THE MATERIAL RESOURCES OF KANSAS.
The growth of our State in population has not, however, equalled the development of its material resources. The United States census of 1880 shows that while Kansas, at that date, ranked as the twentieth State in population, it was the eighth State in the number and value of its live stock, the seventeenth in farm products, the fourteenth in value of farm products per capita, the twentieth in wealth, the thirteenth in education, the seventeenth in the amount of its indebtedness, State and municipal, and the twenty-fourth in manufactures. Only one State, Nebraska, shows a smaller proportion of persons unable to read and write. And in twenty-eight of the forty-seven States and Territories, taxation, per capita, was greater than it is in Kansas.
In 1880 Kansas was the sixth corn-producing State of the Union. Only Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, then produced larger crops of this cereal. But the corn product of Kansas, that year, was only 101,421,718 bushels, while for the year 1885 it was 194,130,814 bushels, or nearly double the crop of 1880.