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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



as I have said, these problems which affect us also affect you. We have 

 3 million acres of land under irrigation. We have almost as much under 

 cultivation without irrigation, and all of it we could take care of in a good 

 deal better shape if we had the right knowledge and experience. This year 

 we produced large fields of wheat in eastern Colorado without irrigation 

 that yielded 40 bushels to the acre. That is good. We have many districts 

 where the rainfall is a little more and where we have had more practice in 

 handling the soils where almost every year there are good crops raised — 

 almost as good, perhaps, as back in the regions of the East. 



So we are interested in this dry-farming campaign. Some people have 

 dared to deride dry-farming. I saw a man on the train yesterday and he 

 pointed out the window and said, "What is that?" and I said, "That is an 

 irrigation gate," and he said, "Is that what they call dry-farming?" He 

 was a visitor. So you see everybody does not have the same idea of what 

 dry-farming is. We are producing in Colorado crops on land ranging from 

 4,000 to 9,500 feet in altitude. We are irrigating orchards and we are rais- 

 ing fruit without irrigation. We are raising alfalfa with and without irri- 

 gation. We are finding throughout the state that there is something new 

 we can do all the time, but the one thing we have learned out there is 

 that if we are to succeed, we must have diversified crops. 



We have the spectacle on the Western Slope of more fine fruit than 

 we can sell and we cannot even pay freight on it to take it where people 

 want it. There are thousands of tons of as fine fruit as I ever saw going 

 to waste for the want of factories to take care of it. We have the power 

 going to waste and there are people in this country who are looking for the 

 food that those factories would take care of. This morning a good deal was 

 said about the product of Kansas — how much you have raised. We buy 

 some things from you. As a matter of fact, Colorado takes almost its 

 entire output of silver and pays it out to these sister states on the east of 

 us for livestock and foodstuffs and their agricultural products that- we 

 might raise ourselves if we had the people to do it. 



No one of the Western states is absolutely independent of the others. 

 You get our coal and we get your bread and ham. We are helping each 

 other and I hope to see the time when the exchange will be greater. 



Out in our state we need more railroad facilities. We realize we must 

 have population, as well as money, to build those roads in order that the 

 roads may*be maintained after they are built. We need wagon roads. We 

 have roads that we can travel a little but the coming of the automobile 

 has demonstrated that we must have better ones and greater highways. 

 These great highways must be built through the gorges and the Western 

 Governors asked for a donation of only 5 percent of the Western lands in 

 order to build these great highways through the mountains, not only that we 

 may use them in our business, but that you may use them. That is some- 

 thing where we are getting good and where we are going to accomplish a 

 great deal of good for this Western country. It is a beautiful condition, 

 when with a few hours's ride, you can go into those cool parks in the Rocky 

 Mountains in the summer. 



