THE CHINESE FAMINE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8830, 5 June 1907, Page 1

THE CHINESE FAMINE.

i America and Europe are doing much to alleviate the horrors of the present famine in China, and the rich merchants of Shanghai and Hongkong are contributing their quota. Some Chinese farmers and dealers, however, are reaping a harvest in the afflicted district, for while the present suffering is not so severe as that experienced in the Yunnan famine thirteen years ago (says the Overland Chinese Mail), I yet fin spite of every effort to alleviate its ravages it is becoming intensified. Half a bushel of rice is now fetching five dollars, but children are not being sold into slavery as is recorded in some records of periodic famine in that country. The Celestial Empire speaks plainly of “the steadily-increasing severity of the distress,” and quotes from a letter received from Hanchow, in the very heart of China, where the country is in a terrible condition. Those who flee from the famine district are driven back from places of plenty, only to die at home. House and tiees are being torn or cut down and sold at a nominal price, and whole provinces are turned into deforested deserts. We quote the following passage from the letter referred to, in illustration of the truth that there are vampires who make fortunes out of famine, just as others are ready, to do out of foreign or intestine war;—“ Emigration is going on en masse, but a large portion of the first emigrants have returned, having been refused permission to stay in the better off districts to the south, where the concentration of refugees and brigandage are feared. They return to die at home, or at hast near where their homes stood for a large proportion of the houses which withstood the floods have been torn down and sold at ridiculous , prices for firewood. Needless to say, furniture was first sacrificed, bat that in most cases would scarcely realise a dollar. Trees are sold at such low prices that the people cf Pei-hsien, which is some distance to the north, and, being on higher ground, has suffered but lightly from the funds, are buying them up in large quantities and storing them for sale after next harvest at handsome profits. Those whose fields hays borne good crops, make their fortune this year.”