Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/482

 two to sixteen times, it is evident that the above estimate of the cost of transporting one criminal to Siberia must be made considerably higher. But this serious item of expense does not, by any means, comprise all that it is necessary to debit to the exile system. The construction and repair of prisons demand enormous current expenditures, notwithstanding the unsatisfactory condition of such buildings; the maintenance of the large number of sick and infirm exiles who can no longer support themselves is a heavy burden upon the local population; and the work of exiled hard-labor convicts, as shown by long experience, does not begin to reimburse the Government for the expenditures that it makes on their account. If to all this be added the facts that the Government is now spending upon the exile system a comparatively insignificant part of the money that would be required to put it into a satisfactory condition; that the number of persons employed to guard and oversee the exiles is far smaller than it ought to be; that such employees receive only a trifling compensation for their services; that the exiles have no schools; that the asylums required by law are not built; and that the force of guards in Siberia is so small that almost everybody escapes from the prisons and the penal settlements who cares to do so—it will be seen that, upon the amount of money now appropriated for its maintenance, the exile system cannot become successful, either as a punitive, a protective, or a reformatory agency." Nevertheless, this wholly unsatisfactory and inadequate institution, according to the estimates of Lokhvítski, Foinítski, and Yádrintsef, costs the Government of Russia at least five million rúbles per annum, and the people of Siberia almost twice as much more. Yádrintsef is of opinion that the 40,000 exile vagrants who are constantly on the march in Siberia cost the peasants not less than 2,960,000 rúbles per annum, and that the cost per annum of the whole number of communal exiles and forced colonists that are unable or unwilling to