TENURE AND USE OP ARID GRAZING LANDS. 49 



the land is plowed these plants are destroyed and it takes many years 

 for them to reoccupy the soil after cultivation has ceased. It there- 

 fore is clear that when an entryman attempts to cultivate land whose 

 productivity is so problematical, he is taking a very large risk of 

 losing everything he puts into the venture. 



Probably the surest way of determining whether or not some of this 

 and will produce crops profitably is to try it. Large areas of it cer- 

 tainly will not. Other areas will, part or all of the time. These 

 areas that will and will not produce crops are often in close juxtapo- 

 sition. Such lands, because of their relation to each other, are best 

 used together. 



To the entryman who is not acquainted with the climatic condi- 

 tions much of the land, judged from the character of the soil, looks 

 like good farm land, and it is very difficult to make him believe that 

 it is not. He may be and usually is acting in perfectly good faith 

 when he asks to be allowed to homestead it and says he is ready to 

 risk his accumulated capital, his labor, and his family on the venture. 

 He is often poorly informed and suffers in consequence. 



A still worse situation sometimes arises. The homesteader may be 

 able to grow crops on his place for a few years in succession and seem- 

 ingly succeed. This is taken to mean the absolute proof that his 

 judgment was correct. Then comes a drought lasting one, two, or 

 three seasons, and the farmer learns the truth. His former temporary 

 success, however, has been the undoing of the whole region. Many 

 homesteaders have come in; the range has been broken up; the 

 stockman has had to move out because he had no feed ; much of the 

 native vegetation, the only kind that will stand the drought, has 

 been destroyed by the farming operations. The land is neither graz- 

 ing land nor crop land. The stockman is gone and the crop farmer 

 has to go in turn. 



This condition has arisen in place after place simply because men 

 have improperly estimated the agricultural possibilities of the land. 

 In the present state of our knowledge there is but one criterion by 

 which to judge. Arid and semiarid lands should be recognized as 

 grazing lands and treated as such until it is demonstrated that suffi- 

 cient crops either of forage or of grain can be grown upon selected 

 areas during the dry years to guarantee, in conjunction with the associ- 

 ated grazing land, a living to the occupant. 



All of this land which the public assumes to be unoccupied is 

 already in use by citizens who have greater or less equities in the 

 region by virtue of priority of occupation, continuous use, and mone- 

 tary and other expenditures in its improvement for production. 

 These persons are and have been for a long time permanent residents 

 of the region, interested in its development and carrying on a busi- 

 ness which has been making the land productive of commodities that 



