Our party were delighted and surprised to find in this beautiful city of seventeen thousand people such a rush of business. The streets were thronged with teams, the stores crowded with people. Hundreds of new buildings were going up--great stone blocks and elegant residences. We could easily understand this, when we found that Hutchinson was located on three trunk lines and two branch railroads, surrounded by an agricultural country that cannot be excelled, and underlaid with the thickest vein of pure salt in the world. Mr. Bourne, Treasurer of the Empire Loan and Trust Company, and for many years a banker, told me that a great many of the business men of Hutchinson were formerly from New York, and that Eastern capital was rapidly coming in to develop the latent interests here. As an illustration of the rapidly growing commercial importance of Hutchinson, the Santa Fe Railroad Co. has recently issued circulars to shippers of live stock, which places Hutchinson on an equal footing with Kansas City. William Willard Howard, in _Harper’s Weekly_, Nov. 3, 1888, says: “Wise and conservative methods of doing business attract a great deal of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston capital to Kansas properties that are now lying idle. Many Eastern capitalists are sending money to Kansas, but with few exceptions the bulk of the investments are in mortgages on farm property. To men who have made a study of Western securities these mortgages are looked upon as safe and profitable investments; but while they are no doubt beneficial to the individual borrower and lender, they yet cannot benefit Kansas a hundredth part as much as the same money would if used in the proper development of the State’s great resources. The day is rapidly approaching when the vast sums of money now stored in financial centres will be as readily invested in Kansas property as funds are at present put into farm mortgages. The city of Hutchinson has shown how it can be done.”