Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/326



the drouth had been broken all over the north, it lingered on, to the south. My parents wrote me from Kansas, that thousands of acres of wheat, sown early in the fall, had failed to sprout. It had been so dry. The ground was as dry as powder, and the winds were blowing the grain out of the sandy soil, which was drifting in great piles along the fences and in the road.

The government's final estimated yield of all crops was the smallest it had been for ten years. As a result, loan companies who had allowed interest to accumulate for one and two years, in the hope that the farmers and other investors would be able to sell, such having been the conditions of the past, now began to threaten foreclosure and money became hard to get.

From the south came reports that many counties in Oklahoma, that were loaded with debt, had defaulted for two years on the interest, and County warrants, that had always brought a premium, sold at a discount.

The rain that had followed the drouth, in the north, as the winter months set in, began to move south, and about Christmas came the heaviest snows the south had known for years. With the snows came low temperatures that lasted for weeks. As far south as Oklahoma city, zero weather gripped the country, and to the west the cattle left on the ranges froze to death by the thousands. A