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JUL ! 7 1~j6
No. 4--1239
Library
T HE
WORKS
PROGRAM
--Works Progress Administration--
For Release in Morning NGwspapers
Saturday, July 18, 1936.
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Water Conservation Projects are .Approved for Montana to Tela::e Care of
Destitute Fa:::-mers in :Drought Area.
Seven new wr>,ter conservation projects we re under way today in
the heart of Montana's drought r-i.rea mid 14 others are r endy for operation, Works Pro gress AdministrP.tion officials report ed toan.y to Howo.,rd
O. Hunter, Assistant Administrntor dir ec ting drought operations.
Tho water conservation program, surveys indicated, wns the only
a1ternetive t0 a mass exodus of farmers from eastern Montana before the
advance of drought and the ravnges of grasshoppers and morrnon crickets.
c.
W. Fowler, . Deputy Administra tor of the Mont Rna Works Progress
Administrati on , advised, however, that ample work would be available t o
care for the destitute farmers.
The projects jus t begun are emergency stock wate r e.nd small
irrigation reserviors and ditches, all on public property and for public
use in bone-dry gullies within a radius of 50 miles of Mil es City.
Old timers of this and other cow towns emphasized the seriousness
of the increasing feed shortage, however, recalling the "burner of
adding:
11 .A.s
t 34 11
and
bad as she got then, there was no open talk of gi vin I this
country back to the Indians, like they 1 re talkin 1
now. 11
Olaf Nestley, a successful Montana stockman for 25 years, discussed conditions many are confronting on his ranch, some 20 mil e s east
of Broadus in Powder River County.
He still has 1,300 sheep and 80 head
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of ca t tle.
He h1-s no p l aJ1s for relocation, n o defe atist atti tu:ie, but he
tells a Works Progress Admini st ration rep r e sen ta ti •re:
"I have no hay.
My range will hold out for p robably another month,
and only that long by fe ed.i ng g round grain stored from p r evi ous years,
there will be absolutely nothing left to do but l eave .
are cle a r of mortgages,
Then
My stock and ranch
I cM borrow money ·to move and salvage something
from what I have, otherwise if I try to stick it out, everything will be
lost.
I would rather move out than go on r elief."
A b :.;ri.ke r in Broadus says:
"For the first time in the 19 years I 1 ve been here, I've been unable to raise or buy home g ro~m lettuce or garden produce.
g r een vegetable we eat has b ee n shipped in.
This year every
11
Dan Gaskell, a. weather-burned old time cowman on Pumpkin Creek, 70
miles south of Miles City, also was known as one of the more successful
ranche r s o·f Powder River Cou..'1.ty,
He had provided. some small dams of his
own i n earlier years and they never had failed him, producing eno .1gh wate r
0
for a li ght crop even in 1934, but this year even these p roved inadequate,
he r epo rt s .
What littl e 6 rass came u p was harvested by t he g rasshoppe r s
and another hundred acres, intended to p roduce hay, he added, "didn't even
make goo d g rasshopper for age ."
He has 350 head of cattl e that are ne aring
the end of feed to be found on a scraflny range , with its sparse covering
of dry, f a ded g rass.
Others, with no livesto ck and no land of the ir own, are without
even the slender recources of the ranche rs, officials explained.
To meet this situation and provide protection against future drought,
proposals involvi ng 450 s mall stock water dams, costing an average of $1,500
each, have been submi tt e d to the Works Progress Ad.rninistration from Montana,
All of the projects are sponsored by the State Water Conservation Board and
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it is expected that additional dams will be started each week under the
F ede ral Works Program until the major needs of the drought area have been
met.
While es timates of the number of potential drouc:it v ictims in the
Southeast continued to mou..nt, little likelihoo<;l of the exist e nce of immediate suffering or hm1ger is s een, Malcolm J. Miller, Works Progress
Admi n istration field r epr ese ntative in charge of drought operation s in the
Southern States, reported.
Mr. Mill e r is co!lducting a c~nf erence at
Montgomery, Ala., today with representatives of the Works Pro gress Administr a tion, the Rese ttl ement Adininistration and other groups looking to a
unified program of drough t relief for that St a t e .
Similar confe rences have already b ecrn h e ld in ~forth a.nd South
Carolina and Ge orgia and others are sche dul e d early n ext week for Oklahoma
and Tenne ss ee .
11
We ca n I t tell a-bout the actual numb e r of peop l e needing a id until .
our intake and. ce rtific2tion ma chinery b egins to funct ion , 11 Mill e r declar e d.
11
This service has alre ady been started in th e Carolinas and Georgia and
should get under we:;;r h e re tomorrow or Monday.
11
Vfo will certainly have to increase our original quota of 20,000
for the entire region but by ho\v much I am u nable to say now.
11
In the meanwhile, nobody is going hungry eithe r in Alabama or any
other State in this section.
The full effects of this drought won't be
felt for several weeks yet when the d e struction of garden and vege table
cro-ps b egins to pinsh and when th e money for cash crops fails to mn.terialize.
By that time our Work Program for thes e people will be in op er a tion and
thos e really n eedi ng jobs will hav e them. 11
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