372 DRY-FARMING 
the experiment stations in this and other countries 
of the world shall attack the special problems con- 
nected with this branch of agriculture. 
The United States Department of Agriculture 
The Commissioner of Agriculture of the United 
States was given a secretaryship in the President’s 
Cabinet in 1889. With this added dignity, new life 
was given to the department. Under the direction 
of J. Sterling Morton preliminary work of great im- 
portance was done. Upon the appointment of James 
Wilson as Secretary of Agriculture, the department 
fairly leaped into a fullness of organization for the in- 
vestigation of the agricultural problems of the coun- 
try. From the beginning of its new growth the 
United States Department of Agriculture has given 
some thought to the special problems of the semiarid 
region, especially that part within the Great Plains. 
Little consideration was at first given to the far West. 
The first method adopted to assist the farmers of 
the plains was to find plants with drouth resistant 
properties. For that purpose explorers were sent 
over the earth, who returned with great numbers of 
new plants or varieties of old plants, some of which, 
such as the durum wheats, have shown themselves 
of great value in American agriculture. The Bureaus 
of Plant Industry, Soils, Weather, and Chemistry have 
all from the first given considerable attention to the 
