8 



Campbell s 1902 Soil Cultuee M\>-ual. 



THE SEMI-ARID BELT. 



ITS GREAT RESOURCES AND ADVANTAGES. 



That vast country known as the Semi -Arid Belt, extending fron: 

 Canada, on the north, well into Texas, and from the Rocky Mountains to the 

 Missouri River, and across that river, easterly, through the Dakotas and 

 into western Minnesota, began to receive its first settlement in consider 

 able numbers about twenty-five years ago. 



The experiences of the people who have lived in that country of great 

 prairies during this period have been varied in the extreme. They have 

 had years of partial and years of total failures, and interspersed along with 

 occasional years of good crops. Alternate hope and despair have filled the 

 •settlers" mind>. Had it not been for the cows and chickens and the small 

 garden with the windmill as an irrigator, and the stockraising industry . 

 much of that great section would long ago have been largely depopulated 

 and abandoned as an agricultural countrj-. 



Up to 1894 very little attention had been given to the question as to 

 how the soil of that section might be treated to insure crop>s, and the old 

 method of farming was pursued, with the usually attendant disappoint- 

 ment. 



The press driU and other tools were introduced as having the re- 

 quired merits for overcoming the drought; irrigation was talked of and in 

 some instances tried: summer fallowing was tried without any material 

 change in crop results. 



The *'Rain Maker " came, and with boastful confidence in his pow- 

 ers attempted to perform miracles, and failed. 



Trees and orchards by the thousands were planted all over that 

 country, only to be cut down by the hot winds and the long periods of 

 mid-summer drought. During this time agriculturical colleges were es- 

 tablished in these states, but the conditions as respects both the climate 

 and soil formations were all new. and it was first necessary for the pro- 

 fessors to study and experiment to ascertain what might be done and how 

 to do it to overcome what appeared to be insurmountable difficulties. 



Not until the subject of the storage and conservation of the natural 

 rainfall in the .soil began to be comprehended did any real light or hope 

 for the successful solurion of this hard problem come to us. 



The development of our investigations, pursued along this line of 

 thougnt and theory, has at last brought us to the one significant conclu- 

 sion, namely, that the storage and conservation of the rainfall in the soil 

 by our method of cultivation is the only means of saving that great sec- 

 tion and making it bloom and prosper. 



