GREAT DROUGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 134, 8 June 1934, Page 7

GREAT DROUGHT.

NATIONAL DISASTER.

525,000,000-Dollar Relief Plan Projected. FAMINE FEAR IN AMERICA. lUuited P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) WASHINGTON, June 7. "The drought now prevailing over the farm belt of the United States has reached the proportions of a national disaster," said President Roosevelt yesterday, in projecting his 525,000,-000-dollar relief programme. Although this expenditure will upset his plans to balance the Budget in 1930 the President believes that much and perhaps more will be essential in the lace of the prospective calamity. The drought has extended eastward and includes most of the New York State. It is producing an acute shortage of cattle fodder.

In matter-of-fact language, a Government report, issued yesterday, said the drought would materially affect the national food supply, and told why the President feared the situation had approached the proportions of a disaster. However, Mr. Roosevelt made it plain that there is little likelihood of anything like famine conditions. He found support in a comprehensive summary compiled by the Department of Agriculture.

This report said the ravages of the sun did not mean that there would be a national food shortage, but otherwise there were few cheerful lines in the most thorough review yet made of the loss and misery that arc growing out of the worst recorded drought in the history of the United States.

Approximately 30 States have felt tils effect of the drought, and the continued Jack of rain is rapidly turning portions of the'west and mid-west into the semblance of a desert.

A grain of comfort came from tlie weather bureau yesterday. It reported local showers, most of them light, in the Ohio Valley, and a section northward from Western lowa and Nebraska, in the last 24 hours. However, there is nothing to indicate that the break in the dry spell is in sight. The Government is going ahead with its preparations for the request to Congress for the 525,000,000-dollar relief fund.