HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 44] 
Tam well satistied the day is coming when the people of the mountain 
countries of the United States will build tens of thousands of dams 
and hold up these waters that are now going away in spring freshets. 
They will either do it through State expenditure or private effort, and 
hold up those waters in order to put them on lands when the dry time 
comes. The difference quite often between a maximum and a mini- 
mum crop is getting water at the right time. 
I was astonished this year, in looking over the sugar crop of Louisi- 
ana and Texas, that it is a light crop because of drouth, and there is 
the great Mississippi River, 90 feet deep, lying 40 or 50 feet above 
the level of the country. If they had only tapped that river and 
brought the water out they would have had a maximum crop. They 
will do that some day. We have plenty of rainfall in the country to 
give us much better crops than we are getting now. One of the les- 
sons the Department of Agriculture is trying to teach to every one, 
and it is one of the most necessary, is the conservation of moisture in 
the soil and the proper methods of cultivation by which moisture is 
taken care of. I stopped off in Nebraska last summer and spent one 
hae in a new locality where they had built dams and were growing 
eets. 
I went into the field and tried to pull up a beet, but could not—the 
ground was all solid aroundit. The superintendent of the beet factory 
was there, a man who had devoted his whole life to that business. I 
said to him, ‘‘ When did you cultivate that field?” He said, ‘‘ We have 
not cultivated it since we irrigated it.” I said, ‘‘ You irrigated it and 
didn’t cultivate it, and now you have gotten the field the same as brick. 
Did not your beets stop growing just then?” ‘‘Yes; they stopped 
growing just then.” I said, ‘‘If you had not wet it at alland had kept 
your cultivator going you would have had a much better beet crop, 
and that water might have gone somewhere else.” That is one of the 
most interesting problems in America to-day. The people of the 
United States who grow sugar beets are growing 9.6 tons to the acre. 
If they will increase the tonnage up to 15 tons to an acre, you can 
repeal your protective-tariff laws; the sugar-beet men will not need 
them. But that one thing has to be impressed all over the United 
States, and you would think it so simple a proposition that any farmer 
would understand it; and yet very few farmers do understand it—the 
conservation of moisture in the soil by cultivation and the necessity 
for adding moisture to the soil in irrigation countries. That problem 
we are studying. It is one that is going to be of very great practical 
value, not only to the people who irrigate, but to the people who live 
in the rainfall countries and depend on the rain as it comes to the soil. 
We have not made, Mr. Chairman, estimates for much increase along 
salary lines; not much this year. There have been afew that we thought 
wise to make. The man who writes the weekly report of the Weather 
Bureau, Mr. Berry, is doing a pretty high class of work. I wish you 
would look into itand rememberhim. I think Mr. Moore has only three 
or four. I wish you would give it careful consideration. Mr. Berry, I 
think, deserves a little more than he is getting. That weekly report is 
a valuable report. He writes it with ability, and he is getting a small 
salary. 1 think I have kept you long enough and have said all I care 
to. Tf you think of any questions to ask about the general policy of 
the Department, I would be glad to discuss them. ; 
Mr. Burveson. I would like to divert your attention to the fact, 
