THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



179 



is not temporary. You gentlemen, who are soon to 

 pass from the scene of action and turn over to the 

 younger generation this great business which you have 

 spent a life-time in building up, do so under greatly 

 changed conditions from what they were when you be- 

 gan twenty-five or forty years ago. There has been a 

 complete evolution in that period. The business, to be 

 profitable, must be conducted upon an entirely new 

 basis. You can no longer afford to graze large herds 

 upon lands which will sell for $5.00 to $10.00 per acre 

 when it requires ten to twenty acres of native grass to 

 support a cow. To quote one of our great statesmen, 

 "You are confronted with a condition and not a theory." 

 You must reduce the number and increase the quality. 

 You must make this $5.00 to $10.00 land produce (in- 

 stead of $1.00 worth of native grass) $-10.00 worth of 

 hay. Instead of ten acres to one cow, you must make 

 one acre take care of ten cows. 



Now, gentlemen, this is what can be done in west 

 Texas, and what is being done in a few places and will 

 be done in many places within the next few years. There 

 is not a man within the sound of my voice who will 

 gainsay the proposition that west Texas is as well 

 adapted to stock farming as any part of the United 

 States, but for the irregularity of the rainfall. Xature 

 has provided us with the soil and climatic conditions 

 unsurpassed by Illinois, Missouri or any of the great 

 States where stock farming has been conducted upon a 

 profitable basis for many years where lands are worth 

 $50.00 to $100.00 per acre." 



It is a fact that nearly all of the arid or semi- 

 arid lands in the west are possessed of marked fertility. 

 It is seldom that absence of abundant production is 

 caused by want of fertility; but is nearly always caused 

 by want of moisture. The trouble does not lie in the 

 fact that rain of the aggregate quantity to produce good 

 crops does not fall, but the shortage of crops is due often 

 to the failure to get a single rain at a critical time. 

 When it rains, it pours and pours, and when it stops 

 it remains dry a long time. There is scarcely any crop 

 grown in North America which can not be grown in 

 western Texas with the aid of irrigation. Alfalfa will 

 grow as well in west Texas as any part of the country. 

 There is no better hay crop known than alfalfa for ma- 

 turing and fattening live stock. The yields obtained 

 in west Texas will be much greater than in Colorado 

 or many of the arid States where it is being grown suc- 

 cessfully and profitably; our seasons are much longer 

 and we could always get at least four cuttings, and most 

 years five, which should give an average yield of at 

 least six tons per acre. Alfalfa hay, when made, is 

 worth to a stockman to be! fed to the live stock which 

 feed upon the ranges, at least $7.00 per ton. How many 

 of you who had large herds upon the ranges last month 

 would not have gladly paid twice that amount for a 

 few hundred tons stacked on your ranches ? One million 

 acres of land is not many acres to a man living in 

 western Texas, and when I speak of west Texas, 

 I mean that country west of the 98th meridian. 

 Did you ever stop to think what an immense area this 

 is? Draw a line from the north boundary line of Clay 

 county on Eed River straight through Texas, following 

 the 98th meridian, and you have an area containing 

 over 120 million acres an empire within itself. Sup- 

 pose one million acres of this country was planted in 

 alfalfa which produced yearly six tons per acre, worth 

 seven dollars per ton. You have six million tons, worth 

 forty-two million dollars, and these figures would not 



fully represent the value of the alfalfa crop to the 

 country. When the ranchman whose cattle graze in 

 the summer on the adjacent upland ranges are feeding 

 alfalfa to their stock in winter, what are they doing? 

 ^ by, they are keeping the animals growing all the 

 winter months, whereas if they had to winter out upon 

 the open range they would lose much in flesh, to say 

 nothing of the hazard of loss through privation. When 

 the young cattle are wintered on the open range, usually 

 they weigh less in the spring than they did in the pre- 

 ceding autumn. When wintered on alfalfa they gain 

 from 100 to 150 pounds during the winter season. This 

 fact has been demonstrated at many experiment stations 

 in irrigated sections. This means that the ranchman 

 can shorten the period of production by one-third at 

 least, that is to say, an animal that requires three years 

 to grow it on the open range, can be made to attain the 

 same weight in two years when fed on alfalfa in winter. 

 This makes it possible to increase the production from 

 the pastures of the open range by 50 per cent. Alfalfa 

 thus grown also makes it possible for the ranchman to 

 finish the stock grown on the ranges before it is shipped 

 to market. Especially is this true if some grain is 

 grown on the irrigated land, as for instance, corn, oats 

 or barley. Experiments conducted at experiment sta- 

 tions have made it clear that when cattle are finished 

 on alfalfa along with grain that one-third of the amount 

 of grain usually fed will give as good results along with 

 alfalfa as a full grain ration in the corn belt where 

 cattle are fattened on corn. There is no question but 

 what with irrigation we can grow as fine corn, oats or 

 barley as Illinois, Missouri or Iowa, and with a greater 

 degree of certainty when we are supplied with water to 

 insure us against failures for want of moisture. Now I 

 do not undertake to say that all of this vast domain can 

 be irrigated but I do claim that millions of acres of it 

 can be. 



Mv observation has been that there are few years 

 but what at some time during the year that rain does 

 not fall in excessive torrents upon the plains and hill- 

 sides and over the valleys of all this broad land. At 

 some period nearly every year, every water course be- 

 comes a raging stream, carrying the floods to the rivers 

 that flow through the low lands of south Texas, often- 

 times causing ruin and disaster to homes and lands, 

 to railroads and other property. The value of this water 

 which after causing wreck and ruin in the fruitful val- 

 leys of the Brazos and Colorado, has lost itself forever 

 in the sea. During the last sixty days enough rain 

 has fallen in the arid and semi-humid belts of Texas 

 to have watered millions of acres in that vast territory. 



There are hundreds if not thousands of places along 

 the dry creeks and canyons where storage reservoirs 

 could be constructed at compensatory cost to conserve 

 the water to irrigate vast areas of land. Near our 

 little city of Wichita Falls stands an object lesson 

 that will convince any man who has any doubt as to 

 the feasibility of storm water irrigation. About six 

 miles south of the town an earthen dam, over a mile 

 in length, was built across Holliday Creek valley, a 

 little dry weather creek that is, dry nine months in 

 the year- and as a result we have an artificial lake 

 that covers nearly 3,000 acres. Irrigation ditches con- 

 vey the water to the lands below in addition to furnish- 

 ing our city with all the water it requires (even though 

 the city were to grow in population several times its 

 present size). We have an ample supply of water to 

 irrigate ten thousand acres of land. 



