The Great American Drought President Roosevelt and his Republican rival,
Mr. Alfred M. Landon, are meeting this week in Iowa. Such encounters between presidential candidates in the cam- paign are almost unheard of, but this year the great drought makes conferences between the President and State Governors an urgent necessity, and Mr. Landon is Governor of Kansas. It is now apparent that the desola- tion over a vast middle area between Oklahoma and the prairie provinces of Canada approximates to that of 1934. Not fewer than 500,000 families are directly affected, and the Federal' Government will need to increase the fund already voted by Congress (nearly £300,000,000) for agrarian relief. Mr. Roosevelt is in favour of the expansion of work-relief jobs to a maximum of 150,000. The situation is worsened by the incessant breaking out of forest fires, especially in the North-West. The preventive organisation has been much improved, and thousands of youths from the federal labour camps are fighting fires, but the excessive dryness of the country and the atmo- sphere makes an unmanageable peril. Governor Landon has started his campaign in the West. He is attacking the present administration as reckless and wasteful, and demanding a return to " the American system of govern- ment,"• with "•real jobs at good wages ".instead of work- relief. Mr. Roosevelt is contemplating a speaking-tour of the whole country.
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