Louis G. Vogel, City

Chairman Names

Committees To Make Drive.

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NEW ULM’S SHARE OF STATE’S QUOTA $500

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Necessity For. Quick

Action Is Told By

Prominent Minnesotans.

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New Ulm’s drive for the relief of the starving children of Germany will commence Friday, April 25, according to Louis G. Vogel, local chairman of the committee. Monday of this week Mr. Vogel announced the following committee to assist in the solicitation of these funds: First Ward, first precinct-J.P. Graff and Otto Oswald; second precinct-Aug. Beyer and John Bartl; Second Ward, first precinct-Andrew Saffert and Otto J. Buenger; second precinct- Ed. Stoll and Theo. Mueller; Third Ward, first precinct-John Henle and B. I. Vetter; second precinct-John A. Sellner and Wm. Lieb; Fourth Ward, first precinct-J.A. Ochs and W. J. Julius; second precinct-Elmer Backer and E. Hagberg.

New Ulm’s Quota $500.

New Ulm’s share of the $250,000 to be collected for the German relief in the state of Minnesota is $500, and there is no doubt but that this sum will be speedily raised. Sleepy Eye has already oversubscribed her quota of $325, by $50, the committee there collecting over $375.

State Chairman Here.

Mayor Geo. E. Leach of Minneapolis, State Chairman, will be in the city, Thursday, and arrangements have been made so that he will be permitted to make a few remarks at the annual concert given by the Regimental Band. It was planned to have Col. Leach give an extended talk to the people of New Ulm Thursday but on account of the band concert it was decided not to do this and the band has given Col. Leach permission to make a brief address during the intermission.

This announcement was made by Herman Polkow, Chairman of the County relief drive Tuesday while in the city. According to Mr. Polkow, a chairman for the drive has now been secured in every township and every municipality in the county and from now on the work will be pushed. Brown County’s quota has been placed at not less than $3,000.

In one school district in Linden over $40 has been raised. In Morgan $300 was raised in the village and the Township of Morgan raised $200.

Leach Touring Counties.

With Col. Geo. E. Leach, state chairman, touring six counties of the state this week, the appointment of a committee for the Minneapolis campaign, and the announcement of the largest individual gifts yet subscribed to the national fund, officers of the Minnesota state committee of the American Committee for the Relief of Starving German children expressed themselves as well pleased with the organization work already done to secure Minnesota’s quota of $250,000.

“The Minnesota quota should be raised by June 1”, said Col. Leach.“If Chicago in a campaign headed by General Chas. G. Dawes can raise $600,000 for the starving German children, and if Julius Rosenwald can give $100,000 as his individual gift, we in Minnesota should be able to raise the sum needed from us.”‘

In Dire Need.

“In the minds of many Americans there is a deep rooted notion that the suffering of the German children is exaggerated and that on the other hand Germany herself is not doing her share in trying to alleviate this condition. My own personal knowledge enables me to state that both these assumptions are wrong.

“It is moving to see how in spite of the economic exhaustion in which, I should say, 80 per cent of the German people live, everybody is trying to help his neighbors. I cannot do better than quote from a letter which I have just received from an American living in Germany:-

“The pamphlet of the Red Cross Society which I sent you the other day tells a lurid and true story of present day conditions. I sent it in order to put into your hands material for refuting the malicious slanders so often heard that ‘Germany is feigning bankruptcy and poverty and is begging abroad while doing nothing for her own destitute people.’ What one hears and reads of children going to school wholly unfed and returning home to a small ration of stale, cold potatoes explains the growth of all such things as rickets, tuberculosis and what not also. It is simply heartrending.”

“The experience of General Allen’s Committee has been most encouraging In this regard that, wherever it has been able to have the truth about these and condition ranch the minds and hornets of tho American people, they have not failed to respond.

Schall Urges Relief Congressman Thos,, Schall of Minnesota in advocating the apportionment of $10,000,000 of government funds for the relief of the starving children of Germany said:

“The need is an imminent emergency. He gives twice who gives quickly. They are starving now; they will be dead; and it will be too late if we do not get the machinery in motion.

“The testimony of the hearing stands undisputed that there are rows on rows of tubercular babies in the hospitals in a country where formerly tuberculosis in children was practically unknown; that there are today in Germany little children streaming from the awful torments of starvation, on whose gaunt forms there is not one ounce of muscle or fat, whose skin is stretched taut across their bones, whose little bodies are but life in death, living skeletons; that thousands upon thousands of little ones are suffering from hunger-bred, rickets, twisted out of all semblance of childhood’s proper forms, their abdomens distended their limbs shrunk and wasted.

“Eye witnesses testify to seeing children fainting in the street from hunger after having stood in line all day, from three o’clock in the morning, to get the dole of a pound of potatoes which is allotted every other day to each member of a family, and little children found dead in the streets, in the alleys, clutching in their tiny emaciated hands a partly eaten potato or crust of bread, the other part having been too suddenly taken into a starving stomach. These are actual conditions, seen by big-hearted Americans without a drop of German blood in their veins, who went as travelers, but stayed to help, stricken to the heart by the awful misery on all sides. This while our tables are groaning with plenty, our surplus crying for a market, our crops allowed to rot in the field because there is no outlet for them. Even Russia in her poverty is collecting gifts of pence from the workers for the relief of the suffering at her door. French occupants in the Ruhr can not look on unmoved at the horrors that the despotic hand of the conqueror has brought on a defeated and defenseless people and are putting no obstacles in the way of the voluntary helpers who are trying to aid the situation.

“In the name of all those loyal Germans in this country who denied the pull of tender ties and stood unflinchingly by the cause of their adopted land, in the name of those boys of German blood who volunteered without an instant’s hesitation and rendered service to the United States in deeds that blaze with heroism, and more than all, in the name of childhood, tender, appealing babyhood that should be so protected and surrounded with well-being and comfort, I appeal to you men and fathers to come to the aid of these little ones. Lighten the cross that is too heavy for their suffering little lives to endure. Save them, give them back their health and their opportunity. Eighty-three cents a month in our money will spare the life of a child. Can we hesitate or quibble in the face of such proven distress, destitution, and grief? The deaths are so many that the German Government is not giving out the figures Despair is driving many to suicide.”

New Ulm Review

April 22, 1924

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