12 



DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



termincd pioneers fought against great odds, conquered Nature and brought 

 forth from a forbidding desert a commonwealth vast and powerful, we are 

 assembled to absorb some of the true Utah spirit. 



The pioneers of Utah were but a type of the pioneers of to-day. They 

 had problems to face — they solved them. The men who are building the 

 greater West of to-day have always been obliged to face problems, and 

 they are always facing them, and usuall}^ the}^ always solve them and 

 overcome them. There was a day when our National Congress looked 

 upon the West as a place where Nature had placed insurmountable bar- 

 riers; thought it was impossible to continue on the forward march. To- 

 day the West has given proof of her independence by turning the vast 

 wealth of her broad acres into the breach in the Nation's financial wall. 



There was a time when irrigation was looked upon as "play farming," 

 fit onl}'^ for theoretical agriculture. To-day the irrigated states are far 

 surpassing in production and values the acreage of the East. 



There was a time when it was believed that the agricultural develop- 

 ment of the semi-arid states must of necessity be limited to the exact 

 acreage of water distribution under irrigation methods. Men marveled 

 that God should give to a people a territory so vast and yet so worthless, 

 except, perhaps, to make distances magnificent and transportation ex- 

 pensive. Some men still believe that this is true. 



I recently overheard a controversy between two prominent farmers 

 of Colorado — one an irrigationist — dyed in the wool — and the other a dr}^ 

 farmer and an experimenter. The one said: "This dry farming business is 

 all dry rot; it never did mean anything and never will." The other replied: 

 "The proofs of a proposition are the results obtained by application. Come 

 with me and see what you can see." The wet farmer replied: "I don't 

 care to see; there is nothing to see; there never can be any results from 

 dry farming; it is all rot and nothing else; I will give ten dollars a stack 

 for every stack of dry farmed wheat straw to be found on a bee line between 

 Greeley and the Wyoming line." The dry farmer said: "I will give you 

 three hundred dollars if I cannot take you on a line fifteen miles wide 

 from Greeley and the Wyoming line and show 3'OU one thousand stacks of 

 dry-farmed straw." "But pshaw," said the irrigationist, "I will not gamble 

 with a dry farmer; he has not sense enough to keep himself from povert}'." 

 And that ended the discussion. (Laughter.) 



That is the argument, gentlemen, against dry farming. 



I believe that there will be a day when scientific agriculture, as repre- 

 sented by dry farm development, will stand side by side in the public esti- 

 mation as an clement in state building. I believe that this Dry Farming- 

 Congress will play an important part in working out the problem. 



Tt was my pleasure to be a member of the committee of arrangements 

 which organized the first Dry Farming Congress in Denver one 3^ear ago. 

 We had but a small appreciation of the probabilities of such a movement. 

 We prepared for two hundred delegates — we had nearer six hundred. 

 After the first day we were obliged to hire a larger auditorium, and we 

 were glad of it. For the first time in history men of affairs assembled 



