"Yes," said the man of God, "and you found bread."
President Kimball's letters to his son William, who was then in England, will fully tell the story of the famine, and also many of the current events of that period:
"GREAT SALT LAKE CITY,
"February 29, 1856.
"TO MY DEAR SON WILLIAM, AND TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
"My family, with yours, are all in good health and spirits. I have been under the necessity of rationing my family, and also yours, to two-thirds of a pound of breadstuff per day each; as the last week is up to-day, we shall commence on half a pound each—at the same time they all begin to look better and fatter, and more ruddy, like the English. This I am under the necessity of doing. Brother Brigham told me to-day that he had put his family on half a pound each, for there is scarcely any grain in the country, and there are thousands that have none at all scarcely. We do this for the purpose of feeding hundreds that have none.
"My family at this time consists of about one hundred souls, and I suppose that I feed about as many as one hundred besides.
"My mill has not brought me in, for the last seven months, over one bushel of toll per day, in consequence of the dry weather, and the water being frozen up—which would not pay my miller. When this drought came on, I had about seven hundred bushels of wheat, and it is now reduced to about one hundred and twenty-five bushels, and I have only about twenty-five bushels of corn, which will not provide for my own family until harvest. Heber has been to the mill to-day, and has brought down some unbolted flour, and we shall be under the necessity of eating the bran along with the flour, and shall think ourselves doing well with half a pound a day at that. * * * We have some meat and perhaps about seventy bushels of potatoes, also a very few beets and carrots; so you can judge whether or not we can get through until harvest without digging roots; still we are altogether better off than the most of the people in these valleys of the mountains. There are several wards in this city who have not over two weeks' provisions on hand.
"I went into the tithing office with Brother Hill and examined it from top to bottom, and, taking all the wheat, corn, buckwheat and oats, there were not to exceed five hundred bushels, which is all the public works have, or expect to have, and the works are pretty much abandoned, the men having been all turned off, except about fifteen who are at work on Brother Brigham's house and making some seed drills for grain, as we will be obliged to put in our grain by drilling, on account of the scarcity, which probably will not take over one-third of the grain it would to sow broadcast.
"We shall probably not do anything on the public works until another harvest. The mechanics of every class have all been counseled to abandon their pursuits and go to raising grain. This we are literally compelled to do, out of necessity. Moreover, there is not a settlement in the Territory but is also in the same fix that we are. Some settlements can go two months, some three, some can, probably, at the rate of half a pound per day, till harvest. Hon. A. W. Babbitt even went to Brother Hyde's provision store the other day, and begged to get twenty or twenty-five pounds of flour, but could not. This I was told by William Price who is the salesman of the store. Money will not buy flour or meal, only at a few places, and but very little at that. I can assure you that I am harrassed constantly; I sell none for money but let it go where people are truly destitute. Dollars and cents do not count now, in these times, for they are the tightest that I have ever seen in the Territory of Utah. You and your brethren can judge a little by this. As one of the old Prophets said, anciently, 'as with the people so with the Priest,' we all take it together.
"Some of the people drop many big tears, but if they cannot learn wisdom by precept, nor by example, they must learn it by what they suffer.