America and the Drought President Roosevelt, who has kept a
stout heart and a smiling face through the difficulties of the world economic crisis, is now assailed by the quite distinct problem of the American drought. It is purely a calamity of Nature, and nobody can blame the Administration for its occurrence ; but its victims are said already to number 26 million people, and the problem of relief must be a very thorny one. Besides temporary exped- ients, some more permanent remedies are being attempted. One is to increase irrigation through a great dam on the Upper Missouri. Another is to re-afforest a belt 100 miles wide right down the middle of the United States from north to south. The third is migration. The first two are relatively easy and popular ; they are natural channels for relief work. But migration can only be hard and unpopular, since it will mean inducing tens of thousands of families to leave homes and farms, which either they or their parents created out of virgin prairie. Montana and the Dakotas present the most urgent cases, for a great deal of their soil is shallow, and was only ploughed up under the stimulus of War wheat prices. But the much better land of the typical Middle West is also a problem. Its virgin qualities being exhausted, it is becoming steadily dearer to cultivate.
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