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remarked, afterward, that this was only one of Russia's manifold ways. It is thus, peacefully, blandly, but relentlessly and with the Biblical "wisdom of the serpent," by skilful utilization of the native elements, as well as by the introduction of new forces, that a Russian leaven is being distributed throughout the entire Persian loaf. The murmuring of the vanquished in the countries, the Russian has overcome is never wholly stilled; the prophecy of revolt is continuous, but the Cossack is a sedative of wondrous efficacy. The Russian knows the peoples he holds sway over, and

manages them as no other can, for their blood is in him. His hand is heavy on the recalcitrant, his largess and his trade are always in the van of his progress, and his transportation systems are crowded forward with a swiftness that makes the rest of the world wonder. He conciliates native agencies at every step of the way. There are Mohammedans and Armenians serving in his border regiments. He wants Geok Tepe to be forgotten. He is mindful of the admonition of Paul I.; he "remembers that he is only at war with the English, and is the friend of all who do not

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The crescent-shaped cordon which Russia has so long been establishing around India has been materially extended, both on east and west. Within the past three years-since the Russians guaranteed the Persian loan-Muscovite control has advanced from the Caspian to the Arabian Sea. Persia is heavily mortgaged, and, by virtue of concessions made under these obligations, the Russian engineers have about completed surveys for a net-work of railways throughout the northern and western part of the Shah's kingdom, connecting all Russia, all Siberia and the Pacific coast with both the head and the foot of the Persian Gulf, and with the railroads soon to be constructed eastward out of Asia Minor. The Russian outpost in the Afghanistan direction is within a day's journey of Herat. Troops and munitions of war are there. "The key of India" may be seized by Russia when she will. On the eastern end of the crescent, in China and Corea, Russian demands for territory or special rights grow too rapidly to be kept track of.

give them help." The Chinese episode is eloquent upon that score. He "assures men of the friendship of Russia." He annihilates memories; he weans peoples from regrets. He plays upon their vanity until it is transmuted into loyalty; he grafts upon his already conglomerate speech something of the language of the conquered, and the next generation speaks with the tongue of Moscow. In brief, he finds a barbarian, and moving on in the prosecution of his eternal purpose, leaves a Russian. That is what he has been doing in Caucasia and Transcaucasia, as well as on the far side of the Caspian, and that, reasonably assuming that England will not interfere strongly to block his progress to the South, is what he will ultimately do in all of Persia; what that will mean, in the struggle which is

bound to come some day, the map shows. The Russian believes in his mission. He is unsparing, not always eloquent of the spirit of Peace Congresses, but his engines of war are bound to become the instruments of a cleaner and more progressive civilization, in Persia, at least, when the primary purpose of conquest shall have been served. That he aspires to the possession of all Asia there seems no longer any room for doubt. There are great obstacles in his path; he removes them. He has one way in Manchuria, another in Iran. But he is building warships as fast as he is taking up land in Asia. He anchors them now in Port Arthur; next in Bushire and Bender Abbas. How soon will the searchlights of his cruisers sweep the harbors of Calcutta and Bombay?

T

ACTUAL RURAL INDEPENDENCE

A TYPICAL, WELL-ORGANIZED, SMALL FARM IN THE CEN-
TRAL WEST, WHERE ELECTRICITY, MODERN MACHINERY
AND GOOD MANAGEMENT HAVE WORKED PERHAPS THE
GREATEST REVOLUTION SINCE THE DAYS OF ABRAHAM

BY

WALTER E. ANDREWS

O show the modern organization of agriculture under the best conditions in a well-developed community in one of the central States, I take the actual instance of Mr. Russell. Mr. Russell is a farmer who owns eighty acres of land and makes a specialty of dairying and fruit raising. Of course he hires a man and his wife by the year; gives them a neat, separate tenanthouse, and pays them $300 a year in cash for their services. An electric car line runs past the farm to a good market town, about four miles away. A creamery and canning factory is reached by this same trolley route.

At five o'clock in the morning, whir-r, whir-r goes an automatic electric alarm in the tenant house. The hired man gets up and hurries to the big barn. He feeds and grooms the cows and cleans out the stalls. Then the proprietor arrives in time to help at the milking. Both men wash their hands and put on clean white duck suits used only when they milk.

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The milk goes to a neat milk-room adjoining the barn and is fed into a centrifugal cream separator operated by electric power derived from the trolley line. A touch on a lever and the little motor hums merrily. most before you know it the separator has whirled all the cream out of the fresh milk into the shipping cans; while the skim milk -still warm and appetizing-is ready for feeding to calves and pigs.

The filled cream cans are hooked to a wire carrier, which spins them, by force of gravity, direct to the trolley platform on the road. In a few minutes a trolley car comes along, with a freight car attached, stops at the platform, takes the cans on board, and then whirls away with them to the creamery. The freight charges are but a few cents (which are collected weekly) and the empty cans are returned later in the day free of charge. Mr. Russell is credited by the creamery with so much cream and on settlement day he receives a check in payment.

Thus the milking is done and the cream is on its way to market before Mrs. Russell is out of bed. She does not have to bother with "setting" the milk in pans, or with ripening or churning the cream. She is no longer a slave to milk-pans and churns; and the old unsatisfactory way of "trading out" the butter at a local grocery store is done away with entirely. Butter or cream now means cash. The cows, instead of picking a poor living from uncertain pastures, are stabled in clean stalls, cool in summer, warm in winter, and always well ventilated. Instead of "guesswork feeding," they are given a scientific ration exactly adapted to their needs.

A windmill, a tubular well, and a tank supplies pure water for barn, house, lawn and milk-room. The windmill has an automatic governor which stops or starts pumping according to the needs of the big storage tank. There is fresh water before each cow constantly, regulated by an automatic watering device. The stable floor is of cement, and is of cement, and is flushed clean with the hose twice a day. The The stable walls glisten with whitewash, and everything is as neat and clean as it once was dirty and untidy. Dairying is now a science.

The cows are fed various grains and large quantities of ensilage-the latter from a big round silo holding 200 or more tons of succulent, preserved corn-fodder. Corn is planted and fertilized with the aid of special machinery, worked with a "riding" cultivator, and cut by horse-power. Not a single clip from an old-fashioned hoe is required, and the operator rides comfortably at his work with a sunawning rigged up over his head. One man and team can now do the work of many men, and do it better. The man with the hoe has become the man with the horses.

And it is much the same with fruit or other farm products. The ground is plowed with a sulky plow, or torn to pieces with a sharp disc harrow. Whether plowing or harrowing, the operator rides or walks as he chooses; machine and team do the work.

The trees are systematically sprayed by a system of compressed air operated by power obtained from a wagon's moving wheels. One man drives the team, and two other men hold the nozzles and send the fine spray exactly where needed. The proportions and ingredients of the various spraying mixtures have been exactly determined by scientific experiment. Injurious insects and fungus

diseases are thus combated rapidly and successfully.

When the fruit is ready to market it is taken to Mr. Russell's packing-house, and there "sorted" by an ingenious machine grader into three or four grades or sizes. After being carefully packed, the various grades are stenciled for shipment. Toward night a trolley-car takes the day's gathering direct to its destination-canning factory, steamboat dock, or commission man. Checks for sales come back promptly by mail.

There is a telephone in the barn and in both houses, connecting the farm with town and neighbors. Mr. Russell, like any other merchant, has an "office" of his own at his place of business-the farm. He takes one or two daily newspapers, which reach him promptly by rural mail carrier, and he keeps constantly informed on market conditions. Every day he telephones to his commission man, or to private customers, or to the canning factory, and he makes definite arrangements about shipments and sales. Each day's business is regulated according to the prevailing conditions; not a single consignment is sent off blindly. You will find no suspicion of "pig in a poke" about Mr. Russell's methods.

He keeps a simple set of books, and he knows at the end of each year just how he stands. He works hard, but not in the way his father worked. He directs the machinery, whereas his father was the machinery itself; he farms with brains instead of hands; he rides a good saddle-horse about his place, whereas his father was ridden by his work.

Now take a look into the snug farm-house, and what do you see? There are new books and magazines, pictures, and dainty furnishings. There is a piano in the parlor, and a bicycle or two on the back porch. Everything looks comfortable, cosy and attractive, without attempt at style or show. The chairs are intended to sit on, and the old hair-cloth sofa is now a genuine lounging place.

In winter the house is heated by a hotwater furnace in the cellar; and ventilation is insured by open fireplaces. In the kitchen there is a modern range; and in the cellar you will find a refrigerator. Electric lights are everywhere-in the house, on the porch, in the barn. The trolley line furnishes the current, of course. Thanks to windmill and tank, good water is on tap wherever needed—

hot or cold. And, if you fancy a bath, you will find the Russell bathroom as convenient as your own in the city.

The boys and girls of the family attend the high school in the town; the trolley line making a special school-rate of two cents for the round trip. Church and entertainments are liberally patronized, for modern farm life —thanks to the trolley—is no longer isolated.

Once each day (Sundays excepted), Uncle Sam's rural carrier brings the mail to the farm-house, and it is hoped he will soon bring in addition the latest government weather

forecast. He sells stamps, money orders, and takes letters and packages for mailing. Often, too, he does little errands for people who care to pay for the favor.

Do the boys and girls leave this sort of farm? No! They compare their home comforts, and their parents' successful, peaceful life, with what they see in the town, and are contented.

To sum up, Mr. Russell is the most independent man in the world. He has really achieved the independence that has so long been talked about in connection with farming.

F

THE

JAMES J. HILL

DEVELOPMENT AND THE

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MAN WHO WORKED OUT THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS OF THE NORTHWEST-THE SIGNIFICANCE AND INTEREST OF HIS TRANSCONTINENTAL STEAMSHIP AND RAILROAD SYSTEM BY

MARY C. BLOSSOM

ORTY-FIVE years ago there went into the great new country of Minnesota a young Scotch-Irish farmer from Canada. He was the sixteenth of his name in direct line of descent, hardy and alert. At the age of eighteen in the straggling village of St. Paul he became checkclerk and caretaker of freight at the steamboat landing.

At that time there was not a mile of railroad in the state or to the west of it. There was a traffic in fur carried on under the most primitive conditions. The Hudson's Bay Trading Company had for many years been the source of a large and important carrying trade from the northwest territories of British America. The year's catch of peltries was collected at the company's trading post, Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, and was sent in carts when the spring came to St. Paul.

In 1862 the first ten miles of railroad in the state were finished with great effort. It ran from the levee in St. Paul to the riverside in St. Anthony, and was known as the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, of which Mr. Hill later became the agent. It was then that he noticed that a poor quality of wood for fuel was brought into town. He made a contract

with the railroad to haul the better wood that he cut; and he thus founded the Northwestern Fuel Company, which still exists.

After the civil war the railway crawled northward and westward, and the trail of the Red River carts became shortened more and more. Mr. Hill clearly discerned the great resources and possibilities of the Red River country-Western Minnesota and Eastern Dakota. The necessity of a steamboat line on the Red River of the North became apparent-no sooner planned than executed. Mr. Hill came East, contracted for his boilers and machinery, and on the bank of the river built his flat-bottomed steamer called "The Selkirk," which in the summer of 1870 began to run between Winnipeg and the head of navigation. Soon the rival line operated by the Hudson's Bay Company saw its advantage in a consolidation.

There is no record of an enterprise of Mr. Hill's in which he has not succeeded. In his enterprises, of course, he uses the same agents that others use, but with a sense of proportion and with a concentration of utility that makes his power reach twice as far and accomplish twice as much as most other men. The "Selkirk," and a line of stages connected

with it, formed the first regular means of communication between Winnipeg and the outer world. The same year, 1872, Mr. Hill consolidated his transportation interests with those of the Hudson's Bay Company, forming the Red River Transportation Company. The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad now reached the western boundary of the state at Breckenridge.

While Mr. Hill was managing this Red River Steamboat service, his frequent trips between St. Paul and Winnipeg were not all taken by boat. Sometimes they were made in the dead of winter over the snow. He would take a sled, four or five dogs, food for the dogs, and pemmican for himself, and travel for days, sleeping like the Esquimaux among his dogs at night. Once he journeyed eighty miles in one day. Once, too, when traveling in another way, he had a burly Frenchman as companion, and by some means this man dislocated his shoulder and suffered great pain. Mr. Hill tied him to the wheel of the cart, and by an ingenious contrivance forced the shoulder into its place, and the man pursued his journey in comparative comfort. In these years of hard work Mr. Hill grew rich in observation and experience and fertile in resource; he learned the Northwest country to its heart, and dreamed of a great transportation line that should open its wealth to the world.

He became possessed by this idea; on the street, at the club, wherever he met men, he buttonholed them and talked of a great road and of the possibilities of the Northwest, until even his friends were worn out with hearing. It is told of him at this period, that while watching for several nights by the sick bed of a friend, he would look into the fire, sing Scotch songs and tell Scotch stories, reverting ever and again to his beloved project, and talking into the night oblivious of time, until he was sent home leaving his friends with doubts of his entire sanity.

For several years the St. Paul and Pacific system of railroads, consisting of 437 miles of completed track, was in bad condition. It was mortgaged, the roadbed was not good, the time was one of great depression in the financial world, the stockholders, mostly Holland capitalists, were weary with delay and misfortune. Because of his faith in the future of the region that he knew so well, Mr. Hill formed a syndicate of five persons

which soon gained possession of the road, and in June, 1879, the system was consolidated into a single ownership as the St. Paul, Minnesota & Manitoba Railroad Company. The task was not an easy one; the untiring industry and foresight of the moving spirit were taxed to the utmost. At a time when he was striving to complete a certain piece of road in order not to lose the land grant, he worked night and day, personally supervising the construction, laying the ties under most adverse conditions, and getting the water out of the way as best he could. The service of a friend who labored with him unceasingly in this hour of need has never been forgotten. To crown their efforts the road was completed two days before the appointed time.

Later it was extended to the Pacific coast, traversing vast tracts of land without human habitation. The track was well laid but the stations were often only freight cars, remote from one another, and remote from other human settlements. Dismal predictions were made, but not for a moment did the unflinching courage and purpose of the leader waver. The Cascade Mountains were rich in lumber of a growth so large as to be useful for purposes not previously possible for single trees. Some of the trees had gained four to five hundred rings, proving them to have been large when Columbus discovered America. Coal fields were discovered, and a branch road carried their product for the use of the main line. Settlements were formed for preparing the lumber for shipment; and Mr. Hill was all along the line, giving words of practical advice to newcomers, telling them the kind of stock that they ought to keep, and how to get it, and what to feed it, and giving them many other bits of practical assistance. While the work was going on through this region, Mr. Hill rode over the rough mountain roads on horseback, deciding problems of tunnels and the like. He knows the cost of a bridge as well as his engineers, and more than once he has torn up specifications and saved money by using his own plans. One reason why the road has held its own while others failed, is that before putting it into operation he spent $5,000,000 in grading. It was Mr. Hill who taught the workers in the lumber country to alternate the thick and thin ends of the shingle so as to make flat, square packages, and thus economize space in the cars. He is sometimes called exacting with the employees

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