Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/483

Rh work, and that live upon the earnings of others, is 7,500,000 rubles, or almost $4,000,000.

Within the past five years great pressure has been brought to bear upon the Russian Government to induce it so to modify the exile system as to relieve the Siberian people of a part of their heavy burden. Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, the chief of the prison administration, has become convinced of the necessity for reform; General Ignátief and Baron Korf, both men of energy and ability, have been appointed governors-general in Eastern Siberia, and have insisted pertinaciously upon the abolition of criminal colonization; the liberal Siberian press, encouraged by the support of these high officials, has assailed the exile system with new boldness and vigor; and the Tsar's ministers have been forced, at last, to consider the expediency, not of abolishing the exile system altogether, but of so modifying it as to render it less burdensome to the inhabitants of a rich and promising colony. In giving the subject such consideration, the Government is not actuated primarily by humane motives — that is, by a desire to lessen the enormous amount of misery that the exile system causes; it merely wishes to put a stop to annoying complaints and protests, and to increase the productiveness and tax-paying capacity of Siberia. In approaching the question from this point of view, the Government sees that the most irritating and burdensome feature of the exile system is the colonization of common criminals in the Siberian towns and villages. It is this against which the Siberian people protest, and it is this which lessens the productive capacity of the colony. Other features of the system are more cruel, more unjust and disgraceful, but this is the one that makes most trouble, and which, therefore, must first have attention.

Just before I left St. Petersburg for the United States I