In the short-grass country of southwest Oklahoma, the normal pattern of weather is a cruel one for farmers: too much rain at spring-planting time, drought in the growing season, rain again for the harvest. Year after year, cotton, maize and alfalfa crops have either been washed out by floods or ruinously parched.
This year's weather was as bad as any since the Dust Bowl days of the '30s. No rain had fallen, to speak of, all summer. But last week, instead of gloom, there was jubilation in the short-grass country. A $12,000,000 federal reclamation project was formally opened, promising an...
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