One hundred years ago in Kansas, May 6 – 14, 1918:

May 6, 1918

  • Among women who were running newspapers while the men were at war were Mrs. W.E. Payton, Colony Free Press; Mrs. Charles H. Browne, Horton Headlight-Commercial; Miss Dora Adriance, Seneca Courier-Democrat; and Miss Martha Ryan, Wathena Times.

May 8, 1918

  • The Kansas Children’s Home Society met at Topeka.  The society had placed 164 orphans during the year and voted to adopt seven French orphans.

May 10, 1918

  • Governor Capper asked 60,000 Kansas men and boys to enlist in the “Harvest Army.”
  • The Topeka Daily Capital said that gas tractors were “tearing the whole country upside down” in southwestern Kansas and that the famous shortgrass pasturage of that section would soon be gone.  Trainloads of tractors had been shipped in.  Three thousand acres were being broken on one ranch in Morton county.  Another had 11 outfits plowing.  In Rice county 20 tractors were plowing on the Sherman ranch.  Ten tractor outfits were unloaded at Satanta within two days and five at Montezuma in five days.
  • The 35th Division reached Le Havre, France.

May 14, 1918

  • Farmers from 13 counties met at Kinsley and adopted the following wage scale for harvesters:  pitchers and headermen, 50 cents an hour; stackers, 57 1/2 cents an hour; cooks, $3 a day.

Blair Tarr is the Museum Curator of the Kansas State Historical Society. He oversees the three-dimensional collections of the Society, but has special interests in the Civil War, Wichita-made Valentine diners, and Leavenworth's Abernathy Furniture. In the last few years he has also done a lot of cramming on The Great War. He is a past president of the Kansas Museums Association and the Civil War Round Tables of both Kansas City and Eastern Kansas. He is currently a board member of the Heritage League of Greater Kansas City.