New-York tribune., 1919-01-06
No, Not With Kansas

w RATS the matter with Kansas? ?"
asked William Allen White in dav LONG
past, Immediately starting himself on
the road TO fame with the answer to his
own question. Regardless of what the
answer was at that time it is apparent
from the report Of an agent of the
United States Department of Agricult
ure that that matter doesn't matter now.
Nothing is the matter, from a business
standpoint at least, with state that
plants 11,1S4,0O0 acres to wheat, par
ticularly when that acreage has a potcn-
tlal yield, under present crop prospects,
which are placed at % per cent, of 200
100000 bushels, for which the govern
ment has obligated itself to pay 81 20 a
bushel.
If we remember rightly, at the. time
the sage Of The Empoyio Gazette as
sumed the double role Of interlocutor and
end man Kansas was being scared by
hot winds that might have served for
early models for q German hcnmcn-
arerte1, and the Sahara desert was
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 Amendment of the Deca-
logue, Populism was the nc pl1ts ultra of
political wisdom, Mary Elizabeth Lease
was advising the farmers to raise less
corn and more hell, and Jerry Simpson
was stalking sockless through the halls
OF Congress because he and all other
hansans were too poor to buy hose
But times change and men change
with them. Since that day. antcdating
the movies, when the greatest Of outdoor
sports in the Sunhower State was watch
ing William Jennings Bryan pluck the
crown Of thorns from the brow Of labor.
there has been Il monotonous succession
Of big crops and high prices Fields
which once produced only taxes have
spouted oil, and the hardy agriculturists
who "sat under" the apostles of "fiat
money" and vino felt themselves being
enmeshed in the Shiny tentacles OF the
octopus, now draw their rallions year
in royalties from the Standard and other
predatory nterestg.'
Every farmer has a motor car and
sone have as many as five. not all Of
them by any means the output Of a Dc
trcit man who would be Senator, but now
will be an cditor. A tractor ploughs his
fields, q machine nillss his cows and
power plant lights his house. The rain
that patters at night upon his mansard
roof lulls him to pleasant dreams of his
boys taking the scientific course in az
riculture at Manhattan, or law or cngi
necring at Lawrence; Of his girls being
graduated 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, moving to Hutchinson and living
the easy life Of retired farmers. Whereas
his rare dissipation Of old was an occa
sional "onc fare for the round trip''
excursion to Kansas City to see the re-
splendcnt annual Priests Of PalIas pa-
radc, he now winters in California or ia
perfectly at home among the white lights
Of Broadway.
Two hundred million bushels Of wheat
at 1920 "A bushcl, an annual oil outpuf
valued at a billion dollars, and cattle
corn, alfalfa and the like for "smaIl
change" e"-wbat was it you said. Mr..
White, was the matter with Kansas?
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Tc,, k;IIaxt