THE DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



53 



ter at least with the head of the family, and most generally the trouble 

 is with the head of the head of the family. 



Immigration Increasing. 



"The great western plains country is now the Mecca for hundreds 

 of thousands of people annually and they are finding homes where they 

 can live in peace. They are settling down on the vast expanse tra- 

 versed in former years by the buffalo and the Indians and are making 

 crops from soil that until recently was looked upon as unfit even for 

 the burial of a dead Indian. This same soil is now yielding wheat. 



Crop Production. 



oats, corn, forage and all varieties, beans, pumpkins and other vege- 

 tables innumerable, and even watermelons. Yes, watermelons such as 

 Georgia herself would be proud to produce, and on 10 inches and less of 

 rainfall — it sounds to the skeptical like fairy talk, but rs backed by the 

 proof. 



"Providence did not create any of this land in the West to lie in 

 idleness. It was made for men, and men have found it and are grow- 

 ing wealthy and happy and contented upon it. They are doing this by 

 farming in a sensible manner — conserving the moisture that God gives 

 them instead of wasting it — and they are getting results that would 

 never have been dreamed of a few years ago, except among our un- 

 civilized aboriginal brethren of northern Mexico. 



"Land that will produce can be taken up for nothing. All a man 

 has to do is to settle down upon it and live there for five years till 

 Uncle Sam gives him a patent to it. Land that can be bought at from 

 a dollar to three dollars an acre, is yielding astonishing results. All 

 over west Texas and in eastern New Mexico — I refer to both as one, 

 for there is nothing but an imaginary line dividing them, and the same 

 conditions exist in both — there are millions of acres of land awaiting 



Dry Land Area. 



the coming of the homesteader, and every inch of it will produce some 

 necessity. Where settlers have taken it up and farmed it sensibly, the 

 returns are almost beyond belief, and they have not had anything to 

 assist them but common sense and the natural rainfall. The man who 

 did not use common sense, just like the same man in any other line, 

 has failed, but the workers have obtained results. It depends on the 

 man behind the plow and the brain he uses. 



Watermelons from Dry Land. 



"From netting $100 an acre from watermelons grown on land that 

 cost $5 an acre because it was alongside the railroad and adjoining 

 a telegraph station and postoffice — land further from the railroad sells 

 for much less — to harvesting beautiful crops of corn, beans, milo maize, 

 sorghum and many other things, is the history of one dry farmer of 

 my acquaintance in west Texas on the New Mexican line, and similar 



