THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington, September 17, 1936.

MY DEAR MR. COOKE: I am writing to ask you to serve as chairman of a special committee whose duty it will be to make a report to me not later than January 1 on a long term program for the efficient utilization of the resources of the Great Plains area. I am anxious that we leave no stone unturned in exploring and reporting on all the possibilities of this region, as one in which reasonable standards of living can be maintained by the largest possible population. We should face the fact that the climatic conditions make special safeguards absolutely necessary. I would like your report to include such recommendations for legislation as you may deem necessary. The report now called for is an amplification of the recommendations presented to me at Bismarck.

In the letter appointing the earlier committee I said: "We have supposed that the modes of settlement and of development which have been prevalent represented the ordinary course of civilization. But perhaps in this area of relatively little rain, practices brought from the more humid part of the country are not most suitable under the prevailing natural conditions. At any rate circumstances make it obvious that relief activities are not

sufficient and that a competent study and recommendations are desirable."

You are advised that I am appointing another committee to report on the crop insurance feature of this general problem. After consulting with the heads of their several Departments I have designated the following to serve with you on this committee: Prof. Harlan H. Barrows, member Water Resources Committee, National Resources Committee, Chicago, Illinois; Dr. H. H. Bennett, Chief, Soil Conservation Service, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.; Dr. L. C. Gray, Assistant Administrator, Resettlement Administration, Washington, D. C.; Col. F. C. Harrington, Assistant Administrator, Works Progress Administration, Washington, D. C.; Col. Richard C. Moore, Division Engineer, Missouri River Division, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, Kansas City, Missouri; Mr. John C. Page, Acting Director, Bureau of Reclamation, Washington, D. C.; and Dr. Harlow S. Person of the Rural Electrification Administration, Washington, D. C.

Sincerely yours,

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.

Mr. MORRIS L. COOKE,
Administrator, Rural Electrification Administration,
Washington, D. C.

The Great Plains Committee desires to record its appreciation of cordial assistance from many sources. Public Hearings.-Its predecessor Committee, The Great Plains Drought Area Committee, during the summer of 1936 held public hearings in the course of a tour which included Amarillo and Dalhart, Texas; Springfield and Lamar, Colorado; McCook and Chadron, Nebraska; Rapid City, South Dakota; Gillette, Wyoming; Miles City, Montana; and Bismarck, North Dakota. The present Committee in December 1936 held hearings in Dalhart, Texas; Bismarck, North Dakota; and Washington, D. C.

These hearings in the aggregate were attended by the governors of the States concerned, either in person or through designated representatives; by representatives of pertinent State agencies such as State planning boards; by representatives of farmers' organizations; and by many citizens in their individual capacities. The testimony at these hearings, the memoranda of State conservation commissions and planning boards, and other documents submitted have been of noteworthy value.

Correspondence. Many citizens of the Great Plains area, and a number outside the area, who were not able to attend the hearings, took the trouble to relate their ex

periences and express their views to the Committee by correspondence. All pertinent suggestions in these letters were noted for the use of the Committee.

Departments of the Federal Government.-Cooperation among agencies of the Federal Government is a matter of every-day experience, and on this ground the Great Plains Committee is indebted to many Federal agencies. In addition, many of the data pertaining to conditions in the Great Plains during recent years are to be found only in current files, and to draw off those data requested by the Great Plains Committee has imposed laborious tasks on several agencies. For such data the Committee is especially indebted to Resettlement Administration and Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture, Works Progress Administration, and Farm Credit Administration.

Special Memoranda.-A number of memoranda on special subjects were prepared by various individuals and agencies for the benefit of the Committee. Inasmuch as none of these authors is responsible for the nature and extent of use of their memoranda by the Committee, and especially as they should not be held responsible for views on the respective subjects expressed by the Committee in this Report, these most helpful contributions are acknowledged here collectively and not in detail.

Spectacular dust storms in 1934 and 1935 brought into sharp relief the vital problems of agriculture on the Great Plains. Unprecedented, they came first from the southern sector of the Plains—the drought-ridden fields of the Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle, western Kansas, eastern Colorado, eastern New Mexico—and then from the other Plains States to the north. Drought and misuse of the land have brought the scourge of wind erosion to a vast total area throughout the Plains Region, from near the hundredth meridian on the east to the foothills of the Rockies on the west, and from the Panhandle of Texas in the south to Canada on the north.

Human enterprise clashed with elemental forces of nature in the occupation of the Plains. That story, of grass and cattle, wheat and tractors, drought, and finally, of dust, is told in the body of this Report.

Today, in real accomplishment on the land, progressive men are writing a sequel of compromise to that story of conflict. In representative areas up and down the Plains, they are adapting their use of the land to the unusual conditions which nature imposes on the Region. The results they have obtained seem to sustain the practicability of Plains agriculture and indicate the fallacy of a rather widespread assumption that the whole of the Region is unsuited climatically and otherwise to farming.

It is the purpose of this appendix to set forth some of the results obtained in support of the belief that conservation of water and soil resources through better land-use practice will prove, on the better land at least, the answer to the dilemma of Plains agriculture.

WATER IS THE KEY

In the Great Plains, water, in a sense, is the beginning and the end of agriculture. Without it there can be no crops, of course; and crops are needed to anchor Plains soil against the wind. Without water, cultivated soil, depleted of binding grass roots and spongy humus, is turned into a dry powdery substance. It starts to blow. On the Great Plains, rainfall is scant and irregular. Usually there is enough to make a crop if none is wasted.

As much water as possible must be stored in the underground reservoir of the soil or in surface reservoirs to bridge long dry spells between the rains. Conservation of rainfall is essential in Great Plains farming; and measures of water conservation are, in effect, the first defense of the soil. Good land use, therefore, requires the retention of rainfall moisture on the land as the first step in protecting the soil from erosion.

COOPERATIVE CONSERVATION PROGRAM

Since the spring of 1934, the Soil Conservation Service and some 2,000 farmers and ranchers on the Great Plains have been cooperating in a series of land-use demonstrations embodying the actual application of conservation principles to more than 600,000 acres of typical Plains land. Fifty-five separate demonstrations are now under way in scattered areas throughout the Region (Figure 40). In effect, they provide a network of conservation "show windows" in which farmers of the Plains country may see conservation practices in operation, learn how to apply them to the land, and judge their effectiveness in terms of actual results on the land itself.

Each demonstration area is a distinct entity, selected because of the very severity and the representative nature of its land problems. In each, a physical inventory of the land has been made by survey experts of the Soil Conservation Service. Erosion conditions, as well as the factors influencing erosion—topography, soils, and land use-have been mapped in detail. Complete plans for a coordinated program of land treatment, involving the application of conservation practices in accordance with the differing needs and adaptabilities of each parcel of land, have been made for individual farms (Figures 41 and 42). Farmers and ranchers voluntarily are putting them into effect under the guidance of conservation specialists.

The primary purpose of the work in these selected areas is one of demonstration. The introduction of conservation farming practices on more than half a million acres in less than three years' time, however, represents no

inconsiderable advance in the better utilization of Great Plains land.

Before the initiation of the demonstration program only 10,454 acres in the 55 project areas in the Plains Region were farmed with a view to conservation of water and soil. Today, conservation farming practices are being applied to more than 600,000 acres in the same areas. More than 155,000 are being strip cropped (Figure 32) to retain water and protect the soil from wind. Nearly 200,000 acres are being tilled on the contour to conserve rainfall and impede the sweep of wind (Figure 43). Contour furrows have been run on some 85,000 acres of grass land to conserve water (Figure 44). More than 3,600 miles of terraces-more than enough to span the United States—have been built to hold the moisture on some 65,000 acres; when present agreements are completed, nearly 150,000 acres will be terraced (Figure 33). In the 55 project areas, the acreage devoted to cleantilled, erosion-inducing crops is being reduced 16 percent and the acreage of dense erosion-resisting crops increased 28 percent. Nearly 200,000 acres of grass land on which grazing was formerly uncontrolled, are now being carefully managed to prevent overgrazing and consequent erosion.

All of these practices are designed to retain rainwater on the land, force it into the reservoir of the soil, increase the underground reserve of moisture for the nourishment of crops, and increase the production of protective vegetative cover for the land. They are not difficult of application; the average farmer on the Plains can easily follow them in the culture of his land.

For surface storage more than 2,100 dams have been built in the Great Plains Region with Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration, and droughtrelief labor under the direction of Soil Conservation Service engineers (Figure 45). Most of these dams were constructed on the lands of cooperating farmers and ranchers as part of the normal demonstration program of the Service; others have been built outside of the demonstration areas as part of the emergency drought-relief program. Their total storage capacity is estimated at nearly 32,000,000,000 gallons—a material addition to available water supplies for stock, irrigation, and other purposes in the Plains Region.

More important than this land treatment work itself, however, is the effect which it has made in convincing Great Plains farmers that soil and water conservation is both practical and advantageous. More than 22,000 farmers and ranchers outside the boundaries of the demonstration areas are known to have applied one or more of these conservation practices to more than 2,800,000 acres in the Plains. Such rapid and widespread acceptance of sound conservation principles would appear to indicate not only the effectiveness of the

program but the readiness of Plains farmers to accept advice and to adopt, voluntarily, proved methods of soil defense.

EMERGENCY PROGRAM

In the spring of 1936, the Soil Conservation Service cooperated with State and local agencies in an extensive emergency listing program designed to curtail wind erosion damage in the Southern Plains. Agricultural engineers from the operations projects of the Service directed the running of contour lines wherever requests for their services were received from State and county officials.

During this emergency program nearly 2,500,000 acres were listed on the contour. From five to eight inches of rain fell late in May. The water caught and stored in the soil as a result of the contour listing meant the difference between a crop and a crop failure in nearly every instance. Measurements indicated that on the average, one inch more of rainfall soaked into the contoured land than into similar land untreated or plowed in straight rows. This meant that the contoured soil was wet more than one foot deeper than the soil which was not contoured. This amount of additional underground water storage increased the probability of crop production by 75 percent, and meant additional protective residues for the prevention of wind erosion during the 1936-37 winter-spring "blow season.”

On a farm near Hereford, Texas, for example, a rain of 6.53 inches during the ten-day period from May 18 to 28, 1936, penetrated to an average depth of 37 inches on blown out wheat land which had been listed on the contour. On adjoining wheat land listed in straight rows up and down the slope the moisture penetration during the same period was only 20 inches. On the Soil Conservation Service project at Vega, Texas, ten days of rain totaling 5.48 inches soaked the soil to an average depth of 2.15 feet on contour tilled land. In similar fields farmed in straight rows, moisture from the same rain penetrated to an average depth of only 1.48 feet.

Near Springfield, Colorado, an average of 4.58 inches of rain was reported for the month of May 1936. Measurements showed a moisture penetration of 44 inches on contour listed land as compared to 35 inches on land listed in straight rows.

On a 640-acre farm near Channing, Texas, 3.42 inches of rain fell between May 1 and May 22. Fields which had been terraced and contour listed were wet to a depth of 36 inches. Adjoining fields, unterraced and uncontoured, were wet to a depth of only 17 inches.

In the vicinity of Clayton, New Mexico, the total rainfall for May 1936 was only 1.6 inches, of which not more than 0.5 or 0.6 inch fell in any one day. On a contour listed field of sandy loam soil, measurements showed a