ARID WASHINGTON AND OREGON 



wheat and stock. The climate varies with the altitude, 

 and is similar to that of Washington and the lower parts 

 of Idaho. The rainfall is about fifteen inches, which is 

 not more than half enough for profitable agriculture. 

 There are no great extremes of either heat or cold. 



The products are practically the same as those of 

 Washington, except that the earliest vegetables and 

 small fruits are more successfully cultivated in the low 

 valleys of the latter. Small-fanning and fruit-culture 

 are successfully pursued wherever irrigation is provided. 

 Indeed, the contrast with the prosperity of those who 

 operate large farms in grain is very striking. 



The writer recalls an experience in point. On one oc- 

 casion he rode for hoars through miles of farms devoted 

 exclusively to wheat, which was raised at a loss, the 

 proprietors generally going into debt for vegetables, 

 poultry, and even dairy products, at the stores in the 

 county seat. Then at Pendleton, on the same day, he 

 inspected a little patch of irrigated ground only three- 

 quarters of an acre in size which furnished a family 

 with vegetables and small fruits, together with a sur- 

 plus to be disposed of at the store and sold again to the 

 thriftless farmers who raised only wheat. Hero was a 

 single cherry-tree, the product of which sold in the mar- 

 ket for exactly the same price as the product of five acres 

 of wheat! Ten or twenty acres of irrigated land in east- 

 ern Oregon are more valuable than twenty times as much 

 farmed in grain and sold at the prices prevailing during 

 the past few years. The little farm furnishes a certain 

 living, with a prospect of something more ; the large 

 farm means drudgery, debt, and very often ruin. Tin-so 

 economic facts having been clearly demonstrated to Ore- 



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