The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-04
KANSAS ROBBED THE EAST
FAKE REAL ESTATE BOOM ENGIN-
 EERED BY 1IORTGA SHARKS.
Eastern Investors Sent Their Millions SO Freely That the Sharks Had to Beg the kansans to Borrow.

D-"sterh ihVesIOrs sent lheir mhlhohs
 so Freely That the sharks Had to Beg
 the Kansans to Borrow.
 Garden City, Kan, Nov. 30,-"While
 the mortgage debt of Kansas has been
 reduced, because of unusual corn anu
 wheat yields, about flfty-five million
 dollars during the last three years, over
 ninety million dollars of eastern money
 has been hopelessly sunk in mortgage
 and bond loans in western Kansas and
 Nebraska and eastern Colorado" said
 fcrmer State Auditor Scott the other
 day For instance, Cornell university
 at Ithica, N. Y., has recently abandoned
 so-called farm lands in western Kansas,
 to which it obtained a deed by forecIo-
 sure of mortgages, and has thereby giv-
 en up hope of ever getting back any of
 the SiXty-Seven thousand dollars it
 loaned there in 1SS6 know a savings
 bank in Brooklyn that has during the
 last six months let go for taxes lands
 upon which it once loaned upward of
 one hundred thousand dollars, and
 then paid forty thousand dollars more
 to get deeds and to keep up annual tax
 es Over at Boyes City a man last
 month bought tax title for four hun-
 dred dollars to the whole site of a city,
 where twelve years ago some one hun
 dred and fifty thousand dollars of Con- hecticut money was spent In municipal
 Improvements, such as water works
 and sewers and electric lights. In the
 northwestern Kansas counties of Nor
 ton, Seward, Haskell and Meade there iI1ox n1&o +Lz Ie,
 few years hundreds of thousands of
 acres of land upon which people in New
 York, New England, New Jersey and especially Pennsylvania leaned their money at the rate of five and seven doI- lars an acre. Ten years have demon-
 strated that the region of the great central plains of the twenty-second par allel and east of the twenty eighth par allel can never be made farms, except in spots where the land lies just 1iglit and irrigation is practicable. The vast area of prairie land between these par allels never has been other than graz ing land, and in some years it has been mighty poor for even that. The reck- less waste of hard-earned eastern capi- tai by interruptions mohtgage sharks and land improvement companies out here has been something frightful. Eastern Kansas and Nebraska are ai- most ideal for growing cereals, pork and general farming, but it Is only within few years that eastern money lenders have been able to discriminate between the arid and the fertile parts of these stats"
 Probably no region in the United faf o for 1rioic tudes of fortune. since 1885 than western Kansas. Twelve years ago there were scores of towns of two thousand and twenty-five hundred population in west ern Kansas, with up-to-date schools and public buildings, that have entirely withered away. In 1888 and 'S9 there were eleven towns of almost four thou sand people on the wind-swept plains of western Kansas, and to-day less than fifty people remain on the site of any of these communities. They had all the embellishments of municipal ways, and each bade fair to become cities of eight and ten thousand population before the year 1900. Thousands of men in the plains considered themselves worth if | Ey and seventy-five thousand dollars | twelve years ago, and they had made their fortunes from few hundred dol , ars in half-doZen years. Some men were almost millionaires on paper. In he following ten years the greater number of them have been in direst poverty, and many of them have sub- sisted with their families on beggars' are Now, after long distress and pri- 7Ations that most people know nothing if, these western Kansas settlers are having a certain prosperity in their lerds and 1ocks and in precarious ort of farming on low and damp lands. There are great many theories as to low western Kansas came to have the most extraordinary real estate boom my region on the plains ever knew tome people ascribe it to a general peculative era Others believe it came rom spirit of restlessness to invade he west and to create farms and make .ties there similar to those in Illinois, Missouri and Iowa. Still others say hat the fact that when Daniel Man. ing, secretary of the treasury. paid if some one hundred and thirty million ollars of government bonds and glutted he money market in 1886 the eastern eople seized upon Kansas as the best tate in which to invest the money from he bond payments and they thereby reated an unnatural demand for real state securities in what had been nown in all geographies as the Great .merican Desert. But the commonly ( ccepted opinion nowadays is that the | -onderful corn and wheat crops of { -ansas and Nebraska in 1885 and '26 z le extensive building of railroads ] cross the state and the abundance of , loney in the eastern banks all contrib t ted toward the creation of the boom i 2 western Kansas during the latter l ghties. It happened that at that time / le heaviest rains ever known upon the | rid plains fell three successive wears. Y nd the belief went abroad that the t nrase, the Great American Desert, WAS |
 msnomer, that the white man had I ow concuered the climate, and that i st as abundant crops might be grown t Id as much money made on the cheap Il Id public lands of the plains as iu the n d settled and prosperous parts of n ansas. Forthwith the boom in western Kan t s began. Western Nebraska and f stern Colorado had boons in lesser q gree at the same time. From 1885 un- W
 1000 tho ,nn1I1utjo of yUhGtn1..l K