El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-10-05
TELLS
Of DRY FARM
PREJUDICE
Ell Pasoan Addresses Con
gress of Dry Farmers at
Spokane, Washington.
DRY FARMING NEEDS
TO BE UNDERSTOOD

Spokane, Wash. Oct. Sc. A. Mar
president of the Texas Dry Farming
congress, was on the speakers program
before the convention of the Fifth In
ternational Dry Farm congress here to-
day. He reported on the situation in
Texas and declared that an unfounded
prejudice against dry farming was
retarding real agricultural development
in that state. He said
Texas, the greatest state in the union
organized the first Dry Farming con-
vention of any state in the union, but.
large as it is, and, starting as early
as it did. Texas cannot lay claim to
the active participation in the Dry
Farming congress, the parent organiza-
ton. of many of the other states.
There are several other reasons. In
the first place, the name Dry Farming
has never been one that took we'll with
the Texans. Texas is such large state
that the people in the central, southern
and eastern sections, cannot understand
the needs of the people in the west and
the Panhandle. South Texans, where
they have to fight the floods through
out the summer season. cannot uunder-
stand why anybody wants to talk about
DRY Farming They can't realize
that anybody ought to want rain. When
you talk Dry Farming, they laugh.
You may tell them that the principles
of Dry Farming are applicable any
where and viii improve the crop in
any region, but they only smile. A
few, however, are embracing the scien-
tific methods of cultivation which we
are teaching, and these are among the
most enlightened men in each COM
munlty-but the gospel is spreading
slowly. Thanks to our state agricul-
tural commissioner and his able corps
of assistants, the state agricultural de-
partment is spreading the gospel of
scientific soil tillage and one by one
we are winning converts-proving to
them that while .'Dry Farming is nee
essary in the arid regions, it is good
anywhere.
Real Estate Mems Plant.
Then, another condition we have to
fight is that raised by the real estate
men and the men who have land to sell.
They are afraid of the name Dry Farm
ing" One of our biggest Texas cities
was frightened off from making an
attempt to get the next session of this
convention because the real estate men
said it would be '.ruinOuS." I'VE can
grow crops here on the rainfall we get"
they said. Then, why begin this dry
farming talk and make people believe
that We are in the arid belt?" They
admitted that they have a crop failure
every once in a while and that Scen-
tific tillage might save them. but they
declared tat it would be worse to have
their region advertised as a Dry Farm
region than to have crop failure occa-
sionally and leave Dry Farming out
of It.
In part of this they are right, for
INSCRIPTIONS men have\ TALKED Dry
Farming in communities where there
was no possibility of growing anything
and the failures that have followed
have given the movement many hard
knock. The real estate men-I do not
mean all of them, for there are bad
and good real estate men as there
are bad and good men in all lines
of endeavor-have done more to injure
Dry Farming in the eyes of those who
have not studied it than any other class
Of people. They have advertised homes
in regions where you couldn't shoot
grain of corn into the earth with rifle,
and have brought families out and set
tied them on the land with the result
that the poor emigrants lost all they
had and returned home to spread the
news that Dry Farming was a failure
These poor, misguided men had not
studied the subject themselves; they
did not know what Dry Farming meant;
thought all they had to do was settle
down, put in crop and that it would
grow, regardless of the rainfall.
People Must Learn.
This congress has to do lot of teach
ing before the work of Dry Farming
is fully understood. and in my state
we have as difficult a lot of pupils as
any tutor ever took in hand. You
would think the entire state of Missouri
had emigrated to Texas from the man
ner that they all want 10 be shown"
And when you show them, some are so
hard headed that they won't let it
soak in: some men prefer to knock
good thing because they didn't discover
it. rather than embrace it and get rich.
We have a lot of them in Texas, possibly
no more than in some other states, but
a plenty for all practical purposes.
In the states and territories further