;-
t:
HAGAZINE SECTIOrrTIIRE A
TIIACA2iriESECTI0?l THRBe
PORTLANU OREGON, SUNDAY ; MORNING. ; JANUARY , S, 1 903 .j-
,..Vr"J ' .
1 . ' JJgl, n ' iff mmm
K Tir: a v5 i I -
:.t , ,'y' ... . ' ', '
1 fcrn
1 '
vf)
Not Through'the Ordinary
Agents of Mortality, but
Ghastly Famine
- ' ; 1
URELY and certainly,
without hope of salvo-
o, , millions , o
man beings, the life
', ji .1.1 i
ana sirengm naie tn
them, , are doomed to
o j 'terrible J of ''.)";
deathsstarvation. .
f ZA three great
est peoples! of - the
earth, dwelling in the
Are greatest empires
km
v "".'j:y;U4 maia, xnma ana
Russian-are fdctdi face in the new year with a
fa(aliter'sHhiaturi in her most awful
convulsions, neer.'yet' devised, such as man, in
thdjndddni excesses' bf his latent ferocity, never
; dreamedybf. ' ; v . '
, Te$ mankind ; 'If.ature have combined to
plunge these three "peoples into vast lotteries of
. death. Man, using his fellow-man as a mere
' beait of burden, fit only fofsthe bare feed which
shall keep in him the impulse to live and toil that
t he , may Ike to toil the more, has left whole na-
Hons helpless for their own salvation. Nature,
beggared by the usury of the race, unable to, re
store her plundered vitality without man's aid,
Jums J& her oppressors JhebUak-arid' suMen face
of famine. The victims stretch out to their over-.
lords the lean and shriveled arms of hunger, iwr
' ploringpityereitbetoo'ldte.' s
It is too late. Too late for millions in pau
., pered India who are bound upon the Wheel of
v Life, each in his appointed place of doom await-
t tnr me turn vn- waicn nis t nance m ine oiacK
1
'r ,.,.1 1 r . v'w
IS:
mm
mm
T "V
0
'4
r
poor, skimped Nature rebels against
that one. And,, all, the. while, the gov
ernment, the nearest,' most salient god
of these : overdriven; machines, goes on
its sublime way totting up the chances
lottery shall be! drawn, this year, for starvation
: . or theplague; 06 late, for ilie millions, in taxed
. and flooded China, who now shall not merely! slay
y their girl children; but shall, in thtif extremity
, devour the very hearts of those innocent victims;
- too late for the rebellious hordes of frozen, naked -n its lottery.
f-Russia; whurforall the:rugged:mahkbddhi
tng revolution, ' must perish: in their wilderness ; ematical calculation: Perhaps, if our
under the choosing of the erim Falkxrt of their year's crop hadaiot bccaialf as much
again aa u was in xovy, wnen ii,vw,vw
people were famished in India, some of
us might be; hungry enough to think,
like Purun Bhagat, of the pious, gener
ous woman who1 prays, now, tremblingly
for herself before the weary gods, or of
the bold child1 who ran back to the vil
lage as fast as' his 'little legs could carry
mm. . ; ,
v - 'As it is, the statistics, being pros'
pectively m6rtal . statistics, should have
a -mifflpiflntlv ' Hvft - int Great. it fliom.
Purun Bhagat, we should selves, although these East Indiana dio
off like ies, anyway.; X : ,
.bo li is interesting to know that the
If
I
St
"0 US, occupied with our annoyance of, too little
$7,412,000,00(1 worth of food, these millions of
; the lottery' of death1 are so verv far awav thkt
t they dwindle to a small mass of specks, with the indi
viduals so ;tiny that none ia visible to the human eve.
.t . vThey are like , those germs -we discern - under the
i microscope with a single1 difference:; where we dread
'.' the germs we despise the people.' -Vf -
it . But if, like Kiplinafs : Puri
abandon our riches and our-troublea-- and seek out a
place upon a hilltop in India, with a begging bowl as
oniy possession, ine dowj, filled lor Usatresh, would Indian goyeemnent reckon that no
be laid, silently every mormngm the crotch of the, road ; fewer than3,000,000 of its people will
i outSKia inB Jiermii aflrine.--, i, , v ,: ; t. endure pangs of famine this year :
. , Sometimes the, viUagti priest would bring it; some There havrbeen crop failures on every hand; special agents
ij--, times a tradenjodging m the village, and anxious to, have investigated everywhere. And the chance in the lottery of
t I? me"' might .drudge up the path but, more often, . hunger is ;that one ast Indian put of every half dozen will be -it
wuld be the woman whp cooked the meal overnight. g, far from getting enough to eat that starvation is to be the
f- : And she would murmur, hardly abote her breath r -. end, unless government "relief and private piOfulness suffice to
i: I fSpeak for me before the gods. Bhagat, Speak for ; watch end ward, p ' , - ...::vT.-
:M !ufc one' wie of !0;aild, ?? , . ; . " - ' V , But reKef;and "charity did their utmost in'British India in
Vt; v. , ,,ow ana Men somo uoiu ciuia wouiq oe auowea me .lHie. wblle we were holdinff ur Centennial. nni first irreat world's
... honoryand we would hear hjaiwdropthe bowl Ttnd run ; fair, in honpff our independence of British government. The
as fast as his little leg could carry inm to the village, monsoons failed; there was drought all over India; the govern
. laid out like a map, below. - '',-':i1' ;:t T " mcnt 8Dent 000,000 in relief and 5,250,000, people drew theV
These are some of the-predestilied of India's 300,- fatallot. ; ?? .A - y
?. 000,000, .They prayj and toil, and give in charityoh, t . It will -be famine and the plague; for they are blood' broth-
Wuc chantyout of so; htt wealth lwhon they era. twinned,Jnwant, :ln six short weeks from April to the
r, Javerit.to. give. -Yes, and Mien thev Javeit not to give, 4 middle of Maylasf ycar-451.892 died of the plague, t .
.:"V7 c wic .vim vuxvuiv. iwui, uu iuc pwor wm . . juere oiots, tnese., On the distant landscape of the earth, seen;
::f.' ii viie ju ittiJS"eu.? :;,:Vi v si ' i7' v tWOUffn
;:j.;r:JLiu;y;prayto-rurun:JtJhag,atj:..and they pray to all torted
- ' their gods, ;And the tax collectbrs take this tithe, Vhile. scope-
I J'
t -aiiiiw i
V 4 1
V
V VST -! 1 1
i
"Mowgll . drank the warm milk' . in lou 1
gulps, Messua patting him on the shoulder from
time to time, not quite sure whether he were
her son Nathoo of. the long-ago days, or soma .
wonderful Jungle being, but glad. to feel. that
he was at least flesh and blood. '
. M4Son she said at last her eyes were full
of. pride-have any told thee .that thou .art
beautiful beyond all menf ' ; '
"Messua laughed softly and happily. ,! Th ;
look in his face was enough for her. .
"1 am the first, thenk Itas.jtight. though
it comes seldom, that a mother should tell her"
' son the'se good things.", Thou art very beautiful.
Never have I looked upon such a man.' ..-'v t
"ATowgli twisted his head and tried to see
. over his own hard shoulder, and Messua laughed
again so long that Mowgli, not knowing- why,
, was forced to laugh with her, and the child ran '
from one to the other, laughing, too. : . '
' "'Nay, thou must not mock thy brother,-,
said Messua, catching him to her breast. When :
thou art half as fair we will marry thee to the
youngest daughter of a king, and thou shalt
ride great elephants.'"
Does genius, bring us closet . ;
Well, these are the human beings who" ate '
doomed to share India's lottery, of death. (
And in China I ... . . '...' ' -The
fearful lottery,' which works by whole- ' .
sale, and is more certain, in China's , flood and
famine years, than India's ancient Juggernaut
ever was to perform, its; appalling function of
decimation, has been with its -victims nearly a
year already. Steadily, swiftlyas death rolled
on, crushing its passive, spiritless bond slaves '
China's famine has progressed, .'but ;little am-
peded by the belatdd exertions of the mighty
viceroys, ' swerved but not checked ? in its ' ex- -,
, terminating course by' the half million dollars'
worth of ; food which Americans .p6ured , into
Shanghai for rice while they -were. happily sow
ing "more than a billion " dollars worth rof- com ,
for' themselves.' ' r" v :-jii
. .. - far A Vv i
: . . MILLIONS SUFFER IJI CHINA" "
American jornalismiworout'thetpenclls
of its writers and Jb.ejoameriixfil.ita piiotog1- '
raphers" in the endeavor, to? picture, to American
readers the consequences of the fatal lottery ia -.
China;- . : ' ' - 1 -! " " '"" t t :
r Cable dispatches began about this time last
year to-say of China precisely what this article
Bays this morning1 about China, India, and Kus- ,
sia that the most .extensive, famine, of, -genera " .
tions was impending. .K ' .' .
In a territory as large as the state of 'New '
York, great tracts of country east of, the Grand . -canal,
flooded with',' water ; so widely .Uhat- ona ".
could sail for days without seeing- land, froze
over in the .winter, v Within' an area of '40,000
square miles,; usually, devoted to '.wheat, Indian -corn,
buckwheat," beans and peanpts, 20,000,000
people were doomed to the, famine that" began .
to rage' in ita full'horror last April. ' ' .
Then' China's lottery f of death indeed" chose. 1
out its victims.? JFive' thousand perished' every
day. The. people; ate the seed they had saved
for crops. ' They grubbed up the grass from the
fields. They gnawed, thej bark from.; the' trees.
- Desperate to draw; blanks in the awful chances
of each-fatal day, they' left the countryside
' devastated. - ' J c v ; . ' t l
Then those that . survived! plodded stifUy,
brokenly, to the cities to the "relief camps" at
Tsing-Kiang, Chingkiang, -Yancbau where, in
all the misery of homelessness, they were as
sembled by the twent thousands, the fifty thou-
sands, the hundred thousands.
-The bareiground letlthem lie on it and .
freeze. The bare country could only let them
. hunger. : They lay ahout the camps, .too weak . -
' to. move, gaunt, hollow wretches,' who, toward
- the last, could not have swallowed foodfif it ha 1 ..
been procurable for them. .' ,
.Thousands," realizing 'the utter .hopclfssncp
w'w?' r." .. oi xne situation, arownea tuemsoives to rs' n;.
Uim.; :th. w .W, 0. their, expected d-ath. li..
the telescope of government statistics: mere bent, con- - t-: . . V?. cALalxCjJriS ; very instinct
threads, leanly writhing in their hunger, under the micro-' . . i : ; : . w , .':.. : Sot jrf7. ' " ', women slew
of maternity revolted," an -1 many
their babies rather. than th-nt .
(CONTINUED ON LNS1DE TAGS ) ,
t