mately 952, distributed as follows: at the Alexandrófski Zavód, 188; at the mine of Algachí, 150; at the Pokrófski mine, 70; at the Kadaínski and Smírnovo mines, 184; and at the Sávenski and Górni Zerentúiefski mines, 360. Probably not more than one-third of these men, and certainly not more than half of them, were actually engaged in hard labor. The rest lived, month after month, in enforced idleness, notwithstanding the amount of work that there was everywhere to be done. The only reasons I could get for this state of affairs were, first, that room could not be found for the idle men in the mines; secondly, that the convoys of soldiers were not strong enough to guard large parties of convicts on the roads or in the forests; thirdly, that it would cost more to erect new prisons with convict labor and under official supervision than to have them built by contract;[1] and fourthly, that the convicts could not be set to work in any of the ways that I suggested without a razreshénia, or authorization, from St. Petersburg. None of these reasons had, to my mind, the least force or validity. The idleness of the convicts, and the failure of the authorities to do any one of the scores of things that needed doing, were the direct result, it seemed to me, of official indifference, incapacity, or lack of enterprise. An energetic American with plenary powers and a capital of $10,000 or $15,000 would take the 950 convicts imprisoned in the Nérchinsk silver-mining district, and in less than two years would have a new prison built at every mine in
- ↑ This reason was based on the admitted incompetence and dishonesty of the local officials under whose supervision the work would have to be done. There are cases on record in which the local Siberian authorities embezzled the whole of the sum appropriated for the erection of a Government building: and reported such building as completed and occupied when even its foundations had not been laid. Such a case — that of the Ukírski étape — is cited in the Vérkhni Údinsk correspondence of the St. Petersburg Eastern Review, No. 2, January 12, 1884, p. 8. A well-known photographer in Siberia showed me a photograph of a new Government building which he had just taken, he said, upon an order from St. Petersburg, and which he was about to send to the higher authorities in that city as a proof that the structure, which had been ordered and paid for, was really in existence and had been built in accordance with the plans.
