'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎77] (108/714)

IRAN SOASPIA 77
Russian Minister of Finance, who himself visited Transcaspia in
the autumn of 1890, returned the working cost of the Transcaspian
Railway and Oxus Flotilla combined in 1889 as 287,235?., figures
which are not irreconcilable with those above quoted from the
Novoe \ remya. On the other hand, the same Minister's estimate
for 1890 contained an additir»n of 120,447/. to the figures of 1889. or
a total of 407,682/. for the combined charges of railway and flotilla
during that year. I have since heard that a surplus of 29.000/-. is
claimed for 1890. 1
About one fact there can be no doubt—viz. that the goods traffic
upon the railway is enormously on the increase, and that it will
Goods reach infinitely greater proportions still. The total
traffic weight of goods carried upon the railway in 1889 was
21,741,880 pouds, or 350,675 tons; out of which Central Asian
indigenous product and raw material amounted to 9,069,081 pouds,
or 146,275 tons. In the same year the value of manufactured
goods and sugar imported by the railway into Transcaspia, Bokhara,
and Turkestan was 94 per cent, higher than in 1 888; while the
value of exports conducted thereby from Central Asia to Russia,
and consisting of cotton, wool. silk, dried fruits, and grain, increased
127 per cent. Of the goods thus conveyed by far the most
remarkable, and an as yet unexhausted, rise has been that in
exports of cotton from the ever-spreading Asiatic plantations. In
1888 the amount so carried was 1,213,274 pouds, or 19,655 tons. 2
in 1889 it was 2,200,000 pouds, or 35,484 tons; in January 1890
it was 252,760 pouds, or 4,077 tons (of which 193,229 pouds, or
3,116 tons, came from Bokhara) ; figures which indicate a much
higher monthly average than in the preceding year, even although
they do not quite come up to General Annenkoff's confident
expectation, which he confessed to myself, of a total of 4,000,000
pouds in the whole year. In June, however, more than a quarter
of a million pouds were reported to be lying on the piers at Uzun
Ada waiting for shipment, while the railway was said to be
bringing up some 20.000 pouds daily. The receipts for the first
five months of 1890 were also said, largely in consequence of this
increased export, to be larger by more than 50,000/. than in the
1 In February 1891, however, the Novoe Vremya stated the surplus at
323,610/., figures which I can hardly credit.
2 Before the construction of the Transcaspian Railway the total annual export
of cotton from Central Asia to European Russia by camel caravan, rid Orenburg,
was 9,680 tons.