Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-09-11

of all countries. And whether mountains
must be leveled down or swamps filled
up, or other seemingly insurmountable
natural obstacle overcome, the result is
always the same. Whether that law is
ever modified by the course of streams
by navigable waters, or by the config-
uration of the country, in these days of
rail-commerce, are disputed questions;
but the manufacturing and industrial
interests of any country can no more be
kept from concentrating at the COM
mercial center of that country than
could the commercial center itself have
been located differently by any known
power of organized civil forces.
x
Then what fixed or predermin-
ed the present status and destiny
Of Wichita as the commercial metropolis
and manufacturing and industrial center
of the richest. broadcast and grandest
agricultural and live stock domain to be
found on this continent. might be a ques-
ton which we could not in space of a
single newspaper article, to your salts
faction answer. Here at the junction Of
these streams. the Little and the Great
Arkansas rivers for hundred and may
be for two hundred years antecedent to
4 lo oil, ,,fL ,tnfa no
nomadic tribes met to council: here also
great treaties were by them
made and ratified, here the
early explorers and the later armies of
Federal government camped or bivouac-
ed, and here :was the central bartering
station Of the traders for hundreds of
miles around. And so, also, Ill due
course and in spite Of the organized OPP
position of powerful corporations and
notwithstanding the efforts to swerve
their great railroads around us and to
where their own land subsidies lay,
Wichita, nevertheless, like Topsy, 'just
growed." 1t is true, also, as you will
no doubt have observed, that she is full
days swing away from any other great
city and beyond the shadow and influence
of any other powerful center, as far
from Kansas City, as that city is from
the next great center, and that Wichita
is a morning and evening town for the
arrival and departure of all trains from
and to any and all of the other great
centers; true, too, that a hundred live,
growing and prosperous towns and
smaller cities are directly tributary to
her and within the space of from one to
six hours by the ten different lines of
railway which center here; and further,
that the men who control her various
interests are phenominally generous,
wonderfully energetic and of unequailed
enterprise, but behind and back of all
these facts and circumstances we proba-
bly, could no more convince our esteemed
and honorable visitors today why
Wichita is SO rapidly becoming one
of the important links in the great
chain of commercial cities of this CONT
nent than could they have convinced
the world few years since of the then
coming importance of Chicago, Kansas
City, Omaha, Minneapolis or Denver
as links in that important chain. |
x
You will find Wichita all here today,
and five times as much of it today as you
would have found here five years ago, |
but not half as much today as you will |
find five years hence, You will find in
your long ride across the continent that,
in reality the great American desert has
never been wholly wiped out, but that
the youthful giant of the new southwest
is hundreds of miles away where at the
confluince of his two rivers and fertile
valleys he fiourishes; in short, you will
find no other such valley, no
other such town, no other
such paper and no other such welcom-
ng editorial as this But whether, as a
rude composite or as a pleasant entity
hey retain a place in your memories,
hey are, nevertheless, as a valley, as a
own, as newspaper and as welcome
hone the less uncommon, and, by your
all unique and all great.