I
saw livestock kept alive only because water had been brought to
them long distances in tank cars. I saw other farm families who
have not lost everything but who, because they have made only
partial crops, must have some form of help if they are to continue
farming next spring.
I shall never forget the fields of wheat so blasted by heat that
they cannot be harvested. I shall never forget field after field of
corn stunted, earless and stripped of leaves, for what the sun left
the grasshoppers took. I saw brown pastures which would not keep a
cow on fifty acres.
Yet I would not have you think for a single minute that there is
permanent disaster in these drought regions, or that the picture I
saw meant depopulating these areas. No cracked earth, no blistering
sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers, are a permanent match for
the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and
children who have carried on through desperate days, and inspire us
with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage. It was
their fathers' task to make homes; it is their task to keep those
homes; it is our task to help them win their fight.
First let me talk for a minute about this autumn and the coming
winter. We have the option, in the case of families who need actual
subsistence, of putting them on the dole or putting them to work.
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