The Wichita daily eagle., 1891-11-18
TIE MISSOURI RIVER IMPROVEMENT
STEAL

A River Improvement convention j.
called to meet at Kansas City, Missouri
for the 18th of next month. We sup
pose the idea is to coach congress for 9
big appropriation to be worked into that
sandbar-obstructedt flow of silt known as
the Missouri river We would not be
mean, but we cannot afford to be con-
sidered yet more brainless than the aver
age reader of the EAGLE has already
been forced to conclude. We want to
help give K. C. a boost, but why
couldn't her people hit on some more
taking scheme than that old chestnut,
the Improvement Of that so-called river.
There would be more business in prop
osition asking congress to build a canal
from Kansas City to ST. Louis or to
Memphis, provided it could be de-
monstrated that the waters Of the
said river are fluid enough to
supply such canal. AS for
the claim that the pulling of few mil
/ lion dollars worth of silt-soaked snags
from the bar obstructed channel of the
Big Muddy would in any sense ''relieve
our western industries of the enormous
burdens they are now bearing" except in
that the expensive operation would ne
cessarily increase the volume and flow
of United States currency among the
people who live on the banks of the first
named stream catching bull heads and
laying for suckers, it's all as thin as
the fine picture of the magnificent
steamer which heads the call of the con-
vention. The hope of our sister city that
the talk of such convention will scare
the railroads into making lower
rates to and from the mouth Of
the Kaw is vain one. These
railroad people may not be SO very
smart, but they know navigable river
from an open sewer, and they are also
gradually getting it through their wool
that Kansas City, Mo-, does not consti-
tute "the people of the west" as inti-
mated in the circular, although; judging
from some late efforts of their Com
mercial club" to steal some of Wichita's
industries, the people of that place
doubtless feel a sense of proprietorship
over that portion of the west known as
the state of Kansas. That city has so
long and so successfully doomed itself at
the expense of everybody else than that
of their own Missouri people they now
seem to desire to use Kansas in boom
that is to come from the United States
treasury. The call for this latest Kansas
City Job quotes a civil engineers
opinion to the effect that the tawny
tide of tadpoles and mud-wiggIers could
be rendered navigable for something
else than bull heads. So too, and for
years, did these same government engi-
neers report that the Great Arkansas
could be rendered navigable up to
Wichita, and as regularly did they OBJ
tain appropriations. They are all after
jobs.
If the Missouri river is Kansas City's
only remaining hope then the sooner
that place throws up It's hands and takes
its final slump the better it will be for
its scheming people, and the cheaper
for the people of Kansas who for
years have poured their all into the
maws of the greedy crowd clustered
about the mouth of the Kaw only to toll
every industry of Kansas while bearing
none of the states burdens, crowd-com-
bine that has so far forced a Missouri
river basing line" for freights which has
robbed Kansas of millions and retarded
the growth of the Kansas towns and
Kansas communities for whom the rail-
roads were built; in fact communities
and towns that largely contributed the
money with which the roads were con-
structed.
If Kansas City had any shame or sense
of justice, or even of decency, she would |
manipulate her Missouri river improve
ment steal, alone and unaided, at least |
without attempting to use Kansas as her
cats paw.