Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1902 — Farmers face ruin. [ARTICLE]

Farmers face ruin.

CROPS IN DANGER FROM BLIGHTING RAIN. Fields of the Whole West Damaged by the Incessant Downpour The Wettest June in Thirty Years—Many States Are Deluged. Ruin threatens the farmers of the land. If the rain continues a few days longer the damage to the crops throughout the middle Western and Western States and the loss to the farmers will be beyond calculation. It was raining Sunday practically all over the country, and many already flooded States were visited by an tach or more of rain in twenty-four hours. The farming communities of Illinois and surrounding States are face to face with the gravest kind of a situation. Continued rain will result in wrecked crops. Reports show that there were heavy rains in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, lowa, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Arkansas. The reports from the Dakotas and Minnesota indicate that rain in those States was light, but the great stretches of wheat laud in the Northwest have been soaked so thoroughly during the month of June that the farms are in such a bad shape that very light, continued showers will serve to bring the ruin threatened. Illinois lb one of the chief sufferers. All through the interior as far south as the Ohio river the farms are flooded with water. Corn fields, wheat fields, meadows, pastures and gardens have been turned into lakes and ponds. Only the most favorable kind of weather will save the agricultural communities from heavy loss, and a short continuation of the rains will mean big losses for hundreds of farm owners and farm renters. A low estimate placed on the damage wrought within a radius of 150 miles of Alton, 111., by the storm of wind and rain that prevailed Saturday night and Sunday is $1,000,000. While the farmers are the heaviest losers, the railroads also suffered severely. Added to the unseasonable rains there has been un-June like weather. It has been worse than a cool month. The thermometer has kept distressingly low. Chicago has passed through the most disagreeable June it has known in thirty years with the exception of June, 1892, which was slightly worse/ There have been nineteen rainy days in the month. In June, 1892, there were twenty-one. The rainfall for the month was greater than that of any other June except in 1892, when the total was 10.58. The average for the June of thirty years, with the exception of 1892, is little more than five inches. If the rain continues the population of the middle West will need whales or arks for transportation like Jonah of old and Noah the patriarch.