Ho for The New Kansas from Topeka, Kansas • 1

iiiWii 4. inTfinifn. iTT 7 1 1 A- DTjam-jq I'M THE THE SENT FREE TO ANY ADDRESS. SENT FREE i TO ANY ADDRESS. TOPEKA, KANSAS, JUNE, 1876.

KANSAS In the Centennial Year. Results are the Best Evidence. What men have done. Men may do. Lyman Cone, of Burrton, in Harvey County, purchased of the Railroad Co.

the S. W. of Section 21, T. 23, 3 west, cornering with the town of Burrton, in 1S74, at $10 an acre on eleven years time. He had forty acres broken and in the fall of 1S74, sowed it to winter PeIow wc Jet him tell his own storv of the rebuTT The Most Vigorous Product of the i i -i NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Harrowing 40 acres. Sowi The Centre and Heart of America. Kansas Is a Large State. Kansas is larger than New York and Indiana put together, or than Maine and Ohio, or than the whole of New England, with Delaware and Maryland thrown in. The area of Kansas is 81,318 square miles.

England and Scotland together contain only 8,282 square miles more than Kansas. The State is about two hundred miles wide north and south, and four hundred mile long east vi wet. It lias a gradual cR scent from thn4 west line to the east line of a little over six feet to the mile. Is well drained, with numerous streams of clear running water. Of the 52,043,520 acres comprising its area, but two-thirds, 35,750,600 acres are in the organized counties.

While of the latter amount, only acres are improved land, the rest being wild prairie. While the attractiveness of a State may not depend upon its size, yet, it is clear, where other things are equal, that size is a very great advantage, for it must cost proportionately less to the individual to provide for the necessary expenditures of the State with such a large property to collect from. For instance, a tax of one mill an acre on the 52,043,520 acres in Kansas would raise a much larger revenue than one mill an acre on the 835,840 acres in Rhode Island. An imperial revenue might be raised in Kansas by a very small assessment on the land and an economical State government can be maintained without burdening the land owner with taxes. Threshing 10S0 bu.

wheat sold. Take a map of the United States, place its eastern and western edges together, and fold it then double it from north to south open the map the folds have crossed each other near the centre of Kansas. Do it yourself and you will know that Kansas is the centre and heart of. America. This central location is worthy of special attention, particularly to those who are looking to the West for a new home.

The Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe railroad will eventually go to the Pacific ocean, and that before many years have elapsed and the natural advantages of its route, apparent to any one who will devote a few moments to the study of its position on a map of the United States, will eventually make it The Route across the continent giving, with the eastern connections at Kansas City and Atchison, a more complete system of railroad communication with the whole eastern country than is possible by any other route. And its western extension, by following the Valley of the Arkansas River, carries choice farming lands and settlements with it farther west than any other route. Then by crossing the mountain range over 600 miles south of the present U. P. route, it will secure a passage at a much lower altitude, and in a latitude free from the vicissitudes and dangers of more northern routes.

It will be readily seen that these advantages place Kansas on the direct highway across the continent, and with its present and prospective railway connections with Galveston, Texas, it is as near tide water as the State of Indiana. Possessing, as Kansas does, the most western agri cultural land, reaching close to the vast consuming mining and manufacturing region on the west, and lying directly north of the cotton and sugar country on the south, with the most complete system of railroad com petition on the east, it will command at all times a good market for its surplus products. Itsprominent central position, its splendid wealth ol soil, its salubrious climate, with all its natural and com-, mercial advantages, "glvu' assurance that Kansas is destined to be one of he most populous and wealthy States in the Union. The Staple Products. Next in importance to the geographical location and size of the State, to those who are seeking a country to make a home in, the question of what it will produce is an important one.

Every one will want to know what kind of crops we grow in Kansas, and about how they succeed, and we probably could not answer the question better than by presenting the following table, taken from the State census of 1875. It exhibits the diversity of the agricultural crops of Kansas, and their uniform good yield A General Summary, Showing the Number of Acres, Amount and Value ot each Product of the Principal Crops of the Farm, in the State of Kansas, for 1875. Balance for profit Leaving a net profit after paying for the land at the high price of 10 an acre, (it being valuable land immediately joining the town site,) of nearly $10 an acre. This result was obtained by a man who was engaged in business in the town, is not a farmer by profession, and hired all the work done. STATEMENT OF IERIEL WILDAY, of Augusta, Butler County.

Drilled in the Gold Drop, a variety of winter wheat resembling May wheat, on bottom land, in the forks of Walnut and Whitewater creeks. Harvested over sixty-three bushels to the acre. The ground had been in cultivation five years, and had been planted in wheat for several previous seasons. Plowed six to seven inches deep and used one and one-half bushels of seed per acre. Henry Stull, near Augusta, had on a field of twenty-six acres, forty -five bushels per acre.

Wm. Mellison, of Marion Centre, Marion County, raised over sixty bushels of wheat per acre. It stood over five feet high. STATEMENT OF C. KIRLIN, of Newton, Harvey County.

In the latter part of September 1S74, I sowed broadcast and harrowed in the variety of wheat known as ed Genesee. I also sowed in com stubble, and plowed in with a cultivator, some of the same variety, in all about fifty acres. I harvested in the latter part of June, and obtained thirty bushels per acre. This wheat weighed sixty-four pounds to the bushel. The soil is black sandy loam, second bottom prairie, and has been in cultivation two years, the first crop being sod com.

The cost of producing was as follows Seed, per acre Planting, per acre Harvesting and stacking, per acre Threshing, per acre Total cost, per acre. I 2.00 3.CO $775 The Arkansas Valley the Garden of the West. Not only the wonderfully rapid settlement of the country, from a wild expanse of unbroken prairie only three years ago, to the scene of busy towns and thickly dotted farms, with all the accompaniments of a highly advanced state of society, attest the attractiveness of the Upper Arkansas Valley; it is a theme of praise to every one who visits it, and it only needs to be bA, lifts. in this Centennial year promises to exceed in numbers, wealth, and quality of character to develop a new country any previous immigration in the whole western country. This is now the most inviting field in America for immigration, and is developing and increasing in value more rapidly than any other locality.

ITS ATTRACTIVE FEATURES ARE 1st. A large body of beautiful, rich bottom land. Bottom land in all countries and in all ages, has been esteemed the most durable, productive and valuable. 2d. Its remarkable healthfulness.

This is attributable largely to its altitude, near 1,500 feet above the level of the sea at Newton, where the Railroad first enters the Valley, and rising uniformly from seven to eight feet each mile going west, reaching at Larned an altitude of 2,035 feet at the west line of the State of Kansas, 3,425 feet, and at Pueblo, the present western terminus of the Road 4,764 feet. This altitude, with the gently rolling surface of the country, thoroughly drained, and the entire absence of stagnant water or any thing to breed malaria, secure a healthfulness and freedom from disease that alone makes it one of the most attractive localities to make a home in. So important is the question of health, that life, even with wealth, is a continual agony without it. With health, industry and prudence all the blessings of life are attainable. The climate of the Valley has proved particularly beneficial to consumptives, and persons afflicted with affections of the throat, heart disease, and dyspepsia.

Many who have moved here in search of health, whose cases were considered almost hopeless east, have been restored, and many others have been very much benefited. THE GOLDEN MEAN OF CLIMATE. 3. In the attractive features of the Arkansas Valley we will class the climate. There is a very general desire on the part of the people to get away from extremes, to find the golden mean, the temperate line lying between the extremes of heat and cold.

We illustrated in another piace tH6 central position geographically that Kansas occupies in the United States, by the folding of a map of the United States, placing the eastern and western edges together, and folding it then double it from north to south open the map, and you will find that the folds have crossed each other near the centre of Kansas. By tracing the fold across the continent we find it follows the parailef of 38 north latitude, which strikes the Atlantic coast just a little north of Richmond, Virginia, and entirely south of Maryland, giving the latitude of central Kentucky and Virginia; and on the Pacific coast the foM strikes the ocean about one degree south of San Francisco. This practical illustration will show more forcibly than we could by the multiplication of words, that in the Upper Arkansas Valley, in Southwestern Kansas, on the line of the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railroad, lies the golden mean of the continent of North America, the temperate line, equally distant from the Atlantic ocean on the east and the Pacific ocean on the vest from the cold regions on the north, with their long severe winters, requiring the most arduous labor during the short summers to provide for, and the hot enervating south. 1 It is shown that the Arkansas Valley, lying along the 38th parallel of latitude, is far enough south to secure a mild climate, but to fully appreciate its attractive climate one must understand that it is delightfully tempered ana made salubrious and healthy by the rising altitude. To those who are not familiar with it, the foregohg may seem an exaggerated view of this great valley.

But, in truth, it is not easy to exaggerate its merits, for the soil in the Valley is deep and of extraordinary fertility their are no forests or stones to clear away, and the most beautiful farms lie ready made to lhe settlers hands. The range of products include all those of the temperate zone the climate is invigorating and predisposes to labor, and the seasons are very favorable to the labors of the farmer and gardener. Products. Number of A cres. Value of Products.

A mount of Product. 862.953.54 1,892,816 21 19,071,698 15 1,004,295.97 2,396,257.78 236,201.86 1,415,763 06 300,884.03 388,813.21 29,780.83 475,455.58 315.906.55 21,601.98 579,655.51 1,113,326.59 170,466.25 107.621.55 2,980,405.40 10,046,116 i645i497 3,163,287 80,798,769 9,55 9'794i51 268.661 4043,545 320,394 361,386 325,825 447,864 472,227 280.662 9,844,869 218,232 24,002 16,714 897,444 I Winter bush. Rye Spring Wheat Corn Barley Oats Buckwheat Irish Potatoes Sweet Potatoes ii gals. Castor Beans bush. Cotton lbs.

Flaxseed- bush. Hemp lbs. Tobacco Broomcorn Millet and Hungarian Timothy Hay Clover Hay Prairie Hay Timothy pasture Clover pasture Blue Grass pasture Prairie pasture, under 505,681.74 84,883.92 1,932,860.66 2,061.53 23,026.33 24,145.42 49,358.68 659.65 403.78 12,742.16 21,218.38 6,303. r4 599,481.25 5,084.37 1,548.75 31,626.80 745,213.80 STATEMENT OF COL. R.

C. u. 4,749,900.89 $43,970.494 -a8 Evidence of Progress. In i860 Kansas had a population of 107,206 in 1870 it had increased to 364,399, and when the State 1 census was taken in March, 1875, the figures came up to the handsome total of 528,349. If the census had been taken in October instead of March, we are satisfied the figures would have been 50,000 higher.

But we venture the assertion that this is the largest increase, from 1870 to 1875, that can be shown by any State that had an 7 where near the population of Kansas in 1870. 1 1 1 The New Kansas. 1 1 This embraces the western two-thirds of the south half of the State, and owes its development to the building of the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railroad. It is the country lying centrally along the Cottonwood and Arkansas Valleys, and has contributed much more than any other part of the State to swell the figures of the census. This section of country is specially deserving the name of the New Kansas, for until the building of the A.

T. S. F. Railroad up the Arkansas Valley, it was part of the untamed wilderness of the Great American Desert, and only known to the occasional pioneers and freighters who traveled the old Santa Fe Trail on their voyage across the wide ocean of its surface from the settlements on the east to those on the west. BATES, of Marion Centre, Marion county.

I raised five varieties of wheat the past season. The best yield was the Lancaster, 45 bushels per acre. I had twelve acres of Gipsey wheat, which averaged 37 bushels per acre. This latter variety is a bearded white chaff. I drilled it on black loam bottom land, which had been in cultivation five to six years.

I plant com and small grain alternately. I drilled this wheat in on the 15th day of September, and harvested the crop on the 20th day of June. The total cost per acre was as follows Plowing Seed rilling .50 Harvesting 2.25 ttt 'X otl cost per I regard this as a superior variety of wheat for this soil and climate, and I prefer drilling in grain to broadcast sowing. I gave it a fair trial last year. My neighbor sowed the same seed on the same soil, and harvested 25 bushels per acre, while I harvested 37 bushels.

STATEMENT OF ED. R. EOXNELL, of Lamed, Pawnee county, (county new). Thus far we have only had sod crops. Acreage of fall wheat small, 74S acres, hich yielded from 15 to 20 bushels per acre.

Barley, drilled on sod broken last fall, 1S74,) averaged 20 bushels per acre, of good quality. Spring wheat, drilled on sod, averaged 12 bushels per acre, quality good. I broke sod during the month of March and first days of April, which I harrowed twice over, and drilled to oats on the 12th day of April, which yielded 22 bushels per acre, extra quality. The kind of oats were of the barley variety. Sod com yielded an average of 20 bushels per acre, quality good.

The acreage of fall wheat sown this fall is at least 400 per cent, above that of last year, which looks exceedingly well. Soil, a black sandy loam, matted with buffalo grsssi STATEMENT OF J. C. STEWART, of Atlanta, Rice county. About the 21st of September, 1874, 1 sowed a little over nine acres of land with Red May wheat.

The soil is a black loam, or upland prairie, and has been in cultivation three years. The two preceding crops were com. I harvested the crop on the 28th of June, and obtained a yield of over 30S bushels from this field of less than 9 Ji acres; over 30 bushels to th5 acre. The total cost of producing was Fo Putting Harvesting and Total Opinions of Distinguished Men. Twenty years, ago, on Vhe 19th of May, 1856, Charles Sumner, in an eloquent speech delivered in the United States Senate, presented the following graphic picture of the geographical and natural advantages of Kansas Take down your and you will find that the territory of Kansas, more fflian any other region, occupies the middle spot of NoVth America, equally distant from the Atlantic on theeast, and the Pacific on the west; from the frozen waters of Hudsons Bay on the nortn, and the tepid Gulf Stream on the south, constituting the precise territorial centre of the whole vast continent.

To such advantages of situation, on the very highway between two oceans, are added a soil of unsurpassed richness, and a fascinating, undulating beauty of surface, with a health-giving climate, calculated to nurture a powerful and generous people, worthy to be a central pivot of American institutions. Horace Greeley first visited Kansas in May, 1869. In one of his letters to the New York Tribune he said: I like Kansas that is, natural Kansas, better than I expected to. The soil is richer and deeper the timber is more generally diffused; the country more rolling, than I had supposed them. I consider Kansas well watered no Prairie State better.

Springs, streams, creeks, rivers, are quite universal. Later, 1870, he wrote There is no portion of the West which offers better inducements to the agriculturist or stock raiser than that portion of Southern Kansas watered and drained by the Arkansas river. Schuyler Colfax, in one of his letters, styled it The Italy of the American Continent. Gen. T.

W. Sherman in his report on this country in 1866, said The extreme fertility of the soil of the Arkansas Valley and the prospective completion of a railroad through its centre necessitates the early removal of all the Indian tribes from its vicinity. In August, 1868, Louis Aggassiz, the renowned savant, visited Kansas. After his return the Spring-field (Mass.) Republican said Prof. Aggassiz is fairly seething with enthusiasm over his visit to Kansas.

All Brazil was nothing to what he Jias seen of natural beauty and scientific revelation. Edward Everett Hale, in his book on Kansas; Says It is unrivalled for the fertility of its soil, the beauty of its broad prairies, the number of its crystal streams, and the salubrity of the climate. Joseph Arch, the great English philanthropist and agricultural agent, says, in his report to the British Co-Operative Agricultural and Emigration Society: I regard the soil and climate of the Arkansas Valley as the most temperate and attractive, and as offering better inducements to European agriculturalists than any other region in the world, not excepting South America. Baron Von Brunoff, who visited America in 1873, in the interest of the Livonia Colony, wrote I consider the region traversed by the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railroad, as far superior as a wheat growing country to our own, in fact I am free to confess that as a wheat and fruit raising region it surpasses any portion of Southern Russia. Vice-President Wilson last year said, in his address to his friends on his return home: But to you who are young, full of life, hope and ambition, I say go to our newer New England the bright, broad fields of sunny Kansas.

The Valley of the Arkansas river offers you everything that mankind can ask of nature. The editor of the New York Independent says: Kansas is the best advertised and most favorably known of the far Western States. Her prestige is due to three causes; 1st. Her political troubles and warfare for freedom, which elicited universal sympathy; 2d. The fertility of her soil, the superior of which does not exist in the west and 3d.

To the activity of her citizens. We might multiply such testimony if space would permit. The Best Wheat Land Known. According to the carefully compiled statistics of the State Board of Agriculture of Kansas for 1875 there vvere seven counties that had the very large average yield of twenty-two bushels of wheat to the acre, and one county, Sedgwick, reached an average of twenty-three bushels. Of these eight counties, Dickenson, Chase, Marion, McPherson, Harvey, Butler, Sedgwick, Cowley and Sumner, all but Dickenson are in the New Kansas of the Cottonwood and Arkansas Valleys, and all but two directly on the line of the A.

T. S. F. Road. The newer counties directly west of these had an average of fifteen to twenty bushels to the acre, and gave evidence of equaling any other part of the State when the settlers have had a little more time to do the work in a more thorough manner, and can select good seed.

Last year was the first year that wheat was planted in a number of the counties, and there being no wheat in the country the farmers had to take any kind of wheat they could get for seed, and plant it under the most unfavorable circumstances. This year the acreage in winter wheat is nearly three timas as large as last year in the counties named, and thexrop is looking very promising. March of Empire. A Hardly three years have elapsed since the A. T.

S. Fj Road built up the Arkansas Valley, yet so rapid has been the settlement of the country that over one million acres of government land have been taken for homesteads, pre-emptions and timber claims and one-half of a million acres of railroad land have been sold almost entirely to actual settlers, arid towns like Newton, with 1,200 inhabitants; Wichita, with 2,000 Hutchinson, with 1, 5qo; Great Bend, with 1,000 Larned, with 400, and many-smaller ones intervening between, with attractive business houses, mills, superior school houses and churches all bear testimony to the unprecedentedly rapid settlement of this New Kansas. i The Growth of the New The counties given below represent the organized counties in that portion of Kansas which we designate the New Kansas, because it owes its development and growth entirely to the building of the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railroad. The Census was taken in March, 875: I Where From to the New Kansas. We cannot show in a more forcible manner how vide spread the interest is in the New Kansas, developed by the building of the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe R.

than in the figures of the following table, shoving where the settlers came from, as taken by the State census, in March, 1875, to the counties of Chase, Marion, Butler, Harvey, Sedgwick, McPherson, Reno, STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH ROSS, of Newton, Harvey county, formerly of Pittsburgh, Pa. Purchased of the T. S. F.

R. R. Co. Section 27, T. 23, R.

1 west, 640 acres, at 7.75 per acre, on eleven years time. In 1S74 had 50 acres broken and sown to wheat, with tlie following result $3.00 per acre. $150.00 no Population in When Organ ized. Counties. Population in i860.

Population in 870. 75- 75.00 12.50 93-75 12.50 100.00 62.50 8ti tting. Harrowinyr d. Seed, 75 --H Harvesting and stacking Cli Threshing 1,250 bushels. 1.50 .25 s.25 per bush.

per acre, 2.00 .05 per bush. 146 60 si a 1,046 74 437 xi975 768 3i35 uj 4,896 Nebraska New New ork N. Hampshire-North Carolina. 1 Oregon Rhode Island-South Carolina-Tennessee 380 Texas- 233 Vermont 83 Virginia 301 340 61 .243 18 36 188 338 6 1,210 37 7 Arkansas Colorado Con Florida 19 11,690 Indiana 3,111 Iowa 5,599 Kentucky 1,186 100 Maine 134 Maryland 86 274 1,559 Minnesota 401 i95 22 738- $506.25 Cost of land, 50 acres 7.75 per acre, 5S7.50 $893.75 1.15 per bush. bushels wheat Chase Butler Sedgwick Sumner McPherson Reno Rice ....1 Barton Rush Pawnee Edwards 1859 1865 1855 1872 1870 1871 1870 1872 1871 1872 l874 1872 1874 537 9.852.

t46 310 4.925 1 6205 5112 21453 '5099 45 ,006 234 profit $54375 Judge Ross now owns 1,280 acres of railroad land has 524 acres in winter wheat, which is looking splendid. 179 ii i I I I JY aJL 1 1.