TH CHAPTER IV SUNSHINE FARMING HE first map of the United States which I ever studied represented nearly the entire region between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountain crest as the Great American Desert. It is wonderful how the influence of the old map endures. Many of our countrymen still seem to think of west Kansas and Nebraska and eastern Colorado as one vast sandbank. Certain it is that multitudes regard this tract as now, henceforth and evermore, just a great oxpasture, not a dead waste like Sahara, worth mentioning as part of our country's domain, good hunting-ground and helpful in keeping down the price of beef, but destined never to become a land of homes. Of late a few, more enlightened, so far modify this view as to admit that some part of what was once accounted desert will be brought under culture by means of irrigation. Even such usually take no account of windmill or gasoline engine irrigation, more and more in vogue, and certain to add in time millions of acres to the cultivable portion of American soil, or of elevated reservoirs and lakes independent of rivers, helping the work of irrigation, or of that economy in the use of irrigating waters from which as much is to be hoped for agriculture as from the mighty arm of government now exerting itself to impound our rivers in aid of our fields. We have learned that in the use of water to raise crops, enough is not only as good as a surfeit but a great deal better. Instead of sloshing on water in a field because we have plenty, we now save the surplus for new acres elsewhere. Independently of the "dry" culture, of which I shall speak presently, a little water will go a great way. But the majority, even of those who know all about irrigation in every form and also understand the meaning of the economies which are possible and sure to be exercised in the application of irrigating waters, take these improvements as the limits to the ex tension and triumph which agriculture can hope for in sub-humid America. Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu in his very entertaining work, "The United States in the Twentieth Century," voices the current view. He says: "Crossing the Mississippi the amount of the annual rainfall rapidly diminishes. From 375 to 500 miles west of the river, following a line almost identical with the 100th parallel of longitude, it becomes less than 20 inches a year. The irregularity of the rainfall and the consequent long drouth effectually prevent the cultivation of the soil, except in some privileged sections and in valleys susceptible of irrigation. This is the so-called 'dry lands' region, which embraces the tablelands of the Rockies and the western portion of the plains, for a length of 1,250 miles north and south and a breadth of 750 to 800 miles east and west. This represents about a third of the territory of the United States or a surface five times that of France. Almost half of the region in question is quite arid, and is made up of deserts that extend over the tablelands of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, the southeast of California, a large portion of New Mexico, and parts of neighboring states." "The semi-arid zone is overrun by vast herds of cattle, which would be even more numerous did not the rigor of the climate restrict their development. I frequently heard it stated that in these parts of the country the cultivation of cereals has been pushed too far to the west. Many farms devoted to these products have had to be abandoned." "That it (the western division) holds any serious place in the economic life of the United States is due simply to the richness of its mines." "The western half of the two Dakotas and no small portion of Kansas and Texas are almost unavailable for agricultural purposes by reason of drouth." This remarkable book by Leroy-Beaulieu nowhere hints of any advance possible to agriculture in the semi-arid domain save by irrigation. The author notes, of course, that our agriculture everywhere, west and east, could profitably be made more inten |