And now, having sketched the growth of Kansas during the past quarter of
a century, it is proper to ask, what of the future? I answer with
confidence, that Kansas is yet in the dawn of her development, and that
the growth, prosperity and triumphs of the next decade will surpass any
we have yet known. Less than one-fifth of the area of the State has been
broken by the plow—ten million of fifty-two million acres. Multiply the
present development by five, and you can perhaps form some idea of the
Kansas of the year 1900. The light of the morning is still shining upon
our prairie slopes. The year just closed witnessed the first actual,
permanent settlements in the counties along our western frontier—not
settlement by wandering stockmen or occasional frontiersmen, but by
practical, home-building farmers and business men. The line of organized
counties now extends four hundred miles, from the Missouri river to the
Colorado line. The scientists, I know, are still discussing climatic
changes, and questioning whether the western third of Kansas is fit for
general farming. But the homesteader in Cheyenne or Hamilton counties
entertains no doubt about this question. He has no weather-gauge or
barometer, but he sees the buffalo grass vanishing and the blue-joint
sending its long roots deep into the soil; he sees the trees growing on
the high divides; he watches the corn he has planted springing up, and
waving its green guidons of prosperity in the wind; he sees the clouds
gathering and drifting, and he hears the rain pattering on his roof—and
he knows all he cares to know about climatic changes. He is going to
stay.