The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-01-24
STARVING MILLIONS
Church and State Unable to Cope
With RuSsia'S Famine.
THE RICH GIVE THEIR JEWELS
The Poor Their Mite-Count Tolstoi and
His Family TO the Rescue
Causes OF the Famine.

tFor THE SUNDAY neutrality-suspicious.
Russia's famine finds It's only parallel in
the terrible want and privation with which
India has been stricken time and again, and
in the depths of the misery to which Ire
land has fallen during its awful famine
wears. Where in ireland the restitution
was confined to few counties, in Russia
at present it is ravaging over eighteen of
the largest provinces in the empire, an ex-
tent of territory as large as France, Bel
GUM and Switzerland.
The rich are giving their jewels; even
the poor in the cities are bringing to the
churches the remnants of their daily food.
No day passes in which dozen relief trains
do not leave st. Petersburg, and almost as
many go daily from Moscow, Liban, and
other large cities.
The great international market at Mini
Novgorod is filled with sallow-cheeked
beggar peasants, who have fiocked there
only to find an empty market, and destitu-
ton almost as severe as it is at their homes
in Samara and Kazan. The highways
about Kew, about Novo-Ouzensk, Samara
and Kazau, are filled with starving men,
women and children, intent upon plumber,
looking to prison walls as haven of food
and drink. Children are strangled as they
reach for the crust of the bread which must
go to the furnishing aud stronger father
and mother.
CASES OF ACUTE STARVATION
are reported from all sides. Contagious
diseases, direct consequences of starvation,
have broken out in Kazan, adding their
ravages to those caused by hunger. Judi
cial proceedings in common law courts
have had to be stopped, because witnesses
happened to be peasants and were lying
with feet swollen from starvation.
Mothers are killing their children that
they may not see them tortured by hunger;
parents are selling their daughters to get q
crust of bread. Whole districts are slowly
starving themselves out upon pig weeds,
husks and boiled grass The papers are
publishing elaborate articles upon the use
of acorns and other similar substances as a
substitute for corn.
In twelve of the provinces the famine is
complete. In six only partial. Forty mil
lions are suffering. and it is estimated that
it will take 100, 00O,000 pounds, or 75,000,00C
bushels of grain to keep the population
alive until the next crop.
AS yet no appeal has been made by the
government Of that country to sister ma
tons. The story of the want and misery
that is prevalent has leaked out bit by bit
and il is only by the appeals of individual:
that the extent Of the deprivation wa:
made known.
1t is queer fact that no united effort or
the part of the people can be made to assis
the stricken. All aid must go through gov
eminent agents. or must be made by indi
viduals. In a word, no two persons arr
allowed to make any appeal in their collec.
tive name without laying themselves liabl,
to prosecution on the charge of forming al
illegal association.
A word as to
THE STRICKEN DISTRICT,
its geography and resources. In what il
known as West Russia, South Russia anc
the Caucasus, there is plenty. II is il
Astrakan and Kazan, provinces of Eas
Russia, that the want is greatest Tn
Volga river, which empties itself into tn
Caspian sea- near the city of Astrakan
waters the famine district. most fertil
country, and in which, since 1910, there ha
been no great crop failure. The city o
Samara lies on the Volga, and is the centr
of the famine. In the north lies the city o
Perm. Here, and in the country adjacent
there is at least a small quantity of seet