Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1894 — THIRSTING KANSAS. [ARTICLE]

THIRSTING KANSAS.

Kansas has a prohibition law and even water is scarce. The average Hoosier would feel like a fish out of water or a Gam br in us without beer if suddenly transported to its inhospitable and sumptuary atmosphere, and he would doubtless suffer great discomfort until he learned to drink milk. Efforts to remedy this unhappy condition of affairs are constantly being made by the distillers, brewers and irrigation companies, and the day may be near at hand when the streams will flow with liquid plenty and the warped and thirsty bars shall overflow with the amber fluid so dear at 5 cents a glass. Through the enterprise of Colorado ditch companies what few rivers Knnsasonce had have--been carralled

before they reached the State line and made to give up their life-giving wealth to the Centennial State’s domain before they got beyond the inspiring limits of the dome of the continent. and as a result the situation in Western Kansas has become desperate. Efforts are now making for an extended system of artesian wells. An inexhaustible supply of water is said t 6 underly the entire State that may easily be reached and if the wells do not flow the water will be raised by wind power. Relief from the great droughts that have rendered Kansas agriculture a delusion and a snare seems to be in sight -to a limited'extentat ieaat—in the near future. Still the Indianafarmer will be apt to retain his admiration for his own fertile soil; and the migratioh to the plains of thirsting Kansas does not promise j to be alarming in the spring of ’94 simply because artesian wells have become b practical solution of the question of a reliable water supply on the arid plains of the West. “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush,” and a sure thing in Indiana is worth any number of intangible possibilities on the treeless wastes that lay beyond the Mississippi.