The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-04-21
r1REsomE KANSAS TRADES.

prairie dogs, Populists and other pests.
But there IS some hope in the reflection
Populist, has been materially abated dur
ing the past three years.-Los Angles
The above printed item is an editor
ial from the paper owned by General
Harrison Gray Otis. man Intellectual
~ large enough to be mentioned by
great political party as a possible nom
inee for the vice presidency.
Gen Otis recently passed through
Kansas en- route to Washington and the
press at the time recorded the gentle
man as giving generous praise to the
magnificent country and the genuine
signs of prosperity to be observed.
Why this sudden change of front?
What the animus of this fling at the
commonwealth of Kansas? The reason
is as plain to be seen as was the hand
writing on the wall at the feast Of Bel
shazzar Petty politics is the sole rea-
son for the publication of a scurrilous
statement that should cause the editor
to hang his head in shame for giving it
publication. 1t is not the province Of
this article to take up the cudgel in de-
tense of one political party against the
attacks of a member of another but
simply to stand up for the fair name of
a state that is being DETAINED without
/
cause or reason.
The JayhawlSer kingdom has enjoyed
the bright and endured dark periods
that came equally under the admins
trations of all political parties. Grass
hOppers and cyclones devastated the
| land, as the Los Angeles paper states,
under Republican rule; prohibition
troubles and Texas fever plaques came
with a Democratic governor and legis--
lative war and crop failures with the
Populist administration But this is
! over, yet through it all the people have
been loyal, temperate. industrious, and
never discouraged. Patriotism has also
ever been one of the states cardinal
virtues.
John Brown and Jim Lane were from
Kansas and upheld the flag in the Dor
der warfare of 81 when the days were
dark indeed and Quantren and his men
in grey We're foes hard to combat. With
the sinking of the Maine the gallant
Twentieth responded and again made
the name of the state famous from one
end of the country to the other.
This, too, is the home of the free
school. The per centage of illiteracy is
smaller in Kansas, perhaps, than that
of any other state in the Union. Ger
tainly more so than California with its
thousands of Cinnamon and sand lot
ters." Hundreds of little school houses
| lie adjacent to the line of railway over
which the California editor passed and
must have been noticed by him. Also
the absence of the "army Of devastat-
ing prairie dogs" He might have OBJ
served the presence of the one and the
absence of the other and taken lesson
| therefrom.
An enlightened and temperate people
are always a good class of citizens in
the main and a state containing such is
not in hard luck nor yet to be pitied.
This incessant alleged witty thrust
by outside papers like the one in ques-
ton, at Kansas has grown so weari-
some that the worm has not only turn
ed but proposes to wiggle vigorously.
The state today is prosperous and its
people largely free from debt. There are
cattle on the thousand hills and their
market value is so great that cattle
men are becoming stoop- shouldered
carrying their gold and silver doubloons.
England seeks every spare horse in the
territory at generous prices for South
Africa; graneries are filled to over
flowing and Easter bonnets are as num-
erous as leaves in Volombrosia.
There is no desert. Prairie dogs have
fed in rapid retreat before the music of
the harvester and the whistle of the
plough boy. Only the other day nature
made a dismal failure of an attempted
twisting cyclone along the south-cen-
trail border
Let the defamers of Kansas draw in
their heads, turtle-like, and subside.
The courageous citizens who have
brought about the present glorious state
of affairs, through many trials and diff
fculties, deserve praise rather than
censure and sneers.
Ex-senator Ingalls, once said
'9The every day events of Kansas
would be narvels elsewhere; our pIati-
tudes would be panegyrics; the trite
and commonplace are unknown It is
impossible to overestimate the value of
citizenship in a state that sent more
soldiers into the Union armies than it
had votes when Sumter fell; that ex-
ceeded all quotas without draft or
bounty; that had the highest rate of
mortality upon the field of battle That
a state SO begotten and nurtured should
be as indomitable in peace as it was
invincible in war, was inevitable. Its
CESSATION was heroic. It represented
ideas and principles; conscience, patri-
: otism, duty; the 'unconquerable mind
and freedoms holy flame
And this is but the dawn We stand
in the vestibule of the temple Much
less than one-half the surface of the
state has been broken by the plough. Its
resources have been imperfectly ex-
plored. It has developed at random
Science will hereafter reinforce the en-
4 ergies of nature. and the achievements
!. of the past win pale into insignificance
/ hat he tod er1o-
fury to Gomez
Japanese are pouring into the Pacific
states by thousands, but exclusion Of
e the people Of a country that can rnuste
7 sixty war ships is hardly to be though