NATIONAL RELIEF MEASURES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18646, 15 August 1930, Page 9

NATIONAL RELIEF MEASURES.

Fighting Drought In U.S.A. “NO NEED FOR ALARM.” United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright WASHINGTON, August 13. The Secretary of Agriculture (Mr A. M. Hyde), to-day requested the first emergency railway freight-reduction rates to apply to 198 counties in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and Indiana. After a consultation with President Hoover, the Secretary stated that the Agricultural Department would maintain a careful watch on retail prices, which, despite reports of increases from larger centres, apparently had not reached the level the Department considers unwarranted.

“There is no reason for the housewife to become alarmed or panicky,” he said, “and although some trucks of garden products have been damaged, there is no real shortage.” Representative Laguardia to-day called upon President Hoover to protest against the 25 to 35 per cent increase in the prices in 'New York City for meat, butter, eggs, vegetables and milk.

Reports from all sections of the country were that food prices were going up, with no prospects of reduction before next year. Individual instances of sharp increases were 40 per cent on potato prices in Madison and Wisconsin; two dollars per bushel on beans in Indiana; three cents per dozen eggs in Kansas; and fifty per cent on rock melons in Indiana.

The Weather Bureau has announced that fourteen of the 50 centres in the fourteen drought-stricken States have reported less than l-10th of an inch of rain in the last two weeks, at a time when only an abundance of rain could rescue the crops.