44 



THIRD ANNUAL SESSIONS 



remarks which you have heard from other states, it would be futile for 

 me to attempt to go into details to tell what New Mexico has done. I 

 will say that Prof. Tinsley, of the State Agricultural College, is on the 

 program for an address and he will undoubtedly enlighten you more intel- 

 ligently than any other man in New Mexico could do as to what has 

 been accomplished there in the dry farming movement. 



Statehood Fight. 



"New Mexico, as you know, in conjunction with Arizona, has been 

 knocking at the doors of Congress for statehood for years and years, to 

 be exact, since 1850, and their claim has been rejected time after time. 

 They did become kind enough a few years ago to offer to admit those 

 two great territories as one great state. New Mexico rather than stay 

 out in the cold any longer voted on the proposition to accept. We felt 

 that two senators and the representation to which we would be entitled 

 would give us a standing which we didn't have. We have a voteless 

 delegate rn Congress now and we feel the injustice of it very much, and 



Dry Farming Advancement. 



I want to say to you that the dry farming movement has done more to 

 advance our cause for statehood than any other one thing has done in 

 the past twenty years. 



Immigration Increasing. 



"We have had about 30,000 homestead settlers come into the terri- 

 tory of New Mexico since the dry farming movement has become gen- 

 erally known. That does not take into account the settlers who have 

 come in there and bought land. Those figures are taken from the rec- 

 ords of the land offices in the various land divisions of the territory. 

 The same thing is true of Arizona, while not to so great an extent, at 

 the same time the population of those territories is increasing at an un- 

 bounded rate. In our own district around Las Vegas we have had no 

 public land open to entry and have had to depend on the sale of lands of 

 the Las Vegas grant. You who are familiar with the conditions in this 

 section of the country know it is harder to get settlers where the land 

 is sold than it is where homesteads can be taken up. But I am happy 

 to say that through the efforts of one or two land companies who are 

 operating there, we are getting settlers at the present time and we are 

 seeing what it means to have men come out with a carload of horses, cat- 

 tle, hogs and farm implements and we will realize within a year or two 

 exactly what it means to a town to have the country around it settled 

 up. We have been handicapped by the native element who are, to put 

 it mildly, shiftless. 



Failures and Cause. 



"We often say that if one of our native farmers were put down on 

 the richest farm in Illinois, Iowa or Indiana, he would be more apt to 

 starve to death than not. Why? Simply because he wouldn't work 

 enough to keep the weeds down. They would kill him out. But in the 



