The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1907-09-27

old mother, with scarcely sufficient
vitality to make her mourning heard.
After a time she arose and with her
bare hands heaped clods of earth upon
the conical grave mound. The widow,
VINO could afford no mourning garb ex-
cept small square of white cloth the
size OF a handkerchief upon her head,
wept and walled as only an oriental
woman can do. Her body shook with
shuddering sobs. All the grief OF the
ages seemed embodied in her mourn
Ing. This famine means more to those
two lonely women than it does to my
scientific friend.
Near the same spot middle-aged
man, with some mourning rags of
white upon him, fell on his knees as
we approached, and clutched at our
clothing. Plainly, he had gone to
pieces. He was a nervous wreck, as
well as a starving man. He had just
been out burying his old mother, and
GRIEF, combined with hunger, had been
TOO much for him. So, in an almost
delirious frenzy, he besought the hon.
orable foreigners with noble hearts to
help him. Our only possible course
was to shake him off and pass on.
In an e1ementaI struggle such as
this, between man and hunger, with
existence itself as the stake at issue,
II is scarcely surprising to find rever-
slons to beast-selfishness. So, when I
saw woman with two little children,
one OF them suffering from smallpox,
living In a mat hut three feet high,
three feet wide, and four or five feet
long, l was not astonished to learn
that her husband had deserted her;
that mas been the way of some hus-
bands in every such disaster The as
tonlsh1ng fact is that so many parents
and husbands are loyal; it is royalty
common among these uncounted FAM
Inc victims to find the parents wan
ana emac1ated and the little children
comparatively ruddy. True, many pa
rents are selling or giving away their
children, and even drowning them, but
this is usually an expression of solicit
tude for the child's welfare. Even the
sale OF little daughters into slavery
must not be judged by occidental
standards. Several mothers have be-
sought me to buy their children, or to
accept them as gift This morning
had pressed on me by a forlorn
mother as healthy specimen of Chi
nese babyhood as one would care to
possess. Having been driven from the
refugee camp, with her family and pos
sessions on a wheelbarrow, she was on
her way back to the country to starve,
she said, and fear she spoke truly.
Practically the entire famine dis.
trict has been almost wholly cleared
of live stock. 1--WE have no beasts, and
men are eating beasts food" is the
way one farmer succinctly put it. He
meant that the people are living on
grass, bark, roots, leaves and such
like. This morning 1 inspected the
houses of almost an entire village,
looking for food-and such bare.
crude, filthy and comfortless homes
they are-and nowhere did see a
grain of rice. The whole village Is
subsisting upon dried sweet potato
leaves, which l found cooking over
many stoves. Out here it is custom.
airy to extract the oil from peanuts
and then to press peanuts, shells and
all, into a hard cake as cattle fodder
Beans are treated in the same manner
Now these dried cakes are sold as
food for human beings. l watched one
man, on whose features grim hunger
had written large her signature, buy
a portion Ct this. He was given a
wedge about four inches long, three
inches deep, and possibly two inches
wide at the outer edge, for 20 cash.
which is two-thirds of the government
allowance per day for an adult The
avidity with which he seized and de-
voured dry few additional crumbs
the little more" that goes with every
bargain in China-was eloquent of the
cravings of his body.
This dole of 30 daily cash-equiya-
lent to one and half cents, American
currency-the Chinese government
pledges to give every sufferer in the
famine district north of the Yangtze
river. 1t really seems as If the higher
officials are in earnest, and extraor-
binary efforts are being made to pre-
vent squeezing" by the other officials
through whose hands the money must
pass. This is one of the manifesto
tions of new" China which abound
these days. OF course, the attempt is
not wholly successful, and myriads of
starving people have not received
single cash. Most of those who have
encamped, ominously, outside of the
walls of several cities have been help
ed; for the officials fear them. Now,
with force and fair promises, the
larger part of these refugees are being
driven back into the country. All of
them distrust the official promises of
help. The assistance that is at pres
ent extended is not expected to hold
out for month, since cent and
half day given to 100000 persons
is a sum to tax any treasury.
Foreign relief is being distributed
in the form Of flour to bring down the
prices. Famine prices" is no mere
nhaSa here. fbo cost of all foodotufss