The Weekly Union Times

Famine and Drought in California.

—The accounts from California are very dismal indeed in regard to the bad crop prospects in that State, the ruin wrought by which is to be added to the bursting of the silver mining bubble. Doubts are expressed if the entire San Joaquin valley will yield 100,000 bushels of wheat and barley, which yielded last year about 10,000,000 bushels. A California correspondent of the New York Graphic writes under date of May 18: "All the news from the Pacific coast is disastrous. I will give it as my deliberate opinion that we will have a famine in this State before the season is over. The drought has killed all our crops, and nearly destroyed all our cattle. This is the second great drought since the settlement of California, and the memory of those two will always be a cloud upon the business horizon of this wonderful State, for capitalists will not invest money in ranches and cattle, and run the risk of a burning season, when all their possessions will be devoured and annihilated by the sun and dust. I fear you will soon hear of more business disasters of a most gigantic character from this coast. Things were really in an unwholesome state when Ralston died, but the difficulty was then averted only to end in greater calamity and panic. It is a fact that people who were millionaires six months ago, are to-day eager to secure situations as waiters and farm laborers. The drought alone nearly ruined the State, but occurring simultaneously with the bursting of the mining bubble, it has proved more than the people of the State can stand. Starvation literally stares the whole farming population in the face, and in a few weeks more they will have neither meat, fruit nor grain."