The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1907-08-04
KANSAS FARMS PAY BETTER
RANGHMEN SOW KEEP THEIR
EYES or THE MARKET.

Revolution In the Business Of Cattle halsinE
Customs That Are DtsappeartnE with
the CowboSs-Dut There Are Possi-
bilities Of Excitement Even NOWADAYS.
All work stops in tho Ransias wheat fields
when the baseball scores como in. Twenty
spans Of mules, drawing unwieldy ma
chimes ia an ever widening swath around
the field OF ghttering grain, drew up TO the
Ance and hooked their heads over one an
others necks In restful ease, while their
drivers FASTENED over to the corner where a
small boy with n field telephone was chalk
ing up on a regularly marked OIL board
the scores of half q dozen games in as many
ci.us. Five miles. away beyond the wheat
and the alfalfa were the ranch buildings
while far 70 the north. over twelve miles
of shining prairie, lay a thin curl OF smoke
from the nearest railroad train.
Say, Lon, who's pitchin' for the New
Yorks to-day"
Lon didn't know. but a moment at the
telephone and the distant telegraph ofiice
told him, at the same time giving him the
final score of the Louisville game, which
brought a cheer from a son OF Kentucky
who had some way strayed into the Kansas
whcatfelds.
The little group is joined by men from
the moving machines in the purple alfalfa
field adjoining, and in a m the men
come from the high wheeled ~cultivators
almost hidden from sight in the dark green
corn across the road All gather around
the score board, pushing and bantering
one another like the keenest fans that ever
crowded Park row, 1000 miles away.
Say. Lon" calls OUT a tall youth as the
~perspiring Lon pauses in his Efforts to Keep
pace with the telephone, And out about
that boat race, will youf"
"Aw, my son, rothin' dom for the HoI-
voids, co nes the answer, "a the repre-
sentative sS Harvard retires to the shade
of a stack, while the crowd cheers over the
victory Of me Ch.caro Cubs.
Then from the direction Of the ranch house
comes a distant bcnk. honk, ana the men
settle down IN the shade as an automobile
drives uL and big ans of iced tea and lemon
Rde and LasNets OF sandwiches are hanoed
out. Twenty minutes later the MAJ hines
are al WORK acain, singing their way through
the grain until sUndown. IerhaIs the next
day the cutting VIII be five miles the other
side OF the ranch house. but wherever the
men are there IN the afternoon goes the
score board, swung on the top OF a harbed
wire fence. and there, too, m tha boy
and his field telephone.
Kansas IN harvest time is a vast checker
board, level as a moor. viii lis fields laid out
in square cleancut lines; first the yellow of
the wheat, then the purple OF the alfalfa.
heavy with bloom, after that the deep rich
green of the corn. almost ready TO break
into tassel and finally the lighter green Of
the pasture land. just touched with brown
from the Summer heat There are no three
cornered helds in Kansas, there are no teI
acre los. Everything is done on the quar-
ter section basis and a field that measur- IS
less is consemptuously termed a Patch.
Afternoon tea and field bulletin boards
are iuro Ctions in ordinary ranch life, but
they are only indications Of change h
has come over the whole rural industry in
the West. changes that would cause the big
mustached ranchman Of twenty years ago
to grow purple with horror. A ranehman
in Kansas to-day may not have a dozen
head Of cattle on all his acres. but he is still
a ranchman, and perhaps next year he will
have thousands OF head.
The Kansas ranchman OF to-day follows
the market as closely as does a Wall Street