PROGRESS OF SIBERIA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11635, 12 August 1905, Page 4

PROGRESS OF SIBERIA.

Not many years ago Siberia was only known to the rest of the world as the home of Russia's exile system. Then it achieved still wider fame as the land of the greatest military railway in the world, and latterly it has become known from Vancouver to the Bluff, from Buenos Ay'res to~ Melbourne, as a probable fierce competitor., in the London Hutter market. At ons time it imported Anarchists, now it exports tofts of butter.- The wholo story of Siberian development is expressed in the change. And yet it is doubtful whether other countries realise the immense progress that has been going on in the. last ten or fifteen years in that vast territory, nor the gigantic plains. A Mr Turner, the managing director of a big firm of provision merchants in Manchester, who -is at present visiting Australia", • spent some months in_ Siberia not long ago in the interest's pi his business, and paid special attention to the butter industry. He estimates the agricultural zone of Western Siberia at . 8000 square miles, and says that the Trans-Siberian Railway "traverses a district' which has a climate similar to that of Canada, only more extreme, and with the best black soil in the world."' For sixteen years the Government has been pushing the settlement of Siberia. Emigrants, we are told, are taken 2500 miles for about thirty shillings, they are fed free, , or at. very little cost, at their destination, where each receives about thirty-five acres of hind, they are furnished with wood sufficient to build houses, and with loans of money which is repayable in ten years.. For three years they pay no taxes, and only half taxes for the next three. Russian, Danish, and German dairy experts teach, them the mysteries of butter-making, though the Russian peasant's objection to cleanliness must offer considerable difficulties to the success of the expert's teachings." 'Up to lasb year people were pouring into this great dairying land, and in eight years' tha population, of a town 2000- miles east .of Moscow had grown from 800 to 40,000, Six years ago the importation of Siberian butter into England was some 8000 tons, two years ago it had risen to 35,000 tons, and though it fell off last year owing to the war, the conclusion of peace wjll Sea a resumption of the development of Siberia that cannot faiKto havel an* effect upon her competitors. • . _ - „. ..• r ...