THIRD ANNUAL SESSIONS 



by watching the seasons, knowing when to plant, how to plow — they 

 used wooden plows — and just what to do on every occasion. They have 

 not had any scientific men to teach them, but have learned from expe- 

 rience; they seldom have a crop failure, and the doctor says that th.ey 

 do their planting and working much after the same fashion as our scien- 

 tific dry farmers of the present day. We have either copied from them 

 or have studied out the same problem in the only way it is capable of 

 solution. 



Texas Begins to Experiment. 



"In West Texas, while we are new at dry farming as actually prac- 

 ticed in that state, we are not new to it in that section of the country; 

 we are the home of dry farming. The Indians nearby set the pace and 

 we are merely following them — and with success, too. We are far less 

 advanced in Texas in the matter of dry farming than in some of the 

 states in the West simply because we did not have to resort to it and 

 we didn't. We had so much land that didn't have to be irrigated or that 

 had too much moisture as a general thing, that we have been busy with 

 that. Now, however, we have discovered that the land we once scorned 

 as fit only for a prairie dog and not fit for a respectable cactus, is as 

 good as any in the state, and better than some. 



Experimental Stations. 



"Texas has awakened and the present Texas legislature is about to 

 appropriate money for the establishment of three 'dry farm' demonstra- 

 tion stations in Texas, one of them at El Paso; the other two in the pan- 

 handle country, but hundreds of our West Texas farmers have already 

 demonstrated what can be done. 



"We now fully realize in Texas that the land in the West hitherto 

 contemptuously referred to as desert, is in reality one of the greatest 

 sections of the state; that it will grow nearly anything the wet lands 

 of Texas will grow, and that for climate it surpasses all the rest. The 

 atmosphere always clear and dry, the sky as blue as turquois, and the 

 heavens at night like a canopy studded with diamonds, there is some- 

 thing to live for in the dry farming region that cannot be found any- 

 where else in the world. A man gets out of bed with a clear brain, an 

 elastic step, wide awake and full of energy — the lack of humidity does 

 it. That is typical of the dry farming region and it is healthful as 

 well as productive. Many a man has come out west with a hole in his 

 lung as big as his fist from bending over a plow year after year in a 

 wet, sloppy, cold country, and now lives to tbank Providence who created 

 the dry farm and the blue heaven; the land of sunshine and health. 



"It is not the soil that has brought many to the West in the past, 

 but they have come in search of health, have found it, and necessity 

 made them discover such wonders in the earth that the soil itself is 

 now the attraction. A few years ago nobody came West to farm, unless 

 there was something the matter with somebody in the family. Now if 

 a man fails to come West we realize that there rs something the mat- 



