Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-01-08
No, Not With Kansas
(From the New York Tribune)

lolil lilS ANCN Vi
Whats the matter with Kan
sas?" asked William Allen White
in a day long past, Immediately start
ing himself on the road to fame
with the answer to. his own ques-
ton. Regardless of what the an
swer was at that time, it is appar-
ent from the report of an agent of
the United States Department of Ag
riculture that that matter doesn't
matter now. Nothing is the matter,
from a business standpoint at least,
with a state that plants 11,1S4,OOO.
acres to wheat. particularly when
that acreage has a potential yield,
under present crop prospects, which
are placed at 9S per cent. of 200,-
600. .090 bushels, for which the gov
ernment has obligated itself to pay
$2.20 a bushel.
If we remember rightly, at the
time the sage of the Emporia Ga
zette assumed the double role of in
terlocutor and endman Kansas was
being scared by hot winds that
might have served for early models
for a German flammenwerfer, and
the Sahara desert was a Flanders
bog compared with the scorched
depressions which had once been
the beds of Kansas streams. The
heaven born ratio of Sixteen to One
had become the Fourteenth Amend
ment of the Decalogue, Populism
was the ne plus ultra of political
wisdom, Mary Elizabeth Lease was
advising the farmers to raise less
corn and more hell, and Jerry Simp-
son was stalking sockless through
the halls of Congress because he and
all other Kansans were too poor to
buy hose.
But times change and men change
with them. Since that day. antedat-
ing the movies, when the greatest
of outdoor sports in the Sunfiower
State was watching William Jen-
nings Bryan pluck the crown of
thorns from the brow of labor, there
has been a monotonous succession
of big crops and high prices. Fields
which once produced only taxes
have spouted oil and the hardy agri-
culturists who sat UNDER the
apostles of fiat money" and who
felt themselves being enmeshed in
the Shiny tentacles of the octopus,
now draw their millions a year in
royalties from the Standard and
other predatory interests"
Every farmer has motor car
and some have as many as five, not
all of them by any means the out
put of a Detroit man who would be
Senator. but now will be an editor.
A tractor ploughs his fields. q ma
chine milks his cows and a power
plant lights his house. The rain
! that patters at night upon his man
sard roof lulls him to pleasant
dreams of his boys taking the
scientific course in agriculture at
Manhattan, or law or engineering at
Lawrence; of his girls being gradu-
ated in domestic science from the
state schools and being finished"
in the East, and of himself and
"maw," when the young folks get
big enough to run the farm, NOV
| ing to Hutchinson and living the
easy life of retired farmers. Where
as his rare dissipation of old was
an occasional lone fare for the
round trip" excursion to Kansas City
to see the respondent annual
Priests of Pailas parade, he now
winters in California or is perfect
| ly at home among the white lights
I of Broadway.
Two hundred million bushels of
wheat at 1920 a bushel. an annual
oil output valued at a billion dol
lars, and cattle, corn. alfalfa and
the like for Small change''-what
was it you said, Mr.. White, was the
matter with Kansas?