VOL. XXI.

No. 6.

India's Terrible Famine.

Within the past month America has awakened to a realization of the fearful plight of India. The meeting of the Ecumenical Conference in New York, and the harrowing stories of the delegates from India, opened the eyes of thousands of Americans to the extent and intensity of this famine. Many keen-sighted Americans, fresh from their travels in India, have reminded us that it is the Indian missionary rather than the British civil or military officer, necessary as he is, who is in closest touch with native life in India. The missionary can speak of India's woe from his experience within the famine-stricken homes. The situation this summer is appalling. No less than 40,000,000 of people are actually famine-stricken, while more than 20,000,000 in addition are suffering, to a greater or less degree, from scarcity of food. It is difficult, indeed, for an American to grasp the idea of a population almost equal to that of the United States without food sufficient to keep living; of thousands of men, women, and children actually dying every day because there is

no breakfast, dinner, or supper for them. Yet such is the literal truth in central and western India to-day. In a great arid tract of 300,000 square miles there is no money to buy the grain which has been grown in the more fortunate parts of the land. The people are trying to eat berries, roofs and grass; parents are selling their chil dren to buy food; men, women, and children are dying on the roadside, without the strength to reach the relief works instituted by the government; nearly 6,000,000 people are employed on these works, and the number is growing at the rate of 200,000 per week. It is admitted on all sides that the famine is vastly worse than that of 1897, and it is feared that it may be as bad as that of 1877, when 6,000,000 people actually died of starvation. In the parched country there is nothing for the cattle to eat, and they are dying -to add the final touch of misery to the situation. In one district, an official report says, 1,000,000 cattle have died of starvation. As the cattle are absolutely necessary in almost every phase of Indian agriculture, this will prove a much more lasting blow than the failure of the crops. Lord George Hamilton, secretary of state for India, recently announced in the House of Commons that, even with good climatic conditions during the next seasons, it will take six years for central India to recover from this loss of live-stock. Men and women will actually be forced to draw the plows and to transport the crops with their own hands.

The Cause of the Famine.

India is a country not quite half as large as the United States, with four times its population. These 300,000,000 people must be fed from their own crops, as there is, relatively, no manufacturing resource to buy food with. There are parts of India with a population of 1,000 people to the square mile; and there are millions upon millions of farm laborers, vagrants, gypsies, and nondescript classes, whose means of living, even in times of plenty, are inscrutable. In a normal year the

LOADING AMERICAN CORN ON THE STEAMER "QUITO" FOR THE FAMINE SUFFERERS.

country, as a whole, produces a little more food than is actually necessary to support its people. But the crops are dependent on the monsoonsthe southwest monsoon in the beginning of summer, and the northeast monsoon in the winter. If these periodic rains are late, or are insufficient in quantity, trouble comes, and the spring and winter crops of wheat, barley, and pulses in the north, and of rice and millets in the south, begin to suffer. When the monsoons fail absolutely, there is destitution in the affected district, and when a persistent succession of failures and partial failures occurs, there comes a great and terrible famine, like that the country is now groaning under. Since the first great famine of which there are records devastated the land in 1770, when 10,000,000 perished in Bengal alone, India has scarcely passed a decade free from scarcity of grain in one district or another. The British Government expects a drought about twice in every nine years, a famine once in every cleven or twelve years, and a great famine like the present about twice in a century.

district, of government works to give destitute people a chance to earn their living, of gov. ernment funds to feed those who cannot possibly work. It has a famine code, which reduces to a science the various operations of locating, estimating, and fighting the famine. It has many noble servants who give themselves up to the task of feeding the starving. From Lord Curzon and Lady Curzon down, the entire governmental body is giving of its own resources, is stirring the whole civilized world to aid, is devoting magnificent energy to the task of giving the wisest and most far-reaching relief. Yet, the best that can be done is pitifully inadequate for such a huge task. There are areas of thousands of square miles absolutely destitute; and what can a few thousand Englishmen do with the vast populations in the Native States? The subordinate native officials are generally dishonest, and if the work of relief is to be effective, the last step of its administration must be conducted by white men. The starving people are restrained by caste prejudices and religious rules, as well as by the inertia of squalor, from making any effort to procure relief until the last moment. Then, with hundreds of miles to drag their way to reach relief, their strength does not suffice; the missionaries tell ghastly stories of parties of destitute people arriving at the relief works only an hour or so too late. The 6,000,000 people now laboring on the government works include men, women, and children. They break stones for highways, dig wells, transport earth on irri gation works, build huts, and help on the fam.

ine railroads. For this work, the men receive about three cents a day; the women and children less. The tasks are made as light as possible, and are proportioned according to the capacity for work of the individual. The aim is to give just enough money to enable the destitute to buy food; and it has been found that where it is physically possible for a sufferer to work, it is kindness to make him or her earn the pittance. The millions now employed on the relief works bring their families with them and camp in squalid villages near the roads and dams on which they are laboring. The overcrowding of these villages, and the utter misery of the occupants, are causing fearful inroads of disease and an almost hopeless moral degradation. starving ones that are unable to work, food is doled out. To supply this there is the Famine Insurance Fund, maintained by an annual tax, and charitable contributions from wealthy Indians-Lord and Lady Curzon themselves have given $3,000-the English Mansion House Fund, and donations from America and other countries.

for India.

To the

With the realization in America of America's Aid this great calamity has come a rapid determination to send a generous contribution to the relief fund. Aroused by Dr. Sheldon's editorials in the Topeka Capital on the famine situation, Kansas began to take subscriptions of corn for India, with Governor Stanley

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY COMMITTEE TO DISTRIBUTE SUPPLIES FROM THE UNITED STATES.

at the head of the movement. Twenty thousand bushels were forwarded to New York and sent to India by the steamer Quito, which was chartered by the United States Government to convey the supplies raised by the Christian Herald. The ship sailed on May 10 with 5,000 tons of corn, which, with various contributions of money, is to be distributed in India by an interdenomina. tional committee of missionaries. The Ecumenical Conference, when in session in New York, appointed a committee of one hundred of the foremost citizens

MR. WILLIAM E. DODGE.

of the metropolis to raise funds for the work of relief, and the executive committee of this organization is setting to work with zeal to cover the whole country with its propaganda. Mr. W. E. Dodge is the chairman, and Mr. John Crosby Brown, treasurer. Contributions are sent to Brown Bros. & Co., 59 Wall Street, New York. Mr. Dodge's committee has applied to the mayors of all American cities to aid in the work. The mission boards of the various churches are raising funds in their respective fields, and money sent to the treasurers of the various boards will be wisely used. Churches are taking special collections, and hundreds of influential newspapers are starting subscriptions. A cargo of corn sent to Chicago to be sold for the benefit of the famine sufferers sold for sixtyfive cents a bushel, twice as much as it was worth

-an evidence of the strong appeal the situation is making to American hearts. Canada is raising relief money; and, with the Lord Mayor's London fund of over $1,000,000, an energetic subscription in Berlin and other European cities, there will undoubtedly be a saving of hundreds of thousands of lives through relief measures outside of the efforts of the British Government. When three cents earned a day will keep the laborer on the relief works alive, it is pleasant to figure out the results of these millions of dollars sent to India, and to know that the end of the century facilities for transferring money by cable make it sure that the relief will reach its destination almost immediately.

The Ecumenical

The Ecumenical Conference on MisConference sions, held in Carnegie Hall, New on Missions. York City, April 21-May 1, was remarkable for its dimensions, its quality, and the popular interest it inspired in subjects like the Indian famine. Nothing like it, in size and ecumenicity, has ever been seen in this country; nor have either of the two previous similar conferences held in Great Britain ever approached it. One hundred and fifteen missionary societies or boards, working in 48 different lands, were represented. The number of delegates was 1,500, of whom more than 600 were missionaries. The 75 main and sectional sessions of the conference had an estimated attendance of 163,000 persons, and 50,000 people attended the exhibit of missionary literature, etc., held in an adjacent parish-house. The press of New York gave an unusual amount of attention to the meetings, and thousands who were not present, through verbatim reports of the speeches, have been informed and inspired by the deliberations of the experts. The President of the United States, Governor Roosevelt, of New York State, Admiral Phillip of the Navy, U. S. Commissioner of Education Harris, Presidents Low of Columbia, and Angell of Michigan Universities, and many of the most eminent leaders of the business world honored the conference with their presence and with words of praise for the mission cause and the important educational and political ends which foreign missions subserve. The honorary president of the conference was Hon. Benjamin Harrison, ex-President of the United States, whose address on taking the chair was one which will ever be quoted by friends of missions as a classic deliverance on the fundamental relations between Christian missions and the extension and preservation of civilization. The conference was a deliberative, and not a legislative, body; and hence it is impossible to point to any definite resolutions as embodying the consensus of opinion. But it was clear, to those qualified to judge, that the conference marked the beginning of a new epoch of comity at home and abroad in mission work. The missionaries at the front and the laymen at home are weary of denominational strife. Hereafter there will be more economy of administration at home, and less overlapping of fields abroad. The presence of veteran missionaries, scarred with wounds, men like John G. Paton, of the New Hebrides, William Ashmore and J. Hudson Taylor, of China, Bishop Thoburn and Jacob Chamberlain, of India, and Bishop Ridley, of British Columbia, added much to popular interest in the conference, and made it memorable

Dr. Paton's plea for action by the Un'o

States Government in putting an end to trade in liquors among the natives of the New Hebrides always deeply stirred the audiences which he addressed, and one of the by-products of the conference was the organization, in the United States, of a branch of the British Society for the Protection of Native Races-a society which has for its mission the securing of governmental action against those who traffic in liquor and in slaves.

The Methodist

The twenty-third quadrennial GenerGeneral Con- al Conference, which opened in Chiference. cago the first week in May, and was in session up to the 29th, has been the most important meeting of the highest court of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the North held since the separation of the Church, North and South. By its action the first day of its session, it at once gave the laity parity of standing in the General Conference; thus democratizing, in some degree, a denomination which has been peculiarly undemocratic in its structure, notwithstanding its peculiar mission to the people. The officials and delegates then turned to consideration of fu ture relations of comity with the branch of the denomination in the South; to the consolidation of denominational societies and the abolition or combination of denominational newspapers, and thus the possibility of eliminating wasteful multiplication of officials and machinery; to the modifi cation of the rule of the Discipline prohibiting amusements of a certain sort to church members, which rule it has been found impossible to enforce, and which has proved deterrent in its effect on those who otherwise might have joined the denomination; to the defining of the authority and scope of work of the missionary bishops of the Church; and to a consideration of the influences at work lessening the grip of the Church upon the world and the loyalty of church members to denominational agencies. Removals by death and the waning physical power of several of the bishops made it needful for the Conference to elect two bishops. The demands of the work in foreign lands made necessary especial consideration of the best methods of superintending the growth of the Church there. The independent press of the denomination, prior to the assembling of the conference, had called vigorously for investigations of certain facts and tendencies in the lives of the officials of the Church; and the temper of the conference reflected this disposition to probe alleged or real scandals to the bottom. With the accession of lay members the conference took on virility and showed a disposition to improve denominational affairs, no matter what obstacles lay in the way.