Part 18

Our first objective point in the famine district was the Province of Nijni Novgorod. But we must go by Moscow, where by the courtesy of Count Bobrinskoy a telegram was received, stating that his brother would pass through the city to the famine district, and his company could be made available, if desired. Such an opportunity was not to be lost, and our course is changed to the south, first by rail to Bogorodizk, thence by droschky to Michailovskoi, to the house of Shestoparoff, manager of the beet sugar mills of the Bobrinskoys. Here the home taste and appearance of everything inside make one feel as if he were in his own New England home, although not a word of English is heard. After breakfast the next morning we go to the distributing station, which is supported by the Bobrinskoy family in one of the sugar mill buildings. Here we find the doctor, the baker, the soupmaker, several of the first ladies of the place, great cauldrons of excellent soup, tea, milk, Nestle's food, rye and corn bread--the tea and milk are for the sick and for the children--and the doctor, who is familiar with every family, directs who shall receive and what. The bread and the soup are served on regular account, the houses and families all having been visited and the condition of each carefully recorded. As soon as one is able in part to care for himself the bread is sold at a moderate price.

A number of villages are supplied from this bakery and kitchen, and this is but one of nine carried on by this family entirely at their own expense. In the afternoon we visit different villages, some twenty houses or more. We find two Red Cross nurses from Moscow, who are at work and have their home with the peasants. In four months one has lost but four cases; the other but two; and the average number of sick in the past four months by the doctor's report is three hundred. The peasants say they would rather do without the doctor than be without the nurses in the village.

The peasants' home consists of one or two square rooms, built of logs, stone, or mud bricks, with floor of earth, and furniture of boards. One quarter of the room is given up to the brick oven, which is so constructed that it serves not only for a stove, oven, cupboard, and bed in cold weather, but the chickens and small animals find protection from the cold underneath during the severe cold weather. Usually a large horizontal pipe of terra cotta passes overhead and out through a thatched roof of straw, which is often two feet thick. The fuel may be wood, straw, or dry dung; fuel is scarce. A deep cellar, well covered, outside, may hold potatoes, roots, etc. The cattle and other animals find shelter in a room adjoining the family. At Bogorodizk another royal family, in addition to work similar to the above named, supplied the peasants with raw material for spinning, weaving and making of native goods and garments both for themselves and for the market, which the countess found either at home or by sending them to the larger cities. Through letters of introduction we had the good fortune to find Count Tolstoi on his estate at Yasnia Polonia.

When the count was asked his opinion of the cause of the existing conditions, he said the government might not like to have him say that the peasants should have more land and own it themselves--that now they have only enough in the best seasons to give barely food for their support, and when a year of scarcity comes, they cannot help being destitute. When asked if there had been improvement in their conditions since the emancipation, he said if that meant in the way of property, financially, no, but mentally there had been progress and development.

One of the first questions Count Tolstoi asked was, "What do you think of most? I would excuse him for such a question; but he always liked to get into sympathy with the person he was talking with and to know how to understand him. What subjects occupied my mind most when going to sleep?" etc.

At night I slept in the library surrounded by English and American books and magazines.

When asked about the demoralizing effect of giving free help to the peasants, as said by many, he thought that an excuse of those who did not want to help. The peasant was never so unhappy as when out of work and had nothing to do. Even a day's idleness was tiresome to him, and he did not think that a people who had been worked to their full endurance for a generation were going to be demoralized by giving them soup when they were hungry.

Peasants were coming at all hours of the day to see the count. At dinner time two had been waiting several hours. The Count let the dinner go on, and stopped to read a long paper they had brought; read it through carefully; had a long talk with them; unfolded the paper again to look over passages more carefully; after further talk he read again, and told me after they were gone, for I remained with him, that they were having a law suit and had come to him for advice, and so far as he could judge, the peasants were in the right.

When I bade him good-bye he said, from what he had heard of Miss Barton, he felt that she must be a very near relation, and wished me to give her his love.

Starting again for Nijni Novgorod we meet at Moscow Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, the writer and lecturer, who accompanied us through the Volga and southern districts. Leaving Moscow in the evening by the fast express, we reached Nijni the next forenoon at ten. Here we were entertained by the governor. The city of Nijni Novgorod has a population of about sixty thousand ten months of the year; during the other two months its population is increased to six hundred thousand. This extra population from the twenty-seventh of July to about the fifteenth of August inhabit the "dead city" in which not a single family lives the rest of the year. Yet it contains one of the largest and finest buildings in Russia, and not a match nor a cigar can be lighted at any time under penalty of twenty-five rubles. The "dead city" is built at the junction of the Oka River with the Volga, so that it is yearly inundated to the ceiling of the first stories, when the spring rise of forty feet or more comes with the melting of the snow. Here, too, is located one of the largest churches of Nijni, and on the Volga side the Siberian wharves.

In the living city is the residence of the governor on a clay bluff four hundred and seventy feet above the river, with the business part at the foot of the bluff adjoining the river. Nijni being in direct line of free river transportation as well as railway connection between St. Petersburg, Siberia, China, and the Caspian districts, the Caucasus, the oil region of southern Russia, with its wine, grain and fruit districts, make this city a great commercial centre. And the pulse of famine or plenty is probably felt here as soon as in any part of the empire.

In the two months named, traders from nearly every European and Asiatic country gather here with every variety of goods and product that can be carried by rail, water, or caravan: grains, hides, leather, teas, metals, precious stones, fish, meats, cloths, silks, peasants' works and weavings; and the great sandbar in the river Oka of several hundred acres is covered with Siberian iron. Electricity furnishes light where needed, for it will be remembered that it is light enough in this latitude to read at midnight in summer time. Here are also royal quarters for the governor and State officials, whose social and executive residences are in the "dead city" during the entire time of the fair, in which time the governor is an absolute czar in power. To give briefly a Russian view of the famine and how it was felt in a single province and the Russian manner of dealing with it I give the following abridged account:

Nijni claims to have been the first provincial government of Russia to take active measures to relieve the sufferers by famine. The first news came to the governor from reports of dry weather in his province in May, 1891, for the crops of the three preceding years had been short, and at this time the peasants had begun to ask for bread, having already sold a part of their horses and tools; and only two of the eleven districts had sufficient bread for their people.

Without waiting to consult the general government, in order to save time, the governor took the responsibility upon himself of immediately purchasing one hundred and twenty-five thousand poods (a pud is about forty pounds), or twenty-two hundred tons of grain, and sent this in the early part of June to the districts most affected by the drouth. He used his influence to stop speculation in grain, Nijni being a great grain centre, and formed a commission from all the districts to carry out relief measures. It was after this that the Department of the Interior appropriated one million rubles ($550,000) to buy bread.

It has been a custom in Russia that when a loan is made to the _poor peasants_ that the _rich_ peasants of the community are held equally responsible for the payment; hence _they_ have fallen into the habit of claiming an equal apportionment whenever loans have been made for relief measures in times past. Thus the Zemstvo (the elective magistrates of the village) have the power in themselves to say that they had not ordered nor asked for the grain, and refuse to receive it for those really needing it. Hence the governor of Nijni ordered that only those receiving should be charged with the loan.

The whole loan here received was 6,350,000 rubles, all of which except 150,000 rubles had been distributed when we visited the district.

In the nine needy districts of Nijni Novgorod Province there were 587,000 persons needing assistance that were excluded from the government loan as being between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five--"therefore able-bodied and able to work." The Nijni governor followed his judgment rather than the instructions of the Minister of the Interior, and seeing that this amount was insufficient and that no provision had been made for cattle and horses, he tried to get permission to begin public works in order to furnish labor and pay to those needing it; but this was not secured until December, when 3,000,000 rubles were appropriated for roads, 420,000 rubles for town improvements, 40,000 for schools and churches. From eight to ten thousand men were given work in the woods at fifty kopeks, 27 cents, per day, and one ruble and fifty kopeks, about 77 cents, per team.

To secure a general interest of the people the governor made every public commission (boards of directors, trustees, etc.), take an active part in the relief work. He created commissions among the nobility to superintend relief work, combining the Red Cross, the churches and other individual organizations all into one committee, so that when the Crown Prince's committee was formed on the twenty-eighth of December 341,550 rubles had been received and distributed besides 52,020 poods, 2,080,800 pounds, of bread which had been given to those who had no right to the governmental loan.

By contributions three hundred and thirty-one kitchens were established in villages, giving meals for one-half to two kopeks per meal. Nijni, with a living population of sixty thousand, contributed one hundred and ninety thousand rubles. Places were established in Nijni where twenty kitchen meal tickets may be purchased for one ruble. The citizens buy these and give to such as they desire to help.

From Nijni we take steamer down the Volga, and through the kindness of Mr. Zeveke, owner of the American Steamboat Line, so called because American names are given to all of his twelve large steamboats, we are allowed time to visit each town on the Volga, as we pass down the river. At each place the grain has been received and being used. At Samara we find Mr. Bezant, one of our consignees, just recovering from the typhus which was contracted in his relief work. And we get direct reports from Count Tolstoi, Junior, whose work is in this province farther to the east, and Prince Dolgoruhow, another consignee in the district of Burulich; these have ten carloads of the "Tynehead's" corn, and are saving the lives of many. At this time the Province of Samara alone had lost five hundred thousand cattle, as many horses and 1,500,000 sheep from the famine.

At Volsk we saw many people around the church. The bells in a dozen different towers all ringing; from another church a large procession of a thousand people were coming, bearing on high poles crosses and banners and icons. They are joined by the people from the first church, with their crosses and banners which are not raised till the first procession is joined, and all march in their variegated red and yellow and bright colored dresses, with bare feet and uncovered heads in the broiling sun, miles away to the open fields to pray for rain, which has still been withheld from this section of Saratoff Province.

The town of Saratoff has a population of 125,000, contains many Germans, from having been one of the German colonies founded by Queen Catherine during her reign, to encourage agricultural industries. Here as in Volsk we found the people in the fields praying for rain, and in the evening it came. Here we met Mr. Golden, an Englishman, who has been the active agent in the Saratoff district, and Mr. Muhler, a German, who has been the active worker on the east side of the Volga in Samara Province. Both these gentlemen, together with a Catholic Bishop, say that the American help, both in material and money, came so timely that it saved thousands of lives that otherwise must have been lost. It came when they could get nothing from other sources, and their thanks to America are unbounded. The relief was "as if the Lord had ordered it." Of the "Tynehead's" cargo, Saratoff received fifty-three carloads and the Province of Samara one hundred and four cars.

There was a small quantity of the corn that got wet when put into the ship during a rain in New York, and had begun to heat when unloaded. This was sent to Saratoff with a suggestion that they use it for their cattle, but when we reached that place the peasants had washed the corn and dried it, and said it made very good bread.

As a typical incident and as an expression of the universal feeling throughout Russia:--when we reached the platform of the station at Saratoff to start westward, a Russian gentleman who could speak a little English, and another one and his wife who could not, came to the train, with an attendant bearing champagne and glasses, and made a speech of thanks, expressing the gratitude of the people of Russia to America for the heartfelt sympathy she had so beautifully expressed. The help she had brought to their people in a time of distress made every Russian feel to want to personally express his thanks. Wishing every success to its representatives, they drank to America and bon voyage.

To see some of the smaller consignments, on our way eastward from Saratoff we stopped at an inland station and went into the country some miles near Tambof, where two carloads of corn had been consigned. Here it was being ground in the wind-mills and made into the old-fashioned New England rye and Indian loaves and baked in great, brick ovens, just as we had found in other places.

Referring back to Riga. After the last car had been sealed and the way-bills sent, we were speaking of the harmony and unity that existed in all the different branches of this relief work, and it incidentally came out that the count and his family were carrying on an extensive system of relief among the peasants in the famine district, supplying some thirty villages with rye and corn bread, obtaining their corn from southern Russia, with soup, broth and tea for the sick and Nestle's food for the babies--the latter an experiment of his own. It was suggested that in such an extensive work as this he should have had some of the American corn, but he replied they could get on very well without it; that his family had taken that work upon themselves to do at the beginning, and would continue to do it until next August and did not need other help. I expressed a desire to see this work, which I later found was a fair sample of what is being so quietly done all over Russia that its extent is unknown until one comes upon it. And it was at Michailoviski that we had the pleasure of seeing some of this work.

Everywhere we found people of all classes giving their time to the work of relief to supplement the governmental help; and this does not mean simply directing, superintending, or planning work for others to execute, but I found men giving up their own business, the attention of their estates, to see personally to the detail as well as the general work. I found cultivated, intelligent, refined women making their homes in the huts of the peasants, where they could be nearer their work. I found countesses working in the huts of the typhus hospitals, or taking the sick into their own homes, giving up social enjoyments and personal comforts, their own plans, in order to make their work of relief more effective. If the official side of Russia is subject to criticism, as sometimes claimed, surely the quiet, personal work and self-sacrifice of its people in this calamity is an example for any Christian land.

Sitting at the hotel table Count George told how his conscience would protest against a good dinner after he had returned from his investigating tours in the famine district to learn the situation, as a member of the Grand Duke's Committee, for, "the ruble spent for wine and coffee would keep a peasant child or mother a whole month." But he says when he got back to St. Petersburg a few days away from the distressing scenes, his mind occupied with other business, it did not trouble him at all to eat a good full meal just as he had done before.

On another hand to show how suffering continues in any place from lack of competent oversight this incident will show.

When going over the ground to see how the relief work had been done for his committee, he came to a village that was in a very bad condition. Many sick and dying for want of food, he asked the Zemstov if a kitchen could not be established. The reply was no; there was no one to manage it. "But," he said, "you have a school here; the teacher can take charge of the kitchen." "No; he is not capable; he is too slow and of no account, and we intend to get rid of him as soon as we can get someone to take his place. There is not a person in the village that could conduct a kitchen." The count in his rounds came to the school house and found, as he had been told, that the school-master did look miserable enough in an old, worn and even ragged coat, and learned that he had not received his wages for some months; there was no money to pay him. His roll showed a list of sixty pupils; there were but fifteen present. When asked where the others were, he replied that it was so near the holiday time--only ten days--that he had let them go home. The count turned to one of the boys and asked if he had had anything to eat to-day, expecting him to say no; but he said yes; "he had a warm soup this morning." The same question to the second boy, with the same reply; and so on with all the fifteen. When asked where they got their soup, they said the master had given it to them, and had been doing so for some weeks.

The master stood in the corner with his face very red, looking very much ashamed. It was then learned that when the school-master found his pupils coming to school without food, he began to use the savings he had laid by, to feed them, until his purse would not allow him to continue with so large a number; and he had let all but the fifteen go, and he was feeding and teaching them from the savings of other years. The count said he could not pay him his wages due, but he furnished the village with the means for a soup kitchen, and the master was put in charge and conducted it in such a manner that no one thought of his being an incompetent manager.

The shipping of the cargo of corn in the "Tynehead" to the Baltic in a voyage of twenty-eight days and its distribution through Russia answers a number of questions that were raised when the proposition to send corn to Russia was contemplated. These questionings came from business men, shippers, boards of trade, the produce exchange and philanthropists, and by some it was stoutly asserted that corn could not bear ocean transportation that distance without spoiling.

And if it should pass without spoiling, it was affirmed they had no mills to grind it in Russia, that the peasant knew nothing about corn, that they could not change their habit of living, and therefore would be unable to make use of it, if received. One of the leading business men of the country went so far as to write that we might as well ship a cargo of pebbles as a cargo of unground corn. Hence there was a degree of satisfaction to see the entire cargo, with the exception of a small quantity referred to loaded in the rain, come out of the ship in as good condition as when it was put in the hold, and to find in our journey in the interior that the peasants even needed no suggestion about grinding it in their windmills, which were amply sufficient.

But when the little corn that had heated was sent to Samara with the suggestion that it be used to feed the cattle, with four additional days in the hot state in the cars, and this was still used by the peasants and called _good_, it removed any doubt that might be forced into one's mind that a starving peasant would die rather than eat a food that he was not accustomed to.

Referring back to St. Petersburg, after our list had been made up for the general distribution of the cargo, Mr. Hilton carefully went over it and said, from his personal knowledge of the people to whom the consignments were to be made, he would be willing to personally guarantee that 80 per cent of everything sent according to the list would be honestly and faithfully distributed, just as the donors wished, and he further believed that the remaining 20 per cent would be as faithfully handled.