The vacancy in the United States Senate occasioned by the death of Senator Plumb was filled on the 1st of January, 1892, by the appointment by Governor Humphrey of Hon. Bishop W. Perkins, making the third time in the history of the State when this office had been filled by appointment of the Governor. Mr. Perkins had served three years in Army of the Union, in line and staff positions; and in Kansas on the judicial bench and in the lower House of Congress.

In November, 1896, the bronze bust of Senator Preston B. Plumb was installed in the Governor's room in the Capitol at Topeka, the gift of his widow.

SUMMARY.

1. William A. Peffer succeeds John J. Ingalls as United States Senator.

2. Among the important Acts of the Legislature were those pro viding for the encouragement of irrigation; for an eighthour working day; creating the office of bank commissioner; in regard to land ownership by aliens.

3. Alfalfa recognized as an important, Kansas product.

4. Colonel N. S. Goss died at Neosho Falls, March 10, 1891. 5. Former citizens of Russia in Kansas send relief to the famine sufferers in that empire.

6. Rain makers experiment with the heavens above Kansas. 7. Deaths of Samuel C. Pomeroy, Colonel N. S. Goss, John A. Anderson, Senator Plumb and S. N. Wood recorded.

CHAPTER XXXII.

ANNALS OF 1892.

359. Political Revolution Complete.-The year 1892 was the year of a Presidential election, a political year, and business was affected in Kansas, as in all the rest of the country. In Kansas the political revolution was made complete. The entire People's Party State ticket was elected as follows: Governor, Lorenzo D. Lewelling; Lieutenant-Governor, Percy Daniels; Secretary of State, R. S. Osborn; Auditor, Van Buren Prather; Treasurer, W. H. Biddle; AttorneyGeneral, J. T. Little; Superintendent of Public Instruction, Henry N. Gaines; Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, S. H. Allen; Congressman-at-Large, William A. Harris.

Governor Lewelling.

Kansas cast her ten electoral votes for James B. Weaver, of Iowa, for President, and James G. Fields, of Virginia, for Vice-President. The other States casting electoral votes with Kansas were Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and North Dakota, twenty-two votes in all

The eight Congressmen to which Kansas became entitled under the census of 1890, and first elected in 1892, were William A. Harris, Congressman-at-Large; Case Broderick, First District; E. H. Funston, Second District; T. J.

Hudson, Third District; Charles Curtis, Fourth District; John Davis, Fifth District; William Baker, Sixth District; Jerry Simpson, Seventh District. The Congressional delegation stood five People's Party members and three Republicans.

360. Cyclone at Harper and Wellington.-On the 27th of May, 1892, the towns of Harper and Wellington were visited by a tornado, and ten persons killed, a large number wounded, and a vast amount of property destroyed. The storm was among the most destructive of the many which have visited the State, and excited special horror from the fact that the fatal bolt was sped after nightfall; at Wellington, within a few minutes of nine o'clock.

361. Science and the Cyclone.-What has been called the "Kansas cyclone" is not peculiar to Kansas, but has been known in all parts of the United States; more especially in the great area between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains.

The science of meteorology, long as man has watched the skies, is among the younger sciences. In the brief period that meteorogical observations have been made in Kansas, the phenomena of the " whirling storm," as it has been called, has been very carefully noted. It has been observed that these calamitous visitations accompany the transition from the temperature of winter to spring, beginning in the southern States and advancing northward with the spring, several of the most notable in Kansas having arrived in May. The period of cyclones, or tornadoes (as they have. been called both), is from noon to sunset; and while they are not unknown after darkness has fallen, they may be

called uncommon. The course of the storm is, in a vast majority of cases, from southwest to northeast, and the appearances accompanying it always the same. The hours of murky lowering in the distant sky; the heavy air; the sudden falling of the barometer; the cellar-like chill; and then the apparition of the enormous funnel-shaped cloud, moving in its zigzag course, thrusting down its wavering trunk like that of an elephant to the earth, its huge, black bulk mounting to the clouds, and boiling and whirling within itself; drawing to its blackness the lightest and heaviest of objects; not only overthrowing human habitations, but grinding and breaking them to fragments. All these visible terrors attend the storm. Its track is narrow, its passage swift. It is here, and, with a frightful roar, it has gone, followed after by a deluge of rain. Often in its track, as if deflected by some heavy object, it bounds into the air, striking the earth again after a considerable interval, until at last it rises in the viewless and trackless atmosphere, and is lost in the "abyss of heaven."

It is believed and hoped that, while these dread visitants will continue to come unbidden, they will not always come unheralded, and that the advance of science will enable men to foretell and, even at long distance, hear and see the approach of this "power of the air."

362. Death of Mrs. Lucy B. Armstrong.-Kansas, on the 1st of January, lost one of its oldest inhabitants. Mrs. Lucy B. Armstrong died in Kansas City, Kan. She was the widow of John M. Armstrong, Government interpreter to the Wyandottes. She came to Kansas, then the Indian Territory, in 1843. Her father was the Rev. Russell Bigelow, first presiding elder of the Methodist church in

Kansas. She saw, till for her the curtain fell, the whole splendid drama of civilization in Kansas.

363. Conflict in Seward County. The troubles in Seward county, in the early part of 1892, were connected with the former disturbances in Stevens County. The Seward county distresses included the savage murder of the Sheriff and Deputy Sheriff; the dispatching of a body of State troops to protect the Judge of the district and enforce law and order. This was among the last of these needed armed interferences by the State. It is hoped the spread of civilization will make it the last.

364. Coal Production of 1892. It was noted that the production of coal in Kansas, in 1892, was the largest in the history of the State, 68,843,114 bushels, of which Crawford county mined 23,000,000 bushels. This increasing production, however, had marked every year prior to 1892, beginning in 1880, and has every year since, with the exception of two years. In 1897 the Kansas coal mines yielded, according to the estimates of the United States Geological Survey, 3,672,195 tons.

SUMMARY.

1. The entire People's Party ticket was elected.

2. Lorenzo D. Lewelling was elected Governor. Kansas cast her electoral vote for James B. Weaver.

3. A very destructive cyclone visited Harper and Wellington May 27, 1892.

4. A severe county seat conflict occurred in Seward county. The militia were called out.

5. The coal production of 1892 was 68,843,114 bushels.