![]() It was their fathers' task to make homes it is their task to keep those homes it is our task to help them with their fight.įirst let me talk for a minute about this autumn and the coming winter. No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers, are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage. Yet I would not have you think for a single minute that there is permanent disaster in these drought regions, or that the picture I saw meant depopulating these areas. I saw brown pastures which would not keep a cow on fifty acres. ![]() I shall never forget field after field of corn stunted, earless and stripped of leaves, for what the sun left the grasshoppers took. ![]() I shall never forget the fields of wheat so blasted by heat that they cannot be harvested. I saw other farm families who have not lost everything but who, because they have made only partial crops, must have some form of help if they are to continue farming next spring. I saw livestock kept alive only because water had been brought to them long distances in tank cars. I saw cattlemen who because of lack of grass or lack of winter feed have been compelled to sell all but their breeding stock and will need help to carry even these through the coming winter. That was the extreme case, but there are thousands and thousands of families on western farms who share the same difficulties. I talked with families who had lost their wheat crop, lost their corn crop, lost their livestock, lost the water in their well, lost their garden and come through to the end of the summer without one dollar of cash resources, facing a winter without feed or food - facing a planting season without seed to put in the ground. I saw drought devastation in nine states. I went primarily to see at first hand conditions in the drought states to see how effectively Federal and local authorities are taking care of pressing problems of relief and also how they are to work together to defend the people of this country against the effects of future droughts.
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