FARM ORGANIZATION IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA. 
51 
higher prices received, but with the finishing of the extensive work 
requiring the use of teams, that had been in progress by the United 
States Reclamation Service for several years, and the opening up 
of new alfalfa lands, both in these valleys and elsewhere in Arizona 
and New Mexico, the price of alfalfa hay dropped considerably. 
The farms were large enough, however, to furnish their owners with 
a comparatively comfortable living, and they did not respond quickly 
to this economic change. 
The owners of smaller farms have been feeling for several years 
the necessity for more intensive methods and have been turning to 
dairying to meet the situation. The raising of live stock has always 
been attractive to owners of large farms in all sections of the country, 
and southern Arizona has been no exception. The tendency in 
this State for the owners of large farms to engage in stock raising 
has been coincident with the development of irrigation. 
The farms ranging in size from 81 to 119 acres are not quite large 
enough to make the raising of beef cattle attractive to their owners, 
and are yet large enough to furnish a comparatively comfortable 
living for the farm family without the dairy enterprise. Their 
owners have therefore been slow to respond to the changed economic 
conditions; many of them are still devoting their time to com- 
paratively unprofitable enterprises, and a large percentage of these 
are on abnormally high priced land. 
The owners of many of the smaller farms were obliged to do outside 
labor to add to the income furnished by the farm. Some outside 
labor was also done by owners of larger farms, but in such cases the 
labor was done for the purpose of making more profitable use of 
equipment purchased for special operations on their own farms, such 
as leveling land, heading grain, etc., rather than as a necessity to 
add to the farm income. The number of farmers working out and 
the amount so earned by them is shown in Table XXII. 
Table XXII. — Number cf •farmers earning money off the farm out cfa total of 725 farmers 
and the amount so earned. 
Size-group. 
Number 
of farms. 
Number 
of farmers 
working 
out. 
Average 
earned by 
farmers' 
working 
out. 
Size-group. 
Number 
of farms. 
Number 
of farmers 
working 
out. 
Average 
earned by- 
farmers 
working 
out. 
Acres. 
0-19. ' 
62 
60 
68 
92 
111 
83 
20 
19 
22 
21 
21 
9 
S206 
536 
559 
448 
409 
804 
Acres. 
81-119 
56 
47 
49 
62 
35 
8 
8 
4 
4 
$554 
20 
120-159 
450 
21-39 
160 
559 
40 
161-320 
435 
41-79 
Over 320 
826 
80 
It will be noticed that the number of farmers doing outside work 
falls off sharply at the group of farms of 80 acres. This must be 
