I know one city on the eastern plains of New Mexico which six years ago had no being. yet is now a prosperous city of over 5.000 people. and the landscape in every direction dotted with farm houses of the homesteaders. Many of these. unfortunately. have been lost to the original entrymen because of drought and the rigors of the homestead laws of which we are complaining. In this eastern section the tide of immigration. the forefront of it impelled forward by the thousands behind them. try dry farming. or scientific farming. more properly called. The principle of this system is intense cultivation: First. to make a pan or bottom below the cultivated soil that would tend to hold the moisture from sinking too deep. and. secondly. to so continuously cultivate the plowed soil as to make it like dust to prevent evaporation and hold the little moisture that does fall around the roots of the plants. This takes many times as much labor as to raise a crop where there is ample rainfall. and when the crops fail for lack of any rain at all the settler should have time allowed him from continuous residence to make a living for that year somewhere else.
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immigration