Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-12-07
HERE WE ARE AGAIN.
ANOTHER BIG PACKING FEATHER
In the Cap Of the Greatest Future
Live Stock Center.
Francis Whitaker t. Sons, Of st. Louis
Concluded Not to Wait till Spring
The Ground Broken Yesterday for.
their Mammoth Wichita
Packing Plant.
HERE WE ARE AGAIN.

Mr.. Whitaker telegraphed his archi-
tect, Mr.. John Thomas, yesterday TO break
/ ground Immediately for his Wichita pack
/ ing plant. The telegram was delivered at
| 1870 a. N In the same hour he also no
titled the President Of the board of trade,
that he had just returned from the east
and was prepared to push his plant here TO
the earliest possible completion, all con-
tracts for engines, machinery tanks, etc
having been successfully let, to be deliver
ed in this city SO that by the first Of May
| next, Mr.. Thomas, the architect, assures
Us, the plant viii be in full operation,
! should the winter not prove exceedingly
unfavorable TO building. BY the noon
hour, Mr.. 7. 4. Mclean of this city, had
entered into contract TO do the excavatin g
for the mammoth foundations. At
o'clock, the committee on packing houses
/ headed by its chairman, ". A. Thomas,
| and A ". Oliver, president Of the board
| Of trade. repaired to the twenty acre plot
next adjoining the Dold packing plant, on
the north, and under the directions of the
architect, the first dirt was thrown, force
OF men with picks, shoyels, piows and
scrapers, standing ready TO supplement
the formal act with earnest dirt throwing
Comparisons are said TO be odious, but
without which it will be hard to give our
| readers an adequate idea of the buildings,
which are to constitute the Whitaker
packing plant Three or four of the build
ings are to be simply monsters. One floor
of the mammoth cooling building alone
Will have a capacity of six thousand
carcasses all hanging separate. Every
HI SC 70 La = t-5a 4 ~
bridges connecting them of iron. The
buildings alone are 70 cost a quarter OF a
million of dollars, and the engines, ma
chinery, watts, tanks. com presses, etc, etc,
half as much more. It might all be
summed up in . comprehensive word
when we state that Mr. Whitaker says he
will surpass the Dold plant, which latter
/ institution, Kansas City and Chicago
packers unite in saying IS without an
equal in the United States, capacity alone
excepted.
What has occurred outside Of the unex-
pected strength which Wichita's live stock
market has developed and shown, that war
rants Mr.. Whitaker to 90 forward with
such a great enterprise during the winter
months can lot be given in this connec-
ton. The managers of the transportation
Of the great western trunk lines have
known and conceded for months that
Wichita was not only going TO take high
rank as a traffic center, but that over and
above her jobbing and manufacturing
trade, the live stock, not only of south
west Kansas, OF No Mans Land and the
Panhandle, but of the entire Indian terri
tory. Southern Colorado and New Mexico
would Inevitably ind its market in Wich-
tia and that at Wichita would it be largely
cured and packed for the markets and con-
sumers of the world. Following such con-
victiOns come inevitable concessions.
Rates on tonnage are always fixed by
amount, not distance. In short, it
would be useless 10 explain that
one Of the greatest and best known
SD ppers and packers in the west, knows
what he Is about-a shipping and packing
firm that paid thousands Of dollars aunu-
ally in freights befor. even Kansas City
was dresmed of, and one that consequently
knows the territory and the markets to be
reached from Wichita as no other firm
knows these matters.