Wheat cutting is now general and the harvest is quite a good one, so famine relief work has stopped for the most part. The next thing needed will be some brigand relief work, for no attempt was made to regulate the men of the first and second Honan Divisions after the flight of the one leader and the killing of the other. In some places, such as Lanfeng, where the men behaved fairly well and gave up their arms, they were left without even money enough to pay their way home, and your correspondent saw small parties of them trudging along to their homes without even a roll of bedding between them. This does not encourage the others to give up their arms and many can bring it back and find plenty thousands of fairly decent men have who are willing to buy the poison found themselves turned into [bandits. They are in bands everywhere now throughout this district, living on the country and giving the people generally a pretty bad Ame.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.