The growth of our State in population has not, however, equalled the
development of its material resources. The United States census of 1880
shows that while Kansas, at that date, ranked as the twentieth State in
population, it was the eighth State in the number and value of its live
stock, the seventeenth in farm products, the fourteenth in value of farm
products _per capita_, the twentieth in wealth, the thirteenth in
education, the seventeenth in the amount of its indebtedness, State and
municipal, and the twenty-fourth in manufactures. Only one State,
Nebraska, shows a smaller proportion of persons unable to read and
write. And in twenty-eight of the forty-seven States and Territories,
taxation, _per capita_, was greater than it is in Kansas.
In 1880 Kansas was the sixth corn-producing State of the Union. Only
Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, then produced larger crops
of this cereal. But the corn product of Kansas, that year, was only
101,421,718 bushels, while for the year 1885 it was 194,130,814 bushels,
or nearly double the crop of 1880.