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Show KANSAS REVISITED. 433 " DROUGHTY KANSAS." worth a dollar a bushel. The dry year of 1874 brought with it grasshoppers, cut- worms and chintz- bugs; and in the period between that and the plentiful crop of 1875, the settlers suffered, as they thought, enough for seven years of want. Is this to be the future of Kansas? Must she have every fifth or seventh year a season of drought and barren-ness? Well, yes; and no ! On the one hand I am convinced that all the States which border on the dry plains will have occa-sional seasons of ex-treme drought; on the other, I am sure settle-ment will be followed by a modification of the climate, and that as the country grows older the citizens will learn how to guard against famine years. Their true remedy is not a war on the rail-roads, but diversification of crops, the establishment of home manu-factures, and, above all, improved methods of stock- breeding. Kan-sas is emphatically a " stock country." I am afraid to say how much margin there is for skillful men; but I personally know stock-growers who have made from thirty to sixty per cent yearly on their capital for many years in succession. Cattle fatten upon the open prairie for seven months in the year, and sheep a month longer. First rate prairie hay, on which stock will keep fat all winter, can be put up for two dollars per ton. The climate is dry in winter, very suitable for cattle and especially so for sheep; and there have never been grasshoppers enough to spoil the pasture. What matters it, then, if the grain crop does fail every fifth year, when the other years are so productive? What is needed is improved stock, and a little care to guard against the occasional winter storms. Kansas has woman- suffrage on a small scale. Women can vote at all school meetings ; and at Geneva, in Allen County, I found the community wrestling with school - politics in a new phase. The am-bitious little " city " had started off with an academy, which was in due time to grow into a college; but, instead, it grew the other wav, 28 |
