DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



39 



In many sections of the West dry farming can best be developed as 

 supplementary to irrigation, since nearly all irrigated localities are sur- 

 rounded by lands which are too high to admit of the cost incident to put- 

 ting water upon them; or, in a majority of cases, such lands remain unde- 

 veloped simply because there is a lack of a water supply. 



I consider it very doubtful indeed whether a settler could homestead 

 and start a farm on the very best of the dry lands. Most of the dry farm- 

 ing at present is done in connection with some irrigation farming, or by 

 companies principally composed of men who follow some other vocation 

 in life. 



I have introduced a bill in the Senate, a copy of which I enclose you, 

 perrnitting any person qualified to make a homestead entry to enter three 

 hundred and twenty acres in a compact body of arid or semi-arid non-tim- 

 bered, non-irrigable, unappropriated, unreserved, surveyed public lands, 

 devoid of potable water, not requiring residence thereon, but in lieu thereof 

 requiring certain cultivation. If this bill becomes a law it will provide the 

 means for thousands of citizens to obtain a farm, and in so doing redeem 

 the greater part of the Great American Desert. 



It has been thought that the wealth of the United States in timber, fuel, 

 minerals, lands and water were unlimited, but in the mad rush to make use 

 of some of these resources and to acquire wealth through their development 

 we have lost sight of the fact that the supply of these natural products, 

 however unlimited they appear, will be ultimately exhausted by wasteful 

 use. It is estimated that at the present rate of consumption our timber 

 supply will be totally exhausted in twenty years. Our public lands capable 

 of irrigation are practically exhausted. The cost of fires in the United 

 States in 1906 amounted to $500,000,000,00, which was eighty per cent, of 

 building operations of that year. The supply of coal and iron ore is fast 

 going. These are only a few of the agencies at work destroying our 

 natural resources, and I believe that the time has arrived when the natural 

 resources of our country should be conserved. This can be done by de- 

 veloping the water supply, for irrigation of arid lands, by developing the 

 water power of the country, and thus save fuel — it is estimated that ten 

 million horse-power can be developed in this way — by educating the people 

 to manage scientifically the forests, by substituting concrete for wood in all 

 kinds of buildings, and by demonstrating to people that our waste lands 

 of the West can be successully and profitably dry farmed. 



This Congress must guard against the booming of any particular sec- 

 tion; it must entei" upon a campaign of education. I assure you it will 

 be no easy matter to subdue the arid West. In order to be successful and 

 to accomplish it without large and costly failures, it must be done slowly 

 and by the closest application to conservative, practical methods. Any 

 wholesale attempt to colonize large areas of this arid land by people ac- 

 customed to farming only in humid regions is almost certain to result in 

 total failure. Do not forget the fact that the West has had much more 

 rain during the last two years than usually falls, and that we will have 

 drier years again. 



