Diário de Lisboa
- Our daily bread — Agricultural credit
- The Faial catastrophe — Reconstruction and relief
- The road from Miranda do Douro to Mogadouro
The front page connects subsistence with public responsibility. A central essay describes farmers caught between poor credit, moneylenders and transport costs. Another appeal insists that Faial’s recovery requires money and safer rebuilding, while a road item presents tax-paying residents demanding a connection or repair subsidy from the state.
Substantial passages on agricultural credit, Faial reconstruction and the complete road petition item. Other sections of the agricultural essay and cultural/personal notices remain outside the selected reading.
Translation
Our daily bread — Agricultural credit
The agricultural year is a bad one—everyone knows it. The shortfall in olive oil, bread, wine, beans and potatoes has grown compared with last year’s harvests. The government is not to blame, since it does not control the unavoidable meteorological part of production.
Its task is a different one: to ease the cost of living by fighting the vampires and supplying the markets in good time.
[…]
Agricultural credit is, for now, precarious, slow and complicated. The government lives under the illusion that the Alentejo consists of a handful of large farmers who make speeches here in Lisbon and give themselves the importance of… electoral catastrophes.
The Alentejo consists above all of a more modest and less talkative population—people who pay for sowing with the proceeds of the harvest and often pay for harvesting with money from usurers. These devour the economy of our ill-fated province. What claws!
The price set for wheat is the same whether the farmer lives many kilometres from the railway or right beside it. Transport helps bring the countryside to ruin.
The area sown diminishes year by year.
The Faial catastrophe — Reconstruction and relief
The Faial catastrophe is passing into the category of old, almost forgotten things.
The emotion stirred by the first reports is subsiding, for few remember the misery of so many people without homes and so many homes without safety.
[…]
Words of sympathy are worth much, but acts of solidarity and relief are worth far more. Horta and the destroyed villages cannot remain in perpetual mourning. They must be rebuilt so as to withstand further shocks.
This task requires a plan of works and money to pay for it.
Portuguese people throughout the world—on the mainland and islands, in colonies with or without the flag—cannot shirk the duty of contributing to so worthy and patriotic a cause. Horta also needs a will strong enough to rise above passions and prevail over the indecisive and the many victims of administrative inertia.
To be sure, there has been no shortage of collecting parties, subscriptions and spontaneous gifts.
Why not hold a great bullfight and a great sporting festival? Would it really be too much to decree a relief stamp for Faial’s victims for three days?
The road from Miranda do Douro to Mogadouro
Some time ago we mentioned the subscription opened among people from Trás-os-Montes to repair the old Roman road linking Miranda do Douro and Mogadouro, since the public authorities had abandoned the connections between that town and the rest of the country.
We learn that the people of Miranda have petitioned the Minister of Commerce to order a connection to road No. 9 or to grant them a subsidy to finish repairing the Roman road.
Nothing could be more just, for this is a region that pays its taxes punctually without receiving the slightest benefit from the state.
Context
How a poor harvest tightens the credit trap
Farmers need money before the next crop can be sold: first for sowing, then for the work of harvesting. The editorial argues that expensive private lending drains the proceeds before they can finance another season. A uniform wheat price adds a geographical disadvantage when distant farmers must pay more to reach the railway. The resulting contraction of sowing connects household finance with the future food supply, which explains the demand for government action beyond blaming the weather.
Why relief had to become reconstruction
The earthquake struck Faial on August 31, 1926, damaging Horta’s buildings, including the local secondary school. Two weeks later, the appeal fears public attention is already fading. It moves from immediate gifts to the harder task of funding work that can make homes safer against further shocks. Festivals and the proposed temporary stamp are ways of extending contributions beyond those moved by the first reports, while the call for local leadership addresses the problem of organizing the rebuilding itself.
A road petition as a claim on the state
The people of Miranda had already organized private contributions, but the paper treats road access as a public obligation. Their two requests—a connection to an existing numbered road or a subsidy for repairs—offer different means to the same end: dependable links with the rest of Portugal. The appeal to taxes paid makes the argument reciprocal. Residents who meet their obligations to the state should receive usable infrastructure, rather than finance isolation’s remedy alone.
Original
Panem nostrum — o crédito agrícola
O ano agricola é mau—toda a gente o sabe. O azeite, o pão, o vinho, o feijão e a batata avolumaram o seu deficit, se nos referirmos ás colheitas do ano passado. Não é o governo o culpado, visto não ser êle quem regula a parte fatal, meteorologica, da produção.
A sua missão é outra—atenuar a carestia da vida, combatendo os vampiros e abastecendo, a tempo e horas, os mercados.
[...]
O credito agricola é, por emquanto, uma coisa precaria, demorada, complicada. O governo vive na ilusão de que o Alemtejo se reduz a meia duzia de grandes lavradores, que aqui em Lisboa fazem discursos e se dão uma importancia de... catastrofes eleitorais.
O Alemtejo compõe-se, sobretudo, duma população mais modesta e menos faladora—gente que faz as sementeiras com o dinheiro das colheitas e faz as colheitas, muitas vezes, com o dinheiro dos agiotas. Estes devoram a economia da nossa mal fadada provincia. Que garras!
O preço estabelecido para o trigo é o mesmo, quer o lavrador viva a muitos quilometros do caminho de ferro quer lhe seja visinho. Os transportes concorrem para a ruina dos campos.
As sementeiras reduzem-se de ano para ano.
A catastrofe do Faial — reconstrução e assistência
A catastrofe do Faial passa á categoria das coisas velhas, quasi extintas.
A emoção causada pelas primeiras noticias vai-se acalmando, pois raros se lembram do que seja a miseria de tanta gente sem lar e de tanto lar sem segurança.
[...]
As palavras de simpatia valem muito, mas as obras de solidariedade e assistencia valem muito mais. A cidade da Horta e as aldeias destruídas não podem ficar em perpetuo luto. Impõe-se o problema da sua reconstrução, em condições de resistirem a novos abalos.
Esta dificuldade demanda um plano de obras e dinheiro para o custear.
Os portugueses de todo o mundo—Portugal continental e insular, colonias com ou sem bandeira—não podem eximir-se ao dever de contribuirem para tão benemerito como patriotico dever. Exige-se tambem que, na cidade da Horta, haja uma vontade bem firme e bem acima de paixões, que se imponha a tantos indecisos e a tantas vitimas da inercia administrativa.
Bandos-precatorios, subscrições, envios expontaneos de donativos não têm faltado, é certo.
Porque não se faz uma grande tourada e um grande festival desportivo? Será de mais, porventura, que, durante três dias, se decrete uma estampilha de assistencia aos sinistrados do Faial?
A estrada de Miranda do Douro a Mogadouro
Referimo-nos ha tempos á subscripção que foi aberta entre transmontanos, para reparar a velha estrada romana que liga Miranda do Douro com Mogadouro, uma vez que os poderes publicos votaram ao abandono as comunicações entre aquela cidade e o resto do país.
Sabemos que os mirandeses representaram junto do sr. ministro do Comercio, pedindo que mande ligar a estrada n.º 9 ou que lhes conceda um subsidio para terminar a reparação da estrada romana.
Nada mais justo, tratando-se de uma região que paga pontualmente os seus impostos, sem receber do Estado o mais pequeno beneficio.