"You see," he said, "Kansas City has the largest undisputed tributary trade territory of any city in the country. We are not, in reality, a Missouri city so much as a Kansas one. Indeed Kansas City was originally intended to be in Kansas and was really diverted into Missouri when the government survey established the line between the two states. We reach out into Missouri for some business, but Kansas is our real territory, as well as Oklahoma and Arkansas. We get a good share of business from Nebraska and Iowa, too. These facts, plus the fact that we are in the very center of the great American feed lot, account for our big bank clearings. In bank clearings we come sixth, St. Louis being fifth, Pittsburgh seventh, and Detroit eighth. And we are not to be compared in population with any of those cities.
"Almost all our greatest activities have to do with farms and produce. We are first as a market place for hay and yellow pine; second as a packing center and a mule market; third in lumber, flour, poultry, and eggs, in the volume of our telegraph business, and in automobile sales. And, of course, you probably know that we lead in the sale of agricultural implements and in stockers and feeders."
At that my companion, who, because he resided for a long time in Albany, N. Y., prides himself upon his knowledge of farming, broke in.
"I suppose," said he, "that instead of drawing stockers and feeders with horses, they use gasoline motors now-a-days?"
"Oh, no," said the Kansas City man, "they walk."
"Walk?" exclaimed my companion. "They have made an advance in agricultural implements since my day if they have succeeded in making them walk!"
"I'm not speaking of agricultural implements," said our informant. "I'm speaking of stockers and feeders."
"What are stockers and feeders?" I asked.
"Cattle," he said. "There are three kinds of cattle marketed here; first, fat cattle, for slaughter; second, stockers, which are young cows used for stocking farms and ranches; third, feeders, or grassfed steers, which are sold to be fattened on grain, for killing. In stockers and feeders we lead the world; in fat cattle we are second only to Chicago."