Raw Red Burn

Down upon a good third of the U. S. poured a blistering sun last week, broiling, baking, burning an area from Wisconsin to New Mexico, from Illinois to Montana. Up soared thermometers in Bartlesville, Okla. (101DEG), Bismarck. N. Dak. (102DEG), Manhattan, Kans. (103DEG), St. Joseph, Mo. (104-o St. Paul, Minn. (105DEG), Huron, S. Dak. (106DEG), Morris, Ill. (107DEG), Sac City, Ia. (108DEG). Peat bog fires ate their way into the city limits of Milwaukee, while townsfolk panted in an all-time high temperature of 103DEG. At 102DEG, Chicago missed by less than a degree its all-time top torridity. Flushed and groggy, schoolchildren were sent home in Des Moines and Minneapolis.

Not only was the Midwest as hot as the hinges of Hell. It was also tinder dry. It had been dry for five rainless months. Lake Michigan reached its lowest stage in a decade. The Mississippi was lower than it had ever been. On the Great Lakes, cargo boats went 25% light to get over the shoals. Aviators had to climb 5,000 ft. above Omaha to surmount sulphur-colored dust clouds. But the distress to navigators, airmen and city folk was nothing to the desperation of Midwestern farmers, as they watched their fields incinerate, their cattle actually perish of hunger and thirst.

Farmers in eastern Illinois quit working their powdery fields. Around Rock Island the oat crop was conceded to be destroyed and cattle were let in to munch on what was left. Five hundred farmers in three Wisconsin counties rounded up 26,000 head of half starved cattle, loaded them on stock cars, shipped them north to rented fields in the Lake Superior region. At Kansas City, George E. Farrell of AAA estimated that the wheat crop was being abandoned at the rate of 1,000,000 bu. a day, that growers were losing $1,000,000 daily. On the Chicago wheat exchange, wheat rose almost its 5-c- limit to $1.07. This meant money only for farmers in Texas and Oklahoma, on the drought's fringe, where harvests were abundant and ten days early.

For the records, the Chicago Weather Bureau announced that precipitation over 1,000,000 sq. mi. from the Rockies to the Lakes was less than 20% normal. "Worst drought since 1894," said the Lincoln, Neb. Weather Bureau. "Worst in 50 years," retorted Chicago. "There has never been anything like it," cried AAAdministrator Chester Davis. "For intensity, duration and scope, this drought exceeds anything in our knowledge. The ensuing crop failure is likely to be just as drastic."

Relief. Plenty of animals were starving, but as yet few people. That would come later. The great summer drought of 1930 did not deliver its full impact of human misery until the following autumn and winter. Recalling the volunteer assistance which South Dakota gave Arkansas in those terrible times, Editor W. T. Sitlington of the Little Rock Arkansas Democrat called upon the farmers of his State to repay a "mercy debt." Taking the cue, Governor J. Marion Futrell of Arkansas declared : "Gratitude calls upon the people of Arkansas who are able to do so, to show their appreciation and to show that they never forget a friend." Last week 20 carloads of hay, cotton seed meal and cake and other livestock food rolled out of grateful Arkansas bound for prostrate South Dakota.

In 1930 President Hoover, a prime Reliever in his time, laid down the principle that the Federal Government was no match for an Act of God. The Red Cross raised $5,000,000 to care for the needy, and the Administration, slow to assume the drought burden, was taunted with the charge that it would feed a starving mule but not a human being. Since then fashions in Relief have changed. Last week nobody dreamed of conscripting the Red Cross for drought service. Federal Relief Administrator Harry Lloyd Hopkins, who did not flinch from the task of supporting 4,000,000 jobless through the worst of the winter, was ready and willing to accept for the Government the obligation of drought relief.

President Roosevelt asked, and the House promptly passed, a $1,178,000,000 allocation for relief and rehabilitation during 1935, to which would be added $5,000,000,000 in RFC and PWA balances and savings if needed.

On Administrator Hopkins' office wall was a big U. S. map, an ugly red & blue splotch in its middle to show where the nation was burned raw. As a starter, Administrator Hopkins laid on the line $5,476,000 from his misery chest to be distributed at once for stricken families and stock-feeding throughout the drought-stricken area: Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming. "The drought," said he, "takes precedent around this office over everything else. This is a serious thing." Estimates for drought relief alone ran as high as $500,000,000.

"It's getting extremely serious," echoed Assistant Secretary Rexford Guy Tugwell over in the Department of Agriculture. In Iowa farmers were released from their domestic allotment obligations, allowed to plant quick forage crops for their skinny stock. A partial release of AAA stored surplus corn was effected. Biggest measure was a program to buy up 1,200,000 head of cattle, 20% of the Northwest's supply, process them before they 1) break their fodderless owners, or 2) starve to death.

Said Dean Walter Castella Coffey, of University of Minnesota's Department of Agriculture: "The situation is acute. Conditions are becoming more alarming hourly. The truth is, the U. S. is threatened with a food shortage."

Many a rustic sage had predicted that one good spell of destructive weather would make silage of all the Washington desk farmers' agronomist programs. The 1934 drought assumed really catastrophic stature when Dr. Tugwell did an amazing about-face and declared: "The AAA program is not necessarily one of crop reduction. Our policy may well be one of crop expansion."

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