498 Transactions of the American Institute. 



The motive power which keeps up this sustained exodus from 

 Europe, is found in the want of disposable land in Europe, and its 

 high price. 



If this is a fact, does it not behoove us, who are fai'ming on lauds 

 year after year, with barely a return of what we expend, to sell 

 our high price lands here and migrate to the West, with the pro- 

 ceeds buy land and stock our farms, where we would suddenly 

 become independent ? 



I believe that, after six years experience that I have had in Kansas, 

 a man can do better in that State than he can in any other in the 

 Union. 



Having traveled through Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois and several 

 other States, I found that while in Illinois quite a colony was 

 migrating to Kansas, where their friends had been but three years, 

 and had accumulated more money than they had for eight or ten 

 3^ears before. 



Kansas opened to settlement 30th of May, 1854; admitted as a 

 State January 29, 1861; is 207 miles wide, north to south, about 

 400 long, east to Avest; between latitudes thirty-seven degrees and 

 forty degrees; about 80,000 square miles; 50,000,000 acres, one- 

 half yet unsurveyed — millions of acres open to homestead and pre- 

 emption. By an act of Congress, any citizen can get eighty acres 

 of land within the limits of the railroad, and one hundred and sixty 

 acres outside of railroad limits, b}' living on it five years aud paj^ing 

 about eighteen dollars ofiice fees. Government price of lands, pre- 

 empted, per acre, two dollars and fifty cents. Lands in second 

 hands, from one dollar and twenty-five cents to five dollars; timber, 

 five dollars to twenty-five dollars. 



The Union Pacific Eailroad Company has any amount of lands, 

 which they offer at reduced rates, on credits from four to ten years, 

 and free from taxes for six years. Some of their lands are of the 

 highest order. 



The Kickapoo Indian Reservation, in a line of the railroad, situ- 

 ated twenty miles west of Atchinson, is a tract containing upwards 

 of 150,000 acres. 



Those lands have been appraised from three to fifteen dollars 

 per acre, average seven dollars; are of the highest order. The 

 soil is of inexhaustible depth, and unsurpassed fertily for agricul- 

 tural and stock-raising purposes. 



The best school system has been adopted in and through the 

 State. 



