Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 87 



A NEIGHBORLY MESSAGE FROM KANSAS. 



(Hon. Arthur Capper, Topeka, Kan.) 



My friends, I account it a great privilege and honor more 

 than of passing moment to be invited to Columbia to talk to this 

 fine gathering of Missouri people. I come to you as to a citizen 

 of a sister state, but I hope the farmers of Missouri may look 

 upon me not altogether as an alien, for while I live in Kansas 

 and love Kansas — a loyal native son should love his mother 

 state — I have been striving for several years to serve the farmers 

 of Missouri as well as the farmers of Kansas to the best of my 

 ability. Your problems have become my problems, and from a 

 purely selfish standpoint, if no other, I am deeply interested in 

 your welfare and your prosperity, in the agricultural progress of 

 Missouri, in the moral, social, economical and political advance- 

 ment of your people. A generation ago these two states held 

 widely divergent views on many important subjects. We have 

 not always traveled the same road. Let us thank God that day 

 has passed. 



Today the people of Missouri and the people of Kansas 

 stand shoulder to shoulder for the same ideals, fighting the same 

 battles for the betterment of the race. The two states are con- 

 fronted by much the same fundamental problems. Missouri, 

 the older state with a large city population, has some advantages 

 and some disadvantages when compared with Kansas, a country 

 state with no metropolis within its borders. I say Missouri 

 has disadvantages. I mean the handicap placed upon the moral 

 and intellectual progress by the large city. I recognize the part 

 the city plays in modern life. I admire the enterprises domi- 

 nating such great centers of industry and commerce as St. Louis 

 and Kansas City; I know the great works and I do not deny 

 their legitimate growth, but I also know the city's slums, the 

 city's vice, the city's floating population, the city's greed, the 

 city's sin of extravagance and the indifference of the average 

 city man to the public good render the problems of the State 

 somewhat more difficult of solution. I do not pretend to say 

 that the man who lives in the great city is any less honest, any 

 less patriotic, any less loyal, any less a good citizen than the 

 man who lives in the country, but I do say that he lives in a 

 different atmosphere. He learns to look upon public affairs 

 from a different angle; he is more engrossed in his own personal 



