RAPID PROGRESS OF RUSSIA

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIX, Issue 13066, 4 March 1903, Page 8

RAPID PROGRESS OF RUSSIA

Fears are sometimes expressed (says a London paper), lest the gigantic trusts, or combinations to which the American financial magnates have recently accustomed us may end by usurping the functions of governments. Certainly, the enormous scale on which the- trusts operate, ;mcl the magnitude of their schemes, are calculated to fascinate the! imagination of the ordinary run of mankind. But Russia has apparently undertaken to show that it is still possible for such effete institutions as governments to work' on a. grand scale. The building of the great trans-continental line across Siberia was in itself an undertaking of some magnitude; but the building of railways may almost be called, in, most countries, a normal function of government. Hitherto, however, it has not been regarded as part of the business of government to build an entirely new town on a perfectly barren strip of land, and on territory which

is, nominally at least, foreign soil. Yet, this is what the Russian Government has done. At the first sale of building plots in the town of Dalny, the prices realised were about four times the reserve price. This town of Danly is, indeed, on© of the wonders of the world. Little more than'two years ago, it had no existence, and to-day it is still incomplete; but, already there is the mighty skeleton of a city which some competent observers believe is destined to become one of the great centres of the world's commerce, for Dalny has been selected by the Russian/Government as the commercial terminus of the Manchurian Railway on the Pacific Coast. The barren hillsides that slope down to the waters of Ta-lion-wan Bay have been transformed as if by magic. An immense city has been founded in skeleton. Docks and wharves have been built; roads, avenues, and boulevards have been planned and kid out; aa immense railway station and numerous public buildings have been brought into being before ever the city had a single inhabitant, apart from its official population. The inhabitants have still to come, bub their places are prepared for them. Residential and business quarters, ■ covering many square miles, have been defined in plots, and it is a. sale of the first small selection of these plots which is reported to have resulted much .more favourably' than the Government had ventured to anticipate. It is interesting to note that the two largest purchasers were British firms,' and the growth of this strange city will be followed with the most intense interest throughout the civilised world.