REFUGEES 
169 
bodies, the central labor exchange expanded its work of regulating 
local supply and demand, forming large groups of workers for em- 
ployers applying to the exchanges, studying labor markets and 
wage conditions. Beginning by serving the needs of refugees only, 
the central labor exchange gradually extended its activities to the 
entire labor market and rendered considerable service to Russian 
agriculture during the season of 1916. 
The statistical subcommittee made it its business to ascertain the 
extent and direction of the movement of refugees and to watch the 
work of the canteens. Later, it intended also to take a census of 
refugee families on a uniform plan. The local committees were fully 
aware of the importance of such a census, and in most of the prov- 
inces they took it in accordance with the program laid down by the 
statistical subcommittees, in spite of all the obstacles placed in their 
way by the Ministry of the Interior and its local organs. 
A Statistical Analysis of the Refugee Movement. 
According to the figures obtained by the subcommittee, the num- 
ber of refugees rose from 105,000 on the first day of registration to 
205,000 on October 5, 1915, after which it began to decline rapidly, 
falling as low as 13,000 on November 5. After this date the decline 
continued, dropping as low as 2,000 or 3,000 toward the end of No- 
vember, 1915.® Simultaneously the number of refugees served by 
the canteens also declined. 
The statistical subcommittee also published information regard- 
ing refugees who had settled down. The number of such refugees on 
July 1, 1916, was 2,820,031, distributed over sixty-four provinces 
and territories of European and Asiatic Russia. The wave of this 
great migration reached the remotest corners of the Empire, 
Vladivostok on the Pacific and Tashkent in Central Asia. The 
largest number of refugees settled in new places were discovered in 
the province of Ekaterinoslav, namely 242,406, of whom about 
50,000 had taken up their abode in the city of Ekaterinoslav itself, 
numbers equal respectively to 7.01 per cent of the native popula- 
tion of the entire province and 28.7 per cent of the residents of the 
city. The lowest percentage of refugees was found in Bessarabia. 
3 Izvestia (Bulletin), No. 82, p. 99.