During construction of the [M 003 / East Chinese Railway], a small army of [G 06 / Cossacks] was needed to defend against roving groups of bandits (`hunghutzes') who raided construction camps for horses and firearms, robbed workers on pay days, and attacked supply vessels. The chief engineer, Yugovich, was obliged to increase his initial force of 700 police to 5,000, build barracks and watch towers, and maintain mounted patrols along the route. These measures were costly (the police alone cost $1,250,000 per year) and far from effective since the hunghutzes infiltrated into camps as workers.
In the summer of 1899 a particularly severe epidemic of bubonic plague broke out. Railway doctors were rushed to the scene, while additional physicians, bacteriologists and surgeon's assistants with vaccines and disinfectants to prevent the disease from spreading, were dispatched from St Petersburg.
Panicky laborers were on the verge of flight. To calm the hysteria the railway's board of directors imported a highly revered monk to inspire strength and appointed a priest to live in the workers' camp to relieve anxiety further by his spiritual guidance. The board also added a monetary incentive to discourage desertion: if an employee died of plague, his relatives would receive a grant of two thirds of his annual wage multiplied 10 times. These measures succeeded in calming the workers and no more than three deaths occurred among the 2,600 in the camp.
The greatest costs were incurred after May 1900 with the [G 05 / Boxer Rebellion]. In the Mukden region, 130 miles of telegraph and railway installations were destroyed. War Minister, Alexis Kuropatkin, welcomed the Boxer Rebellion. He mobilized 200,000 troops, telling Witte: "This will give us an excuse for seizing Manchuria." Before the last pockets of resistance had been wiped out in December, 560 of the 800 miles built to date were destroyed - ties, rails and spikes had been torn up and carried off; telegraph poles had been cut down and the wires stolen; stations and employees' quarters had been burned to the ground; looters had cleaned out administrative buildings, warehouses and workshops; and rolling stock had been reduced to irreparable wreckage. Losses totaled some US$35,873,000.
