WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
And now, having sketched the growth of Kansas during the past quarter of a century, it is proper to ask, what of the future? I answer with confidence, that Kansas is yet in the dawn of her development, and that the growth, prosperity and triumphs of the next decade will surpass any we have yet known. Less than one-fifth of the area of the State has been broken by the plow—ten million of fifty-two million acres. Multiply the present development by five, and you can perhaps form some idea of the Kansas of the year 1900. The light of the morning is still shining upon our prairie slopes. The year just closed witnessed the first actual, permanent settlements in the counties along our western frontier—not settlement by wandering stockmen or occasional frontiersmen, but by practical, home-building farmers and business men. The line of organized counties now extends four hundred miles, from the Missouri river to the Colorado line. The scientists, I know, are still discussing climatic changes, and questioning whether the western third of Kansas is fit for general farming. But the homesteader in Cheyenne or Hamilton counties entertains no doubt about this question. He has no weather-gauge or barometer, but he sees the buffalo grass vanishing and the blue-joint sending its long roots deep into the soil; he sees the trees growing on the high divides; he watches the corn he has planted springing up, and waving its green guidons of prosperity in the wind; he sees the clouds gathering and drifting, and he hears the rain pattering on his roof—and he knows all he cares to know about climatic changes. He is going to stay.