Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 99

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074

USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 99

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Archives of the Missouri Valley Historical Society establish quite clearly that Kansas City did not receive its title from either the territory or the state of that name. The settlement was at first "The Town of Kanzas"; next, "The City of Kansas," and finally "Kansas City." What is now the state of Kansas was a part of Nebraska territory when "The Town of Kanzas" had its begin- ning. "Kawsmouth" was the name bestowed by the early and unofficial geog- raphers on the group of cabins in what is now "West Bottoms."

Kansas City's Unbounded Faith in 1857.

Albert D. Richardson, in his "Beyond the Mississippi," pictured Kansas City as he saw it in 1857. He traveled to Jefferson City by rail and from there by boat, the journey requiring two days.

"Kansas City perching on a high bluff, commanding-a fine view of the river for miles below, was a very important point-in a neck-and-neck race with Leavenworth and St. Joe for the rich prize of the great commercial metropolis of the Far West. In front of the town the broad bowldered landing sloping down to the water's edge presented a con- fused picture of immense piles of freight, horse, ox and mule teams receiving merchandise from the steamers, scores of immigrant wagons, and a busy crowd of whites, Indians, half- breeds, negroes and Mexicans.

"There were solid brick houses and low frame shanties along the levee, and scat- tered unfinished buildings on the hill above, where 'the Grade' was being cut fifteen or twenty feet deep, through abrupt bluffs. Carts and horses wallowed in the mud of these deep excavations; and the houses stood trembling on the verge as if in fear of tumbling over. Drinking saloons abounded, and everything wore the accidental, transition look of new settlements.

"But there was much stir and vitality, and the population, numbering two thousand, had unbounded, unquestioning faith that here was the city of the Future. A mile and a half from the river building lots one hundred feet by fifty were selling at from $300 to

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$700. Lots three blocks from the landing commanded $1,000, and a single warehouse on the levee rented for $4,000 per annum."

Of the original thirteen Kansas City townsite owners in 1838, sons or daughters of three were still living in the city in 1920. They were the descend- ants of John C. McCoy, John Campbell and Jacob Ragan. This was the record as kept by Mrs. Nettie Thompson Grove, secretary of the Missouri Valley His- torical Society.

In the hall of the Missouri Valley Historical Society hang the portraits of "The Fighting Ragans." Jacob Ragan, one of the original thirteen townsite in- corporators of Kansas City, was a soldier in the War of 1812. His father was a soldier in the Revolution. Stephen Carter Ragan was in the Confederate army. Stephen H. Ragan was in the Spanish-American war. Walter and Ste- phen Ragan were in the World war.

The Germination of Kansas City.

Kansas City had its germination after a manner wholly its own. Its be- ginning was a first movement of the get-together spirit which has been char- acteristic of the community and to which it owes its greatness.

"You see," said Dr. W. L. Campbell, born in Westport, son of the commo- dore of a fleet of prairie schooners which navigated the Santa Fe Trail in 1855, "Kansas City didn't originate as a country crossroads town with a store and a blacksmith shop and a couple of houses. It missed that sort of history which attaches to most frontier towns. Standing here at the junction, it was always a wholesale center, not just a growing retail town. Rents were high, too. What a rent Colonel Titus must have paid for his gambling house-a big three-story place furnished like a palace, down at Main street and the Alton tracks!

"There's another thing," Dr. Campbell went on, talking to the Star reporter, some years ago. "This never was known as Westport Landing. That's an erroneous impression that has gotten abroad. It was Kansas City. That's the way the founders named it. The founders, fourteen of them, met in the tavern of William D. Evans, Lot I, Block I, Old Town,-that's the germinal lot of Kansas City. That's where the town was born really. There the tavern stood on the southeast corner of Main street and the Levee. It ought to be marked. One-eyed Ellis was the chairman of the meeting. That was his only claim to celebrity, too, except that he sold remarkably bad whisky to the Indians."

Kansas City, Just Sixty-five Years Ago.

What Kansas City was in 1855 and how it had grown in four years, the Journal of Commerce told in May, 1859. The retrospect was presented with that spirited humor and community pride characteristic of Kansas City news- papers from the beginning :

"In October, 1855, when we first took charge of this paper, there was a population of 478, all told, within the city. The levee consisted of a 'chute' dug in the bank in front of the warehouses of W. H. Chick & Co. and McCarty & Buckley. . The Eldridge house (now old Gillis House) ground entrance was in the present second story, and the only street in the 'city' was a common country road, which wound round the bluff into the

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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI

ravine below Market street (Grand avenue), and followed the windings until it struck the divide south of McNees' mill. The principal products of the city were dog fennel and Jamestown weed.

"The business consisted solely of the Santa Fe shipping trade and the like business for the annual trains of the mountain men and Indian traders. The local trade was carried on principally with the Wyandotte Indians and the people living in the classic shades of 'Gooseneck.'

"The city authorities consisted of mayor, our present active officer, assisted by a board of city fathers, who had the delectable task of disposing of the contents of an empty treasury at the rate of $0.00 per day. The august assemblage was waited upon in the real Kentucky style of doing the dignified, by ex-Marshal Howe, who carried the financial budget of the city in his hat.

"It was thus we entered the campaign of 1856. At this date, Michael Smith, street contractor, had straightened the river end of the road into Market street, and under one of the cornfield engineers, of whom we have had such bright examples, had commenced excavating at the bottom of the ravine on Main street-but still there was no street.

"In 1856 a brief season of activity set in which was soon stopped by the frosts of the Kansas troubles, which paralyzed all business and enterprise and stagnated every branch of trade. This state of affairs continued until the close of the season, and when the spring of 1857 opened there had been but little if any real advances made in the city.

"The bluffs still towered over the landing; no streets were cut through; no eross- streets were contemplated. Under all these depressing circumstances, with no foreign capital to assist us, with active competition above, below and behind us, with an empty exchequer and no resources from which to replenish it to any extent, our citizens boldly entered upon a system of improvements of a magnitude never equaled by any city built in the world. It is now twenty-four months since the work begun, eight of which were closed to operations by frosts of winter and twelve of them under the financial pressure occasioned by the crisis of 1857, and what is the result?

"A city of eight thousand inhabitants, a list of mercantile houses surpassing that of any Missouri river town, a trade larger than any city of her size in the world; with four streets cut through the bluffs, cross streets opened and opening for eight squares from the river ; a whole town built up outside of her original limits (McGee's addition), containing the longest continuous block of buildings west of St. Louis; an entire new business locality excavated out of the bluff, and built up with solid and substantial buildings in the center of the city; the crest of our 'seven hills' covered with private residences; roads constructed into the interior, and the best levee on the Missouri river. All this has been done since the first day of May, 1857, without a dollar of outside capital to assist us, and with the money made by the business of the city itself.

"We will have in operation in a short time a bank with a capital of $250,000, and before August a second with like capital; insurance offices that do a larger business than any institution of the kind in the upper country; a city treasury able by the present assessment to pay every dollar held against it; private bankers that have their drafts honored in any city of the Union or Europe, and a solid and substantial mercantile credit from Boston to New Orleans."

Such was Kansas City's first wonderful stride in municipal progress.

A Woman's First Impression.

Her first impression of Kansas City, as she saw it in 1857, Mrs. Percival Gaugh, widow of the pioneer architect, gave a newspaper man in 1897: "Well, when I landed from the boat and gazed at the frowning bluffs, I thought it was the most forlorn and uninviting spot I had ever seen. The levee was crowded with white covered wagons, to which were harnessed the most dimunitive mules, while the hideous faces of the Mexican 'greasers' made me shudder. There was

HOME OF JAMES McGEE, FIRST BRICK HOUSE IN JACKSON COUNTY

KANSAS CITY IN 1852

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THE MAKING OF A CITY

only one road that led up to the top of the bluff. The first house that I lived in was on the bluff overlooking the river, and we climbed up there on long steps. My only neighbor was Mrs. Chouteau, who had lived on the frontier all her life and seemed quite contented. I wondered what Mr. Gaugh would ever accomplish in his profession here. It surely would be many years before a building of any size would be built. But it was not long before I was sur- rounded with neighbors, avenues were opened, stores began to multiply, churches were erected and the dream of the Kansas City enthusiast seemed a fixed fact. Then the war came on and there was a gloomy outlook for a few years, but when it ended houses sprang up as if by magic, hills and hollows began to dis- appear and the whole contour of the city soon changed."

The Year of the Whereas.

About 1891 an expressive phrase was coined to meet a situation in Kansas City almost without a parallel. Somebody inquired after the financial standing of John Smith. "John Smith?" somebody else replied. "Oh, he is a 'whereas.'" The phrase was in common use. A whereas was a man who had had a mortgage on a piece of real estate foreclosed. Sales as advertised under the mortgage began, "Whereas, John Smith, by his certain deed of trust," and so on and so on. The man who had become a whereas had no occasion to feel lonesome in Kansas City. There were many "whereases." For Kansas City was going through the process of settlement after one of the greatest real estate booms in the history of this country.

In the winter and spring of 1887 the transactions were enormous. Kansas City had 1,500 real estate agents. Everybody dabbled in the business. Fifty dollars capital was enough to begin with. Options flew about thicker than snow- flakes. Who would sit on a stool and add up long columns of figures, sell goods behind a counter or drive a street car when there were hundred dollar snaps to be picked up every day? Speculation was in the air. The city had gone mad. "If you went around to a lawyer's office to see him about a case the chances were you found his head was full of some real estate deal," said ex-Senator Warner. Everybody caught it, and almost everybody "caught on" for more or less profit. But in May and June of 1887 the speculative demand began to diminish. In July the real estate market of Kansas City was dead. People who held property encouraged each other by saying: "This is only the summer dullness." They forgot that the fever had run its course through the previous years without regard to seasons. In August there was general anticipation that the coming of President Cleveland would be the signal for the revival of the boom. But October brought a crowd without any interest in corner lots. The winter opened and still there was no real estate market. The sanguine said : "It will be all right in the spring." But it wasn't. The year of '88 wore away, and then another and another without any more boom.

There is nothing in the history of speculation quite like this stand against adversity made by Kansas City real estate holders. Rents fell off. A building which was good for an income of $24,000 during the boom was doing well if it held up to $17,000. With each succeeding six months the meeting of the inter- est on mortgages became more difficult. These were the best men of Kansas City

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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI

who then clung to their holdings, and wore themselves out waiting for the up- ward rise. If ever hope sprang eternal in the human breast it was right here - in Kansas City from '87 to '91. Ex-Mayor R. H. Hunt said that to him the most deplorable feature of the four years of hard times in Kansas City real estate had been the spectacle of men heroically holding back the onward march of the sheriff's red flag. "The most enterprising and the most public spirited of our citizens," he said, "suffered most during this period. They refused to let go of property, and met their interest charges even while it was a certain loss . to do so. They grew old and broken in carrying their burdens.

When the Kansas City boom was in its wildest stage Matt St. Clair went abroad, leaving behind him this prophecy: "We've got a good many men in this city who think they are rich. I predict that when the winds blow next March there will be more ragged millionaires at the mouth of the Kaw than anywhere else on the continent." Mr. St. Clair miscalculated the nerve of his fellow-citizens. The boom collapsed. But the holders of alleged business prop- erty still wanted as much for it as they did in 1887. The government bought a block of ground for a new Federal Building. The site was about three hundred feet square. The government paid $450,000 for the block.

The Philosophical Spirit.

Kansas City doesn't want another boom. Dr. Munford, at the time of the collapse, put it tersely : "The boom," said he, "brought an immense amount of money to Kansas City. It left us with magnificent buildings, paved streets and transportation facilities. But it was not a good thing for us. The city's true growth is where you find the banker in his bank, the attorney at his office, the merchant with his store; not where everybody is wild over real estate. Kansas City ought never to think of another boom."

The editor was philosophical and in a measure hopeful. "I think," he said, "we are going through the same process that all cities have to go through. We are settling down."

Born of the boom's collapse was the indomitable spirit which led to the physical transformation of Kansas City. In those days of discouragement the movement for parks and boulevards received its early impetus.

The fever comes and rages. It burns itself out. A deadening chill ensues. The raily follows and the patient's condition is again normal. After delirium is depression, and after that health returns. Kansas City had her feverish dreams, and they were wild ones, as aspiring as her hills. Her plunge into despondency was like a slide down the bluff into a pall of smoke which hangs over the great network of railroad tracks in "the bottom" when the wind does not blow. And then Kansas City became normal. She was more than conva- lescent. She was able-bodied.

Sometimes a boy grows so fast it makes him weak. He has a tired feeling long before night. He wobbles after a short run. The watchful mother soaks the legs of such a boy in salt water before he goes to bed. She resorts to various measures to restrain nature's excess of zeal in building bone and tissue ahead of the supply of nourishing blood. Kansas City overgrew until she, too, was weak. There was more city than the developing arteries of trade could supply with

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THE MAKING OF A CITY

vitality. It was necessary to stop and rest. But that period was fulfilled. Kansas City began to grow again. It wasn't a boom. If there was a word in the English language for which Kansas City had no further use it was "boom." As the reformed man referred to the time when he sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, so Kansas City spoke of boom days, not boastingly nor yet with too poignant regret, but as an experience which had been a warning and was not to be repeated.

How Kansas City Came into Her Own.

Whatever the Kansas City seal is, it ought to show a steer and a pig rampant in a feed lot on the obverse and a fine collection of packing house products on its reverse. It ought to be the business of every public spirited citizen of Kansas City to see that the stranger within the gates goes through a typical packing house before he leaves town. A man may think he knows something of this industry from observations in other cities, but he is mistaken until he has visited the largest building in the world devoted to the livestock business and tramped over ninety acres of floors and followed a long legged, fifteen-year-old guide through countless doors, up and down stairways and along chutes and inclines by the mile, for three hours in an attempt to see it all.

These packing house people are immensely fond of their plants, of the variety of their products, of the ingenious labor-saving contrivances, but more than all of the scrupulous cleanliness from bottom to top. My lady can see everything save the bloodletting-she will not care for that-from the live calf to the twenty varieties of soup, and she will not soil the hem of her garment.

One great mistake Kansas City made in the days of her boom was in reach- ing out for things other cities had, while she neglected things other cities had not, and which were hers by virtue of natural advantages. Her citizens decided they must have a Manchester, a Sheffield, and a Birmingham. The fact that the coal fields were many miles away and the ore still more remote did not deter. Having agreed that destiny would not be achieved until there were furnaces and rolling mills and foundries in the suburbs, the boomers proceeded to lay off sites, to erect buildings and to offer bonuses. Money was thrown away on such schemes and much good gray matter was exhausted in abortive plans to make of Kansas City what her location and surroundings never intended her to be. Had the energy and capital thus expended been directed to the upbuilding of industries in which Kansas City is now almost without competition, she would have been bigger than she is today.

Kansas City is to be considered the natural center of the meat industries of the United States. She is an easy second to Chicago and year by year creeps closer to the first place. Chicago from the beginning has fostered her live stock and packing interest in every way. To Kansas City the discovery of her posses- sion of this trump card in the game of western cities has been almost a surprise. The development has come largely by force of circumstances, not altogether as the result of judicious and persistent encouragement. The impetus is not forced. It is natural, and nothing can prevent Kansas City from becoming the live stock market of this country. It is the center from which a radius of 250 miles sweeps

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a meat-producing territory which has no equal, and will have none in generations to come.

Amazing Sights of the Packing Houses.

What sense is there in telling one that a Kansas City packing house has a capacity of so many thousand hogs a day, unless he can stand by the chute and see the carcasses come up through a hole in the floor dangling by their hind legs to an endless chain-big hogs, little hogs and medium-sized hogs, coming into view at the rate of one every fifteen seconds? As they reach a certain height down they flop in quick succession between two black giants. A blow of the cleaver and they are in halves. Another blow and they are in quarters, going in four different direction to as many tables and under the keen-edged knives. Down a half dozen chutes disappears the hog, divided into hams, shoulders, sides, jowls, feet and sausage meat.

How without a visit to the room of the "silver churn" can any one appre- ciate what it is to make 100,000 pounds of butterine in a day? One may think this is a queer kind of dairy, but the maids who wrap the rolls and prints and pats in the whitest of cloths are as plump as any who ever sat on a three-legged milking stool and counted her chickens before they were hatched. What's the use of kicking after seeing 2,000 gallons of genuine milk worked into the product. to give it the true flavor? After seeing and smelling, the average man will take his bread thankfully and never ask what side of it is butterined.

It is another sight to see printing presses which use paint instead of ink and sheets of tin instead of sheets of paper, putting on the brands before the cans and buckets are made. The automatic machines which do all but finish the little air-tight receptacles for the deviled and potted meats are interesting. And the comedy of all is furnished by the sausage stuffer. From the spout of the great tub of ground meat the sausage leaps half a dozen feet like a thing of life. It squirms and coils and wriggles as it passes through the deft fingers which divide it into links.

To those who have never been within, a packing house is a packing house and nothing more. To those who know, it is where roast quail and roast plover are prepared, where beef is braised as well as dried, where bouillon is put up in jugs and lamb tongues in jars. It means canned meats as well as butterine and twenty kinds of soups. Starting in to kill chickens for soups, the packers gradually drifted into the business of killing and dressing chickens at the rate of many thousands a day.

On the pay rolls of the packing companies of Kansas City are thousands of people. A better civil service system than the government has yet devised op- erates in this army of employes. The doors are open to boys. Every year hun- dreds are taken in. They are given a trial. If in twelve months they show capacity and ambition they are advanced. If they appear to be mere human machines, drudges or drones, they are promptly turned adrift. This is the principle which runs through the employment of all. It is a rigid application of the rule of the survival of the fittest. There is room near the top for every one who enters the service.

KANSAS CITY AT AN EARLY DAY

PLANTERS HOUSE.

STOYES E TIA TIVE

MAIN STREET, KANSAS CITY, IN 1867

Vol. 1-57

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THE MAKING OF A CITY

A Reminiscence of "P. D."

The packing district has its traditions. Time was when there were several members of the Armour family active in the conduct of the plant. Each Armour was known familiarly to employes by his initials. "P. D." was the head of the house. One day, in a distant city, he went into an exposition building and saw an array of exhibits from his Kansas City plant. A young woman demonstrator was giving samples of soup to a crowd. The old packer watched the process. Seeing he was not recognized he said to the young woman :

"It can't be very good or you wouldn't be giving it away."

"We do that for humanity." was the quick reply.

"H'm," commented Mr. Armour. "What's that?" he asked, pointing to an enlarged autograph of his own signature over the booth.

"That's Mr. Armour's signature," replied the demonstrator.

~ "Why, I thought old Armour couldn't write," urged "P. D.," in apparent surprise.

"Well, he's got brains," retorted the young woman. "If I had P. D.'s brains I wouldn't care whether I could write or not."

"P. D." smiled and passed on. In a few minutes the Rev. Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, who helped Mr. Armour find good ways to spend his money, came back to the booth and handed the young lady an envelope with a $50 bill and "P. D.'s" compliments.

The packing house seen from the outside is not a thing of beauty. It is usually a growth. The visitor who looks down from the bluff at Kansas City upon the bottom may feel repelled by the lack of architectural symmetry. He sees a white city, but is depressed by the want of esthetic surroundings. Once within. the bad impression is lost in admiration for the utility of everything. Out of the stock yards rise by easy inclines the covered driveways. These go to each of the packing houses. Some of them cross the Kaw river. Others are elevated above the tops of the houses. Looking up a street in "the bottom" the visitor will see through the sides of the driveways the bunches of cattle moving slowly along hour after hour from the yards to the packing houses. At one place a driveway passes over not only the street car line, but the elevated road as well. With each bunch of cattle goes a driver. A complete record is kept of all the stock bought, and the meat in the carcass can be traced back to the ranch or range whence it was shipped.

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Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 99

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939 Publication date: 1921 Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company Number of Pages: 1074

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074