Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1874 — Hard Times in Kansas. [ARTICLE]

Hard Times in Kansas.

From a private letter written by a gentleman living in Southeastern Kansas, we make the following extract, thinking it will not be altogether uninteresting to those readers of The Union who may have been entertaining thoughts about moving west of the Missouri river at a future day :,.

“The dry weather still continues. Farmers have sown wheat down to the past week, [last week in October], and of course it is not all up yet. Times are very hard, ant many are looking forward with appiehension to the future. Money is very scarce. The wheat crops and cattle, which are all we produce for export, find a dull market With cash I could buy plenty of wheat at 50 cents a bushel, fat cows and heifers at $1.25 to $2 per cwt. on foot, corn 85 cents to $1 a bushel, oats 50 cents, potatoes #1.50, sweet potatoes $2 to #2 25, T>eans #3 ToTIS.SO. Dry goods are cheap, groceries dear. The country seems to be all broken up, and everybody on the move. Labor is very cheap. Men dig coal, haul it nine to twelve miles, and receive #2 a ton for it. Men are wandering everywhere for work Ind wages. There is reatly great destitution all through this part of the country, and worse west of ns.— The scarcity of mouey, and low prices ot everything there is to spare, makes business very dull) and the future is dismal and contemplated with dread. I was at Girard yesterday. Nothing but politics and poverty were the topics of debate, except a political temperance meeting was on the tapis. It excited but little interest All these political hobbies look to me like demagogisra, and this and other kindred oue-sided schemes, which are entirely devoid ot statesmanship, are disgusting to people who are exercised over the dread of nudity and short rations, with an uncertain wiuter'-just over the border of time, or over the border of the month, marching upon them. * * * * *

‘‘l see by The Union how the election resulted in your county.— Although I have very little respect for the purity or patriotism of th| leaders of either the old Democratic or Republican parties, yet in the upshot of things, and the outlook for th,p future, I think you, at least, have brave cause to congratulate your friends, and they ought to congratulate you on the re6nlt. On your side are all the offices of the chanty bf political significance

the commissioners, auditor, clerk and assessor. To carry these officers, the representative in the legislature, State senator and ber of Congress—and to defeat the power that has proven so shamefalse to tlfeir solemn pledges, so deaf to the appeals of patriotism, so scornful to the warnings of friends, and so blind to the admonition of the portentous events that were urged upon their attention in vain—are certainly things to be glad for, things to rejoice over. “I think the upshot of the whole business will prove in this way: In the future Mr. Grant will be more and pay more regard to public opinion. The Republican party will be more willing to heed advice. And the next Congress will receive a more practical message—one that ' will not recommend such utopian schemes as a canal from the Rocky Mountains through the great plains to the Missouri river, at a cost of ♦ 150,000,000; a ship canal from some point on the Mississippi over or through the Alleganies, to South Carolina, at an expense ♦150,000,- 1 000 to ♦300,000,000 more, all to be borne by the nation, with a Credit Mobilier tail for the personal benefit and ultimate ruin of Congressmen. The President will advise economy and curtailment of expenses, he will seem to care less about horse and more about the interests of the country; instead of trying to keep his party in power by factitious issues, as I ftm sorry to feel that Senator Morton did in the late canvass in Indiana, President Grant will be more worthy of himself, and laying aside fiction, strategy and buncomb, will show himself, as I believe he is capable of showing himself, a genuine statesman. “I hope there will be no more silly, men to propose a third term President. The people are not prepared for a monarchy, as was evidently intended to foreshadow’ in the proposal of Gen Grant fora third term. The fate of the Imperialist newspaper, started in New York a lew years since, demonstrated that the idea of a monarchy in ttie United States has so few advocates as to render such a theory so tar beneath contempt as hardly to elicit derision. * * The people are not willing to relinquish the right to elect a President to a second term it they so desire—that is, they are not willing to indorse a one-term policy either by limiting it to four years or extending it to six years. This they have repeatedly intimated.”