DROUGHT WORSE

Taranaki Daily News, 13 August 1930, Page 9

DROUGHT WORSE

MANY FACE STARVATION

NO RAIN IN VICIOUS STORMS DISEASE ADDING' TO HAVOC UNEMPLOYMENT SPKEADING By Telegraph -Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 5.5 p.m. Washington, Aug. 11. The President, Air. Herbert Hoover, has been advised that unemployment, disease and in some eases actual starvation are complicating the situation due to the drought, which is becoming progressively worse despite a. tew scattered storms yesterday. The New York and New Jersey areas received a storm but instead of rain were showered with destructive hail. Other areas have been much damaged by unusual thunderstorms in which there was no rain but injurious lightning, firing buildings and killing live stock.

Emero-ency water restrictions have been ordered in Maryland, V iiginia, Pennslyvania and West Virginia. The live stock in these States is being fed on winter rations of hay and bran. Ten-dollar spring lambs are being sacrificed for 50 cents each. Canneries have closed down owing to the shortage of corn. Several towns have asked their citizens to send their laundry elsewhere to conserve the water. ... Herds of cattle congest the highways in Virginia as the farmers move tnem about in search of water. The ruination of crops has affected farm families not only from the standpoint of. income but by the cutting down of their own food supplies. Many face actual starvation because even the usual table vegetables are burned up and the cattle have been lost or are unmarketable. In Kentucky corn is a total loss and the tobcicco crop has been seriously damaged. Truck gardening farms have been almost wholly destroyed. The situation in Louisiana is severe. The cotton ciop is two-thirds ruined, hay and corn are completely lost and sugar-cane will be delayed by six weeks. Alabama reports that the cotton has been damaged. Typhoid is bad and infantile paralysis is spreading due to the dry weather.

Representatives of the suffering areas called on President Hoover, who received reports and promised all possible aid. One report stated: “Suffering among tenant farmers is beginning and will increase rapidly.”