The Wichita daily eagle., 1891-11-22
KANSAS C1rY,s GRIP ON KANSAS

The Kansas City Journal, a sheet
noticeable for its patronizing attitude to-
wards Kansas of late. in a column OF
supposed superior wisdom, mixed with
personal filings, attempts defence of the
Missouri river improvement convention
from the recent exposure made of that
scheme by the EAGLE, the writer saying,
among other things, that the editor of
this paper has failed to grasp the signifi-
canoe of the problem, concluding with a
paragraph running:
''The Missouri river has been of too much
benefit To Kansas for the friends OF that
state to try to ignore II. P"
We are not going to reply, in kind, to
the editorial in question by denying a
lack of brains or by attesting our friend
ship for the people of Kansas, but
touching the declaration of the
three lines quoted, and which embody
the spirit of the whole article, we en-
brace the occasion to say that the bar in
the harbor of Galveston is just the kind
of blessing to the people of Texas that
| the Missouri river is to the people of
Kansas, which river being by nature a
misfortune, has been by Kansas City
rendered a curse. Railways, constructed
from the east to furnish the means Of
traffic, found impossible by its waters,
were for years barred passage across
its uncerta n bed, and only to the detri-
ment of Kansas. Through a pretence of
its navgability Kansas City, joined by
other Missouri river towns, notably st.
Joseph and Omaha, have persistently
forced these railways into making that
sinuous stream "basing line" for all
east and westbound traffic, whereby
Kansas City, being at the great
elbow of the river, made
all the state of Kansas tributary to its
warehouses, slaughter pens and elevat-
ors. Under this enforced traffic arrange
ment rendered only possible by the ex-
istance of a supposedly navigable river,
Kansas City was made the jumping-off
place, the dumping-station for all the
incoming and all the outgoing freights
of million of Kansas people, and largely
also for the people ofColorado and o.. Ne
braska. All conceivable products of
Kansas farms, for years, have been
forced under this scheme of highway
and waterway robbery to pay toll to
Kansas City, not only, but every ton of
freight supplies from the east has been
constructively stopped and taken off at
the Missouri river and an additional and
higher local rate added for the bal
ance of the haul to the Kansas customer.
The result has been to build up a traffic
entrepot for Kansas at the west end of
the first bridge constructed across that
crawling curse, the Missouri river, the
name of the end of which bridge was
changed from Westport Landing, Mis-
souri,, to Kansas City, Missouri, and the
accumulated inhabitants of which have
grown rich and domineering from ad-
vantages growing out of the unlucky
circumstance that in the pre-railway age
a few steamboats, had crawled from st.
Louis to Westport Landing in as quick
time as the trip could have been made
by mule teams Wichita, as well as
every other interior city, town, COM
munity and railway station in Kansas
pays, today, and always has paid,
proportionately extra and additional,
and often burthensome, freight charges
because of the maintained claim of
navigability for that miserable river.
Murdock and the EAGLE may, as the
Journal claims, know very little, but he
knows more of the inside workings of
the traffic rules, and of the outrages
which have been saddled onto the people
of Kansas through the connivance of
Kansas City, Missouri, because of the
Missouri river, than all of the Kansas
City editors who have attempted to air
themselves on that question combined,
or otherwise they are hypocrites; a
stream that could only be made naviga-
ble by lining its bottom for its entire
length with copper, yet which if it had
been in fact, as in name, susceptible of
competitive navigation, would have
proved great blessing to the
people of Kansas, not only in
holding down freights, but in that
no Kansas City, Missouri, with its sys-
tenn of steals and tolls and superior pat
ronizing airs would ever have been pos
sible.
For a fuller answer to its article the
Journal is referred to our reply of yes
terday morning to the editor of the
Gazette. In the meanwhile the EAGLE
is for Kansas, for her people, for her in
stitutions and for her material interests.
as against the whole world, which in
cludes Kansas City, Missouri, her papers
her traffic schemes and her toIling Jobs
and steals.