The San Francisco call., 1898-12-21
DROUGHT AND DISTRESS.

| ALIFORNIA has never suffered as much from perturbation in the seasons, the fuctuation of > famine and plenty chargeable to climatic con- ditions as other States.
 For many years i'll her early settlement, ensuing upon the border troubles, Kansas was a famine snitten State succession Of drougts, and of sea sons in which growing crops were cut. down by that poison southwest wind which IS the analogue of our hot mortimer, compelled her people to appeal to the surrounding States for charity A Kansas relief committee was standing organization i'll nearly every town in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. throughout those years When the seasons again became normal their crops were reaped and eaten by grasshoppers, that swarmed down from the Rocky Mountains and fell upon the land, as great burden as they to old Egypt. The term bleed ing Kansas which had taken its place among the party cries of 1856. changed to starving Kan sas" But the insect plague passed away, and Kansas has since added her enormous production of corn, wheat beef pork and fruit to the surplus out of which the farmers o the United States have been able to feed the world
 The afhicting drought of the past season has brought about suffering in some limited localities in California They are where crops and the stock ranges depend upon a normal rainfall principally in the valleys and the foothills of the Coast Range. heavy rainfall in late September early October, by bringing on the range forage, would have averted most of this suffering The early rains were lacking, however and their lack, added to the short moisture of the preceding rainy season, exhausted the stored resources of the people
 The sufferers do not number more than 2ooo-per- haps not more than I5oo They valuable citizens. Every man who takes his family and settles land, to make 1t productive and add to the States re- sources is a valuable citizen. In supplying their wants let it be understood that those who do it are
 Lf-- ,r1 which the term sometimes applies. The State, through its various organizations and boards of trade, spends more money every year in advertising to secure immigrants than will be needed to relieve these good people who are with us and will stay and | labor for the commonwealth What will be required to keep them in comfort where they if spent on | immigration, would not secure a like number ot new citizens It is, therefore, wise selfshness and good business to furnish these folks with abundant and substantial ration, and to keep life in their remaining animals until natures bounty, responding to their la l bor again makes them independent.
 President Dohrmann of the Merchants Association has the matter in hand, and 1t will be well to make that organization the recipient and distributor of the relief required One organization IS sufficient. It can better make transportation arrangements than many can and there will be less waste in distribution than if many were concerned in 1t.
 All that the people want is to be helped that they  may soon help themselves.
 It is said in quarters that their settlement III the destitute districts unwise, inasmuch stock ranching and dairying therein must depend the spontaneous forage and not artificial production. While this may be to a degree true, 1t is less their fault than appears the surface.
 | The Government has not been wise in handling its stock range domain It would have been better to lease this in large for grazing purposes solely Its natural forage plants would thereby have been saved from extermination by stocking, and il experience demonstrated the fitness of any part of 1t for agriculture this could have been finally separated and held subject the of the homestead settler
 Instead of this policy these lands throughout the West have been treated agricultural, their acquis ton has been confined the acreage of agricultural holdings, and the grazing interests have sustained themselves by resort artifce that would have beer unnecessary under better system.
 As the Government has held these lands subject tc patent to small holders, the people must not bt blamed for assuming too much from that fact. The first duty is their immediate relief, and then they vii adjust themselves to the conditions disclosed by the experience.