distinguished feature of the Exposition was the remarkable number and character of the gatherings, international and national, that were brought about in connection with it. The most notable of these was the International Congress of Arts and Sciences, which opened September 19th. "This Congress," said President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, in an article describing its plan, "is not such a series of gatherings as took place at Chicago and at Paris, but is rather a carefully elaborated plan to educate public opinion, and the world of scholarship itself, to an appreciation of the underlying unity of knowledge and the necessary inter-dependence of the host of specialties that have sprung up during the past century. … For participation in this congress there will assemble a large body of the world’s greatest scholars. They will come from all parts of the world to contribute surveys of their several departments of knowledge, planning those surveys so as to emphasize the mutual relations of all the separate arts and sciences."

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: A. D. 1904. Meeting of the Interparliamentary Union.

See (in this Volume) WAR: THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1904-1909.

ST. MARK’S CATHEDRAL, at Venice: Fall of the Campanile.

See (in this Volume) VENICE: A. D. 1902.

ST. PETERSBURG: DISTURBANCES IN.

See (in this Volume) RUSSIA.

ST. PIERRE: Volcanic Destruction of the City.

See (in this Volume) VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS: WEST INDIES.

ST. VINCENT ISLAND: Volcanic Eruption of La Souffrière.

See (in this Volume) VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS: WEST INDIES.

SAKHAROFF, General: Assassination of.

See (in this Volume) RUSSIA: A. D. 1904-1905.

SAKURAI, Lieutenant Tadayoshi, The story of.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904-1905 (MAY-JANUARY).

SALISBURY, Lord Robert Cecil, Marquis of: Resignation of the Premiership in the British Government.

See (in this Volume) ENGLAND: A. D. 1902 (JULY).

SALONIKA: A. D. 1903. Dynamite Explosion by Insurgents.

See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1902-1903.

SALONIKA: A. D. 1903. Center of the "Young Turk" organization.

See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1908 (JULY-DECEMBER), and after.

SALOON QUESTION.

See (in this Volume) ALCOHOL PROBLEM.

SALT TRUST, Dissolution of the.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1901-1906.

SALTON SEA, The.

At a point not far from where it runs into Mexican territory the Colorado River, for a long recent period, has been deflected by bordering sand deposits from a great depression in the neighboring desert, known as the Salton Sink. In 1901 an irrigation company began works for supplying water from the Colorado to lands in that vicinity, and seems to have taken no proper precautions for controlling the flow through its canals. The result was a break through the sand hills, into the Salton Sink, which converted it for the time being into the "Salton Sea,"—so described in all accounts of the catastrophe. For nearly two years the flood of the Colorado was poured into the Sink, forming a sea or lake which covered an area of about 400 square miles. It was not until February, 1907, that the combined exertions of the Southern Pacific Railway Company, the California Development Co. (whose works produced the trouble) and the engineers of the United States Reclamation Service, succeeded in returning the Colorado to the channel it had escaped from. Since that was done evaporation has been steadily emptying the Sink, at the rate of five or six feet annually, according to the Chief of the Weather Bureau, which has maintained a station there. At the end of a year of observations he was reported as saying: "We will get the data we want within another year probably and then we can cut off the Salton Sea station. The evaporation data we expect to obtain will be valuable for calculations on irrigation works and reservoirs."

SALVADOR.

See (in this Volume) CENTRAL AMERICA.

SAM, Theresias Simon: President.

See (in this Volume) HAITI: A. D. 1902.

SANBORN, Judge Walter H.: Opinion in Suit for the Dissolution of the Standard Oil Company.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL, &C.: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1906-1909.

SANTIAGO, Chile: First Pan-American Scientific Congress.

See (in this Volume) SCIENCE AND INVENTION: INTERNATIONAL CONGRESSES.

SAN DOMINGO: A. D. 1901-1905. Financial Conditions. Dissipation of Revenues.

"Many years ago the government, being unable to raise money on ordinary security, adopted the practice of vesting the power of collection in its creditors. Duties are settled in _pagarés_, or promissory notes, duly indorsed, and payable usually in a month or two months. In order to secure loans, these _pagarés_ were handed over to the creditor, who collected the money directly from the importer or exporter. This expedient, which was designed to protect the creditor against the government itself as well as against its enemies, was in vogue when the government in 1888 sought financial relief in Europe. Such relief was obtained from Westendorp & Company, bankers, of Amsterdam, who in that year underwrote and issued, at 83½ per cent., 6 per cent. gold bonds of the Dominican government to the amount of £770,000 sterling, the government creating a first lien on all its customs revenues, and authorizing the Westendorps to collect and receive at the custom-houses all the customs revenues of the republic. Under this contract, which was ratified by the Dominican Congress, the Westendorps created in Santo Domingo an establishment, commonly called the ‘Regie,’ which collected the duties directly from the importer and exporter and disbursed them, the Westendorps sending out from Europe the necessary agents and employees. It was further stipulated that the Westendorps should, in case of necessity, have the right to constitute a European commission, which it was understood was to be international in character. The power of collection and disbursement was exercised by the Westendorps down to 1893, when it was transferred to the San Domingo Improvement Company, of New York, which continued to exercise it till January, 1901, when the company was, by an arbitrary executive decree issued by President Jimenez, excluded from its function of collecting the revenues, though its employees were permitted to remain in the custom-houses till the end of the year.

{583}

"As an assurance to the foreign creditor, whose legal security was thus destroyed, Jimenez constituted in the same decree a ‘Commission of Honorables,’ with whom the sums due to foreign creditors, including the American companies, were to be deposited; but their capacity as depositaries was not destined to be tested. Late in 1901, it became known that out of the reported revenues of the year, amounting to $2,126,453, the percentages for the domestic debt had not been set aside, and that no payment had been made on the floating interior debt, but that the Jimenez ‘revolutionary’ claims had been paid without previous warrant of law, and that there existed a deficit. Since that time, with the exception of comparatively small amounts, nothing whatever has been paid to the foreign creditor. The omission, however, has not been due to lack of revenues. It has been due to conditions which, if all the debts of the republic were with one stroke wiped out, would continue to prevent the government from meeting its ordinary expenses. The revenues have been seized and dissipated by the government and its enemies in ‘war expenses,’ and in the payment of '_asignaciones_' and ‘revolutionary claims.’ … That foreign governments will stand by and permit such conditions to continue cannot be expected. They have already manifested their desire to intervene."

_John Bassett Moore, Santo Domingo and the United States (American Review of Reviews, March, 1905)._

SAN DOMINGO: A. D. 1901-1906. Participation in Second and Third International Conferences of American Republics.

See (in this Volume) AMERICAN REPUBLICS.

SAN DOMINGO: A. D. 1904-1907. Years of almost Incessant Disorder and repeated Revolutions. Jimenez, Vasques, Wos y Gil, Morales and Caceres in succession at the Head of Government. Menace from the Creditors of the Republic. Appeal to the United States. American Treaty. President Roosevelt on the Situation.

The assassination of President Heureaux and the election of President Jimenez are related in Volume VI. of this work (see DOMINICAN REPUBLIC). Jimenez’s rule was not long, and he gave way to a provisional government, under General Vasques, which was upset by a revolt that broke out in March, 1903, and which planted General Wos y Gil so obviously in power that his Government was recognized by the United States in October. But the rapidly revolving wheel of political events seems to have soon whirled Wos y Gil out and brought Jimenez back, to be tossed into private life again in 1904 by General Carlos F. Morales, of whom Mr. Sigimund Krausz gave a most favorable account in _The Outlook_, of September 17, 1904. "The common idea," said Mr. Krausz, "that the population of Santo Domingo consists exclusively of a horde of savages, and that the generals and politicians causing the kaleidoscopic sequence of revolutions are of the same class, and, without exception, uneducated brutes and degenerates, is quite erroneous, and has been created for the sake of sensationalism, largely by journalists and magazine writers without personal knowledge of Dominican conditions, or by native exiles who, naturally, are always enemies of the party in power. … While it is true that the vast majority of the Dominican people in the interior of the island live in a fearful state of ignorance, superstition, and even barbarism, caused by many decades of internal warfare, there is, however, also a class of natives who certainly ought not to be thrown in the same pot with them. These are the better citizens of the capital and the larger coast towns, among whom are many intelligent and educated men who had the advantage of fairly good schools and intercourse with foreigners. Among this class are a number who have received all or part of their education abroad, who speak two or three languages, and who, in their social intercourse and manners, may safely be pronounced gentlemen. They follow the occupations of merchants, planters, lawyers, physicians, etc., and while, as a rule, they keep aloof from politics, it is from their strata of society that spring most of the military and political leaders of Santo Domingo. There are few of these men who, by their appearance, betray the strain of negro blood in them, and the type is hardly distinguishable from that of Latin-Americans in general.

"Carlos M. Morales belongs to the better class of Dominicans mentioned before, masters French, English, and Spanish fluently, and has the advantage of an ecclesiastical education in a seminary of Santo Domingo City. He was, in fact, for eight years a priest, before disagreement with various dogmas of the Church and the desire to take an active part in the political affairs of his country induced him to throw aside the cassock. He is a close student of West Indian conditions, and well acquainted with the affairs of the world in general. While being an ardent admirer of the United States and its institutions, and sincerely desiring its political friendship, he is at the same time the strongest opponent of any policy that would tend to make Santo Domingo a political dependency of Uncle Sam, either in the form of annexation or a protectorate."

Morales was soon beset with claims from insistent foreign creditors, on account of debts which his predecessors had incurred, and which they had left nothing to satisfy. Several European governments were threatening forcible measures to secure payment for their subjects, and Morales asked for help from the United States. The situation and its outcome were reported subsequently to Congress by President Roosevelt, as follows:

"The conditions in Santo Domingo have for a number of years grown from bad to worse until a year ago all society was on the verge of dissolution. Fortunately, just at this time a ruler sprang up in Santo Domingo, who, with his colleagues, saw the dangers threatening their country and appealed to the friendship of the only great and powerful neighbor who possessed the power, and as they hoped also the will, to help them. There was imminent danger of foreign intervention. The previous rulers of Santo Domingo had recklessly incurred debts, and owing to her internal disorders she had ceased to be able to provide means of paying the debts. The patience of her foreign creditors had become exhausted, and at least two foreign nations were on the point of intervention, and were only prevented from intervening by the unofficial assurance of this Government that it would itself strive to help Santo Domingo in her hour of need. {584} In the case of one of these nations, only the actual opening of negotiations to this end by our Government prevented the seizure of territory in Santo Domingo by a European power. Of the debts incurred some were just, while some were not of a character which really renders it obligatory on, or proper for, Santo Domingo to pay them in full. But she could not pay any of them unless some stability was assured her Government and people.

"Accordingly the Executive Department of our Government negotiated a treaty under which we are to try to help the Dominican people to straighten out their finances. This treaty is pending before the Senate. In the meantime a temporary arrangement has been made which will last until the Senate has had time to take action upon the treaty. Under this arrangement the Dominican Government has appointed Americans to all the important positions in the customs service, and they are seeing to the honest collection of the revenues, turning over 45 per cent to the Government for running expenses and putting the other 55 per cent into a safe depositary for equitable division in case the treaty shall be ratified, among the various creditors, whether European or American. …

"Under the course taken, stability and order and all the benefits of peace are at last coming to Santo Domingo, danger of foreign intervention has been suspended, and there is at last a prospect that all creditors will get justice, no more and no less. If the arrangement is terminated by the failure of the treaty chaos will follow; and if chaos follows, sooner or later this Government may be involved in serious difficulties with foreign governments over the island, or else may be forced itself to intervene in the island in some unpleasant fashion. Under the proposed treaty the independence of the island is scrupulously respected, the danger of violation of the Monroe Doctrine by the intervention of foreign powers vanishes, and the interference of our Government is minimized, so that we shall only act in conjunction with the Santo Domingo authorities to secure the proper administration of the customs, and therefore to secure the payment of just debts and to secure the Dominican Government against demands for unjust debts. The proposed method will give the people of Santo Domingo the same chance to move onward and upward which we have already given to the people of Cuba. It will be doubly to our discredit as a nation if we fail to take advantage of this chance; for it will be of damage to ourselves, and it will be of incalculable damage to Santo Domingo."

_President’s Message to Congress, December 5, 1905._

Twenty days after the above was sent to Congress President Morales was a fugitive from his capital, expelled by a sudden revolutionary movement in which Vice-President Caceres and most of the Morales Cabinet appear to have taken a leading part. Some fighting occurred; but the Morales forces were beaten decisively in the first week of January, 1906, and their General, Rodrigues, was killed. Morales, wounded, sought protection at the American Legation and resigned the Presidency, January 12. Caceres succeeded to the office, and a treaty of peace between the contending parties was signed on the 17th, on board an United States vessel of war. The new Government of San Domingo adhered to the arrangement made by Morales with the United States.

As ratified ultimately, in the spring of 1907, by the United States Senate and the Dominican Congress, the treaty provided for the conversion of the embarrassed republic’s debt and the floating of a new issue of bonds, through the agency of a firm of New York bankers which had undertaken the management of the affair; while the Government of the United States, by its agents, was to continue its supervision of the collection of revenue.

SAN DOMINGO: A. D. 1905-1907. The American Receivership of Dominican Revenues. The Modus Vivendi of 1905 and the Treaty of 1907. The working of the Arrangement.

"By the _modus vivendi_ of March 31, 1905, it was provided that until the Dominican Congress and the Senate of the United States should act upon the convention of February 7, 1905, the President of the Dominican Republic, on the nomination of the President of the United States, should appoint a person to receive the revenues of all the custom-houses of the Republic. Of the net revenues collected, 45 per cent was to be turned over to the Dominican Government, and used in administrative expenses. The remainder, less the expenses of collection, was to be deposited in a bank in New York to be designated by the President of the United States, and to remain there for the benefit of all creditors of the Republic, Dominican as well as foreign, and not to be withdrawn before the Dominican Congress and the Senate of the United States should have acted upon the convention then pending. During the operation of the _modus vivendi_ all payments were to be suspended, without, however, in any way interfering with or changing the substantial rights of creditors. This _modus vivendi_ went into effect on April 1, 1905. Under the receivership created by this _modus vivendi_ there has been collected, to August 31, 1907, $7,183,397.56. Of this amount 45 per cent was turned over to the Dominican Government, and $3,318,946.97, to bear interest while on deposit, has been remitted to New York. This is in striking contrast with the results of the customs operations of former years, when, having control of the entire revenues of the Republic, the Dominican Government had not only been unable to pay its current expenses, but found its apparent public debt increased at an average rate of almost $1,000,000 a year for some thirty odd years. The convention between the United States and the Dominican Republic, signed at Santo Domingo City on February 8, 1907, was transmitted to the United States Senate on February 19, 1907, by the President, for ratification, and was ratified on the 25th of the same month. After formal ratification by the President of the United States and the Dominican Republic, ratifications were exchanged July 8, 1907, and formal proclamation made by the President on the 25th of the same month. Regulations have been drawn up for the application of its provisions. The treaty sets forth that the debts of the Dominican Republic amount to more than $30,000,000, nominal or face value, which have been scaled down by a conditional adjustment and agreement to some $17,000,000, including interest, in the payment of which the Government has requested the assistance of the United States. {585} The latter agrees to give this assistance subject to certain conditions set out in the treaty, the principal among which are

(a) the President of the United States shall appoint the general receiver of the Dominican customs and his assistants; and

(b) that the Dominican Government shall provide by law for the payment to such general receiver of all the customs duties of the Republic.

The money collected is to be applied as follows:

(1) To paying the expenses of the receivership;

(2) to the payment of interest on bonds issued by the Dominican Government in connection with the settlement of its debts;

(3) to the payment of the annual sums provided for amortization of said bonds, including interest upon all bonds held in the sinking fund;

(4) to the purchase and cancellation or the retirement and cancellation, pursuant to the terms thereof, of any of said bonds as may be directed by the Dominican Government, and

(5) the remainder to be paid to the Dominican Government.

On the 1st day of each calendar month the sum of $100,000 is to be paid over by the receiver to the fiscal agent of the loan, and the remaining collection of the last preceding month paid over to the Dominican Government, or applied to the sinking fund for the purchase or redemption of bonds, as the Dominican Government shall direct. Should the revenues thus collected exceed $3,000,000 for any one year, one-half of the surplus is to be applied to the sinking fund for the redemption of bonds."

_Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, October 31, 1907 (Abridgment, Message and Documents, 1907, page 797)._

----------SAN DOMINGO: End--------

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1901-1909. Water Supply. The Hetch Hetchy Project.

"Under this name is designated a plan for obtaining a water supply for the city of San Francisco from the head waters of the Tuolumne River in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Hetch Hetchy Valley is one of the most widely known regions of the high Sierras, second only to Yosemite in scenic interest. It is formed by a widening of the gorge of the Tuolumne River, about 30 miles westerly from the crest of the Sierras. It is thus described in the United States Geological Survey, 21st Annual Report.

"‘The valley proper is about three and one-half miles long and of a width varying from one-quarter to three-quarters of a mile. The rugged granite walls, crowned with spires and upon battlements, seem to rise almost perpendicular upon all sides to a height of 2500 feet above this beautiful emerald meadow.

"‘The Tuolumne River leaves this valley in a very narrow granite gorge, the sides of which rise precipitously for 800 or more feet, thus providing naturally a most favorable site for a masonry dam.’ As the result of exhaustive investigations, in 1901, having reference to the procuring of an adequate water supply for the City of San Francisco, that city, through its proper officers, selected, surveyed, filed upon and made application for the reservoir rights of way in the Hetch Hetchy Valley and Lake Eleanor, which lie within the reservation known as Yosemite National Park. These reservoir sites were recognized and surveyed as such by the United States Geological Survey, in 1891, and the survey filings and application were made in conformity with the act of Congress of February 15, 1901, relating to rights of way through certain parks, reservations and other public lands.

"Lake Eleanor is situated 136 miles east of San Francisco on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is about 300 acres in extent and lies in a broad, flat valley enclosed by precipitous walls of granite, narrowing at the lower end of the valley. It is 4,700 feet above sea level and receives the direct drainage from 83 square miles, and by a diverting canal 6 miles long from 103 square miles additional of uninhabitable mountain slopes which reach an altitude of 11,000 feet, and receive a mean annual precipitation of from 40 to 50 inches, most of which is snow. About a mile and a quarter below the lake, the valley closes into a granite walled gorge and offers an excellent site and material for a dam. …

"Hetch Hetchy reservoir (site) is about 140 miles from San Francisco on the main fork of the Tuolumne River and is about 3,700 feet above sea level. It receives the drainage from 452 square miles of the uninhabitable slopes of the Sierra Nevada, reaching to elevations of over 13,000 feet. …

"The Hetch Hetchy project proposes to conduct the water liberated from these reservoirs by way of the gorge of the Tuolumne River 16 miles and thence by canals, tunnels and pipes."

_Frederick H. Clark, Head of History Department, Lowell High School._

The application of the City to the United States Government for the Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy reservoir sites was denied, in the first instance (1903), by the Secretary of the Interior, the Honorable A. E. Hitchcock, but subsequently granted, on a reopening of the case and a rehearing, by Secretary James R. Garfield, in whose decision, rendered May 11, 1908, the considerations for and against the proposed use of these famous seats of natural beauty and sublimity were discussed at length and concluded to have the greater weight in favor of the application.

One stipulation made by Secretary Garfield was that within two years the City should submit the question of water supply to the vote of its citizens, as contemplated in its Charter. This was done on November 11, 1908, and the voters of San Francisco, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the private water company, recorded their approval of the Hetch Hetchy Project by the overwhelming vote of 34,950 for, to 5708 against the proposition. At the same election a sale of municipal bonds to the amount of $600,000 was authorized in order to enable the City to proceed to perfect its titles. These bonds have been sold and at this date (June, 1909) the acquisition of the required land is under way.

Almost passionate protests and pleadings against this use of the beautiful Hetch Hetchy Valley have been uttered by John Muir, the word-painter of "The Mountains of California," and many earnest voices from all parts of the country have been joined to his in the expostulation. Mr. Muir writes: "It is impossible to overestimate the value of wild mountains and mountain temples. They are the greatest of our natural resources, God's best gifts; but none, however high and holy, is beyond reach of the spoiler. These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the mountains, lift them to dams and town skyscrapers. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

{586}

"Excepting only Yosemite, Hetch Hetchy is the most attractive and wonderful valley within the bounds of the great Yosemite National Park and the best of all the campgrounds. People are now flocking to it in ever-increasing numbers for health and recreation of body and mind. Though the walls are less sublime in height than those of Yosemite, its groves, gardens, and broad spacious meadows are more beautiful and picturesque. It is many years since sheep and cattle were pastured in it, and the vegetation now shows scarce a trace of their ravages. Last year in October I visited the valley with Mr. William Keith, the artist. He wandered about from view to view, enchanted, made thirty-eight sketches, and enthusiastically declared that in varied picturesque beauty Hetch Hetchy greatly surpassed Yosemite. It is one of God’s best gifts, and ought to be faithfully guarded."

When this work went to press, in May, 1910, Secretary Ballinger was giving hearings on the question of revoking the permit to San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1901 1909. The Struggle with Political Corruption.

See (in this Volume) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: SAN FRANCISCO.

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1902. The Chinese Highbinder Associations. Report of the Industrial Commission on their Criminal and Dangerous Character.

"Investigations made under the directions of the Industrial Commission reveal the dangerous importance to be attached to the existence of the so-called associations of ‘highbinders’ among the Chinese population of San Francisco. It is variously estimated that of the total number of Chinese in that city, amounting to 25,000 or 30,000, there are about 1,000 members of the highbinder associations who represent the worst class of criminals. Many of them have been compelled to flee from their native country on account of crimes committed there. They are organized under the semblance of benefit societies, but for the purpose of blackmail and violation of the immigration laws. They impose fines arbitrarily upon the hard-working and prosperous Chinese, and enforce their decrees through criminal violence and even assassination. They nullify the judgment of American courts through their own secret tribunals and their paid assassins; they make a business of bringing to the United States slave girls and coolie laborers, and through their system of intimidation it is difficult, and often impossible, to secure witnesses who will testify to the truth. It is generally believed by those who have given attention to this matter, that if the country could be rid of this criminal class of Chinese, and the highbinders societies be permanently suppressed, one of the greatest factors in the commission of fraud in the administration of the Chinese exclusion laws would be eliminated. An eminent authority asserts that fully 75 per cent of all the frauds committed at the present time against the exclusion law can be traced directly to the highbinder associations. So perfect is the organization of these societies, and so thorough their reign of terrorism, that the efforts of the authorities to suppress them have never been successful. The only thing which they fear above all others, holding it in greater dread than our laws, our courts, and jails, is deportation to China. The only decisive remedy in that case is legislation through Congress, which should render aliens who are members of such societies, or any society having for its purpose the commission of crime or the violation of our laws, liable to deportation. What is true of the highbinders of San Francisco is probably true also of certain anarchistic societies which are recruited from Europe."

_Final Report (1902) of the Industrial Commission, page 1009._

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1906. The Earthquake Shock of April 18, 1906. The Geological Explanation. Stupendous Destruction by Fire following the Earth Tremor. Conditions produced by the Fire. Relief Measures.

"On the morning of April 18, 1906, the coastal region of Middle California was shaken by an earthquake of unusual severity. The time of the shock and its duration varied slightly in different localities, depending upon their position with reference to the seat of the disturbance in the earth’s crust; but in general the time of the occurrence may be stated to be 5h 12m A. M., Pacific standard time, or the time of the meridian of longitude 120° west of Greenwich; and the sensible duration of the shock was about one minute.

"The shock was violent in the region about the Bay of San Francisco, and with few exceptions inspired all who felt it with alarm and consternation. In the cities many people were injured or killed, and in some cases persons became mentally deranged, as a result of the disasters which immediately ensued from the commotion of the earth. The manifestations of the earthquake were numerous and varied. … Springs were affected either temporarily or permanently, some being diminished, others increased in flow. Landslides were caused on steep slopes, and on the bottom lands of the streams the soft alluvium was in many places caused to crack and to lurch, producing often very considerable deformations of the surface. This deformation of the soil was an important cause of damage and wreckage of buildings situated in such tracts. Railway tracks were buckled and broken. In timbered areas in the zone of maximum disturbance many large trees were thrown to the ground and in some cases they were snapped off above the ground.

"The most disastrous of the effects of the earthquake were the breaking out of fires and, at the same time, the destruction of the pipe systems which supplied the water necessary to combat them. Such fires caused the destruction of a large portion of San Francisco, as all the world knows; and they also intensified the calamity due to the earthquake at Santa Rosa and Fort Bragg. The degree of intensity with which the earthquake made itself felt by these various manifestations diminished with the distance from the seat of disturbance, and at the more remote points near the limits of its sensibility it was perceived only by a feeble vibration of buildings during a brief period.

{587}

"The area over which the shock was perceptible to the senses extends from Coos Bay, Oregon, on the north, to Los Angeles on the south, a distance of about 730 miles; and easterly as far as Winnemucca, Nevada, a distance of about 300 miles from the coast. The territory thus affected has an extent, inland from the coast, of probably 175,000 square miles. If we assume that (he sea-bottom to the west of the coast was similarly affected, which is very probably true, the total area which was caused to vibrate to such an extent as to be perceptible to the senses was 372,700 square miles. Beyond the limits at which the vibrations were sufficiently sharp to appeal to the senses, earth waves were propagated entirely around the globe and were recorded instrumentally at all the more important seismological stations in civilized countries.

"Various manifestations of the earthquake above cited, including the cracking and deformation of the soil and incoherent surface formations, were the results of the earth jar, or commotion of the earth’s crust. The cause of the earthquake, as will be more fully set forth in the body of this report, was the sudden rupture of the earth's crust along a line or lines extending from the vicinity of Point Delgada to a point in San Benito County near San Juan; a distance in a nearly straight course, of about 270 miles. For a distance of 190 miles from Point Arena to San Juan, the fissure formed by this rupture is known to be practically continuous. Beyond Point Arena it passes out to sea, so that its continuity with the similar crack near Point Delgada is open to doubt; and the latter may possibly be an independent, tho associated, rupture parallel to the main one south of Point Arena. It is most probable, however, that there is but one continuous rupture. The course of the fissure for the 190 miles thru which it has been followed is nearly straight, with a bearing of from North 30° to 40° West, but with a slight general curvature, the concavity being toward the. northeast, and minor local curvatures. The fissure for the extent indicated follows the old line of seismic disturbance which extends thru California from Humboldt County to San Benito County, and thence southerly obliquely across the Coast Ranges thru the Tejon Pass and the Cajon Pass into the Colorado Desert."

_Report of the California State Earthquake Investigation Commission, Volume 1, pages 1-2._

SAN FRANCISCO: The Great Conflagration.

General Frederick Funston, commanding the United States troops at San Francisco, lost no time in ordering them out for service in the emergency, and his report gives many interesting particulars of the struggle with outbreaking and spreading fires, in which they took an heroic part.

"By 9 A. M.," he wrote, "the various fires were merging into one great conflagration, and were approaching the Palace Hotel, Grand Hotel, Call Building, Emporium, and other large buildings from the south. … By the morning of the 19th the fire had destroyed the main portion of the wholesale and retail section of the city, and was actively burning on a line from about the corner of Montgomery avenue and Montgomery street southwest on an irregular line to Van Ness avenue at Golden Gate avenue. … The progress of the fire was very slow. It averaged not more than one block in two hours. … By the night of the 19th about 250,000 people or more must have been encamped or sleeping out in the open in the various military reservations, parks, and open spaces of the city.

"On the night of the 19th, when the fire reached Van Ness avenue, Colonel Charles Morris, Artillery Corps, in command of the troops in that portion of the city, authorized Captain Le Vert Coleman to destroy a number of buildings far enough ahead of the fire to make a clearing along Broadway, Franklin and Gough streets, which space the fire was unable to bridge, and in this manner was stopped after it had crossed Van Ness avenue and the fire department seemed powerless. It is my opinion that if it had not been for the work done at this place the entire Western Addition of the city would have been destroyed.

"By the morning of the 20th the Western Addition, as that part of the city lying west of Van Ness avenue is called, was considered safe, except from the danger arising from a very threatening conflagration working along the slopes of Russian Hill toward that part of Van Ness avenue lying north of Broadway. All day of the 20th an heroic fight was made by the soldiers, sailors, firemen, and citizens to stop this fire, which had a frontage of about half a mile, and was working its way slowly against the wind. A number of buildings were destroyed here by high explosives, and back firing was resorted to. The fight, at this place was greatly aided by water pumped from the bay at Fort Mason. …

"By the most tremendous exertions the flames were prevented from crossing Van Ness avenue between that port (Fort Mason) and the point where they had once crossed and been fought out. By the morning of the 21st the Western Addition was considered safe, and the advancing flames south from the Mission district had been stayed; but a rising wind caused the fire to turn northeastward from Russian Hill and destroy a portion of the city along the bay shore that had hitherto been spared."

Of the work of dynamiting that was done, mainly by the soldiers, Major General A. W. Greeley, in a special report, says: "The authority for demolitions was in every case derived from the Mayor or his representatives. During all of the 18th and until the afternoon of the 19th the city authorities withheld their permission to blow up any buildings, except those in immediate contact with others already ablaze. Consequently, although we were able to check the fire at certain points, it outflanked us time and again, and all our work had to be begun over in front of the fire. … By [afternoon of April 19th] the Mayor gave permission to take more drastic measures to stop the fire."

SAN FRANCISCO: After the Fire.

Of conditions after the fire General Greeley gives a vivid description, partly as follows:

"On April 18 this was a city of 500,000 inhabitants, the commercial emporium of the Pacific coast, a great industrial and manufacturing center, adorned with magnificent buildings, equipped with extensive local transportation, provided with the most sanitary appliances, and having an abundant water supply. On April 21 these triumphs of human effort, this center of civilization, had become a scene of indescribable desolation, more than 200,000 residents having fled from the burnt district alone, leaving several hundred dead under its smoldering ashes. …

{588}

"The burnt area covered 3,400 acres, as against 2,100 in Chicago and 50 in Boston. … Even buildings spared by the fire were damaged as to chimneys, so that all food of the entire city was cooked over camp fires in the open streets.

"Two hundred and twenty-five thousand people were not only homeless, losing homes and all personal property, but also were deprived of their means of present sustenance and future livelihood. Food, water, shelter, clothing, medicines, and sewerage were all lacking. Failing even for drinking purposes, water had to be brought long distances. Every large bakery was destroyed or interrupted. While milk and country produce were plentiful in the suburbs, local transportation was entirely interrupted so that even people of great wealth could obtain food only by charity or public relief."

SAN FRANCISCO: Loss of Life and Property.

General Greeley "gives the loss of life in San Francisco, including some who subsequently died from injuries received, as 304 known and 194 unknown. In addition, 415 persons were seriously injured. Estimates of the value of property destroyed made up from the reports of settlements by the insurance companies are given as follows in Best’s Special Report on San Francisco Losses and Settlement, published in New York, February 25, 1907:

‘The total loss to insurance institutions throughout the world was from $220,000,000 to $225,000,000. It is probable that the sound value of the property represented by this loss was nearly or quite $100,000,000 greater than the last named figure, so that this conflagration takes rank as the largest in history in point of values destroyed. The loss fell on 243 insurance institutions, plus those foreign companies (twenty or more in number) which have made no report to us.’"

SAN FRANCISCO: Maintenance of Order.

"After the arrival of state troops ordered into service by the governor of California, five separate organizations were maintaining order in San Francisco—the municipal police, the national guard of California, the United States navy, citizens’ committees, and the United States army. Under this multiplied control it was inevitable that some clashes of authority should occur, and that citizens should at times feel hampered by excess of regulation. ‘It bears testimony,’ says General Greeley, ‘to the judgment and forbearance of the personnel enforcing order and to the sensible, law-abiding qualities of the people of San Francisco, that during such prolonged and desperate condition of affairs there should have been but nine deaths by violence. All killed were men, and four of the cases have been the subject of investigation under the civil law.’

SAN FRANCISCO: Relief Measures.

"Invaluable service of relief was rendered by the railway companies, the Southern Pacific, under the personal direction of President E. T. Harriman, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, giving free transportation over their lines from April 18th to the 26th, and affording every possible facility for the forwarding of relief supplies. The ferries and suburban lines did the same.

"Food, clothing and tents furnished by Pacific coast cities began to pour in, followed quickly by similar supplies from more distant points and by the War Department of the United States under special appropriation promptly made by Congress. The proper handling and distribution of these vast quantities of material and the control of the refugee camps that filled the public parks devolved upon the military authorities. Relief service was promptly systematized by the army officers, ably assisted after the opening week by Dr. Edward T. Devine, special representative of the National Red Cross. After July 2 the army was withdrawn from the refugee camps and the relief work passed under the control of the Red Cross and citizens’ organizations. Mr. J. D. Phelan of San Francisco, chairman of the Finance Committee of the Relief and Red Cross Funds, thus commends the services of the army in its management of the relief operations: ‘As citizens we feel that the army in time of peace has demonstrated its efficiency and usefulness as it has in our days of trouble signalized its splendid qualities on the field of battle.’

SAN FRANCISCO: Behavior of the People.

"General A. W. Greeley in his special report thus characterizes the behavior of the people of San Francisco.

‘It is safe to say that nearly 200,000 persons were brought to a state of complete destitution, beyond the clothing they wore or carried in their arms. The majority of the community was reduced from conditions of comfort to dependence upon public charity, yet in all my experiences I have never seen a woman in tears, nor heard a man whining over his losses. Besides this spirit of cheerful courage, they exhibited qualities of resourcefulness and self-respect which must command the admiration of the world. Within two months the bread line, which at first exceeded 300,000, was reduced to a comparative handful—less than 5 per cent. of the original number.’"

_Frederick H. Clark, Head of History Department, Lowell High School._

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1906. Segregation of Oriental Children in Public Schools. Resentment of Japanese.

See (in this Volume) RACE PROBLEMS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1904-1909.

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1906 (April-October). During and after the Suppression of Saloons.

See (in this Volume) ALCOHOL PROBLEM: CASUAL OCCURRENCES.

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1906-1909. The Rebuilding of the Shattered and Burned City. Improvements in the Reconstruction.

"The great fire of April, 1906, practically obliterated the business section of San Francisco. Vast heaps of brick and stone and iron beams, twisted and bent, filled the area where the great hotels, banks and mercantile establishments, wholesale and retail, had stood. The opportunity to correct original errors and to make improvements in the ground plan of this portion of the city was at once recognized. People said to one another: ‘ London, Chicago, and Baltimore have bitterly regretted, since their great fires, that they did not improve their streets. Are we to fail to take advantage of their mistakes?’ A Citizens’ Committee on Reconstruction was appointed; many valuable suggestions were brought together; and an expert engineer was directed to study the plans and make practical estimates of the cost of the more important improvements. A set of most commendable changes was thus brought to the point of authoritative adoption. These changes included, particularly, the widening of streets needed for main thoroughfares, extension of a few main streets so as to facilitate the distribution of traffic, the extension of shipping facilities along the water front, and improving the thoroughfares leading thereto. The opportunity of making these improvements while the whole area was destitute of buildings was, of course, never likely to recur.

{589}

"At this point the whole matter came to a standstill. It was the misfortune of San Francisco at this critical moment to be under a municipal administration, wholly incompetent and corrupt. Private enterprise was strained to the utmost in the effort to recover from the great losses, and from the want of governmental initiative, all projects of municipal improvement failed for the time. Under a reformed city-government after 1907, a great deal of municipal work was undertaken which will be indicated below.

"Rebuilding of private structures is a wonderful record of courage, energy and resourcefulness. The first stage was the rushing up of temporary wooden structures,—any sort of a building that would afford shelter and permit the resumption of business. For the most part the lumber yards of San Francisco were untouched by the fire, and thus the city had a considerable stock of material for immediate operations. Van Ness Avenue and other former residence streets were soon lined with one-story wooden buildings over which appeared the well-known names of down-town firms.

"The second stage in reconstruction was the removal of the ruins left by earthquake and fire. The business section of the former city was constructed mainly of brick. Whether from ignorance or prejudice the former building laws of San Francisco did not permit the use of concrete except for floors and foundations. Only a few of the more recently constructed buildings were of steel. Thus the first great problem was presented by the standing brick walls.

"For a few days the use of dynamite for the overthrow of standing walls was permitted, and in this way much additional damage was done to buildings not wholly ruined by the earthquake and fire. Subsequently it was found to be far more systematic and advantageous as well as safer to pull down the standing walls by means of wire cables and stationary engines. Pulling down old walls became for a time a trade in itself.

"Thousands of men found employment in cleaning the old bricks and stacking them up for use in rebuilding. For the removal of the vast quantities of debris,—twisted pipe and beams, broken brick and crumbled plaster, temporary railways were constructed over the level down-town district, and elaborate plans were made for a wholesale business by steam transportation. There was trouble over loading facilities, however, and the greater quantity was carried away by two horse dump-wagons, the material being used for filling in low lands along the water front and elsewhere. All California felt the demand for horses and wagons that this great work created.

"Immediately after the fire the work of revising the building laws was taken up. Fortunately this task received the intelligent guidance of a citizens’ committee composed of local builders, architects and engineers. The building regulations were rescued from their contradictions and confusion, and a clear, systematic ordinance was secured. The most notable forward step was the authorization of reinforced concrete buildings.

"Architects and engineers interested in the problems of reconstruction organized a ‘Structural Association’ as a clearing-house for improved building methods. The utmost pains were taken to study the effects of the earthquake and the conflagration in order to secure every possible advantage from the lessons inculcated. The results of this study may be summarized as follows.

"Steel frame buildings (Class A) were perfectly able to resist the effects of earthquake shock of the severity of the disturbance of 1906, and when properly protected, to endure the test of conflagration as well. Concrete, both plain and reinforced, rose rapidly in favor as structural material. Opinion as to the continued use of brick in construction was divided, but on account of the need of brick in the cheaper buildings, there was no tendency toward its falling into disuse. Wired glass, that is, plate glass in which a mesh of fine wire netting is embedded has been brought into favor, the idea being that when this glass is subjected to great heat it may crack, but will not fall.

"Along with the improved methods of construction, the rebuilding of office and business structures afforded an opportunity of modernizing them. Merchants went so far as to form a ‘Down-Town Association’ which held weekly meetings for the purpose of studying the problems of rehabilitation and of taking advantage of every suggestion for improvement. The new buildings have been perfected in lighting and sanitation and in exterior finish and interior arrangements have been brought up to the standard of the world’s best types. Thus the business district of the new city has been made immeasurably superior in durability, cleanliness and appearance, to what it was before the fire.

"The amount of reconstruction that has been done is shown in the following table taken from the San Francisco _Chronicle_ of April 18, 1909, which summarizes the work done in three years. The table was compiled from the municipal records.

"Private building operations, April 18, 1906 to April 18, 1909:

Number. Cost.

Class A 82 $19,391,982

Class B 109 8,042,831

Class C 1,369 42,416,072

Frame 12,352 50,962,813

Alterations 6,334 9,528,310

Total $130,344,008

"Class A buildings having steel frames; stone, brick or concrete facing, fire-proof floors. Completely fire-proof.

"Class B buildings of reinforced concrete, brick or stone, with steel beams entering into the main walls, fire-proof.

"Class C brick, stone or concrete buildings with floors and floor-framework of wood.

"As the actual cost usually exceeds the estimate that goes into the public record by about 15 per cent. it would be proper to estimate the cost of all this construction at $150,000,000. Of this amount it is estimated that less than $10,000,000 has been furnished from outside of San Francisco,—local capital having proven itself sufficient for this vast work. Within this same period the public service corporations have expended nearly $20,000,000 in reconstruction,—the greatest work being the practical rebuilding of the street-car lines. For municipal reconstruction the city has repaved nearly all of the business streets and has voted bonds for $18,200,000. From the funds thus provided permanent improvements of great importance are now (August, 1909) in progress.

{590}

"The election authorizing the sale of bonds was held on May 11, 1908. The purposes for which these bonds were issued are thus announced by the Public Utilities Committee of the Board of Supervisors:

"‘Fire Protection Bonds, $5,200,000, for the installation of an extensive high pressure water system which will give superior fire protection to the greater part of the thickly built portion of the city, and designed to be the most serviceable of its kind in the world. With this installed it will be almost impossible for a conflagration to ever again visit the city.

"‘Sewer Bonds, $4,000,000, for the construction of a complete sewer system which will discharge the sewage in a manner that will perfectly safeguard the health of the city.

"‘School Bonds, $5,000,000, for the construction of school-houses to the number of more than thirty, replacing those destroyed by fire in April, 1906, and providing sites and additional structures in districts now inadequately supplied.

"‘Hospital Bonds, $2,000,000, for the construction of modern hospitals.

"‘Hall of Justice Bonds, $1,000,000, for the construction of buildings for the police and other departments of the city government.

"‘Garbage System Bonds, $1,000,000, for the construction of modern works for the disposal of the city’s waste in a sanitary manner.

"‘With these improvements the City of San Francisco will be equipped with public works that will insure it a prominent place in the cities of the world in respect to all things that go to make stability and give permanence to the community as a great trade and industrial center.’ The rapid recovery of San Francisco from the losses of the great fire is further shown by the following comparison of values from the Assessors Reports:

Value of Taxable Property.

1905. 1906. 1908.

Real Estate $304,136,185 $237,082,752 $258,642,215 Buildings 97,830,165 50,250,480 90,996,500 Personal Property 122,264,596 88,805,510 103,912,469 Total $524,230,946 $376,138,742 $453,551,184

_Frederick H. Clark, Head of History Department, Lowell High School._

SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1908 (July). Visit of the Battleship Fleet.

See (in this Volume) WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: NAVAL.

SANITARY UNDERTAKINGS.

See (in this Volume) PUBLIC HEALTH.

SANTOS-DUMONT, A.

See (in this Volume) SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: AERONAUTICS.

SARRIEN-CLEMENCEAU MINISTRY.

See (in this Volume) FRANCE: A. D. 1906.

SARTO, Giuseppe, Cardinal: Elected Pope.

See (in this Volume) PAPACY: A. D. 1903 (JULY-AUGUST).

SASKATCHEWAN: Organized as a Province of the Dominion of Canada.

See (in this Volume) CANADA: A. D. 1905.

SAXONY: A. D. 1906. Political Reform.

See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: GERMANY: A. D. 1906.

SCANDINAVIAN-AMERICAN SOLIDARITY.

See (in this Volume) EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL INTERCHANGES.

SCHMITZ, EUGENE E.

See (in this Volume) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: SAN FRANCISCO.

SCHOOL CHILDREN, UNDERFED.

See (in this Volume) POVERTY, PROBLEMS OF.

SCHOOL PEACE LEAGUE, The American.

See (in this Volume) WAR, THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1908.

SCHOOLS.

See (in this Volume) EDUCATION.

SCHOUVALOFF, COUNT, ASSASSINATION OF.

See (in this Volume) RUSSIA: A. D. 1905 (FEBRUARY-NOVEMBER).

SCHREINER, W. P.: Opposition to Disfranchisement of Colored Natives in South Africa.

See (in this Volume) SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1908-1909.

----------SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: Start--------

SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: Aeronautics: The Development of the Aeroplane and the Dirigible Balloon.

To be lifted from the earth by an inflated sack of gas lighter than air, and be drifted with it by the winds, was an interesting experience for a few adventurous people, after the Mongolfiers, in 1783, had found it could be done; but the practical advantages from it were slight, so long as the voyager of the air had no slightest control of his journeying. The possibility of such control only came within the range of inventors’ dreams when motor enginery had been carried far towards the promise of much power with little weight. The promise was half a century behind its fulfilment, however, when Henri Giffard, the notable French engineer, is said to have constructed a balloon which lacked nothing but the adequately light and vigorous motor in order to be as [much a] dirigible as any of the present day. But the needed motor began to take form, and success in the propulsion of balloons on steered courses, with some independence of the winds, began to be realized, in the experiments of Count Zeppelin, in Germany, and of M. Santos-Dumont in France, beginning about 1898.

Before that date, however, invention had been started on bolder lines, seeking independence of the clumsy gas-bag, and striving to mount the air as the bird does, by pushing against it the inclined planes of his wings. Otto Lilienthal, in Germany, began experiments to that end in 1893. He had no motor; but starting from a height, and "making judicious use of the movement of the wind," he accomplished gliding flights of about 1200 feet, and the machines he constructed were suggestive of ideas to the experimenters who followed him. He was killed by a fall in 1896. Many were then working at the problem of aerial flight without the lifting force of light gases. {591} Some studied it scientifically and some attacked it in the rough manner of sheer empiricism. Of the former, in the United States, were Octave Chanute, the engineer, and Professor Samuel P. Langley, the astronomer and physicist of the Smithsonian Institution; in England there was Sir Hiram Maxim. These gentlemen arrived at no practical success in their own experimenting, but they furnished good guidance to the work of their more fortunate successors. A little later the scientific students of the problem were joined by the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. And then came the two workers who advanced from empiricism to science in their undertaking, and who won the first great successes by a happy combination of the two.

The brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright have told, in an article contributed to _The Century Magazine_, how they were stirred to serious interest in the aviation problem in 1896 and began to read what Langley, Chanute, Mouillard and others had written on it. Entering, purely as a sport, on experiments in gliding flight, on Lilienthal’s lines, they became fascinated by the pursuit. From the first they appear to have chosen what is known as the biplane structure for their machines, the invention of which they credit to a previous inventor, Wenham, whose design of it had been improved by Stringfellow and Chanute. To this construction, of two planes, one above the other, for supporting surfaces, they have steadfastly adhered.

At the outset of their experimenting the Wrights found a difficulty in the balancing of "flyers" which previous workers did not seem to have treated seriously enough, and they settled themselves to the conquest of it at once. This and other problems soon carried them from empirical testing into scientific studies, which occupied several years. They found that the accepted measurements of wind pressure, on given plane surfaces exposed at different angles, were unreliable, and they applied themselves to the making and tabulating of measurements of their own. It was not until this work had given them "accurate data for making calculations, and a system of balance effective in winds as well as in calms," as well as the necessary data for designing an effective screw propeller, that they felt themselves prepared "to build a successful power-flyer."

So far, these thorough-going workers at the problems of aviation had been experimenting with a machine designed, as they said, "to be flown as a kite, with a man on board," or without the man, "operating the levers through cords from the ground." Their active experimenting began in October, 1900, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1901 they made the acquaintance of Mr. Chanute, and he spent some weeks with them, observing and encouraging their work. In September and October, they say, "nearly one thousand gliding flights were made, several of which covered distances of over 600 feet. Some, made against a wind of thirty-six miles an hour, gave proof of the effectiveness of the devices for control." Late in 1903 they had reached the point of testing a power-machine, and sailed into the air with it for the first time on the 17th of December in the presence of five lookers-on. "The first flight," they tell us, "lasted only twelve seconds: a flight very modest compared with that of birds; but it was, nevertheless, the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in free flight, had sailed forward on a level course, without reduction of speed, and had finally landed without being wrecked. The second and third flights were a little longer, and the fourth lasted fifty-nine seconds, covering a distance of 852 feet over the ground against a twenty-mile wind."

In the spring of 1904 the experimenting of the Wright Brothers was transferred from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to a prairie not far from their home, at Dayton, Ohio. There they overcame final difficulties in the maintaining of equilibrium when turning their machine in circles of flight; and then, at the end of September, 1905, they suspended experiments for more than two years, which they spent in business negotiations and in the construction of new machines. Their experimenting was not resumed until May, 1908 (again at Kitty Hawk). At this time it was directed to the testing of the ability of their machine to meet the requirements of a contract with the United States Government to furnish a flyer capable of carrying two men and sufficient fuel supplies for a flight of 25 miles, with a speed of forty miles an hour.

Meantime, during the two years of suspended experimenting by the Wrights, other workers in Europe and America had been approaching their successes, so far as to be competitors for the important prizes now offered very plainly for winning in the aviation field. M. Santos-Dumont, turning his attention from dirigible balloons to aeroplanes, had made, at Paris, the first public flight on that side of the ocean; and though he covered no more than 220 yards, it was a long stride in practical success. Henry Farman, Louis Bleriot, M. Delagrange, in France, Glenn H. Curtiss and A. M. Herring, in the United States, were making ready to dispute honors with the Dayton aviators, of whose actual achievements the public knew little, as yet.

On all sides there was readiness for surprising and astonishing the public in 1908. Farman, at Paris, in March, exceeded a flight of two miles; Delagrange, at Milan, in June, covered ten miles, and more; Farman, in July, raised his record to eleven miles, and Delagrange carried his to fifteen and a half in September. The Wrights had made flights that ranged from eleven to twenty-four miles in the fall of 1905; and now, in their renewed trials of 1908, these distances were more than doubled. Wilbur Wright went abroad, to exhibit their machine in France and elsewhere, while Orville, in September, submitted it to official tests at Fort Myer, near Washington. There, on different days in that month, rounding circuits of the parade ground, he made time records of continuous flight that ran from 56 to 74 minutes, travelling estimated distances that stretched in one instance over fifty-one and a third miles. These trials at Fort Myer were interrupted sadly by an accident, from the breaking of a propeller-blade, which caused the machine to drop to the ground while in flight. Lieutenant T. E. Selfridge, U. S. A., who rode with Mr. Wright at the time, was killed, and Mr. Wright suffered a broken leg.

{592}

Wilbur Wright, meantime, was entering on great triumphs in France. At Le Mans, on the 21st of September, he traversed 68 miles in a continuous flight of a little more than an hour and a half. This achievement was far surpassed by him on the 18th of December, when 95 miles were travelled in an hour and fifty-four minutes, and again, on the 31st of December, when the stay in the air was prolonged to two hours, nine minutes and some seconds, and the distance covered was 76½ miles.

These records of the Wrights for time of continuous flight were beaten by a number of European competitors, as will be shown below. Otherwise, the records of 1909 show no very marked advance beyond those of 1908; but the year had excitements in aviation, connected especially with attempted flights over the English Channel. Hubert Latham, a recent French practitioner in aviation, was the first to venture this leap through the air from France to England. His machine was described as being an Antoinette monoplane, designed by M. Levevasseur. He launched it from Calais in the early morning of July 19, and traversed about six miles of the passage when his motor failed and he fell to the water, unhurt, and was rescued by an attendant steamer. Six days after Latham's failure, on the 25th of July, Louis Bleriot, using another monoplane machine, made the crossing with brilliant success, flying from Calais to Dover, 21 miles, in 23 minutes, and winning the prize of £1000 which the Daily Mail, of London, had offered for the performance of the feat. M. Latham then repeated his attempt and was unfortunate again, his motor giving out after it had carried him within two miles of the Dover shore.

Orville Wright, at this time, July 27, was demonstrating at Fort Myer the ability of his aeroplane to carry two persons in a well-sustained flight. With Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm, of the Signal Corps, as a passenger, and having President Taft among his spectators, he made a flight of an hour, twelve minutes and forty seconds, accomplishing upwards of fifty miles at an average speed of forty miles an hour. A day or two afterwards he carried Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulois over the ten mile course from Fort Myer to Alexandria at a speed of more than forty-two miles an hour.

In the last week of August the first race meeting for heavier-than air flying machines occurred at Rheims, France, and a dozen aviators from France, England and America competed for large prizes in long distance and duration flights. A number of new records was made, and new names acquired note. Louis Paulhan kept the air for two hours and forty-three minutes with a Voisin biplane, covering 83 miles. Hubert Latham surpassed this in distance and speed, making 96 miles in two hours and eighteen minutes; and this again was beaten by Henri Farman, who travelled 118 miles, remaining in the air over three hours. M. Latham used the Antoinette monoplane, and M. Farman a biplane of his own design. Mr. Glenn H. Curtiss won the prize for speed, doing 18 miles in twenty-five minutes and forty-five seconds.

Orville Wright had now gone abroad and his brother had returned to America. In August and September the former gave exhibitions at Berlin, breaking some of his own records, carrying a passenger in his machine for an hour and thirty-five minutes, on the 18th of September, and rising, on the 1st of October, to an unexampled height, believed to have exceeded 1000 feet. This, however, was greatly exceeded in January, 1910, by Hubert Latham, at Mourmelon, France, who rose to 3280 feet, and by Louis Paulhan, at Los Angeles, California, 4165 ft. On the 3d of October the Crown Prince of Germany was his companion in a short flight.

Meantime Wilbur Wright, in America, had endeavored to supply one of the spectacles arranged for the Hudson-Fulton celebration at New York; but the intended programme of aviation was spoiled by forbidding winds. He did, however, make one astonishing flight, on the 4th of October, from Governor’s Island, up the Hudson to Grant’s tomb, and, on his return, passing over the British battle-ships then lying in the river. The distance travelled was about twenty miles and the time of the journey thirty-three minutes and a half. Unfortunately it was unexpected, and was seen by a small part only of the millions who had been watching several days for a flight. On the next day Mr. Wright made the statement that no more public exhibitions would be given by his brother or himself. "Hereafter," he said, "we shall devote all our efforts to the commercial exploitation of our machines, and fly only as a matter of experiment, to test the value of whatever changes we decide to make in the construction."

Turning now back to the development of the motor-propelled and dirigible balloon, we find that field of aeronautics very nearly monopolized at the beginning of the twentieth century, so far as the public saw it, by the Brazilian millionaire, A. Santos-Dumont, who spent his time and his wealth at Paris in ballooning. The French Government had been authorizing army experiments in dirigible ballooning since 1884, and a motor-driven air-ship of that description, designed by Captain Renard, and named "La France," had made a trip from Chalais-Meudon to Paris and return in September, 1885, being the first balloon ever navigated back to its starting point; but not much in the same line to excite public interest appears to have been done in the next sixteen years. Then, on the 19th of October, 1901, a lively stir of interest everywhere was excited by the exploit of Santos-Dumont, in navigating his balloon from St. Cloud to and around the Eiffel Tower and back to the starting point. He had done the same privately three months before, at a very early morning hour of July 12, on which occasion he broke his rudder at an early stage of the journey, descended in the Trocadero Gardens, made repairs and then went on doing the whole round in an hour and six minutes, including the stop.

Expectation, however, that controllable navigation of the air, in average conditions of wind, might really be an approaching and not very distant fact, cannot be said to have had much awakening in the world until the performances, in 1908, of Count Zeppelin’s huge airship, 440 feet in length, called Zeppelin No. IV., which enclosed numerous envelopes of gas in a rigid aluminum frame. On the 2d of July, 1908, he drove this great balloon from Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, to Luzerne, 248 miles, within twelve hours. Starting again from Friedrichshafen, August 4, intending a 500 mile trip, he made a lauding at Oppenheim, 260 miles distant, returned thence to Stuttgart, and finally to Echterdingen, where a hurricane storm wrecked his airship completely, causing its motor to explode. Public sympathy with the veteran aeronaut and public faith in his work were so strong that a fund was raised promptly by subscription for the building of another of his costly balloons.

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With this he was ready for new voyages in the spring of 1909, and started from Friedrichshafen on the 30th of May, carrying two engineers and a crew of seven, travelled 456 miles to Bitterfield, where, without landing, he turned back; but landed later near Goeppingen, receiving a slight injury to the balloon in landing by contact with a tree. The whole distance travelled was about 850 miles, in 37 hours. Late in August the Count accomplished a long desired voyage from his headquarters on Lake Constance to Berlin; but was forced to land at Nuremberg for repairs, and again at Bitterfield, disappointing the great crowds which waited at Berlin, till late at night on the 29th, with the Emperor, to welcome his arrival. When he came, the next day, however, the public enthusiasm showed no cooling. "He was received," says a despatch from Berlin, "with all the honours which the Court and capital could pay him, and his triumphal entry into the city this afternoon as the honoured guest of the Emperor, was not merely a dramatic success but a national demonstration." And now, from this glancing survey of achievement thus far in the navigation of the air, with and without help from the levitation of gas, what expectations of further achievement can we reasonably indulge? Here is one answer, from a notably scientific mind,—that of the late Simon Newcomb, the astronomer:

"It would seem that, at the present time, the public is more hopeful of the flying-machine than of the dirigible balloon. The idea that because such a machine has at last been constructed which will carry a man through the air, there is no limit to progress, is a natural one. But to judge of possibilities, we must advert to the distinction already pointed out between obstacles interposed by nature, which cannot be surmounted by any invention, and those which we may hope to overcome by possible mechanical appliances. The mathematical relations between speed, sustaining power, strength of material, efficiency of engine, and other elements of success are fixed and determinate, and cannot be changed except by new scientific discoveries, quite outside the power of the inventor to make. That the gravitation of matter can in any way be annulled seems out of the question. Should any combination of metals or other substances be discovered of many times the stiffness and tensile strength of the fabrics and alloys with which we are now acquainted, then might one element of success be at our command. But, with the metals that we actually have, there is a limit to the weight of an engine with a given driving power, and it may be fairly assumed that this limit is nearly reached in the motors now in use. … Owing to the levity of the air, the supporting surface must have a wide area. We cannot set any exact limit to the necessary spread of sail, because the higher the speed the less the spread required. But, as we increase the speed, we also increase the resistance, and therefore we must have a more powerful and necessarily heavier motor. … Bearing in mind that no limit is to be set to the possible discovery of new laws of nature or new combinations of the chemical elements, it must be understood that I disclaim any positive prediction that men will never fly from place to place at will. The claim I make is that they will not do this until some epoch-making discovery is made of which we have now no conception, and that mere invention has nearly reached its limit. It is very natural to reason that men have done hundreds of things which formerly seemed impossible, and therefore they may fly. But for every one thing seemingly impossible that they have succeeded in doing there are ten which they would like to do but which no one believes that they can do. No one thinks of controlling wind or weather, of making the sun shine when we please, of building a railroad across the Atlantic, of changing the ocean level to suit the purposes of commerce, of building bridges of greater extent than engineers tell us is possible with the strength of the material that we have at command, or of erecting buildings so high that they would be crushed by their own weight. Why are we hopeless as to all these achievements, and yet hopeful that the flying-machine may be the vehicle of the future, which shall transport us more rapidly than a railroad train now does? It is simply because we all have so clear a mental view of the obstacles in the way of reaching such ends as those just enumerated that we do not waste time in attempting to surmount them, and we are hopeful of the flying-machine only because we do not clearly see that the difficulties are of the same nature as those we should encounter in erecting a structure which would not be subject to the laws of mechanics.

"I have said nothing of the possible success of the flying-machine for the purposes of military reconnaissance or any other operations requiring the observer to command a wide view of all that is on the landscape. This is a technical subject which, how great soever may be its national importance, does not affect our daily life."

_Simon Newcomb, The Prospect of Aerial Navigation (North American Review, March, 1908)._

Here is another, from Thomas A. Edison, the inventor:

"In ten years flying machines will be used to carry mails. They will carry passengers, too, and they will go at a speed of 100 miles an hour. There is no doubt of this."

These are the words of Mr. Edison in an interview published in the _New York Times_, August 1st, 1909. But while he is sure that the "flying machine has got to come," he is not at all sure that it will come along the lines pursued in the present experiments. "The flying problem now consists of 75 per cent. machine and 25 per cent, man," he said, "while to be commercially successful the flying machine must leave little to the peculiar skill of the operator and must be able to go out in all weathers." He continued:

"If I were to build a flying machine I would plan to sustain it by means of a number of rapidly revolving inclined planes, the effect of which would be to raise the machine by compressing the air between the planes and the earth. Such a machine would rise from the ground as a bird does. Then I would drive the machine ahead with a propeller."

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Mr. Edison believes it is a question of power. "Is it not thinkable that a method will be discovered of wirelessly transmitting electrical energy from the earth to the motor of the machine in mid-air?" He asked and answered his own question, saying:—"There is no reason to disbelieve that it can and will be done." He added, however, that there was great room for improvement in explosive engines. "Any day we are likely to read that somebody has made picric acid or something else work—done some little thing that will transform the flying machine from a toy into a commercial success." And when it is perfected, he says, the flying machine may end war by becoming a means of attack that cannot be resisted.

SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: Agriculture: Dry Farming in the West.

For twenty consecutive years, in scores of places from the James River to the Arkansas, Mr. H. W. Campbell, of Lincoln, Nebraska, the pioneer "dry farmer" of Arid America, "has been uniformly successful in producing without irrigation the same results that are expected with irrigation, with comparatively little additional expense, but not without a great deal more watchfulness and labor. What Western people have become accustomed to calling the ‘Campbell system of dry farming’ consists simply in the exercise of intelligence, care, patience, and tireless industry. It differs in details from the ‘good-farming’ methods practised and taught at the various agricultural experiment stations; but the underlying principles are the same.

"These principles are two in number. First to keep the surface of the land under cultivation loose and finely pulverized. This forms a soil mulch that permits the rains and melting snows to percolate readily through to the compacted soil beneath; and that at the same time prevents the moisture stored in the ground from being brought to the surface by capillary attraction, to be absorbed by the hot, dry air. The second is to keep the sub-soil finely pulverized and firmly compacted, increasing its water-holding capacity and its capillary attraction and placing it in the best possible physical condition for the germination of seed and the development of plant roots. The ‘dry farmer’ thus stores water not in dams and artificial reservoirs, but right where it can be reached by the roots of growing crops.

"Through these principles, a rainfall of twelve inches can be conserved so effectively that it will produce better results than are usually expected of an annual precipitation of twenty-four inches in humid America. The discoverer and demonstrator of these principles deserves to rank among the greatest of national benefactors."

_John L. Cowan, Dry Farming the Hope of the West (Century Magazine, July, 1906)._

"It is difficult for one who is used to the commonplace methods of tilling the soil which obtained a quarter of a century ago to believe that a new method has been discovered which will triple and quadruple the results of the old system in those parts of the country in which the rainfall is somewhat restricted. The imagination cannot immediately grasp the statement that dry farming methods would lift the Kansas wheat crop from 75,000,000 to 216,000,000 bushels. Yet this is a fact.

"If the mind of the eastern farmer can grasp this tremendous fact he will be ready to credit the statement that there are millions of acres in the western country which were until a few years ago regarded as utterly worthless, but which are now cheap at $25 an acre. To the wheat industry alone of the western country the proved fact of the value of dry farming means more than any other development fact in the agricultural history of this country. What is true of increased yields in dry farming is equally true, and in a larger degree, perhaps, with respect to irrigation. For years the government has been warning the country that the increased production of wheat is not keeping pace with the increased consumption.

"Should this continue it would mean that ere long the United States would be compelled to draw a part of its wheat supply from the Canadian Northwest. It would also mean that the United States would lose the export wheat trade with the Orient, which is bound to increase rapidly. It is not generally known that the 400,000,000 people in China are being educated to the use of wheat and other cereals than rice, and that, therefore, the demand for wheat will continue to increase. …

"One of the facts which Mr. Harriman realized far in advance of any one else and which was an important factor in his transportation plans was the possibilities of dry farming as well as irrigation. Before he began to talk much about these subjects he set about to prepare his system to reap the first and most substantial part of the results of dry farming and of irrigation. Other railroad builders are now beginning to realize that Mr. Harriman is prepared to transport the products of the West, of the Northwest and the Southwest between almost any parts of this country, as well as through many ports from San Francisco to the South Atlantic ports, including one or two on the western coast of Old Mexico. Although he and former President Roosevelt were at war in many respects, it was Mr. Harriman that gave the former President much of the information he acquired regarding the boundless resources of the West. By doing so he caused the government to work even more energetically than it had been working for the conservation of the nation’s resources."

_Chicago Record-Herald, July 11, 1909._

SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: Anniversary Celebrations.

The eightieth birthday of Dr. Rudolph Virchow, founder of cellular pathology, was celebrated on the 13th of October, 1901, by a remarkable assemblage of distinguished physicians and surgeons from many countries, who made pilgrimages to Berlin to do him honor.

The centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the semi-centennial year of the publication, in 1859, of his work on "The Origin of Species," were commemorated in every part of the world; but the great collective demonstration of honor to Darwin’s memory, organized by the University of Cambridge, his _alma mater_, was a tribute of surpassing impressiveness. As described by the London _Times_, on the opening day of this extraordinary celebration, June 22, 1909, "the whole learned world, from Chile to Japan," was joined in the homage paid. "Some of those who will be present," said _The Times_, "were his comrades, most of them have been in some measure his working contemporaries. {595} Two hundred and thirty-five universities, academies, and learned bodies at home and abroad have nominated delegates to represent them; and of these 107 are situated in foreign countries and British dominions outside the United Kingdom. Thirty of the most famous institutions in Germany, thirty in the United States, fourteen in France, ten in Austria-Hungary, eight in Italy, as many in Sweden, seven in Russia, and lesser numbers in seven other foreign countries have honoured the occasion by naming some of their most distinguished members to take part in it. The distant seats of learning in the younger British countries have responded with not less cordiality; seven in Canada, seven in Australia, five in New Zealand, and the same number in South Africa have appointed delegates; India and Ceylon are represented by eight. Within the United Kingdom 68 universities and societies are lending their support; and, in addition to the appointed delegates, there are some 200 invited guests, who include men eminent in every walk of life. … No such academic tribute as the present festival has ever been paid to the memory of an individual within so short a time of his own life."

The commemorative exercises of the occasion were continued through three days.

SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: Astronomy: The Astronomy of the Invisible.

"The discovery of double and multiple stars from the effects of the gravitational attraction on their luminous components is known as the ‘Astronomy of the Invisible.’ It was first suggested by the illustrious Bessel about 1840. … The greatest extension of the Astronomy of the Invisible has been made by Professor Campbell, of the Lick Observatory. In the course of the regular work on the motion of stars in the line of sight, carried out with a powerful spectroscopic apparatus presented to the Observatory by Honorable D. O. Mills, of New York, he has investigated during the past five years the motion of several hundred of the brighter stars of the northern heavens. … With such unprecedented telescopic power and a degree of precision in the spectrograph which can be safely depended upon, it is not unnatural that some new and striking phenomena should be disclosed. These consisted of a large number of spectra with double lines, which undergo a periodic displacement, showing that the stars in question were in reality double, made up of two components, moving in opposite directions,—one approaching, the other receding from the Earth. There were thus disclosed spectroscopic binary stars, systems with components so close together that they could not be separated in any existing telescope, yet known to be real binary stars by the periodic behaviour of the lines of the spectra so faithfully registered on different days. …

"Campbell’s work at the Lick Observatory derives increased importance from its systematic character, which enables us to draw some general conclusions of the greatest interest. He has thus far made known the results of his study of the spectra of two hundred and eighty of the brighter stars of the northern heavens. Out of this number he finds thirty-one spectroscopic binaries, or one ninth of the whole number of objects studied. … It seems certain that a more thorough study will materially increase the number of spectroscopic binaries; and Professor Campbell thinks one sixth, or even one fifth, of all the objects studied may eventually prove to be binary or multiple systems. Such an extraordinary generalization opens up to our contemplation an entirely new view of the sidereal universe. …

"If we accept the conclusion that with our finest telescopes, in the best climates, on the average one star in twenty-five is visually double, it will follow from Campbell’s work on some three hundred stars that five times that number are spectroscopically double. Thus, although over a million stars have been examined visually, and some five thousand interesting systems disclosed by powerful telescopes, the concluded ratio would give us, at last analysis, four million visual systems among the hundred million objects assumed to compose the stellar universe. On the other hand, the large ratio of spectroscopic binaries to the total number of stars examined by Campbell would lead us to conclude that in the celestial spaces there exist in reality no less than twenty million spectroscopic binary stars! Could anything be more impressive than the view thus opened to the human mind? …

"It may indeed well be that the dark and unseen portion of the universe is even greater than that which is indicated by our most powerful telescopes. Half a century ago Bessel remarked:

‘There is no reason to suppose luminosity an essential quality of cosmical bodies. The visibility of countless stars is no argument against the invisibility of countless others.’"

_T. J. J. See, Recent Progress in Astronomy (Atlantic Monthly, January, 1902)._

SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: Biological: Mendel’s Law of Variation in Species.

"Gregor Mendel was Abbot of Brünn in Moravia when Darwin was at work on the Origin. He does not appear to have had any unusual interest in the problem of evolution; indeed, his main concern was with an essentially pre-Darwinian question,—the nature of plant hybrids. With this problem as an avocation from his serious clerical duties, the abbot busied himself in the garden of his cloister; a leisurely, clear-headed, middle-aged churchman in whom a great scientist was spoiled. For eight years he experimented with varieties of the common pea, and in 1865 communicated to the Society of Naturalists in Brünn the substance of the discovery which is hereafter to be known as Mendel’s law, ‘the greatest discovery in biology since Darwin.’ Unfortunately, at that time, the Brünn Society, like the rest of the world, had other things on its mind. … Somehow or other, Mendel’s discovery escaped attention until four years ago [1900], when De Vries reached it independently. Two years later Mr. Bateson, who had been among the first to realize its significance, made a translation of the two original papers. … Since then, Mendel’s Law has been found to hold for a considerable number of cases, both among animals and plants, but most unaccountably not to work for a few others; so that, as yet, no one knows how nearly universal it may prove to be, nor how it is to be reconciled with the older Law of Ancestral Heredity of Galton. …

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"One illustration will serve to make clear the practical workings of Mendel’s principle. If a single rough-coated guinea-pig of either sex be introduced into a colony of normal smooth-coated individuals, all its offspring of the first generation will be rough-coated like itself. In the next generation, if one of the parents is smooth and the other rough, the young will be half of one sort and half of the other, but if both parents are rough, three quarters will take the ‘dominant’ rough coat. In the next, and all subsequent generations, one half of these rough-coated individuals which had one smooth-coated grandparent, and one-third of those which had two smooth-coated grandparents, which were not mated, will drop out the 'recessive' smooth-coatedness, and become, in all respects, like their original rough-coated progenitor, even to having only rough-coated young, no matter what their mates may have. Thus Mendel’s law, though by no means simple, is very precise. The essential part of his great discovery is that in each generation of plants or animals of mixed ancestry, a definite proportion lose one half of their mingled heritage, and revert, in equal numbers, to one or other of the pure types."

_E. T. Brewster, Some Recent Aspects of Darwinism (Atlantic Monthly, April, 1904)._

SCIENCE AND INVENTION, RECENT: The Carnegie Institution of Washington. Promotion of Original Research.

The following information relative to the founding, the plan and the work of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is derived from the, authorities of the Institution:

The Institution was founded by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, January 28, 1902, when he gave to a board of trustees $10,000,000 in registered bonds, yielding 5 per cent annual interest. To this endowment fund an addition of $2,000,000 was made by Mr. Carnegie on December 10, 1907. The Institution was originally organized under the laws of the District of Columbia as the Carnegie Institution. Subsequently, however, it was incorporated by an act of Congress, approved April 28, 1904, under the title of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The articles of incorporation declare, in general, "that the objects of the corporation shall be to encourage in the broadest and most liberal manner investigation, research, and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind." By the act of incorporation the Institution was placed under the control of a board of twenty-four trustees, all of whom had been members of the original board referred to above.

The President of the Institution is Dr. Robert S. Woodward, formerly of the faculty of Columbia University. The Chairman of its Board of Trustees is Dr. John S. Billings, Director of the New York Public Library. The Board includes such notable members as William H. Taft, Elihu Root, Seth Low, Andrew D. White, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Henry L. Higginson and President Henry S. Pritchett.

Since the object of the Institution is the promotion of investigation "in the broadest and most liberal manner," many projects in widely different fields of inquiry have been considered, or are under consideration, by the Executive Committee. These projects are chiefly of three classes, namely:

First, large projects or departments of work whose execution requires continuous research by a corps of investigators during a series of years. Ten such departments have been established by the Institution. …

Secondly, minor projects which may be carried out by individual experts in a limited period of time. Many grants in aid of this class of projects have been made.

Thirdly, research associates and assistants. Under this head aid has been given to a considerable number of investigators possessing exceptional abilities and opportunities for research work.

An annual appropriation is made for the purpose of publishing the results of investigations made under the auspices of the Institution, and for certain works which would not otherwise be readily printed. Its publications are not distributed gratis, except to a limited list of the greater libraries of the world. Other copies are offered for sale at prices only sufficient to cover the cost of publication and transportation to purchasers. Lists are furnished on application.

Since its organization in 1902, about one thousand individuals have been engaged in investigations under the auspices of the Institution and there are at present nearly five hundred so engaged. Ten independent departments of research, each with its staff of investigators and assistants, have been established. In addition to these larger departments of work, organized by the Institution itself, numerous special researches, carried on by individuals, have been subsidized. Seven laboratories and observatories, for as many different fields of investigation and in widely separated localities, have been constructed and equipped. A building in Washington, D. C., for administrative offices and for storage of records and publications, is now approaching completion. A specially designed ship for ocean magnetic work has just been completed and started on her first voyage.

Mr. George Iles, in his "Inventors at Work," describes and characterizes the aims and guiding principles of the Institution as follows: "In its grants for widely varied purposes the policy of the Institution is clear: only those inquiries are aided which give promise of fruit, and in every case the grantee requires to be a man of proved ability, care being taken not to duplicate work already in hand elsewhere, or to essay tasks of an industrial character. Experience has already shown it better to confine research to a few large projects rather than to aid many minor investigations with grants comparatively small.

"One branch of work reminds us of Mr. Carnegie’s method in establishing public libraries—the supplementing of local public spirit by a generous gift. In many cases a university or an observatory launches an inquiry which soon broadens out beyond the range of its own small funds; then it is that aid from the Carnegie Institution brings to port a ship that otherwise might remain at sea indefinitely. Let a few typical examples of this kind be mentioned;—Dudley Observatory, Albany, New York, and Lick Observatory, California, have received aid toward their observations and computations; Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin, has been helped in measuring the distance of fixed stars. Among other investigations promoted have been the study of the rare earths and the heat-treatment of some high-carbon steels. The adjacent field of engineering has not been neglected: funds have been granted for experiments on ship resistance and propulsion, for determining the value of high pressure steam in locomotive service. {597} In geology an investigation of fundamental principles has been furthered, as also the specific problem of the flow of rocks under severe pressure. In his remarkable inquiry into the economy of foods, Professor W. O. Atwater, of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, has had liberal help. In the allied science of preventive medicine a grant is advancing the study of snake venoms and defeating inoculations.

"At a later day the Institution may possibly adopt plans recommended by eminent advisers of the rank of Professor Simon Newcomb, who points out that analysis and generalization are to-day much more needed than further observations of a routine kind. He has also had a weighty word to say regarding the desirability of bringing together for mutual attrition and discussion men in contiguous fields of work, who take the bearings of a great problem from different, points of view."

_George Iles, Inventors at Work