The indictment against the Czar and his government for their brutal defiance of the commonest rules of humanity has been more than substantiated by the deplorable facts set forth in the previous pages. It is agreeable to note some disposition to mend matters on the part of the supreme authorities. Certain reforms in prison administration have been introduced in recent years, showing that the autocrat of all the Russias has not continued utterly indifferent to the sufferings of Siberian exiles and convicts. Widespread radical changes have been impossible; the evils were too deep seated and too extensive for general removal; but one or two new prisons have been erected, more in accord with the dictates of penitentiary science and aiming at partial improvement. A brief account of one or two of these may serve to relieve somewhat the gloomy picture which has been by no means over-coloured. The Czars Alexander II and III could not plead ignorance of the horrible conditions prevailing in Eastern Siberia which were brought unmistakably to their notice by the reports of Anuchin in 1880 and 1882. Some of his condemnatory remarks have already been quoted and may be repeated here as summing up his final verdict. After minute inquiry and much investigation, he characterises the Siberian prisons as follows: “The exile system and penal servitude in Eastern Siberia are in the most unsatisfactory state ... while the exile bureaus in the provinces are not organised in a manner commensurate with the importance of the work that they have to do and are prejudicial rather than useful to the service.” The Czar Alexander III was so deeply impressed with the necessity for reform that he endorsed on this report in his own handwriting, “I should greatly like to do this and it seems to me indispensable.” Events proved too strong however even for the autocrat ruler of all the Russias. He says: “I have read this report with great interest, and I am more than troubled by this melancholy but just description of the government’s forgetfulness of a country so rich and so necessary to Russia.” On the part dealing with prisons the Czar endorsed the words, “A melancholy but not a new picture.” On a later page I shall go further into the ameliorations and improvements attempted since 1886. CHAPTER VII VAGABONDAGE AND UNIONS