Emporia

Emporia, a city and the county-seat of Lyon county, Kansas, U.S.A., on the Neosho river, about 60 m. S.W. of Topeka. Pop. (1890) 7551; (1900) 8223, of whom 686 were foreign-born and 663 were negroes; (1910 U.S. census) 9058. It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways. The city has a Carnegie library, and is the seat of the state normal school and of the College of Emporia (Presbyterian; 1883). Emporia’s industrial interests are mainly centred in commerce with the surrounding farming region; but there are small flour mills, machine shops, foundries and other manufacturing establishments,—in 1905 the value of the factory product was $571,601. The municipality owns and operates the water-works and the electric-lighting plant. Emporia was settled in 1856 and was chartered as a city in 1870. The Emporia Gazette, established in 1890, was purchased in 1894 by William Allen White (b. 1868), a native of Emporia, who took over the editorship and made a great stir in 1896 by his editorial entitled “What’s the matter with Kansas?”; he also wrote several volumes of excellent short stories, particularly The Court of Boyville (1889), Stratagems and Spoils (1901) and In Our Town (1906).