provision for levying a general tax, in counties issuing the bonds, for the benefit of a numerous body of citizens, who, without fault of theirs, and solely by reason of successive crop failures, are now reduced to extremities, and are in fact impoverished to such an extent that they are, for the present time, wholly without the ability to obtain the grain necessary for seeding the lands from which they derive the necessaries of life. It is agreed on all sides that this class of citizens, having already exhausted their private credit, must have friendly aid from some source in procuring seed-grain, if they put in crops this year. The legislature, by this statute, has devised a measure which seems well adapted to meet the exigency, and promises to to give the needed relief, with little prospect of ultimate loss to the county treasuries. It is reasonable to anticipate that the beneficiaries of the act will be enabled to tide over their present embarrassments, and, through the aid granted them by this statute, a wide spread calamity, both public and private, will be averted. The crisis in the development of the state which renders some measure of wholesale relief imperatively necessary is fully recognized by all well-informed citizens of the state, and this court will be justified in taking judicial notice of the existing status. The stubborn fact exists that a class of citizens, numbered by many thousands, is in such present straits from poverty, that unless succored by some comprehensive measure of relief they will become a public burden, in other words, paupers, dependent upon counties where they reside for support. It is to avert such a wide-spread disaster that the the seed-grain statute was enacted, and it should be interpreted in the light of the public danger which was the occasion of its passage. “The support of paupers, and the giving of assistance to those who by reason of age, infirmity, or disability are likely to become such, is, by the practice and the common consent of civilized countries, a public purpose.” Cooley Tax’n (2d Ed) pp. 124, 125. “The relief of the poor—the care of those who are unable to care for themselves—is among the unquestioned objects of public duty.” Opinion of Brewer, J., in State v. Osawkee Tp., 14 Kan. 424. If the destitute farmers of the frontier of North Dakota were now actually in the alms-houses of the various
