Kansas Prosperity

However spotty and uncertain the business situation may be in the East, in Kansas and to a less degree throughout the agricultural Southwest there is only prosperity. Farmers have shipped their wheat to market at excellent prices and with unusual speed. Country banks have large de posits, and diminishing loans. The question is: What use, if any, will the farmer make of his good fortune?

For one thing, a revival of interest in wheat-growing is already evident. Also, the high price of corn is leading farmers to sell their surplus of it, instead of feeding it to hogs and cattle. In consequence, hogs and steers are being rushed to market also. Some long-headed farmers are therefore planning to devote more attention to livestock in the future.

The Western farmer is paying off mortgages on his land rapidly, and beginning to invest in more land. Farm land, which has been a drug on the market for several years, is now being transferred in lively fashion, and its price in some sections has already risen from 10 to 25%.

Salesmen consider that fall buying in the wheat and corn belt will be particularly good this year. But among others, bond salesmen are beginning to be interested too. The farmer has had a severe lesson in personal extravagance, and gambling in land and oil stocks. Some bond and mortgage houses predict that the farmer will purchase sound invest ment securities in unusual amounts during the coming months.