Corn Goes
Stave August we have not enjoyed one week's good weather. The hay was a poor crop, and was badly saved; it was not all in when the corn was due to he reaped. By that time, the storm on storm had begun, and harvest weather never came. Over large areas, as much as 75 per Cent. of the oats was lost, the authentic reports say.
How sad it was, in September, October, November, to go through the land, beholding the uncut or
unsaved corn, and swamped fields cornpletely black with hundreds of thousands of crows, feasting on the unrecoverable grain!
AND POTATOES GO That was not all. With half their hay and three quarters of their corn destroyed by the pitiless, drowning, laceseant rain and the mounting floods, our harassed couutry people watched for fitting weather to lift the. potatoes.
It neser came.
If a dry, bright day broke the gloom, the sodden land was unfit for the lifting, and rain-storms came again before any drying had begun, So, when Christmas week arrived, our farmers still had their potatoes in the ground.
This has happened before, in bitterly cold seasons, without disaster; but this year we. have had little cold, but rather the rain has come with mildness.
As a result, the potatoes have begun to sprout again, and that means lost crops.
13AD MARKETS IN TOWNS This may not seem important news to the urban reader; but, in truth, it is terrible tidings. Our mainly rural economy, north and south, is like a boat on a tide that has failed—or, rather, like a boat on a torrent that has swept on towards the falls.
Our towns suffer. Many a year has passed since I saw Christmas markets as bad as in a country town that I visited for my shopping. The country buyers had little to spend; for the harvest returns were lacking.