The Topeka state journal., 1898-02-16
HAIL TO CORN.
Secretary COburn of the Kansas
State Board of Agriculture
Is Chosen to Preside at the
First Corn Convention
MEETING AT CHICAGO.
Calls Corn the Premier Crop in
His Opening Address.
Compares It's Money Value With
AT CHICAGO.
Compares Its Money Value With
the Silver Output.

Chicago, Feb. 16.-The first corn con-
Vention ever held in the United States
began today at the Great Northern
MOTEL About $50 delegates were pres
ent and more are expected. Nearly all
the middle western states are repre-
sented, as well as a few of the far west
ern commemorative. Arrangements
have been made for giving practical
denonStfat1On of the value of corn as
food, a kitchen having been opened
where bread, crackers, and a number
of table delicacies are to be had for the
asking.
Mr.. F. D. Coburn, secretary of the
Kansas state board of agriculture, was
chosen chairman of the convention. He
said:
The object of our coming together
as to confer about the ways and means
by which Americas great premier crop
and wonderful cereal may be better un-
derstOod and appreciated by the world
at large. We are satisfied that scarcely
one person in a hundred cOmprehendS
the magnitude of it's production, it's
money value, its innumerable uses and
possibilities, or its whOlesomeness as
universal food for animal and man.
I'm the last three or four years we
have heard much of silver and it's i'm
portance. From the attention OratOry
and printers ink devoted to it, we
might suppose that it was the one inter-
est before which all others paled and
sank into iusignificance. The average
annual pAoduct of American silver
mines, however, during the three years
ending with 1895, was less than SAG, 5O0,
900, while the average value of Ameri-
can corn for each of the last ten years
has been nearly $685., 100000
1.-The central western states are the
home and habitat of Indian corn. The
governments statistics show the acre
age devoted to corn to have been in re
cent years about 10 per cent greater
than the aggregate devoted to wheat,
oats, barley, buckwheat and potatoes;
in 1896 the acreage was 18 per cent
greater. We hear much of the wheat
crop and the casual reader of the news
papers would suppose there was no
other which could be rightly compared
with it. Statistics, however, show that
during the last decade the value, one
year with another, of our corn crop has
been nearly dOuble-99 per cent greater
than that of our wheat. The value of
the corn crop in this decade has been
about the same as the comb bined values
of wheat oats, barley, buckwheat and
potatoes produced in the same period.
Il am proud to come from a state
regarded by many of the beniShted and
TnsOphisticated as something of a deS-
ert which while being transformed
from buffalo range into the wonderful
garden it is coming to be, has IN %
years produced corn that in the heldS
had a value of more than $326,OOO,OOO,
and in the last two years had an out
put of 375, 900, 600 bushels.
''These few simple facts AFFORD ample
justification for our meeting here to
devise ways and means by and through
which corn shall obtain wider recog-
milton and the appreciation winch It's
merits should command.