20 ARID AGRICULTURE. 



BOOM FOB The West is filled with paradoxes. The 



MORE PEOPLE wor( j ar i c | j g some times used to mean poor, or un- 

 productive. However, there are no lands in the 

 world more productive than our best arid lands, 

 unless we except the soils forming the deltas of 

 some great rivers. The most thickly populated 

 delta lands support over five hundred persons 

 per square mile, or about five-sixths of a person 

 for each acre. 



Some Western lands have been made to sup- 

 port four cows per acre. If they were ordinarily 

 good cows and gave twenty pounds of milk per 

 day apiece, five-sixths of a person could not drink 

 the milk. If the forty quarts of milk per day 

 from the four cows were sold for five cents a 

 quart, the income of two dollars ought to give 

 entire support to a whole man. With such pos- 

 sibilities the comparatively small irrigated por- 

 tion of arid America would support a population 

 equal to one-half the total present population oi 

 the United States. The arid region can also 

 supply two-hundred-acre dry farms to a half 

 million farmers and give each one as much more 

 land for pasturage or range. With the average 

 sized farm family this makes room for two mill- 

 ions more population in this land of promise. 

 Time and the future will make the promise good. 



CLIMATE OP This arid region we arc writing about has 



THE DBY from one-sixth to one-half the amount of rain 



and snow which comes in other parts of the 



