Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-12-30
KANSAS AND OKLAHOMA.
The Wealth of the Stream Which VIII
Flow Through and to Us.

I
There are some short sighted people in
this world and, we are sorry to say it,
| but the discussion of the Oklahoma
question has developed the fact that
| they don't all live outside of Kansas.
The western town-boom of the Pacific
coast has spent itself from Seattle to San
Diego The great tide of western emf
grafton which has been spread out into
innumerable small streams for the past
few years has almost subsidized alto
gether, so far as any noticeable impulse
is concerned. The most prosperous eras
for the west have been through and from
strong or marked immigration move
ments. Such stream always bears along
surplus with it which is dumped
on to the locality for which the emmi-
grafton flow set out. There is only one
solitary chance or prospect for a great
emmigrating drift in the near future,
and that chance or opportunity will be
the one afforded by the opening of the
Indian territory to settlement. 1t will
be the strongest and richest tide Of
settlers, spectators, traders and ad-
venturers that ever event anywhere" in
quest of new homes and fortunes. They
will be consumers all, and not pro-
ducers. The great volume of that tide
viii sweep over and through Kansas III
such a way that Kansas will become
involved and interested as much as
Oklahoma itself, and as far as
the cream is concerned Kan
sas will do the skimming. Kansas will
lose people but gain more in numbers
than she will lose, especially will this
hold good as to southern Kansas. Wich-
tia will lose greater number OF Inhabl-
tants than any city or own in the state,
but Wichita will gain five where she
loses one. This tide of emigration,
when it starts, will not be diverted for
years, nor change exceptin character and
in volume. 1t will grow richer in char
acter as it decreases in volume. South
ern Kansas will be, after the first squirt,
as much the objective field for the flow
as the territory itself to which it lies so
contiguous. The new territory and its
inhabitants will look almost wholly to
Kansas as a base of supply. We will
have sufficient element of Kansans
there, in fact, to naturally compel this.
But there will be no other place to which
the settlers of that country can look. On
their east is the half civilized Indian and
the less civilized Arkansan; on the
south undeveloped Texas, and on the
west the wilds Of the Panhandle and
the mountains of New Mexico.
Kansas will just as certainly supply
that country as that Iowa supplied
Nebraska or as that Missouri would
have supplied Kansas had she had any
supplies wherewith to decently do the
thing As it was, Kansas made st. sJoe
rich and developed Kansas City into the
town that she is, AS Kansas got every
thing from or through those places, be-
sides one or two river towns of her own,
SO the dense and unproductive settle
ments which will, as it were, in day
occupy the Indian Territory have to take
all they will need for improvement and
tiCfC4ODlLICiU UIlsiu CiICg WI cot,
for the first year or two, from and through
Kansas. In this general churning the sup
ply of milk will be enormous for the
Territory, but southern Kansas Will ladls
off the resultant butter.
The sooner this tide of western immi-
grafton is again started and headed in
this direction and across Kansas the
sooner will the present situation be re-
lieved. Let the opening of the Territory
be followed Immediately by big crop
year in Kansas, or by series of them,
and all this section, with all its cities and
towns, would wax fat and great and the
men in the newspapers and towns which
are attempting in their feeble way to
stay the inevitable are to be pitied no
less for their short-sightedness than for
their littleness.