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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 1903)
Finland as a Field for Commercial Invasion MM Copyright. 1003, by Frank O. Carpenter.) f KI,KINGFOR3. Finland. Sept. 1. I I I (Special Correspondence of The I l lice.) I have stopped here on my way from Russia to Sweden to look up American Interests In the land of the Finns. This country Is Hte.id Uy Increasing as a customer for American foods. It has Home of the thriftiest people of northern Europe, with wants about twice an great an the average man the world over. The people ore comparatively poor, but their foreign trade now amount to $100,000,(00 a year and their Imports are equal to an expenditure of $.13 for every man, woman and child In the country. In Russia the Imports do not average more than 15 per person, so that Finland Is worth to the rest of the world six times as much as Russia, In proportion to lis population. Hut first let me give you the land In a nutshell. The country Is a great muss of granite rock, half surrounded by seas, riv eted In between Russia, Norway and Sweden. It Is a land of forests and l.ikes and cultivated farms. It belongs to Rus sia and Is ruled by the rnr, hut Its popu lation Is not Russian at all. It has alto gether nbout 2,700,000 Inhabitants, and of these lens than 6,000 are Russians. The remainder are Finns, Sweds, Herman and 1 41 phi rulers. The Finns number more than 2,(K0,nijO, the Swedes 3W.00O, tho Ger mans 1.900 and the Laplanders 1,200. The Finns came origin illy from Hie he n t Of Russia. They were of two tribes, one dark-hnlrcd und the other light. They drove tho Inlanders to the northward and have ho crowded them out that there are only a few hundred left, and most cf these work for tho Finns. The reindeer belong to the Finns and nneh Laps as re main nre nomadle, many of them wander ing about In the cold lirnU of the north, living In tents. Finland has more lakes to lh" square rnTe thnn any other country. It Is called Ihe land of a thousand lakes, and I am to d that tho lakes actually numb, r 10,000. They are Joined by canals, and you can r.ow go all over the country by waler. Mi.ny streams flow Into these lakes nnd the m a. The country Is rough and the streams hav3 hundreds of waterfalls. A recent measure ment of 7oO falls shows that they could fur nish about "OOO.OiiO horse power, end it Is now expected that this horse power will be developed by electricity, fome elortr'eil plants have already been jut up nnd nvmy others are contemplated. The Westlngh aire and General Electric people phou'd look Irto the field and send their best drummers here to develop It. I write these notes In II -Islngfors, th capital of Finland. The elly has 10I.C0O population. It Is situated oa the GuP of Finland, on an excellent harbi r, part of It being on an Island which i.i c nnected with tho mainland by a bridge. 1 nmo in by .iea from St. Petersburg, and wh n I landed It seemed to mo as though I were back In America. The people look mrro llko Ameri cans than Russians, nnd the buildings not unlike those "of our cities. Some of the business blocks are large nnd several of them would be a credit to any city of tho United States. They are made of Finnish granite, In blocks ax big as the biggest stone blocks used In the buildings of Chicago. The Finns are not like the Russians. They are better dressed nnd mor Intelligent. The Russian drcsky, with Its great tow over the horse's neck, Is net seen hre. and the c ibs and carriages are much like -jur own. The ;vMft Irll.l.t: tfri Ji t i IT Ml 'it-it t fir. .1 M s a j- a - 7 I lm.MTi rfil" " i; 'WtK '' ! f - a'Jl V - - a WINTER TRAVELING IN FINLAND. women of the lower classes wear about the Bame dress as the well-to-do Russian peasant women, but otherwise they look morn llko the Germans. The Finns are more Intelligent than the Russians. llelslngfors has five times as many book stores In proportion to Its popu lation as SI. Petersburg. The books are printed In the Roman text, which seems friendly after my long experience with the Greek hieroglyphics of Russia. The signs over the stores are In Roman and one can upell out whnt they mean. The mnjorliy cf the people here can rend and write, which Is not the case In Russia. There aro public schools nil over the country. There Is a university for 2,500 students, of whom 4C0 arc women. There are ubo busl nes ur.d technical schools, including 27 agri cultural schools, 18 dairy schools, 14 xchoo's for cnttlo mnnugers nnd 9 schoo's for gard eners. Finland has about 2ii0 newspapers, of which 13) are printed In the Finnish tongue. The most of the people are Luth erans. There arc a few Unptlsls. a few Roman Catholics and a few who belong to the Orthodox Greek church of Russ'a. I dropped Into tha Union bank here to get Forac nv.ney on mj' Ijtter fit credit nnd got It. At the same time I gathered s me Information about tho banking business. It la profitable. Tha Union bank Is now forty years old and It has been paying dividends of from 10 to 21 per cent Bince Its beginning. Its capital was originally SK'O, C00, but It has been raised to SOO,000 and thi bank now has more than twice that amount as a surplus. It has about $16,000,00) of deposits and Its stock Is quoted at 5e0. pay ing nb lut 4 per c;nt on that valuation. Another big bank is the Joint Stock Panic of the North for Commerce and Manufac tures. This KaS a capital of J2.000.0MO and it pays dividends of. 9 per cent. In addition to this there are many other prosperoua banks und many savings banks. But come with me to the Finnish st ;res .nd fee if they have any American gojds. We need not go far to find them, 'there are California pears and peaches, Oregon salmon und canned meats from Chi ago. There are sewing machines and type writers, cameras and mimeographs und all sorts of American novelties. The most of the textile goods aro German or E.igilsh, but the merchants tell me that a great deal of Finnish cloth Is mad' from raw cotton Imported from the Ui.lted Statas. The Finns like our pork. They smoke our tobacco and they light their homes with American petroleum. They are Importing our farm machinery, i specially rearers and mowers, und now und then a thresher. Some of the farmerss here have steam plows and there Is one who has an electric threshing machine. Farming and lumbering are among the chief businesses of Finland und farming leads. Only about one-third of the coun try is cultivated, and the land does not compare with ours In fertility. Neverthe less it Is well bandied and the farmers make money. The average farm Is small. There are altogether about 118,000 farms la addition to 72,000 (mall holdings. Much of the land Is farmed by tenants und of late years some by syndicates of peasant farmers who combine together. The Jokkls Joint Stock company, for In stance, owns 70,000 acres, and It has half of this under cultivation. It uses the best of modern machinery, and has twelve miles of railroad on its estate. Such companies would make flne customers for Amerle.au farm tools. Much of the land here Is devoted to stock raising and dairying. There are something like a million sheep, 300,000 horses and 100,000 reindeer In Finland. There are a million and a half cattle, and among them some of the finest milk- - Si - l . f A I 1 tx v.- -f',..:,'.-.,i l i i ' I ' !' Y 1 ers on earth. Some of the Finnish cow give over 5,000 pounds of milk each per year, and from seventeen to twenty pounds of this milk will make a pound of butter. The butter Is excellent, and It la In great demand throughout northern Europe. Much of it Is put up In cans and shipped all over the world. A great deal is made at creameries, and there is one man who has established a creamery and buys his cream half frozen. Ills works are at the port of Ilango, and the peasants for miles around freeze their cream into a soft mass and thus ship it In bulk. This reduces the freight rate, and they say It does not hurt tho cream. Fin land's exports of butter now amount t $6,OCO,000 a year. The best of the Finnish farms are tn the southern part of the country. Her you find good houses of two stories painted red, with white window frames. Nearly every well-to-do man keeps a separate house for his guests, and the better farm ers have four or rive horses and twenty or thirty cows. Some have American reap- ers and mowers, and not a few have steam engines. In some places the houses are grouped together In villages, and In others they are scattered over the farms. Farther north tho farmers are poorer, and In some parts very poor. In times past when the crops failed they lived upon bread made of pine bark and chopped straw. Now they use rye bread, sour milk and salt fish. In many families the bread Is only baked twice or thrice a year. The diet is such that It causes catarrh of the stomach, and In some parts of the country nearly every other man or woman Is a . dyspeptic. There la one thing, however, in which the Finns surpass any people of Europe. I re fer to cleanliness. Every family has its o.vn bath house, and the bath house is oi'te 1 built before the dwelling Is built. It usually consists of a large room with a ledge we I up under the roof. There Is an oven In the room, In which heated water is thrown, causing an enormous amount of steam to pour out. The bathers lie on the ledges an 1 thus steam out the dirt, whipping them selves with birch twigs now and then to accelerate circulation. Everyone tai.cs a bath Saturday night, and In hard-working seasons one every night There can be mi cleanliness without perspiration, and a rran who has not taken a Turkish or Russian, bath does not know what it Is to be clean. After a century or so of wastefulness the Finns are beginning to save their forests. They have been cutting the trees much as we have, and millions of acres of timber have been wiped out without adequate re turn. Today there are government lawa aa to forest culture and lumbering. A school cf forestry has been established, some of the woodlands have been drained and a ajencral Interest in conserving the trees Is manifested. The big trees of the goverr tnent forests have been counted. It Is esti mated that there are more than 80,COJ,(03 trees of merchantable quality left, and that the crown forests number twice as many. Tou have heard of Norwegian pines. fThere are thousands of them In Finland, although they are being rapidly cut for shipbuilding and lumbering. There are saw mills and planing mills In many parts of the ' runtry, and the lumbering business is 1 rapidly increasing. It might pay A me Pans to look into this field for possible soles of BnlUIng machinery. Another product of the forest is wood pulp. There are twenty-flve wood pulp mills now In operation, which make a product of about 100,000,000 pounds of pul per year. About one-half of this is ex (Continued on Fage FifteeaJ LAPLANDERS AT HOMBL