The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1901-06-21
KANSAS A STAGE.
A million Feet wide and Two Million
Feet LOng-EuEeae Ware Before the
Kansas City Knife and Fork Club.


kansas City knife and Fork Club.
Alta meeting of the Knife and Fork
club in Kansas City recently, Eugene
Ware, who was one of the speakers, in
trodueed himself as appearing in the
the dual role Of guest and missionary.
In the latter capacity, he said:
sKansas is not a state. OF course, in
one sense it is, only for jurisdictional
purposes. Where the United States
constitution gives the citizens of one
state the right to see the citizens OF
another state in the federal court, then,
under those circumstances, the terri
tory comprised in what we call Kansas
is deemed to be a state, and people
who live in Kansas are deemed to be
citizens of a state. But this is only a
legal fction-it exists only in contem-
plation.
aSOme have called Kansas a univer-
sity, from the fact that three years in
Kansas is equal to four years in Yale,
and that a man who can make living
in Kansas could get rich in Wall Street.
But this view fails to take into consid-
Grafton the most essential features Of
its history. said Kansas was not a
state. I will say further that it is not
a crank state, and viii 60 still further
and say that it does not produce
cranks-never did-and that a II evils
Kansas suffers comes from without
her borders.
ssThe world, which in the days of
Shakespeare was all a stage, has, by
reason of the correlation of forces and
the pneumatic inclination of the time,
undergone much change. You can
readily see that the world can not be,
and ought not to be, all stage; there
must be some gallery, some pit, some
dress circle.
sit seems to me that here IN America,
the great theater of the worlds activi-
ties, Kansas is the stage, and that there
has been a continuous performance
for about fifty years. Kansas is a mil
lion feet wide and two million feet
long. These figures are almost abso-
Iutely accurate, and you may rely upon
them 1t is smooth and uniform in
its rise to the west, where it attains
an elevation of half mile over its eastern
end, so that a spectator from Ohio
looking westward can see almost the
whole floor of the stage. In the par
quet before US the great states of In
diana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee
and others; in the dress circle we see
South Carolina and Vermont. Virginia
and Massachusetts, have private boxes,
while in the front, near the orchestral
is the bald headed row, which I am
now addressing in Kansas City.
"The first play that was given in
Kansas was by a stroIling band of Mis-
souri, players. Then comes the change,
and in the twinkling of an eye, as the
curtain rolls away, we see vast pros
cenium of fire dashed with blood, and
across the stage with gigantic strides
marches a man with a pike. We hear
the growing pulsations of distant can
non, and we hear the shouting of the
captains 1t is the hired fighting for
the unhired; it is the greatest labor
movement the world has ever seen
the wage-earner is breaking down the
competition of the non-wage Garner; it
had to come; it had to win. All great
labor movements win.
"Then across the stage marches a
man with the voice Of an orator and
the face of a bitter and melancholy
genius. He is billed as the grim
chieftain of Kansas He wears the
toga of a senator and the sash OF a
general. He is loudly applauded, but
he give no heed-he seems wrapped
up in the pale cast of thought We
see him at the white house with de-
tachment of Kansas troops in the base
ment acting as a body guard of Presi-
dent Lincoln. The curtain falls upon
a suicide.
Then some eastern players give US
'York-Pomroy, or $1,000 in Cash. in
one act, while we shift the scenery.
Then we stage Julius Caesar, and a
lean and hungry Brutus walks the
boards for Is years, and finally, instead
of Brutus stabbing Caesar, Caesar
stabs Brutus, and treason triumphs
over all. Aud in the place where
erept as 'twere in seOrn of brains, re-
heeting bricks of thinly plated gold
that wooed the Shiny bottom Of the
deep and Knocked the dead bones that
lay scattered by.
81 viii net dwell on the stage effects;
the grasshoppers- they we're from Wy
oming; the hot winds were from New
Mexico; the billiards were from Dako-
to; the socialism from Brussels.
sAeross the stage next marches
man of hair. through whose West
Virginia whiskers blew the hot winds