DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



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into that country to investigate. I have a habit of writing newspaper 

 articles and I wrote a story about it, and said I saw land that was raising 

 60 bushels of corn to the acre. Some fellow called me down on it, said 

 he didn't believe it. The editor says, "It's up to you to make good on 

 this thing; you wrote it and you have to make good." I wrote to the 

 fellow and said, "Here, you have got to help me out or I am going to come 

 out and expose you. You told me there was 60 bushels of corn to the 

 acre on that forty-acre tract down there, and you have got to get me 

 some evidence or I am going to come down there and expose you." They 

 hustled around and signed up a lot of affidavits. The result was that an 

 actual measurement of that 40 acres showed 58 bushels of corn to the 

 acre. I made good to the newspaper any how, and the man wrote back 



and said, "Oh, well, " We found out afterwards this man was a sheep 



man in there, and he wasn't very much in favor of "fehe thing anyhow. 

 He says, "This is just one year." T said, "That is true, maybe this won't 

 hold good year after year, but it is sure there today." This was three 

 years ago I wrote this article, and they have made good every year and 

 the prospects for next year were never better. This San Jose Valley is 

 a tract of land with probably half a million acres in it. They have four 

 or five steam plows and do things by the wholesale. They start in at one 

 end of the valley and go clear across and plow up for everybody. The 

 result is they handle the crops very cheaply. 



One thing struck me, too, in looking at these men. They are not 

 the type of men that came into western Kansas and starved out. They 

 are men of property, nearly all of them, and nearly all of them have 

 brought their cattle and horses from the east. One day in the city of 

 Santa Fe I saw fifteen such outfits come down there and start over that 

 valley — all from one little neighborhood in Iowa. They brought money 

 with them, and brought property to build their homes and make them- 

 selves comfortable, and I do not think they are going to be starved out. 

 There is no questioning there will be years when they will lose their 

 crops, but if I remember rightly back in Ohio and Indiana and the eastern 

 states they have their years as well when they lose their crops. So un- 

 doubtedly they will, some of them, have their set-backs, but taking the 

 years as they come and go, year after year, they are going to wipe the 

 desert out by this system, and there is no doubt about it. Every acre 

 they put in cultivation stirs up the ground and makes them more able 

 to cope with it. Just as they did in western Kansas, when the first men 

 starved out, new men came in there and struck things right, and out 

 from Hutchinson to the west nobody would believe that the whole coun- 

 try was a cattle country at one time. The second crop of men that come 

 profit by the experience of the first men, and if they should have good 

 years they will get a start, and after once getting a start I don't think 

 anything in the world will shake them out. They never have been. 



Now then of course you ask me where the stock men come in on 

 this. It is true that some sheep men and cattle men have been very hos- 

 tile toward this move because they have lost their ranges, but notwith- 



