RUSSIAN OFFICIAL CORRUPTION.

Evening Post, Volume LXVII, Issue 147, 22 June 1904, Page 5

RUSSIAN OFFICIAL CORRUPTION.

TRADE CRIPPLED. LARGE ARMY OF~ UNEMPLOYED. , (Received June 22, 0.37 a.m.) LONDON,* 21st Juno. Gross instances of oHiciivl Rusbian corruption continue "to como to light. Artillery of the latest pattern lias been ni(?ltcd mid sold. The Ked Cross Socifcty's boxes of wpplios wore iilmj found to have been filled with bricks and stones. The Times says the war is seriously crippling 'Ruwiun trade. Hundreds of thousands Iwjs tons of traffic wtre carried on the railways during May computed with the same month last year. There ate 60,000 railway hands * nnd 350,000 factory hmidn idle, and the unemployed aie increasing nt the rate of 3000 daily. [Commercial ciicles remain depre^cd, in spite of (he optimism of the military element and the piebs (wrote the Moscow coiiYf>))ondMit. of the London Times under d.ite 2nd May). * The head of a commercial concern of high standing in one of the largest Russian trading centres hns just given expression to what I believe to bo the feeling of not a. faw of hie class in Russia. "I fail to see," he declared, "that this Mar is worth the ciuullo to Russia, Wo are- told that all will assuredly be over except Iho signing of the peace any time after September or October of this yenr. The manner in which military experts propose to bring all this about is not. quite clear. ViceAdmiral Skrvdloff, M-e are told, w ill work wonders with what remains of the brand new fleet which cost us so much. How he is to achieve more than Admiral Makaroff with less at his uisposal passes my comprehension. Men like inyseif, whose business is either already ruined or on the road to liquidation, ask whether Manchuria is worth it. all. There is not eveu the excuse that Manchuria is a potenfial South Africa." Tho gentleman in question has been for over thirty years director of one of the leading Kujwinn impoif and expoifc houses trading ■« ith liastorn A«in. He is now winding up his affairs, and his retirement from- the field of Russian commerce menus increased difficulty to iih least a do/.on minov trading houses and loss of employment to scores of oflicinls and men, many of whom have served him and his predecessors for periods of 30 and even I years.]