"I've had my eye on this country a good while in spite of the dismal tales of hardship and failure that have come eastward out of it. I've looked to it as the place for me to put some of my theories to the test. I believe alfalfa, or lucerne, as it is called back East, will thrive here, and I'm going to risk your derision and go a little farther. I believe this can be made the greatest wheat country in America."
Judge Thayer brought his hand down with a smack of the palm that made his papers fly, his face radiating the pleasure that words alone could not express.
"I've been telling them that for seven years, Morgan!" he said.
"Hasn't it ever been tried out?"
"Tried out? They don't stay long enough to try out anything, Morgan. They're here today and gone tomorrow, cursing Kansas as they go, slandering it, branding it as the Tophet of the earth. We've never had the right kind of people here, they didn't have the courage, the faith, and the vision. If a man hasn't got the grit and ability to stick through his losses at any game in this life, Morgan, he'll never win. And he'll never be anything but a little loser, put him down where you will."
"I've met hundreds of them dragging their bones out of Kansas the past four or five years," Morgan nodded. "From what I can gather by talking with them, the trouble lies in their poverty when they come here. As you say, they're not staked to play this stiff game. A man ought to provision himself for a campaign against this country like he would for an Arctic expedition. If he can't do it, he'd better stay away."
"I guess there's more to that than I ever stopped to consider myself," Judge Thayer admitted. "It is a hard country to break, but there are men somewhere who can subdue it and reap its rewards."
"I tried to induce the railroad company to back me in an experimental farm out here, but the officials couldn't see it," Morgan said. "I'm going to tackle it now on my lonesome. The best proof of a man's confidence in his own theories is to put them into practice himself, anyway."
"These cattlemen around here will laugh at you and try to discourage you, Morgan. I'm the standing joke of this country because I still stick to my theory of wheat."
"The farmers in Iowa laughed their teeth loose when we book farmers at the college told them they could add a million bushels a year to the corn crop of the state by putting a few more grains on the ends of the cobs. Well, they did it, just the same, in time."