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About The Loup City northwestern. (Loup City, Neb.) 189?-1917 | View Entire Issue (April 25, 1907)
7HS'U57MBC/7ZCW QT /OOP AT C/fflYfi7A7f(y Boston.—On the treeless steppes ot Russia, beyond the "pale." and in the arid districts of northeastern China, thousands ot human beings are dying for want of food. Lack of rain in the first instance, excess of it in the sec ond is the cause. Fire provinces in China and 21 in Russia are affected, and. while from the former country come awful tales of the bartering of human flesh for food, of the sale of little children, and of the breaking out of the plague among the close-packed sufferers, from Russia comes a wail of despair, where men. women and children are trying to cling to life, with almost nothing to eat and with no fuel in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero. Conditions are such in both coun tries that it is estimated that what in this country would be the price of a single visit to the theater would save a human life until returning crops bring self-support. The Christian Herald of New York. »hich has taken charge of the Ameri can end of the Chinese famine relief, pledged itself to supply 10,000,000 i>ounds of flour, corn, cornmeal, medi cal supplies, etc., in addition to what had already been sent. The govern ment gave the army transport Gen. Buford to carry this consignment from San Francisco to Shanghai. Government Aid Inadequate. In Russia the famine is being re lieved to some extent by government aid. but the restrictions this aid car ries with It make it very inadequate. It involves the delivery of one pound of bread a day only to sufferers less than 17 and more than 59 years of age. Infants under one year, and all the vast majority between 17 and 59 get nothing except what the unselfish among the more fortunate are willing io share. And. above and beyond this, there is the fact that the black hand of Russian official graft appropriates for private ends at least one-half of the money the government voted for relief. Bishop Potter, of New York, is pres ident and Dr. Samuel J. Barrows, for merly of Boston, is secretary' of the American relief for Russia. A foreign correspondent writing in description of the affected districts says: “Every semblance of grass plants and roots has disappeared, and starving parents are eating their chil dren. I know this to be true, and have myself found human flesh on sale." Three Months in Famine’s Grip. The district involved in the famine is known as “Kianpeh.” meaning •'north of the river," the stream being the Yangtse. For more than three months thi3 region in northern China has been in the remorseless grasp of famine and famine-bred disease. Forty days of rain and consequent floods heaped calamity upon the 40,000 square miles of territory" and its 15, 000,000 of people. Before new crops can be raised it is estimated that, despite the best efforts for relief, the death list will exceed that of Naples, San Francisco and Jamaica rolled into one. Writing after a tour through one of the famine camps of 30,000 starving refugees, a correspondent said recent ly "Utile more than an hour ago l saw two women, presumably mother and grandmother, wailing over the tiny coffin of a child that had been part of grim famine's daily toil. “It is all so horrible, so bverpower iag, so haunting, so heartrending, that •me cannot write of it in orderly fash ion. It seems as if only the repeated cry of 'Help! Help! Help!' can be fashioned for the ears of the prosper ous American people, to whom God has givey a year of plenty, while the poor of China perish from want. 4 "Out of the awful mass of suffering a succession of individual pictures comes trooping before my vision. There was the man. too weak to stand erect, who bore on his back, as older brothers carry babies in China, 1^ blind old mother, the mere skin-an bone framework of a woman. They wanted help, and pleaded for it in the thin whine of the utterly miserable— and I dared not give them so much as a copper! The Mother’s Suffering. “Or that mother, hard-eyed and rigid, who stood against a wall with her six children gathered about her tattered skirts, staring out uncaring on a company of living refugees, who are a more melancholy sight than the thousands of ancient graves among which they are encamped. They had been fed—one portion of thin, watery rice porridge for them all—and now they must wait in the cold for another i 24 hours to pass before they can be ■ fed again—a.nd even then some j stronger ones, may push them aside and steal their turn at the meager re lief. “Strange incongruities flash into one’s mind as he walks about among these 30,000 refugees. As I passed this morning an old, old woman, cov ered only by a few rags, who sat on the cold, bare ground, sharing her small bowl of rice with a babe of 12 or 18 months, evidently her grandchild, who sat on her knees, I thought of some grandmothers whom I know in America—sweet-faced and comfortable and kindly, whose evening of life is made pleasant by the love of children and grandchildren, and who know not the word want. And I recalled some baby friends—sweet, ruddy little dears, wrapped in the finest linen, with ward robes upon which love has lavished its generosity, and whose food is a matter of careful consultation with physicians and friends. “Of course, I cannot imagine these delicately nut.ured babes in dirty tat ters and exposed to the cold winter night and day. week after week, yet sortehow one picture suggests the other. Just so. when a refugee mother accosted us this morning and asked us ' to accept her child as a gift, imagina ! tion brought instantly to view the pre ciousness of the American children l know. Suffering unparalleled. “Incidents could be piled upon inci dents; every one of these 30,000 refu gees incarnates a story—a story of a home abandoned, of toilsome journeys to this southern district in the hope of finding a pittance of food to allay that . awful gnawing of hunger; of the ■ eager hunt for a sheltered nook in a doorway; of being driven from spot to spot, until at last a few feet of bare earth are secured out among the graves with the other refugees—a space no bigger than a Chinese grave suffices for an entire Chinese family; of the daily and nightly huddling to gether in one mass for the sake of hu man warmth; of the search for dry gra^s with which to make a tiny fire; of the morning struggle fcr a portion of the government rice and of that in describable, terrible, primitive duel between life and starvation which the Chinese so dauntlessly endure “In all this, I write of the best, and not of the worst, This is only the first outpost of the famine district. Always Close to Starvation. “The Chinese live closer to actual starvation than it is possible for a westerner to comprehend; they are al ways poor. So the failure of the crops I —-not to mention the destruction of ■ their homes by flood—at once placed ! them in a state of actual destitution, 1 which can only be relieved when the | wheat crop is harvested in July. | Meanwhile, owing to lack of seed, only i half of the spring wheat crop has been I planted." The cargo of food which the Chris tian Herald sent over to the stricken district in China cost $100,000, and this sum was raised by popular sub scription. Its arrival in China is expected to do much for the sufferers, but more food will have to fellow at once. Con ditions have grown steadily worse, and plague has broken out in one or two of the provinces. The sufferers are huddled together in thousands in the camps. Millions Face Death. In Russia the conditions are little less appalling. For the first time in the history of such catastrophes in Russia the government itself is aroused to the necessity for relieving the stress. The famine affects no less than 30,000,000 peasants inhabiting an area half as large as the United States, and while this area lies be tween the steppes and “White Rus sia,” the famine is affecting indirectly . the people within the “pale” who de pend upon the peasants for trade and commerce. The peasantry represents 85 per cent, of the entire population. Their one means of livelihood is farming, and when the rain did not come to make their crops grow the past season their only hope of sustenance was gone. Last year in more than 1.500,000 square miles of Russian territory there was sowing but no reaping. The peas ants hopefully put their little store of seed grain into the ground. When the arid land failed to return a crop, not only were they robbed of the fruits of their toil, but their seed grain itself, which might have served as food, was gone. There was nowhere to turn for work or succor. Hundreds of miles away there were cities, but the few daring ones who reached them sent I back the hopeless words: “No work.-’ Wholesale “Grafting.” In 1891, when the famine killed hun dreds, the Russian government hit upon the expedient of forbidding the word "hunger,” but the famine of the present is so much greater that the I government is fully alive to it. Be sides having appropriated 135,000,000 already, it is now negotiating a loan of $37,000,000 more for famine relief. But even this sum is totally inadequate ! to the work in hand, especially as half | of the money will line the pockets or official grafters to whom the deaths of thousands of poor peasants is merely an unfortunate incident in their own short cut to wealth. At present the relief work in Russia consists of doling out a pound of bread a day to sufferers. The aged and minors get nothing. Some families of five or six have perhaps two who draw bread. Other families have none. If two of a fam ily of six draw bread and divide it equally it means that each member! eats one-third of a pound a day. The regular diet of a Russian peasant is j five pounds of bread daily. Thus the most fortunate are now existing upon \ one-fifteenth of their regular fare, or, to an American who has three square meals a day, two meals in three weeks. The very seeds of the weeds have been eaten and the ground has been stripped of every green thing. The lit tle horses have all been sold or eaten, and the occasional cows, too. Nothing remains but. the hope of relief from , the outside. There is no wood for fires and many families have joined , together in one house for warmth, j tearing the other dwellings down for ' fuel. It is estimated that in the province of Samara alone there will be 200,000 i deaths in a total population of 3,000, 000. and others of the 21 provinces af- j fected will have like averages. Seek Aid of the World. Determined efforts are now being ; made to enlist the sympathy of the world with the suffering, ignorant peasants, and emissaries have been sent to this and other countries. M. Shiskoff, who is in America to enlist aid. says that $8 will save the life of ! an adult and that $5 will keep a child | from dying. SHOWED NOBILITY OF SOUL. Poor Man’s Remarkable Fortitude in Face of Gloom. For real, whole-souled optimism in •the face of gloom, submission to ap uarent defeat of noble aims and sun ahininess of disposition when every lurn of fortune's wheel means loss, give me the old paper man l know, whose wife worked in the washtub in order to assist him to make both ends meet, and who when she lay dying cheered her to the last with roseate tales of the success of his precarious business on the street cor ner" said a Philadelphia charity work er the other day. “Such devotion I never saw. The old woman required so much of her husband’s time and attention that it is a wonder he was able to earn enough to keep his own body and soul together, to say nothing of her needs. But he never whimpered. “ ‘He’s always been the same,' the good wife told me the first day I found them in a little room down town. Poor soul, she wag In the last stages of consumption, but as cheer ful as her husband was. The day be fore her death she asked him: ‘How are you making out. John? Still hold ing your trade? Ah. poor Johr., you’ve had a hard time with your old. wom an, and it’s been hard for me to see you spending your money for med icines and food that I could io with out if I was well; but, rever mind, John; God will reward you for it j all.’ “John sup messed his tears,, which I could not do. ’It's all right, wife, for as long as you can be comfortable and 1 can keep well enough peddling my papers, neither of us shail want.' “Well, the fact was that John had not a dollar left when I came upon the scene. He had told ’iis sick wife this same story again and again. Every cent he had earned had gone for invalid comforts and the cost of prescriptions. Indeed. I just ar rived in time to save the woman from 1 learning the truth. On the day she died she told me that John had been able to earn more during her illness than they hud both previously earn fed together—‘that was when I could work at the washtub, you know,' she explained. She lingered until the sun sank in the west and with its last glint on the horizon her spirit depart ed. I shall never forget the fortitude of that old man, nor shall I ever lose the inspiration of his unselfish devo tion. He had lied to her, it is true, lied to her to whom he had always confided his secrets, but the revela tion of the secret that he carried about with him while she lay ill unto death he forbore to make, lest she should be retarded in the recov ery he prayed might come to her. Even to me he did not utter one single complaint. "He is still selling his papers, and, what is more, Insists on sharing his profits with our society. Only an in cident in the lives of the very poor, but one that reaches the hearts of those who know their struggles and their victories. Need I add that this old hero shall not 'be left alone to suffer when he, too, will be called upon to fight bis battle against the grim reaper?" NO VALID REASONS PATRONIZING MAIL ORDER HOUSES IS WITHOUT EXCUSE. GOODS NOT EVEN CHEAPER With Freight Charges Added and Quality Considered the Home Merchant Does Best. (Copyrighted. 19<i6. by Alfred C. Clark.) The reasons why people should trade at home are numerous, but so far as we are able to learn but one reason is advanced for purchasing goods of mail order houses. That one reason—a saving of money—is often no reason at all. for in many instances the express charges or freight and cartage will bring the cost of an art! cle that as quoted in the price list seemed a wonderful bargain, almost or quite up to the price charged by the local dealer. But even were one able to save a few cents on the pur chase price by buying away from home, it apj>ears to us that the loss is infinitely more than the gain, for he who sends the money which he earns in the home town out to swell the coffers of wealthy dealers in dis tant cities cannot fail to forfeit in a considerable degree the respect of those around him. nor can he under these conditions preserve his self respect Intact The man who patronizes mail order houses must have a sneaking feeling the country merchant to carry on business. You must remember, too, that when you send your money to some big con cern in a distant city, you lessen the amount of money in circulation in your own residence town. If you had spent it at the home store, some of it at least would have been paid out by the proprietor in the form of wages t% his employes, they in turn would have expended it for the neces sities of life, and it would have passed from one to another of the home deal 1 ers. proving an important factor in the prosperity of the community. Hav ing sent it to the mail order house the probabilities are that it will never j again benefit anyone in your home town. You should trade with the home | merchant because he is the one from whom you ask and receive favors, i Perhaps you have had a run of ill luck ! —you have lost your position, had long-continued illness in the family, or have experienced difficulty in collect ing money due you. You are in straitened circumstances. Would a letter to the mail order house, stating all these circumstances, secure for you a supply of the necessaries of life on liberal credit terms? Most as suredly not. An appeal to the propri etors for aid in your extremity would be barren of results. It is the home merchant who stands ready to extend the credit neecssary to tide you over an emergency, and for this reason, if for no other, he should have your loyal support in your times of pros perity. Perhaps you are financially inde pendent, and have never known the necessity of asking for credit. Even The mail-order fiend is encroaching upon our town like a devastating prairie fire, and we should turn to with a will, and by the aid of the home trade plow run a protecting furrow around the community that will save us and our institutions from destruction. Such is the duty of every loyal resi dent. that everybody in town knows that he is a hindrance rather than a help to the community. He is not wanted in public positions, and when ques tions of local interest and importance are discussed, his opinion carries far less weight than the man who con tributes his share to the prosperity of the community by spending his mon ey where he earns it. In addition to losing in a large de- • gree the respect of others and his own self-respect, the man who does nothing to build up the town in which he lives fails to find the contentment which is necessary to happiness. Hav ing done nothing to make the town better, he is unable to see the many advantages it possesses, and is con tinually talking and thinking of its deficiencies. He does not move out, however, but stays on year after year, a discontented parasite, getting all he can and giving as little as possible in return. There is an unwritten law of nature that makes it impossible for one to really taken an interest in a place until he has done something for it. and it is oniy when we have done our share toward building up the town in which we live that it becomes a real home to us. Perhaps the local dealers In country towns do not always have in stock just the articles you desire, but they are usually willing to order whatever their customers want, and under or dinary circumstances can supply you as quickly as you can procure the goods from a mail order house. When you buy of the home merchant, the goods are before you and you see what you are getting, fn buying by i mail there is always a chance that when the goods arrive they will not j prove to be just what you expected and desired, in that case you are put to the inconvenience of sending them back for exchange, or if the need is immediate and pressing, you are '■ obliged to accept that which is not entirely satisfactory. Trade at home in order that your home town may have stores at which to trade. There are many times when you are in a hurry for some article^ there is no time to send to New York, Chicago, or elsewhere. Your need is immediate and imperative. You are glad under such circumstances to trade with the home merchant, yet if other people followed your example and patronized mail order houses, there would be no borne merchant to trade with. If others bought of him only when they wanted things in a hurry, and sent out of town for the greater part of their supplies, he would have left for more promising fields long ago, or if he had stayed in those circumstances, the sheriff would finally have closed his doors. You wouldn't like to live in a place with out ■tores, and yet It may be that you prefer to reside in a country town rather than in a city. Do your share, then, toward making it possible for then you are indebted to the home merchant for many of the advantages you enjoy. The proprietors of a mail order house would laugh you to scorn were you to ask them to subscribe to ward the building of your new church, the improvement of your school build ing, or the expenses of maintaining your fire department. The home mer chant contributes liberally to the sup port of these institutions so essential to the public comfort and well-being, and you cannot afford to withhold from him your patronage. You know your local dealers. Per haps they have grown from childhood to manhood in your home town; you were boys together, they have watched by you in sickness, and comforted you in sorrow, they take a kindly interest in your welfare. Do you not prefer that your trade should increase their small profits rather than add its quota to the millions of dollars annu ally sent to the mail order houses? If the home merchants prosper the town will be a better place in which to live. Their prosperity will be mani fested by improvements in the appear- \ ance of their own property, and by their increased liberality in contribut ing toward public improvements, and by helping them by your patronage, you will also be helping yourself and the entire community. ny uomg your snare toward adver- ! Using the interests of the community, you will make for yourself a place that heretofore you have never held. *ou will be looked up to and respect ed. and vour advice will be sought in public affairs. Uve and let live, and life will hold for you far more of en joyment and satisfacUon than it ever can if you live with the idea of get ting all jou can out of the town in which you reside and the people around you, and holding fast to what you get. regardless of your duty to others. Be loyal to your town, to your merchants, to the public welfare, and your home town will be the best place in the world in which to live. PRANCES a. HARRIS. The Utility of Beauty. Beauty and uUlity are not necessar ily antagonistic. Beauty itself is use ful in that it augments the happiness of life. Take away the flowers and birds, the varying colors of vegeta Uon, the litUe cascades and the In numerable things of beauty with which nature has endowed her scenery and life would be bereft of much of its gladness, much that ex alts and embellishes it, much that makes it more useful to the human family. Provocation Enough. Maud (before the laughing hyena's cage)—-How provoking! Here we’ve been 20 minutes, and the hvena hasn’t laughed once. Ella—Strange, and he’s been eyeing your new spring hat, too. Washington Day by Day News Gathered Here and There at the National Capital FAT AND SLIM FOLKS GET UNCLE SAM’S HELP WASHINGTON—There are too i many fat people and too many thin people in the country', and the ] government, through the agricultural department, is conducting experi ments to show them how to strike an average. C. F. Langworthy, chief of the division of nutrition investigation, is conducting investigations which in clude dietary studies, digestive ex periments and various other things in connection with food. “How to get thin and how to get X&P are being experimented within a course of dietary studies at the University of Maine, at Orono, in that state, under the supervision of Prof. C. D. Woods, and at the University of Tennessee, at Knoxville, by Prof. E. C. Waite. These experiments were in full swing before Secretary Taft entered the cabinet, and therefore it cannot be charged even in a presidential cam paign that he used his influence to get the government to work on the scheme. Now is the time to get thin, the government’s experts believe. With the approach of the summer and its IT has developed that the Perry Bel- , monts have suffered a rebuke in their attempt to ‘break into" Wash ington society. Mr. Belmont has been rejected as a member of the Chevy Chase Hunt club, and this action has brought to a climax a sensational so cial situation. The fact that there has been all winter a social campaign for and against Mr. and Mrs. Perry Belmont into which all their New York connec tions—the other Belmonts, Sloanes and Astors—have been drawn, makes this social tempest of wider propor tions than those which are ordinarily discovered in teapots. What is, perhaps, the most curious part of the situation lies in the fact that Mr. Belmont is an active mem ber of many- culbs far and away more exclusive than the Chevy- Chase. He is not only a member of the Knicker bocker, Manhattan, New York Yacht club, Metroi>olitan, Army and Navy, WRONG MAN, BUT HE WAS PLEASED WITH THE SMOKE AMONG the numerous employes of one of the government depart ments in this city are two men whose names, though they differ in the way of spelling them, are not altogether unlike in the; manner of their pronun ciation. Both of them have the good fortune of being close friends of a prominent druggist, and the elder of the two has frequently obtained from the medicine man -a supply of medi cated cigars, which he finds to be of value in giving him relief from a catarrhal affection. Recently lie called on the druggist and requested him to have prepared for him a box of the cigars. After a few days, not having received them, he wrote a note inquiring as to the cause of the inattention and received word in reply that the medicated stogies had been sent to his office sev eral days before his complaint was made. The next thing was a call made at the drug store by the man with the MRS. IDA M. VON CLAUSSEN, who came all the way from Stockholm prepared to upset Uncle Sam's diplo matic corps because Minister Graves would not present her at King Oscar's court, even when Oscar, whom she had “jollied'' at Wiesbaden, was "just crazy to see her”—got as far as the waiting-room at the White House with her complaint the other day. She couldn’t even get as far as Secretary Loeb, who sent an assistant out to meet her and direct her suave ly to the state department. There upon Mrs. von Claussen retired from the White House, after leaving a com munication requesting that the presi dent appoint a commission to inquire into her sanity before she proceeds fuSher. Mrs. Von Claussen is much in earn est in proclaiming her grievance, and believes that what she regards as an insult to herself was an insult to the whole American people. She declares she will return to Sweden and be presented to the king. “Mr. Graves stated a deliberate un truth when he said I did not offer evidence of an invitation to be pre sented to King Oscar and that I did not have the proper credentials,” de clared Mrs. Von Claussen, when shown the dispatch from Stockholm to the effect that Minister Graves had written an open letter explaining the controversy. “He kno'jrs I was in vited to be presented to the king, and he says what is false when he states I had nothing to lndentify me. I had u i« u IT “ green vegetables the path of the fat man who wants to reduce is made easier. To fat ones the government says: ' Eat little, sleep little and drink less. ‘ To the thin man it says: "Drink all you can, eat all you can and sl<*ep as much as you can." The thin man who wants to get fat must eat and drink everything that he can stomach. He must eat plenty of potatoes, bananas and bread; most important, he must drink before and after his meals. The experts say it is principally what a person drinks and not what he eats that makes him fat. Fat is mostly water, it is asserted, and the more water or other liquids a person stows away the more likely he is to gain weight. Above all, a thin person who wants to spread out must sleep ten or eleven hours a day. A nap after each meal is offered as an excellent inducement for fat to come and stay. On the other hand, the man who is trying to lose weight is advised that he keep moving after a meal to thwart the dread adipose. SWELL SOCIETY BARS THE PERRY BELMONTS Jockey club. Turf and Feld, Coaching club, and similar organizations in this country, but he is a member of the Reading room at Newport and was one of the two Americans elected to the Paris Jockey club. To cap the climax Perry Belmont is president of the Allied Hunt club, of which the Chevy Chase organization is a sub ordinate member. The divorce records of the Belmonts is believed to have something to do with their rejection. Mrs. Belmont was formerly Mrs. Henry T. Sloane. Sloane sesured a divorce from hei in 1899. and she was married to Bel mont the day the decree was granted. Perry Belmont also has a divorce rec ord. He married a Miss Sarah Whit ing when he was a young man, and the two went to Paris on their wed ding trip. Mrs. Belmont came back alone and secured a divorce. A baby was born after the divorce was granted. catarrh, who was disposed to be in dignant, and the porter who had been dispatched with the cigars was called up. He said that he took them to the office and handed them to a mes senger, who promised they should be delivered without any delay. They had not been, however, and it became necessary to investigate the mystery. An explanation came next day, when the other friend with a name sounding like that of the sick man called on the druggist and thanked him for what he thought tad been a present to him. He wanted to find where he could procure another box. as he had used all of these. There was a peculiar flavor to the tobacco, he said, that he liked very much. He didn’t know they were medicated cigars until the druggist told him, and the matter was set straight by the other gentleman being promptly sup plied with his catarrh remedy, and then they all enjoyed the joke: NEW YORK WOMEN OUT AFTER ENVOY’S SCALP a cablegram from President Stires of I one of the leading trust companies of I New York. I also had a letter from my cousin, Geheimrat von Pramann. as well as several other letters. And I defy Mr. Graves to send to the United States copies of the newspa pers which he says ridicule me. 1 was treated kindly by the papers of Sweden. 1 purpose to expose Mr. Graves’ intrigues to the president. I believe he will be interested in what I have to say about the diplomatic service in Europe, particularly at the Swedish capital." Mrs. Von Clattssen intimated strongly that perhaps Mrs. Graves was jealous of the gowns Mrs. Von Claussen wore, and that tiat fact might have operated to prevent her husband presenting an American vis itor to the Swedish king. — Indian Methods. The great medicine man of the Creek Indians was asked by a United States commission (of eminent physi cians): “Can you cure cancer? We have a patient who has been dying for 17 years, and we are unable to do any thing for him.” The aged red man called for a hot iron, and with it burn ed a big hole in the leg of the man where the cancer was gnawing. The physicians were astounded. He ex plained briefly: “Indian no cure can cer: Indian easy cure burn!” There fore—burn, bum, bum, when a dr*g or snake bites you.
