The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1897-05-18
our boise city Letter.
Boise, Idaho, May IS, 1897.

III . SlNliS LID OplhlOl, WhlCh X
not an opinion, of Kansas, con-
tradicts himself. He says: ''The
Kansas people are incarnation of
industry, the avater of energy;
but they are poor as the skeleton
of Famine, or Patagonian's con-
ception of poverty. This is be-
cause the average citizen of that
commonwealth expends all his
nervo muscular resources attend
ing to everybody's business but
his own" and more of the same
Brann(d) stuff. AS man of the
world Mr.. Brann should know
that very industrious people have
little time to meddle with other
peoples business. They have
too many irons of their own in
the fire to give an excess of
thought or attention to the af-
fairs of their neighbors. AS a
newspaper man, who presumes
to instruct other people, it it his
duty to know the reason why the
Kansas people are poor as a
"Patagonian's conception of pow
erty;" it is his duty to know,
also, that in all material things
Kansas has outstript all her
neighbor states. Forty-six years
ago when the settlement of Mis-
souri, had been going on for half
a century, I was in Kansas lit
was not Kansas them. and it was
the habitation of wild tribes of
Indians. White people had, in
deed, began to invade the terri
tory and form settlements, but
their numbers were small, and
the visible evidences of their
presence very meagre. But
Texas had been ceded to the
United States; gold had been dis
covered in California, and the
hegira to the Story land that lay
between civilization and sunset
no one knew precisely where at
that time-had set in. Kansas
received the larger share of the
debris cast upon the shore by the
great human tide as it poured
westward, and soon became a
community of sufficient impor-
tance to provoke a bitter war in
Congress between the free and
slave elements in that body.
From Congress the war spread
to the country. The champions
of abolitionism were supplied
with arms and munitions of war
from New England and from
some of the Western States, not
ably Indiana; the defenders of
slavery received like encourage
ment from Missouri and other
Southern States, and Kansas be-
came literally battle ground,
raided alternatively and at times
simultaneously by Jim. Lane,
Jim. Montgomery, John Brown
and their imitators. Between
battles the Kansan cultivated his
farm, built his house, construct
roads, bridged streams, looked
after his herds, established shops
and factories, provided for the
maintenance of schools and col
leges, and did all else necessary
TO the upbuilding of a great
State and the development of her
resources.
Grasshoppers devasted his
fields; cyclones used his houses
for tops; tornadoes swept his
fences into adjoining States or
drifted them, like snow, into
sheltered places miles from where
they belonged; lightning de-
stroyed his stock and his barnes;
Quantrell cut his throat and
burned his cities; Republican
officials stole everything his
farms produced but the mort
cages. With an energy that
faltered at no obstacle and faith
in the future that not concetena-
ton of evils could shake, he pur-
sued his chosen way. and today
Kansas leads every Southern
State west of the Missouri river,
in every agency and appliance
that go to make up an enlight-
ened community. Such things
Mr.. Brann, are not accomplished
by men who waste their entire
rvo-muscular energies attend
ing to other peoples business. >
When Texas catches up with
Kansas. Mr.. Brann may laugh a.
the idiocrasycies of the latter
but for awhile yet little modes
ty would be very becoming, ever
in SO good a writer as Mr.. Brann
5
The superintendent of the Ada
county poor farm, great, burly
brute, named Geo. w. Hall. wa:
arrested and brought into towr
yesterday, charged with brutally
beating a 10-year old boy. Th'