DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



33 



travelingmen. The men thought to impress him, so one of them told a 

 story about the big corn in Kansas, then another one told a wheat story, 

 and the third man told about the cucumbers. The green-looking fellow 

 sized them up and then said: "Well, I know why in the Bible it says that 

 Ananias came fo(u)rth. You gentlemen came first, second and third!" I 

 have been preceded by Mr. McOmie, Dean Jardine, and Mr. Atkinson! 



I will not take even the full five minutes, I think. I would very much 

 rather talk about New Mexico over at the booth in the Interstate Building 

 where we have something of an exhibit, due largely, to the aid received 

 from the United States Department of Agriculture in gathering the ex- 

 hibit. Those of you who come to the booth and talk to myself or Mr. 

 Curless, I will know I am talking to the people who wish to hear about 

 New Mexico. Our exhibit there is from the dry-farming region only. 



New Mexico is the fourth state in size in the union, but perhaps some- 

 thing less than one-quarter of it is available for dry-farming to some 

 degree. Being the Dry-Farming Congress, we haxe explored that section 

 of the state for an exhibit, and have not visited the Pecos Valley or the 

 pumping district about Deming or the irrigated section in San Juan County. 



We grow other crops besides the ones we are exhibiting. In the sec- 

 tion down there, I think you will agree we have perhaps the best alfalfa 

 that is grown anywhere in the United States. We have no derricks and we 

 can bale alfalfa from the shocks in the field and put it immediately under 

 cover. 



Now, we are all of us working together down there to help the settler 

 on the dry farm. We have several agents. The Santa Fe Railroad has 

 Mr. Bainer, with whom you are all acquainted, as he has attended these 

 meetings in the past. The El Paso and Rock Island lires have Mr. Trum- 

 bull, who is present this afternoon, thoroughly familiar "■vith the dry- 

 farming possibilities in the state, men who can talk to you more authori- 

 tatively than I because I have been there only three years. 



The Agricultural College, of course, reaches as many as possible. We 

 are doing more and more toward helping the dry-farming make a success 

 and a permanent home. The United States Department of Agriculture has 

 given us a station at Tucumcari. We are all working toward the same 

 purpose — that is to make a permanent home, something besides a one-crop 

 system, which has to some extent demoralized the work, has demonstrated 

 for instance one of the examples which I might bring out, through that 

 region it takes about 5 acres of land to keep a steer a year. Last one of 

 the men demonstrated that on IV2 acres, he could grow sufficient material 

 to keep the steer a year. 



Let me impress upon you that it is not getting rid of the stock but 

 getting rid of a lazier method of stockraising, because we will have more 

 stock under dry-farming methods than we will have without it. Now we 

 are telling people that they cannot afford to ship water out of the state, 

 with high freight rates, in the form of forage, and the biggest problem of 

 dry-farming is the marketing side, and the railroads's agricultural men 



