The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1897-01-19
A Wall WITH GALL IN IT.

for the people of this state would be TO
paralyze hepacking house and livestock
amalgamations, the grain and elevator
trusts and the all-round blended steals
and robberies currently posing and pass
ing under the name Of Kansas City,
Missouri.
The wall of the papers of that town
over the late refusal of our state rail-
road commissioners 10 concede an addl-
tional cut in grain rates is not unmixed
with threats or great gobs of gall. The
cemented and consolidated agencies of
that Missouri town have always talked
as though they had some right to be
heard by or some authority TO command
not only Kansas railroad arrangements
but also the board of Kansas railroad
commissioners Such assumption might
have proved presumption but for the
fact of many past concessions made
ihem The Star declares in effect, that
The refusal Of the commissioners is not
only an outrage which will not be
brooked, but that Kansas grain des-
tined for southern ports, or any port,
must be first hauled to and handled by
Kansas City. Cheeky! Well, yes. Why?
Kansas City in affording the state of
Kansas a convenient market, is grow
Ing to be a controlling power at the ex-
pense Of Kansas, at tAe expense of this
IL al
cost of any possible commercial cities or
market centers of our own. Kansas
City, Missouri, is being developed into
q great dominating force commercially,
financially and politically, by the state
Of Kansas. Kansas, in being the Gre
ator Of such aggregate power, is help
less in controlling, directing or profit
ing by il, save as dear-bought conven-
fence. Kansas City is independent of
the people, institutions and laws of
Kansas, and for which she has no use,
further than she can utilize them, by
turning them 10 her own advantage.
Kansas City is of Kansas, was made by
Kansas, is sustained by Kansas, but it
belongs and is subject only TO Missouri.
Her development and strength is Mis-
souris growth and greatness. A future
million OF inhabitants for that Missouri
town would mean Just that much added
to the state Of Missouri at the expense
of Kansas, just the concentration of
that many people and their contingent
energies, interests and eventualities,
which otherwise would have been add
ed 10 Kansas towns and cities. The
railway commissioners of Kansas or the |
legislature therefore could do no posi- i
BILE greater service to the people of this |
state, nor add so much to its taxable |
valuation, population and future devel- |
opment. as TO conform 10 such a policy, |
and pass such laws as would leave |
Kansas City a whistling station. 1t
might be rough on Missouri, but it |
would be the making of Kansas. If |
Kansas can sutain such city as Kan |
sas City without having word to say
and while under the laws of another |
and a non-progressive state, what
would be the character of the city or
cities on her own soil, whose growth /
and powers would be but additions to
those she already possesses? Kansas
City's demand that Kansas grain must
first be sent through her toll gates
would have meant something last year.
But it doesn't count this season. The
influences which dominate Kansas just
now have no love for the joint-stock
completely of that Missouri town whose
representatives have bribed Kansas in
terests away. stolen Kansas industrial
and commercial concerns by the score,
locked its livestock growers, tolled its
grain producers and bled all by extor-
items, and then, through the pull they
had with the transportation lines of this
state, compelled everybody to consign
everything they had to sell to the yards,
the pens, the elevators, and the commits
sion houses of their skinning corpora
tons, which, in turn, are upheld and
sustained by laws enacted by a lot of
cheap ignorance mailing from the cat
fish creeks coon hollows and back
woods of Poor old Missouri" at an old
moSsGack collapse, concealed in the
brush on the brink of a deserted river.
known as jefferson City. AT this out
of-the-way burg, reached principally by
mud-wagons and unkempt representa-
uves having a vote TO sell, have the in
terests and destinies Of Kansas. this
state of sun-lit prairies and intelligence.
been iuggled and manipulated NJ the
behest of the constituencies octupus
that sprawls over the Sui Hills, and
which from its dirty seat of yellow clay
presumes to declare what Kansas shall
and shall not be and do.
As a commonwealth, Kansas. in all
that she is and aspires TO. lies limp
within the tentacles of this gorged and
greedy sucker, asquat beyond the
kaw's mouth. II perhaps has now
grown too strong and impregnable TO
successfully scotch. but if its cemented
and dominating outfit OF trusts and
combines have any regard for present
comfort, they had better keep their itch
ing palms of Of that Pop aggregation
holding forth at Topeka this winter.
and devote their spare change To their
old-time cheap boosters who are iust
now waking the echoes OF the tangled
purlieus of Jefferson City, state of Mis-