From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for July 18, 1915:

• “Topeka. – It’s harvest time, and harvest time means that Kansas has within its borders many thousands of strangers – men of all races and nationalities, birth and training who are helping the farmers reap the crop. It is estimated at the office of the state free employment bureau that there are between thirty thousand and thirty-five thousand such men in the state today. They are a polyglot lot. Among them are the scourings of the great cities of America, runaway boys, criminals, collegians preparing for football, men in search of health and foreigners arriving to make a place for themselves in the new world. Some are old man, with snaggy gray hair hanging down over their shirt collars – men who have drunk deeply of the cup of life. Others are boys in their teens, their eyes shining and smiling as they search for adventure in the harvest fields…. In Wichita recently a Slav from Serbia, who came to Kansas to escape the war, a mining captain from New Zealand, who speaks five languages, a Frenchman and a Canadian applied at the branch office of the state free employment bureau for work on the same day…. These man have come into Kansas on freight trains, on passenger trains, horseback, afoot – in fact in every conceivable way and when the harvest is done the majority of them will scatter as quickly as they gathered…. This too, is the season for runaway boys, according to Kansas police authorities. They point out that the ‘wanderlust’ germ lurks in every corner and crevice at this season. Scarcely a day passes that officials of cities in the wheat belt do not pick up youngsters who had been unable to resist ‘the call to the fields.’ In the majority of the cases parents are notified and the boy is sent home. Frequently however, the parents direct the boys be allowed to work in the fields.”
• “J. J. Parker, the walnut trader, recently shipped two carloads of stumps, logs and knots upon which he might have realized a hundred fifty dollars more than he received had he known at the time the strength of the demand for walnut for gunstocks for the European war.”
• “The time of District Judge Smart has been taken up since 9 o’clock this morning with the case of Foster vs. Foster which is a continuation of a divorce suit settled in the last term of court. Mr. Foster, who is a railway mail clerk and has married again, is suing his ex-wife, also remarried, for the custody of their three small children, and a discontinuance of alimony. A great deal of testimony has been introduced and many witnesses subpoenaed. Mrs. Foster, who is now Mrs. Morrison, claims that her ex-husband has visited the children only four times since they quit living together and that when he did come he paid more attention to her than to them, all of which Foster denies.”
• “The campus of the University is being extended this week by the addition of the material that is being taken from the foundation of the new Oread Training School building. All the rocks, clay and dirt is being dumped on the side of the hill just south of the Medic building. The new additions will become a part of the south approach to the campus which is planned for construction in the future. Hereafter all the dirt that is taken from the campus will be placed on the same dump.”