The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-08-06
CARD FROM c. WOOD DAVIS.
To the Editor o. the Eagle
In your issue of August Pad appears, as
from the Fredonia Citizen, the following


r you say something about wheat Why keep evei
lastin:ly silent, CROP statistician and prophs
creising lopuIalion2 wax, up the Chicago optiol
Dealers Marsi Murdoch gl'l approve til;.t aud g
yea several better. probably, bg re.lsser1ing tia
pui fo, M epi-oR business wheat would be Wort
sre1 5s md the i 81 i re ast
nd US farmers ought 70 be Informed, without e
| lay. whether tllis cereal will be worth $40 pc
bashei next yeas
Assuming that am the party referred
TO / desire to say to editor of the Citizen
and others who have been making
similar inquiries, that il they will care
fully read the editorial columns of tn,
New York Sun-especiaiiy the Sunday
and Monday issues-and the pages O
leading European reviews and Journals
they will probably find that [ am mol
$50 ererlastlngly SILENT and that
have not ceased to talk of diminishin.
areas and increasing population; buI
they may not discover another fact,
still more important, and that is that
am now talking to al. audience that Is
appreciative; willing 10 pay for what it
gets and having sufficient dIscernment
to know Il good thing when in sight.
This audience is not. as was that IN Kan
| sas, disposed to ride free horse to
death and then reward him only with
kicks.
In this connection permit me 10 say
/ that in no word or line that ever wrote
| for publication have ever said that n
! buShei of wheat would sell for specific
sum, or at any approximation of spe-
! citic sum, at any given time, nor have |
said that any given time or within any
/ given period that Il bushel of wheat
would sell for SD or any other sum-
most OF the smart Alecks of the Kansas
press attributed the prophesy OF 50 a
bushel to me and the Citizen man i'm
plies one of 81. 90, these makers of
prophecies should agree upon some COM
mon fgure-and | am not accountable
for either the vagaries, wild imaginings
or wholly false statements Of lot of
low priced scribblers who fill the Kan
sas papers and whose conceptions Of the
English language are as crude as are
their conceptions of the proprieties of
life.
| have never been much of prophet,
and some eighteen months since deter
mined to retire from the Kansas field
and leave it to Iri r. Hicks and the
rain makers, having found that one who
was even as little of prophet as myself
country and among his own people," At
the same time determined to never
again be SO foolish as to write for Kan
sas paper upon SO inappropriate a subject
as economies, or to attempt to encourage
the sore pressed farmers of the state
with something besides the regulation
political noStrums. | confess, with deep
contrition, that | was simple enough to
suppose that in stating, through the
Kansas press, the facts brought out by
patient and iaborious investigation,
entered upon and long continued
for theasole purpose of determining why
my business was not profitable and
whether relief might reasonably be ex-
pected before death from old age, | was
performing a service deserving OF some
return other than riiicule.
| desire, however, to direct attention
to one little point which may explain my
failure to please the managers of the po-
litical press of Kansas. That is, that my
facts are satisfactory to neither Repub-
iican, Democrag nor Populist political
editors in Kansas are poll
tlcianS first and editors after-aS they all
have party axe to grind and my stone
does not sharpen their kind of an axe.
The facts which | have tried to state are |
TO all partisans be- |
cause they assure the farmer relief, at |
an early day, from the operation Of |
natural causes and neither by the pro-
tective tariff Of the Republican doc
the free trade of the Demo-
cratic theorist. nor yet by the fiat money
and sub-treasurv humbugs of the office
seeking POpuiist patriot; hence | am q
sort OF political Outcast, worthy CT all
execration and a fit subject for the jibes
and cheap jokes that give their parpe-
traitors reputation for smartness with
the yokels who stand open-mouthed,
ready to swallow whole, and swear by,
all the subsurd stuff that appears in ''my
paper"
Kansas is an exceedingly fine state:
lis people enterprsing and many
Of them even intelligent, but there
are so many very able kanSaas,
the field SO narrow and the offices SO
few that some of the superabundant
talent of the state must seek fields for its
ambition elsewhere. and never expect
lug to be candidate for office-a thriv-
ing Kansas industry even when all else
faiis-l have, with a self-Sacrificing
spirit worthy sll commentator land
which | would beg leave TO suggest
Iuight De widely initiated with great
benefit to the state) taken my prophetic
wares to other chimes leaving an op9n
he'd for Irl h. Hicks who is of the cali
Der beloved of all Kansas editors. If [
could talk of the occultaton of Venus
and Mars. or of the mysterious influence
IF Mercury | should be the devil of a
fellow with the average Kansas
but confirming my investiga-
hons TO SO commonplace a matter as the
relation of acres to population, the price
Of farm products and the prosperity of
he state and its people. / am out of
place. | admit that when foolish and
younger | was OFT of place, but / have
earned that / might continue to exist
even if the Cheap Johns of the Kansas
press did not wholly approve Of me.
some Of the people who have delighted
% ridicule the thoughts and words
which they have been pleased 20 put in
any mouth-the Atchison Champion as
,ne instance-have kindly copied. and
Inserted as original with themselves,
matter that | had contributed 10 the
EDITORIAL columns of New York paper,
md even allowed their contemporaries
~ $50 1'A~ IMAM phJAA NsNAtAs 80 ttit
EAGLE did for an article OF this kind
which it copied from the Champion in
citation 10 corn and hogs: and when
-eadlng the EAGLES credit the Cham
lion'S editor never biushed.
The only prophecies which / ever
1enned appeared IN the Forum, Arena
md EAGLE during 1890 aud 1851. Meth
II in these nor IN any article contributed
or publication elsewhere can any speci-
lie prediction be found other than that
" 1895 TIE worlds hread-eatin- nnnula-