THE PERIOD OF UNCERTAINTY.
The period from 1865 to 1875 was, however, a period of uncertainty. Kansas remained an experiment. The drouth and grasshopper invasion of 1860, a menacing memory for many years, had just begun to grow dim when the drouth of 1873 and the still more disastrous drouth and locust invasion of 1874 revived its recollection, and intensified the uncertainty it had inspired. The intervening years were not, it is true, without their exaltation and triumphs. Luxuriant harvests followed the disaster of 1860, year after year in unbroken succession, until 1873, and we indulged in much jubilant boasting and self-gratulation over our fruitful soil, our benign climate, and our gracious seasons. But over and through it all brooded and ran a feeling of question or uncertainty, which manifested itself in many ways. The newspapers, while affecting to sneer at those who did not believe Kansas to be a country where rains always came just when they were wanted, nevertheless recorded every rain with suspicious prominence. Even the corner-lot speculator watched the clouds while he was denouncing the slanderers who asserted that Kansas was "a dry country." "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," might have been said of the Kansans who, from 1865 to 1875, vehemently maintained that the normal condition of Kansas was that of a quagmire.
And in the midst of it all came 1873 and 1874, with their twin devastations and calamities. A fierce sun rose and set for months in a cloudless sky; the parched earth shrank and cracked; and the crops withered and shriveled in winds as hot as the breath of a furnace. But as if the destruction thus wrought was not enough, out from the northwest came clouds of insects, darkening the sun in their baleful flight, and leaving the very abomination of desolation wherever they alighted. It was then that the bravest quailed, and our sturdiest farmers abandoned all hope. Thousands of people, now among our most prosperous citizens, would have sold everything they possessed for one-sixth of its value, during the year 1874, and abandoned the State forever. But they could find no purchasers, even at such a price.
Somehow—and I mention the fact to their everlasting credit—many of the newspapers of Kansas never lost heart or hope during that distressful season. They lauded the State more earnestly, if possible, than ever before. They asserted, with vehement iteration, that the season was exceptional and phenomenal. They exhorted the people to keep up courage, and confidently predicted abundant harvests next year. And to their influence more than any other, is due the fact that Kansas survived the drouth and grasshopper invasion of 1874 with so little loss of population.