The Brownsville daily herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1897-1910, 1909-03-22
SIN OF WASTING RAIN

A new religion has grown up in the
West. Its deyotees are sworn to the
practice of saving rain.
You think this a joke? Well, if
70 do. just read the proceedings of
the national dry farming congress
that has just completed its delibera-
lions at Cheyenne, Wyo. 1t was a
fine meeting. 1t was devoted not TO
war or conquest, or any of the usual
modes of enlarging boundaries, and
yet, if the new religion of moisture
conservation once wins full accep-
lance from the farmers of the nation
it may give US two acres of titled
land where We now have one.
West of the Missouri-far enough
West-there begins the old "short
grass" range where first the buffalo
and then the herds of the cattle ba-
rons, lived on the heritage cured on
the ground in the dry summers. 1t
is fine range land, but the pressure of
farms, coupled with the recurrence of
rainy periods, draws the farmers out
on the plains, and they have broken
the range up, and are determined to
make farms of it.
But those dry summers that used
TO cure the grass as it stood they
are likely to recur and make farm
ing precarious. Yes; but here the
dry farming comes in and brings
hope to all the semi-arid West
And dry farming is nothing but the
saving of the rain that falls from
either running off or evaporating.
who lives at Lincoln, Neb.. has been
preaching it to the West for years.
He had the supreme nerve Is years
ago to tell the farmers who were
burned out by the drouth that it was
their own fault,
There was plenty of rain, he said,
but it ran off the hard-baked fields,
and eyaporated from the crusted
earth and did the crops no good.
1t it had been 1000 years ago they
would have stoned him. But in the
nineteenth century thep jeered and
derided him. But he went on No
founded of a superstition ever
worked harder for proselytes than
did Campbell for believers in his sane
and simple religion of making crops
grow where nothing grew before.
He taught them how to pillow deep
pack the bottom of the furrow. slice
and leave the top loose This let the
rain soak in easily, instead of run
ming off, and the loose mulch cut the
moisture off from the wind and sun,
kept it from evaporating. Then he
showed them how to harrow it when
ever it got crusted on the top. and
save rain from season to season so
that even the dry years. the ground
kept getting moister year by year
Nobody paid him to do it except
by subscribing for the various pa
pers he founded, and by asking him
to lecture sometimes, and purchasing
the cheap manuals he wrote and sold
1t never amounted to much.
Any successful ward heeler in any
big city can make more morey in
year than Campbell can in 10.
But the feeling that truth must be
told makes the telling of its own re-
ward. The recent dry farming con-
gress is proof that the Campbell
method has won. And the world will
profit by the knowledge that by
proper tillage a little rain can be
made to go a long way South At
RIGA, western Canada, the Siberian
steppes, Australia, and arid South
Africa. will learn how to utilize their
scant rainfall, and the growing pop
ulations of the world will be fed.
The waste of rain is one of the
the most ruinous of wastes@San An
tonic Light.