Devastation on the Plains

Reported the Department of Agriculture last week with an urgency that broke through the cold officialese: "In many places in the Great Plains, moisture conditions are the worst in recorded history." The result: after only one month of the normal (November-May) annual "blow" season, the acreage of crop and range land damaged by soil-eroding winds in the ten-state area was already three times larger (almost 2,000,000 acres, one-third of them in Kansas) than in the same period last year. Moreover, with the peak of the high-wind season yet to come, some 29 million additional acres--up almost 10 million from December 1955--were "in condition to blow" because of pulverized-soil conditions, depleted soil-moisture reserves, inadequate cover and crop residues.

On Jan. 13, announced the White House at week's end, President Eisenhower will begin a threeday, seven-stop flying tour through the worst-hit of the drought areas, the skeleton-dry southern Plains states, to assess for himself the extent of the damage. In Wichita, Kans., Ike plans to join a specially convened meeting of farm, business and local government representatives to discuss possible improvements in the Government's already extensive relief program. No matter how high the new totals may go, ultimate relief can come only from a source uncontrolled by man: the saving beneficence of drenching rain or heavy snow.

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