The Palatka news and advertiser., 1915-08-27
FLORIDA LAND IS
NOT WORTH A DAMN
Says the Attorney-General
of Kansas, who Bears
a Crouch.

"The attorney general of Kansas is
credited with making the remark
that Florida land is not worth
DAMN /" says Editor w. B. Powell of
the Clearwater Sun, and then Mr..
Powell gets busy and makes the fol-
lowing pointed comparisons:
That's his privilege and undoubted-
ly his pleasure and mode of express
Kansas is state which has hatch
ed out Sockless Simpsons, Carry Ma
tions, Whiskered Pfeffers, and lot
of other freaks and damning high
state official is not out of the ordinary.
Something has happened to rile
this dignity. He probably attended
the closing hours of the last Kansas
legislature when five or six million
dollars appropriations were put
through in chorus in five minutes, all
committeeman reading their appro-
priation bills at the same time, and he
had to damn something.
Or probably he owned some of that
Wichita boom when you couldn't tell
where Wichita left off and Newton be-
gan; when farmers mortgaged $4,000
farms to buy town lots in Wichita
which afterward were worth 10 cents.
Or probably he owned some of that
Kansas land that you would have to
nail down at night to keep it from
blowing over into the next township.
But he ought to have damned his
own state.
We know that state.
We lived in it.
We have seen it 40 below zero in
winter and 120 above zero in sum-
mer. We have seen blizzards that
froze cattle stiff in their tracks, and
we have seen summer so hot that
cattle went mad from the heat.
We have seen floods that covered
20 miles of the Arkansas river bot
tom and drowned people like rats,
and we have seen the same stream
so devoid of water that cat fish were
running around with tin cups in their
mouths begging for water.
We have seen hot winds that cooked
a whole township of corn over night
so that lighted match would have
incinerated the whole crop.
We have seen chinch bugs and grass
hoppers devastate the country like it
had been run over by an army of
goats.
We have seen cyclones and torna-
does and hunted cyclone cellars with
the avidity of prairie dog.
We have seen prairie fires that
caused one to repeat the Ten Com
mandments and wish that he had ta-
ken out life insurance.
We have seen rains that flowed
through key holes like a squirt gun
was behind the force that made it
possible to penetrate such small
aperture.
We have seen farmers coming to
town dressed in COW skins, the wo-
men folks wearing gunny sacks on
their feet for shoes, and rags for out
er garments.
We have seen them burning cow
chips for fuel, and eating gophers and
jack rabbits.
We could take a few more rods Of
space to tell of the joys of living in
Kansas, and why this attorney general
goes 1000 miles to find a place to
damn we cannot understand.
He ought to begin at home.
Or he, at least, ought to visit Flor
ida, or live in Florida, as we have
lived, and then his comparison or de-
ductions would have more weight.
If this damning official will come
to Florida we will show him a tract
of 25,000 acres that he could not buy
for less than S500,000, and it raises
$50 bushels OF corn to the acre; 100
bushels of rust-proof oats to the acre
and-1O0 barrels of Irish potatoes to
the acre.
We viii put up $1,000 if he will
cover it, that we will take 10 acres of
Florida soil, and have it produce more
in dollars and cents in five years than
anv 10 acres in Kansas in the same
length of time.
But this damning official probably
is running for Office and desires to
Dopularize himself by playing to the
Kansas farmer.