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Show DRY FARMING AND STOCK RAISING HOMESTEADS, 1904-1934 503 percent of this land was in the humid states. Some states or parts of states which had been open to settlement for as much as 30 to 40 years still had less than 20 percent of their land in private ownership. Although the number of people filing for homesteads was increasing, the growth of population in the semi-arid states was unsatisfactory to leaders in business, agriculture, and politics. Advent of Dry Farming In the semi-arid West the state governments and their colleges of agriculture, immigration bureaus, legislatures, railroads, and real estate agents, all were deeply interested in developing these states more intensively than the livestock industry had. All were trying to find the best method of exploiting the public lands that would result in accelerated immigration and make for more effective use of the land. The alternatives were dry farming in units of less than 320 acres, which was acquiring great popularity with land locaters, real estate agents, and railroads, or "a mixed, farming-grazing organization" which was endorsed by agricultural scientists in the United States Department of Agriculture. If the second choice won out the question left was whether "the system should be that of the farmer raising stock as an adjunct to cropping operations or that of the rancher growing feed for stock. . . ,"15 Dry farming techniques, as expounded by Hardy Webster Campbell, called for a relatively intensive form of agriculture that would provide opportunities for many thousands of farm families. Semi-arid lands with rainfall insufficient for normal cropping could produce grain, grass, or other crops if the moisture in the soil was carefully preserved in fallow years by harrowing to keep down weeds and to make the 15 Hargreaves, Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains pp. 329 ff. top soil into a dust mulch. Other essential practices were deep plowing in the fall and firmly packing the seeds sown by drills. Shrewdly contrived educational or propaganda work by the colonization and land departments of the railroads, well supported by others interested in the real estate and development business, publicized dry farming experiments which through sheer good luck and able management had had remarkable success, though perhaps aided by somewhat more than normal rainfall. There was much agitation and discussion. Some stockmen advocated the leasing of rangelands not suitable for irrigation; others favored enlarging the 640-acre Kin-kaid homesteads. Aligned in opposition were the advocates of an enlarged 320-acre homestead unit that might serve the interests of dry farming. Fortune and their greater numbers favored the dry farming advocates. They obtained the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 which authorized 320 acre-homesteads on nonirrigable, non-mineral land having no merchantable timber in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada. Not wishing to be regarded as semi-arid states, California, Idaho, Kansas, and North and South Dakota had asked to be left out of the measure. Five years of residence on the land with continuous cultivation of other than native grasses was required and there was to be no commutation. Because in Utah much land had no known source of domestic water but was still useful for dry farming, the statute provided that on as much as 2 million acres in that state residence on the land would not be required during the 5 years. Such classification as was required to segregate lands to be open to homestead-ing under the Act of 1909 was to be done by the Department of the Interior through the Geological Survey. The measure dis- |