Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1878 — Charming Kansas. [ARTICLE]

Charming Kansas.

Under date of November 17th, 1878, Jasper Kemp wrote to J. M. Wasson, Esq., a letter from which we are permitted to copy as follows: “I am in Kingman county close to our old neighbors, the Boroughs’s. This is not the country I expected to find. There is no corn to sell and not much bay. Mr. Boroughs’s corn will make about five bushels ou an acre. I have to pay twenty cents a bushel for the corn I use and haul it forty to fifty miles. Ido not think this part of Kansas mucli of a corn producing country. It is too dry for it- Wheat is worth fifty cents a bushel. The grasshoppers have taken most that was sown this fall. It is not best for a less than S4OO. It cost me $22 to get here. Drove through with team and was ou the road three days less than six weeks, laying over five days and a half. Oxen and cows are dear. I paid S4O for a cow tliat is hot giving milk. One yoke of oxen and two cows wilt keep a family in fuel. My advice to people in Jaspercounty that have comfortable homes is to stay there. 11 looks pretty thin to have to pay twenty cents a bushel for corn and haul it fifty miles, and burn cattle chips for fuel. Nobody hires work done at any price. People used io say that this is a poor man’s country; and so it is, for if a man comes here poor he is likely to remain poor all his life.”