Famine relief

“ With no previous experience of famine on so extensive a scale and unware that the drought of the previous year would have so disastrous an effect upon the grain supply, Government was utterly unprepared to meet the calamity that faced it during the hot weather months of 1866. With no organised measures of famine relief and hampered by lack of the means of speedy communication and transit, starvation had overtaken thousands of the unfortunate people before relief could come. ”

“ Apart from famine relief of all sorts, we are making it our chief object to save the crops of next year. Owing to the fact that the peasants are selling their horses for next to nothing, there is a grave danger that the fields will not be ploughed for the spring corn, so that the famine will be repeated next year. ”

“ In spite of well organized famine relief administered by missionaries and other representatives of foreign countries (some of whom lost their lives from famine fever when engaged in this work) , many people perished from starvation, fever or exposure.
Early one morning towards the end of February when the weather was still bitterly cold, a sad thing was happening inside a little wayside temple not far from one of the villages in this famine region. On the cold brick floor just in front of the idol's shrine lay a dying beggar. Famine was claiming one more victim. ”

“ In times past, it was the gaunt Avenger which decimated the people and which kept down the population within the range of tolerable existence. The god of dirt and insanitation carried away the unneeded residue left by famine. Famine is one of the very few evils before which human power stands helpless. The government has done very much by irrigation schemes and by the building of railways to mitigate [pg 022] this evil. By famine funds and relief works it strives, as it did the last famine, to reduce the mortality and suffering arising from these seasons of drought. ”

“ A state of famine implies relief works on which the Government pays a fixed rate of wages to all workers, and assistance of some kind is given to every one—women, children, babies, and the old, as well as the able-bodied workers. The rate is decided by the Famine Commissioner according to his estimate of the price of grain. ”

“ It has been estimated that five thousand adults and ten thousand children have already perished with famine, and that twenty-five per cent of the whole population will perish, unless the House will afford effective relief. ”

“ A combat with famine is to the State in India an act as much demanded by obvious expediency, as in the interests of humanity. This relief is afforded partly by remissions of revenue throughout the stricken districts, and partly by the opening of public works where the starving and destitute may find food and employment. In the winter of 1877-78 a terrible famine fell upon the North-West Provinces. The cultivated land in these provinces is mainly under two descriptions of crops—the rain crops, and the cold weather crops. ”

“ The government has a meteorological department, with observers stationed at several points in Africa and Arabia and in the islands of the sea, to record and report the actions of nature. Thus it has been able of late years to anticipate the fat and the lean harvests. It is possible to predict almost precisely several months in advance whether there will be a failure of crops, and a permanent famine commission has been organized to prepare measures of relief before they are needed. ”

“ The natives of the south know the principal famines of their generation by certain names. The one previous to 1877 was called 'the red wind famine.' No one could say why it received that name. The famine of 1877 was 'the great famine,' so termed on account of its unusually wide extent. The famine of 1890-2, when the relief works were established all over the country, was known as 'the fat coolie famine.' The word coolie has much the same meaning as journeyman. It implies a day labourer, one who is paid by the day. The people who earned a daily wage on the relief works were coolies. ”

“ Americans from all walks of life and every part of our country have responded quickly and generously to every famine that has occurred since World War II. And we have already raised more than $120 million for emergency relief for victims of the current famine in Africa. The generosity and compassion of our people deserve to be recognized and commended. ”

“ The experience gained in the great famines of 1898 and 1901 has been garnered by these commissions, and stored up in the “famine codes” of each separate province, where rules are provided for the treatment of famine directly a crop failure is seen to be probable. The first step is to open test works; and directly they show the necessity, regular relief works are established, in which the people may earn enough to keep them from starvation, until the time comes to sow the next crop. ”

“ When there is a famine in India, when owing to some unusual course of nature the sky refuses its rains and the earth its [197] fruits, relief works are provided in the provinces affected, trains of provisions are poured in from all parts of that great Empire, aid and assistance are given to the population involved, not merely to enable them to survive the period of famine, but to resume their occupations at its close. ”

“ The increase has been quite rapid during the last five years, owing to the experience of the last famine, when it was demonstrated that facilities for rapid transportation of food supplies from one part of the country to another were an absolute necessity. It is usually the case that when the inhabitants of one province are dying of starvation those of another are blessed with abundant crops, and the most effective remedy for famine is the means of distributing the food supply where it is needed. ”

“ But we are not exempt from famine. In the year 1816, known as the year of “eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death,” the crops failed throughout America because of freezing weather all summer long. Little or no food was raised and the Americans would have perished from famine had it not been for the wild meat in the woods. The people lived on deer and bear that winter. To-day if our food supply fails we can not live on venison. No country is by natural law exempt from famine. Our famine will come when we fill this country as thickly as men can stand; China and India have so filled themselves. ”

“ The almost constant threat of famine in Africa and the continuing food problems in Asia should remind us all of our global vulnerability, especially as the population continues to grow. Raising the global community's awareness of the hunger that afflicts the young, the infirm, the poor, and the elderly—and considering the needs of others each day—can bring change and help ensure our food supply for the future. ”

“ For example, the worst reports of hunger and starvation often come from countries that have been racked by years of political upheaval and civil war. Indeed, in countries such as the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, famine has not been so much the result of adverse weather conditions and crop shortages as of strife-related barriers to the distribution of food. The needless suffering of millions of innocent men, women, and children compels us to persevere in the quest for lasting peace and security. ”

“ America is leading the fight against global hunger. Today, more than half the world's food aid comes from the United States. And tonight, I ask Congress to support an innovative proposal to provide food assistance by purchasing crops directly from farmers in the developing world, so we can build up local agriculture and help break the cycle of famine. ”

“ The cultivation of this production, where it does not destroy life, does destroy comfort, and slaves may be compelled, but freemen will not go voluntarily, to raise the “paddy crop.” In India, where the people of many districts depend upon it entirely as a chief article of food, [Pg 188] famine is often the result, simply because the failure of one crop leaves the unenergetic people without any other present resource. ”

“ But this I may state in a sentence, that the greatest, probably the most prosperous, manufacturing industry that this country or the world has ever seen, has been suddenly and unexpectedly stricken down, but by a blow which had not been unforeseen or unforetold. Nearly five hundred thousand persons—men, women, and children—at this moment are saved from the utmost extremes of famine, not a few of them from death, by the contributions which they are receiving from all parts of the country. ”

“ Crawling along the mountain roads I found myself trying to estimate which of the two entailed most misery upon Mankind, the old-time famine, which I saw going on all round me in Morocco, caused by want of water and failure of the crops, or the artificial modern and economic famine so familiar in all large towns, where in the West End the rich die from a plethora of food, and in the East End the poor exist just at subsistence limit by continual work. ”

“ The world is making progress in ending hunger, albeit slowly. In some countries, civil strife and socialist policies continue to fuel famine. We must continue to work towards peace and incentive policies if we are to eliminate famine caused by poverty, drought, environmental decline, and inappropriate economic policies. Many governments throughout the world have recognized that the health of their nations and their people depends on a strong agriculture, based on free enterprise and competitive markets. ”

“ If famine threatened any part of the world, word of it could come in the twinkling of an eye, and millions on millions of tons of food-stuffs, speedily transported to the scene, would stave off the straitness and render the calamity impossible. ”

“ Even in our most thickly-peopled manufacturing districts, to which the staple articles of food are brought from far-distant regions, assistance from abroad, to sustain the poor, has never been asked; nor do I believe the poor have ever been reduced, for weeks together, to a diet of corn. But this famine at the South occurred in a region where most productive land can be purchased for from three to seven dollars an acre; where maize and wheat [Pg 250] grow kindly; where cattle, sheep, and hogs, may be pastured over thousands of acres, at no rent ”

“ The natural limit of population is starvation. The more bread the more mouths, less bread, fewer people. Europe and the Orient reached the starvation limit before America was settled. A bad crop meant a famine, and a famine started a plague. This plague and famine would sweep off a third of the population, and the rest could then raise food enough to thrive on. England and Wales have had famines, Ireland has had famines, France has had famines, Russia has a deadly famine after every bad crop year, while in India and China famine is a chronic condition.
America has never had a famine. ”

“ In the third place, the distribution of flour among poor families, even among those that still have means of their own, does not attain the purpose of forefending men from famine diseases, because in a family where strong men easily get along with poor food, the weak, the young, and the old contract disease from want and the poor quality of food.
In all famine-stricken places all families, both rich and poor, eat miserable bread made with lebeda-weed. ”

“ It thus comes about that scarcity amounting to a real famine cannot result from the failure of crops in any single year. It requires two consecutive failures to produce extensive suffering among the very poor, and three to result in a real famine. ”

“ While the means of support failed upon every side, and food rose to such enormous prices that everything that could possibly be eaten was economised, so that the starving dogs were drowned from compassion, the famine steadily advanced from the west and south to the east and north, till it involved the whole population in its crushing grasp. It was painfully interesting to mark the progress of the visitation, even in those parts of the country where its ravages were least felt. The small farmer had only his corn, designed for rent and seed. ”

“ They have likewise issued orders for the cultivation of the ground at each of the posts, by which means the residents will be far less exposed to famine whenever through the scarcity of animals, the sickness of the Indians, or any other cause, their supply of meat may fail. ”

“ Still, food has to be grown on land, and often on land distant from any means of water carriage; and the countries of Europe were forced in general to a policy of self-sufficiency, raising the requisite supplies of food at home under conditions however unfavorable. We may appreciate the short space of time separating us from this state of affairs by noting that in France, even in 1817, people were dying of famine in Lorraine, while wheat was abundant in Brittany ”

“ The miserable creatures will pick up chicken-weed, nettles, sorrell, bug-loss, preshagh, and sea-weed, which they will boil and eat with the voracity of persons writhing under the united agonies of hunger and death! Yet the very country thus groaning under such a terrible sweep of famine is actually pouring from all her ports a profusion of food, day after day ”

“ The people, in short, in the olden days, and even for some time after I landed in India, hoarded grain, and in times of scarcity they encroached upon their supplies of buried grain, whereas now they hoard money, which in time of famine can go but a very short way in buying grain. The statement that an increase of famines would be sure to ensue from the causes above indicated is amply corroborated by the facts. There is no evidence to show that droughts have increased, but there can be no doubt that in comparatively recent times famines and scarcities have. ”