John Gunther on Kansas

“The various processes of assimilation, of wrestling a commodious life out of soil, of chaining new communities to the plains, weren't always easy. On one occasion a Russian grand duke came to Kansas to hunt buffalo. The lieutenant governor, honoring him at an official banquet, pointed to a banner on which was emblazoned the state motto, Ad Astra per Aspera, and explained, "Duke, them there words is Latin, and they mean to the stars after a hell of a lot of trouble."”

“Where did Kansas come from? From New England and the South, in a proportion of three or four to one. The abolitionists pumped in, armed with "Beecher's Bibles" (rifles) and the printing press, an equally important weapon, to keep the state free; they waged their own pre-Civil War with the Southerners already there. Everybody knows the story of John Brown of Osawatomie. After the war, emigration from the North continued; any federal veteran was entitled, after 1865, to settle on 160 good acres of Kansas land, and there came- as in Nebraska- a great influx of Grand Army of the Republic officers and men. The first New England stock became diluted with that of Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois. Nevertheless, southern influence has always remained fairly strong, though not so strong as in Missouri, I say. As of today, there are Jim Crow theaters in Topeka. The remarkable thing is that Kansas did become so homgenous. It is an extraordinarily well-integrated state, overwhelmingly "Nordic," middle class, and Protestant. One factor making for homogeneity was of course the ineffable richness of the land. The soil of Kansas absorbed, colored, and made virtually identical the Methodist preachers from Iowa small towns, the younger sons of the Salem clipper captains, workmen from the Susquehanna, and even Ozark crackers from Arkansas. The Kansan is, as has been well said, the most average of all Americans, a kind of common denominator for the entire continent.”

“Really Kansas is two states, or maybe even three. One line of division is of course that which cuts through the Dakotas and Nebraska too, the 98th meridian. Western Kansas is short-grass country, sparsely settled, with scanty rainfall and big mechanized farms, based on wheat. The east is moist, with thick alluvial soil; here we touch the corn belt. In between is an area more difficult to define, "central" Kansas, which is mostly (of course I am oversimplifying) alfalfa and grazing country. South of Kansas is cotton, and north is spring wheat; Kansas grows neither, and its two great crops are of course winter wheat and corn. The gist of the Kansas "story" is, in a way, a struggle between wheat and corn, although plenty of farmers grow both. Corn is cultivated in every county now. It doesn't, however, come anywhere near the importance of wheat in the state's economy, and Kansas is the greatest wheat state in the Union by far. Wheat, as we know, is a crop not without risks; also, in Kansas at least, it used to be called a "lazy man's crop." In the old days you planted it in September, whereupon there was nothing to do until you harvested it the next summer, whereupon you paid off the bank. Not now. Wheat farmers are busy all the year. They have hogs, soy beans, sheep, lespedeza, and sorghums like feterita, to lessen their dependence on wheat, and to provide an income all the year around. Above all, land planted in wheat (until it starts to "joint") may be used for grazing; the wheat is green before the snow comes, and then again in spring; a most remarkable thing in this part of the world is that the miore you pasture wheat, the better will be the wheat produced; it does wheat good to be eaten as it grows!- almost as cropping a beard in an adolescent makes the beard stronger. This technique of growing livestock on growing wheat means, in effect, that the wheat farmer gets two wheat crops a year, one in the form of meat. I asked the Capper editors what distinguished Kansas farmers as against those of any other state. They replied: (1) aggressiveness; (2) willingness to experiment; (3) the gambling instinct, imposed of necessity by the risks of wind and rain; (4) modernity. It may seem a poor figure, but at least one-third of Kansas farms are electrified.”