A GREAT RUSSIAN CONTRACTOR.

Colonist, Volume XVIII, Issue 2016, 6 January 1876, Page 4

A GREAT RUSSIAN CONTRACTOR.

(From a Vienna Paper),

Dr. Strousberg-, who was arrested at St. Petersburg,afterfailing for nearly £1,000,000, is of Jewish origin his full name beng Baruch Hirsch Strousberg. Born in 1823 in humble circumstances at Neidenburg, in East Prussia, he went to London in 1835, after the death of his father. Here he was received by his uncles, who were commission agents, and was then baptised a member of the Church of England. Gifted with great intelligence and euergy, he more or less educated himself, and entered journalism. In 1848 he went to America, where he gave lessons in German, but finally realised some money by buying a cargo of damaged goods, and selling them at a heavy profit. With this capital he returnpd to London in 1858, and fouude'1 sev al newspapers, but six years afterw&ids he wee, to Berlin, where he was for seven years the agent of an English insurance company. In 1864, however, Strousberg began to think of improving his fortunes, and having made acquaintances at the British Embassy, by this means came to know some English capitalists with whom he contracted for the construction of the Tilsit find Insterburg Railway. Within six years Strousberg was unking a dozen lines—among others those of Kuomama. Pie had over 100,000 workmen in his pay, and had launched out into other vast enterprises. At Hanover he established a gigantic machine factory ; at Dortmund and Nenstadt he had smelting works and iron factories; at Antwerp and Berlin he built entirely new quarters; in Prussia he bought ten estates; in Poland an entire country; iv Bohemia be paid £800,000 for the splendid domain of.Zbirow, where he established railway carriage works which employed 5000 workmen. Meantime he built a palace for himself in the Wilhclmstrasse at Berlin, which in decoration, luxury, and accommodation surpassed that of the Emperor himself. In it were to be found works by the first German and French artists—JJelacroix, Meissonnier, Gerome, and others. Nor was his charity on a less splendid scale. In winter he caused 10,000 portions1 of soup to be given daily to the poor, in addition to £20,000 worth of wood. When the famine broke out in East Prussia he sent whole trains laden with corn and potatoes to his suffering fellow-countrymen Of course, such a man had hia own organs in the Press, and was chosen to represent the nation. Yet he took from the Moscow Bank, which he founded, 4,308,000 roubles, and it is hinted that his future is riot altogether unprovided for. No greater collapse than that, of " Strpusbierg;' ha* probably occurred in the financial; history of the country, save, perhaps^ that of Law.