Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1903 — CONQUEST OF WHEAT FIELDS. [ARTICLE]

CONQUEST OF WHEAT FIELDS.

The Annual Battle Between Man and Nature in Kansas The annual battle between man and nature fought in the wheat fields of Kansas ended about the 20th of July. The army of conquest, equipped with harvesters and thrasher?, entered at the southern portion of the State, and, sweeping everything before it, progressed north-ward until the Sunflower State was marked by nothing but stacks of grain and fields of stubble. Over vast areas the sheaves of wheat were thraehed out as fast as they were garnered, while in many counties the wheat was left standing in shocks ready for the thrasher in tho fall. According to Philip Eastman, writing in the Review of Reviews for August, this year’s wheat harvest in Kansas waa the largest in the history of the State and the greatest by far of any State in ther Union. Time was when the name of Kansas was associated in the popular mind with corn. But the famous “wheat belt” of the West now includes thirtycounties in Kansas, extending from the northern to the southern boundary. Not a county in this belt raises less than a million bushelc annually. It ia pointed out that the yield of Sumuer County alone—*l,Bl2,lo2 bushels —is more than the combined yields of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Mississippi. Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Alabama and New Jersey. Barton County, which ranks next to Sumner, called for 4,400 extra men and more than 2,000 additional horses this year to harvest her crop of wheat. In 1901 Kansas broke her own record In the matter of wheat crops and led the list of all the States, with more than 99,000,000 bushels. This was 19,000,000 more bushels than were raised in the State of Minnesota, although the acreage of wheat sown in Minnesota wus greater than that of Kansas by 853,808 acres.