Chapter IV: Conclusion (3)

MR. PRESIDENT, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In one sense, at least, the State Normal School is the most important of our higher educational institutions. The others educate, each year, a number of individuals, and necessarily a limited number, who are, individually, to fill various positions on life’s battle-field. The State Normal educates the educators, and thus by its influence, its system, its method and thought, reaches and shapes the minds of many thousands. There were, last year, 8,342 teachers in the public schools of Kansas, and they controlled and instructed an army of 308,600 children—an army larger than Grant, or Napoleon, or Wellington ever commanded; an army far more difficult to direct than were theirs; an army whose drill, discipline and instruction will exercise, through all the coming years, a larger and a far more important influence over the material and intellectual well-being of humanity than did the victories of these great commanders.

The office of teacher has not, until late years, been regarded as other vocations are. Men were educated in law, or medicine, or theology, or learned the trades of craftsmen, because they expected to make practical use, during their life-time, of the knowledge and skill they acquired. But men and women drifted into the school-room as teachers—and in too many cases still do so—not because they expected to make teaching their business, but because, for the time being, they could find nothing else to do. Many of these teachers were and are, undoubtedly, well qualified for educational work; many of them have achieved marked success in this work, and, growing to like it, have continued in it. But many others, and far the largest number, I fear, of those who engage in teaching as a mere temporary make-shift, do not fairly earn even the poor salaries they are paid. No one can succeed at anything if he does not put his heart and mind into his work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,” is a lesson which the teacher must take to heart, or his or her teaching will come to naught.

And surely there can be no more important work than that of an educator in the schools. Year by year this fact is strengthening in the public mind, and as a result the teacher is growing in public appreciation and pecuniary value.

The underlying spirit, the clear purpose of the State Normal, is not to educate lawyers, or doctors, or ministers, or tradesmen, but to educate, train and fit men and women for the profession of public educators. They who enter this Institution with any other purpose in view, are guilty of a fraud on the generosity of the State. The General Government educates young men, at West Point and Annapolis, for the army and navy. There is no law which compels them, after graduation, to enter either branch of the service. But there is an unwritten code which, appealing to their personal honor, is stronger than any statute, and which compels these graduates of the Nation’s schools to serve two years in its army or navy. They may then resign, but in the event of war, they must promptly tender their services to the Government.

Some such code of ethics should govern graduates of the State Normal. They are educated by the State, as teachers, for the purpose of elevating the standard and qualifications of its public educators, and they should feel in honor bound to fulfill this implied personal obligation.

And surely there can be no nobler ambition than to be a really great teacher—such a teacher, for example, as Arnold of Rugby, or Horace Mann. To rule and shape human minds, to mould and fashion children and youth for the highest and noblest duties of life—is not this a work which should enlist in its service the best heart and brain of all the land?

Last year, in a quiet hamlet in Pennsylvania, an old man died. For more than sixty years he had been a teacher. He had taught in nearly every district of the county where his long and useful life was spent, and half the men of that county, under sixty years of age, have been his pupils. More fully than any other person I have ever known, he was my ideal of what a school master should be—the controlling spirit of a school; its master literally, as well as in name; a firm, strong, just man, encouraging the diffident, punishing the vicious, and inspiring all. Fully six feet in stature, angular, with immense reach of arms, large hands, a noble height and breadth of forehead, and steel-gray eyes sparkling under bristling eye-brows, the heaviest that ever adorned a human face—he was, in the school-room, a formidable figure. Even the later-day “hoodlum,” with his reckless impudence, would have regarded him with awe. He was a strict disciplinarian. He had no mawkish sentimentality about corporal punishment. He delighted, I think, to deal with a vicious, disobedient boy—one of the half-animal and wholly perverse kind, as full of cruelty and meanness as an egg is of meat. When one of this class was enrolled among his pupils, it was wonderful how soon all the perversity of his nature was reduced to subjection.

Yet this old master was not a school-room tyrant. The well-disposed among his pupils held him in affectionate regard, and even the turbulent respected the justice of his decisions and the firmness and sincerity of his rule. He did not take pleasure in inflicting pain. He “trounced” a bad or unruly boy because he regarded trouncing as a necessary and wholesome discipline, which would make him a better man and a better citizen. And the punishments he inflicted were rarely, if ever, undeserved. He was as just as he was stern.

As an instructor, he had mastered the branches he taught. He rarely held a book in his hand while hearing a class. With the range of text-books then in use, he was thoroughly familiar. Every rule or principle or fact they contained was at his tongue’s end. He had a real love for his work, and an affectionate interest in the progress of his pupils. The old, weather-beaten brick school house on the “Commons,” with its rude pine desks and benches, whittled by the jack-knives of more than one generation of boys, and its painted black-board on the wall, was the soul of his earthly interests and ambition.

Amid such surroundings he lived for more than sixty years, engaged in a laborious, often perplexing and wearisome, but always useful work. He sent out into the world thousands of men, disciplined, instructed and moulded by his firm but kindly hands—men who are scattered, to-day, from ocean to ocean, and many of whom have achieved the most distinguished success in life. For among his pupils were James G. Blaine, Senator McMillan, of Minnesota, ex-Congressman Townsend, of Ohio, and a host of others eminent in law, in medicine, in literature, and in business.

He reached a venerable age, dying at eighty-four. And I am sure that his pupils, wheresoever they had wandered, received the news of his death with profound sorrow. For the mention of his name would call up a thousand recollections of him—of his tall, athletic person, of his massive head and shaggy eye-brows, of his homely but intellectual face and his keen and kindly eyes, of his quick, firm, dominating voice, and of his relish for every physical as well as mental enjoyment. For the stern master of the school-room was, on the “Commons,” a boy with the boys—the surest catch, the strongest hand at the bat, and the swiftest runner of them all. Remembering Master Joshua V. Gibbons thus, is it strange that his old pupils, grown to manhood and scattered far and wide, should hold his memory in reverent and tender recollection?

I sincerely hope and trust that the Normal will send out hundreds of teachers who, though they may lack the ample physical powers of Master Gibbons, will possess, in full measure, his strong will and just judgment, his admirable perspicuity and precision as an instructor, his wide range of information, and, above all, his ardent, inspiring, never-flagging love for his work. The influence of even a dozen such teachers, scattered throughout Kansas, would amply repay the State for all the expenditures it has ever made in behalf of this Institution, and spread far and wide the reputation of the Normal as a deserving and useful training school for educators.

GENERAL GRANT—MEMORIAL ADDRESS.

[At Atchison, Kansas, on Saturday, August 8, 1885, the memorial
exercises in honor of General Grant were participated in by all
the civic societies, including the Grand Army of the Republic,
Knights of Pythias, Ancient Order of United Workmen, Catholic
Knights of America, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Knights of
Labor, Irish Benevolent Society, and others. After the funeral
parade, fully five thousand people gathered at Turner Hall Garden.
Mayor Samuel H. Kelsey presided, and addresses were delivered by
Gov. John A. Martin, and Col. Aaron S. Averest. The address of
Gov. Martin is as follows:]

MR. CHAIRMAN, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before this audience with more than ordinary distrust and solicitude. Keenly sensible, at all times, of my deficiencies as a speaker, this consciousness is intensified by the reflection that I am to speak, to-day, of one who is enshrined in the hearts of the American people as no other man, except Washington or Lincoln, ever was; of one whose fame, like the sunlight, flooded all the world, and whose example will warm patriotic hearts and stimulate noble ambitions until the end of recorded time.

And how can I describe, as all men knew him, the great soldier who was to-day borne to his last resting-place with a great Nation as his sorrowful mourners, and the funeral bells of the civilized world tolling the universal sympathy of the brotherhood of men? How can I fittingly testify the tender affection, the reverent respect in which the loyal people of Kansas held Ulysses S. Grant? How can I give expression to the feeling of bereavement which shadows every home and hearth in this great Commonwealth, where live a hundred thousand men who, during the dark days of the civil war, gladly and proudly hailed him as their commander, and made him heir to the honor and glory their valor and patriotism, directed by his consummate ability, had won for the Nation?

The North, at the outbreak of the civil war, was like a blind giant. Its strength was at once revealed. Never before, in any age or country, had there been such a magnificent uprising as was that following the attack on Sumter. From country fields and city workshops, from schools, offices, and marts of commerce, a great host—the very blossom and flower of the youth and manhood of the land—swarmed to the recruiting stations, eager to dare and suffer all things for the cause of the Republic. But leaders were lacking. Engrossed in business, and devoting all its energies to the arts and industries of peace, the loyal North had drawn many of its trained soldiers into civil pursuits, where they had been swallowed up in the rush and clangor of commerce. The South had kept many of its brightest intellects in the army, where such men as Albert Sidney Johnson, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and many others equally brilliant, held high positions. These men at once cast their lot against the Nation that had educated them. And the Republic, thus deserted by the soldiers it had trained, groped blindly through many months of sore disaster, waiting for the leaders who were to direct its heroic armies to final victory.

How slow and torturing the waiting was. How many popular heroes were discovered, and worshipped with passionate devotion for a brief time, only to be revealed, at last, as common clay. But through all these dreadful days, the men who were to lead the Nation to complete triumph were making their way, slowly but surely, to their destined places. At Belmont, in November, 1861, a silent, modest man, just promoted to a Brigadier-Generalship, had fought a battle which gave confidence and courage to the troubled country. At Mill Springs, two months later, another quiet, manly soldier, had won a signal victory over a superior force. In Kentucky, still another soldier was winning confidence and respect by the energy and sagacity of his operations; and a fourth, unknown and unnoted, was looking after the commissary wagons of an army in Arkansas.

It is a notable fact that these four men, who were destined, at the close of the war, to be its recognized leaders, began their service in the West, and that they severally represented the cosmopolitan blood of the American people—Grant being of Scotch ancestry, Sherman of Saxon origin, Thomas springing from the Welsh race, and Sheridan coming of Irish stock. Differing widely in characteristics and temperaments, they not only supplemented each other admirably, but each had the firmest confidence in the resources, skill and courage of all the others. Envy or jealousy never distracted them. The same resolute purpose, the same ardent patriotism, the same devotion to duty, animated them all, and each could confidently rely on the support of all the others.

I do not intend, however, to draw comparisons of their several careers, nor of their personal characteristics. I mention their association because it happened that he who was the chief of this group of great soldiers was, perhaps, the first to clearly recognize the greatness of his associates, and to assign them to the positions in which they filled the continent with the splendor of their achievements. For it was Ulysses S. Grant who designated William T. Sherman as commander of the Army of the Tennessee, placed George H. Thomas at the head of the Army of the Cumberland, and selected Philip H. Sheridan as chief of cavalry of the Army of the Potomac.

Two of these great soldiers yet survive; two have answered their last roll-call on earth. And here, as in every city, town and hamlet throughout the land, the people have assembled to honor the memory of the most distinguished of this group—Ulysses S. Grant.

“There are a few characters,” says Macaulay, “which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests; which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure; which have been weighed in the balance and not found wanting; which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High.” Such a character, it seems to me, was Ulysses S. Grant. From the day he won his first victory at Belmont until he sank to rest at Mt. McGregor, he lived in a light as fierce as that which beats upon a throne. For eight years, he was a soldier; for eight years, the President; and ever since, until the day of his death, the First Citizen of the Republic. What he said or left unsaid, what he did or left undone, during all those years, was noted by busy tongues and pens, many of them envious, many of them hostile, and many more, inspired by that strange perversity of human nature which rejoices to find some weakness, or flaw, or stain in a great man, anxious and eager to catch him doing something mean or unworthy.

And through it all—through the fierce and dangerous fields of war, through the still more perplexing and dangerous fields of politics, and through the trials and temptations of a citizenship so elevated that its very height was dazzling—he moved on, serene, patient, inflexible, unstained. He disarmed partisan malice at last as he had disarmed Pemberton at Vicksburg; he triumphed over the rancor and enmity of civil life as he had routed Bragg at Mission Ridge; and finally, and before his death, all the warring factions of the land, North and South, East and West, surrendered to him their willing allegiance, as did Lee at Appomattox.

The changes in the popular estimate of Grant’s character and abilities were as remarkable as everything else in his wonderful career. It was years before the carping military critics of the world would concede that he was a great soldier. He won his victories by accident, they said; he was a butcher; he was a drunkard; he was a figure-head for Sherman, Thomas, and Sheridan, who planned his campaigns. All this they said, as he swung across the continent from Donelson to Vicksburg, from Vicksburg to Chattanooga, from Chattanooga to Appomattox, conquering, in turn, every great soldier of the Confederacy; leaving behind him, everywhere, campaigns and victories as brilliant and complete as any Napoleon ever planned or won; always equal to the greatest emergencies, always ready for any contingency, and always master of every occasion.

Suddenly, from the army he was transferred to another and an untried field, and became the head of the civil government of the country. The critics derided, the cavilers sneered, the weeping Jeremiahs of politics bewailed. This was monstrous, they said. This “sashed Sphinx” knew nothing of civil affairs; this “man on horseback” was dangerous to the liberties of the country; this “ambitious Cæsar” meditated an empire. But the people trusted Grant in civil life, as his army had trusted him in war. Their faith in his integrity, in his patriotism, in the strong, clean fiber of his sturdy manhood and his sterling honesty, never for one moment hesitated or wavered. And it was never disappointed. He justified their faith by his works. The triumphs he won in the field of political economy were as conspicuous and complete as those he won in war. Upon the civil history of the country he left a record as brilliant and as lasting as was the record of his services as a soldier.

I know that there are some who still insist that he was not a statesman. But statesmanship, I take it, is nothing more or less than the genius of common sense applied in civil government. It is illustrated by what the Americans call “level-headedness” in emergencies; by the judicial quality of seeing both sides, or all sides, of any question, and doing the right and the just thing in dealing with it; by clear comprehension of the ultimate effects of any policy; by courage in withstanding popular clamor, and even in braving public distrust and denunciation, when such clamor, distrust or denunciation is inspired by ill-regulated zeal for a good cause, or unreasoning devotion to a bad one, or by the arts of selfish and ambitious demagogues.

And surely Grant was endowed, in full measure, with these qualities of statesmanship. He was called to the Presidency during one of the stormiest and most perplexing epochs in the history of our government. The honest payment of the public debt; that strange but contagious delusion, the inflation of our paper currency; the settlement of the claims of this country on Great Britain, for damages inflicted by privateers sent out from English ports during the war; the enfranchisement of the Freedmen, and their protection in the enjoyment of the rights conferred upon them by the Constitution; the reorganization of the States lately in the Rebellion; the policy of Indian control and management; the resumption of specie payments—all these great questions, vitally affecting not only the peace and prosperity of the Nation, but the happiness and welfare of all classes of its citizens, Grant was called upon, as the Executive head of the civil government, to discuss and to decide.

Did he falter, or fail, or blunder in dealing with any of them? Read his messages to Congress, and his State papers, in the light of subsequent results, and make answer. His opinions were not only maintained with vigor and courage, but they were defended with logical directness. His insight was as penetrating and his judgment as comprehensive, as his courage was exalted; and time and events have demonstrated not only the honesty and purity of his purposes, but the clearness and sagacity of his mind.

Retiring from the Presidency, he made a tour around the world, and was received everywhere with such honors and enthusiasm as had never before greeted a private citizen. Emperors and kings, great statesmen and great soldiers, were proud to do him homage, and the peoples of every race and tongue, thronging to see him, testified their appreciation of his exalted services in behalf of human liberty and popular government. And in every presence, under all circumstances, he remained the same unostentatious, sincere and modest man, as undazzled by his eminence as he had been patient in his obscurity.

But the firm fiber of his manhood, it seems to me, had never been so clearly revealed as it was during the last year of his life. Suddenly, and in his old age, his competency was swept away, and an insidious disease fastened upon him. Trusting, with characteristic confidence—for he was so incapable of guile or hypocrisy that he never suspected it in others—he was betrayed, and reduced to penury. Without a murmur he gave up everything, not even reserving the trophies and mementoes presented to him by the people of this and other countries. Then, slowly dying, and knowing that death was inevitable, he calmly measured every moment of his ebbing life, and set about his last work. Like Sir Walter Scott, but under many more and far greater difficulties, he became an author in order to repair the wreck of his fortune, and has left behind him a book which will be read by more people than any other volume, except the Bible, that has ever been printed. That his Memoirs will be worthy of his fame, the brief extracts already published conclusively prove. In the field of literature as well as in those of war and of statecraft, he was unconsciously great. He wrote pure, compact, direct and vigorous English. He had the rare faculty of condensing a volume of meaning in a sentence, and of presenting scenes and events with masterly completeness of detail and richness of color.

His book completed, he calmly and patiently awaited the inevitable hour. His last days were as serene as those of his most prosperous years. His courage never faltered. He was patient, gentle, thoughtful of others. “Let no one be distressed on my account,” seemed to be the burden of his thoughts, as it was of the last words his feeble fingers traced on paper. He sent messages of thankfulness and good-will to all. He looked death in the face and did not quail. And so, preserving to the end the simple manhood of his life, his brain unclouded and his heart filled only with loving-kindness and serene content, he drifted away, quietly and peacefully, into the unknown sea that flows round all the world.

The lesson of his life is a lesson for all the generations of men, for it is a lesson of encouragement to the poor, of hope to the unknown, of comfort to the despairing, and of inspiration to the brave, the loyal, the honest and the true-hearted. He had risen from obscurity to the sun-bright heights of fame. He knew the bitterness of want, and the despair of friendlessness. He became the commander of the greatest army ever mustered on the earth, the executive head of the Nation, the familiar associate of the great and powerful of every land. But he never lost his poise, his self-control, his modest dignity, or his manly worth. He lived down, during his lifetime, every calumny and every hate. The party that had denounced, assailed and opposed him, became at last his eulogist. The foemen he had conquered in war became his friends and mourners. And to-day, with reverent sorrow, the civilized world stands uncovered around his grave.

The impress he left upon the age in which he lived can never be effaced. He wrought, during his life, without a thought of dramatic effect, yet his career was crowded with the most dramatic events. There was little of romantic feeling in his nature, yet his life was so wonderful that the story of it will have all the charm of a romance. His bulletins and orders, as a soldier, were never rhetorical, yet they have in them the thunder of cannon and the shouting of the captains. He was never noisily self-assertive; he accepted his appointed place, whether high or low, with equal complacency, and there did his whole duty. In the purity of his life, in the unselfishness of his patriotism, and in the firmness of his action, he resembled George H. Thomas, and to these qualities he added the prompt, bold and resourceful perceptions of William T. Sherman and the energy and dash of Phil. Sheridan.

To do honor to the memory of such a man ought to be a sacred duty. For in honoring him, the Nation honors those qualities of manhood upon which its stability, its glory and its power must forever rest, and which good men and women, the world over, will lovingly teach their children to emulate. The lesson of his life, to millions yet unborn, will be a beacon-light, an inspiration and an example, to guide, to animate and to instruct. Thus, until time shall be no more, the career of Ulysses S. Grant will be a monument, more enduring than any of bronze or of stone, to the worth and glory of free institutions and to the dignity and honor of American citizenship.

KANSAS FARMS AND FARM INTERESTS.

Address delivered at the Smith County Fair, Smith Centre, September
24, 1885.

It has always seemed to me singular, not to say inappropriate, that lawyers, journalists, ministers, physicians and other men having no practical knowledge of farming, should be invited to deliver addresses at agricultural fairs. About plowing, planting, or harvesting; about soils and their treatment; or about any of the every-day work of farmers, such men have little or no practical knowledge. Yet it seems to be the rule to invite them to deliver the addresses on occasions of this character; and, in appearing before you to-day, I plead this custom as my excuse. I came, not because I hoped or believed that I could instruct you in the work or duties of your vocation, but because your committee gave me an invitation so courteous and so kindly, yet so urgent, that I could not, without seeming rudeness, refuse to accept it.

At the beginning, therefore, I desire to say that I am neither a practical nor a theoretical farmer. It occasionally happens, that a man living in town or city has a real love for farm life. Such a man, if he cannot gratify his bent, delights to study the literature of farming, and thus accumulates a great harvest of theory, which, if practically applied, would probably result in the production of enormous cabbages and potatoes, and large crops of cereals, all costing their producer three or four times their market value. A Kansas friend of mine who has this sort of a penchant for farming, and wealth which enables him to gratify it, owns a large farm in one of the eastern counties of the State. Some years ago a number of his friends from the Eastern States came to visit him, and he took them out to see his farm. After they had admired its finely-cultivated fields, its blooded stock, and other attractions, the proud owner escorted the party to the farm-house, where an elaborate luncheon had been prepared for his guests. The bill of fare included delicious milk and—this was before the era of prohibition—sparkling champagne. When the company had assembled, the host said: “Now, gentlemen, here is milk and here is champagne; help yourselves to either; it makes no difference to me—they both cost the same!”

I cannot, however, claim to have even such knowledge of farming as these city farmers may be possessed of. My whole life, except some years of my boyhood, has been passed in towns or cities, where my work and my duties have happened to be. I have never even attempted to conduct a farm. I have, of course, indulged in that universal day-dream of the dwellers in cities or towns—the aspiration for a country home. The merchant in his counting room, the professional man at his desk, the artisan in his workshop, all indulge in this dream of a quiet, peaceful home in the country; a home embowered in trees, where the birds sing, and the breath of the morning is sweet with the perfume of flowers; where the horizon is broad, and the view over meadows, woods and fields is as restful as it is beautiful; and where the roar and clangor and fury of city life are shut out. There is something in the nature of the whole human race—in the blood from our first parents, perhaps, or that of our not far distant progenitors who wandered over the fresh earth, living in tents and pasturing their flocks—that whispers of the green fields and the quiet woods, and fills all our hearts with longing for their beauty and their repose.

Very few, however, realize this dream: I have never been able to. It would be absurd for me, therefore, to talk to practical farmers about the business of their lives, or to assume to instruct them concerning the best methods of farming. You need have no fear that I will attempt to do this.

But there are some things connected with farm life about which I may be able to present suggestions of interest, if not of value. First, then, it seems to me that too many Kansas farmers fail to appreciate the cash value of pleasant surroundings at home, the real worth of farm adornments, the dollars and cents that multiply in flowers and shrubbery on well-kept lawns, and especially the wealth that is accumulating in trees that are growing while they are sleeping.

There is a material and pecuniary side to this question of home adornments, as well as an æsthetic side. The value of a farm—its cash value, I mean—cannot be measured entirely by the fertility of its soil, nor by the crops it produces, nor by the springs and streams that rise or flow upon it. Its market value is affected, far more than many farmers imagine, by the surroundings of its owner’s home. If these resemble the environments of a wretched hovel on the outskirts of a town; if the front door-yard is a pig-sty, and the back door-yard a cattle-pen; if the farm-house stands, bare and desolate, like a brown rock in a desert, beaten upon by sun and storms, by rain and wind, do you think the value of the farm is not impaired? To say nothing of the personal discomfort of such surroundings, do they not involve, also, a cash depreciation of the land?

I am not talking of the homes of farmers who, lately arrived, and possessed of limited means, have located on quarter-sections of raw prairie, and are devoting all of their energies to the work of producing crops. The patient heroism, the true nobility that has been illustrated in the daily lives of thousands of Kansas farmers and Kansas farmers’ wives—men and women who, coming here with hardly a dollar, live in rude dug-outs or cabins, in cruel isolation and bitter poverty, toiling, saving, and enduring patiently the most trying privations, in order that they may at last own a farm and a home—this sort of Kansas heroism, so common and yet so splendid, may justly challenge the applause and admiration of the world. I am speaking of and criticising, not this class of farmers, but the farmer who, having secured a good farm and a fair competency, goes on living his old life of monotonous drudgery, and compels the faithful wife, who has been the companion of his toils and his struggles, to live it with him.

Of what benefit is money, if it does not purchase some of the comforts of life? Of what value are expanding acres and luxuriant crops, if they do not bring in their train the delights of a pleasant and cheerful home?

I know farmers in this State—men abundantly able to build comfortable homes, and to surround them with all that makes life opulent and happy—who seem content to exist amid the meanest and most squalid surroundings. The charm and glory of a beautiful land is all about them, but it touches no responsive chord in their hearts. Their houses are not homes—they are simply places in which to eat and sleep. Summer suns and winter winds blaze and beat upon them. No overhanging trees throw around them the refreshing coolness of their shade. No verdure of grass or perfume of flowers encircles them. No birds make the air about them vocal with music. There they stand, lonely and desolate, avoided by every sweet and beautiful thing in nature; and even the fresh breath of the morning and the gentle breeze of twilight come to them tainted and impure. Every burden and trial of human life must be multiplied and intensified by such dreary surroundings. Yet I know, and all of you probably know, farmers’ homes like unto this I have described.

There is, as I have said, no excuse for the farmer who, after a residence of four or five years in Kansas, continues to live amid such surroundings. He may not be able to build a fine house, but he can at least plant a few trees around his home, and let the rich grass and the lovely flowers of our prairies grow and blossom about his door-yard. All these beautiful things can be had, by every son and daughter of Kansas, without wealth to buy them; and with them will come the music of singing birds, and shelter against sun and wind, and comfort, rest, and a larger and broader view of the beauty of life and the bounty of God.

I have noticed, too, that the farmers who continue to live amid such squalid surroundings at home, are those most likely to indulge in prodigal extravagance, or, more properly, reckless waste, in other directions. They buy expensive reapers, and leave them in the fields where they were last used, to be consumed by rust and rot. Their wagons are never housed, and their plows and harrows are consigned to the first convenient fence-corner. Their horses and cattle shiver in the wintry winds, or find shelter only by gnawing holes in straw-stacks. They have no granaries for their wheat, no cribs for their corn, and so are compelled to sell their products at once, generally at the lowest prices of the year. And having thus invited poverty by waste or carelessness, they call it bad luck, or attribute their misfortunes to the contraction of the currency, or to railroad monopolies, or to any other cause except the real cause—their own lack of order, system, and intelligently-directed energy.

The question of selling farm products, or rather the problem of selling them at the right time, is one of vast importance to farmers. Every farmer ought to study carefully and intelligently, not only the current market reports, but the reports and statistics of the food products of the world—their probable supply, their probable demand. He should know when to sell, and he should have a place in which to store his grain until the right time to sell it comes. Kansas is to-day the most prosperous state in the Union. I make this statement deliberately, and am confident that statistical and census reports will sustain it. But Kansas would be far more prosperous if the barns of her farmers were as creditable to Kansas agriculture as our school houses are to Kansas intelligence. Kansas will never be as prosperous as the State ought to be, until every prairie slope within her borders is adorned with a Pennsylvania barn. You all know what a Pennsylvania barn is, I suppose. I mean one of the great double-decker barns, built on the side of a hill, the first story capacious enough to stable all the horses and cattle belonging on a section of land; the second story—on a level with the ground on the upper side—vast enough to take in all the hay and grain of the farm, and furnish, also, storage room for all its vehicles and implements. A noble barn is the old Keystone double-decker, and the Kansas farmer who has one of them is fully armed and equipped, not only against the elements, but against the “bears” of the grain markets. Forehanded, and with such a barn, he can wait until he gets his price for his grain or his stock. He is not compelled to accept the prices fixed by the gamblers in options. With such barns scattered all over the prairies of Kansas, the Kansas farmers would rule the markets, would make the price of their own products.

Another thing the farmers of Kansas want to pay greater attention to, is road-making. Years ago, when the farms were scattered, and the roads ran along the divides, we had, without cost or labor, the best natural highways on the continent. But the occupancy of the country, and the fences or the herd law, have diverted the roads to the section lines, and, as a result, our highways are generally execrable. The losses entailed upon the farmers of Kansas, growing out of these wretched roads, are enormous. They foot up in a dozen different directions—in loss of valuable time, in injury of horses, in breakage of vehicles, in destruction of harness, in a multiplication of trips, and in many other ways. Above all other men, the farmers of Kansas require good roads. Increased tax levies for public highways, and an intelligent expenditure of these levies, is one of the great needs of Kansas. A marked decrease of the prevalent Kansas mania for new railroads, and an equally marked increase of public interest in the construction of decent country roads, would be a wholesome reform of incalculable advantage to the farmers of Kansas. The law most needed in this State is a good road law—an act that will put the building or repairing of our public highways under competent direction, and furnish ample means for such work, and thus give to Kansas a system of durable roads, macadamized wherever the ground is soggy, and with solid stone culverts or bridges wherever these are necessary.

The four questions I have thus discussed—the pecuniary value of home adornments, the exposure of farm implements to the mercy of the elements, the importance of commodious barns, and the necessity of improved roads—are of direct personal and practical interest to every Kansas farmer. And what interests the farmers of Kansas, must be of moment to every citizen. For Kansas is an agricultural country. The prosperity of this State is based upon its farm products. Our mineral resources are, in comparison with our agricultural productions, small and unimportant. We have some lead in the southeast; we have coal in many sections, and the supply is equal to the wants of our people; we have salt and gypsum in abundance. But the wealth of Kansas lies in our harvest fields. Our prosperity is based, primarily, upon the plow. Kansas embraces over fifty-two million acres of land. Fully fifty million acres of this vast area of country is capable of producing luxuriant crops. Only a little over thirteen million acres—less than one-fourth of the entire area—is now under cultivation, and the land classed as “under cultivation” includes nearly five million acres of prairie grass. Practically, therefore, only about seven million acres of Kansas soil have been touched by the plow. Yet the products this year will aggregate fully ten million bushels of wheat, two hundred million bushels of corn, six million bushels of rye, three million bushels of oats, and seven million bushels of Irish potatoes—making two hundred and twenty-six million bushels of these five crops.

It is not possible, as yet, to estimate the value of the field crops of Kansas, including grasses, for the year 1885; but their value for the previous year aggregated $104,945,773.

Kansas had last year 5,444,391 head of stock, valued at $115,645,050.

We have planted nearly twenty-two million fruit trees, and have over one hundred and thirty thousand acres of artificial forest trees.

The assessed valuation of the property of the State, for the year 1885, aggregates $248,820,262, an increase over last year of $11,806,505. The real estate aggregates in value $123,000,000, an increase of nearly six millions over the valuation of last year. The railroad property of the State is valued at $30,367,820, an increase of $1,911,912; and we have 4,180 miles of completed railway within our borders.

This is all the growth of thirty years. I could, perhaps, more accurately say of twenty years; for Kansas hardly began to grow until the spring of 1865, when the home-returning soldiers and the railroads came together. The development of Kansas during these two decades challenges comparison with that of any country in the world. An irresistible impulse seems to have brought hither the best blood and brain of all the nations of the world. Our schools, colleges, universities and churches rival those of the oldest countries, and railways, traversing nearly every organized county, bring a market to every farmer’s granary.

It is asked now and then, Can this wonderful growth continue? Why should it not continue? Less than one-fourth of the entire area of Kansas, as I have stated, is under cultivation; there are millions of acres yet unoccupied; the immigration to Kansas this year is unprecedented; and the human energy which is assembling here with such unprecedented rapidity, must produce results even more remarkable than those wrought during the past two decades. The development of the present is only the dawn of that which is to be. The Kansas of to-day only foreshadows the Kansas of the future.

I make this statement with a full realization of its meaning. I know there are many, even of our own people, who believe that a very large section of the western third of our State can never be successfully tilled. But actual experiment is shattering this theory. The line marking the western boundary of agricultural productiveness is a myth. It goes westward with the settlements. The rain-belt travels with the plow. It has been located on half a dozen degrees of longitude. It was on the Blue river when I came to the State, nearly thirty years ago. The valleys of the Republican, the Arkansas and the Solomon were then regarded as rainless deserts. But the line moved westward, year by year, until it reached the hundredth meridian. Beyond this, by almost universal assent, it was declared that successful farming was not possible. Yet in the northern tier, three counties lying west of that line, and running through to Colorado, are teeming with a busy and aggressive population; and these people point to crops of wheat and corn equaling any ever grown elsewhere, as the most convincing answer that can be made to the assertion that western Kansas is sterile and rainless. On the far southwestern line the development and the harvests produced are equally astonishing and convincing. The same wide and beautiful valleys, the same rich uplands, the same deep and productive soil, the same luxuriant vegetation, are the characteristics of these far-western counties, as they are of the counties watered by the Delaware, the Kansas, and the Neosho; and the same blue sky and pure air bends over and envelops the whole of this great State of ours, from the Missouri to the Colorado line.

With this fair land as his home, with this productive soil as his workshop, and with the rare and healthful atmosphere of Kansas to stimulate his energy, the farmer of this State ought to be contented and prosperous. Certainly, in no other State have the opportunities for securing pleasant homes and productive farms been so favorable and so numerous as here in Kansas. Certainly, in no other land has so much material wealth been dug out of the earth in so brief a time, as here in Kansas. Certainly, in no other country under the shining stars have so many poor and struggling men won modest fortunes by honest industry, as here in Kansas. And certainly, the future of Kansas promises a growth and development as rapid, and as substantial, as that of the past.

I speak of the future thus confidently, because, after all, the richest heritage of Kansas is the imperial manhood of its citizenship. No State in the Union, no country in the world, can boast of a braver or more intelligent, enterprising, liberty-loving, and law-respecting population. From the date of its organization up to the present time, Kansas has been receiving the best blood and brain of the civilized world. Hither, thirty years ago, came thronging a host of bright and generous men, to protect this fair land against the aggressions of slavery. Here, six years before Mr. Lincoln issued his first call for volunteers, the war which was to strike from the slave his shackles, began; and here, defying alike the power and blandishments of the National Administration, the opponents of slavery won their first victory. Hither, the Union saved and freedom nationalized, thronged a great army of soldiers—men who had fought on every battle-field of the late war, and who, during four years of peril and of hardship, had illustrated by calm and patient endurance, and by the most magnificent courage and patriotism, the grandest virtues of American manhood. Here is a people who have wiped a desert from the map of the continent, and replaced it with a garden. Here are the men who have pushed the plains to the foot-hills of the mountains; who have dotted the treeless prairies with forests; and who have made the solitudes of the bison the home of the plow.

Of what achievements or conquests in the arts or industries of peace is such a population not capable? Where are the limits that bound the progress and development of a State having such a citizenship?

I do not believe that anyone now living can guess or gauge the possibilities of this great State of ours. A century hence Kansas may reach the full stature of its material growth; but not during our lifetime will this maturity of development be witnessed; not during our day and generation will this young commonwealth reach a point where further advance is no longer possible. The Kansan of the future can say of his State, as does the Kansan of to-day:

“This is the land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o’er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons imparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age and love-exalted youth.
This is the spot of earth supremely blest—
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.”

AMERICAN SOLDIERS.

Address of welcome, delivered at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Reunion,
Topeka, Kansas, September 29, 1885.

COMMANDER STEWART, COMRADES OF THE GRAND ARMY, AND SOLDIERS OF THE UNION: To me has been assigned the delightful duty of welcoming to the Capital this great multitude of patriot heroes. Yet it seems to me that words of welcome are unnecessary. There is no town or city within the boundaries of Kansas where the soldiers of the Union would not be greeted as friends or comrades, and honored as guests; and I know that the loyal people of the Capital, one and all, will welcome you with a hand-clasp far more eloquent than speech.

They will welcome you as men who brought from the gloom of the past the lights of the present and the hopes of the future. They will welcome you as soldiers who rescued the Republic from anarchy; as heroes who brought Union, Liberty and Peace out of the smoke and flames of civil war. They will welcome you as fellow-citizens whose energy, enterprise and industry are building up, here in the heart of the Continent, the greatest and most prosperous State in the Union. One and all, they will welcome and salute you.

You are survivors of the greatest war the world has ever known. You were prominent actors in the grandest epoch of history. You fought for the noblest cause that ever warmed the hearts and nerved the arms of heroes. You have lived to witness the grandeur of your triumph, and the growth and prosperity it has brought in its train. You are here to meet old comrades; to revive recollections of scenes and events that should never be forgotten; to sing the old songs; to touch elbows again in the steadily dwindling line that once reached from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic. And I am glad and proud to say to you: “All hail! and welcome, thrice welcome, to the Capital!”

I know that dyspeptic, envious and small-souled people regard the fact that soldiers’ reunions are steadily increasing in interest, with ill-concealed distrust. Some years ago, following a meeting similar to this, a gentleman said to me: “The boys have had a pleasant time, no doubt. But of what practical benefit are these great gatherings of soldiers? They keep alive, it seems to me, recollections of a period of strife and bloodshed, and what good does that do?”

I replied: “My friend, did you ever object to the celebration of the Fourth of July? That keeps alive memories of a period of strife and bloodshed. Yet we have been celebrating the ‘Glorious Fourth’ for over a hundred years, and nobody has ever objected that it did no good to celebrate it.”

Similar objections are sometimes made to the “Grand Army of the Republic.” It is said that such an organization not only keeps alive the memories of the war, but perpetuates the feelings and prejudices of a period when the land was aflame with passion; and that there is something of egotism in these associations and assemblages of men to celebrate events in which they were actors.

For one, acknowledging that soldiers’ reunions and the Grand Army organization do all this, and are all this, I make no apologies for them. On the contrary, I rejoice that the Grand Army is growing more popular with the men who wore the blue, and that soldiers’ reunions and camp-fires are held with more and more frequency. When the people cease to remember that there have been times when men cheerfully periled health and life for a good cause, they cease to believe in such a thing as patriotism. There is something in example, and these organizations of old soldiers, these reunions of old soldiers, reviving recollections of the old days, when nearly three million men stepped out of the monotony of commonplace lives, and glorified a glorious cause by patient endurance of hardships and privations, and the heroism of death—this example cannot be without its uses in teaching the younger generations of Americans, enjoying the birthright won at Yorktown and preserved at Appomattox, that love of country, courage, and devotion to duty should endure forever.

And why should not the memories of the late war be kept alive? Was there ever, since the morning stars first sang together, a more patriotic, a holier, a greater war than that waged for the Union? We have been celebrating the Declaration of Independence, as I have said, for over a century. Yet the total free population of the American Colonies, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, was, in round numbers, 369,000 less than the number of Union soldiers mustered into service during the late civil war. The Continental army, during the Revolutionary war, never exceeded 76,000 men, present and absent; our army, during the war of 1812, aggregated only 38,186; and the total force of the United States during the war with Mexico was only 116,321. During the war of the Rebellion, 2,772,408 men enlisted in the Union army, and from January 1st, 1863, to May 1st, 1865, our army numbered, at all times, nearly 1,000,000 trained soldiers. Kansas alone furnished nearly half as many men for the Union army as were present for duty during any year of the Revolutionary struggle, under Washington.

There were more Union soldiers killed in battle during the war of the Rebellion, and more died of wounds received in battle, than were present for duty during any previous war in which the United States has been engaged. In the National Cemeteries, 318,870 soldiers of the Union are buried—more than four times as many as were enlisted during the Revolutionary war. The latest and most accurate statements show that 44,238 Union soldiers were killed in battle; 49,205 died of wounds received in battle; 9,058 were drowned or accidentally killed; 184 were executed by the enemy; 224,899 died of disease, and 14,155 of causes not stated—making a total of 341,719.

There were 49 engagements, large and small, during the eight years of the Revolution. There were 2,261 during the four years of the Rebellion. And in each of 149 of these the Union loss exceeded 500 men killed and wounded; in each of eighty-eight it was over 1,000; in fifty-two, over 2,000; in twenty-three, over 5,000; in fourteen, over 10,000; and in each of four, over 20,000.

The engagements of the war of 1812 numbered only 89, and the casualties aggregated 1,877 killed, and 3,737 wounded—a total of 5,614.