Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1891 — The Winter of '47 in Ireland. [ARTICLE]

The Winter of '47 in Ireland.

As winter advanced the distress grew deeper and fiercer. It was a hard winter, cold rains and snows alternating. To famine and fever was added cola. Hundreds of cabins in County Cork had nothing on their earth floors save a few rotten bundles of straw—not a blanket, “not a stick of furniture.” Neither could the j eople afford in many cases even the cheap peat fires. The men tramped barefoot through the snow to the relief works. Their rags hardly covered theifi bones. It was the commonest thing in the world for men to be “struck with the cold,” and die in a day or two. All over the country men and women could be seen “redigging the potato grounds, in hopes of finding some few remaining.” They were bending over the fields which the sheep had deserted, trying to find turnip roots. Families were known to have lived for weeks “on the flesh of horses that had died.” A Skibbereen man -with a family of five had nothing for them to eat from Saturday to Thursday except eleven and one-half pounds of potatoes and a head of cabbage. He walked several miles, to the works, and the superintendent gave him a piece of bread; he tried to swallow it and dropped dead. —Octave Thanet, in Century.

The starch trust was organized nearly a year ago, and has already for months kept the price of starch fully a cent per pound higher, than before the aombine was made. They have raised the price by about one-third. At the recent meeting pf the trust dividends were declared on three kinds of shares. The protective duty on starch is prohibitory.