Jibaros, Agriculture

Porto Rico. Last week a stalwart gentleman, who looks something like a beardless, bespectacled Abraham Lincoln and something like William Gibbs McAdoo, surveyed a great task. He is Henry M. Baker, Red Cross National Director of Disaster Relief, who sailed to Porto Rico immediately after the recent hurricane. Two immense, related problems faced him. One was the feeding, clothing and housing of countless jibaros (peasants). The other, more vast, more complex, was the rehabilitation of agriculture, involving financing and credit in thousands of individual, differing cases.

The food problem is twice as great as that faced at any one time following last year's Mississippi floods. Mr. Baker estimated that he must feed over 500,000 persons for the next month. At the end of that time he hopes that the crisis will have passed. This will require $30,000 a day and 1,000 to 1,500 tons of food per week. Agricultural credit facilities are now nonexistent, and must be created. Mr. Baker attended a meeting of coffeemen who requested 60,000,000 seedlings and 10,000 houses for employes. He promised the houses on condition that his investigation proves them necessary. The Red Cross will shortly provide 20,000,000 seedlings. Coffeemen want $60 per acre, paid over four years in diminishing amounts. The estimated coffee loss is over $25,000,000.

Mr. Baker stated that farm relief was the only means to accomplish the Red Cross task, for with credit established through an agricultural credit corporation, labor for thousands would be available. He cabled the national organization that over 60 nurses might be necessary to cope with the influenza, typhoid and malaria epidemics from which 20,000 are ill. Education was another phase of Porto Rican life which suffered. One thousand one and two room rural school buildings were totally destroyed.

Henry M. Baker is no tyro. He has looked on disaster 45 times. His look habitually signals the end of chaos. He supervised relief after the Northern Ohio Tornado of 1924, the Midwest Tornado of 1925, the Florida Hurricane of 1926. During the Mississippi Valley floods of 1927 he directed the rescue of 330,000 persons and their conveyance to 149 Red Cross camps. His organization provided food and shelter for 607,000. He was educated abroad, and took post-graduate work in Social Economy at the University of Missouri and the St. Louis School of Social Economy.

Florida. From Florida came the following "absolutely conservative figures" of George W. Carr, general chairman of relief work. "Homes seriously damaged--11,389; homes completely destroyed--3,584; business houses seriously damaged--1,447; business houses completely destroyed--552; number families homeless--4,800; number people homeless--16,082; medical department estimates deaths in excess of 2,000; estimates of damage to perpendicular improvements--$33,875,000. . . . Total figures above do not include damage to sea walls, docks, bridges, highways, floating equipment, crops, farming machinery, house furnishings, personal property and the like. The most conservative estimate of the damage to Palm Beach is $50,000,000 plus economic and labor losses to clean up the debris."

National contributions to the $5,000,000 relief fund for both Florida and Porto Rico totaled $3,500,000. The Palm Beach Red Cross chapter, feeling the original amount insufficient, appealed for $12,000,000.

Funerals. On Sunday black and white funerals were held at West Palm Beach. A great crowd of white people came to Woodlawn Cemetery. They stared at each other and at 69 new graves. The city band played dolefully in the quiet afternoon. Hymns were sung by a massed choir from the city's churches. Eight clergymen conducted simple rites for those buried at Woodlawn and elsewhere.

Hundreds of Negroes convened in their own Cemetery around a trench dug by a steam shovel. In the trench lay 674 coffins. The blacks' singing was more vibrant; their grief more impassioned.