Our corner of Pochow seems somehow out of the range of the International and Provincial Committees. Not a cent yet has come from, them for this county, so far as I can ascertain—certainly not through our mission. We are only a small band of missionaries—two men only. A local Committee with which our Mission is nomina ally associated has received from the Governor at Anking $20,000) amd 23,000,000 cash worth of grain for distribution, and last week men gathered from all over the county with the officials and spent three days here dividing this up among nearly 300,000 people, the most noel? getting about 300 cash each and the second class a little over 100!! The local people and their friends at other places have raised more than $50,000, and some Buddhist Society has sent here 2,000 tan of coarse grain. Most of the grain raised locally has been spent on repairing city walls and in soup kitchens, but All of it. has gone practically to people within a very short distance of the city, and all chat has been spent from all sources would fall far short of a dollar per capita for each of those said to w in great need! Perhaps scarcely a dollar of this remains now in their hands, but has already been spent and still 100 days stretching out between them and the harvest! Our Mission has in hand ®ver $20,000, given with the condition that we distribute it, and we are selecting about three 3,000 families whom we hope to pull through till the wheat comes. We are to use about half in working people on roads and our own property and the other in froe gifts in grain, if we can buy-it in quantities, and otherwise in money. We have already had about people at work for two weel mostly women at 120 cash per day, and the men at 160. Just now we are held up by a storm of wind and snow two days ago followed by a hard freeze. This greatly intensities the suffering. Just this morning I have been going with two native Christians into the quarters of these workers few of their places could be called homes to see what are their conditions. We went into some 50 homes and I do not think there was a catty of grain in any one of them: Most of them We could have given out several an existence. Incidentally, we were besieged by many others wanting tickets on the same condition. hundred this morning. All this is within a gunshot of our home and near the city. I hear that the country people are even worse off. No work to do for pay and scarcely and neighbours from whom to beg! I intend in a day or two to go carefully through some villages near the city.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.