The failure of 1894 was
due as much to a lack of proper agricultural information and
practice as to the occurrence of a dry year.
Next, the statement is carelessly made that the recent success in
dry-farming is due to the fact that we are now living in a cycle of
wet years, but that as soon as the cycle of dry years strikes the
country dry-farming will vanish as a dismal failure. Then, again,
the theory is proposed that the climate is permanently changing
toward wetness or dryness and the past has no meaning in reading the
riddle of the future. It is doubtless true that no man may safely
predict the weather for future generations; yet, so far as human
knowledge goes, there is no perceptible average change in the
climate from period to period within historical time; neither are
there protracted dry periods followed by protracted wet periods. The
fact is, dry and wet years alternate. A succession of somewhat wet
years may alternate with a succession of somewhat dry years, but the
average precipitation from decade to decade is very nearly the same.
True, there will always be a dry year, that is, the driest year of a
series of years, and this is the supposedly fearful and fateful year
of drouth.
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