The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-03-01
NEBRASKA'S BITTER FIGHT FOR LIFE.
The PEOPLE OF THIRTY COUNTIES DESTITUTE AND SfARYIEG
stephen ReporWating the Bitter Cold of Winter
for the Spring. When They'll Have No Seed Corn
The Relief Commission Exempt Counties
TCoPYRncET, 1895.

, north, in the south. In the east,
| in the west. But the greater pro-
portion of the people Of this stricken
district were men who loved their
! homes, their farms, their neigh bor-
hoods, their countries. They had be-
come rooted in this soil, which SO sell
dom failed them in compensation for
their untiring and persistent toll. They
could not move all the complexities of
their social life and their laboring life.
The magic of home held them from
travelling toward the promise of other
lands. And upon these people there
came the weight of the strange and un-
speal1able punishment of nature. They
are fearless folk, completely Amer
lean. Their absolute types are now sit
ting about New England dinner tables.
They summoned their strength for
long war with cold and hunger. Pros
perity was at the distance of new
crop of 1895. II was to be from August
to August. Between these months
doomed the great white barrier of the
winter of 1S94-95. It was a supreme
battle to which to look forward 1t re-
quired the profound and logged cour-
age of the American people who have
come into the west to carve farms,
railroads, towns, cities, in the heart of
a world fortified by enormous distances.
The weakest were, of course, the
first to cry out at the pain OF it. Farm
ers, morally certain of the success of
the crop, had already gone into debt
for groceries and supplies. The hot
winds left these men without crops ana
without credit. They were instantly
confronted with want. They stood for
a time reluctant. Then family by fam
lily they drove away to other states
where there might be people who would
give their great muscular hands oppor-
tunity to earn food for their wives and
little children.
Then came the struggle of the ones
who stood fast They were soon driven
to bay by nature, now the pitiless enc
my. They were sturdy and dauntless.
When the cry for help came from their
lips 1t was to be the groan from be-
tween cienched teeth. Men began to
offer to work at the rate of twenty-five
cents day, but, presently, in the
towns no one had work for them. and,
after a time, barely anyone had twenty
five cents day which they dared in
vest in labor. Life in the little towns
halted. The wide roads, which had
once been SO busy, became the dry
veins of the dead land.
Meanwhile, the chill and tempest of
the inevitable winter had gathered in
the north and swept down upon the dew
astated country. The prairies turned
bleak and desolate.
The wind was direct counterpart
of the summer. 1t came down like
wolves Of ice. And this was the time
that from this district came that first
wall, half impOtent rage, half despair.
The men went to feed the starving
cattle their tiny allowances In clothes
that enabled the wind to turn their
bodies red and then blue with cold.
The women snivered in the houses
where fuel was as scarce as flour, and
where -four was sometimes as scarce as
diamonds.
The cry for aid was heard every
where. The people of a dozen states
responded in a lavish way and almost
at once. A relief commission was ap-
pointed by Gov. Holcomb at Lincoln
to receive the supplies and distribute
them TO the people in want. The rail