My fellow-traveler from Stockholm, who represented a firm of
paper-makers in Hamburg, and who paid an annual visit to Abo and
Helsingfors, acted as my guide around the town, while I awaited the
information from the humbled Chief of Police. My German friend pointed
out to me how, since Russia placed her hand upon Finland, progress had
been arrested, and certainly plain evidences were on every hand. There
was growing discontent everywhere, for many of the newspapers had
recently been suppressed and the remainder were under a severe
censorship; agriculture had already decreased, and many of the
cotton-spinning and saw mills were silent and deserted. The exploitation
of those gigantic forests from which millions of trunks were floated
down to the sea annually had now been suspended, the great landowners
were deserting the country, and there was silence and depression
everywhere. Finland had been separated for economic purposes from the
more civilized countries, and bound to the poverty-stricken,
artificially isolated and oppressed Russia.
Pages:
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248