WHAT has thirty years of prohibition done for us in Kansas? The geography of years ago pictured Kansas as the great American Desert. Hardly a desert now, with thirty-four million acres in cultivation!
Very little indigence in Kansas, with an average of $132 on deposit in our banks for every person in the state! We have $3,000,000,000 worth of property on the tax-roll, assessed on not to exceed seventy per cent of the actual cash value of our resources. Our citizens pay taxes on $1,765 each, a little over $100 more than they paid on a year ago, even though last year was the worst drought season in our history.
Our agriculturists use the best for their own tables, and a plentiful supply of that; but after using all the butter, eggs, and poultry needed, they sold $22,000,000 worth last year—just a little revenue of $7,000,000 more than this government paid for about a third of the total acreage of these United States, the Louisiana purchase.
A great many of our farmers are complaining because they can't pay off their mortgages till they become due. They have decreased their recorded indebtedness from fifty-five per cent to forty-five per cent in the past ten years. At the same time, they have boosted the home-owned securities from $13,000,000 to $67,000,000. The men who own six million head of live stock think none the less of their carriage teams and saddle horses because they now own 35,000 automobiles, one to each forty-five persons in the state.
Every year our state creates new wealth; last year, a wealth of $2,000,000 a day was the record.
With a population of 1,690,000, we have an enrolment of 9,600 students in our state universities, and 7,500 in our denominational schools. Six thousand students attended our state university and agricultural college last year. This is a remarkable showing when compared with Missouri, which has 3,500,000 population and only 3,317 students in her university and agricultural college. Indiana, with about the same population, has 1,961 students in her combined schools.
Few in Jails and Penitentiary
We have only 724 inmates in our state penitentiary, only twelve of whom are women; while Colorado, with half our population, has 800. We have 214 boys in our state reformatory, and a vast majority of the inmates of both penal institutions were transient in our state when they committed their crime. In fact, in our state reformatory we have only eighty-four Kansas boys. The others were residents of other states. And in our Kansas penitentiary we have 152 native Kansans, and the remainder were citizens of other places, or those who had acquired a residence in Kansas.
Whole Counties Without Poor-Farms
Eighteen counties have no poor-farms; and one of our best counties, Barton, has no use for its poor-farm, but turns it into an asset by renting it. Twenty-nine counties have no inmates in their poor-farms. We had only 625 paupers in the state last year, and they are cared for in the poorhouses of seventy-six counties.
Our state has a total bonded indebtedness of $370,000, held by the permanent school fund. We have $169,000 of that indebtedness in cold cash already accumulated, and will have the balance ready to meet the obligation long before the obligation is due.
We boast of no millionaires, though we have billions of wealth, but a cleanly earned wealth more equitably distributed than that of any other state.
Something has contributed to our wonderful prosperity. Something out of the common run of affairs has given us a fifteen per cent increase in our population in the past few years, while older Middle Western states have practically stood still. We have analyzed ourselves, and we are satisfied that prohibition is largely responsible.
Prohibition and States' Rights
Some object to federal enactments, basing their opinion upon states' rights. The same objection was offered when the problem of slavery was being solved. The proposition that national prohibition is contrary to the whole spirit of our government, sounds like the slavery arguments of seventy-five years ago. Human rights and the welfare of humanity must have preference in the settling of the liquor question.
States' rights must not be permitted to interfere with or stand in the way of human rights, of moral rights and better citizenship. States' rights is a lame contention when balanced against the rights of mother and family, and against an endeavor that can only bring a better condition for the human race.
