The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-06-26
BOSTON BEANS ON THE WESTERN
WONDER.
The Magical Mascot of the Meridian and
Her Universities.

| From the Boston Transcript.
A boom town after the boom has passed
usually looks like town that had never
had boom. The factory buildings and
blocks put up for business that never
came suggest a town that was overbuilt
| by mistake In the southwest there are
several such cities and towns, where
! there are brick and mortar monuments
of collapsed booms. The monuments or
souvenirs of the days when Wichita pro-
claimed herself the Peerless Princess of
the Prairies" are. however, very differ
ent from those usually left on the shore
by the recession of the financial tide.
Not that we would be understood as say
ing that Wichita is stranded; far from it.
Wichita has 10000 people and is a
bustling city. Two years, however,
Wichita had dreams of being a city
whose hustlers should be numbered by
the hundreds of thousands, and of
hustling Chicago into a corner. Then
the boomers got out maps and plans of
city lots, building lots and additions, and
the maps-and-plans factories ran night
and day. In one year Wichita shipped
SO much wheat that she shipped
herself into fame; another year
more Texas steers chased more
people through her streets than in any
other city in the world. With this pros
perity came yearning for the things
that are not bought nor sold in the
market place. She had longings for
culture and went in for it for all she was
worth. Universities became her foible.
She had lots of land and there were few
universities in Kansas. There are, how
ever, in Kansas, as elsewhere, plenty of
people who will start a university as
lightly as they start a hencoop, or as De
Lesseps started the Panama canal.
These university starters, by singular
coincidence, established number of
universities in the center of as many
additions, or as we should them here in
the east suburbs.
The universities doomed with boom.
and we are told by a doubtless faithful
chronicler that when you have climbed
to the dome of the $3.50, 200 court house
of Wichita, the vision is bounded and
limited in every direction by circlet of
universities, done, begun, or left undone.
There are universities in the east, the
west, the north and the south. -Four
miles from the court house in one
direction is seen Paramount college,
which the CongregationalistSp put up at
cost of 500, 0G0 and which is ready for
any student who may wander over the
prairies in search of culture. 1t has no
students yet, but may soon have them,
since if there are no young men who
seek its classic shades, an attempt will
be made to induce young women to
come there and get educated. Wichita
university, built by the Lutherans at
Paramount, and is, we are told. in opera
ton. Not far off the Presbyterians have
a university site, but have prudently
determined to wait for a visible
supply of students before beginning
the work of building. On the
west side of the Arkansas river
is what WAS believed would be uni
versitv that would make Yale and Har-
ward mere schoolhouses in comparison.
This is, or will be when it is finished,
known as Garfield university. 1t is
planned on the most liberal scale, with
accommodations for g, 300 students. Gar
field university has tower 170 feet high, |
and the roof of the one building in
which all the recitation rooms, etc, are
to be found covers an acre and quarter.
Of course after these figures all doubts
as to Garfield becoming a great uni
versity are simply impious. South of |
the city the foundations Of two UNIVERSE |
ties are in waiting for another boom |
which Wichita believes is coming. Alto |
gether Wichita has two universities, |
four colleges and four academies, which |
will be ready to welcome the great army
foreseen in vision by the editor of the |
Wichita EAGLE when he proclaimed that |
''the youth of the future will come to |
Wichita for culture"