THE DRY FARMING CONGRESS 



27 



Fake Advertising. 



"Irresponsible real estate agents have gone east and told of the 

 wonderful glories of western lands and have said, by intimation, if not 

 by direct statement, that all the farmer had to do was to turn the fur- 

 row and pick up gold dollars following the plow. That has brought to 

 to state many men without sufficient funds and without sufficient brains 

 to carry them through, and many men with energy, ability and stability, 

 but in some instances these same men have been "forced to go back to 

 Kansas, Illinois and Missouri in wagons drawn by two lean mules. 



"This has hurt the state to a considerable extent, but the state as a 

 whole, and I mean the dry farming portion of the state, is prosperous 

 beyond the belief of those who were interested in the movement a few 

 years ago. Some newspaper reports within the last six months have 

 detailed scenes of destitution and almost starvation in eastern Colorado, 

 the result of the bad year of 1908. Newspaper stories of all kinds have 

 been circulated and have hurt the state, and some of the delegates from 

 other states have been wondering whether Colorado had any crops in 

 1908 or not. 



Causes of Failure. 



"A few men have been starved out, but they were of the class de- 

 scribed a few minutes ago; men without money, men without equip- 

 ment, men without homes, men without credit; they have been forced to 

 return to the east because they couldn't scrape together enough money 

 for seed for 1909. 



"I can only say, gentlemen, that Colorado today has as great a fu- 

 ture, if not greater than that of any other dry farming state in the 

 west. It is further developed than any other state. Development is 

 slow along these lines always. The average farmer does not like to 

 be taught, he wishes to learn. I mean by that, he does not like to have 

 information forced down his throat. He wishes to assimilate and the pro- 

 cess of assimiliation is always slow. 



"The dry farming movement has gone ahead within the last two 

 years with such speed, such energy, such force and such vigor that 

 some of our Colorado farmers who are dry farmers talk too much and 

 do too little, but I find from circulating among the farmers that, in 

 spite of the fact that many have a definite opposition to the words 'Dry 

 Farming' still we have men who are developing under the Campbell 

 system and other systems which attempt to change the methods as they 

 have been known for years, unconsciously assimilating these methods 

 and putting them in practice on their own farms, to their own salvation. 



"Colorado is prosperous in the dry land section, taking the state as 

 a whole. In the town of Yuma, Colo., we have about fourteen new resi- 

 dences, a new furniture store, a new hardware store, a new gent's fur- 

 nishing establishment and two banks within the last three months in a 

 town of three hundred people, and the bank which has been there ten 

 years has today deposits of $145,000 on a capital of $12,000. Our 



