AN AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY—SCIENTIFIC FARMING—FARMERS, THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE WEST—MODERN IMPROVEMENT—TOPOGRAPHY—SOIL—STATISTICS.

Atchison county is distinctively an agricultural community. There have been some earnest efforts made in the past to develop its mineral resources, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that future efforts in that direction will unlock hidden resources of fabulous value. But in the future, as in the past, agriculture will be the big important dividend producer in this county. Up to this time it is not unfair to say that only the surface of the soil has been scratched. Farming has been the occupation of a very large portion of our people from the days when the first settlers took up their claims and with crude implements, broke the sod, down to this enlightened age, of the riding plow and the traction engine, but scientific husbandry has not been followed on a large scale in this county. Crops have been so easy to produce, on account of rich soil and a favorable climate, that the methods employed in countries not so blessed and of a greater population, have not been followed in the past. This is not an arraignment of the former, for Atchison county has been peculiarly blessed in its possession of an intelligent lot of thrifty farmers. They have toiled and labored early and late; they have built comfortable homes, accumulated fortunes, and are the sturdy, dependable citizens of the county, but for over sixty years they have lacked organization and the prosperous farmers have succeeded because of their own personal initiative, judgment and hard work. As a class they have not made the progress to which they are justly entitled. Those that came early and remained, have in most instances met with rare success, but they worked out their own salvation, unaided by scientific organization.

214One hundred and sixty of them have banded together for mutual help and have secured a county agricultural agent to assist them in this direction, as the rich country in the States east of us have been forced to do. The soil also has an abundance of potash and a creditable amount of phosphorus, so with the proper use of legumes and manure, with the addition of some phosphorus, the fertility of the soil may be increased and maintained indefinitely. If soil washing is stopped and the organic matter in the soil maintained, this county has a soil, that agriculturally speaking, is second to none.

The real aristocracy in the West, will, in future generations, trace its ancestry back to the pioneers, who settled on the land and tilled it. Those who went into trade and the professions when they came to Atchison county prior to 1860, and in subsequent years, have prospered, in part, by their wits, but in the main, on the farmer. The farmers were then, as now, the real wealth producers and so it has come to pass, after these many years, that the farmer “has arrived,” and with the increase in population and the general trend of advancement and improvement in all human activities, farming now stands near the top of the big human enterprises. The desire for organization and co?peration among the farmers is growing everywhere, and it has taken hold of Atchison county in recent years.

The farmer’s life in this county, in the late fifties and early sixties, was a hard and lonely one. During those years many homesteads were pre?mpted, fifteen to twenty-one miles southwest, west and northwest of Atchison, and onto these the young pioneers took their wives and families. There they built their log houses, “broke out” their land, and put it to corn and wheat. There were few neighbors, fewer creature comforts, and no conveniences. It was a solitary life.

This history contains biographical sketches of many of these pioneers, and in them will be found the intimate stories of hardships, privations and discomforts. They came to conquer the resources of nature, and they accomplished what they came after. There were no highways over which to convey their crops when harvested, and the ways to the nearest market were long and dreary ones. It was a two days’ trip over the prairies to Atchison with a load of grain, and there were few ways to economize time, although, fortunately, time was not an object then, as it is in these restless days.

And yet within the short span of the lives of far............