Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada

by Charles Dudley Warner

There are many handsome and stately buildings in the city, the recent erections showing growth in wealth and taste. The Chamber of Commerce, which is conspicuous for solid elegance, cost a million and a half dollars. There are 3295 members of the Merchants’ Exchange. The Court-house, with its noble dome, is as well proportioned a building as can be found in the country. A good deal may be said for the size and effect of the Exposition Building, which covers what was once a pretty park at the foot of Lucas Place, and cost 6750,000. There are clubs many and flourishing. The St. Louis Club (social) has the finest building, an exceedingly tasteful piece of Romanesque architecture on Twenty-ninth Street. The University Club, which is like its namesake in other cities, has a charming old-fashioned house and grounds on Pine Street. The Commercial Club, an organization limited in its membership to sixty, has no club-house, but, like its namesake in Chicago, is a controlling influence in the prosperity of the city. Representing all the leading occupations, it is a body of men who, by character, intellect, and wealth, can carry through any project for the public good, and which is animated by the highest public spirit.

Of the social life of the town one is permitted to speak only in general terms. It has many elements to make it delightful—long use in social civilities, interest in letters and in education, the cultivation of travel, traditions, and the refinement of intellectual pursuits. The town has no academy of music, but there is a good deal of musical feeling and cultivation; there is a very good orchestra, one of the very best choruses in the country, and Verdi’s “Requiem” was recently given splendidly. I am told by men and women of rare and special cultivation that the city is a most satisfactory one to live in, and certainly to the stranger its society is charming. The city has, however, the Mississippi Valley climate—extreme heat in the summer, and trying winters.

There is no more interesting industrial establishment in the West than the plate-glass works at Crystal City, thirty miles south on the river. It was built up after repeated failures and reverses—for the business, like any other, had to be learned. The plant is very extensive, the buildings are of the best, the machinery is that most approved, and the whole represents a cash investment of $1,500,000. The location of the works at this point was determined by the existence of a mountain of sand which is quarried out like rock, and is the finest and cleanest silica known in the country. The production is confined entirety to plate-glass, which is cast in great slabs, twelve feet by twelve and a half in size, each of which weighs, before it is reduced half in thickness by grinding, smoothing, and polishing, about 750 pounds. The product for 1887 was 1,200,000 feet. The coal used in the furnaces is converted into gas, which is found to be the most economical and most easily regulated fuel. This industry has drawn together a population of about 1500. I was interested to learn that labor in the production of this glass is paid twice as much as similar labor in England, and from three to four times as much as similar labor in France and Belgium. As the materials used in making plate-glass are inexpensive, the main cost, after the plant, is in labor. Since plate-glass was first made in this country, eighteen years ago, the price of it in the foreign market has been continually forced down, until now it costs the American consumer only half what it cost him before, and the jobber gets it at an average cost of 75 cents a foot, as against the $1.50 a foot which we paid the foreign manufacturer before the establishment of American factories. And in these eighteen years the Government has had from this source a revenue of over seventeen millions, at an average duty, on all sizes, of less than 59 per cent.

Missouri is one of the greatest of our States in resources and in promise, and it is conspicuous in the West for its variety and capacity of interesting development. The northern portion rivals Iowa in beautiful rolling prairie, with high divides and park-like forests; its water communication is unsurpassed; its mineral resources are immense; it has noble mountains as well as fine uplands and fertile valleys, and it never impresses the traveller as monotonous. So attractive is it in both scenery and resources that it seems unaccountable that so many settlers have passed it by. But, first slavery, and then a rural population disinclined to change, have stayed its development. This state of things, however, is changing, has changed marvellously within a few years in the northern portion, in the iron regions, and especially in larger cities of the west, St. Joseph and Kansas City. The State deserves a study by itself, for it is on the way to be a great empire of most varied interests. I can only mention here one indication of its moral progress. It has adopted a high license and local option law. Under this the saloons are closed in nearly all the smaller villages and country towns. A shaded map shows more than three-fourths of the area of the State, including three-fifths of the population, free from liquor-selling. The county court may grant a license to sell liquor to a person of good moral character on the signed petition of a majority of the taxpaying citizens of a township or of a city block; it must grant it on the petition of two-thirds of the citizens. Thus positive action is required to establish a saloon. On the map there are 76 white counties free of saloons, 14 counties In which there are from one to three saloons only, and 24 shaded counties which have altogether 2263 saloons, of which 1450 are in St. Louis and 520 in Kansas City. The revenue from the saloons in St. Louis is about 8800,000, in Kansas City about 8375,000, annually. The heavily shaded portions of the map are on the great rivers.

Of all the wonderful towns in the West, none has attracted more attention in the East than Kansas City. I think I am not wrong in saying that it is largely the product of Eastern energy and capital, and that its closest relations have been with Boston. I doubt if ever a new town was from the start built up so solidly or has grown more substantially. The situation, at the point where the Missouri River makes a sharp bend to the east, and the Kansas River enters it, was long ago pointed out as the natural centre of a great trade. Long before it started on its present career it was the great receiving and distributing point of South-western commerce, which left the Missouri River at this point for Santa Fé and other trading marts in the South-west. Aside from this river advantage, if one studies the course of streams and the incline of the land in a wide circle to the westward, he is impressed with the fact that the natural business drainage of a vast area is Kansas City. The city was therefore not fortuitously located, and when the railways centred there, they obeyed an inevitable law. Here nature intended, in the development of the country, a great city. Where the next one will be in the South-west is not likely to be determined until the Indian Territory is open to settlement. To the north, Omaha, with reference to Nebraska and the West, possesses many similar advantages, and is likewise growing with great vigor and solidity. Its situation on a slope rising from the river is commanding and beautiful, and its splendid business houses, handsome private residences, and fine public schools give ample evidence of the intelligent enterprise that is directing its rapid growth.

It is difficult to analyze the impression Kansas City first makes upon the Eastern stranger. It is usually that of immense movement, much of it crude, all of it full of purpose. At the Union Station, at the time of the arrival and departure of trains, the whole world seems afloat; one is in the midst of a continental movement of most varied populations. I remember that the first time I saw it in passing, the detail that most impressed me was the racks and rows of baggage checks; it did not seem to me that the whole travelling world could need so many. At that time a drive through the city revealed a chaos of enterprise—deep cuts for streets, cable roads in process of construction over the sharp ridges, new buildings, hills shaved down, houses perched high up on slashed knolls, streets swarming with traffic and roaring with speculation. A little more than a year later the change towards order was marvellous: the cable roads were running in all directions; gigantic buildings rising upon enormous blocks of stone gave distinction to the principal streets; the great residence avenues have been beautified, and showed all over the hills stately and picturesque houses. And it is worthy of remark that while the “boom” of speculation in lots had subsided, there was no slacking in building, and the reports showed a steady increase in legitimate business. I was confirmed in my theory that a city is likely to be most attractive when it has had to struggle heroically against natural obstacles in the building.

I am not going to describe the city. The reader knows that it lies south of the river Missouri, at the bend, and that the notable portion of it is built upon a series of sharp hills. The hill portion is already a beautiful city; the flat part, which contains the railway depot and yards, a considerable portion of the manufactories and wholesale houses, and much refuse and squatting population (white and black), is unattractive in a high degree. The Kaw, or Kansas, River would seem to be the natural western boundary, but it is not the boundary; the city and State line runs at some distance east of Kansas River, leaving a considerable portion of low ground in Kansas City, Kansas, which contains the larger number of the great packing-houses and the great stock-yards. This identity of names is confusing. Kansas City (Kansas), Wyandotte, Armourdale, Armstrong, and Riverview (all in the State of Kansas) have been recently consolidated under the name of Kansas City, Kansas. It is to be regretted that this thriving town of Kansas, which already claims a population of 40,000, did not take the name of Wyandotte. In its boundaries are the second largest stock-yards in the country, which received last year 670,000 cattle, nearly 2,500,000 hogs, and 210,000 sheep, estimated worth 851,000,000. There also are half a dozen large packing-houses, one of them ranking with the biggest in the country, which last year slaughtered 195,933 cattle, and 1,907,104 hogs. The great elevated railway, a wonderful structure, which connects Kansas City, Missouri, with Wyandotte, is owned and managed by men of Kansas City, Kansas. The city in Kansas has a great area of level ground for the accommodation of manufacturing enterprises, and I noticed a good deal of speculative feeling in regard to this territory. The Kansas side has fine elevated situations for residences, but Wyandotte itself does not compare in attractiveness with the Missouri city, and I fancy that the controlling impetus and capital will long remain with the city that has so much the start.

Looking about for the specialty which I have learned to expect in every great Western city, I was struck by the number of warehouses for the sale of agricultural implements on the flats, and I was told that Kansas City excels all others in the amount of sales of farming implements. The sale is put down at 815,000,000 for the year 1887—a fourth of the entire reported product manufactured in the United States. Looking for the explanation of this, one largely accounts for the growth of Kansas City, namely, the vast rich agricultural regions to the west and southwest, the development of Missouri itself, and the facilities of distribution. It is a general belief that settlement is gradually pushing the rainy belt farther and farther westward over the prairies and plains, that the breaking up of the sod by the plough and the tilling have increased evaporation and consequently rainfall. I find this questioned by competent observers, who say that the observation of ten years is not enough to settle the fact of a change of climate, and that, as not a tenth part of the area under consideration has been broken by the plough, there is not cause enough for the alleged effect, and that we do not yet know the cycle of years of drought and years of rain. However this may be, there is no doubt of the vast agricultural yield of these new States and Territories, nor of the quantities of improved machinery they use. As to facility of distribution, the railways are in evidence. I need not name them, but I believe I counted fifteen lines and systems centring there. In 1887, 4565 miles of railway were added to the facilities of Kansas City, stretching out in every direction. The development of one is notable as peculiar and far-sighted, the Fort Scott and Gulf, which is grasping the East as well as the South-west; turning eastward from Fort Scott, it already reaches the iron industries of Birmingham, pushes on to Atlanta, and seeks the seaboard. I do not think I over-estimate the importance of this quite direct connection of Kansas City with the Atlantic.

The population of Kansas City, according to the statistics of the Board of Trade, increased from 41,786 in 1877 to 165,924 in 1887, the assessed valuation from $9,370,287 in 1877 to $53,017,290 in 1887, and the rate of taxation was reduced in the same period from about 22 mills to 14. I notice also that the banking capital increased in a year—1886 to 1887—from $3,873,000 to $6,950,000, and the Clearing-house transactions in the same year from $251,963,441 to $353,895,458. This, with other figures which might be given, sustains the assertion that while real-estate speculation has decreased in the current year, there was a substantial increase of business. During the year ending June 30, 1886, there were built 4054 new houses, costing $10,393,207; during the year ending June 30, 1887, 5889, costing $12,839,808. An important feature of the business of Kansas City is in the investment and loan and trust companies, which are many, and aggregate a capital of $7,773,000. Loans are made on farms in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa, and also for city improvements.

Details of business might be multiplied, but enough have been given to illustrate the material prosperity of the city. I might add a note of the enterprise which last year paved (mainly with cedar blocks on concrete) thirteen miles of the city; the very handsome churches in process of erection, and one or two (of the many) already built, admirable in plan and appearance; the really magnificent building of the Board of Trade—a palace, in fact; and other handsome, costly structures on every hand. There are thirty-five miles of cable road. I am not sure but these cable roads are the most interesting—certainly the most exciting—feature of the city to a stranger. They climb such steeps, they plunge down such grades, they penetrate and whiz through such crowded, lively thoroughfares, their trains go so rapidly, that the rider is in a perpetual exhilaration. I know no other locomotion more exciting and agreeable. Life seems a sort of holiday when one whizzes through the crowded city, up and down and around amid the tall buildings, and then launches off in any direction into the suburbs, which are alive with new buildings. Independence avenue is shown as one of the finest avenues, and very handsome it and that part of the town are, but I fancied I could detect a movement of fashion and preference to the hills southward.