Abbreviated as KS by ABBREVIATIONFINDER, Kansas is one of the national leaders in the agricultural industry. The state is the largest producer of wheat in the country, which makes it known as the Wheat State and Breadbasket of America.

Kansas has one of the largest herds of beef cattle in the country. The agricultureand livestock were for much of the history of Kansas their main source of income.

The geographic center of the 48 contiguous United States — that is, excluding Alaskaand Hawaii — is located in northern Kansas, in Smith County. The geodetic center of North America is also located in Kansas, in Osborne County. This center is used as a reference point for all maps made by the United States government.

Dodge City is considered by many to be the “Cowboys Capital of the World.” Kansas also has a strong mining industry, and is a national leader in oil and natural gas production. Currently, the main sources of income in the state are commerce and industry.

Recent History

Recession

Kansas was the first American state to ban the sale of spirits and alcoholic beverages in the United States, in 1880. This law was not repealed until 1986. Kansas, then heavily dependent on agriculture, faced a period of economic recession during the late 1880s and early 1890s.

This recession was caused by the low prices of agricultural products in the international market, and by the high interest charged on loans taken by farmers, many of whom were forced to abandon their farms and move to cities or other regions. from the country.

Another problem was the high prices of rail freight transport. These economic problems led a newly formed progressive political party, the Farmers Alliance (Farmers Union), to win the state elections of 1890, being reelected in 1892 and 1896.

The Farmers Alliance, in response to popular demand for socioeconomic reforms, imposed limits on the interest rates charged by banking institutions in the state, and on the prices charged for the transportation of rail freight and various consumer products.

The Farmers Alliance went into decline at the beginning of the 20th century. The socio-economic reforms were continued by the Republicans, who passed laws prohibiting the use of child labor, created labor laws, and drove the prices charged by the railroad companies for the transportation of cereals. Republicans also gave women the right to vote.

Industrialization

The mining became the second most important source of income from Kansas to the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to the discoveries of large reserves of oil and natural gas in [1892] and in 1915, and helium in 1905.

These nature reserves, plus World War I, caused Kansas to rapidly industrialize beginning in the 1910s. The war was also a cause of prosperity in the agricultural sector.

After the war, and throughout the 1920s, Kansas continued to industrialize rapidly, although the state’s agricultural sector went into recession due to the drastic fall in the prices of agricultural products on the international market.

Crisis of 30

The Great Depression of the 1930s caused a major economic crisis in Kansas, aggravating the already existing recession in the agricultural sector, the suspension of payments of various banking and commercial establishments, and causing unemployment and misery.

Kansas was one of the states most affected by the so-called Dust Bowl, marked by long periods of drought, large swarms of locusts and large sandstorms. Again, many farmers abandoned their farms, moving to cities or other states. Socio-economic assistance from the government of Kansas and the United States helped to minimize the crisis beginning in 1936, but the recession only stopped with the end of the Dust Bowl, in the late 1930s, and with the onset of the Second World War, the latter by causing a large increase in demand for mining, agricultural and industrialized products.

• CountryAAH: Offers a full list of cities and towns in Kansas, together with postal codes for each of them, and including capital city of Kansas.

Post-war

Kansas continued to industrialize rapidly after the end of World War II. The state also maintained pre-war production levels for mining and agricultural products. However, the prices of these had fallen with the end of the war, which caused a fall in their prices, and an economic recession in these sectors of the state economy.

The recession in the agricultural sector was aggravated by a new period of drought during the 1950s. The problems of the agrarian and mining sector and the rapid industrialization of the state caused a great flow of population from the countryside to the cities. At the end of the 1950s, more than half of the population of Kansas lived in urban areas.

In 1953, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had grown up in Abilene, became President of the United States, remaining in office until 1963.

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the segregation in educational institutions throughout the country. This decision was made during the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education lawsuit, where African American parents filed a legal appeal against the Topeka Board of Education, because of the segregation of the city’s public schools, imposed by the Board.

Kansas faced a new period of economic crisis during the 1980s, due to low prices for oiland agricultural products. Kansas created an economic planning agency, Kansas Inc, which helped the state overcome the crisis in the early 1990s.

In 1991, Democrat Joan Finnley became the first governor of Kansas.