DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



67 



involved; men who believe that climatic conditions are being modified to 

 fit the needs of agriculture, and those who are equally sure that climatic 

 conditions are practically constant and unchangeable from generation to 

 generation; men who want to improve their methods of farming, and men 

 who want to tell others how to farm; representatives of great transporta- 

 tion companies who want to haul people into the country and to carry the 

 products of the activities of the people out of the country. There are 

 representatives here of the various agencies calculated to minister to all 

 the wants, spiritual and material, of a dense and highly civilized popula- 

 tion, which we hope may some day occupy the semi-arid portions of the 

 country that are now but sparsely settled, and where the comforts and 

 luxuries of life are in a more or less primitive state, and where agricultural 

 methods are still crude and unsatisfactory. But with all this diversity of 

 interest, the heterogeneous mass of humanity has one common interest, 

 and that is the successful agricultural development of the semi-arid lands 

 of the United States. If this organization does not become an effective 

 machine to aid in bringing about this result it will not be from need 

 of common incentive, nor the lack of mechanical material, for I am sure 

 that we can furnish an ample supply of mechanical parts for almost any 

 kind of a machine. Nor does it seem probable that there will ever be any 

 difficulty in generating sufficient heat to run the machine. What we need 

 perhaps more than anything else at this stage of our development is a 

 saving sense of humor that will enable us not only to see the amusing 

 side of the foibles of our associates, but also of ourselves, when they are 

 pointed out to us; that will allow us to submit good-naturedly to a considera- 

 ble amount of hammering, filing and fitting of the various parts of the ma- 

 chine, if they do not go together just as they ought, and even if the machine 

 "wobbles a bit" after we get it going, to enable us to patientl}' adjust its 

 parts so it will run more steadily. I cannot better express my ideas on 

 this point than by a short quotation from Samuel McChord Crothers' essay 

 on "The Mission of Humor." 



"This is a big world and it is a serious business to live in it. It makes 

 many demands. It requires intensity of thought and strenuousness of will 

 and solidity of judgment. Great tasks are set before us. We catch fugitive 

 glimpses of beauty and try to fix them forever in perfect form — that is the 

 task of art. We see thousands of disconnected facts and try to arrange 

 them in orderly sequence — that is the task of science. We see the ongoing 

 of eternal force and seek some reason for it — that is the task of philosophy. 



"But when art and science and philosophy have done the.ir best there 

 is a great deal of valuable material left over. There are facts that willi not 

 fit into any theory, but which keep popping up at us from the most un- 

 expected places. Everything is under the reign of strict law, but queer 

 things happen nevertheless. What are we to do with all the waifs and 

 strays? What are we to do with all the sudden incongruities which mock 

 at our wisdom and destroy the symmetry of our ideas? 



