Iowa Recorder Greene, Butler Co, IA December 7, 1904 IRISH FACE A FAMINE Potato Crop in West of Island a Failure This Year. There is no doubt whatever that an extensive area of the poorest district in the west of Ireland is threatened with famine. The potato crop has failed badly, the tubers, where not actually diseased, being wretchedly small. To these people, eking out the barest subsistence at the best of times on pitifully meager and unproductive holdings, reclaimed by their own slavish toil from the bog and barren hillside, the potato is the staff of life. They never get a meat meal more than two or three times a year, living on maize, potatoes and dried fish chiefly. The weather, with prevailing damps, has been worse than usual, and from July 15 to Sept. 10 there was not a single fine day. In Castlereigh, County Roscommon, one of the most severely affected districts, last spring the local authorities, foreseeing the possibility of a bad potato crop, as the preceding years' seeds were inferior, asked permission from Dublin castle to spend a small sum distributing new seeds, but this demand was curtly refused. The potatoes are also the principal food of the pigs, out of which the peasants make a living, and owing to the potato shortage they have been compelled to sell their pigs, with the result that prices have fallen disastrously. Every year the men go to England for harvesting work, bringing back the wherewithal to pay rent and occasionally something over. Owing to the depression in England, this year was the worst for these men in a quarter century. Cathy Joynt Labath Iowa Newspaper Abstracts http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/IA/index.html Ireland Newspaper Abstracts http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/Ireland/index.html Irish in Iowa http://www.celticcousins.net/irishiniowa/index.htm