Grain moves inland by camel and araba. Acorne, 7 Feb 1920.
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Location

Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey

Year

1920

Item Detail

Paul B. Fischer's account of moving Turkish Government grain inland runs across three pages and is the most practical thing in the issue. A camel carried 300 kilos, a horse or mule 200, and an ox or buffalo araba 1,500, at about forty cents per ton mile over journeys of twelve days. Other items cover the same ground on horseback, among them a fifty-mile ride to deliver 600 blankets at Kessab. A note from a Greek village north of Marsovan records forty young men taken, of whom five lived and nine came home and died.

Context

The Acorne was the weekly bulletin of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, produced in Constantinople for private circulation among the Committee's own staff. By January 1920, it printed a thousand copies a week for station directors in the field and for supporters in America.

Issues ran to four pages of short field dispatches and unit reports: orphan care, medical work, refugee feeding, education and workshop programs, with operational notes on supplies, rations, transport and exchange. Personnel notices recorded arrivals, transfers and departures. The bulletin took the title Near East Relief with Vol. II, No. 42 on 23 October 1920.

No complete run is known to survive. NERHS holds seventeen issues of Volume II, drawn from the Harry Pratt Judson records at the University of Chicago, the Martin Weaver Documents at the Mennonite Historical Library, and the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary.

These five issues run from 31 January to 27 March 1920 and cover the Adana district, the massacre at Marash and its aftermath, and American relief in north-west Persia. They reached the University of Chicago through President Harry Pratt Judson, who headed the Committee's Persian commission.

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  • Holding Institution

    University of Chicago (Office of the President)

  • Attribution

    University of Chicago, Office of the President. Harper, Judson, and Burton Administrations. Records (1869–1925)

  • Rights

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  • Document Contents

    'Monthly Exchange' printing the January rates for the dollar, pound sterling, franc, lira and gold lira; «Good Cheer» on the station at Oulou Kishla; 'Araba Transportation', signed Paul B. Fischer and running across three pages, on moving Turkish Government grain inland at 300 kilos to a camel, 200 to a horse or mule and 1,500 to an ox or buffalo araba, for about forty cents per ton mile over journeys of twelve days; 'Relative to Armenian Property Rights' on the Central Commission of Relief's protest over restitution; 'Felt Like Peace Conference Heroes' on a fifty-mile horseback delivery of 600 blankets to Kessab below Mt. Cassius and orphanage plans for Latakia and Kessab; 'War's Aftermath' on a Greek village three hours north of Marsovan where, of forty young men taken, five only lived and nine came home and died in the village; 'News Notes' on the return of the Wallen and Arnold film tour with more than five hundred still pictures, Miss Annie T. Allen at Brusa and Miss Mc Intosh at the Jerusalem orphanage; 'Not on the Map', a letter from Harounie on two hundred orphans.

Grain moves inland by camel and araba. Acorne, 7 Feb 1920.