The Spokane press. [volume] (Spokane, Wash.) 1902-1939, 1909-08-07

bony horses across arid fields, now
the fields are fat and the harvest
ing is on a big business plan.
Campbell, the bonanza farmer, in
vented the process formerly called
dry farming" which made 1t pos
sible for wheat to be grown on dry
soil. He became successful farm
er though some of his neighbors,
laughing at him, stayed poor. He
turned editor to tell them the Sc
cret of his fertile acres; then be-
came a manufacturer of the har-
vesting appliances he invented to
deal with the peculiar problems OF
the western wheat soil.
The story of Campbell is lesson
to all farmers and to all men who
would demean the modern Ameri-
can farm.
In the spring of 1883 Campbell
formerly railroad machine shop
foreman in Vermont. brought his
family out west He settled on a
quarter section homestead in
Brown county. then Dakota terri
tory, now North county, South Da-
kota. He plowed his virgin soil
with a team composed of an OK
and a long cared mule. But he
studied the soil. got it analysed,
and in spite of Encouragement
around him found that the Dakota
soil had all the elements in it to
raise perfect wheat The soil was
loose and the moisture from rains
escaped. making the country
dry country and keeping the
crops down.
His neighbors thought him crazy.
The 1854 season was drouth
season. Campbell's crops failed, so
did his neighbors. The neighbors
wrote east for money and left.
Campbell stuck.
He left his sod stable one day to
take look at what was left of his
wheat. Most of his stubble was
sparse, but the ruts made by his
cultivator and the hoof prints of
the OK and the long cared mule
were heavily stubbled
Campbell decided, rightly. that
the ground needed to be packed in
order to hold the moisture and
grow good wheat. The footprints
of the OK and the long cared mule
blaZed the way for what is now the
worlds greatest wheat country. 1t
was the first lesson in wheat rails
ing the farmer ever learned
Campbell studied and found that
the soil must be packed at the bot
tom OF the furrow, where the wheat
starts to terminate. That was les
son No 2.
So next spring the first wheat
packer, a harrow-like implement,
was turned out at the litthp forge of
Woodman & Foy, Hettinger coun-
ty, South Dakota. To the amaze
ment of other farmers Campbell's
yield that year was phenomenal.
There had been little rain and the
Dakota pioneers knew that it was
the machine, and not the climate,
that made Campbell fortunate.
From that time on he doomed his
theories. built his implements and
those of his neighbors. and kept
right on buying farm lands where
the soil was pronounced worthless.
These tracts now are bonanza
farms.
Here are the farms Mr.. Campbell
operates today: North Dakota,
1000 acres; Midland county, Texas,
GAO acres; Plainview, Texas, 800
acres; Holdredge. Nebraska, 800
acres; Medicine Hat, Alberta, $40
acres.
When those farmers back in the
old days were praying for rain"
said Campbell as he sat on the
porch OF his home here, Il told
them that the thing to do was to
put a cistern under their ground
and put lid on 1t. The cistern
was the natural moisture, the lid
the pressed ground at the top.
save the water you've got told