The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-05-15
Mr.. COBURN TALKS
The Secretary Tells the Bankers
Why They Are Prosperous.
Has a Good Word for Crops of
the Past and Present.
OFFICERS ARE NAMED.
Resolutions on Banking Legis-
lati0n Are Adopted.
A Two Days Session Ends in a
Banquet With TOasts.

Kansas City. May 15-The bankers
of Kansas-some 600 of them and the
representatives of more than 200 mil
lion dollars of the best assets on earth
were about to close their twenty
| first annual convention in Kansas City
Kan, at o'clock yesterday afternoon
when F. D. Coburn, state secretary of
agriculture, entered the auditorium.
The bankers had become weary of tales
of prosperity, of big bank deposits, of
discussions of methods of curing f1nan-
cial ills arising back east" They
were waiting to join their wives and
daughters in the good time arranged
whose guests they were. But when
Mr.. Coburn-"the man who knows
arrived in his gray suit of clothes and
his gray beard, it was different.
II merely dropped in to say a few
things to you," the secretary said, rails
ing a thin white hand to quell the dis
turbance the yelling bankers were
making. Then he proceeded to say
things.
What Mr.. Coburn Said.
This is what he said:
st am persuaded that few of us,
when we talk of our crops, as we do
so much, have the proper grasp of their
significance: not alone of future posi-
bilities, but of their present magni-
tude and value, and the striking con-
trasts they afford to those of other
states. 1 suspect that many of the
best informed are unaware that Kan
sas raises 100 times more corn than
California; nearly so times as much as
North Dakota; 3k times as much as
Pennsylvania, and 40 per cent more
than Ohio. That one medium sized
Kansas county in a single year grew
more corn than Maine, Rhode Island,
North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming,
New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Washing
ton Oregon, New Hampshire, YER
mont and Massachusetts combined is
probably not common knowledge.
According to the governments re-
ports Canada's aggregate yield OF corn
for eight years was less than that OF
the Kansas crop in single year-l9O6
Forty per cent of the value of all Kan
sas crops for 20 years has been con-
tributed by corn-the king of the
states cultivated plants. The aggre-
gated home value of five years crops
have exceeded 1872 million dollars and
of 20 years, 913 million dollars.
while corn is the crop that brings
Kansas her greatest wealth, wheat is
the one the most talked about, and
that makes the state famous IN the
breadstuff markets of the world. Thls
is due Jointly to two facts. One is that
in aggregate yield Kansas easily, tops
The other is that Kansas wheat and
flour have a character and standing
among millers, dealers, bakers ana
epicures which make them largely In
dependent of the competition Wheats
from elsewhere must contend with, be-
cause their self advertising merits give
them an unquestioned identity pecu-
liarly their own and have placed them
in class by themselves. Making
bread or pastry from Kansas flour
of M fhorp-
by justification for being the most ap-
petizing, wholesome and nutritious
known to culinary science or art.
''In the past ten years, the state
has yielded an aggregate Of 73O,6O9,-
479 bushels, worth $446,75S.791. In
this time she has raised four of the
largest wheat crops in America, hence
the largest in the world. Kansas has
produced six wheat crops worth at
home fifty million dollars each, and
five of these were in the past five
years The government reports rate
Missouri, California and Michigan as
among the crack winter wheat pro-
ducers of the world, but in 1907 Kan
sas raised more than the three states
combined OF the states producing
winter wheat, Kansas has been first
in output for each of the past five
years, and in eight of the past ten
years.
"In 1901, one Kansas county, (Sum-
ner), was credited with a yield of
6,S12,102 bushels of wheat, or more
than was produced the same year in
the whole state of Texas, or in North
Carolina, or in any one of twenty-five
other states and territories. This
county's wheat exceeded by over /
million bushels the output of New
England, Mississippi, Alabama, New
Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico and Wy
oming combined.
THE recent crop report of the bu-
reau of statistics of the United States
Department of Agriculture shows the
present acreage of winter wheat in
Kansas as nearly 20 per cent of the
total area sown in the United States,
and ia per cent more than that sown
in the state having the next largest
acreage.
you ask what of the conditions?
Last fall there was sown in Kansas
approximately I million acres of win
ter wheat. Through mishaps, liable
to occur from various causes in a
field of such wide extent, possibly
per cent of the whole may be charged
off the books. This leaves something
like 6 y million acres now racing to
maturity, with the biggest wheat
counties presenting. IN the main, the
highest conditions, and with a ground
humidity ranging from wet to wetter.
This does not imply any denial or
Misunderstanding that there are
neighborhoods where poor seeding,
poor soil, procrastinating humidity, or