Harbin, Dec. 12.
The cold weather is on us in earnest, but so far there have been but few northerly winds, which absolutely penetrate through one's body, so that the cold is quite bearable. The temperature which falls as low as 20 degrees centigrade in the early morning rises 10 degrees during the day time.
Everybody is complaining about the absolute lack of business, trade is practically at a standstill. Restaurant, cafes, theatres and chantants are being badly hit because the public cannot afford to pay the prices now demanded and at the principal hotels there is now no difficulty in finding accommodation—a thing impossible but a month or two back. The managements insist upon payment in yen, whilst the shops and stores are only doing a hand to mouth trade.
The gambling in exchange has subsided and the hundreds of exchange shops on Market Street, that did a thriving and profitable business but a short while back, are now not making enough to pay their rent, simply because most Russians have been bled to such a point that they can be bled no more. On every side one hears the discontent of the local population openly expressed, Things are decidedly in a bad way with the Railways, for they have to own up to the fact, that their receipts in Romanoff notes for the month are insufficient to pay their wages bill which amounts to something over 12 million roubles. Railway employees received 50 per cent. of their wages in small notes and the balance in 25 and 50 Romanoff and Horvath notes. The latter are at nearly 50 per cent. discount when purchases from the Chinese are made.
Owing to the seriousness of the situation which the railway management has to face in solving the problem of how to pay its wages bill without causing discontent among the railwaymen, the administration is showing a little renewed energy in trying to ameliorate transportation. It has decided to place 1,000 wagons on the Harbin-Changchun run, so that some of the enormous stock of Manchurian produce—beans, beancake, millet, wheat, koaoliang—awaiting shipment southwards is able to be moved. A certain number of cars are already here and it is quite a novelty to see certain streets blocked with Chinese carts loaded with grain, for it is many months since such a bustle has been witnessed.
There is no exaggeration in saying that if the railway can furnish five times this number of cars monthly it will take many months to move the enormous accumulated stocks ly-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.