﻿92 EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT 



From Galbreath's store, Henry county, conies the statement "that there are many 

 familits who will actually starve if they are not assisted." The ao^ent of the State 

 Grange, A. J. Child, who has been distribulino- corn supplied by the grange, writes 

 from Appleton City, St. Clair county: "It grows worse and worse, and God only 

 knows what the future of many of these inhabitants is to be. They are out of every- 

 thing and have exhausted every available means of credit in their eftbrts to live and 

 get crops started, and now the chinch-bugs and grasshoppers are cleaning up every- 

 thing like a consuming tire. I am overpowered and overwhelmed by disclosures of 

 the fearful want, and the equally fearful outlook." Judge Woods, of the Henry 

 county court writes : "I cannot see how our people are to get through the next two 

 months, as there is not enough bread-stuff in the county to keep them from starvation. 

 If it were here, they have no money to buy with. Those who had a little corn had ta 

 feed it in order to save their stock, and now they are out of corn, money and credit. 

 Hundreds are living on bread and water." A letter from Kingsville, Johnson county, 

 says: "The; condition of things in the western part of our county is perlectly dis- 

 tressing. Men aire growing desperate, and already threaten to divide out by force 

 what there is in the county, and we all know that when such a move is once made, the 

 worst men in the county will take tlie lead." — [St. Louis Bepiiblican, about the middle 

 of June. 



I do not exaggerate, but state the simple truth when I say that I have been time 

 and again over the most of this (Polk) township, and I do not believe there is o?ie sprig 

 of timothy, clover, wheat or corn left standing an inch above the ground in the town- 

 ship ; that not a bundle of oats will be cut ; not a pound of hay or grass of any kind 

 will be saved this season ; vegetables of every kind have been totally destroyed, and 

 all the fields, without a single exception, so far as 1 have been able to learn, are as 

 bare of vegetation, even weeds, as newly ploughed ground — notwithstanding the fact 

 that some farms have been planted as often as twice and three times this season, and 

 the wild grass and weeds on the outlands in both prairie and timber, have either been 

 entirely devoured or cut down so close to the ground that cattle have been and still 

 are starving to death by hundreds. The owners having in many cases paid out all 

 their money, sold everything they could get along without, and mortgaged their farms 

 to get money to carry their stock through the winter and i)lant their crops, now are 

 left with nothing to eat, their stock have starved to death, and they have no money, 

 and no means of raising any by loan or mortgage, to buy food or to get away from here 

 to more favored sections of the country. — [Globe-De?noc)'at Correspondence from Stras- 

 burg, Cass Co , June Ifj. 



My own impressions received at the time, may be gathered from 

 the following remarks made at a meeting of the merchants of St. 

 Louis, held at the Merchants' Exchange, May 28, for the relief of the 

 destitute, and reported in the St. Louis papers : 



I have just returned from the district of Pettis, Johnson and Cass counties, and 

 from reports I have had from Vernon, Bates and Johnson counties, I can form a pretty 

 correct conclusion as to the actual state of things there. One reason why reports are 

 so contradictory is mainly because you will find districts in the same county very 

 differently affected, I believe that Cass county is about the worst oft', and actually the 

 devastation by the locusts in that county cannot be exaggerated. You may go 

 from one end of that county to the other, and with the exception of forest trees, where 

 there is timber, and here and there a low piece of moist prairie, or occasionally an oat 

 field, there is not a trace of vegetation to show you that it is the growing season ; the 

 country is as bare and desolate as in mid-winter. The only vegetation remaining ii> 

 the fields consists of a few stalks of milkweed (Asclepias), wliich is about the only con- 

 spicuous plant they do not relish. 



Very much the same state of things occurs in the adjacent counties, and the dis- 

 tress is great. 



I find among the people in the stricken district generally a determination to over- 

 come the difficulties, and, as far as possible, to relieve their own people. The well- 

 to-do citizens feel inclined to relieve their own counties as far as possible, and with few^ 

 exceptions there is no actual distress. The greatest want is mainly on account of the 

 scarcity ot seed. Some famdies will need rations anil food to keep them from starva- 

 tion until they can bridge over the present destitution, but as a rule the need is mainly 

 for seed tor the different crops. They need corn that will mature early, buckwheat, 

 Hungarian grass, vegetable seeds, potJitoes — everything that will soon mature, and this- 

 they want immediately. 



It is impossible to say how long those sections in the several infested counties, 

 which are now in a fiourishing condition, will remain so. The probabilities are that 



