With this fair land as his home, with this productive soil as his workshop, and with the rare and healthful atmosphere of Kansas to stimulate his energy, the farmer of this State ought to be contented and prosperous. Certainly, in no other State have the opportunities for securing pleasant homes and productive farms been so favorable and so numerous as here in Kansas. Certainly, in no other land has so much material wealth been dug out of the earth in so brief a time, as here in Kansas. Certainly, in no other country under the shining stars have so many poor and struggling men won modest fortunes by honest industry, as here in Kansas. And certainly, the future of Kansas promises a growth and development as rapid, and as substantial, as that of the past.
I speak of the future thus confidently, because, after all, the richest heritage of Kansas is the imperial manhood of its citizenship. No State in the Union, no country in the world, can boast of a braver or more intelligent, enterprising, liberty-loving, and law-respecting population. From the date of its organization up to the present time, Kansas has been receiving the best blood and brain of the civilized world. Hither, thirty years ago, came thronging a host of bright and generous men, to protect this fair land against the aggressions of slavery. Here, six years before Mr. Lincoln issued his first call for volunteers, the war which was to strike from the slave his shackles, began; and here, defying alike the power and blandishments of the National Administration, the opponents of slavery won their first victory. Hither, the Union saved and freedom nationalized, thronged a great army of soldiers—men who had fought on every battle-field of the late war, and who, during four years of peril and of hardship, had illustrated by calm and patient endurance, and by the most magnificent courage and patriotism, the grandest virtues of American manhood. Here is a people who have wiped a desert from the map of the continent, and replaced it with a garden. Here are the men who have pushed the plains to the foot-hills of the mountains; who have dotted the treeless prairies with forests; and who have made the solitudes of the bison the home of the plow.
Of what achievements or conquests in the arts or industries of peace is such a population not capable? Where are the limits that bound the progress and development of a State having such a citizenship?
I do not believe that anyone now living can guess or gauge the possibilities of this great State of ours. A century hence Kansas may reach the full stature of its material growth; but not during our lifetime will this maturity of development be witnessed; not during our day and generation will this young commonwealth reach a point where further advance is no longer possible. The Kansan of the future can say of his State, as does the Kansan of to-day:
“This is the land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o’er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons imparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age and love-exalted youth.