Kansas is an agricultural State. It has no gold or silver, no iron, and just coal enough to furnish fuel. It is the farmers' and stockmen's State. Its development simply shows what good old Mother Earth, when in her happiest vein, can do. "Agriculture," says Colton, "is the most certain source of strength, wealth, and independence; commerce, in all emergencies, looks to agriculture both for defense and for supply." The growth and prosperity of Kansas afford a striking illustration of what intelligent farmers, with a productive soil and a genial climate for their workshop, can accomplish—what wealth they can create, what enterprise they can stimulate. It is difficult, however, to comprehend what the figures I have given, showing the amounts and values of Kansas products, really represent. When we read that Kansas produced, last year, 194,130,000 bushels of corn, the nine figures set down do not convey any adequate idea of the bulk and weight of this crop. But when it is stated that the corn crop of Kansas for 1885 would fill 485,000 freight cars, and load a train 2,847 miles long—reaching from Ogden, Utah, to Boston—we begin to comprehend what the figures stand for. The wheat crop of the State, last year, was called a failure. It was, for Kansas. And yet it would fill 31,939 grain cars, and load a train 189 miles in length. The oats crop of the State, for the same year, would fill 44,335 cars, and load a train 260 miles long; while the hay crop would load 768,534 cars, making a train 4,510 miles long. These four crops of Kansas, for 1885, would fill 1,329,808 grain cars, and load a train 7,804 miles in length. In other words, the corn, wheat, oats, and hay produced in Kansas last year would load a train reaching from Boston to San Francisco by the Union Pacific route, and back again from San Francisco to Boston by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé route. COMPARATIVE VALUES. In speaking of the value of the farm crops and farm products of Kansas, I can present a dearer idea of the wealth our farmers have digged out of the earth by some comparisons. In 1881 the products of all the gold and silver mines of the United States aggregated only $77,700,000; for 1882 they aggregated $79,300,000; for 1883, $76,200,000; and for 1884, $79,600,000—making a total, for those four years, of $312,800,000. The value of the field crops of Kansas, for the same years, aggregated $411,092,498; and the farm products of the State for the same period, aggregated in value $595,099,894—or very nearly double the aggregate of all the gold and silver products of all the mines of the country. The gold and silver products of the world average about $208,000,000 per annum. The farm products of Kansas for 1885 aggregated $143,577,018, or nearly three-fourths the value of the gold and silver product of the world.