400 DRY-FARMING 
the settlers, the willing soil failed to yield a crop only 
one year. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that 
hundreds of farmers in the driest section during this 
dry period, who instinctively or otherwise farmed 
more nearly right, obtained good crops even in 1894. 
The simple practice of summer fallowing, had it been 
practiced the year before, would have insured satis- 
factory crops in the driest year. Further, the set- 
tlers who did not take to their heels upon the arrival 
of the dry year are still living in large numbers on 
their homesteads and in numerous instances have 
accumulated comfortable fortunes from the land 
which has been held up so long as a warning against 
settlement beyond a humid climate. The failure of 
1894 was due as much to a lack of proper agricultural 
information and practice as to the occurrence of a 
dry year. 
Next, the statement is carelessly made that the 
recent success in dry-farming is due to the fact that 
we are now living in a cycle of wet years, but that as 
soon as the cycle of dry years strikes the country dry- 
farming will vanish as a dismal failure. Then, again, 
the theory is proposed that the climate is permanently 
changing toward wetness or dryness and the past has 
no meaning in reading the riddle of the future. It is 
doubtless true that no man may safely predict the 
weather for future generations; yet, so far as human 
knowledge goes, there is no perceptible average 
change in the climate from period to period within 
