DRY LANDS AND FORESTS 99 



Nine per cent, of the area of continental 

 United States has less than 10 inches of rain; 

 thirty per cent, less than 20 inches and more 

 than 10 inches; thirty-three per cent, between 

 20 and 40 inches, and twenty-seven per cent, 

 over forty. 



Unless the rains fall and the sun shines, all 

 the "isms" and "ologies" of agriculture, both 

 as an art and as a science, go for naught. 

 Rain, or the lack of it, is the constant factor 

 which Jeremiah the Gleaner must keep in 

 mind when he is charting his empire of op- 

 portunity. It was not the Rocky Mountains 

 that stopped the westward tide of immigra- 

 tion. Immigration stopped at the ninety- 

 ninth meridian, less than half the distance 

 across the continent and rolled back on corn- 

 belt acres, not because there was not land 

 enough but because there was not water 

 enough. 



Between the ninety-ninth meridian and the 

 Rocky Mountains there is a strip of level 

 table-land three hundred miles wide, the Great 

 Plains clean enough, smooth enough, rich 

 enough to feed the nation for generations to 

 come. Except for one fact it hasn't enough 

 water. It is water in the long run that will 



