306 CAMPBELL'S SOIL CULTURE MANUAL 



recgonized its results, if not in official documents, in the 

 far more significant form of establishing numerous experi- 

 ment stations on the high, dry plains that they have always 

 hitherto regarded as hopelessly arid. There they are de- 

 monstrating along independent lines the very facts to the 

 proving of which Hardy W. Campbell has devoted more 

 than twenty years of his life. This belated government 

 action, taken when the results of the Campbell system 

 could no longer be denied or ignored, is, in fact, the strong- 

 est endorsement that the Campbell system of farming with- 

 out irrigation in the semi-arid region could receive. * * 



Mr. Campbell's own account of the circumstances tha 

 started his investigations is interesting, and hitherto un- 

 published. In 1882, he harvested one of the greatest wheat 

 crops that had ever been cut and threshed in the Dakotas, 

 obtaining 12,000 bushels from 300 acres of land, in Brown 

 county, South Dakota. The next year, his crop of 260 

 acres of the same land was an absolute failure, while the 

 remaining 40 acres returned a good yield. Here was a 

 puzzling proposition, as all the land had received the same 

 treatment and had been seeded at practically the same 

 time. To discover the reason for the widely differing har- 

 vests became, for a time, Mr. Campbell's ruling passion. 



He recalled that the record-breaking crop of 12,000 

 bushels had been secured after spring plowing of the land. 

 Also that the 260 acres that failed to yield a crop worth 

 harvesting the subsequent season had been plowed in the 

 fall, while the 40 acres from which a good crop had been 

 obtained had been plowed in the spring. The conclusion 

 seemed inevitable that the secret of obtaining good crops 

 lay in the spring plowing. 



He talked it over with his neighbors, and everyone 

 agreed that the virtues of spring plowing for spring wheat 



