THE WEALTH OF AN AGRICULTURAL STATE.
Kansas is an agricultural State. It has no gold or silver, no iron, and just coal enough to furnish fuel. It is the farmers’ and stockmen’s State. Its development simply shows what good old Mother Earth, when in her happiest vein, can do. “Agriculture,” says Colton, “is the most certain source of strength, wealth, and independence; commerce, in all emergencies, looks to agriculture both for defense and for supply.” The growth and prosperity of Kansas afford a striking illustration of what intelligent farmers, with a productive soil and a genial climate for their workshop, can accomplish—what wealth they can create, what enterprise they can stimulate.
It is difficult, however, to comprehend what the figures I have given, showing the amounts and values of Kansas products, really represent. When we read that Kansas produced, last year, 194,130,000 bushels of corn, the nine figures set down do not convey any adequate idea of the bulk and weight of this crop. But when it is stated that the corn crop of Kansas for 1885 would fill 485,000 freight cars, and load a train 2,847 miles long—reaching from Ogden, Utah, to Boston—we begin to comprehend what the figures stand for.
The wheat crop of the State, last year, was called a failure. It was, for Kansas. And yet it would fill 31,939 grain cars, and load a train 189 miles in length. The oats crop of the State, for the same year, would fill 44,335 cars, and load a train 260 miles long; while the hay crop would load 768,534 cars, making a train 4,510 miles long.
These four crops of Kansas, for 1885, would fill 1,329,808 grain cars, and load a train 7,804 miles in length. In other words, the corn, wheat, oats, and hay produced in Kansas last year would load a train reaching from Boston to San Francisco by the Union Pacific route, and back again from San Francisco to Boston by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé route.