The period of triumph began in 1875. While the world was still talking of our State as a drouth-powdered and insect-eaten country, Kansas was preparing for the Centennial, and getting ready for a great future. And in 1876, she sprang into the arena of Nations with a display of her products and resources which eclipsed them all, and excited the wonder and admiration of the whole civilized earth.

From that time to this the development of Kansas has never known a halt, nor have the hopes of our citizens ever been troubled by a doubt. More permanent and costly homes have been builded, more stately public edifices have been reared, more substantial improvements have been made on farms and in towns, more wealth has been accumulated, during the decade beginning in 1875, than during the two previous decades. No citizen of Kansas, from that day to this, has ever written a letter, made a speech, or talked at home or abroad, with his fellow-citizens or with strangers, without exalting the resources and glorifying the greatness of the State. No Legislature, since that time, has ever doubted the ability of the State to do anything it pleased to do.

A new Kansas has been developed during that period. The youth of 1875 has grown to the full stature and strength of confident and intelligent manhood. The people have forgotten to talk of drouths, which are no more incident to Kansas than to Ohio or Illinois. They no longer watch the clouds when rain has not fallen for two weeks. The newspapers no longer chronicle rains as if they were uncommon visitations. A great many things, besides the saloons, have gone, and gone to stay. The bone-hunter and the buffalo-hunter of the plains, the Indian and his reservations, the jay-hawker and the Wild Bills, the Texas steer and the cowboy, the buffalo grass and the dug-outs, the loneliness and immensity of the unpeopled prairies, the infinite stretching of the plains, unbroken by tree or shrub, by fence or house—all these have vanished, or are rapidly vanishing. In their stead has come, and come to stay, an aggressive, energetic, cultured, sober, law-respecting civilization. Labor-saving machines sweep majestically through fields of golden wheat or sprouting corn; blooded stock lazily feed in meadows of bluestem, timothy, or clover; comfortable houses dot every hill-top and valley; forests, orchards and hedge-rows diversify the loveliness of the landscape; and where isolation and wildness brooded, the majestic lyric of prosperous industry is echoing over eighty-one thousand square miles of the loveliest and most fertile country that the sun, in his daily journey, lights and warms. The voiceless Sphynx of thirty years ago has become the whispering-gallery of the continent. The oppressed Territory of 1855, the beggared State of 1874, has become a Prince, ruling the markets of the world with opulent harvests.

THE FACTS OF THE CENSUS.

I am not, in thus exalting the growth and prosperity of Kansas, speaking recklessly, as I shall show by statistics compiled from the census and agricultural reports of the United States and our own State. Figures are always dry, I know. But when they tell the pleasant story of the march of civilization into and over a new land, surely they cannot fail to interest men and women who have themselves marched with this conquering army of industry and peace.

THE GROWTH OF KANSAS WITHOUT PARALLEL.

The growth of Kansas has had no parallel. The great States of New York and Pennsylvania were nearly a hundred and fifty years in attaining a population Kansas has reached in thirty years. Kentucky was eighty years, Tennessee seventy-five, Alabama ninety, Ohio forty-five, and Massachusetts, New Jersey, Georgia, and North and South Carolina each over a hundred years, in reaching the present population of Kansas. Even the marvelous growth of the great States of the West has been surpassed by that of Kansas. Illinois was organized as a Territory in 1810, and thirty years later had only 691,392 inhabitants, or not much more than one-half the present population of this State. Indiana was organized in 1800, and sixty years later had a population of only 1,350,428. Iowa was organized as a Territory in 1838, and had, at that date, a population of nearly 40,000. In 1870 it had only 1,194,020 inhabitants. Missouri was organized in 1812, with a population of over 40,000, and fifty years later had only 1,182,012. Michigan and Wisconsin, after fifty years of growth, did not have as many people as Kansas has to-day; and Texas, admitted into the Union in 1845, with a population of 150,000, had, thirty-five years later, only 815,579 inhabitants.

In 1861 Kansas ranked in population as the thirty-third State of the Union; in 1870 it was the twenty-ninth; in 1880 the twentieth; and it is now the fifteenth. During the past quarter of a century Kansas has outstripped Oregon, Rhode Island, Delaware, Florida, Arkansas, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, Maryland, Mississippi, California, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Wisconsin, and New Jersey—all States before the 29th of January, 1861. Of the Northern States only eight, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Iowa, and of the Southern States only six, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Virginia, and Texas, now outrank Kansas in population. At the close of the present decade Kansas will, I am confident, rank as the eleventh State of the American Union, and will round out the Nineteenth Century as the sixth or seventh.

In the following table the population of Kansas, as shown by the first census of the Territory, taken in January, 1855, and the official enumerations made every five years thereafter, is shown. The figures also exhibit the proportion of white and colored, and of native and foreign-born inhabitants; the increase of population every five years, and the density of population per square mile of territory at the close of each period. The State census taken in 1865, however, did not show the proportion of native and foreign-born citizens:

Year.Total population.Increase.Density of population.White population.Colored.Native population.Foreign-born.
18558,601
1860107,20698,6051.3106,39081694,51212,694
1865140,17932,9731.6127,27012,909
1870364,399224,2204.4346,37718,022316,00748,392
1875528,349163,9506.5493,0035,344464,68263,667
1880996,096467,74712.2952,10543,941886,010110,086
1885[[1]]1,268,562272,46615.41,220,35548,2071,135,887132,675