Производительные силы района Мурманской железной дороги, 1923 г. / Правление Мурманской ж. д. – Петрозаводск : Типо-Литография Мурманской железной дороги, 1923.

m i . gions). but dairyf'arming for which the northern latitudes’ conditions seem to be most favourable. It is not in vain that Canada, Siberia, Danemark, Sweden and Finland have become the chief suppliers of milk produce to the world market. Dairy-farming is quite possible ne arly everywhere in the region of the Railway not excluding its fart hest outskirts. The region of northern marshes and swamps can also be used for rein-deer breeding. That region’s vast spaces answer to every condition necessary for its becoming the greatest centre of rein deer trade in Europe being second only to the Eastern part of the Archangel government.. A great future is undoubtedly reserved to fishing. According to most modest calculations the Mourman Railway region with the adj oining seas, if rationally exploited, can afford yearly no less than я50.000 000 lbs fish. We must point out the abundance of salmon and gang-fish species: 50% of the salmon taken in the Russian North is taken in the Mourman Railway region. The peculiarity of the enumerated branches of economical life consists in their depending more on human labour than on material means of production, wherefore they are quite up to the measure of our country, poor in funds and rich in its population’s unapplied labow . It must be admitted that a rational working of forests and, partly, of fisheries requires the outlay of some material funds, but here human labour trill nevertheless always prevail. As to the mineral resources, they are as yet so unsufficiently • explored that we are unable to even roughly trace their possible pros pects. Hut we can already- go as far as t-о affirm the great practical importance of bog-ore, feldspar, quartz, Muscovite and Olonetz-marbles. All of these either have already been exploited before or /are at pre sent being exploited, and their complete exploitation depends on im proved means of communication as well as on the obtaining of suffi cient hands. / True it is that the Railway region lacks the so necessary coal, but it is fully compensated by the comparative neighbourhood of Spitzimrgen’s enormous collieries, on the one hand, and the abundance of hydraulic power along the whole stretch of the line, un the other. Mighty sources of water power are dispersed in different places at near distances from the line, which will permit to electrificate the latter and to supply newly established enterprises with cheap electri cal energy. Standing before direct active partaking in the local industrial life an unusual proceeding for Russian Railways—the Mourman Rail way Direction wants to give the public an insight of its region’s na tural resources, as well as of the conditions of exploiting the same. That purpose is served by the present collection of articles made by the Members of the Russian Academy of Science S. Platonoff and A. Foel-sman as well as by other men of science well acquainted with the country in question.