Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

nions of the “Studien-Kommission” were fur- ther supported by the reports of our field-workers, who were on the ground and had first hand knowledge of prevailing conditions. They urged prompt aid in recon- struction for the sake of the schools. They wrote that RECONSTRUCTION WORK IN RUSSIA 295 teachers were dismissing their schools and returning home with the pupils, because it was in vain to try to teach when the pupils sat dull and listless, instead of doing their work or listening to the lectures and explanations. When urged to work the children pathetically reply, ‘Teacher, we cannot. We are too hungry.” Another reason for alarm was the persistent effort on the part of the Soviet authorities to take over all of the schools and’ introduce in them communistic and atheistic teaching. Similarly, the impoverished asylums, hospitals, etc., were in need of support from America in a way that would assure the possibility of their continued operation. But how could the people support their institutions: if they themselves were in need? The Russian Menno- nites were almost entirely dependent upon agriculture, and agriculture was in a deplorable state. Only a small part of the land was being cultivated, and that insufficiently, because of a lack of horses. The great war had taken many of the best of these, the revolutions had reduced the number still more and the lack of feed during the famine claimed a large per cent of those that remained. The following statistics, gathered in the Ukraine in the summer of 1922, in preparation for the tractor program, give a good idea of conditions at that time. In the settlements where the drouth had not been so severe—New York, Memrik, Gruenfeld, and Sagradowka —there was one horse to every four and one-half or five persons. In Gnadenfeld and Chortitza Volosts there was one horse to every seven persons. In Nicolaipol Volost, one to eight and one-half persons. In Halbstadt Volost, one to twelve persons. The extreme case on record was Lindenau, a village in the Halbstadt Volost, which had only three horses for a population of over 500. If the few horses that remained in the spring of 1922 had been well-fed, much could still have been ac- 296 FEEDING THE HUNGRY complished. But the drouth of the previous year had affected all vegetation, so that there had been very little feed of any kind, not even roughage—and the horses could do only about one third the normal amount of work. In this emergency the people hitched up anything they could—oxen, a few camels, many milk-cows, and all sorts of combinations of these. But many people had no live-stock left at all. In their despair they dug the soil with spades and shovels in order to plant some grain. I saw a Russian peasant man and wife working the field together in the following man- ner. The family had no horse so the man walked ahead and strewed some millet seed on the ground while the woman with a small woo