Winfield Courier, Thursday, January 1, 1885.

Referring to the reported sale of all the Normal School lands to a bank president at $3.00 per acre, Hon. Jacob Stotler in the Wellington Press says:

The Press called attention to this matter in September. The bank President referred to is undoubtedly H. C. Cross, of the First National Bank of Emporia. Early in the summer the regents sold the remainder of the Normal endowment lands, between seven and eight thousand acres, to Mr. Cross for $3.50 per acre, not $3.00 as the Eagle has it. The lands are located in Mitchell County, and are represented to us as being worth $7 or $8 per acre. Whether Mr. Cross made the purchase for himself or for the Emporia Syndicate we have never learned, and as we said in our former article the purchasers could not be blamed much by their code of morals, in jumping at a transaction in which they will pocket a cool $25,000. Whether the exchequer of the State Normal School can stand depletion at this rate is another thing, and is a matter in which the public is directly interested. We have been told that at the time the offer of $3.50 was made an offer of $4 per acre was pending. We suppose the Board of Regents was responsible for such transactions as this. The whole thing looks suspicious. The very poorest lands in the state have brought more than $3.50 per acre for the past two years. It seems hard to think that the guardians of the interests of one of our state schools would deliberately consent that its financial interests should suffer at their hands, yet it looks as if the Normal regents had either done this or had committed an unpardonable blunder. The fact that the lands were sold stealthily, instead of being thrown open to the highest bidder, is another very suspicious circumstance. We hope the boast of Governor Glick about the pure and superior manner in which the state institutions have been run under his administration will not be marred by the discovery of anything crooked in the sale of the Normal lands, but we insist the matter will bear investigation by this Legislature. If the treasury of that institution has been cheated, the blame and punishment ought to fall where they belong.