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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



Real Arizona, the agricultural section, is not seen from the car win- 

 dows, as both the Santa Fe on the north and the Southern Pacific on the 

 south pass through the desert. 



There are in the neighborhood of 8 million acres of yrigable land yet 

 in Arizona untaken, thousands of square miles of stock range, and one of 

 the greatest timber belts in America. The vast field of industry has 

 scarcely been explored. Arizona stands second to none in copper produc- 

 tion, and, therefore, has an unsurpassed market for all the farmer can 

 raise. 



In speaking of the cultivation of the soil under the science of irrigation, 

 either by the application of the running stream or by the conservation of 

 rainfall, — scientific dry-farming, — I presume I am within the limits of 

 my subject and in keeping with the splendid purpose of this great Congress. 



Arizona without irrigation would indeed be a desert and not unlike 

 the picture generally drawn by tourists; that it is nothing but a desert of 

 sand with nothing but the product of cactus, the mesquite and the sage- 

 brush, inhabited by savages and cowboys, with the lizard and the gila 

 monster, but this is not so. Arizona stands today as one of the most 

 progressive states in the Union, though but a child, the baby state. She 

 has, I presume, more undeveloped resources yet to be brought under the 

 touch of man, than any other section of its size in the world. But what 

 she needs is just what she is getting, and that is a scientific course of 

 training and bringing into use of her untold resources by scientific touch 

 and by capital. 



It is comparatively but a few years ago when the prospector honey- 

 combed the mines for the rich deposits of copper, and that the Indian and 

 cow ranger occupied the country. The pioneer soon followed, and with the 

 science of irrigation commenced to reclaim the wasting plains and valleys. 



In those early days, not more than a third of a century ago, parts of 

 southern Arizona were susceptable to dry-farming, as the great Creator 

 had designed. The grass, like a blanket, covered the face of the earth and 

 conserved the moisture, like a sponge, soaked up the rainfall and held it 

 for the teeming vegetation, but man, made in the image of the Creator, 

 wasteful, reckless, selfish man, caring nothing for the future, but bent on 

 skimming^ the cream, turned his herds loose to destroy. Soon what was 

 God's green earth became a wasted desert, the cow trails to and from the 

 watering places were followed by the floods, and soon after the rain fell 

 it ran off, depriving the vegetation of its needed moisture and tearing the 

 country into great gorges. 



Now it is our purpose to repair those several wasted places by the 

 science of irrigation, and by the untiring industry of man get back what 

 by the recklessness of man, has been lost. Mark the change. 



From the great Imperial Valley, the wonder of the world just across 

 the river in eastern California on the west, to New Mexico and western 

 Texas on the east, all the way through southern Arizona, but generally 



