22 AGRICULTURE IN THE SEMTARID GREAT PLAINS. 



done and is now being done on the overwhelming majority of farms in 

 the region under tliscussion. There are a very few farms on which 

 improved methods have been followed, and these farms indicate that 

 much better crops are possible than the average farmer has secured. 



Seeing the movement to the dry lands gaining momentum, specu- 

 lators bought large ranches and employed agents in all parts of the 

 country to parcel out the lands at a large profit. The result was an 

 organized campaign for settlers. This could not have been con- 

 demned if the advertisers had been content with describing the semi- 

 arid region as it really is, but much of the advertising has been mis- 

 leading and much of it positively untrue. 



Railroads have been important factors in promoting settlement in 

 all the western country. It was a good business proposition for them 

 to increase the population of the country through which they had 

 built, and, furthermore, many of them had large tracts of land, which 

 they were anxious to sell. 



Strange as it may seem, the establishment of experiment stations 

 in the region has had a strong influence in bringing in settlers. Some- 

 how people seem to take the location of an experiment station as a 

 guaranty that farming will be successful in the vicinity. The loca- 

 tion of a station has almost always immediately increased the demand 

 for and enhanced the price of land in the neighborhood. It should 

 not be forgotten that most of the experiment stations in the region 

 have been established only a few years, during which more than the 

 usual number of favorable seasons have occurred. Many of the 

 heavy yields produced at these stations have been largely due to 

 abundant rainfall, as has sometimes been stated in their bulletins, 

 but' people frequently lose sight of the climatic conditions and attrib- 

 ute the results entirely to the methods and the seed used. 



FARM PRACTICES IN THE REGION. 



A very common method of ])utting in grain has been to go into a 

 field which has received no preparation whatever since the last crop 

 was harvested and with a seeding attachment on a disk cultivator, go 

 over the ground once, and ])erhaps give one harrowing with a spike- 

 tooth harrow afterwards. The writer has seen thousands of acres 

 treated in this way, till so much perennial grass had gainetl a footing 

 that it was often difficult to tell just where the field ended and the 

 virgin prairie began. 



Most of the land has seldom been plowed. Corn and sorghum 

 have generally been listed in without any previous preparation of the 

 soil and have been cultivated one to three times, the ground being 

 treated the same way year after year or alternated with small grain 

 disked in on the stalk ground. Since disk drills came into use it has 



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