Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-01-13
LYING AS AN ENTERPRISE.
Few Facts which DOwned Schem
Based on Falsehood.

| A gentlemen who represents an extern
sive jobbing house in Chicago, and who
| called last evening" afforded us not little
amusement To say that ne was consid-
erably Disguised as also excited, would be
| drawing it mild enough. AS we asked
nothing, and got only what he voluntarily
stated, we may not have got onto the en-
tire situation. But we got this much
straight enough: The firm in Chicago had
| been waited upon with some wonderful
showiDgs and statements touching the
commercial importance and superior ad-
| Yantages of certain Southwestern Kansas
town as wholesaling point. Accepting
the showing as being plausible if not abso-
iutely correct our visitor, a member of the
firm, came out to look the matter over,
| and. if everything was as represented, to
rent the necessary room for branch job
bing concern. He hadn't more than got
into Kansas and fairly to talking
of commercial centers before he
heard of Wichita. However, he stuck
his objective point in good shape in due
course OF time and found things a little off
from the descriptions, yet upon the whole,
fairly prosperous town. As he couldn't
get the Wichita suggestion out Of his head
he concluded to come round this way on
his road home. The result and revelations
of his trip may well be immagined. He
didn't know that there was, in fact, a real
city in Kansas We told him that there
were two or three dozen of them, but only
two in which the business was such as to
demand a bank clearing house or that
ever made any bank clearing house
reports, and that Wichita as one of the
two showed three times the business of
the other which other is town away off
in northeast Kansas. We showed him,
further, and by the railway map, that
Wichita was the only city in Kansas that
stood a ghost of a show for the jobbing
trade of the Indian territory and this, to his
entire satisfaction We showed him that
the town he talked of locating il was pay
ing within a fraction of six per cent in
taxes and that that towns mortgage debt
was, as compared to the assessed valua-
ton of the town itself, three hundred per
cent greater than Wichita's; we showed
him that Wichita does ten times the job
bing business Of any city in Kansas, aud
that this was not only the live stock, and
the grain, and the jobbing center of the
state, but must, inevitably, be the great
central salt market; we showed him that
while our taxes were but two and fifty
two hundredths that the sum total of our
taxable increase for single year almost
equalled the entire taxable property of his
great center; we showed him that for all
of our great enterprises, and also that
for our water works system, two electric
light systems, street gas lighting system,
and our street railway system, ETC., the
city had never issued bond or was not in
debt for them single cent: we showed
him that Wichita was in the very center
of the great agricultural garden of Kansas,
and this was so attestei by the official re-
ports Of the state board of agriculture; we
showed him that no other city in the state
had as many local railways nor as many
trunk lines: we showed him that in the
lines Of retail dry goods and of retail
clothing, ETC., that people came here by
rail every day from every direction to
trade. and that the sum total of such re-
tail trade was probably five times that of
any city in the state. besides many other
things unnecessary to specify here. With
his eyes bullying out and drops of sweat
standing out upon his brow he exclaimed:
''Sir, am forced to believe it; evidences
of all you say are to be seen on every hand:
your great buildings. your streets full of
traffic and life all show it, and l shall re-
turn to Chicago and SO report; but what
about those otner fellows up yonder; what |
of all they said about your city being dead |
and of the coming Importance of heir own
life?" We saw that he desired no answer
yet felt he needed the one we gave him,
aiz: Sir. they seem to be enterprising
liars who simply made you victim of
their enterprise