Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1903 — FORTY MILLIONS LOST. [ARTICLE]

FORTY MILLIONS LOST.

Careful Ketimate of Recent Flood Damage In the West. In seven fearful days the water* of a prairie slope racing into the lower Missouri river have brought to the middle West the greatest loss in life and property of all its history. Hundreds of lives and perhaps $40,000,000 of property have been sacrificed. Fanners, manufacturers, towns, cities, railroads, have all •hared in the tremendous damage—and because fire was seldom present there is no recompensing insurance to make the blow lighter, writes- Charles Moreau Harger In Leslie’s Weekly. The Kaw valley of Kansas is like an outstretched hand. The finger tips are 200 miles from the end of the wrist, where is situated Kansas City, Mo. They are, too, 500 feet higher thau tbe city, and down their converging lengths flow . the prairie streams. As the river joins the Missouri It makes a turn <to the south, and in the bend is Kansas City, Kan., the big sister of the Missoupri town. Th# latter has 50,000 people; tire former 170,000. In the former are tbe stockyards, the packing houses, among the largest in the world; earshops, manufactories and wholesale warehouses and grain elevators. Sixty miles westward, at the joining of palm and wrist, is Topeka, the capital of Kansas. Of its 35,000 people nearly one-third live on the level ground north and south of the river rather than on the high slopes where is the statehouse and where are the beautiful homes of leading citizens. Over a stretch of the richest country in the Weet, where wheat stood waist high and com was peeping through the ground, whers alfalfa fields were In bloom and oats was beginning to wave, 200 mijee long and three to five miles wide, the valley Is swept clear. Not le*s than $10,000,000 will be the farmer*’ loss. The town* will lose another sl,000,000; Topeka, $3,000,000; the railroads, $2,000/000. And all because it rained up among the fingers of the prairie water basin. The towns will suffer most from the flood. The final will recover quickly. On many oMhe submerged acres a crop of corn will yet be planted and harvested. The wheat it not all gone. Not more than one-twentieth of the Kansas crop la directly affected—probably not that. There ha* been much stock drowned, many farms made desolate; the blow la a fearful one. Only tbe flood of 1844 compares with It But tbe West is stouthearted, buoyant; it will heal tbe scars anfl recover. t