DIRE OUTLOOK IN RUSSIA.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 9 October 1901, Page 3

DIRE OUTLOOK IN RUSSIA.

The Shadow of Famine

(Per s. s. Ventura at Auckland.)

San Francisco, 12th September.

Russia is on the eve of another famine Nearly, one-third of the provinces of European Russia have been declared officially to have produced an insufficient crop of cereals. While others are put down as sufficient, and some as “under the average,” only two provinces out of more than seventy have really good harvests, and among the “insufficient” are the best corn-growing districts of the Empire in Europe. Experience has taught that what official figures estimate as

“sufficient,” is a great dearth. Small as are the wants of Russian peasants, “insufficient” means utter starvation. The famine-stricken area exceeds half a million square miles, und is about the same as that whicn suffered in the great famine of 1891. The population is over forty-three millions.

,Tho causes arc the intense heat, the absence of rain, when most needed, and torrents and hail, which destroyed crops, as well as the pests engendered by the heat. The report have not been so black since the days of the great famine. Russia will not be able to make things right by drawing upon the resources of Central Siberia, because crops are not good there, and the absence of roads other than railroads will make distributionto the stricken muzhiks impossible. of iq§ds is said to be the secret of Russian starvation within a short distance, comparatively, of Europe’s food supplies.