The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-09-04
We Will Throw Aside Our Ex-
celSiOr Banner
And Sink Into the Dull Hope
fulness of Other States.

The following by a master hand, al
though its conclusions may be faulty,
is found in the New York Post of Mon
day:
Topeka, Kan, Aug q.
From Kansas City westward to Tope-
ka, the capital of Kansas, one passes
through a continuous garden. It is
the most arabic belt of this state which
IS a section OF the great continental
terrace running up to the foot of the
Great Range, and it presented to any
stranger who traVerSed it a quarter of
a century ago a most mazing, and I
believe an unparalleled, example of the
Transforming power of thrifty man
over external nature. The teeTning tract
with its bending orchards, its success
ion OF tasteful homes, lawn fringed and
flower banked, its lush, outstretching
pastures dotted with grazing animals,
is a very vivid and convincing picture
of prosperity and cOntentment painted
by toll on what only a few years ago
was the hem of the great American
desert The contiguous farms have a
fresh, spick span aspect that you no
longer detect In New England, where
the stalwart fathers of these men piled
up stones and hauled fertilizers till
they discouraged their children. The
inexhaustible soil of Kansas, black and
deep where the plOughs has lifted it to
the sunlight and the rains have washed
the soda out of it, is the bOunteous fact
that underlies all the wealth and all the
look at the domain with its crops and
its homes, cheek by jOwI, for hundreds
of miles, without thinking of the men
who elsewhere so years ago expended
the energy of one generation in cut
ting down trees and pulling stumps to
redeem a few acres from the wilder
ness of New York, Pennsylvania and
Ohio Nature herself invented the
greatest labor saving scheme known to
man when she spread the rolling prair-
les of Kansas.
From Topeka westward over what
was once the perilOus Santa Fe trail
the monotony of railroad travel for the
greater part of the long up grade
across the state is broken so regularly
black fields that the fancy may be mo-
mentarily pardoned for regarding
them as the white keys on this great
instrument of civilization.
In less than 20 years these animated
little centers have put off the border air
entirely They now wear in a modest
but unmistakable way the evidences
and adOrnmentS of encrOaching Gull
ture and refinement. The pretty rail-
way station with its petunias and gray
elled circus, the lyceum, the free libra
~, the Gothic church, with the ivy
already cIng1ng to its base, the sub
stantial warehouse, now and then of
lime stone with a chiselled portal, the
electric plant, the local tramWay the
knot of pretty euuipages at the station
the animation of daintily dressed Won-
en- and children, and the general air of
conscious independence-an struck me
over and over again. Nothing has so
far marred the pristine freshness of
the picture. Nature herself has been
cOaxed into the composition. Look
which way you will on this journey
and the never ending osiers and prafr-
ie willows make a watery simmer as
the breeze turns their leaves. Always
it seemed to me heard the laughter in
the clear air OF lusty children. Always,
if I stopped over.I found the town feel
ing it's gracefully ont to hTni6-
cred suburbs where the architect had
fashioned his lumber into Elizabethan
device and displaced the old ruins of
barbarism with terraces and rose gar
denS.
Coming from a great eastern metrop-
oils to this land lying in the sun, where
cannot help feeling the buoyancy, the
expansivenesS, and the hopefulneSs of
things. The entire aspect of the thick
" settled parts of the state is one of
equally diffused independence and
! comfort. None of the problems of
plague spots of an old and dense popu-
latiOn has yet come to vex or mar this
outlook The inevitable conclusion
from a surface survey is that the coun-
try is better off in distributed compe-
tence, in modest happiness we'll assured,
and in vital intelligence than any sim
liar tract or the same age anywhere IN
the country, and this impression is
confirmed by all the statistical infor-
nation that is available Such COM
mOnW6a1Ih Cnat mas WfencneQ us pros
perity in less than half a century from
barbarism in spite Of a rugged and ca
PRECIOUS climate, and sits down now
amid tits own sheaves in the heyday Of
its fruition. ought to be a contented
and thankful people.
But for some reason it is not, or at
least it thinks it is not. I found that
/ the men who have borne the heat and
( burden of the successful fight are for
4 the most part disgruntled. I do not ar
4 rive at this conclusion by listening to
4 the complaints of the unthrifty and
/ unsuccessful men who make the air of
the village store heavy with their muir
/ murs I detected it in the family cir
! Gle of the well ordered farm, in the So
! cial gathering, and in the church meet
| ing. These men are nursing an mag
/ mary wrong. They are, as rule hon
| est minded, patriotic and God fearing
women conservative to the last degree
! in adjacent states west OF the Mlss1ssip-
! ri the curious unadaptability of the in
/ tensely practical man, whose whole life
/ has been an exercise of the VIII IN
/ overcoming material obstacles, TO the
| sudden exploitation Of problems lying