The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-04

communities of eight and even twelve | thousand people in year and half
 Settlers came in by the tens of thou sands, and the railroad companies that
 were already on the ground did an enor- | nous business. In the month of June
 lSSh over sixteen hundred new farms
 were pre-empted under the United
 States land law in Ford county, and
 there were almost similar reports from | the region round about.
 Money seemed to be literally poured 1 in upon the new country. We used to wonder where it came from; there
 seemed to be no end to it." said former | Congressman Jerry Simpson recently
 ln speaking of the wonders of the Kan sas boom. Railroad companies spent it with lavish hand In several sections where one railroad could scarcely do a
 paying business for years to come, even if 1t had all the business of that region
 two rival railroads parallel each other
 for miles. There were over seven hun dred miles of railroad built in 1887 in western Kansas, and in 1886 almost as much more. The bonds of any railroad that built in Kansas sold right away, and people voted rights of way with a reckless hand. Some towns of six hun dred population had three railroads built into them in one year.
 The mortgage loan companies that had been in operation in the state for years made tens of thousands of dol lars profits annually for several years, and their success created about three hundred and seventy new money loan ing concerns, besides double as many more individual agents for lending east ern money. Fourteen large money lending concerns were in operation in Dodge City alone, and one of them handled over eight hundred thousand dollars of New England money in 1887. Anybody who owned anything in the shape of real estate could borrow money in those days. Not only borrow, but many man tells how he was impor- tuned by the broker to borrow more than he asked because the agent got per cent on the amount of capital he put out. Everybody borrowed and the people, who had no land to borrow on, went and took up quarter section of government land, and, when they had
 
 borrowed to the full limit of value Then they lived on the proceeds for year or two. The mortgage indebted ness of the area now known as Sher- man, Thomas, Logan and Wallace counties was twenty-four thousand dol lars in 1885, Four years later it was over seventeen hundred thousand dol- lars. John W. Breidenthal, state bank commissioner, says that the guarantee of interest and the seven per cent. in- terest caught eastern investors, espec- ially when advertised in religious newspaper. One company at Topeka with capital of seventy-five thousand dollars had guaranteed the interest on eighteen hundred thousand dollars worth of loans at one time, and there were scores Of similar institutions. Banks sprang up at cross roads, and they guaranteed interest on their stock and bonds with reckless abandon, but they all faded like a mist two or three years later. Where there were twenty two banks in eight northwestern coun- ties in 1889, there are now two and these are mere shadows of the former on the ruins of which the less ar ones have built in the last few years. Every town of one thousand and more population had it's boom in town lots, and it seems incredible to-day that lots from the boundless plain, one | md two miles from communities of .hree thousand people, could have had l ready sale at two hundred dollars and | even five hundred dollars each. There |
 
 If real estate out here, which were | ,nce valued and had been mortgaged l lnd sold for over four hundred thousand | lollars twelve years ago, and can be | bought to-day for three and four thou and dollars.
 "As an illustration of how money was brown away" said ex-Mayor Sessions l tt Dodge City last week, there was | hat man John Coolidge, who was agent or big money brokerage concern lamed the McKinley-H Co.,. of Kansas. They handled yer fifteen hundred thousand dollars ut this way in two years, and it all anne from the savings of school teach rs. lawyers, doctors, merchants and ountry editors in central New York. The Grouse estate at Syracuse put some hree hundred thousand dollars in the rms hands for loaning out here on so- alled farms. Well, Coolidge made in on loans over thirty-five dollars in 1887 alone, and be- des he turned some two hundred thou and dollars of second mortgages and nirty thousand dollars in cash into the ompany as it's share of the profits dur lg the same year. I could sit here for ours and tell you of how so-called arms out on the bleak plains, where nly buffalo grass ever grew, were val ed at sixteen hundred dollars, two | nd three thousand dollars by the { gent, and how good hard money was , aned upon them at such valuations. l ian grazing, and not one of the farms
 worth to-day over one hundred dol f, IFS, and never will be more valuable. ,
 lot of men asked for loans of six { lndred dollars on their farms, and Z ere asked by the agent to take two I lousand dollars. The agent deducted I $ commission of ten per cent of the { oney put on the property when the ! oney was paid. Not one in twenty of ( ose buffalo-grass farms ever had i K of work put upon them after the C oney was loaned. When the eastern ortgagee came to find that his interest as not paid and that taxes and nenal- a