HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 359 
country that attraction has drawn in whole counties of people, and 
then they have been depopulated again. Certain counties in that region 
have been peopled and depopulated two or three times. Rainy seasons 
would bring them in, and dry seasons drove them out. There is no 
question in my mind but that that country is going to be permanently 
settled, permanently inhabited, but it has got to be by a peculiar kind 
of agriculture. 
You have got to develop the kind of agriculture that is suited to 
that country, and the kind of agriculture that 1 think would succeed 
there is this: That each farmer must have a relatively large area of 
land for general cultivation, but he must supplement what he can do 
in that line by having 10 or 20 acres of land that he can irrigate, for 
which he can have a water supply each year. On that 10 or 20 acres 
of land he can be assured every year of a garden. He can be assured 
of a little fruit, and he can be assured of a few acres of alfalfa to take 
care of his milch cows and feed animals, so that when a season of 
poe does come he will not have to take off what he is making in 
the fat years to support him in the lean years. He will be able to 
make a living on his small irrigated area and will have to depend for 
lis prosperity on the fat years. By a system of farming of that kind 
you can, I believe, give a stability and attractiveness to the agriculture 
of that country, just the same stability and attractiveness that it has 
in other parts of the country. 
In the first years that we were carrying on these investigations we 
had to deal with two general questions. One was the determination 
of how much water was being used, because we were being bombarded 
with interrogatories from everywhere, and we had to carry on through 
that region a large number of measurements to determine what farmers 
were going on under the unskillful methods, and we had to carry on 
certain investigations similar to the one referred to in California to 
determine what was the system—the legal and social institutions that 
they were working under. 
But we have made considerable progress. Ido not feel that there is 
the same necessity for expending money along those lines that there 
was before, and last year we made a beginning in the study of what 
could be done with small quantities of water in the semiarid region— 
that is, to determine what it would cost to procure it, determine the 
best methods of supplying, and the best methods of distributing it 
and using it. 
It is a peculiar question there because you have not what they have 
along large rivers, the possibility of developing means of economy 
by using large volumes. You must use large quantities and you 
must develop a system based on the idea that you are only going to 
have small quantities of water to distribute and apply. Last year we 
did some work in western Kansas in cooperation with the State experi- 
ment station. They appropriated $1,000 to aid in that investigation. 
We instituted some inquiries in western Texas, and I made two visits 
to the Wichita River to study the conditions existing there. This, in 
a broad way, is what happened there. In probably two years out of 
three they can raise a fine grain crop. Probably the third year they 
have a failure. But with the application of a very small quantity of 
water in the fat years I am satisfied those grain cropscould be doubled 
if the water supply could only be supplemented by a very small addi- 
tional supply. 
