DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



255 



take up with the Agricultural Department to see if there was any availa- 

 ble water so that we could dam this river for irrigation. We sent to the 

 Agricultural Department and they sent back a surveyor and made sur- 

 veys and were trying to ,find out the possibilities of storing water, and 

 he found it was of such little consequence when he came to look it over 

 that he reported back and said, "I find that Cochise County can store no 

 water by a dam site." (Long applause.) Right there I found that it was 

 absolutely unnecessary to try to get any water for irrigation. 



Now then, we are here trying to adopt the next best method of farming, 

 which we believe is dry farming. Our county, as I told you, has something 

 like four million acres. Two million acres of this is unoccupied government 

 land, surveyed, and open for location. It is land that needs absolutely no 

 clearing whatever. 



In regard to the place we are inviting you to come, I want to say one 

 thing in regard to Douglas. Six years ago Douglas wasn't known. It was 

 merely an arid piece of land, occupied by coyotes, jack rabbits and prairie 

 dogs. Today there is a city there of 18,000 people. Right here I might as 

 well sa}^ that there is a hotel there that stands second to none west of the 

 Mississippi river, Douglas, all told, has either six or eight hotels. If you come 

 to Douglas I assure you that we will show you the largest train of cars 

 hauled in the world; we will show you the largest plant of machinery in the 

 United States, a smelting plant; we will show you the largest power plant in 

 the United States; we will show you a city that has its streets paved, ce- 

 ment sidewalks, and an electric power plant that stands second to none 

 for the size of the city; and it has its electric cars and a great many 

 other things which I could go on and enumerate that might be of interest 

 to you. But I feel and I am sure that you gentlemen as farmers can 

 appreciate my standing before you and asking you to come to a place of 

 this kind. If we should go up a little farther north from our country I 

 could show you some very fine orange groves, the largest dam in the 

 world, the largest artificial reservoir in the world and a great many other 

 thngs that might be of interest. But I feel that there is not one of you 

 here but what the name Arizona alone should appeal to you, and further- 

 more I feel that everyone of you would be only too glad to step across 

 into a foreign country. 



Now, gentlemen, I am not here trying tp antagonize anybody. I 

 have not asked one person to assist me in pulling this Congress to Douglas, 

 Arizona, for the simple reason that as a wire-puller I know naught. That 

 is a lesson that I have never learned, and my hair is too gray now to 

 jump out and button-hole a fellow and try to pull wires. I don't know 

 anything about it and I don't want to. I am before you with the plain 

 facts as they exist in my county. I have been there for something over 

 fifteen years, and if there is anyone that could appreciate a climate I 

 should think they surely would appreciate it in fifteen years, and I can 

 say conscientiously that so far as Arizona climate is concerned it is su- 

 perior to anything I have ever seen, and I have been around. I have 

 made my circle and have come back to Arizona. I know I cannot interest 



