LAND AND OTHER AGENTS OF PRODUCTION 151 



mined. As before stated, the exploiting of dry farming on the Great 

 Plains has been carried on during a period of unusually heavy rain- 

 fall. In all probability droughts as severe and as long continued will 

 occur in the future as have occurred in the past. Then and not until 

 then, will these methods be subjected to the decisive test. There 

 will always be a borderland where stock raising will be the important 

 industry with farming as a side issue. The actual .settler who will 

 give his personal attention to the details of farm work, and who has 

 had sufficient experience in farming under somewhat similar conditions 

 to make him familiar with the general practices required in the semi- 

 arid districts, and who has sufficient capital to buy one or two sections 

 of land, to build a house and barn, and to stock the farm with a hun- 

 dred head of cattle or more, together with the necessary teams, will 

 have a fair chance of success where the settler who owns but a quarter- 

 section of land and has only sufficient capital, to buy a team and the 

 necessary farm implements would meet with almost certain failure. 

 It is believed that it must be to this class of well-to-do farmers who 

 will combine stock raising with farming that we must look for the 

 agricultural development of a large portion of the semiarid districts. 

 Companies recently organized for the purpose of carrying on farming 

 operations on a large scale with the use of steam tractors also give 

 some promise of success. It is to be hoped that such companies may 

 prove to be permanently profitable, for it will mean much to the agri- 

 cultural development of an immense area of very fertile land. 



41. THE INTRODUCTION OF DRY-LAND PLANTS 1 

 BY A. N. HUME AND MANLEY CHAMPLIN a 



Over a vast area of our western states the crop failures during the 

 four-year period 1910-1913 show with great force that we need to 

 increase the list of drought-resistant cereals. As settlers go into the 

 driest upland regions of our western states from the Mexican boundary 

 north to Canada, they find that the staple small grains are less certain 

 than in the moister regions farther east. The farmers give up the 

 struggle to farm in dry regions with the varieties adapted to moist 

 regions, and go back east. The hardy pioneers who remain and keep 

 up the fight see more clearly the ne^d of cultivating varieties of plants 



'Adapted from Bulletin 156, South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station, 

 pp. 116-22. 



2 The first two paragraphs of this reading are borrowed from Bulletin 158 of 

 the same station, written by N. E. Hansen. EDITOR. 



