Wichita eagle., 1888-04-22
WICHITA A DISTRIBUTING CITY.
To the Editor Of the Eagle:

To the Editor Of the Eagle:
The methods OF commerce like every
thing else must conform TO those changes
enforced by time. In nothing is this
made more plain that the United States
laws provide for ports of delivery hun
dreds of miles inland where no ship ever
can touch. This is done 10 facilitate
commerce by permitting imported goods
to be deposited in the far interior whilst
the duty thereon may be collected just
as the importer takes it from the bonded
warehouse for sale. \ bill is now before
congress TO make Wichita port of
delivery. which promises 10 become a
law at an early date. To many Of our
citizens this may excite the query as to
what the use of ii can be.
The best way to answer the querrv IS
to state that ship may load with En-
gllsh goods at Liverpool for Rio Janeiro,
Central American or Mexican port. At
either of these ports of destination may
be found the never fail products, coffee,
chocolate, istle, sisal, hemp, logwood.
dye stuffs and an innummerable list OF
other products which cannot be grown
in the United States and which enter
into her consumption in an increasing
quantity. When that English ship goes
on to Boston, New York or Baltimore.
she can get a cargo of the above articles,
but if she goes to New Orleans or Gal
weston for cotton. she has to load some
thousands of tons of dirt or rock
as ballast and after arrival
either throw ii overheard
to fill up a valuable roadstead or sell II
to till up lot at the cost of hosting IL
out. Meanwhile several millions of
Americans in Texas. Kansas, New Mex
ico Colorado and Nebraska are paving
the freight and middle charges for their
coffee and other articles named in our
list via New York, Chicago and ST.
Louis over route of several thousand
miles. While if. as there will be, our
commercial facilities Were organized at
interior points like Wichita, the ship
named above could always load as well
for Galveston with coffee and other pro-
auctions, as she now does for east At
lantic ports. for continuous transport to
Wichita by the bonded cars. In that
event we should get our coffee and
tropical imports over distance of fif-
teen to twenty hundreds of miles from
the place of production TO that of claSsI-
fication, preparation and distribution
We should in that case add the advan-
tageS of two thousand miles and less of
cheap water transportation TO seven hun
dred miles special railway rates; the adj
yantages of the presence of its claSsers,
factors and dealers in such stutfS who
now live elsewhere and would then live
with us; the advantages of becoming ac-
quainted with the uses and values of
many productions now unknown to US
and which would come regularly and
cheaply over a certain freight route.
then the people of the great interior
would know what good coffee looked,
smelled and tasted life. Now,
they do not, for it is classed. sampled and
adulterated out of all virtue by the
sharpers of the cities on the coast and in
the distributing centers. 1t is remark
able that the great ocean highway be-
tween Europe and Brazil, and thence
westerly through the Caribbean sea, the
gulf of Mexico to the coast of the
United States carries no regular paSSen
gers any further than between Rio and
Europe Yet the whole track is covered
with an irregular and desultory traffic
from everywhere. If this were once
systematized by importing through the
western gulf ports for the needs of the
great southwestern states regular lines
of steamers would be put on between
Galveston and Liverpool. Havre
and Bremen. In that case
we should go to Europe
bv the way of Galveston instead of New
York city.
Since one business institution attracts
others in the proportion and magni-
tude of itself, we can easily reason that
the establishment of great interior cOf-
fee market is possible and that the very
act of carrying 1t into operation Will not
fail to bring along in Its train great
many other features valuable in building
up a great interior distributing city
This reasoning is all the more probable
since it is in the line of the progress Of
those changes already wrought by time
in commercial development within the
past half century.
w. f. HUTCHINSOS.