USA > Kansas > Sedgwick County > History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas, past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county, Vol. I > Part 24
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actor and ought to be on the stage instead of selling whisky and conveying away his land to defraud his creditors. This brought on another scene. During the oration Juandaro's right hand nervously clutched the ivory handle of his revolver, and when he sat down it was the general understanding that he was not going to answer that question! The tableau was stirring-four men sit- ting looking at each other-deep breathing, long silence.
Surly Bill at length said : "Mr. Notary, do your duty." Juan- daro's attorney here mildly remarked that he did not suppose the notary would take the responsibility and perhaps get sued for false imprisonment, etc. Surly Bill arose, even as Ulysses arose in the old poem :
As if in thought profound, His modest eye fixed upon the ground,
and, after an expressive pause, proceeded :
"The witness is now at the end of his rope. Justice will be done. The law will be vindicated, the culprit punished. Others have permitted this witness to defy the strong arm of the law, but, thank God, we have now a notary who in his duty is as fear- less as the lion, bold to do right, timid only in wrong. I know that I am not, in the discharge of my duty to my client, appealing to a coward, but to one who, knowing the law, is courageous enough to enforce it. Mr. Notary, I demand an answer to my question, or a commitment." During the address I was the per- sonification of abject misery. I had a chill. I grew dizzy, blind -in fact, I felt as the poet when he said :
What a tide of woes came rushing O'er my wretched soul at once.
Surly Bill, seeing my condition, sat down at my table, wrote out the commitment, showed me where to sign it, put the seal on it, went to the window, called Mike Meagher, and in five min- utes Juandaro was in the hall on his back, senseless. I went home, went to bed, stayed there three days. On the evening of the third day, Surly Bill came down to inquire after my health, gave me five dollars, thanked me for my courage, and stated that Juandaro had offered fifty cents on the dollar as a compromise the morning after his commitment, and that the matter was settled.
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Juandaro left Kansas and is now in Arizona; his attorney is in Kansas City, Surly Bill in Ohio, Juandaro's father-in-law in Wichita. The real estate which was in controversy is at present covered with a brick building on East Douglas avenue. "Pro- ceedings in aid of execution" always bring to mind my first depo- sitions in Kansas, with Juandaro as a witness.
"Amaranthine that day in my memory lives."
"GRASSHOPPER." February 26, 1892.
CHAPTER XXIII.
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
By KOS HARRIS.
DECEMBER 9, 1903.
Kos V. Harris, who delivered the formal address of welcome at the convention of implement dealers late yesterday afternoon, electrified his auditors. His language was eloquent, and the address was pronounced one of the best efforts, oratorically and otherwise, heard at any similar gathering in Wichita.
Following is the address in full :
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: The committee having charge of this gathering have selected me to deliver an address of welcome to you. I was selected because I was entirely igno- rant, and therefore presumed to be absolutely without bias and prejudice on this subject. On behalf of the local committee, the local implement dealers of Wichita and the city of Wichita, I bid you welcome. Glancing backward almost thirty years, when Smith & Keating and F. G. Smyth & Sons, at the corners of Law- rence and Douglas avenues, were engaged in the implement busi- ness, with one railroad in this city; when looking westward, mil- lions of cultivatable lands were cattle pastures, and from the state line to the Red river, other cultivatable millions were cut off from trade, commerce and cultivation by an arbitrary edict and law, and from then down until the present day of this harmonious gathering, in generous rivalry of men engaged in the sale of agricultural implements, must be to every man here a revelation, a surprise and a continual source of wonder.
To him who comes here for the first time today, the past, as related by the pioneer, almost staggers belief. To him who has witnessed it all, the past is almost an Arabian Nights tale; the present a glorious triumph; the future full of rich promises. To
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS
those who have witnessed the A, B, C of agricultural civilization in the Arkansas valley and the adjacent and tributary territory ; to those who have beheld the sun of hope arise, watched it in the meridian and beheld it decline in the days of financial distress and adversity, this is a joyous occasion, and they may exclaim as the Psalmist: "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage!" A meeting of men engaged in busi- ness rivalry, in meetings of this character, is not only a liberal education, but builds up confidence in, respect and esteem for each other. Practically speaking, it is a new era in trade and com- merce when men engaged in the same lines meet together to dis- cuss their business and mutually encourage each other. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. Competition, notwithstanding trusts and combines, still exists among dealers and manufacturers. From east to west, north to south, men are employed in the empire of agricultural machinery for their industry, honesty, fidelity and alertness; and in no business throughout the West is there any greater number of capable men employed than in the business controlled and directed by this meeting. In fact, a man who is engaged in your business, and sails his boat successfully, can engage in any busi- ness-except medicine and the ministry.
The banker, the lawyer and the newspaper man are your debtors. Your calling has to do with all of them, and your opin- ion given from time to time has in many cases become the deliber- ate judgment on values, results and the public pulse, by men engaged in other lines. The grain and stock markets of the world are measurably affected year by year by the reports to your houses from your respective agencies. Your business compre- hends grain and stock to such an extent that you are the barom- eter of the condition of the crops of the country from year to year.
But, gentlemen, notwithstanding the past and the present, I beg to state that Wichita has for thirty years planned for gath- erings of this sort. Millions in bonds have been voted and sub- sidies given in the Arkansas valley, trusting to time to redeem the promises made to the voter and the giver. The land was here, the men were here; and they believed as firmly as they believed in existence that this valley was not only the granary of Kansas, but that this Southwestern territory was the superior in yielding power of equal acreage anywhere in the known world. The val-
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
ley of the Nile has been proclaimed for centuries as the greatest field of production; and yet the valley of the Arkansas, the Nile of America, contains a yielding power in wheat compared to which no other section of the world is equal, and the figures of which, when sent abroad, are not only not believed, but are dis- credited. Our people believed that to everybody-and especially the agricultural implement dealers-this valley would prove to be the gold-winner and world-beater of the West. Kansas and Oklahoma business men have given great hostages to fortune, and their faith in the future; and the lines that you represent have taken greater risks, perhaps, on the future development of this country than any other business.
With no disparagement to Oklahoma, its wondrous growth, its glorious future, Wichita has faith in the broad and fertile acres that lie at its gates, in its banking facilities, its railway connections, to finally bring to it the reward to which its people are entitled for planting, nursing and bringing to young and ambitious manhood this commercial infant, that has demonstrated its right to lift its head and be recognized as one of the great commercial factors west of Kansas City, south of Omaha, east of Denver, and north of Texas. The first great gathering of men of national renown to push the claims of Oklahoma was in Wich- ita. At that meeting General Weaver, Congressmen Springer and Manser, Colonel Crocker, and men from other states were present, and at that time Wichita placed herself in the front rank and worked for the success of that meeting, as much as if she was trying to build a railroad or establish a packing house. And when that great meeting adjourned, the rustling "blue stem" of Oklahoma breathed a song which was borne by eager, willing winds along to the oleanders of Texas, the holly of Arkansas, the long-leafed pine of Georgia, the magnolia of Florida, the palmetto of South Carolina, the craggy pines and singing rills of Colo- rado's snow-capped hills to the northern lakes, which song was divined and caught up by the homeless and landless yet ambitious manhood of our common country, and fifty thousand tongues were singing :
"Come along, come along, make no delay ;
Come from every nation, come from every way ;
Come along, come along, don't you be alarmed-
Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm."
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS
Never since the date that Adam and Eve "homesteaded" the Garden of Eden was a fairer prospect ever given over to ciliviza- tion. History fails to record another such a peaceful, cosmopolitan settlement that transformed a melancholy and voiceless plain into a human beehive, containing all the necessary elements in popula- tion, intellect and wealth which go to make up a state between the rising and setting of the sun. And at nightfall of that event- ful day, long, long to be remembered and recalled in story and legend and song, when the sun, like a ball of fire, sank into the Pacific sea, "the foxes had holes, the birds of the air had nests, but the Son of Man had not where to lay his head."
"The night winds swept across the plain-the voiceless plain no more to be;
The glowing sun arose again, and smiled upon a human sea."
The sun looked down and smiled upon a happy, ambitious peo- ple; a future commonwealth that provoked the envy and greed of speculators and the admiration of statesmen; a new-born civ- ilization, proving that Americans (born or naturalized) were capa- ble of government twenty-four hours after residence; looked down upon the united "blue and gray," and consecrated the mar- riage of Kansas and Texas, Nebraska and Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas. Men of Oklahoma, the homogeneous and happy, peace- ful and prosperous home of the warring enemies that met at Get- tysburg and Donelson, Appomattox and Frederickstown, Atlanta and Chancellorsville-
"You have turned your swords into plowshares, Your spears into pruning-hooks."
Wichita welcomes you as the keystone of the government arch, a jewel fit to be set in the constellation of stars that the rising sun gilds with its morning rays and kisses with its last beam ere it sinks to rest. Your settlement and progress is a standing criticism to all prior efforts at civilization, and but for the fact that the day of the pioneer is over, would be a lesson to mankind forever.
Gentlemen, in the unconfined, boundless and ambitious West,
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where men are free, tireless, and labor with zest, the agricultural implement business is not only prosperous, but it is the best.
"It is your refuge and your hope ;
It is the shadow of a rock in a weary land."
The pioneer is gone forever :
"Never again; no, never again Shall the eye of the traveler behold The naked, boundless, treeless plain, The charming vision of the pioneer behold. "Now teeming fields of golden grain By the eye of the tourist is seen,
Where once a free, unpeopled plain, Now appears a waving sea of green."
Gentlemen, this agricultural empire belongs to you and your "children even unto the third and fourth generations." All that we ask is that you treat our farmers fairly and put the carload lots at Wichita, to be "localed" out and distributed throughout Kansas and Oklahoma from Wichita, instead of Eastern points. If we furnish millions in trade, the freight rates should be as low as possible, and from a basing point as near the grain as it can be put, and in our judgment this should be at Wichita, until another star arises in the firmament, makes its way to the zenith and demands recognition-some bright star, yet unknown and undiscovered by the town-building astronomer, that may yet rival us in our boasted possessions and contest with us the right to wear the belt of commercial supremacy in the great Southwest. The development of these lands and the opening up of that ter- ritory gave to the agricultural implement dealers a domain almost equal to Kansas, the profits from which will last until the end of time; and these profits, present and prospective, should entitle this people to have your goods in bulk placed as near the point of demand as it is possible to do. Wichita, situate 225 miles from Kansas City, 600 miles from Denver and 150 miles to Oklahoma City, with its radiating railroad lines, welcomes you here as heirs and joint heirs of the prosperity that will surely flow to this valley before another decade shall pass away. God Almighty seldom sends a man into the world with an ambition to accom-
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS
plish something, without endowing him with the capacity to per- form his work, and we of the Arkansas valley feel that we have both the ambition and capacity to be the commercial center for this Southwestern territory.
To the manufacturer, we say come among us; be one of us and reap the harvest to come. Your houses can fix the rates on tonnage to Wichita if you so will it. A joint demand from the immense tonnage represented by you will make the basing line 225 miles southwest of Kansas City. Kansas City was made the "basing point" when its population and railroads were less than Wichita's. Less than one-half a million Kansans made Kansas City, and the million of people now directly tributary to Wichita will make it. Your acts may retard, may hinder and delay the fruition of the hopes of the Arkansas valley, but as sure as there is a God in Israel, the day will come when every manufacturer in your lines will be here with a place for his goods, or regret that he had not faith in this locality, situation and fertile lands to get in the Arkansas valley team and "work in lead, swing or wheel," to people the Arkansas valley and the adjacent lands and double and triple the "output" per annum.
But, gentlemen, to your business, "this royal infant, yet in its cradle, contains a thousand blessings, which time shall bring to ripeness." The wild Indian rose at the south, and the carpet of grass to the west, has but been scratched by the plow or touched by the reaper and the traction engine. You, gentlemen, can push or retard the growth of your own business. You can settle this great field and enjoy your profits, or watch the gradual growth from year to year. You can be pioneers of agriculture instead of followers, "trolleys in place of trailers; engine, not caboose." Your advertisement of southwestern Kansas and Oklahoma will send to those fields thousands of farmers, to whom your goods will go, and, in building up the prairie, enrich yourselves.
· The men of Wichita have been thirty years building up this city-building it up in the faith that the time would come when it would be the depot of not only your wares, but the headquar- ters and "basing point of Southwestern trade and commerce; building it up to welcome you-to welcome you today."
We feel "that we are citizens of no mean city," and that we are especially and distinctively the city of Kansas, dependent on
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
none and independent of all. We have made a city fit to entertain any gathering, and, from our beginning, the stranger has been made welcome at our gates.
Charlemagne, at Hamburg, about A. D. 800, on the bank of the Elbe, made it a free city ; "Dutch Bill" the Great established and intended it as a free city. To this free city we welcome you and invite you to bring your wares and enable us to make it big- ger, to the end that your trade will help to put millions of souls in Oklahoma and Kansas to buy your implements and move the depots of machinery to a basing point west of Missouri, to break its bulk and be distributed throughout southwest Kansas and Oklahoma. You are here to extend your trade and increase your profits; your ambition is to excel your rivals. This meeting will result in good to all and broaden your views.
Your attention is called to the fact that when your eyes look to the west beyond Kansas City, there is but one place upon which they can tranquilly rest as a depot for your goods, and that place is Wichita. It has cost millions to make this town and develop this country, but some near or distant day Wichita will be to southwestern Kansas and Oklahoma what Kansas City was to Kansas in an early day; and when that day arrives, he who waits to see the outcome will regret that he did not get on the ground floor. In every honest calling there's a prize for him who stands his ground; and for every man who regulates his conduct by the golden rule, there is a crown which will make his declining days contented, peaceful and happy, and will be the most glorious legacy he can bequeath to his children.
All Wichita rejoices at this meeting and bids you welcome, and if good will and good wishes have any weight, we hope you will continue to contend for the prize in generous rivalry, a free fight and a fair open field, and when the end comes, that you may receive a prize as your reward, and a crown as an heritage to leave to your children. He who fails, can read the story of his failure and his rival's success in sorrowful retrospection. From unlucky men, as from a pestilence, people fly, while success is borne on eagle's wings from sky to sky.
" All hail to him who wins the prize ! This world has cried for a thousand years ; But for him who fails, who fails and dies,
There's naught but pitiful tears."
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS
Go on in your labor, gentlemen; adopt the "Old Wichita Board of Trade" motto: "Harmony, Unity, Strength, Success." Welcome, thrice welcome to the "Hamburg to Kansas," and, hoping that your meeting may be successful; that you may leave us with regret, after passing a resolution that you and your descendants and successors will meet in Wichita annually, until time shall be no more, I bid you glad welcome, and I bid you adieu.
CHAPTER XXIV.
OLD NEW YORK BLOCK-SCHWEITER CORNER-A NAR- RATIVE OF EARLY WICHITA.
By KOS HARRIS.
Somewhat is saved from the tooth of time by the recordation of fragmentary, confused facts, which afterward are sorted by a ragman into some sort of order, strung together like buttons on a memory-string and denominated "history." Some are better sorters and stringers than others. That which follows is one memory-string concerning the old Schweiter corner and things brought to mind in connection therewith.
"One generation passeth away and another one cometh."
THE SCHWEITER CORNER.
A man whom I have known for over a generation said to me: "Why don't you write up the Schweiter corner as it was in the days of long ago?" This suggestion moved me to put a saddle on the cow pony, sit firm in the saddle, give the pony its head and a free rein, and ride wherever he goes, nipping at blue-stem and buffalo grass, as he moves ambling and shambling along. In the former generation, when "grandads" were few and far between ;- when white swiss, blue ribbons and pigtails on youthful feminin- ity were rare; when there were three or four boys to every girl in town and you could count the girls; when old Eagle Block (commonly called old Eagle Hall), where the Boston Store now stands, was a more magnificent and grander "publick" edifice than the new Coliseum, Hippodrome, Flavian Amphitheater or Architectural Fabrication or Forum, now in its genesis, at the corner of Water and English streets, or any other future build- ing, will be to Wichita, the "Old New York corner," now yclept "Schweiter corner," was the center of business, and drew the
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OLD NEW YORK BLOCK
loafers around it even as a barrel of molasses draweth flies or a magnet draws iron filings.
The golden days, whereof I write, were halcyon days to those who called Wichita "home." A few people were called "Mis- ter," but they could be counted on your fingers and thumbs. Nearly everybody was young-at least not over middle age- and the gray-headed man was almost alone. The wrinkled fore- head, the gray head, the lack-luster eye, the bent form and the "lean and slippered pantaloon" were rarely observed. 'Twas the era of ambitious, buoyant, fearless youth, "when blood ran warmer than water." Wichita was happy, hopeful, hospitable, harmonious, ambitious, and so contented that "if the Creator had made us another world of one entire and perfect chrysolite," we would not have exchanged Wichita for it. We were "It," and we knew it. When these torn-down buildings were built, Judge Sluss, Governor Stanley, Greiffenstein, Kohn Brothers, Steele, Hope, Gilbert, Murdock, Schatners, Hays Brothers, Judge Jew- ett and Balderston, Fisher, Tucker, Adams & Levy, Oliver, David- son, MeClees, Allen, Fabrique, Mccullough, W. A. Thomas, Black, Corbett, Parsons, Block, Hess, Getto, Hatton, following the above order, were Henry, Gene, Bill, Morris, Sol, J. M., Jim, Jake or "Tripe," Uncle Ben, Seth, Mose, M. W., A. W., J. O., Nels, Joe, Fab, Jim, Al, Jimmie, Scott, "Bully," Mike, Albert, Peter and "Caig."
As my cow pony wanders west on Douglas avenue and across the yards of the Pond Lumber Company, the Schwartz Lumber and Coal Company and the Union Mills, to the ford below the old toll bridge, I dig in the attic of my memory for things long unrecalled and almost forgotten.
Scenes vanished, unbidden rise From the ground before my eyes ; Years of toil, hopes and fears, Freighted with joy, watered in tears.
I hunt amongst the "jetsam and flotsam" of the past genera- tion and recall the buoyant young men, as they are now remem- bered, when Wichita was a Texas cattle town, a straggling town in swaddling clothes, but "hitching its wagon to a star," and the past has such a roseate hue that now it almost seems that in that golden ambitious past, "the morning stars sang together and the
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
sons of God shouted for joy." In the days of old, the days of blue-stem and buffalo grass, keno, faro and all the things implied thereby, men were venturesome, brave and bold.
The sun shone clear, the world was new, And Life was bright as sparkling dew.
South of the Schweiter corner stood old Eagle Block, or hall, and in the second story was the "Eagle" office, the county offices, the court room and a temporary jail. The ground floor on the corner was occupied by the Wichita Savings Bank, the Presby- terian minister's study in the rear. Caldwell & Titsworth's queensware and grocery store, the postoffice, G. H. Herrington's book store and Karatophasky's dry goods and notion palace occu- pied the ground floor east. ("Karatoph" was the fee owner of a new and young second wife and one son, aged about fifteen years. Said wife and son were not congenial, and what spare time "Karatoph" had away from the store and the new bride · he spent mauling said youth in the rear of the store, on the back end of a vacant lot, where the Beacon Building now stands. This is a digression, but it is true.)
WICHITA'S FIRST CIRCUS.
East of Eagle Hall was a vacant space to Market street. The first circus that the scribe hereof attended in Wichita was on said vacant land. The circus tent was short on the top covers, and R. P. Murdock, John T. Stewart, Jim McCullough, Tommie Holmes, Gene Schatner and one other got on the roof of the Eagle Block and viewed the circus without paying the ordinary honora- rium usually demanded by the door-keeper, the rule of circuses then being the same as now, that you can pay without going in, but you can't go in without paying. To the west of the New York corner, where the Kansas National Bank now stands, was the Progressive saloon, Jim Dagner's wholesale and retail liquor house, Pearce & Cogdell's cigar house, a barber shop, a Lone Star deadfall saloon, and overhead was a keno room, connected with other rooms, where there were a few games of chance, such as roulette, faro, gift enterprise, chuck-a-luck, poker (straight, bluff and stud), horse-head. On the theory of old Herodotus, the mention of the thing will be noted that one of the games of
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OLD NEW YORK BLOCK
chance above set forth is horse-head. On the theory of old Herod- otus, the mention of the thing at a time, presupposes that the thing must have existed. No one in Wichita can tell what kind of a game horse-head was, but it evidently was a very pernicious gambling game, otherwise the city council of Wichita, good men and true, would not have prohibited the playing thereof. Over the sidewalk of this building, reached from the second floor by a door and from the sidewalk by a narrow stairway, was a bal- cony where, on the long summer nights, the band played and when the music died away there was a cheerful refrain that floated out upon the air and startled the night, the which, if I remember correctly, was about as follows:
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