50 BULLETIN 1001, tf. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



are just as necessary as those that the incoming homesteader hopes 

 to produce. 



As the grazing homesteader will always select the best of the graz- 

 ing land, his activities are likely temporarily to drive out the range 

 grazing industry, and the present user will lose most if not all of his 

 equity, although the introduction of a more productive type of agri- 

 culture frequently is decidedly doubtful if not impossible. When 

 the present occupant tells the new man that it will be impossible to 

 grow crops on the land, the latter immediately judges the advice to 

 be insincere. It has happened over and over again that the stock- 

 man is correct and the homesteader loses all he puts into the venture; 

 but his advent has at least temporarily driven out the stockman. 



However, the fact that some of the land will produce crops part 

 or all of the time must not be overlooked. Recognizing that it is 

 very desirable to make the land produce as much as possible, it would 

 seem wise to approach the problem of how best to use this land from 

 the standpoint of the range stockman, who is already using it and 

 frequently best knows its possibilities for crop and live-stock pro- 

 duction, instead of from that of the prospective homesteader who 

 doesn't know the country. 



The well-informed range stockman to-day fears the homesteader 

 merely because he doesn't want his range broken up, and recognizes 

 that with the laws in their present form he has no recourse for the 

 losses, amounting to confiscation, which he may be forced to endure. 

 If there is any land on his range where crops can be grown he is ready 

 to buy the feed produced on it if there is any way of restricting the 

 crop farmer to that land which will grow crops. But the stockman's 

 hold upon the land that he uses is now of so uncertain a character 

 that he dare not demonstrate that certain small patches of his range 

 will produce crops occasionally. If he had a legal right to the use 

 of all of the land he now does use, it would be to his advantage to 

 search out these small spots, where additional feed can be produced, 

 and cultivate them. Under the circumstances that now exist, he 

 will do all he can to dissuade any one from trying such a thing on 

 "his'' range. 



Yet if he knew he would not harm his main business, but rather 

 help it by so doing, he would be willing to invest money, labor, and 

 seed in an attempt to produce a little extra feed on such land. In 

 this way even the temporary crop land would be brought into culti- 

 vation without disturbing the stock business, and the ultimate result 

 would be the same so far as total production is concerned. This 

 method would have the other advantage of avoiding the losses that 

 the great majority of the homesteaders now suffer, to say nothing of 

 those of the stockman. While the crops on such land might fail 

 several times in any decade, the crops produced during good years 

 would more than reimburse the stockmen for an}' losses; the loss of 



