LAND AND OTHER AGENTS OF PRODUCTION 147 



thing of the past. With our rapidly increasing population it will soon 

 become necessary to utilize for crop production a large area of the 

 rich arable land of the West which has insufficient rainfall for ordinary 

 agriculture. Then, also, during the last two or three years there has 

 been rather more than the average amount of rainfall over the larger 

 part of the semiarid region, and many people acquainted with present 

 conditions firmly believe that the climate of this region is rapidly 

 becoming more humid. This belief is, without foundation in fact, but 

 since this idea is generally held and has become widely advertised it 

 becomes important to emphasize the fact that there is no adequate 

 basis for hoping that the climate of the arid West is undergoing any 

 appreciable change as regards precipitation. 



The conquest of the semiarid West, to be successful and to be 

 accomplished without large and costly failures, must be made slowly 

 and by the careful application of definitely ascertained scientific facts. 

 The boundaries of existing settlements may be gradually extended, but 

 any wholesale attempts to colonize large areas of this semiarid land 

 with people accustomed to farming only in humid regions or not accus- 

 tomed to farming at all must surely result in disastrous failures, and 

 such failures can only hinder the real progress of western development. 



Somewhere within the bounds of the Great Plains area (from the 

 ninety-eighth meridian on the east to a contour line east of the Rocky 

 Mountains, marking an altitude of 5,000 feet, on the west) will ulti- 

 mately be drawn the line which shall represent the western boundary 

 of the great agricultural region known as the Mississippi Valley. 

 Beyond this will be detached areas, but this will be the margin of the 

 continuous area. It is therefore within this Great Plains area that 

 experiments must be conducted that will determine what portions 

 can be used for general dry-land agriculture and what portions can 

 best be utilized for stock raising. Where this industry becomes the 

 predominating one, means must be devised for supplementing the 

 natural grasses of the range with forage plants, either annual or 

 perennial. Cultivated grains imported from foreign countries having 

 a similar climate must here be tested and selected; here also must 

 be carried on extensive experiments in breeding agricultural plants 

 along the lines that will adapt them to the peculiar conditions of 

 soil and climate which here prevail. 



The light rainfall of this region is by no means an unmixed evil. 

 It is probably due to this that the soils of this area are of such won- 

 derful fertility. While the scanty rainfall has not tended to produce 



