In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.
In today’s excerpt, Fraser talks to an American and a Dane about doing business in Siberia during the last decades of the Tsarist era:
Omsk, you should bear in mind, is the very centre of 2,000 square miles of the finest pasture land in the world. I met two Americans in the town pushing the sale of American agricultural implements. One, the representative of the Deering Manufacturing Company, said to me, “Sir, I have been all over the United States, and this is my third summer visit to do business in Omsk. I tell you Siberia is going to be another America.” He also told me that three years ago he sold only 40 reaping machines. That year, 1901, he sold 1,500, and next year he proposed to bring out 4,000. Deering’s were doing a good trade because they are first in the field. The Government were buying their machines, and then selling them again to the emigrants, getting repayment by instalments. Altogether there are eight American agricultural implement manufacturers’ representatives in Omsk.
“Any English?” I inquired.
“Not one,” he laughed back, and I saw the glow of Yankee satisfaction at getting what he afterwards called “the bulge on John Bull.”
Besides Americans selling agricultural wares, chiefly mowers and reapers, there are fourteen firms in Omsk engaged in the newly-developed Siberian butter trade with England. The largest firm belongs to a Russian Jew; the other thirteen belong to Danes. It was a Dane in St. Petersburg who four years back accidentally saw Siberian butter. He was struck with its excellence. Three years ago 4,000 buckets, each containing about 36 lb., were shipped by way of Riga and Revel to England, and sold in the English market, I’ve a suspicion, as “the best Danish.”
Last summer (1901) 30,000 buckets a week were exported from Siberia to England.
I got into a talk with a Dane engaged in butter-buying.
“Yes,” said he, “the way the butter business has sprung up is amazing, But what has been done is but a tiny scrap to what will be done in the future. You’ve seen the cows, what miserable looking things they are. But the pasturage is so good that there is seven per cent. of butter fat in the milk. There are only two steam dairies in all Siberia; all the other butter is made in primitive fashion by hand. The conditions are such that it is not so clean-flavoured as it should be. But it is splendid butter all the same. The output at present, with a thin population and defective methods, is small, and the competition among the rival firms to get it is American in its keenness. I travel six or seven hundred versts every week on either side of the railway line, buying butter from the peasants. It is brought in native carts all that way to the railway. But the peasant doesn’t understand business. I’ll make a contract for so much butter to be delivered to me in Omsk at a certain price - about eleven roubles (22s.) the pood (36 lb.) has been the price this summer; but when in Omsk the man may meet one of my competitors, and he has no hesitation, if offered a few kopeks (pence) more a pood, in selling it to my rival. When I remonstrate he simply said the other man offered more. He doesn’t understand the morality of a bargain.”
“And about the morality of the other butter buyer?” I questioned.
“Well,” the Dane answered, “competition is right up to the knife. This week five train loads of nothing but butter have left Omsk for Riga. You’ve seen the trains may-be, painted white, with all the latest refrigerating appliances fitted up. The Russian Government is delighted at what is taking place. The authorities will do anything for us. They have just issued a pamphlet in Russian showing how the Siberian peasants can start profitable dairying with the necessary machinery for an outlay of 500 roubles (£50). The Russian peasant, however, is slow. But the Jews have come into the business, and many are already making fortunes by dairying. My firm started a big dairy about 400 versts south from here. The peasants would not believe a machine could separate the butter from the milk. They said the devil was in the machine. There’s been a drought down there. Everybody believed it was because the Almighty was angry that they should allow these devil machines in the country. So they wrecked the place and smashed every separator we had. But it will be all right in a year or two, as soon as they get more civilised. They are beginning to see the advantage of machinery. The winter food for the cows has had to be cut by hand. Now these people are beginning to we that if the grass is cut by machines they can get far more hay, and keep four or five times as many cows, and then the separators make better milk; so some of them are on their way to becoming rich.”
This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.
The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.
