The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-06-18
SHORT SERMON ON KICKING.

| A prominent characteristic Oh rural
| Kansans Is to decry his crop prospects,
| whether it is because he is intinctively a
| bull, and he pursues this course, brist-
| ling with good old fashioned business
| reasons, expecting TO enhance the price
Of his prospective products, or whether
he considers the opportunity favorable,
and his right inalienable to kick-a good
wholesome Kansas kick, compared with
which the college athletes kick is a
mere bagatelle and rot in any degree in
it's question that no fellow NAV an
swer, not even the kick Of the Yale
graduate vino kicked Mexican gambler
Il feet 81 inches, as was measured and
marked on the barroom floor of New
Mexican mining town, and which was
handed down as the .',enderfoots kick,
is in it.
For six weeks or more previous to the
wheat harvest the reports of the grow
ers are universally unfavorable TO fair
average crop. They will not admit any
optimistic view Is the true one. 1t is the
one thing that is never right, that will
not admit favorable comment.
This year gloomy representations of
ten or twelve bushels to the acre
at the outside, with many fields plowed
up and planted to corn. was the word
along the line, until within the past few
days, when the cheerful statement is
common that the chinch bugs have de-
stroyed whole fields Of wheat that would
have easily yielded twenty-five bushels
to thesacre. Personally we are not ac-
quainted with the genus or species of the
chinch bug, but he is to be despised as
kicker, or be never would dare to de-
YOUR twenty-five bushels of wheat where
there was a maximum of twelve. If ne
is an optimist it is the first good thing
we have ever heard said of him. Any
how he is no friend of the farmer or he
would not make foolishness of his pet
statements.
The farmer, however, has as good a
right, and better one, perhaps. TO state
his views of the crop yield as anyone
else; but positive statements, good or
bad, of the yield of the fields before
harvest should be modestly made, and
depressing statements that become
chronic can do no good, but posi-
lively do much harm. The boy that
always cried wolf when wolf there was
none, cried in vain when the wolf did
come.
Just think Kansas, which is not
more than one third under cultivation,
may not raise to exceed forty millions Of
bushels of wheat this year, which would |
have been increased had not many fields |
been plowed up, too hastily, to plant in
corn. To plant corn this year was good |
Judgment, as the high price of fat food
animals plainly show, but that obvious
fact is in no way to blame for falling |
off in bushels of wheat per acre origin
ally sown, when it is certain that many |
good fields of wheat were hastily plowed |
up and would have doubtless yielded |
twenty-five bushels to the acre, chinch- I
bug measure.
We hope our good friends, the farm
ers, who may read this, and who have
had their royal Kansas kick-a kick
which kicked at least thirteen bushels of |
wheat out of each acre, on the average
will be as free as the chinch-bug to
the twenty-five bushels to |
the acre that may be proven by the har-
vest and aftermath.
Beneficent nature, when providing the
productive soil and matchless climate of
Kansas, does not smile upon the thank
less man who cannot appreciate her
counties and who would belittle her
grandest efforts for his good.