In mineral production Kansas ranked 12th among the States of the Union in 1934. The chief products in the order of their values were : petroleum, zinc, coal, cement and natural gas. Petroleum was discovered about 1865 in Miami and Bourbon counties, and about 1892 in Neodesha, Wilson county. There was only slight commercial exploitation before 1900. In 1914 the production was only 3,000,000 barrels, but by 1918 it had jumped to 45,500,000 barrels. A decline then set in which was not checked until new pools were discovered in Cowley and Russell counties in The production rose from 28,836,00o barrels in 1924 to barrels in 1934. The chief producing area is confined to the 27 south-eastern counties. Iola, Allen county, is the centre of an im portant gas field, and the gas yields heat, light and a cheap fuel for smelters, cement works and other manufacturing plants through out a large area. Zinc and lead were produced in Cherokee county, an overlapping of the Joplin field of Missouri. While the field ap proaches exhaustion on the Missouri side, there is a strong pro duction in Kansas; the State's output of zinc in 1934 gave it the rank of second among the States. Coal, which comprised about one-sixth of all the mining enterprises in the State and was the third most important mineral industry, was produced in six eastern and south-eastern counties—the mines of Cherokee and Craw ford counties were most important. Kansas, in 1026, ranked fourth among the States in the production of salt. The beds are found in Hutchinson, Ellsworth, Harper, Rice and Kingman counties. Some was produced by the time process, while the re mainder was mined as rock salt. Building stone of good quality is found in the central part of the State, and the supply of ma terial for cement seems inexhaustible.' The chief products and their quantities for 1925 and 1934 are given in the following table : The larger manufacturing interests of Kansas are based upon the products of the farm. The largest is the slaughtering and packing of meat, which in 1929 had a product valued at $273, 586,689—approximately one-tenth of the total output of the United States. The industry next in importance was the milling of flour, which is widely distributed over the State. The flour and grist mill industry in 1929 gave employment to 2,401 per sons and had a product valued at $121,365,753. In the same year the 15 petroleum refineries operating within the State had an output valued at $98,329,442. Lesser manufacturing in terests in 1929 were railway shop repair and construction ($27, the manufacture of butter, cheese and condensed milk ($26,968,057) ; printing and publishing newspapers and periodi cals ($16,829,411) ; foundry and machine shop products ($15, 206,477); cement ($11,241,899); and bakery products ($11, 668,039). Kansas had, according to the 1929 census of manufac tures, 1,916 industries giving employment to 58,619 persons and a product valued at $751,613,194. Kansas City, the centre of the meat-packing industry, is by far the chief industrial centre of the State. In 1929 its 150 industrial establishments, employing 121, persons, produced products valued at $311,236,022.
The condition of agriculture during the depression was reflected in industry. In 1933 the value of the products of 29 meat packing establishments had shrunk to $97,404,000 and of 99 flour manu factories to $63,594,000. Moreover, 21 petroleum refineries re ported a product worth only $48,801,000, although 389 wells pro duced the largest amount of crude oil in the history of the State's industry.
Kansas is exceedingly well supplied with steam railway facili ties, with an aggregate mileage in 1935 of 9,003. The most im portant systems are the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe ; the Missouri Pacific ; the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific ; the Union Pacific ; the Missouri, Kansas and Texas; the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy; and the St. Louis and San Francisco. These roads give excellent connections with Chicago, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. The first train entered Kansas on the Union Pacific in
1860. In 1923 there were 13 electric inter-urban and street rail ways, operating 582m. of track within the State. With the building of hard-surfaced roads, motor-bus lines are superseding electric railways. The State highway department controlled 8,513m. of roads at the end of 1933. Of this total 5,517m. were surfaced. The total motor vehicle registration for 1934 was 528,664; motor vehicle registration fees in that year totalled $3,130,000.
History.—The territory now included in Kansas was first visited by Europeans in 1541, when Francisco de Coronado led his Spaniards from New Mexico across the buffalo plains in search of the wealth of "Quivira," a region located, by Bandelier and other authorities, in Kansas north-east of the Great Bend of the Ar kansas. Thereafter, save for a brief French occupation, 1719-25, and possibly slight explorations equally inconsequential, Kansas remained in undisturbed possession of the Indians until, in 1803, it passed to the United States (all save the part west of oo° long. and south of the Arkansas river) as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The explorations for the United States of Z. M. Pike (1807) and S. H. Long (1819) tended to confirm old ideas of sandy wastes west of the Mississippi. But with the establish ment of prairie commerce to Santa Fe (New Mexico), the waves of emigration to the Mormon land and to California, the growth of traffic to Salt Lake, and the explorations for a transcontinental railway, Kansas became well known and was taken out of that mythical "Great American Desert" in which, thanks especially to Pike and to Washington Irving, it had been supposed to lie. The trade with Santa Fe began about 1804, although regular caravans were begun only about 1825. This trade is one of the most picturesque chapters in border history ; and picturesque in retro spect, too, is the army of emigrants crossing the continent in "prairie schooners" to California or Utah, of whom almost all went through Kansas.
But this movement of hunters, trappers, traders, Mormons, miners and home-seekers left nothing to show of settlement in Kansas. Before 1854 Kansas was an Indian land, although on its Indian reservations (created in its east part for eastern tribes removed thither after 1830) some few whites resided—mission aries, blacksmiths, agents, farmers supposed to teach the Indians agriculture, and land "squatters"—possibly Boo in all. Ft. Leaven worth was established in 1827, Ft. Scott in 1842, Ft. Riley in 1853. Methodist (1829), Baptist, Quaker, Catholic and Presby terian missions were active by 1837. Importunities to Congress to institute a territorial government began in 1852. This was re alized by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
By that act Kansas, which from 1854 to 1861 included a large part of Colorado, became, for almost a decade, the storm centre of national political passion, and her history of prime significance in the unfolding prologue of the Civil War. Despite the Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30' N. lat. (except in Missouri), slaves were living at the missions and elsewhere, among Indians and whites, in 1854. The "popular sovereignty" principle of the Kansas-Ne braska Act involved a sectional struggle for the new territory. Time showed that the winning of Kansas was a question of the lightest-footed immigrant. Slave-holders were not foot-loose; they had all to lose if they should carry their blacks into Kansas and should nevertheless fail to make it a slave State. Thus the South had to establish slavery by other than actual slave-holders, unless Missouri should act for her to establish it. Although Missouri did not move her slaves, her proximity encouraged border partisans to seek such establishment even without resi dence—by intimidation, election frauds and outrage. This de termined the nature and outcome of the Kansas struggle.