Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/628

Rh into zones: Moscow covers particularly textiles, sugar, and beer; in the Baltic iron, textiles, and ship building flourish; Poland produces textiles and tanned goods; in southern Russia the coal and iron industries are predominant; the Ural zone is given over to minerals, without coal; Baku is well known the world over for its oil productions.

These industries had a tremendous development, but overproduction and wild speculation induced equally startling collapses and bankruptcies. Foreign employers "all have a high opinion of the skill and working powers of the mujik (peasant), although in other respects — sobriety, morality, education, and honesty — they regard him as far inferior to the artisan of western Europe."

Of the workmen Villari says:

"They are underpaid, ill-fed, worse housed, and are not cheap. The peasant has great industrial possibilities, is docile, quick to learn, but is without initiative, careless, and needs constant supervision."

The artisan, however, "has a new feeling of human personality and dignity," is inspired with new ideas, and driven to new movements.

Confirming Wallace's opinion, Villari states that the Eastern Church is an inert body, almost devoid of vitality. It contributes little to the moral and intellectual progress of the people, but merely keeps them enslaved and ignorant. The average priest, his one thought money exaction, is grasping, avaricious, and callous to the moral condition of his flock. While the average Russian is devoted to his faith and most carefully observes its practices, yet "the liberal movement will render the absolute domination of the church a thing of the past."

The elevation of the people is declared essential, as "until the conditions of the mujik are radically altered and improved, Russia can never hope to be really peaceful or prosperous."

Altogether, the volumes of Wallace and Villari are not only of current interest and value, but will continue so until the methods of Russian administration are materially improved and the rights of man are more generally recognized and respected.

HE new Erie Canal, to which New York is committed and which will cost more than $100, coo, 000, is by far the greatest work ever undertaken by any state. The canal is overshad- owed in the public mind by the Panama Canal on account of the international character and the interesting complications that have attended the inauguration of that work by the United States, but in commercial importance the Erie is in many ways the equal of the Panama Canal. The canal is described in the report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1904, just published, by Col. Thomas W. Symons,U. S. A., who was so largely instrumental in preparing the plans. On the Panama it is hoped some time to reach a tonnage of 10,000,000 ; on the Erie all works, structures, water supply, etc., are predicted on a tonnage of 10,000,000, and provisions are made for accommodating at slight additional expense a tonnage greatly in excess of this. On the upper Great Lakes there is a water-borne commerce of very nearly 90,000.000 tons per year. The Erie Canal will furnish the cheapest route for connecting this vast lake com- merce with the seaboard, and its wide-reaching influence can hardly be conceived or appreciated except by those who have given years of study to the problem.

In magnitude the work that New York has undertaken exceeds the work at Panama. More earth and rock must be excavated, more masonry used, and