The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-07-10
WHERE IS WICHITA?

No Kansas town or city was ever
subjected to a pressure of combined
agencies and organized opposition such
as Wichita has withstood. No young
city, anywhere, ever encountered SO
many untoward happenings, individ-
ual misfortunes, corporate collapses
within, and such systemized antagon-
ism, treachery and conspiracy from
enemies without, and survived. From
the advantages Of her location, before
a single line of railway had reached
her she was the important commercial
and banking town for all Southwest
Kansas. Later she became the cattle
town and the grain center, in short the
principal market for very large sec
ton of the state and for much of the
Indian Territory. Her recognized adj
vantages Of prestige and Of location
were conceived to be unfavorable to
the lines of railways which had
reached her, by their arrangements,
which Arrangements set about imme
diately, and with a harmony of pur-
pose, to hold down the only town whose
commerce had commenced to threaten
the establishment Of basing line be-
tween the Missouri river and Denver.
The Santa Fe built roads all around
us. The St Louis and San Francisco
entered into a contract with the Santa
Fe whereby it abandoned its con-
tracted extensions beyond Wichita.
The Rock Island endeavOred to make
its Liberal branch its main line for the
southwest. The Missouri Pacific
changed its through mountain line
away from us by putting in some round
about links that sent it hundred
miles north. With her big start and
onward sweep these things would not
have hurt Wichita in any perceptible
degree probably, but for the freight
rate Determinations which followed.
The railroads Disseminated against
the freights of Wichita from every
direction, and to every point Her
grain market was ruined, her seven
elevators torn down and her milling
interests crippled. The state board Of
railway commissioners were appealed
to to save the splendid live stock mar
ket and packing interest her people
had built up. The response of the
commission was but q halfway affair.
Following close upon this action and
its results came three years Of short
crops, dull times, mortgage fore
closures and debt disasters, in which
five Wichita banks have gone down
dragging hundreds of citizens with
them, and crippling every business
enterprise Of the town. Two of the
banks were among the largest and
most solid in the state. But two other
banks in the state equalled them in
either capital or business. They went
down under their loads Of property,
which property will some time in the
near future be worth enough to have
paid out all of the banks and left the
bankers themselves rich men. But
the banks went down and with them
a number of the most enterprising and
able men the city ever boosted.
With all this accumulation Of ad-
yerSitieS and disasters, Of calamity and
miscarriages, of blunders, mischances
and conspiracies, to which might be
added the fact that all the other cities
of the state were combining and plot
ting against us, not only materially
but politically, and it becomes a Won
der that Wichita has still between
twenty and twenty-five thousand peo-
pie, and that her bank clearings of last
week showed up nearly one-half mil |
lion of dollars, or one hundred and !
forty thousand greater than any other
city in Kansas, than Topeka with its
great corporation and state pay rolls.
So, Wichita still lives, and will live, !
not only will live but will flourish |