The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-03-22
KANSAS PLEADS GUILTY.

in an editorial utterance in the current
number of The Worlds Work in dis
cusSion of the place taken by Iowa IN
our national politics. and an implied
comparison of the characteristics of its
people with some of the characteristics
of the people of Kansas.
After speaking of the prominence at
tanned by a quartette of Iowans, and
the difference between Iowa and Ohio.
which is pivotal state, The Worlds
Work says of Iowa:
I'm a sense its prominence may be
called an accident. But there is at
least a plausible explanation in the
character of the people. The state has
no large city. Its population is a rural
population, 20 per cent of which is of
American stock. In comparison with
Illinois and Ohio, for example, it is not
a manufacturing state. 1t is a COM
munity of farmers, who are perhaps
the most successful farmers in the
world. 1t would be difficult to name
any other agricultural area on the
globe as large as Iowa that is the home
of as many persons who have won
wealth from the soil-not mere sub
sistence. but such comforts and lux
uries as few agricultural communities
have hitherto known.
And the people are of singular uni
form character. They do nothing rad
ical as the people of Kansas, for ex-
ample, often do. They are not given to
trying either social or political expert
ments. They have never become ex-
cited. They are among the most con-
sentative people of the country-uni-
formly thrifty, stable, Unconditional
They have not produced national
IF ha
men of Iowa. In fact. you never hear
much about Iowa. But this very con-
scientious attention to their own tasks
has developed a type of safe and useful
men. The present prominence of
Iowans may then be more than an acct
dent"
While this is doubtless meant to be
complimentary to Iowa, the contrast is
also complimentary to Kansas, even
though unattended. Kansas cannot
deny the charge that she produces ma
tiona1 heroes. Iowa did not produce a
Titus to be the first to scale the walls
of Pekin, nor a whole regiment OF
heroes like the Twentieth Kansas
Iowa boys were not awarded Is per
cent of all the medals for bravery
awarded during the Spanish American,
Philippine and Chinese wars, as were
Kansas boys-four of the 35 awarded
went to q. single Kansas regiment
Kansas will also have to plead guilty
to the charge that she is sometimes
radical; that she is given to expert
menting. Kansans are never content to
follow where others lead-she must do
at least part of the leading herself
otherwise General Macarthur would
never have made a certain famous re-
port that 'Caloocan is taken, the
Twentieth Kansas is a mile in the
front, and all HI can't stop EN-
Kansas is to the United States what
the Yankee Is to the rest of the Anglo
Saxon race The American smiles at
the seriousness with which the English
man takes himself and at his lack of
progressiveness. Just so the Kansan
regards his eastern brothers. And as
the Englishman will believe almost
anything of the progressiveness of the
American, SO the eastern man will be-
lieve almost anything of the Kansan.
Perhaps that explains why eastern
newspapers will publish any kind of
story with a Kansas date line, no mat
ter how fabulous.
But there is a reason for all this. as
there is for Iowa's place in the national
life. Kansas is more truly American
than any other state in the union. This
may be a broad statement, but it is
capable of proof. There is nothing pro-
vincial about Kansas. Its people are
made up of the people of all other
states. The blood of the Puritan and
the Cavalier ningle in Kansas. Mas
sachusetts and Missouri fought for
supremacy here when the foundation
stones of the state were laid. The
more radical of both sides poured into
the state, and after the war was over
they settled down to dwell in peace side
by side Then came the tide of immi-
grafton. From every locality came the
people-a progressive, enterprising race
who sought to conquer a Wilderness
Thousands and thousands of veterans
of the civil war focked to the state to
make homes for themselves, until Kan
sas was the greatest "old soldier state
in the union in proportion to her popu-
lation. An old soldiers reunion in
Kansas represents more states than
any sort of gathering in any other
state. From the south, too, came the
immigrants, and although Kansas is in
so great a degree an ''old soldier" state,
in no other state is there less of the
old enmity between the north and the
south. Kansas is the only northern
state that ever sent an ex-confederate
soldier to the United States senate
These are the reasons why Kansas is
truly American.
DIR. William A. Quayle, the noted
Methodist divine and scholar, once
stated in a lecture on English litera-
ture that nowhere on the globe is the
English language more pure than as it
is spoken in Kansas. 1t is free from
provincialisms and the idiomatic ex-
pressions of long established commune
ties. It lacks the cockney dialect of old
England, the ''twang'' of New England,
the drawl and provincialisms of the
south, and the idioms of the older
northern communities. The people