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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (July 12, 1903)
Prince Hilkof f , the Czar's Minister AMERICAN FERRYBOAT ON LAKE B 18 TO BE SUBSTITUTED. (Copyright, 1908, by Frank O. Carpenter.) i err viHWiTVn inn m I9n. SI clal Correspondence of The Bee.) I It wu thronirh n lpttpr from his excellency, Count Casslnl, the Russian ambasador at Washing ton, that I wan accorded an Interview by Prince HllkofT, the great Russian railroad builder and manuger. I'l l nee Hllkoff la no of the chief members of the czar's cabinet. He Is an actual privy councillor and In tlio minister of public works and railroads of this, the greatest cnipiro of the wor'.d. He has hold this position since 1X36, and It Is largely through him that the Russians have become the most advanced railroad constructors of the nations. Dur ing his administration almost 11,000 miles of railroads have been built, or considerably mora thnn one-third pt the railroad mile age of the lund of the czur. He has pushed the Transfllbcrlan road to completion, he has extended the lines In southern Asia and hss built thousands of miles In Euro pean Russian. No man In the world Is bet ter posted upon railroad mutters thah Prince Hllkoff. Ho has an accurate knowl edge of every road In Europe, he knows Asia better than many Americans know their own states and he carries a map of the world on his brain. Many have the Idea that Russia is ruled by an hereditary nobility; they think there la no chance here for a man without his father is rich. This Is a mistake. The or dinary citizen has almost as good oppor tunities here as in the United States, and the ablest men of the empire are self-made. Mr. Wtlte, the Bismarck of Russia, now secretary of the treasury and business man ager of the czar, began life as a railroad cleric rrlnce Hllkoff came of a good fam ily, but ho has risen from the ranks. He was well educated, and after graduation chose the railway as his life work. He had studied civil engineering, but he wanted practical knowledge, and therefore went to the United States and entered the employ f an American contractor, a Quaker, who was building roads in South America. The young prince started out by carrying a surveyor's chain, and continued as a civil engineer, laying out and superintending railway building fur this man. He was employed by him In Argontlne, and while there aided in the construction of the road Which now runs from Rosaiio to Cordova. Later on he accepted other similar positions and gradually rose until he became the bead of the vast system of railway com munications of this empire. It was his St. Petersburg palace that I met Prince Hllkoff. The appointment was fixed for 11 o'clock In the mtrnlng, and at that time I found his excellency at work in his Study. Ho laid aside his paper as I entered, shook my hand and addressed me In English. He speak Engltsn fluently and It was in that tongue that the Interwlew was conducted. As the prince talked I had some Chance to study him. He Is a straight, well-formed and rather heavily built man of fifty. He has a broad forehead, bright piercing eyes and hair and beard of frosted silver. He looks more like a practical busi ness American than one's ordinary idea of a Russian prince, and he impressed me with his force of character and common sense. The first subject that came up was the Transslberlan railroad, and In the course of the talk I asked his excellency if he thought it would be a commercial success, lie replied: "The road was built ns a military and State enterprise, and the emperor's Idea was that it would develop Siberia for our surplus population. It was believed that the Increase In values would eventually make the road pay, but the outlook now Is that It will be a very profitable undertak ing, and will eventually give good divi dends on the cost of construction. The traffic has grown beyond our wildest expectations. We are alrenay running ten trains each way per day, and we shall have to Increase this number to fifteen or sixteen Tery soon. The passenger traffic Is grow ing, and It will some time pay a Urge part n n AIKAL AN AMERICAN ICE BREAKER TRINCE HILKOFF. RUSSIAN of the expenses of the road. The freight traffic Is growing In the same ratio. As for the whole line It already pays Its operating expenses and about 1 per cent on the cap ital Invested. The tratno Is so heavy that the rails will not stand It. They are too light. We shall have to relay the whole road and replace them, l did not approve of these light rails, but I had no Idea of the possibilities of the line. We expected at first to run about three trains each way dally. The road was hardly completed before we had twice that many, and, as I hnve snld, we now have more than three times that number." "Olve me some idea of your freight, your excellenry," said I. "It Is far different from what we sup posed It would be," replied Prince Hllkoff. "We expected to carry grain, cattle, farm ing machinery, merchandise and military supplies, and so we do. But, In addition, we have a big business In dairy products. The grass of western Siberia is very rich. There are vast pastures and the cattle feeding Upon them produce the finest of milk and butter. Siberia is already one of the chief dairy countries of the world, and butter from there Is shipped direct to Lon don over the Transslberlan road and through Russia. We carry It to the Baltic and send it thence to England by fast steamers. It takes about three weeks to get it to the seaboard. It Is carried in re frigerator cars, some cooled by ice and some by chemicals. "We have already 1,000 cars devoted to this trade alone, and during the season we run two fast butter trains every day. We have refrigerators at the stations to store the butter. We are already shipping al most 1.500,000,000 pounds of butter a year and the business Is In its Infancy. It will steadily grow and In time Improved breeds of cattle will be Introduced. "Another feature of our traffic," con tinued Prince Hllkoff. "la the shipment of fruits to Siberia. There are people in Siberia who had never seen apples, grapes and oranges until the coming of the rail , . , , , . ,v, - . .-. ; .... ;-. s TRAIN CROS31NO YENISEI RIVER ON ICE REFORE BRIDGE WAS COSP PLETED MATERIAL IN BRIDGE CAME FROM AMERICA. 1 MINISTER OF RAILROADS. road. . These fruits were sold only In the larger cities. They had to be brought by the post or by steamers, and it was Im possible to carry perishable fruit. Oranges then , brought as much as 76 cents or 11 apiece. They are now sold at reasonable prices all along the railroad." "How about grain, your excellency, can you make a low enough freight rate to compete with ours In the markets of Eu rope T"' "I think we shall be able to do so," re plied the minister of railroads. "We are already shipping grain northward to Arch angel, and from there to different parts of Europe by sea. Our grain market of the future will be largely in the far east. There is an enormous demand for wheat and other cereals in China, and that trade will prob ably be developed." "How about the prospects of American trade In Siberia? Does it offer any field for our commercial invasion?" "Yes," replied Prince Hllkoff, "American goods are already sold In many parts of Siberia. This is especially so of farming tools. There Is a demand for reapers and mowers and there should be an opening for all sorts of goods supplied by the western states. I look for a great increase in the commerce between eastern Siberia and the Pacific slope. That part of your country is almost destitute of good coal. We have excellent coal In' Siberia, which we can ship you at a profit, and In return the ves sels can bring back American merchandise and machinery. American furniture Is also In demand and there Is no reason why all sorts of American goods should not be sold." "How about the coal areas of the trans Siberian railroad, your excellency?" "We are finding new coal fields every year," replied Prince HllkofT. "One of the great arguments against building the road was the probable lack of fuel. It was said that we should have to cut down the for ests to feed the engines. The prospects are that we shall have plenty of coal for all time from the beds along the line of the of Railroads road. The coal we are now using comes from deposits near the track. Some of it la excellent coking coal and near it are large deposits of Iron, so that we expect to have a manufacturing industry away out there in Siberia." I here naked some questions about the Improvements of the Transslberlan rail road and his excellency took me across the room and showed me a number of maps in Illustration of his talk. I can only give the gist of his conversation. The road when completed with Its Manchurlan branches will be 5,512 miles long and the route from ocean to ocean, that Is, from Havre to Vladivostock, will be 7.500 miles In length. At present It takes a little over two weeks to go from St. Petersburg to Port Arthur, and the time will eventually be cut down to ten days. General Miles made the trip from Peking to St. Peterbu.-g in eighteen days, and he told me that traveling was very comfortable all the way through. Within a short time we shall be able to go from London to Paris to Shanghai In six teen days Instead of In the thirty-five days required by railroad and sea via the Sues canal. The latter trip to Shanghai costs $50. The Transslberlan fare Is $160, mak ing a saving of $290, In addition to the twenty days. There is on doubt but that the most of the travel to the far east will bo by railroad In the very near future. I understand that the trains are good. The express, which goes once a week, has sleeping cars, dining cars, a library, a gym nasium and all the comrorts possible to railroad travel. The trains go at a good Average speed, and everything is done for the comfort of the passengers. At present the cars are ferried across Lake Baikal, but there Is talk of building a railroad along the banks ot the lake and connecting the two ends of the line. I asked Prince Hllkoff what he thought of this scheme. He replied: "I do not approve of it. As It is now we cross the lake on a steam ferry. The distance Is only twenty-four miles, whereas If we extend the road it will mean a 150 miles of new line and this will have little advantage over the lake as It will take longer to go by train than by the ferry. The great objection has been that the lake Is covered with ice in winter, but this can be obviated by ice breakers. We had one from America which worked well for a year or so when It paddle wheel broke. This stopped the traffic for a time and was the cause of the proposition to build the rail road around the lake. Several good steam Ice breakers would keep the lake open the year around and they won id be infinitely cheaper than the new railroad, which would cost millions of dollars." "What Is the railroad doing for Siberia, your excellency?" I asked. "It Is opening up the country and It will' result in its development. Numerous branch lines will have to be constructed and in time there will be a great empire out there Inhabited by Russians. The ter ritory is enormous. Siberia Is two and one half times as big as Russia In Europe. It is half as large again as the whole Euro pean continent and considerably bigger than the whole United States with Alaska and your new colonies added. The northern part of it la not worth much, being com posed of polar marshes the subsoil of which is always frozen, but a little south of that there Is a vast belt of pine and fir trees and farther south the wide strip through which the railroad goes. Much of the land there compares with the northern part of the United States which you call your great northwest and with the adjoining country on the other side of the line be longing to the British. It will raise wheat and all sorts of hardy cereals. We are finding it excellent for dairying and It is impossible to tell what It may not be In the future. A large part of the value of Siberia Is In Its minerals. It has gold, sil ver, copper and iron. It has coal, rock salt and precious stones and It Is In short a world In Itself which we have not yet prospected." (Continued on Page Sixteen