Wake of a Wave

One day last week the good people of Omaha mopped their brows under a temperature of 106DEG. For the tenth consecutive day their thermometers had registered more than 100DEG. In St. Louis hot weather history was made--with 110DEG. Vinita, Okla. topped that record with 117DEG on the 36th consecutive day of 100DEG or more heat. At the Century of Progress the Chicago Symphony Orchestra stopped a concert at the halfway point when the huge Havoline thermometer showed 106DEG.

In Wrangell, Alaska, the temperature climbed to 100DEG, where it had never been seen before. Near Chicago in Cook County's Oak Forest Infirmary 3,983 aged, penniless inmates still wore their woollen shirts, long winter underwear, ate oatmeal and corned beef hash, and worked in the sun-baked fields. In five days 39 of them dropped dead. Missouri had over 400 deaths. And one day during the hot spell there was a brisk snowfall at Colorado Springs.

Sooner or later all heat waves must end. Late last week showers and clouds changed the weather. The heat wave rolled out of the Midwest and off the front pages but in its fiery wake lay death, dearth and desolation.

In Washington, 1,319 counties in 23 States were pricked off on the huge map in the office of Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins as hopelessly stricken by drought.

"Never Before." The Mississippi River at St. Louis carries water from 691,000 sq. mi. of territory. It is normally lowest in winter when ice holds moisture back in the headwaters. It is normally highest between April and July. In June 1929 it was at top level, even with its banks, 30.8 ft. above the zero mark on the Weather Bureau's gauge. There was no June rise this year. In July the river fell more than six inches. Last week it was zero, an all-time low for July. "Never before," declared the Weather Bureau, "has there been such a general drying up of streams in July from the Rocky Mountains to the crest of the Appalachians."

In Oklahoma, with only 23% of normal July rainfall, countless fires licked their way through forests and across prairies. It was officially estimated that the water supply necessary to keep 100,000 head of cattle alive would be exhausted in two weeks. On July 1 Oklahoma's corn crop was estimated at 15,000,000 bu. A week later it was estimated at 10,000,000 bu. Last week there were no official estimates, but few persons expected the crop to reach 5,000,000 bu.

In Kansas, farmers last week were selling 200,000 head of cattle to the Government before they died on the hoof from thirst. In some places farmers drove their livestock into woodlots and cut down trees to give them leaves to munch. Travelers through southwestern Kansas reported what they mistook for a new oil boom. Everywhere drilling crews were working night and day driving wells for water.

In Texas the corn crop was estimated at less than one-fourth of normal. Carloads of cattle too emaciated for slaughter were shipped to Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia for fattening. Other thousands were slaughtered for canning, but neither of these methods could take care of the numbers laid low by the drought. Cowboys rode out on the ranges, began shooting down starved animals at the rate of 1,000 head a day.

"Poorest." The Department of Agriculture reported: "Dairy pastures are in the poorest condition on record. Milk production ... on July 1 was the smallest on record for that date.'' The July 1 wheat estimate--484,000,000 bu., about half a normal crop--had already told the story of the U. S. wheat farmer. The corn estimate--2,100,000,000 bu.--was by last week a piece of outdated optimism. The potato crop in upper New York State, in New Jersey, on Long Island was suffering severely. Massachusetts had to close all its forests to the public because of the fire hazard. On the Pacific Coast the fruit crop had already suffered considerably. In April and May drought had been a local disaster. In July it was a national catastrophe.

God's Punishment? The Press carried practically no reports of drought conditions in the Dakotas because the Dakotas no longer had any crops to lose. Yet one of the most talked of articles of the day concerned this new U. S. Sahara and appeared last fortnight in the Saturday Evening Post. Not sensational, it was a piece of excellent reporting by Morris Markey. He began: ''This is written from a small town in South Dakota. ... It has not rained in this town for eleven months. . . . In every direction the fields go off to the horizon, brown and full of dust. . . . You cannot take a bath in this hotel. ... If you want a drink of water, you go down to the kitchen. The cook opens the door of the electric refrigerator and pours out three-quarters of a glassful of something that looks like water and tastes like iron filings. . . .

"Men and women and children sat in hot rooms, gazing out over the fields that shimmered in the heat. They, too, seemed to share the defeat which has been administered to the land. . . . You can hear a sermon in the church any Sunday morning or a discourse on the courthouse steps any evening at all, questioning God's approval of crop reduction, herd reduction. The theme is always the same:

" 'We have been taught to work hard and gain from our acres everything they could possibly produce--to nurture our animals thriftily and gain from nature the last meed of God-given fertility. That is God's own command to us, as we can read in the Bible any time. But now they tell us that we raise too much. They tell us to leave some of our acres bare and watch them go to weed, and they come up and give us a little money and shoot our cattle on the ground, saying the cattle are starving and there are too many cattle anyway. God does not approve of that.'"

By last week the idea had become so widespread among hard-hit farmers that God was afflicting them with the drought for a purpose that Secretary of Agriculture Wallace was moved to speak out: "Yes, the drought is serious. But there is one angle which has a touch of the grotesque. That is the attempt to persuade farmers that the Lord is punishing them for reducing acreage.

"If that is true, I wonder why the Almighty has not punished the factory owners, who through these years have stopped production the moment they could no longer make profit."

With a firmer faith in the three A's than in Alpha and Omega, Secretary Wallace claimed that the AAA's operations had ameliorated the severity of the catastrophe because: 1) It had induced farmers to store 270,000,000 bu. of corn in sealed bins thereby laying by a store of feed; 2) the 10-c- increase in the price of corn had decreased corn consumption 50,000,000 bu. thereby saving more corn for feed; 3) the 28% reduction in the pig crop would save 360,000,000 bu. of corn otherwise needed for feed.

Depopulation of Dakotas. While farmers' remarks aroused the Government, Government remarks aroused the farmers. Chunky, 76-year-old Reclamation Commissioner Elwood Mead, who lost his right arm under a trolley car 35 years ago, returned to Washington from the dry places to declare: "Tens of thousands of people must be moved from the drought-stricken western half of the Dakotas and the eastern slope of the Rockies. ... In these districts there is not enough grass to feed one animal. There is no moisture in the ground. There is an almost complete lack of food and water. State authorities have told me they will have to move thousands of families. In general, it is the most complete crop failure in 50 years."

When Dakotans protested bitterly that they did not wish to be moved from their homes, that talk of evacuating the entire western half of their States was absurd, Dr. Mead hastened to say that no one would be forced to leave. The Government would merely offer to buy or lease their lands, would move the owners to better farms.

Until 50 years ago the region which Dr. Mead proposed to depopulate was covered with buffalo grass, considered too dry for farming. Then bright professors of agriculture proceeded to show how it could be "dry-farmed" by planting crops needing little water, timing them to grow on the moisture provided by the melting of winter's snow. By the turn of the century men were beginning to plow under the buffalo grass, turn grazing country into farms. Wartime demand for wheat resulted in a vast increase of dry farming. Even the swamps were drained until the whole country was converted into farms. With grass and swamps gone the land grew drier and drier until this year's drought reduced it to the ignoble status of a dusty desert.

Said Dr. Mead, mincing no words: "Attempts to practice agriculture on a large portion of the mistreated drought lands must be abandoned, and a plan must be evolved for the use of this land for grazing purposes. . . . There is no doubt that if agriculture and livestock raising are entirely eliminated for a few years, and the land planted with grass, original conditions can be restored."

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