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DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



do very well, but there comes a winter and we lose. The ordinary western 

 stock man simply depends upon the grass that he grows and has no other 

 resources, and ordinarily runs his stock in the countrj^ and on the range 

 which does not admit of irrigation, therefore anything that is to make a 

 crop for him to take care of his stock ought to receive from him not only 

 his support but his deepest interest, and I think as a general matter it 

 does. I do not know of anything that has attracted more attention in 

 Arizona and New Mexico in the last five years than this questioli of dry 

 farming. The first meeting, held in Denver last year, I was a delegate 

 from New Mexico, and you will remember it was so largely attended that 

 it was necessary to abandon our quarters and hold our meetings in the 

 Baptist Church, which a good many of us considered quite a joke for a 

 dry farmer. (Laughter.) The state of Texas is probably the pioneer 

 down there — the stock men of the state of Texas, especially up in the 

 Panhandle — in developing this dry farming idea. After Texas got over 

 their fight on the question of free grass and leasing their great ranges 

 in the west, they decided to lease the land in small bodies to the little 

 stock men, and men could lease there a section and two, three or four 

 sections. He did all right in summer, but he couldn't do so well in 

 winter. Once in a while a winter would come in and he would start 

 in the winter with five hundred or a thousand cattle and in the spring 

 he would not have any, and some began to study the proposition of farm- 

 ing. It seemed ridiculous. There is not a stream in that country on the 

 surface, and the water is from 200 to 500 feet down. 



I met a man down there some years ago, from New Mexico. He 

 had a few barrels in his wagon, driving across the prairies. I was down 

 in that country looking at the country just as a stock man. I met this 

 man with his water barrels and said, "What are you doing down here?" 

 He said, "Trying to farm a little." "Where did you get that water?" 

 "Down here to a railroad well about 15 miles." I said, "Do you haul water 

 that far?" "Pretty near that far," he said. I said, "Why in the world 

 don't you drill a well?" "Partner," he said, "if you ever got a well in 

 this country you would have to dig just about as far down as it is this 

 way." (Laughter.) He was hauling water to meet the demands of his 

 family, and hauling it pretty near fifteen miles. 



Now those Texas fellows, as I say, the}^ began farming a little in 

 their low places, and they raised a very good crop of kaffir corn, sor- 

 ghum and tliat sort of things, and they gradually discovered it was rotation 

 rather than irrigation that was going to give them their crops. They 

 stick to kaffir corn. They call themselves kaffir corns. They invented a 

 new word. One fellow called them kaffir-corners. That was his descrip- 

 tion of dry farmers. I have seen crops raised on that dry land without 

 irrigation that were astonishing — four or five tons of kaffir corn and sor- 

 ghum to the acre, with heavy tops; and they got to raising good water- 

 melons. T have seen as good watermelons down in the prairies of the 

 Staked Plains country as anywhere, and they never had a drop of water. 



