DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



69 



than assert his convictions. He must submit to all sorts of mortifying tests 

 and at best he can obtain title to only the tiniest bit of the field he covets." 



This, then, I conceive to be the legitimate function of the Office of 

 Dry Land Agriculture. It is to afford facilities for bringing into the field 

 of investigation of the scientific problems of Dry Land Agriculture a. corps 

 of trained scientists, each one a specialist in some one line. These men 

 may prove to be "troublesome experts" who will "cast discredit on the 

 slippery sport" of "holding the eel of science by the tail," if there chance 

 to be those who are still addicted to this slippery sport. They certainly 

 will "submit to all sorts of mortifying tests" any theories that may be 

 advanced concerntng the practice of dry land agriculture in the Great 

 Plains Area, and it is quite possible that they may play havoc with some 

 systems and theories that are "so beautiful that they are their own excuse 

 for being." But the fact that the conclusions arrived at by these experts 

 will be the consensus of opinion of a " considerable number of trained 

 specialists, serves to completely eliminate the personal element and ought 

 to give greater weight to their conclusions than would attach to those ol 

 any other body of investigators along the same line, not so much on 

 account of their individual superiority as investigators, but because they 

 have better facilities for carrying on their investigations over a wide area 

 under a system that subjects the work of each to the rigid scientific scrutiny 

 of all the others. It must not be understood that the work of these inves- 

 tigators is primarily destructive, for such is not the case. Their wocrk 

 is constructive and conservative. Theirs will be a search for truth, and 

 any fact, theory or system that will stand the test of rigid scientific 

 methods will be welcomed by them no matter what its source. 



A residence of twenty-five years in the Great Plains, during all of 

 which time I was in close touch with agricultural problems and during 

 Iialf of which I was in charge of the agricultural field investigations of the 

 South Dakota Experiment Station convinced me that no progress could 

 be made toward a solution of the fundamental problems of dry land agri- 

 culture until a large number of trained experts could carry on thoroughly 

 systematized investigations at a considerable number of representative 

 stations, distributed over a wide area having somewhat similar soil and 

 climatic conditions, and that these investigations must be continued unin- 

 terruptedly for a long term of years. When I was called to Washington 

 to organize the work in Dry Land Agriculture Investigations I accordingly 

 established the work on this basis. I first sought the co-operation of the 

 trained experts in soil physics, meteorology, chemistry, plant physiology, 

 plant breeding, cereal investigations, soil bacteriology, sugar beet investi- 

 gations, forage crop investigations, and later, pomology, forestry and 

 animal industry. I then sought, and in miost instances obtained, co-opera- 

 tion with the State Experiment Stations throughout the Great Plains. 

 We now have eleven stations in successful operation, seven of which are 

 in co-operation with State Experiment Stations and four of them inde- 

 pendent. The co-operation stations are located at Judith Basin, Montana; 

 Dickinson and Edgeley, North Dakota; Highmore, South Dakota; North 



