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Show 1 By EDWARD EMERINE ! WNU Feature ' "We do nut live, but only stay, And are too poor to get away." Life on the frontier is al-! al-! ways hard. It was doubly hard in Kansas where the pio-! pio-! neers had to endure border wars over slavery, bad men, drouths, grasshoppers, bliz-i bliz-i zards and dust storms, in ad-j ad-j dition to the ordinary hard-! hard-! ships of a new country. But I they stuck it out. j They stuck it out and "sticking ) it out" until the battle is won is still I a characteristic of Kansas people, j Perhaps it was the crucible of those early years that steeled and tempered tem-pered the Kansas spirit which conquered con-quered the prairies. They stuck it out, rose above the trials of the hour and developed that rare sense of humor which enables Kansas people to laugh at themselves and the foibles foi-bles of mankind. Despite Coronado and other Span-! Span-! ish explorers, and French traders, Kansas remained Indian and buffalo buf-falo country for two centuries after English colonists settled in New England and Virginia. Slow in Settlement. It was not until the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed in 1854 that the land was opened to settlement. At that time the entire white population popu-lation of Kansas consisted of about 700 soldiers, based at Forts Leavenworth Leaven-worth and Riley and Walnut Creek ! ; -I - : , s. : s s ; - s $ - l i x " ' s i s i ' - ' v - I -; i ! M i - r , , . CHIEF EXECUTIVE . . . Gov. Andrew F. Schoeppel is a native Kansan, born in Claflin in Barton county. A former lawyer and veteran vet-eran of World War I, he was a member of the Kansas Corporation Corpora-tion commission until he was elected governor in 1942. post office on the Sante Fe Trail, and an equal number of civilians at Indian missions, stage stations and trading posts. The question of slavery immediately im-mediately plunged Kansas into bloodshed. Even before the Kansas-Nebraska bill was signed, Missourians who favored slavery slav-ery slipped across the border and founded Leavenworth and Atchison. But Eli Thayer found 29 men in New England who were willing to emigrate to Kansas, settle on the prairie, be neighbors to Indians and fight slaveholders. Dr. Charles Robinson Rob-inson brought a second party of anti-slavery anti-slavery emigrants, including four musicians, from Boston to settle at Lawrence. Congress had decreed that Kansas would decide the question ques-tion of slavery for itself. And Kan-sans Kan-sans set out to do it in their own way. I H r, 'r1'? ' ' f - ll KvH h? .jus !4 w ' M ! BREAD BASKET OF THE WORLD . . . Kansas is the No. 1 wheat producing state of the nation, yielding almost a fourth of the entire U. S. crop. Whether for or against slavery, Kansas settlers lived in log huts, shake houses, sod shanties, dugouts dug-outs and other humble shelters, using us-ing grass, brush and buffalo chips for fuel. The "sod crop" was corn and corn they atel Corn bread, parched corn, hominy, corn-meal mush they boiled corn, fried it, baked it, stewed it. Fortunately, they had beef, pork and milk to go with it, and a coffee substitute, made of dried sweet potatoes, dried green okra and parched wheat ground together and boiled. Would Kansas be 'slave or free territory? On its first election day in 1855, hundreds of Missourians "with rifles on their shoulders, six-shooters six-shooters in their belts and a liberal supply of whiskey in their wagons" wag-ons" crossed the border and voted. All of the pro-slavery candidates except one were elected! And when the "bogus legislature" met in July, the Missouri slave code was the law of Kansas. The curtain-raiser to the Civil war was fought in Kansas. Men were murdered in cold blood. Border ruffians ravaged anti-slavery anti-slavery settlements. John Brown and his sons took up the challenge chal-lenge and took after the slaveholders. slave-holders. "Bleeding Kansas" was no misnomer during the next few yeirs. But gradually the anti-slavery forces won and Kansas became a free stale. Only two slaves were listed in the census of 1860. Many notables have trod the Kansas Kan-sas stage. Heading the list is Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, great military mili-tary leader of World War II. Frontier Personages. The history of the Old West is represented rep-resented by such Kansas personages as "Wild Bill" Hickock, the marshal mar-shal of Abilene, and Buffalo Bill, the scout. Carrie Nation and her saloon-busting hatchet also brought the state into the limelight. In Statuary hall in the nation's capitol is the figure of John J. In-galls, In-galls, senator, orator, essayist, poet. Ed Howe, the sage of Potato Hill, and his contemporaries, Walt Mason Ma-son and William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette, were Kansas folks. But the unknown soldier, the unhonored hero, of Kansas is the man who introduced the plow. He was not a glamorous figure, and his hands were gnarled and blistered and bent to the shape of a plow handle. Kansas is ideally situated for agriculture, but it took a plow to break the sod. Where William F. Cody used to hunt buffalo are the greatest wheat lands in the world. Kansas produces more wheat than any other state in the union almost one-fourth of the entire United States crop. It is first in milling and wheat storage. Corn, alfalfa, hay, sorghum, broom corn, Sudan grass, potatoes, sugar beets, barley, flax, rye, soybeans, vegetables, fruits, truck crops Kansas produces pro-duces almost everything that is grown on a farm. Rich in Resources. Kansas finds riches below as well as above the surface of her rolling, fertile acres. Kansas is one of the leaders in oil production, with its companion, natural gas. Lead and zinc are mined extensively. Coal is produced in most parts of the state. Under Kansas is enough salt to last 500,000 years! Volcanic ash, gypsum, limestone, clays and other resources are mined in Kansas. Kan-sas. It is an important source of helium gas. As the geological center of the United States, Kansas was and is the land of trails. Those who sought land in Oregon, gold in California or Colorado, trade with the Mexicans in Santa Fe, or cattle from Texas, used Kansas Kan-sas as a highway. The Santa Fe Trail, the California and Oregon Trails, the Butterfield Trail, the Smoky Hill Route, Overland Over-land Trails, Pony Express Route, Jim Lane Trail and the cattle trails from Texas, including the Chisholm, Old Shawnee, Ellsworth and Western West-ern Trails, all used Kansas for a right-of-way. Kansas today bears some of the scars of long ago ruts made by thousands of covered wagons and hooves of cattle among them. Lonely Lone-ly graves still may be found, and bridle bits, parts of wagons and other oth-er mute reminders of the past are picked up occasionally by grandchildren grandchil-dren of the pioneers. Kansas is great, not only as one of the food-producing states of the nation, but as a great family of people who retain much of the pioneer pio-neer spirit. They stuck it out a few generations ago. And Kansans are still "sticking it out" for freedom of thought and of action, and for the right to progress by their own efforts. lfte ft wJsmY Jiililai I -wxtrSZ ;j ciiv'"-;.i.i i vav:'?'?5 Wichita . : . v-i |