Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1921-03-20

'have to admit that cannot see where
he can pay interest on his Investment
and taxes, maintain his establishment
and live in the way he Is living and n
ways has lived.
Now you understand / refer 70
ranching in the old-fashioned way.
The new fashioned way means small
er area of land and more intensive
feeding, which of course means the
raising of the feed on the ranch, other
feed than hay.
This cannot be done unless Montana
is successful agriculturally so repeao
Montana must be successful agricul-
turally or revert to the old method Of
ranching. It will not take you very
long to figure what our decreaSe In
population would have to be.
1t seems to me that it is up, to each
business man in the state Of Montana,
and / do not care whether his judy
ment is biased or not, to get out and
help this dry farming proposition Al
he can. 1t would be NO trouble for mo
to draw picture Of the added pros
perity to the state if each one OF these
half sections were settled and occu-
pied by family with money to spend.
Each man sitting at this table would
benefit directly.
Personally, / firmly believe that this
will come about, and much more quick
" than some Of us think However,
what am going to try to do il to show
what is going to happen If the dry
farming proposition is not q success.
I am going to try to show that it il
up to each and every business man to
thing over, not only for the added pros
perity which / have mentioned, but to
prevent a very abnormal loss in which
everyone will participate if dry farming
is failure.
No intermediate Ground.
As I have stated, there are about
25.OOO.OO acres of land which must
either be dry farmed or used for graz
termediate ground. It is one thing or
the other absolutely. The business
men of this state have done business
on the basis of an agricultural valua-
ton of this land.
We will assume for the sake of COM
parison that for grazing purposes $40
an acre would be the absolute limit.
If water is not available, great deal
of this land would not be worth SO an
acre for grazing. On the contrary for
agricultural purposes it has been APP
praised from SIS to $50 an acre and
some of it higher. Loans have been
made on this land by out-of-the- state
investors completely upon the assump-
ton that it is agricultural land and a
value thereon has been
placed. Bankers and business men
within the state have also loaned
same valuation.
Virtually every abstract which we
have had brought down to date shows
a second mortgage to some bank or
some lumber company, some merchant.
dentist or doctor. Bear in mind thai
all this is based upon an agricultural
valuation.
Millions Loaned to Montana.
There have been about $25, 100000
a year loaned in Montana during the
last six years. This does not include
loans on stock. First mortgage loans
will average about 5000 half Sec
ton.
Old reliable farm loan men who have
been in the business q great many
years have made the statement that
when farm loan concern has to take
over a piece of land on account Of fore
closure they can generally figure that
the land will cost the amount OF the
plus dUouN ~ pcA ~SAs y. sA
face of the mortgage. For example, Il
we have a $1,000 mortgage on q half
section we viii have about 81. 400 Of
interest. taxes and other charges to
add before we become owner OF the
land. In other words the land would
stand us about S3.400 BY the time we
got title This is rather startling
statement but it has been worked out
CONTINUED on Page Seven.)