BEATEN BY DUST

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12534, 22 April 1935, Page 5

BEATEN BY DUST

PEOPLE PRAY FOR RAIN AND GRASS. PATHETIC CONDITIONS IN OKLAHOMA. (U.P.A. by Elec: Tol. Copyright.) (Received April 20, 5 p.m.) CHICAGO, April 19. Heavy rains to-day broke the drought .and settled the dust in Texas Panhandle. Downpours were reported throughout most of the Stnt,e with moisture precipitation extending through South Western Oklahoma and light rains and mist as far west as Albuquerque, New Mexico, The Oklahoma Panhandle however, reported only clouds. Reports from Livingston (Montana) state that, driven from tlieihomes by the dust storms, a motorcade of North Dakota farmers—men, women and children—wore heading west to-day, seeking new homes where the duest does not blow. Tli'ey hoped to find work and honio sites in Western Montana or Idaho. In all 125 persons were in tho caravan. They stated that they will be followed by others from their community. Merchants and tradesmen said that the decision to make the trek came after three continuous and particularly virulent days of gale driven grime, in which life was both unsafe and unbearable. WASHINGTON, April 19. A competent observer, who has just returned to Oklahoma city, following a thousand mile journey through the dust-desolated areas of Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and New (Mexico, declares:

“The inhabitants of the sector mostly fear the coming summer. One great ranch owner said ‘This country will be a living hell when the hot winds of the summer come —the hot blasts of July and August .—and this eternally blowing sand will drive us out if it does not kill, us..’ Residehts of. the sector are moving out by scores and hundreds of others are expected to follow in the next two months. The hardy pioneer spirit that brought them to the high plains country and kept them there during years of bitter struggle have finally been broken. People pray for rain and-grass; yet lieavv rains would make bad lands out of the plains. Few have any faith in the Government’s attempts to control the dust. Two years of propitious weather might see the grass started again, although in some places even alpha grass, which is considered the hardiest, has been killed by root exposure. Another rainless and windy summer will depopulate the dust country. Millions on millions of acres are drifted with sand. What I saw was utter desolation from horizon to horizon.”