Wichita eagle., 1889-06-28
From the Hartford iConn.) Post.
WESTERN CITIES.
Something About How They Grow and
Prosper.
Wichita, Wonder of the West.

Wichita, Wonder OF the West
To the Editor Of the Post;
There Is nothing at the west which
impresses an eastern man visiting it
after an interval of fifteen or twenty
years more yividly than the number of
large cities which in that time have
sprung, if not into existence, yet into
very respectable size. People at the east
who with the ending of their school
days ended their excursions into geo.
graphical knowledge, have a general
idea that Chicago, Cincinnati and st.
Louis are rather big places-big in their
pretensions certainly, and with cen
siderable discount, big in their business
and populations; but they are hardly pre-
pared to find the multitude Of other cities
| whose actual statistics reach far
beyond what a few years ago even
the most extravaganza western news
papers dared to claim for the old famil-
lar trio. Here, for instance, the traveller
stumbles in quick succession on Cleve-
| land, with its go, 900 inhabitants, Toledo
with its 10000, Louisville with its
| iS0. 600, Omaha with its 125, 200, st.
Joseph with its 000-third, also in
wealth to a person of any in the United
States-KanSas City with its 225, 900, and
others with their twenty, thirty and
| forty thousand sprinkled in among them
as thick and active as the fat calves
among the cattle out on apralrle pasture.
| Nor does their size consist in mere num-
berS. Some of them, to be sure, are yet
crude, unfinished, with one street
elegantly paved and the rest in its
original prairie mud, at the center
huge brick block rising in aristocratlc
pride and on its TANKS a tumble down
democratic shanty; but others rival In
solidity and ornament the Oldest towns
of the east. Schools of the latest pat
tern, both in architecture and education,
and not unfrequently academies and
universities. Churches lift up their
lofty spires, with people in them, too.
Stately homes stand on the corner lots
Railroad trains rattle into their depotS
from all points Of the compass. Public
parks blossom on their stems OF street.
They are full of enterprise and activity.
Large sums of money-SOmetlmeS 1t
must be confessed, eastern money-are
devoted to :spublic improvements; and
their inhabitants all believe, and act on
the belief, that their special place is to
be the country next Chicago, and their
corner lots the ones whose value IS soon
to be reckoned by thousands of dollars
for the square foot,
Among the western cities thus recent
ly born, adding to its population for
while at the rate of thousand month,
thrilling with mighty hopes and swelling
with great expectations. is this OF Wlchl-
ia. ''the Peerless Princess of the Palms."
"the Magical Mascot of the Meridian"
"the Witching Wonder of the West, as
its friends call it; ''the Windy Wonder
of the West" and ''the Presuming Pre-
tender of the Prairie" as it is called by
its rivals and foes. 1t is characteristic
western city, one into which the people
of Hartford have put considerable money,
and in which, if not from which they
have considerable interest. Two years
ago Wichita, originally somewhat IN
savory frontier town, had what some Of
It's best people now regard as the mlsfor-
tune of being struck with a boom. A
boom in the business and civic world
is very much like what cyclone is
in the weather, or an old fashioned
revival in religion. Occasionally there
may be some occult human intluen
ces engaged in working it up,
but ordinarily no one can tell
whence it cometh, or how long it con-
tinueth, or why it existeth, or whittier it
goeth. 1t first appears in the shape OF
an idea pervading all classes of people
that their town is in the direct line of
the worlds coming business develop
ment, and that every square inch OF 1t
viii soon be needed for railroad depot,
or a great warehouse, or stately private
residence. Every man begins buying
and selling real estate to his neighbor,
selling it today and buying back, per-
haps, the same thing at an enormous adj
vance tomorrow. Outside spectators
are sucked into the whirl by the car load
and the hundred. New streets are laid
out; lots divided and subdivided; great
buildings begun; flaming circulars sent
east to allure in more capital; syndicates
formed to buy large blocks of land; ad-
ditions of farm land, some of them miles
out into the prairie, laid out with attrac- |
tive names into streets and lots; rail- |
roads built in every direction; and valua- |
bic sites and privileges, often with large |
sums of money, are offered free to outside |
business concerns to come in with their |
names and their plants. 1t begins with |
land speculation, but sweeps along with |
it all the other interests of the communi- |
tv-manufactures, trade, art, science, |
education, charities ard even religion, !
initiating them with the same abnormal |
activity. 1t is easy to get anything lib
orally subscribed for, if it is only snowy |
and costly enough, from the building of |
an ornamental sewer to the organization |
of stained-window church. The hum
BILE village weekly newspaper, enlarged |
into huge daily, is filled with flaming |
new schemes and with glowing accounts
of what is being done. Fortunes of five, |
ten and twenty thousand dollars are
made in a single day by single stroke. |
Everybody is wild with business Juror.
Clerks, mechanics, teachers, ministers |
and all the women, singly or together, |
have their ventures in side streets and |
humber corner lots and even the most |
sober minded business men, those who |
know the whole thing is only a
boom and who caught at it to begin |
with, are drawn sooner or later, in spite |
of themselves, into the mighty vortex. |
SO the thing goes on till suddenly, some |
morning, the end comes, no one can tell |
how or why, catching sometimes the
shrewder dealers equally with the most
unsuspicit u, in its awful calm. Prices |
are held nominally as high as ever. mar
kets opened and schemes put forth; but |
nobody wants to buy. Achange comes |
avoctlC lilo hat