imperfect, we know enough of the development of our main industry to judge pretty well its trend. The following illustrative tables of live stock and five principal crops are compiled from reports of the department of agriculture.

   The acreage of corn has shown a tendency to decrease since 1899, and wheat to increase in about the same degree. But the acreage of spring wheat fell from 381,299 in 1905 to 322,000 in 1907. The yield per acre in 1905 was, fall wheat, 20.4 bushels; spring, 14 bushels. For 1907, fall, 19 bushels; spring, 12 bushels. Oats about hold their own, and the other estimates for 1908, taken in connection with those here given, show that there is a decided increase in potatoes and hay. All classes of live stock, except sheep, show a constant increase, though in 1910-1911 there was a decrease of cattle and sheep, probably owing to deficient rainfall. On the whole, the production of live stock increases measurably more than that of cereals.
   The counties that raised sugar beets in appreciable quantities in 1908 are Boone, 50 acres; Buffalo, 78; Cheyenne, 234; Custer, 15; Dawson, 52; Dundy, 46; Franklin, 19; Hall, 471; Hitchcock, 180; Keith, 19; Lancaster, 108; Merrick, 200; Loup, 718; Platte, 127; Red Willow, 324; Scotts Bluff, 2,500 The total acreage fell from 6,906 in 1907 to 5,167 in 1908. The report of the commissioner of labor gives the acreage of Loup county at only 10 but devotes 718 acres to spelt. Spelt is now raised in considerable quantities in all parts of the state, but principally in the western counties.
   The beet sugar industry, alone, languished in spite of its subsidy sops. The manufacture of sugar in 1901-1902 was 6,660 tons; in 1902-

1903, 9,430 tons; in 1903-1904, 8,669 tons; in 1904-1905, 13,355 tons; in 1905-1906, 9,397. In 1908-1909 our single factory consumed about 30,000 tons of beets, producing 300 tons of sugar. It is quite pertinent and proper to join the present promiscuous chorus of tariff reform by observing that the only Nebraska industries that persist in languishing -- sugar and sheep -- are also the only ones that can, or do derive any benefit from protective tariffs. If the tariff on wool accomplishes its purpose, the little pauper sheep industry costs (in added price of clothing) all the people who do the rest of the state's business, which stands on its own bottom, about twice as much every year as the total wool clip is worth. Likewise, sugar tariffs enable the sugar trust to levy an enormous tax on consumers while the country continues to import about three-fourths of the sugar it needs from lands which a Providence -- deemed all wise before self-protective tariff-makers superseded Him -- especially prepared for the production of that great staple.
   In other words, in what reasonable measure and by what means will Nebraska add to its agricultural greatness already attained? (The responsibility rests chiefly with the people of the commonwealth because, as has been shown, the natural conditions for increase are at hand.)
   Let us take the weakest and artificial example first. The cultivation of sugar beets decreases and the number of factories has been reduced from three to two owing to relatively disadvantageous conditions --which, however, cannot properly be regarded as permanent. Temporary increased rainfall, and especially in the latter part of the season, reduced somewhat the percentage of sugar in the beets, thus giving the California and Colorado fields an advantage. This increased rainfall and a tendency toward higher prices of other agricultural products during the same period. stimulated the production of the ordinary staple crops. Increasing cost and scarcity of labor, an all-important factor in beet culture, is the most discouraging of all these incidents. Farmers in the earlier beet-producing counties have felt so content over good crops of wheat, corn, and hay that they would not stand the slings and arrows of very bad labor conditions and the "docking" of their beets at the factory which has increased and the cause of irritation been justified or excused on account of the somewhat inferior quality of the beets alluded to. Those comparatively new-comers, fall wheat and alfalfa, have been especially potent competitors of sugar beets.
   But a general view of the field seems to justify the opinion of Dean Burnett of the Nebraska school of agriculture, and expert sugar beet men, that Nebraska may yet become an important producer of beets and sugar. Beets will thrive without irrigation where corn will thrive. At the experiment station, near North Platte, from ten to eleven tons of beets to the acre are raised on upland without irrigation. The quality of the beets improves as you go farther west, provided the moisture is sufficient. Fifteen tons an acre is a good yield on the high priced lands farther east. Furthermore, a recurrence of deficient rainfall and some evidence of over-cropping of wheat have stimulated a sentiment in favor of wider diversity.
   Beets and sugar are very successfully produced in the irrigable part of the North Platte valley where soil and climate favor and water is abundant. In other parts of the state this industry is, to say the least, a great reserve, awaiting general adjustment and development.
   Irrigation farming began in earnest in the valley, and especially in the vicinity of Scotts Bluff, after the Burlington railroad reached that place in 1899. By 1904 the production of sugar beets in that neighborhood became important; but they were shipped to the old factory at Ames. The closing of the Ames factory in 1905 stimulated the cultivation of potatoes and alfalfa in this district. In 1908 beet growing was again resumed, the product being shipped to the factory at Sterling, Colorado. In 1909 a combination of eastern and Colorado capitalists organized the Scotts Bluff sugar company, bought the old Ames factory, and reconstructed it at Scotts Bluff. It has a daily consuming capacity of about 1,500 tons of beets. The mill started in November, 1910, continuing sixty days and nights. In 1911

about 11,000 acres of beets were grown and the mill was operated 100 days with a daily output of about 150 tons of refined sugar. Contracts were made for the growing of about 15,000 acres of beets in the season of 1912. The main building of the factory covers about four acres and has fourteen acres of floor space. The total cost of the factory has been about a quarter of a million dollars. It employs from one hundred to two hundred men the year round and during the active part of the season an additional number of five hundred men. From May to December about one thousand laborers are employed in the beet fields. Ninety per cent of these are German-Russians. They live in the city of Scotts Bluff during the winter, moving out to the fields for the growing season. The other ten per cent of hand laborers comprises Japanese and a few Greeks. Only team work is done by Americans. In this section alfalfa, potatoes, and grains are raised, of importance in the order named. During the winter of 1911-1912 about 10,000 cattle and 125,000 sheep were fed from the by-products of the sugar factory and the alfalfa fields in the vicinity of Scotts Bluff. The sugar industry has given new life to the town which, according to the census of 1910, contained 1,746 inhabitants and has grown rapidly since that time.
   Natural favorable conditions are reinvigorating the sugar industry in the North Platte valley.
   That sheep raising has so far been merely incidental and not extensive in Nebraska, is a tribute to the richness of its soil and its peculiar adaptation to the production of the more substantial staples in crops and live stock. That sheep are not more extensively kept on the grazing fields of the northwest, is partly owing to the proximity to the conditions just mentioned and partly, perhaps, to the fact, as the cattle men say, that they got in there first. On the whole, dairying seems to increase, but not as rapidly as conditions appear to warrant. The best observers in Merrick county, for example -- until recent years regarded as within the grazing district -- explain that dairying is not more important, relatively, in the county, chiefly for the same reason that beet culture has fallen off there and elsewhere. The farmers have been doing so very well, lately, with fall wheat, corn, and hay, and their concomitants, hogs, and cattle, that the greater drudgery involved in dairying is not very attractive to them. But the great future of this industry merely awaits a further adjustment of conditions, and especially of the present high prices of grains. It is probable that corn will continue to be king of crops in Nebraska and that fall wheat, continuing to crowd out the spring variety, will be a great queen. While the South Platte is the main wheat section, corn, in large acreage, extends to the north border. Fall wheat has spread very widely into the southwestern counties. It is already an invaluable supplement to the more or less uncertain corn and may become its rival in that section.
   The following estimates made by the Union Pacific railroad company in 1908, show the great extent of the wheat area in southwestern counties and its relation to the acreage of corn:

   The wheat acreage of the southeastern counties runs below that of the counties above named, and corn runs proportionately higher. The extensive wheat raising counties north of the Platte river are, Brown, Buffalo, Colfax, Custer, Dawson, Dodge, Hall, Howard, Merrick, Madison, Platte, Nance, Sherman, Thomas, Valley; but most of them lie adjacent to or near the river. Sheridan county is the only large producer of spring wheat, with 20,850 bushels in 1908. By the same estimate the total number of acres of spring wheat in the state in 1908 was 232,344; of fall wheat, 2,054,970. Custer county, formerly classed as outside the successful dry farming line, raised twenty bushels of wheat to the

acre on 60,860 acres, and thirty bushels of corn on each of 229,294 acres.
   Alfalfa is a comparatively recent, but permanent and very important addition to the state's resources. The Nebraska Advertiser, May 20, 1875, said that Governor Furnas then had a quarter section of land planted with "fruit trees of every variety suited to this climate." He had planted sixty acres in the spring of 1875. The same paper, of May 27, 1875, quoted a letter written by Robert W. Furnas to the land commissioner of the Burlington & Missouri railroad company in which he said that he had cultivated alfalfa a number of years "as an ornamental border plant and also as a forage crop." The letter was concluded with this true prophecy: "I have no hesitancy in advancing the opinion that it is a most valuable acquisition to our crop interests and will, in a very short time, be of incalculable value." The school of agriculture maintains that it will do well wherever our common staple crops thrive. On good upland it will yield from three tons to four tons an acre against about a ton and a half of timothy and clover. For making beef or mutton, a ton of alfalfa will go as far as a ton and a half of wild hay. In favorable soil alfalfa roots will go down thirty feet to water. It is, therefore, a sure and rich refuge for forage throughout our 40,000 easterly square miles. In each of the years 1906-1909, selected uplands near the experiment station at North Platte, and with an altitude 300 feet above that town, produced, without irrigation, a ton and a half to the acre. The valley at North Platte will produce as much as the college farm at Lincoln. Alfalfa will do well in the fertile valleys anywhere in the state; but it cannot be said that it would be a practicable crop on the western table-lands nor a good crop in the valleys in the dry periods. The difference between dry seasons and wet seasons appears from the following record of the experiment station of the State University at North Platte.

   While the table shows that the precipitation for the years 1902-1909, during which the careful experiments of the station have been made, is much above the average, yet that trial has demonstrated that alfalfa can be successfully raised in the long run on table lands such as these in question. Turkestan alfalfa is most adapted to latitude north of Nebraska, but will probably be found practicable in our dryest (sic) sections. Brome grass is also more suitable for the north, but is of value here.
   Our production of staple crops and so of the live stock which they support may be very greatly increased (1) by better methods of cultivation and (2) by extending the area of production, especially in the untilled western section. These processes of improvement are fairly under way. By a practicable improvement of seed corn, the product may be increased above the present average by from

twenty to thirty per cent. Experiment shows that at least one-fifth of every farm should be kept in clover or alfalfa all the time. The rotation should be four or five successive years of ordinary crops and then three years of leguminous plants.
   Expert summary of the roads to increased production is, (1) increasing fertility of the soil, (2) better cultivation, (3) improvement of seeds. Increasing numbers of farmers are traveling these roads led by the experimentation and moral stimulus of the University school of agriculture and the federal department of agriculture. For example, the existence of large stock feeding establishments is due chiefly to the ability of the owners to buy advantageously and to use the best methods of feeding. With more education and experience this function will be localized to the advantage of the individual farmer.
   The improvement of pastures now going on will stimulate diversity and dairying in particular. Blue grass is getting a good hold as far west as Buffalo and Dawson counties. Mr. McGinnis, general agent at Lincoln of the Chicago & Northwestern railroad company, relates that in 1906 he supposed that a pasture on his ranch in southwestern Holt county was done for because the native grass had been quite worn out; but blue grass took possession, instead, and is successfully holding it. In Merrick county, blue grass has not only invaded the better soils but is gradually creeping into the sandy land. Thirty years ago there was a long, sharply defined sand dune on the Whitmore ranch at Valley. In November, 1908, it was affording as good pasturage of bluegrass and white clover as could have been found in the famous dairying districts of Wisconsin. The Whitmores have long been sowing their extensive pastures to tame grasses. They do not "break" the land, but first disk the wild pasture, then sow the seed, following with the harrow. Better results follow this method than the more common one of sowing the grass seed on cultivated soil. They spread all the farm-yard manure they have over these pastures, and particularly on the more sandy parts. They now have more than 1,000 acres of tame meadow and pasture -- clover and timothy, more or less mixed with blue grass. The importance of this gradual process of civilization is very great.
   Climatic conditions all over the state are very favorable to poultry raising. While it is already general in an incidental way, more particular attention will be paid to it as the profit of more intensive farming increases and its methods are better understood.
   There is, of course, an element of speculation as to the destiny of the higher and dryer lands of the western section of the state, though scientific and general experiment are busily engaged in the solution of the problem. Since the passage of the Kinkaid act by Congress in 1904, which raised the homestead maximum to 640 acres, that part of the state has been rapidly filling up with settlers. This increase has been greatest in the northwesterly counties; but it has been checked by recent dry seasons. In 1904 there were 7,834,736 acres subject to homestead; in 1908 there were not more than 3,000,000 acres, nearly all in the sandhill districts of the northwest. There were in Holt county 12,000 acres; Rock, 4,000; Keya Paha, 38,000; Sheridan, 165,000; Sioux, 417,000; Boyd, 700; Banner, 82,000; Cherry, 1,000,000, and Dawes, 9,000. Filings can be made on this land at the land office at Valentine or O'Neill. Every man or unmarried woman over the age of twenty-one, every widow, every minor orphan or widow of a deceased soldier, or anyone who is at the head of a family, though an adopted or a minor child, who is a citizen of the United States, may homestead 640 acres of this land. The fee for filing is $14. Not over 200,000 acres of those lands lie far enough to the south to the tributary to the Union Pacific railroad. In recent years very large numbers of actual settlers bought farms throughout the western section, and those lands have greatly increased in price. The Kinkaid act applies to all territory in the state west of a line running south from a point on the Missouri river at the northwest corner of Knox county to the northeast corner of Howard county; thence west. along the fourth standard parallel, to the northwest corner of Sherman county; thence south along the west boundary of Sherman

county to the third standard parallel, which is the north boundary of Buffalo county; thence west along the third standard parallel to the northwest corner of Dawson county; thence south along the west boundary of Dawson county to the north boundary of Frontier county; thence west along the north boundary of Frontier county -- the second standard parallel -- to the northeast corner of Hayes county; thence south along the line between Frontier and Hayes, and Red Willow and Hitchcock counties to the south boundary of the state. There are shrewd men, well acquainted with that section, who still believe that it is only fit for grazing and that the rapid settlement for general farming now going on will turn out calamitously. On the other hand, there are many men, equally well informed, who believe that the success of these later settlements is assured. The unbelievers contend that in the order of nature there will be periodical series of dry years, like that of the early nineties, when no crops can be raised. The optimists hold that all former attempts at farming in that section have been made, in the main, by inferior people, lacking in capacity and financially destitute, whereas the present settlers are men of nerve and experience and many of them having property enough for a good start. For example, recent settlers in the northwestern counties are very largely from western Iowa, northwestern Missouri, and eastern Kansas and Nebraska. Many of them sell their high priced farms and occupy these comparatively cheap lands because they believe that they can successfully cultivate them and in the meantime greatly profit by the consequent great rise in their value. The future doubtless holds a golden mean which in part, at least, justifies the optimists.
   The conservatives judge the future mainly, if not altogether, by the past, which, to say the least, is not quite fair or rational. While there will doubtless be dry years in those sections again, yet neither memories nor records are comprehensive enough to warrant the assumption, as a basis for business calculation or forecast. that such years will come in seriously long series, or even that they will come at all. There is at least a fair business prospect that the favorable rainfall of the six years preceding 1908 will be the rule and not the exception. Then the absorption of the moisture that does come, by cultivated fields, and the passage of the winds over the great masses of growing crops, instead of the unprotected, heat-reflecting expanse, as of old, will increase the effectiveness of the rainfall and tend to prevent general destruction or severe injury to vegetation. Increasing competition for available lands will draw or force men to these sections with the experience, the stamina, and the financial competence to make the most of them. Intensive and diverse farming, stimulated by the experiments of scientific schools will continue to increase the availability of the less favored lands. So the confident opinion of many shrewd observers, including scientific experts, that, before many years elapse, all the hard lands of western Nebraska will be occupied by farmers who will derive a comfortable living from them is reasonable.
   An intelligent observer of conditions on the table lands of Cheyenne county, a member of the staff of the passenger department of the Union Pacific railroad company, himself a Swede, believes that foreigners, who are more inured to hardships and better satisfied with modest returns for their labor than Americans, would be certain to prosper here. He points out that while 403,121 of our foreign immigrants of 1907 stopped in New York, 223,551 in Pennsylvania, and 110,000 in Illinois, only 5,789 came to the agricultural state of Iowa and 6,216 to Nebraska. He says that a large part of these immigrants have been small farmers in their native countries, and that they would get rich on the monthly check of $40, which they would receive from the product of the fifteen cows which a Kinkaid section in Cheyenne county will maintain, besides a few other cattle, poultry, and producing some grain and root crops.
   The table lands in Deuel county which sold for $2 an acre in 1898, until recently sold for $8 to $10 and settlers bought at such prices in large numbers. A series of dry years has lately checked this development. All Union Pacific lands in Nebraska have been sold ex-

cept those taken back on default. Even under present methods of cultivation, the southwestern section has only to fear abnormally dry years; for with that limitation, they are safely within the corn and fall wheat belt.
   The main irrigable area of the state is the North Platte valley, from the Wyoming border down to Cowanda, about thirty miles below Bridgeport. Farther than that the valley is too narrow for much tillage. This area comprises about 500,000 acres. The river, with the aid of the flood waters stored by the great dam, lately constructed at a point two hundred miles above the western boundary of the state, will supply enough water for double that acreage. Scotts Bluff county had long before been extensively supplied with water through privately owned ditches, and their rights are not affected by the great canal under construction by the federal government and which will reach at least as far as Bridgeport. Several smaller streams supply water for quite limited areas.
   The government will sell eighty acres of land with a perpetual water right to each actual settler; but it refuses to furnish water to owners of other lands except at the price named. This seems a harsh monopolistic rule to which some extensive holders of land in the valley are refusing to yield. Men well known in Nebraska and who are well informed upon this subject, assert that the Wyoming works have cost a great deal more than they should have cost, owing to mistakes and other incompetency. They say, also, that, partly owing to that excessive cost, an excessive price is charged for the lands held by the government subject to its canal. It is therefore impossible for a poor man to pay for this land in ten years, as required, so that the primary object of the enterprise, namely, to furnish the farms to men of small means, is defeated at the outset. Keen-eyed men believe that there will have to be a complete readjustment of the terms in question and that the cost of the irrigation works will eventually become a public donation. The contribution by the east of its pro rata share toward this western improvement would be but a small installment of its immemorial exactions from the west.
   Experiments at the North Platte station have been conducted expressly to try out the possibilities of dry farming in that district. It has been the practice there to raise four successive crops and then apply summer tillage during the fifth season. This means that the land is disked and harrowed frequently so as to prevent evaporation of moisture as far as possible and put the soil into the best condition to store it. After summer tillage land has produced as high as sixty bushels of fall wheat to the acre. During the four years 1905-1908 from twenty bushels to forty bushels of corn an acre were raised on other lands. It has been found that it will pay to pasture steers on the upland native pasture at a valuation of $10 an acre. Cottonwood, black locust, green ash, box elder, and mulberry trees thrive under cultivation. It is necessary to stir the soil about them to conserve moisture. Durum wheat is grown successfully, yielding a much larger crop than the common wheat. So far it is used to feed stock, as there is no established market for it. About seven million bushels of this wheat are annually mixed with ordinary wheat in the flour mills of Minneapolis.
   It is expected that importations of grains and forage plants from foreign and countries will be advantageous, but the chief reliance is upon proper cultivation. Dean Burnett believes that in the North Platte region in question dry farming can be satisfactorily carried on in the long run, and he views the prospects for the northwest table lands hopefully.
   One finds everywhere among business men and farmers as well as boomers great expectations of the state school of agriculture and of the federal department of agriculture in the development of our farming interests. Even railroad men, who habitually rail at the attempted control of their business by the government as pernicious socialism, felicitate themselves and the state upon the beneficence of the purely paternalistic institutions named. And socialism is but paternalism "writ large." Only a few years ago J. Sterling Morton, who could not see the so very plain signs of the

times through his individualistic preconceptions, felicitated himself on his administration of the department of agriculture because he had turned a considerable part of his appropriations back into the treasury untouched, to do which was his chief Jeffersonian care. His successor is impelled by public opinion to spend all he can get and to get all he can spend of the public revenues in his socialistic propaganda. It is a palpable and significant fact that the questions and projects which most engage the public attention and approval at the present time are those which are most socialistic in their character.
   Looking back over the foregoing quite conservative and yet almost roseate sketch of Nebraska's economic conditions and prospects, we are forcibly reminded that instead of repeating itself, according to tradition, Nebraska history has very flatly contradicted itself. For the dominating note of the earlier years of that history was either despair or negation. "It is a land where no man permanently abides," said Washington Irving, after an inspection of the "Nebraska country"; and our earlier sages believed and promulgated the faith that it would be habitable only along the streams of the eastern portion. During the grasshopper invasions of the seventies, the state was a pauper on the national roll of charities; and there was wide belief that there was its normal place. It was the courage and penetration of great railroad promoters and the great courage and faith of the pioneer settlers which, for the first time, as tradition goes, forced history to reverse instead of repeating itself.
   Nebraskans have harped so much upon their prepossession that agriculture is the state's single resource that they have failed to perceive that the state is strategetically (sic) situated for commerce. Its situation is not only approximately central in relation to the country at large but it is intersected by five great railroad systems. Five trunk lines lead out from, or pass through Omaha, the commercial metropolis of the state. Two already count Lincoln, the capital city, as a principal point on their lines; a third will probably soon assume that relation; while this fortunate town is a very important center for branch lines of four great systems. A glance at the accompanying map will show why Nebraska actually has very favorable access to all parts of the country and so to the commercial world.
   These considerations indicate that Omaha is destined to be a large city of the secondary class and that Lincoln's great transportation facilities will eventually overcome its present tendency to a cramped growth on the educational side and cause its development into a well-proportioned city of considerable size.
   A few citations of facts will show that these waiting resources have reasonably responded to improving facilities and opportunities. The total shipment of Nebraska products from the state for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1910, was 14,000,000,000 pounds. About 50,000 car loads of packing house products are annually shipped from the state, mostly to points in the Mississippi valley, but in part to the extreme east and west and to Europe. Omaha has a fair chance to displace Kansas City as the second meat packing center of the world, and the Nebraska City output is considerable. In the year, 1907, 24,900 car loads of wheat, averaging 900 bushels per car, and 35,993 of corn -- about thirty-two million bushels -- were exported, chiefly from Omaha, which is also a great market for barley. Eight of our principal flouring mills exported over seventy-five million pounds of flour in 1907. Corn products are of noticeable importance, the annual shipments amounting to about 2,500 car loads. In 1911 Nebraska ranked third among the states in cereal mill products, and their value for that year was eleven million dollars. The total output of our creameries approximates thirty million pounds; of hay, exceeding two hundred thousand tons; of eggs, upwards of twelve million dozens. In addition to packing house products, aggregating nearly one hundred million dollars in value a year, smelting, chiefly lead matter at Omaha, brought from Rocky Mountain mining states, amounting to nearly fifty million dollars annually, and creamery products, amounting in 1910 to eleven million dollars, there is no considerable single manufacture.