86 WESTERN GRAZING GROUNDS AND FOREST RANGES 



change in the rainfall or other climatic conditions any- 

 where in the West. 



Success of the Settlers. The success of the whole 

 thing lay in the fact that with the second attack the 

 settlers had a series of years in which the rainfall was 

 unusually regular. This gave them time to get estab- 

 lished in some comfort. When a series of dry years 

 came they had the soil in such condition that it returned 

 them good crops with much less rain, while even if the 

 crops failed for one year they had saved up surplus 

 enough to carry themselves and their live stock through 

 a year or two of shortage. 



The Department of Agriculture did much to help the 

 settlers in this work by hunting the world over for 

 drouth-resistant plants of all kinds. From Russia and 

 other regions they brought new species of wheat and 

 other grains that were accustomed to grow with a mini- 

 mum of moisture. On the steppes of Russia it found 

 an alfalfa that grew amid the most inhospitable condi- 

 tions of cold and drouth. This work was also of great 

 value to the dry-farming raid on the desert lands which 

 came a few years later. 



Then came the great'growth of the beet sugar indus- 

 try all over the West. Huge irrigation works were 

 planned and carried out wherever there was a stream 

 available. Western Kansas and eastern Colorado made 

 especially great strides in these respects. In the North- 

 west in Montana, Idaho, Utah and the two Dakotas, 

 between the growth of the sugar industry and the grow- 

 ing of wheat on lands that had always been supposed to 

 be worthless for any purpose whatever except grazing, 

 the settlers swarmed over the land. 



All these things spelled finis for the range stock busi- 



