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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



It is no unusual occurrence to raise two crops on the same ground in 

 the same year. The Gila river is not unlike the Nile. It carries such large 

 proportions of silts, that when this muddy water is spread over the land 

 there is sufficient organic matter in it to produce two crops without im- 

 poverishing the land. After we harvest our grain in May, we can then 

 soak up the land and plant other crops, such as pink beans, corn, milo, 

 squash, and other crops for feed. Corn and potatoes will mature. A 

 farmer on the dark side of the river produced two crops of Irish potatoes 

 on the same land the same year, and from the same potatoes; that is he 

 cut the eyes for planting from the matured first crop and produced a 

 fully matured crop from them. I have seen apple trees blossom the second 

 time in a year. Trees will put forth limbs ten feet long in one year and 

 strong enough for young trees. You may top your cottonwood trees, plant 

 a stick as large as a fencepost, and it will make a tree large as a good- 

 sized umbrella in one season, in time for shade that same year. The thing 

 we have most to contend with is too great growth — keeps us busy cutting 

 back. We do not need much land. A small farm well tilled in this country 

 will make a man rich, especially if he will carry out the wise counsel given 

 at these congresses. 



Now as to dry-farming in Arizona, Professor Forbes, director of the 

 experiment station, who was to have made a talk here, does not think 

 there is much doing; but I hold different views and have great confidence 

 in the outcome. 



In the northern part of the state along the timber belt, I saw fully 

 matured corn and potatoes and all manner of fodder plants raised with 

 only the natural rainfall. Then in southern Arizona, all the way from the 

 capital to the eastern borders, and south to Old Mexico, nearly every 

 quarter section for five miles out around the stations on the Southern 

 Pacific, San Simon, Bowie, Cochise, Benson, and reaching south for a 

 hundred miles, the best of the land is located and there is no available water 

 supply. It is what is generally understood as dry-farming in the extreme. 



When settlers began to come in from the East, I gave them till their 

 money ran out to stay, but they are still on their jobs and are making 

 good. The farmers about San Simon and Willcox got together the best 

 of their products and I was surprised indeed to witness the wonderful 

 products *from dry-farming, ' fully developed corn and cotton, and nearly 

 everything grown. There is all manner of artesian water available in this 

 section. 



I have followed colonizing all my life, and for the last 15 years, during 

 my residence in Arizona, I have attended the various National and Inter- 

 national Congresses. It was through the influence of the Transmississippi 

 Commercial Congress and the International Irrigation Congress that we 

 have the Reclamation Service. Remember it was but a few years ago that 

 Eastern and Southern congressmen did not think there was much in the 

 West worth while, but we interested them. 



We put it up to the East in this manner: You have your manufactured 



