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.