KANSAS 



3203 



KANSAS 



Kankakee is the seat of the Eastern Illinois 

 Hospital for the Insane, the establishment of 

 which demanded $2,000,000. The city has a 

 $300,000 courthouse, a Y. M. C. A. building, a 

 $65,000 City National Bank building and an 

 $85,000 post office. Besides the public schools 

 there are Saint Joseph's Seminary, the Con- 



servatory of Music, a business college and a 

 public library. At Bourbonnais (three miles 

 distant) are located Saint Viateur's College, one 

 of the best-known Roman Catholic theological 

 schools in the West, which has been in existence 

 since 1868, and the Notre Dame Academy, 

 another Roman Catholic institution. D.P.C. 



ANSAS, the central commonwealth 

 in the American Union, a great state whose 

 sunflower-grown prairies have given it its state 

 flower and its popular name of the Sunflower 

 State. It is also known as the Jayhawker 

 State, from some term of obscure origin which 

 was current in the days of the slavery contro- 

 versy, and, in reference to its position, as the 

 Central State. Its official name is taken from 

 that of a tribe of Indians who formerly roamed 

 its prairies. 



Except in the northeast, where the windings 

 of the Missouri River cut off a corner, Kansas 

 is a rectangle. From east to west it measures 

 408 miles, from north to south 208 miles, and 

 it has an area of 82,158 square miles, of which 

 384 are water surface. Thus it ranks in area 

 thirteenth among the states of the Union, 

 while in population it is twenty-second, most 

 of the states which are larger lying to the west 

 of it, and those which are more populous, to 

 the east. 



The People of Kansas. Kansas had in 1910 

 a population of 1,690,949, while the estimated 

 population January 1, 1917, was 1,840,707. At 

 the last Federal census, therefore, it had an 

 average density of 20.7 to the square mile, in 

 which respect it was thirty-second among the 

 states. The number of inhabitants to the 

 square mile is much greater in the east than 

 in the west, where the arid plains will not 

 support a large population. Kansas is not to 

 an important extent an immigrant state, over 

 ninety per cent of the population being Ameri- 

 can born; but Germany, Russia, Sweden, Aus- 

 tria and England are fairly well represented. 

 There are more negroes than in most of the 

 other Northern and Western states, for in the 



troubled times succeeding the War of Seces- 

 sion many colored people flocked into the 

 state; in fact, Kansas has, as befits its central 

 location, a very representative population, set- 

 tlers from practically every part of the South 

 and East having found their way to it in its 

 "boom" days. 



The people in the country far outnumber 

 those in the towns; only about one-fourth of 

 the people live in towns of 2,500 or over. 

 There are no large cities, but a number of very 

 progressive smaller ones, of which Kansas City,, 

 adjoining Kansas City, Mo.; Wichita, the sec- 

 ond largest town; Topeka, the capital; Atchi- 

 son, Leavenworth, Hutchinson, Pittsburg, Cof- 

 feyville, Parsons, Lawrence, Independence and 

 Fort Scott, are prominent. 



Education. From the beginning of its his- 

 tory Kansas showed a keen and intelligent 

 interest in education, and few states have more 

 efficient or more generously-supported school 

 systems. The problem has not been easy, 

 owing to the large rural population, but it has 

 been so well met that only 2.2 per cent of the 

 population are illiterate, Kansas ranking fifth 

 in this respect among the states. 



The school system, at the head of which is 

 a state superintendent of instruction, includes, 

 in addition to the numerous grammar schools, 

 nearly 400 public high schools; the develop- 

 ment in secondary education during the last 

 decade has been remarkable. At least half of 

 these high schools have normal training courses, 

 and more than a quarter of them give such 

 systematic instruction in agriculture as the 

 rural population needs. In many of the rural 

 schools, a large number of which are on the 

 "consolidated" plan (which makes it possible 



