The very motto of the State indicates the early troubles through which it went, the literal interpretation being “To the stars (and stripes) through difficulties.”  The State is generally known now as the “Sunflower State,” and for many years the sword has given place to the plowshare.  But the very existence of Fort Riley shows that t his was not always the condition of affairs.  Early in the Eighteenth Century, French fur-traders crossed over into Kansas, and, later on, Spanish explorers were struck with the possibilities of the fertile plains.  Local Indian tribes were then at war, but a sense of common danger caused the antagonistic red men to unite, and the white immigrants were massacred in a body.  After the famous Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of thirty years later, the slave issue became a very live one in Kansas, and for some time the State was in a condition bordering upon civil war.  The convention of 1859, at Wyandotte, settled this difficulty, and placed Kansas in the list of anti-slavery States.

Some ten years ago, after Kansas had enjoyed a period of the most unique prosperity, from an agricultural standpoint, the general impression began to prevail that the State was destined to become almost immediately the greatest in the nation.  Corn fields were platted out into town sites, and additions to existing cities were arranged in every direction.  For a time it appeared as though there was little exaggeration in the extravagant forecast of future greatness.  Town lots sold in a most remarkable manner, many valuable corners increasing in value ten and twenty-fold in a single night.  The era of railroad building was coincident with the town boom craze, and Eastern people were so anxious to obtain a share of the enormous profits to be made by speculating in Kansas town lots, that money was telegraphed to agents and banks all over the State, and options on real estate were sold very much on the plan adopted by traders in stocks and bonds in Wall Street.

The greed of some, if not most, of the speculators, soon killed the goose which laid the golden egg.  The boom burst in a most pronounced manner.  People who had lost their heads found them again, and many a farmer who had abandoned agriculture in order to get rich by trading in lots, went back to his plow and his chores, a sadder and wiser, although generally poorer, man.  Many hundreds of thousands of dollars changed hands during the boom.  Exactly who “beat the game,” to use the gambler’s expression, has never been known.  Certain it is, that for every man in Kansas who admits that he made money out of the excitement and inflation, there are at least fifty who say that the boom well-nigh ruined them.