Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-05-21
ONLY AN ADJUSTMENT
Wichita's Demand is that She no Longer
be Disseminated Against

LOUIS, may De llheueU 10 Uue policy OF Ln
man who sawed the limb off the tree upo
which he was hanging-kansas City Stal
While Wichita don't deny that tn
state of Kansas made Kansas City, sh
most emphatically declares that the Kan
sas railroad commissioners were not or
ganized in the interest of Kansas Cit
nor Of any other Missouri town. VIII,
Wichita should not have the same SEIZED
ule rates for her wholesale traffic, out
that Kansas City has, we cannot under
stand. AS for the Kansas railway com
missioners discriminating against ont
| Missouri town in favor of another Mis-
souri, town, the claim is pure hog-wash
1t is the duty of the railway
commissioner, in protecting the inter
ests of Kansas, her people and her com
merce, to make just and equitable rul-
ings without reference to the interests
of towns of other states. The retail
Kansas merchant who buys his goods of
Wichita jobbing house is entitled to
just as low freight rates as the retail
Kansas merchant who may buy his
goods at Kansas City. If under such a
ruling Kansas City, Missouri, can't hold
her own against st. Louis, Missouri, or
Chicago, Illinois, the matter is one which
in no wise concerns the commissioner of
Kansas, nor the people of Kansas.
Wichita asked for no discrimination in
her own favor, but simply for an ad-
justment of rates long due her and to
which as jobbing point she was en-
titled, and just as much entitled as Kan
sas City is to the distributing rates
which she has. Wichita was dis
eliminated against, and that fact was
shown to the entire satisfaction Of the
board before the order was made placing
the tonnage of her wholesale houses, of
her packing houses and Of her live stock
markets on exactly the same footing
with reference to the trade of Kansas
people as is enjoyed by a foreign town
with reference to the same people. The
intimation from an outside source that
the act is indefensible or unwise, is an
exhibition of gall only equal to that
exhibited by the traffic managers of some
Of these Kansas railroads calling upon
the merchants OF Kansas City, which
they did last week, to bring all their po-
litical and business influence to bear on
the Kansas commissioners to defeat the
order. The cheek of the two proceed
ings stand without parallel. In plain
English the commissioners are asked to
hold Kansas down to second rate de-
tendency as state only that an outside
city, which has waxed in taxable great
ness in wealth and in population off Of
Kansas, may be sustained and kept on
her ambitious way; and, that the rail
roads which are almost wholly the bene-
ficiaries of the state may be permitted
to take from the pockets Of the produc-
ers and Of the business men Of Kansas
enough to balance their losses in freight
from short crops and to make good the
losses sustained in an insane endeavor
to beat each other by constructing
whole systems of expensive and useless
branches. The idea that the PROPOSE
ton should now be seriously made by
any railway management of Kansas, or
by a railway of any other state which in
any manner depends upon the traffic Of
this state, that Kansas should never
have a terminal market, or that in
already possessing one that it should
be broken down in the interest
Of the markets Of other states,
embraces an outrage SO stupendous and
barefaced as would warrant a revolu-
ton if its enforcement were attempted
Kansas City and st. Louis may protect
their own interests and in so far as their
of location and wealth are
conserve their destinies as
jobbing cities, but notice is hereby and
now served on them, that Kansas did not
project and practically build thousands
of miles of railway, open up her hun
dreds of thousands of farms, build her
of cities only that Missouri
cities might be made great through the
patronage Of a state which outside of
the Missouri cities is infinitely greater |
than Missouri with all her |
advantages of age and internal |
natural resources. While no state can
possibly be commercially and taxably |
great in the absence of great cities with
in her borders; and, while twenty |
per cent of the population and wealth of |
the great states are found within their |
greater cities, it is therefore but political |
and wisdom begotten of expe- |
rience, which are urging the people of |
Kansas to stand by such cities as promise |
greatness, and which they will do; and, |
the party or the interest that attempts to |
stand in the way of such people in such |
a reasonable claim will go to the wall.
The irrepressible @ question of |
rights has come into promi-
hence and in new phase in Ohio. An |
female preacher made applca- |
ton to the probate judge of Wayne
county for license authorizing her to |