And yet within the short span of the lives of farmers who are still here, there has been a marvelous development. Log houses have given way to fine commodious homes, steam heated and electric lighted; great barns shelter the stock, and house the grain; the telephone, the rural delivery and the automobile have revolutionized the farmer’s life and the farmer’s wife. Better roads are the order of the day, and it will be along this line that great progress will be made in the immediate future. Meanwhile, land values are on the increase, and the quarter sections that sold from $500 to $800 each, fifty years ago, are now bringing $16,000 to $24,000 each. Within the year 1915 there has been a general trend of sentiment among the more enterprising farmers to put farming upon a more scientific basis. The services of a farm adviser have been secured, whose duty it is to assist in this direction. They are learning more of food values, crop rotation and diversification, soil culture and plant life. As the value of these things become more apparent, the farming industry will thrive more, and in another generation the problem of keeping the young men and young women on the farm will have been solved.
The richest and most valuable farming land in Atchison county is very generally distributed. There are parts of each township that are rough and broken, but as the population increases land not now regarded as choice will be made to produce abundant crops. The river bluffs, which have stood so long in timber, are gradually being cleared and the bare hills which are left, are admirably adapted to fruit, wheat and alfalfa. Much of this land is as well adapted to fruit raising as is the already famous Wathena district, some of it being exactly the same type of soil. All that is needed is that the fruit growers give their plantations care. The orchard that is properly cared for produces fruit of a quality far superior to that of the famous Northwest. Incidentally, this land returns the grower a greater net profit.
Atchison county lies within the glaciated portion of the plains region. The underlying rocks are buried by the glacial till, but in turn is covered by a deposit of fine silty material, known as loess. Practically all the soil throughout this country is derived from the loess covering. The principal soil is a brown, almost black, silty loam, well adapted to the production of general farm crops. The rainfall is sufficient for the maturing of all crops, the normal annual precipitation ranging from fifteen to twenty-five inches. Atchison county has a population ranging from 28,000 to 30,000 people. There was a slight decrease in the population between the years of 1900 and 1910, yet, in spite of this apparent unfavorable showing, the value of farm land and farm products have increased. About ninety-five per cent. of the land in this county is in farms, of an average value of $69.26 per acre. The proportionate land area is 263,680 acres, of which 249,339 acres are in farms, with an aggregate land value of $17,270,130, which is more than double what it was in 1900, and over two million dollars more than the whole of the Louisiana Purchase cost us in 1803. Figures and statistics are proverbially dry and uninteresting, but there is no place in which they can be more appropriately used than in history, and no language that can be employed could tell a better story of the agricultural progress of Atchison county, than the statistics taken from the thirteenth census of the United States. From this source we find that the total value of improvements on the farms in this county in 1910 was $2,692,755, and that the value of the implements and machinery used by the farmers, not including automobiles, was $499,129. While the value of domestic animals and live stock was $2,149,863, and in these figures poultry is not included. The chicken, duck, goose and turkey census reached 150,127, and these were valued at $77,926. The total value of all crops shown by the census of 1910 was as follows:
| Cereals | $1,928,065.00 |
| Other grain and seeds | 3,577.00 |
| Hay and forage | 281,793.00 |
| Vegetables | 94,232.00 |
| Fruits and nuts | 32,297.00 |
| All other crops | 30,883.00 |
| Grand Total | $2,370,847.00 |
Making a grand total of $2,370,847.00.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PRESS.
INFLUENCE OF NEWSPAPERS—PART PLAYED BY THE EARLY PRESS—“SQUATTER SOVEREIGN”—“FREEDOM’S CHAMPION”—“CHAMPION AND PRESS”—PIONEER EDITORS—LATER NEWSPAPERS AND NEWSPAPER MEN.
Of all the mighty powers for good and evil, none can excel the newspaper. Take all the newspapers out of the world today and there would be chaos. Mankind would lie groping in the dark, and life itself would be a vain and empty thing. Newspapers are the arteries through which the lifeblood of the world runs. They carry to our firesides the continued story of civilization.
Early in the history of Atchison county, before the schools and the churches, the newspaper appeared. It received a bounty of the original town company when that association, September 21, 1854, by a resolution, donated $400 to Robert Kelley and Dr. J. H. Stringfellow, to start a printing office, and it was then that the Squatter Sovereign was conceived, and after a brief period of gestation, was born February 3, 1855. By a strange stroke of misfortune this first newspaper in the county stood for a wrong principle and preached bad doctrine, for it advocated human slavery. Yet it was a creature of environment, and reflected the prevailing sentiment of its constituency. It was fearless in its attitude and rabid in its utterances. It was a violent organ of hate and bitterness toward all Free State men, and in it appeared a constant flood of inflammatory comment directed against those who opposed slavery, and were determined that Kansas should be the land of the brave and the home of the free. But as the pro-slavery cause waned, the Squatter Sovereign waned with it, and in the fall of 1857, when saner counsel and the feeling of brotherhood grew, the town company disposed of its interest in the Squatter Sovereign to the New England Aid Society, of which S. C. Pomeroy was agent, and the paper then passed into the hands of Robert McBratney and Franklin G. Adams. Mr. Adams and Mr. McBratney were both Free Soilers, but they did not run the paper long. It was shortly sold to O. F. Short, who ran it until the following February, and on the twentieth day of that month, 1858. John A. Martin purchased the plant and changed the name of the paper to Freedom’s Champion. Under that name Colonel Martin made of his paper one of the leading Free State organs of the Territory. Always a brilliant editor, of courage and deep convictions, Colonel Martin during his whole career never performed a greater service than during the time he shouted the battle-cry of freedom through the columns of Freedom’s Champion, from 1858 to 1861. In September of the latter year, he laid aside his pen and took up his sword in defense of the principles he so stoutly advocated, and thus translated his words into deeds. When he went to the front he left the Champion in charge of George J. Stebbins, who continued in charge until the fall of 1863, when it was leased to John J. Ingalls and Robert H. Horton. These two men afterwards became political rivals. Both were lawyers and both residents of Atchison for many years. Horton was a typical lawyer, smooth and tactful, who enjoyed a successful career in the practice of his profession and on the bench. Ingalls was of a different temperament, being more intellectual, caring little for the law, less tactful, but ambitious. They both met in the arena of politics, and Horton was the vanquished. Following the senatorial election of 1879, at which they were both candidates, they became bitter enemies, and did not speak until they met, by chance, in London, in 1891. While these two men were editors of the Champion. Ingalls did most of the writing and kept things warm until the return of Colonel Martin from the war in January, 1865, one of the Nation’s heroes. Three months after his return, on the twenty-second day of March, 1865. Colonel Martin became the publisher of a daily paper, and on August 11, 1868, the Freedom’s Champion was consolidated with the Atchison Free Press, under the name of Champion and Press. The Free Press was a Republican daily paper, and first appeared May 5, 1864, with Franklin G. Adams as its editor and proprietor. In April, 1865, Frank A. Root became a partner, and subsequently, L. R. Elliott, who had been an assistant editor, became a proprietor, with Mr. Root retiring later, when the paper was consolidated with the Champion.
The office of the Champion and Press was destroyed by fire May 20, 1869, but three weeks later the paper was in running order, with John A. Martin as sole editor and proprietor, and from that date until the death of Mr. Martin October 2, 1889, it remained one of the most influential and prosperous papers in the State of Kansas.