The World's
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AMISRICAN REAPERS RUN BT COSSACK&
(Copyright. 1903, by Frank G. Carpenter.)
kOSCOW. July 2L (Special Corre
spondence of The Bee.; My scouU
ing expedition thla week haa been
along the tracks of the Invasion
of American agricultural machtrw
ry. Our army of farm tool exporters 1
lowly but surely making Its way Into
RusHla. One firm la shipping as much as
$1,000,000 worth a year, and a score mora
are doing a good business. Tho Imports bo
far are confined to a few specialties, but
new tools come In every year, mid our com
mercial Invasion of Russia Is to be largt ly
In machinery. We already have the lead
In reapers mowers and harvesters, but V 9
are far behind In everything else.
As It is now, the Germans have the bu'.Ii
of the business. They have sent thel
drummers here and made them loam tho
language. They have good agents In all
the principal towns and subagents In tho,
surrounding country, so that they are work.
Ing Russia Just as'the American wholesale
dealer works his territory at home.
.Their systematic organization tells, am
their trade In this branch alone Is at leatt
five times as much as ours. They supply
K per cent of a'.l the plows, drills, snedcrs,
and horse-power threshing machines, and
a large part cf the American imports goea
through their hands. The value of their
business Is already considerably over $100,.
000,000 a year, and It will Increase right
along. .
Next to the Germans come the English,
who are shipping about $66,uou,ono worth of
farming tools and other machines Into this
country, and next the Americans, who fur-.'
nuh a possible $20,000,000 worth.
All this, however. Is as nothing in com
parison with the possibilities of the future.
This HusHlaa umpire Is the biggest farm,
upon earth. It Includes one-. UUi of all
the land upon the globe, and there are ra.l
tlons of acres which have not been touched
by the plow. Here In European RusbL
there are more than , eighty million farm
era actively engaged in tilling tho soil, and,
that with tools almost as rule as thoaa
used In the days of the scriptures. I wish,
I could show you some of them. The Rus
sian plow is little more than a wooden
tick. The sokha, used chlofly In the Black
Earth Zone, hua two Iron share.', but no
point, and In otiier places Heavy two
wheeled wooden plows are use ... In west
ern Russia, Poland and abiut Odessa
there are many Iron plows, but nowhere
do I see our American lmplemt nts. Thore
should be an enormous market for culti
vators and sulky plows of our make, but
so far the Germans have captured the
business.
Other tools are even worse. Many of
tho harrows have wooden teeth, and the
old spiked tooth Iron harrow Is rar. Most
of the grain Is sowed broadcast by hand,
and It la only along the Volga and in las
far south that you will uud American
drills.
There should be a big Mile of American
threshers. Russia Is one of the great grain
producers of the world Iu Europe alone
It haa a yearly crop of about two billion
buehels chiefly rye, oats, wheat and corn.
The biggest Item is rye, which forms tho
bread of the people. The average ylo'.d of
this Is 737,ouu,000 bushels, and a large part
of it is exported to Germany to make rye
bread for the soldiers. In wheat Russia,
ranks next to us In tho markets of
Europe. It produces 3JO.OtO.0i0 or 400.U)0,UOt
bushels annually. The oats crop omuls
alone BO0,u0aK bushel:!, and the. barley
yields more than :00.oi0.O00 bushels.
Thla mighty grain crop haa to be threshed,
and at present a large part of It is hulled
ut by hand or feet.
There are millions of bushels threshed
ut by flails, other millions are trodden out
with horses and cattle, and a vast quantity
la threshed by driving carta over the gruln
as It cornea from the field.
On tho larger estates tho horse or steam
thresher la coming in, but as a rule. It la
from Germany or England. Tho roads her
are Tory rough, and the farmera are afraid
V : '1 " 'f,, ' ...J
H . IT--- J
ON A RUSSIAN SUNFLOWER FARM.
of the American thresher on account of Its
light weight. Tho Germans sell more than
the English, and they are doing a consider
able business in Poland, in southern Russia,
and along tho Volga.
A year or so ago an American from North
Dakota brought in some horse-power Ameri
can threshers and sold thoin. They have
been giving satisfaction, and they may ,
form the opening; wedge for this kind of
our machinery.
What is needed ia an array of American
drummers with a practical knowledge of
agriculture and agricultural machinery and
at the same time the ability to speak Ger
man and Russian. Such men could bo
found In the northwest, id they could
make enormous sales for our great
factories.
These drummers should travel over tho
country from village to village and from
fair to fair. Tncro are many fairs and
markets held at regular Inter vaJs all over
Russia. The men should bae samples of
their machines and a supply In stock at
the port. The Russian wants to see what
ho buys, but ho Is willing to pay a good
price and he wants the bout. In a future
letter I will write of the Nijnl Novgorod
fair, the biggest fair of the world, which
would make a good headquarters for Uch
work.
Our drummers will find thla market a
curious one. They will need to stay hero
for months before thay understand their
possible customers. In America you sell
to the Individual fur'ner. tiers a vast
business Is done with the government, and
the towns and villages, In addition to that
with private persons.
Russia Is a country of villages. The peo
ple do not live in houses scattered over tho
farina. They are collected together In llttlo
hamlets, usually composed of log cabins,
containing from a few hundred to a thou
sand people. They have their stables and
cattle In tho villages and drive the latter
out to the fields. They go out to work In
gangs every morning and walk back every
night.
Much of the land is owned by the villages
as such, and not by the individuals living;
in them. The head men of each town di
vide up the land from year to year, giving
so much to each family, and tho crops are
divided at the end of the season.
The village council fixes the time of sow
ing the crops and of gathering them, and
It may buy machinery to aid in the work.
Thus a little town may have a half dozen
threshers, mowers and reapers, and a good
American drummer may get a big order at
one clip. He may Introduce plows, rakes
and other small tools, at the same time
working each little community as a lobby
ist does a legislature.
Indeed, the drummer will have to under
stand the system of Russian land owner
ship in order to do his work welL He will
find that about one-third of all the land
hero belongs to the state and Imperial fam
ily. The czar owns more than 400,000, 000
acres In Europe alone. Much of this land
Is under cultivation, and his agents buy
farming machinery in enormous quantities.
Many of them are susceptible to persua
sion, and a Judicious preseut at Uie right
time will help a sale.
A second third of European Russia be
longs to the peasants. It came to them
when the cxar freed the serfs. This was
at .about tho same time oa our abolition
movement. We freed 3.0D0.000 negroes, at
a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives
and a big national debt. Russia freed 50,
000,000 without losing one life, and it gave
very man, woman and child, on the aver
age, about seven acres of land. It did not
give tho land to the Individuals, however,
but to the villages, and theso village ap
portion them out from time to time among
the families.
Tlds land was taken from the nobles, but
they were paid for it. The serfs had been
working the lands and had the villages
upon them. The peasants were given the
villages and enough land about them to
a vera go thirty-three acres to tho family, so
that a village of a 100 families got 3,300
acres of land in common. This land is
still so held, and the village as a wholo
ia responsible for the taxes. It is bound
to pay so much for the land, the payments
running over forty-nine years. Some vil
lages have purchased their lands outright.
Others are still paying for it. Altogether,
from such payments and rrom the lands
granted the crown peasants the government
now gets about $40,000,000 a year.
Of the private lands of Russia about
three-fourths is owned by the nobles. Some
of them have tens of thousands of acres,
the average size of the estates in the north
being from 15,000 to 20,000 acres, and In tho
south much smaller.
There are also many peasants and quite
a large number of merchants who have
their own farms. The nobles and the peas
ants are better customers than the mer
chants. Many of the former give large or
ders for agricultural machinery and some
of the latter farm Intensely. The mer
chants buy land as a speculation and work
It to death. They cut off the wood, and
crop and recrop until the land gives out,
and then sell it again. All over Russia,
however, there is little good farming. The
common plow only scratches the earth and
the yield per acre la smalL The average
product of rye Is only eleven bushels, wheat
from ten to thirteen bushels, barley about
twelve bushels, and oats seventeen bushels
per acre. Much of the soil Is as worn out
as the old tobacco and cotton lands of tho
south, and It will take careful cultivation
to make It valuable.
There Is llttlo chance here for the intro
duction of American flour. The frelgtit
rates aro too heavy and of late years the
Russians have been putting up modern
mills of their own. The first roller patent
process mill was Introduced along late In
the sixties, and since that time many have
has grown up near the railroads and rivers.
It Is estimated that there are now 20,000
mills In Russia, which are grinding 31,
000.000.000 pound of flour every year.
Estimating a pound of Hour to a loaf of
bread and that one loaf will feed a man
one day this would be enough to feed the
whole world for about three weeks. Forty
per cent of this flour, comes from along tho
Volga and the remainder from central and
southern Russia. It Is an excellent article,
well ground and well graded, a large quan
tity of it being exported.
I am surprised at the work done hero
by women,. There are more of them In tho
fields than men, and a not uncommon sight
Is a crowd of women hoeing and digging,
bossed by a man who leans on his staff
and keeps them up to thetr work. Much
of the ground la spaded by women. Tho
grain Is cut by them with sickles and
scythes and the harvest scenes embrace
more girls than boys.
Tho women dress In bright red calico
gowns with white walsta or chemises.
Borne have aprons beautifully embroidered.
They have a sort of turban about their
heads in place of a hat and the ordinary
Bhoe Is made of straw and the stocking la
a rag tied on with strings.
The hours of labor aro longer hero than
with us. I have ridden through the black
earth sone on the cara In the early morn
ing and have seen the people starting out
to work at 4 o'clock. They labor from then
until 7 or 8 In tho evening and are satis
fied with 20 or 25 cents a fay. I am told
that you can get girls at 10 cents a day
In some parts of Russia, and that they
board themselves. The men are paid a
bit more, but was-eo everywhere are much
lower than with us.
I wish I could take you Into one of these
(Continued on Tago Sixteea.)
