THE DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



183 



ested itself in this great problem and through its Bureau of Plant In- 

 dustry and its Irrigation Division has taken up an extensive series of 

 studies from north to south throughout the great plains area. 



Dry Farmiing Congress. 



"Finally there has come upon the scene this great organization, The 

 Dry Farm Congress. When two years ago the people of Denver invited 

 the people of the west to a Dry Farm Congress as a side attraction to 

 their livestock show, they found they had stirred up a very live topic. 

 The flood of enthusiastic dry farm delegates almost put the li-vestock 

 show in the shade. The country awakened to the fact that dry farming 

 was a live economic factor in the west and that its strongest advocates, 

 the farmers on the land, were a successful and prosperous lot of people. 

 The live and enthusiastic men in this convention were the dry land 

 farmers. 



The Second Congress. 



"The Salt Lake Convention of a year ago added to the prestige of the 

 Congress and emphasized the importance of dry farming to the west. 

 The Congress justified itself as a clearing house of ideas, scientific and 

 practical, — a place for exchanging experiences, for learning new methods, 

 for analyzing theories and for comparing practices. The interest is grow- 

 ing and expanding. It has become national, — aye, world-wide in its scope, 

 as we see from this the third Congress. May we prove equal to the 

 responsibilities and limitations of dry farm agriculture in the west and 

 placing thi's industry on a safe and proftable basis. 



Rapid Development. 



"It is not surprising that with all these factors engaged upon the 

 dry farm problems, that there has been a rapid expansion of the practice 

 of dry farming within the past five to eight years. The first decided 

 movement out on the dry benches was by the western people themselves. 



Immigration increasing. 



"But a good thing could not long rejnain hid and for the past two 

 or three years thousands of people from the east have been spreading 

 themselves over this western country. Cheap land that has possibi'lities 

 of successful and profitable cropping is yet, as it always has been, a 

 most attractive inducement for the American people to move westward. 

 It is being realized that this is the last chance for a free homestead. It 

 is the last possible swarming of the people over the virgin territory of 

 the United States. If our faith and experience is justified by the years, 

 the next ten or fifteen years will see the tillable land of the United 

 States pass wholly out of public into private ownership. 



Conquering the Desert. 



'The coming of the new settler is interesting to watch and to con- 

 template. He is conquering the desert by inches. Hurled back in the 

 early 90's from a semi-arid country, he retreated defeated but not con- 

 quered. The gritty pioneer refused to move and has been working out 



