50 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



tury after the Indians had been pushed still 

 farther into the arid West. 



Oklahoma, which crowds the dry-land belt 

 lying between the prairies of the Middle West 

 and the mountains, furnished six million acres 

 for the late-comers, and with the final entry 

 of this strip as homesteads, the last of the 

 "inexhaustible West," the last of land sus- 

 ceptible to the type of agriculture that the 

 pioneers knew, disappeared from the continent. 



Those who followed found only the semi- 

 arid Great Plains and the inter-mountain re- 

 gions and the arid Southwest to be had for 

 the asking. Twenty years ago it was the 

 verdict of qualified students that eventually 

 less than twenty per cent, of the bench lands 

 lying between the ninety-ninth meridian and 

 the mountain wall would ever be available for 

 agriculture. It was not a question of innate 

 fertility of the land, but lack of water. The 

 ninety-ninth meridian marks, roughly speak- 

 ing, the twenty-inch rainfall. The prosperity 

 of the Middle West depends on an annual 

 rainfall of not less than thirty-five inches, and 

 once we cross the line we must change our 

 type of agriculture. The early movement to- 

 ward the taking up of these semi-arid lands 



