RUINED FARMERS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20364, 23 July 1934, Page 12

RUINED FARMERS.

Thousands in Relief Camps in Canada. DROUGHT IN PRAIRIES. (By lIATIC T. GRF.iJKe.) WINNIPEG, June IS. When tou come down the eastern elope of the great continental divide and into the 1000-niile-wide cereal belt of the niid-West, you are in the midst of human activity which, like the mountains themselves, is on a gigantic scale. Yet here to-day the picture is hardly less grim than the implacable mountains themselves, for drought and depression have brought the cereal producers on either side of the international boundary almost to desperation. Their crops, planted and attended at the cost of labour incredible, and toil throughout the daylight hours, which here during half the year are about eighteen of the day, have been burned by the sun of endless days without rain, and ravished by the high hot winds of the. great plains until hundreds upon hundreds of fanners have been utterly ruined. Many of. them have planted three times as their seeds have failed to germinate, and yet the rain lias never come. This has meant ruin, the foreclosure of the mortgages, which arc upon 19 out of every 20. farms of the American West to-day, or else the complete abandonment of those farms. A few days ago, in the little prairie city of Brandon, Manitoba, I was talking with a travelling man who “makes” the territory on either side of the boundary, southern Manitoba and the States of North and South Dakota. He said that both the Dakotas were in absolute desperation, and that more than 4000 farms had been abandoned in this region during the past two years. What becomes of the unfortunates who have fled the wheat fields? Who can say ? Many have drifted to the cities, there to make the unemployment problem the more acute. Others hav£ taken to relief works, and yet others' aarely exist, no one can say how. And what of their families? The answers, iven if found, would be too unpleasant .o dwell upon.

Relief Camps. Here in the prairie provinces, Alberta,' Saskatchewan, Manitoba, thousands of unemployed are in relief camps similar to those in New Zealand. All that they receive as compensation, besides theil* rough food and rougher lodgings, is five dollars a month. No allowance for clothes, nothing whatever, but the five dollars “for pocket money.” And among these men on “relief ’ work aie any number of former professional men, doctors, dentists, attorneys, “white collar” people by the scores. Such a thing is a mockery‘if you persist in the notion that this is a “civilised” age, whatever that means. Men who perhaps, have spent thousands to educate themselves professionally and who have laboured to develop a practice —and now find themselves out in the hush or among the mountains working for five dollars a month, “and keep.”

Well, there are 40.000 unemployed between here and the Coast, and nothing but the drabbest of prospects for the future. The Dominion Government supplies the individual provinces with one dollar to every two the latter raise themselves, hut the resources of the local governments are about exhausted, Saskatchewan’s, as you are informed, completely. Moreover, here i.; a climate such as few people who have not experienced it can comprehend at all. There are about four warm months, and these may not be so warm at that, though occasionally they are very hot indeed, with high, dry winds that parch they skin like an overheated room in the States, where the steam is turned on the moment there is a nip in the outer air. But the other eight months are something else again, and from December to April there arc weeks at a time when the temperature does not rise above 15 degrees below zero at all, and when at night it drops in many places to more than 50 degrees below. Not 50 “degrees of frost,” mind you, hut 50 degrees below zero! What think you of “relief work.” building roads, clearing land, constructing bridges and felling timber, at 50 degrees below zero, and five dollars a month pay? Backs to the Wall. Such is depression on the prairies, and it is as bad on the other side of the boundary, with the exception that for five dollars a month substitute 20 to 30, and better food and lodgings. However, no one can say how long that will continue, for the huge sums already advanced by the National Government are fast being used up. The drought throughout the whole mid-West has been worse in the States than in Canada and ruin stalks through Nebraska, lowa. Kansas and the other cereal-producing States. The Federal Government is even purchasing at wholesale farm implements and distributing them to ruined farmers, from whom mortgage foreclosures have swept everything. Yet atop all else a drought unprecedented for decades lias burned up or prevented from germinating crop after crop. The farmers of America, hard pressed for years and not even sharing to any great extent the so-called prosperity of the “boom” period, have their backs to the wall indeed to-day. In normal times these prairie cities, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, and the smaller towns like Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw and Swift Current, are pleasant places. The climate, though extreme,-is healthy, as is apparent in the appearance of the people. The air is clear and bracing, and the spring and autumn sun like a benediction. From all of Europe people have come here, and in any high school graduating class you will note names belonging to a dozen nationalities, mostly Central European. But here this medley has thus far created no problem, political or social. It lias been content to till the soil laboriously, to live simply and be grateful for political liberty. It lias produced succeeding generations of incredibly mixed blood, but generally fine types of manhood and womanhood; in brief, what is generally understood by “good Americans.” or, specifically, good Canadians, though not necessarily 100percenters, either American or British, but honest and loyal subjects of the Empire. Like the rest of the world, however, they are being tried in the crucible of uncertainty and need to-day.