“On September 15 at noon, no one knows by whom or from what station, a signal of dots and dashes was tapped off. Each telegraph-operator answered the message and passed the word to the next, standing by until it was repeated back. Then, leaving all things in order, he stepped from the operating-room into the railway-station. With a motion he gave the countersign to the ticket-sellers, and each, as he received it, shut his desk, and walked out. The word went to the engineers, and each, at the signal, drew his fires and left the engine and its train forsaken on its tracks. Every postman put away his mail, closed the safe, and left his office; every diligence-agent locked his doors. From Astrakan to Archangel, from Warsaw to Vladivostok, the electric summons went, and the whole realm of Russia was paralyzed. “With two thousand roubles, offered by the Governor-General of Poland, before them, and ten bayonets on the tender behind, an engineer and a fireman were secured to run one coach, containing a terrified prince, from Warsaw to the frontier. In the south, a few cars were started by soldiers, but beyond such rare instances, for three weeks not a train was moved. More than this, not a telegram was transmitted, not a letter delivered. Everywhere was black silence, as if all the Russias had been swept from the face of the world. “‘More wages, and the constitution,’ was the slogan of the strikers. The official cohorts met the issue courageously, with bribes and bayonets, and little by little got the upper hand. Force and money were used unstintingly to win the operators needed and break the front of the strike. A few, who, contrary to the expectations of their mates, had remained loyal to the officials, were finally secured and protected by the soldiery. As in time one train after another was manned and moved, the men who had stayed away lost heart, knowing but too well what would be the fate of those who were left outside the breastworks. First singly, then in crowds, they returned, and the great strike was broken.” “Here in Krasnoyarsk there was revolutionist rule for a while as well,” the manager remarks. “The troops were driven out, and we had to wait for reinforcements. Yet when I came to my office there were sixty thousand roubles in the safe, not a kopeck of which had been touched. Some of the best employees were condemned. I was very sad, and the service was very poor when they marched away.” “What became of them?” we ask. In a low voice he answers, “They went to the Yakutsk.” Everybody is silent for a moment. “Where did you say?” inquires the missionary. “The Yakutski Oblast,” answered the chinovnik. In Europe people talk of the rigors of Russia’s winter. In Russia of the cold of Siberia. In Siberia, along the railway, when the thermometer gets down into the forties and the sentries pick up sparrows too numb to fly, they say, “It’s as cold as the Yakutsk.”