DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 117 



man as production per acre. The less labor the world can use on the land 

 and still supply its needs, the better. Whatever labor can be released from 

 the fundamentally necessary task of food production can be devoted to 

 increasing the diversity and raising the quality of the other goods which 

 the people enjoy. If the time shall ever come when over-crowding makes 

 it necessary for the great bulk of the American people to toil for the 

 mere means of filling the stomach, our standard of living will descend to 

 the level of that of China or India. 



The main hope for future agricultural and national prosperity is in 

 using more brains rather than more labor on the land. It is all very well 

 to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, but let us not, 

 if we can help, use three men, or even two men, to do it* where one worked 

 before. It is all very well to make the desert bloom as the rose, but let 

 us do it by brain rather than by brawn if possible. 



The outlook for scientific progress in agriculture is bright. Thousands 

 of experts all over the land, and in every other land as well, are studying 

 this most fundamental of all industries. I am not myself an agricultural 

 expert, and I will not even try to list the many ways discovered in recent 

 years for using more land and for increasing the productivity per acre. 

 The fact that thus far little if any increase in crop yields has been shown 

 in the United States should not unduly discourage us. So long as good 

 land was abundant and cheap the farmer hardly needed to bother his 

 head with new-fangled notions of efficiency. Now that the pressure is be- 

 ginning to be felt, he will surely come gradually to think harder about 

 his work, to be more resourceful, more ready to avail himself of the dis- 

 coveries of others. Surely the tremendous activity of the agricultural 

 colleges, of the federal and state departments of agriculture, of the mul- 

 titude of associations and agencies for the investigation of agricultural 

 methods and the dissemination of information will count for much. The 

 wonderful progress of America in methods of manufacture, mining and 

 transportation shows what she can accomplish when she seriously sets 

 herself to agriculture. 



It will be necessary that we use more and more those lands where 

 moisture is somewhat deficient. Abundance of rainfall is only a relative 

 term. There are areas in this country, large areas unfortunately, where 

 Nature has definitely banished agriculture, but there are other large areas 

 which she bids us reclaim by scientific cultivation. She has set us an 

 enigma, by spreading before us fertile soil while furnishing only meagre 

 quantities of that without which soil is useless, moisture. 



I know of no satisfactory statistics showing how much land in the 

 United States, now uncultivated, is capable of raising crops through dry- 

 farming or through irrigation. The figure doubtless would run into hun- 

 dreds of millions of acres. Take this state in which the Dry-Farming 

 Congress is assembled. In the two western tiers of counties alone there 

 were in 1910 more than 6 million acres not yet under the plow. Only one- 

 fourth of their total area was cultivated. Yet the land in these counties 



