Morning journal and courier., 1891-09-29
KAN SAS.

Some of the Impressions 1t Made on
 n Traveller Through It-Its Farms
 and Its Prosperity-The Calamity
 HowIers-Prohibitio That Pro-
 hibits-The Railroads of the State
 -COmfort for Holders of Farm
 Loans-Some of the Men of Kansas. Editorial Correspondence of the JOURNAL AND
 CoURIER.l
 Kansas! Historic Kansas! The happy hunting ground of the red man before he zation and the pale-face's ruml The range of the million-herded buffalo, whose "wallows" are still to be seen, and whose bones are not yet all collected and sold to the unromantic bone dealerl The place of the old Santa Fe trail, along which thou sands upon thousands of fortune seekers and lockers for better country wearily plodded, and many dropped out through exhaustion, disease or the deadly attack of the sneaking Indian! The bloody skir mish ground in the great battle which made this country in truth the land of the free! The scene of the operations of the murderous, pillaging border ruffian! The land identified with the dreams, the hopes and the efforts of noble, fanatical old John Brown! The State which has taken of the best blood and brains of New England, and which may yet outstrip New England in other things as much as she now does in agricultural
 LITTLE COMPARISON.
 The magnitude of Kansas cannot be ap- preciated without a sight of it. But a lit tie comparison with Connecticut may help our readers who have not seen it to under stand it little. Connecticut has an area of 4, ,674 square miles. Kansas has an area of S1 ,31S square milesl Connecticut has eight counties. Kansas has one hundred and six, and there is more good farming land in several of these counties than in all Connecticut. And so forth and so on. But there is no use in multiplying figures. They will not make anybody realize the vastness of the Kansas plains and the magnificent distances between her borders.
 AGRICULTURE.
 Of course Kansas is and must long con tnue to be chiefly distinguished for her ability to feed the hungry. Here again statistics are of little use to one who reads them at distance. It is well enough to know that she will produce this year 55,- 900, 900 bushels of wheat alone and that she will have $1O4, ,OO0, 900 worth of agri- cultural products for sale besides what she uses at home. These are impressive fig ures. But when you ride all day and all night through vast fields of corn, through still vaster plains thickly dotted with the stacked wheat; when you see everywhere the threshing machines whirling out the plump grain; when you walk in corniehs where it would be easy to get lost; when you see corn fifteen feet high, with the ears so up in the air that a tall man can not reach them; when you see even the weeds so gigantic that you cannot see over them; and when you look upon the almost limitless stretches of dark rich soil sown with winter wheat you begin to realize what agriculture in Kansas may mean. And when you see that a man can raise fifty bushels of corn to the acre or fifteen or twenty bushels of wheat without really working more than three months in the year; without troubling himself about fertilizing the almost too prolific earth, you wonder why the New England farmer is contented to get up at or o'clock ir | the morning, "fork over" and haul manure in the spring, fight like 8 Trojan against | weeds, bugs, etc, during the summer pick stones during the fall and spend the winter in vain effort to get manure enough to enable his exhausted soil to beal a crop. No wonder the Kansas farmer il many cases looks "shiftless" to New Englander. He doesn't have to be always grinding and scraping and guessing. H' can afford to be shiftless, and it is only fair to say that in many cases he is When he isn't he is about the most favored inhabitant of this great, glorious and com paratively free country. He has no boss and he isn't of the kind that would stand much bossing. If he found himself il danger of being bossed he would pick u] his traps and start for Oklahoma or some where else. He has more than he can ca and sometimes more than he can sell And this year he is especially cock of tn walk because the European farmers hav not had good luck. He will feed Europ at a fair price and grow fat himself.
 Some of the facts of Kansas farming ar almost incredible to New England farmer who have to work very hard for what the. get. Think of man getting farm ii Connecticut and paying for it the frs year and having surplus. This is com mon thing in Kansas. What New Eng lander most misses in Kansas farms ar the gardens and fruit trees which ar found on every good New England farm The Kansas farms are great level areas de
 voted mainly to wheat and corn. Blu
 more attention is now being paid to frui and vegetable growing, and it will not b
 long before Kansas will lead the world i
 these respects. She can do it, for she ha
 the soil and the climate to do it with. THE RAILROADS.
 Of incalculable importance to the ds velopment of Kansas are the railroads There are not less than 5000 miles of raj
 road in the State. A look at the railroa map of the State shows that so briskl have the railroads carried on the work C extension that in the great farming region 1 few of the farmers are more than te . miles from railroad station, and most ( them are oh nearer than that. Tn gives every 'lAt, and is 8 civil
 zing and de r whose inf' . ence cannot ovsrestimated. Ar