Morning journal and courier., 1886-02-17
The Advantage. of Kansas

Wichita Correspondence of the Hartford Times, Fresh from a community of crowded and overworked mechanics and small farmers struggling among the rock-ribbed, stone covered and exhausted soil of New England for wages which are reduced by competition to minimum ouly capable of sustaining life, with no chance of ever bettering their condition and becoming independent Ca lord of the soil'' and n freeman, one is per haps better able to contrast the extreme East and Kansas than person who has been longer on the soil, and to whom the great corn and grain fields, the herds of splendid horses, sleek cattle and fat hogs, as we'll A
 the foundation of all this great wealth, the fat land with It's deep black soil is not 50
 inueh Iahrvel and won Ter. To begin with the soil! Rich. black and in the bot toms deep, growing grass the height of the
 backs of the cattle, the uplands black, but
 not as deep. although productive of larger and better crops of corn and grain than the
 most favored bottoms of New Ehgland- finer than even the famous Connecticut | meadows, annually overfowed and enriched by tho Connecticut river.
 Only within the past ten years has the
 western half of Kansas become available for settlement and cultivation on account of in
 sufficient rainfall, With the cultivation of the soil the rainfall Ia going steadily west
 ward to the Rocky Mountains throughout a gl eat belt feaehing from the British posses siens on the North to 1exas, Ten years ago
 the western half of Kansas was useless for agriculture, it only for gFaAing=the rainfall
 in the vicinity of Dodge City being only ten
 inches annually now the rainfall in the same place is thirty inches annually and in creating yearly, All the proper elements for plant growth were in the soil needing only the increased rainfall to utilize them; and the increased rainfall, going westward at
 it's present rate, will in about fifteen years render irrigation unnecessary in Colorado,
 where it has been practiced for years. Al ready reports coming in of extra rainfall in the towns at the foot of the Rocky Noun taius in Colorado. These are facts which
 eastern farmers not familiar with, but of which they will not be slow to take advan-
 tage when assured of their genuineness.
 What is the direct result of the increased rainfall on land hitherto raw prairie and buff falo range, and unit heretofore on account of lack of water for any purpose except gra-' zings The result is just what the people of
 Kansas have seen this summer-the most
 rapid settlement of a new country ever known in this or any other land Two
 months sees a belt of new country reaching north and south through this great State twenty miles wide settled up and dotted with homes; not merely dotted, but filled so close that to obtain land by homestead and pre-emptien it is necessary to go still further west with each successive month, until now the choicest land available lies near and in the western counties of the State; and it is only reasonable to predict the same continu- ous settlement clear through Colorado to the Rocky Mountains.
 A continuous stream of canvas-covered farm wagons, containing farmers and their household effects, has been moving steadily westward all summer through this place, and the same is true of all the main thorough fares leading west. They are filled with the families of intelligent farmers from Illinoi and the middle western States, who see in the free gift from the United States of enc hundred and sixty acres of the choicest of rich land something worth going long jour ney to obtain. The country about Wichita was settled in the same way, and where eight years ago in some cases fine land was to be had free, now the same land with it's fields of corn and grain, orchards of peach, apple and small fruits, herds of cattle, horses, sheep and hogs, cannot be purchased for less than two thousand dollars to twenty thousand dollars, according to the size of farm and improvements. In no section of the country is to be found more happy and prosperous community of farmers. Many are wealthy who ten yeas ago were worth less than five hundred dollars, and all owe their wealth to the rise in the value of land due to rapid settlement of the country. The prosperity of the farming community and the coming up Tn the world ot men who are making money and spending it in the inn proyement of their homes gives a demand for goods of every kind far in excess of what would be wanted in an old and already rich section; and as a natural consequence busi- ness of every kind is driving, building es-
 pecially, new towns of five hundred people springing up in six months or less. Wichi-
 ta, less than fifteen years old, claims twenty thousand people, covers a large area, is beautiful, thriving city, is fast developing a large wholesale trade which will soon prove dangerous rival for Kansas City, and con tains the busiest people of any city in the United States. The climate of southern Kansas is frm-summer days warm, to be sure, but accompanied by 8 fresh breeze from the west. Fall delightful; winter a two months one, from January 1 to March 1, and spring pleasant, with abundance of rain for farming purposes; altogether an in Yiting con1itrY in which to build home