Waiting for Zhou Hexuan and Yin Changling to leave, Liu Xiang asked Gan Jiyong: "Your expression was a little wrong before, what do you want to say?" ”

Gan Jiyong took out a large stack of documents from his leather bag, and said with a bitter face: "There were two outsiders just now, and some words are not good to say in person, Commander, you can take a look at these materials first." ”

Liu Xiang first turned to a summary of the disaster report, only to see that it was written: Since this spring, there has been a long drought and no rain in all parts of Sichuan, the fields have cracked, the roads have been carried by starvation, the grain has been exhausted, and the dead have been stolen. A total of 125 counties, 3 tuns and 1 bureau in the province were affected, except for the counties in the Chengdu Plain, the rest of the places were disaster areas, and more than 37 million people were affected......

During the Republic of China, there were two main sources of statistics on the population of Sichuan, one was customs data and the other was postal data.

There is a huge difference between the two data, which are more than 70 million and more than 40 million respectively, and the actual population of Sichuan should be about 50 million (including Xikang and Chongqing). 37 million people were affected, accounting for 70% of Sichuan's total population.

According to the "Rural Economy of Sichuan" published by the Commercial Press at the beginning of the year, "[Since 1928,] Sichuan has been plagued by disasters for many years, and the barren areas have been expanding day by day. That is to say, Sichuan has been plagued by major disasters for eight consecutive years, with earthquakes, floods, droughts, winds, hailstorms, and locusts.

Coupled with more than 20 years of warlord warfare, from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the period of the full-scale War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the population of Sichuan has hardly increased. It was not until Liu Xiang unified Sichuan that the population grew rapidly in the past two or three years, and now it is experiencing a large-scale drought in Sichuan.

Liu Xiang was not very clear about the disaster before, thinking that only northwest Sichuan was more serious. Now that he had cursorily flipped through the disaster report, he finally became sad, sighed and asked, "How many people died of starvation?" ”

Gan Jiyong replied cautiously: "It is difficult to make accurate statistics, not only in northwest Sichuan, but also in northern and northeastern Sichuan. ”

Liu Xiang casually took out a report on the disaster situation in Xuanhan County, only to see that it was written: This county is starving all over the wilderness...... According to statistics in the previous 20 days, the number of people dying of starvation in each event was more than 10 per day, and it has gradually increased in recent years, reaching about 20 people per day.

Liu Xiang opened the report of Wanyuan County again: Now the population of Wanyuan has plummeted by one-third...... In Wanyuan City, there are only a few more than a thousand people. If you travel a long distance, it is difficult to see cooking smoke all day long, and there is almost no place for hungry people to die along the way.

Liu Xiang looked at the report of Nanjiang County: the total number of people starving to death in urban and rural areas reached more than 1,000 people every day...... Since February 1, more than 80,000 hungry people have died of starvation in the county.

Liu Xiang was shocked by the data, and asked angrily: "With so many people starving to death, how are you, the director of civil affairs, be?" “

Gan Jiyong complained bitterly: "God doesn't open his eyes, what can I do?" Sichuan has been plagued by disasters every year, and it has to develop its internal affairs, and the money of the Civil Affairs Department is simply not enough. So far, I have only managed to get 100,000 oceans, where have I been able to save so many people? ”

Liu Xiang was silent.

The Sichuan Provincial Government's money has been used to build roads in recent years, and the Sichuan-Guizhou Highway was just completed last year, and now the Sichuan-Hunan, Sichuan-Hubei and Sichuan-Shaanxi highways are being built at the same time. These few roads alone can hollow out Liu Xiang's old bottom, because the Shu Road is too difficult, full of mountains and hills, and the cost of road construction is sometimes more than ten times that of the plains. Even if there is private fundraising and businessmen joining forces, Liu Xiang and the provincial government will have to lose their capital.

Gan Jiyong suddenly said again: "A few days ago, Mr. Huang Yanpei of the Central Senate came to Sichuan to inspect, and he passed through Jianyang County and saw that hunger was everywhere. He questioned me that Jianyang was a model county for the New Life Movement, so why were the streets full of hungry people who had died. As for the absence of a corpse! ”

"What's the matter! Jian Yang starved to death? Liu Xiang was suddenly shocked.

The disaster reports I saw earlier all came from the impoverished northern Sichuan, northwest Sichuan and northeast Sichuan, and Liu Xiang was already numb to the fact that those areas reported disasters and died every year. But Jianyang County is different, Jianyang is next to the Sichuan Provincial Government, and it is still a demonstration county for the old Jiang Xin's life movement!

Zhou Hexuan passed through Jianyang this time back and forth, but in a hurry, he didn't go into the city to take a look, otherwise he would have seen a lot of corpses that had fallen on the road.

Gan Jiyong explained: "Jianyang has been hit by disasters for four consecutive years, and the people are already hard, and they are counting on today's grain to be able to harvest more to fill their stomachs. As a result, the summer grain harvest failed, and the price of grain soared, so how could ordinary people still have food at home? ”

Liu Xiang had a headache when he heard this, sat back on the Taishi chair, and muttered: "There are so many people starving to death, I, the chairman of Sichuan Province, how can I still have the face to see my hometown father." ”

Liu Xiang flipped through the report with blank eyes, and it was another one from Nanchuan County: resident Xiong Dahu brought back two jars of soju, the bottom of the jar was broken, and the wine flowed all over the ground. Hungry people in the neighborhood flocked to eat, and drank clean with mud and wine. The starving people, who were already dying of hunger, immediately fell to the ground drunk, lying horizontally and vertically on a dam, and the death toll was 48.

This method of drunken death is already rare, at least not starving to death, that is called suffering.

"What about the central government's disaster relief food?" Liu Xiang asked.

Gan Jiyong shook his head and said, "I haven't seen it yet." Only Huang Yanpei from the Central Senate came, but it was not for disaster relief, and now he has gone out of Sichuan to Luoyang through the Sword Pavilion, and he has written a lot of good poems along the way. ”

"Mom sells batches!"

Liu Xiang grabbed the disaster report violently, and scolded loudly: "Ge Laozi hurry up and rescue the disaster, and if you don't have money, you will find a bank to borrow." Also, those who hoard Juqi to speculate on grain prices will be seriously warned, and whoever is disobedient will be arrested and shot by Lao Tzu! ”

"Obedience!" Gan Jiyong hurriedly stood up and saluted the army.

After sending Gan Jiyong away, Liu Xiang asked the adjutant to send a telegram to Lu Zuofu, mobilizing all the big ships and small boats of the Minsheng Company to go to Shanghai at any time to pick up Zhou Hexuan's grain from the United States. As for the freight, Liu Xiang said what the cost price was before, but now he doesn't mention the money at all.

The entire northern part of Sichuan is now seriously affected, and Liu Xiang has no choice but to give some symbolic relief, and the rest can only be left to fate. However, eastern Sichuan, southern Sichuan, and central Sichuan must go all out to rescue, otherwise something big will happen in Sichuan, and maybe some people will rebel.

In fact, by the height of the famine in the spring of 1937, Sichuan was in shambles. It is the norm to kill officials and eat large households, and the most terrible thing is that they are noisy boxers, demons and monsters all come out, and gather people to make trouble under the sign of immortals, and many innocent people have suffered from it.

Under Liu Xiang's orders, the various units of the Sichuan army were quickly mobilized, and the main purpose was not to provide disaster relief, but to suppress possible riots.

Gan Jiyong ran to major banks every day, begging his father to sue his grandmother for disaster relief, and finally he got 1.6 million oceans from him. Sichuan is really poor, the government is poor, the people are poor, only the richest in the opium trade, Liu Xiang had to increase the "anti-smoking tax" again.

As for stabilizing grain prices, administrative orders alone cannot suppress them, and only when Zhou Hexuan's relief grain arrives can it be alleviated.

Now the disaster has spread from northwest Sichuan to northern Sichuan and northeast Sichuan, and other places are more serious, but they can generally be supported. If there were a few rains in autumn and crops such as sweet potatoes and wheat were harvested, millions of people would not starve to death.

But God is determined to get along with Sichuan, no one can predict that the drought in Sichuan will last for more than half a year.