Part 2
Friday morning the sun rose bright and clear. It found our car on the side track commanding a magnificent view of one of the finest boulevards of Topeka, the capital of this great prohibition State. We had hardly finished breakfast when eight elegant carriages dashed up to the car. In a few moments we were being rapidly driven up the boulevard to the Hotel Throop, where we were welcomed by manager Doolittle, a friend of Mr. Blanchard. After being shown to our rooms, we again entered our carriages and were treated to a most enjoyable drive through the principal streets and avenues of this most beautiful city. After calling at the principal banks we returned to our palatial quarters at the Hotel Throop, where we were honored with a call by a special committee from the Board of Trade.
The Hotel Throop is sufficient evidence that prohibition does not damage the business of a first-class hotel. Mrs. James questioned the driver of her carriage, a very bright and intelligent man, and his testimony was positive in favor of prohibition as a benefit to his business.
Hon. D. O. Bradley interviewed the superintendent of police. The testimony from the police department showed a decrease in the number of arrests by the police of the city of Topeka. For the month of September, 1889, they were only one half the number for September, 1882, with double the population in 1889.
Mr. Doolittle had prepared for us a special menu. The banquet room and tables were most elegantly decorated with beautiful flowers. We were so taken up with the attractions of the table that the hours passed by unheeded. The telephone recalled us to the stern realities of life by announcing that our car was attached to the Westbound “Thunderbolt” and that train of thirteen coaches crowded with through passengers was awaiting our presence in the “Dalmatia.” We hurried to our carriages and were driven at full speed to our car, and before we had hardly recovered our breath Topeka had vanished and the broad prairie was in sight.
The whole afternoon was spent in watching the panorama of cities and towns, farms and ranches, creeks and rivers, as we rushed by them. For nearly the whole distance between Topeka and Emporia we passed through one of the great coal-fields of Kansas. After leaving Emporia and the noted limestone quarries of Strong City, our path lay through an almost continuous field of corn, until we reached the thriving city of Newton. After a moment’s stop we rushed on through wheat, corn, and oats until the famous Arkansas Valley was reached, and Hutchinson loomed in view. Our car was soon on the _house_ track, and we found a large company awaiting to welcome us, among whom were: S. W. Campbell, Esq., President First National Bank; John Lowry, Esq., President Iowa Town Company; George S. Bourne, Esq., Treasurer Empire Loan and Trust Company; J. R. Pope, Esq., Cashier Valley State Bank; F. R. Chrisman, Esq., Cashier People’s State Bank; Samuel Matthews, Esq.; Miles Taylor, Editor _Daily News_; E. L. Meyer, Esq., Cashier First National Bank; W. T. Atkinson, Esq., Cashier National Bank of Commerce; James McKinstry, Esq., Attorney at Law; A. J. Lusk, Esq., President Hutchinson National Bank; W. R. Bennett, Esq., Vice-President Empire Loan and Trust Company, and many others. They crowded our spacious hotel car, and introductions followed. At the request of the party, presented by a committee of ladies, Mr. Knox consented to deliver to us the address which he had prepared for response to the toast, “The East,” at the “Bankers’ Banquet,” of the American Bankers’ Association, at Kansas City. Did orator ever have a more unique auditorium or attentive and appreciative audience?
He said: “No American, returning home, can sail through the beautiful harbor and bay of New York without experiencing a thrill of joy and pride at the unequalled location of this great Eastern city and the rapid strides with which it attracts and combines all the elements which have heretofore formed the largest cities of the world! The Germans drink their bumpers, at home and abroad, to the river Rhine. The river Hudson was the first link of communication between the East and the West. Eighty years or more ago our fathers celebrated the opening of the Erie Canal with a joy unequalled by any of our modern celebrations. They felt that the East and the West were brought more closely together by adding this second link to the methods of transportation.
“I remember when a boy to have visited the cabin of one of the passenger packets of the Erie Canal at nightfall. It reminded me of the buttery of my grandmother in the country on the farm, which was a long room with pans of milk placed on shelves on either side, with a narrow passage between. In this cabin, instead of glistening pans of milk, the passengers were laid to sleep upon the shelves. Outside, three horses on the towpath drew the boat, and upon the horses were boys to guide them. Soon after nightfall the boys were asleep, the horses were asleep, and if the boat had been called “Somnambula,” every thing would have been in harmony with the name! The passengers were three weeks making the journey from New York to Chicago by canal and the lakes. If there was a storm upon the lakes there was danger that they might never reach their destination! Yet our fathers rejoiced over even this small improvement in their means of transportation.
“Within a few months, chiefly by the employment of Eastern as well as Western Capital, perfect lines of railroad have been built and recent improvements have been made, which have so shortened the distance between Chicago and New York that a breakfast can be taken in New York and upon the following day repeated in the city of Chicago. Yet so blasé have we become that this perfect system of transportation has gone into effect almost without public acknowledgment.
“The East and the West then have reason to love the beautiful Hudson, with its Palisades, its Catskill, its West Point, and its
‘Villages strewn like jewels on a chain All its bright length.’
The Mohawk Valley beyond, excels even the Hudson in pastoral beauty.
‘Whole miles of level grain, With leagues of meadow-land and pasture-field, Cover its surface; gray roads wind about, O’er which the farmer’s wagon clattering rolls, And the red mail-coach. Bridges cross the streams, Roofed, with great spider-webs of beams within. Homesteads to homesteads flash their window-gleams, Like friends that talk by language of the eye. Upon its iron strips the engine shoots, That half-tamed savage with its boiling heart And flaming veins, its warwhoop and its plume. Swift as the swallow skims that engine fleets Through all the streaming landscape of green field And lovely village. On their pillared lines, Distances flash to distances their thoughts, And all is one abode of all the joy And happiness that civilization yields!’
“Out from the Mohawk, is Saratoga, and delicious Lake George, and beyond, the Adirondacks with its wealth of forest and beauty, its lofty pine trees and its loftiest mountain peak which we call Mt. Marcy, but which our Indian Fathers with more aptitude named ‘Ta haw us,’--‘He splits the sky!’ Beyond is the glorious St. Lawrence with its thousand islands, and Ontario and Erie which encircle the lands of the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas with their little sparkling lakes; and between our own confines and the border of Her Majesty’s Dominions is that most sublime sentinel of the whole continent--grand old Niagara!
“The Western man, more frequently than the Eastern, travels throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and appreciates its soil and climate, its wonderful resources of coal and iron, and its commercial city of Philadelphia, with its thousands of pleasant homes and its hundreds of beautiful industries. Its sister states of New Jersey and Maryland are on either side and baby Delaware between. Baltimore is the birthplace of the song of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ If there are those who do not particularly enjoy the scenery of mountain and forest, brook and river, and bay and valley of these Commonwealths, there is no one, I am sure, who does not love the fish and the crabs and the oysters and the canvas-back duck of the Chesapeake, which is the most beautiful and bountiful public larder of the universe! And close to Baltimore is magnificent Washington, the capital of our common country. In another direction to the east is Bunker Hill and Boston Harbor and the ‘Hub,’ and all the people ‘way down East’ who have for eighty years been sending their sons to the West to found great commonwealths like Kentucky and Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Minnesota and Kansas, and other wonderful States like those that surround us, and others still upon the more and more distant frontier.
“The children of the East are proud of the East and the children of the West are proud of the West. I lived for a number of years in Minnesota when it was a territory, and I am told by my friends that I made the Eastern people--to use a slang expression--‘tired’ in singing the praises of the land of the Dakotas. After I had located myself in New York, upon a return from a visit to Minnesota I met an old friend in Chicago with whom I had an earnest conversation in reference to the rapid progress of the West. We were both Western men in our enthusiasm, but when he found that I had located in New York he expressed his dissatisfaction by saying: ‘New York! Why, in a few years New York will be to Chicago what Liverpool is to London; New York, like Liverpool, will be the seaport town, but Chicago, like London, will be the great interior city!’ His sudden exclamation nearly took me from my feet, but when I recovered I answered him as earnestly: ‘When Chicago reaches its population of fifteen hundred thousand New York will add to its boundaries a few of its suburbs like Brooklyn and Jersey City and Newark and Hoboken, when it will have a population of three millions, and give Chicago another pull of half a century!’
“But I have been in the habit for years of visiting the West frequently, in order to watch its progress and study geography,--for seeing is believing. I have just spent two days in Chicago, and now find myself for the first time in Kansas City, which was called by more than one person in Chicago whom I met, ‘Chicago No. 2!’ And I have come to the conclusion that possibly what my enthusiastic Chicago friend said, and what I heard Governor Seward also say in the city of St. Paul in the year 1856, is true--‘that somewhere here, in the State of Illinois, the State of Kansas, or the State of Minnesota--somewhere here in this galaxy of States, which we call the Northwest, there will be built a great interior city, larger than any of our seaport towns.’
“The Eastern cities will however, for years contest with you the right to excel them in population, in intelligence, and in wealth. We acknowledge your rapid progress. We know that forty years ago Chicago had just begun to exist and that many of your other cities were unknown.
“But while you have been growing the East has grown rapidly. Take, for instance, the increase in bank corporations and banking capital, as an example. The capital and surplus of the banks of the East during the last thirty years have greatly increased. The increase in their deposits in the last twenty years has been without parallel in any other country. There has been an enormous increase in the deposits of savings-banks, which are properly institutions conducted not for the benefit of the shareholders, but solely for the benefit of the depositors. The deposits of the New England States in savings-banks were but 43 millions of dollars in 1852; in 1860, but 148 millions; they are now more than 1,190 millions. The deposits of the savings-banks of the State of New York in 1852 were less than 28 millions; they are now 505 millions. The capital of the banks of New York City during the last thirty years has increased from 35 millions to 80 millions, and a surplus of 40 millions has been accumulated. The loans have increased many times, and the individual deposits more than seven times, while the bank balances have increased in much greater ratio. Thirty years ago there was no clearing-house. In the year 1854 the exchanges were 5,000 millions; they are now 31,000 millions. The daily exchanges were 19 millions; they are now 101 millions. In the month of October of last year, according to the comptroller’s report, there was an increase of 469 millions over the previous year in the exchanges at the clearing-houses of the United States, of which increase 215 millions was in New York, 84 millions in Boston, 35 millions in Philadelphia, and 56 millions in Chicago. From a slip cut from the Chicago _Tribune_ on my way to this city, I find that the gross exchanges of the clearing-houses of the United States on September 21, 1889, was 1,044 millions, of which 663 millions was in the city of New York and 381 millions outside of New York. This slip contains returns from the clearing-houses of fifty different cities, including all the larger cities. The clearings of the city of Boston were $82,000,000, of Philadelphia $74,000,000, of Chicago $69,000,000, of St. Louis $20,000,000, and of Kansas City $9,000,000.
“In the year 1861 I compiled a table showing at a glance the total receipts of the national banks on two different days, and the proportion of these receipts by the banks in the various cities. These returns show that while the total receipts upon a certain day were $295,000,000, the receipts of forty-eight banks in the city of New York were $165,000,000, or nearly 56 per cent. of the whole. The receipts of the four great cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, comprised nearly four fifths of the total receipts on June 30, 1881, and nearly three fourths of the total on September 17, 1881; while the sixteen reserved cities on June 30th were more than 85 per cent., and on September 17th more than 82 per cent., of the whole amount.
“These facts show how closely connected is the business of the banks elsewhere with the great commercial cities of the East. Nearly every bank and banker located in all the principal cities and villages of the country have deposits subject to sight draft in New York. Every mail not only brings remittances from neighboring cities, but from the most inaccessible points in the country. To-day a single roadside tavern or outpost upon the great plains of the frontier; to-morrow a railroad is constructed, and in place of the tavern of the frontiersman or the military outpost, there is the city of Cheyenne in the embryo State of Wyoming, or the city of Bismarck in the new State of Dakota, or the city of Winnipeg in the Provinces of Manitoba. And almost on the day of the birth of these young cities or villages, banks are organized under the authority of the laws of the United States or Canada, which are almost immediately thereafter brought into close communication with some correspondent in New York.
“The East sympathizes with you in your growth, and receives substantial profit from that source. New York, as well as Chicago, is your market, and the effect of good crops in all sections of the West is felt in New York as surely as in your Western cities. The progress and prosperity of the West increases largely the progress and prosperity of the East. For more than a half century--for more than eighty years--the East has been sending a portion of its surplus here for investment. It had its early losses, but its gains have been large, which is evident from the fact that it has never for a single year ceased to send, not only its people here, to find homes in the new States, but it has increased its Western investments annually. A few years ago tables were made showing the distribution of national-bank stock throughout the country, from which it was found that a large portion--say about one eighth--of the stock of these new institutions in the West was held in the East. If it were possible it would be most interesting to obtain similar figures in reference to the holdings of the East in your railroad and other transportation companies, and in your industries of various kinds. It is known that the East in many instances holds a majority of the stock in your greatest companies, and annually elects the officers of such corporations. The interest upon the bonds, almost without exception, of all your Western corporations, is payable in New York, and to considerable extent to Eastern owners. You have grown rich; but we of the East are your co-partners in business, and notwithstanding your riches, we give notice that we do not intend there shall be any DISSOLUTION OF THE CO-PARTNERSHIP.
“So far from that being the case, we give notice that in those branches of business which we find most profitable, we intend from year to year to increase our holdings. Those of us who have been in the habit of visiting the growing West, know its resources, and propose, as heretofore, to continue to assist in its development--largely under your management.
“We do not care to prophesy where the centre of this great country will be a century hence. The important point is, that the country, as a whole, shall increase its power, its population, its wealth; that its people shall be intelligent and homogeneous in character; and, above all, that the country shall have a government that is good and strong. I lived in Minnesota when St. Paul had a population of about 5,000. At our social gatherings we frequently took a census, and always found that every State in the East was represented by persons present. The East is the father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather of the West. The telegraph, the railroad, the telephone, and the cable have made us all neighbors!
“Webster, in one of his great speeches, said of South Carolina and Massachusetts: ‘Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution; hand in hand they stood around the Administration of Washington, and felt his strong arm lean upon them for support.’ We may paraphrase this expression, and say that with the rapid development of each section of the country, it is most important that the East and the West, the North and the South, shall, if necessary, march shoulder to shoulder in defence of the country, hand in hand stand around every good Administration in time of trouble, and rejoice if the strong arm of the Executive shall lean upon all for support!”
After we had enjoyed this treat and all expressed our appreciation of it, we looked out upon the beauties of a Kansas moonlight night. The charm was too much for us. In a moment we were upon the street.
Electric light was everywhere, making night almost as bright as day. The long line of beautifully decorated show windows of the large stores reminded us of home.
Mr. Blanchard had secured elegant rooms for our party at the Brunswick, but most of us preferred our cosy apartments on the “Dalmatia.”
We were all up bright and early, after a good night’s sleep. This Kansas atmosphere is wonderful. It makes one sleep at night in spite of himself, and such an appetite as it does give.
As we came from the breakfast table we found elegant carriages awaiting us.
Each bank sent out either its President or Cashier to help entertain us.
We visited the wonderful salt works at South Hutchinson. The pure white salt was admired by all. Being free from all impurities, the Hutchinson salt does not cake. The supply is unlimited; at a depth of 350 to 400 feet lies a bed of solid, pure rock-salt, 330 feet thick, covering an area of many miles in extent. Hutchinson will supply all the salt trade west of the Mississippi River. Additional interest was manifested by all in this field, as it was learned that this source of wealth was originally developed by Ben Blanchard, unaided and alone.
The development of the great salt wealth of South Hutchinson no doubt gave Hutchinson permanent impulse at the opportune moment. Competition from Wichita for the business centre that must of necessity settle on some point in Kansas subsided when the salt fields came to the surface with its unlimited supply of pure white salt. Standing by the side of one of the leading bank presidents of Hutchinson, at one of the great salt wells, one of our party, not knowing whose energy and enterprise discovered and developed the great industry, made the remark: “I should be willing to take off my hat to the man who first struck salt here.” The bank President replied: “Well, you may take off your hat to Mr. Blanchard, the President of the Empire Loan and Trust Company.”
We left the salt works, with its thousands of tons of snowy salt, for the green fields of the farms. There was not a cloud in the sky. The cool, fresh, country air put us all in the best of spirits. For miles and miles we hurried on, scaring up quail, prairie chicken, and rabbits from the finely-kept green hedge fences which line the road on both sides. Choice farms are on every hand. In fact the country presents the appearance of a checker-board, nearly every quarter section being a fine farm with its grove of forest trees, orchard, and small fruit. The two story farm-houses and large barns remind one of the best portions of Pennsylvania.
We passed team after team on its way to Hutchinson loaded with wheat, oats, or corn. We stopped at the fine fruit farm of Mr. Switzer, and received a bountiful supply of choice, rosy apples. The cherry and peach trees still bore traces of the wonderful crops that had been gathered and shipped. To our left was Mr. Furney’s fine mansion, and a little farther on the elegant stock farm with its hundreds of blooded cattle, belonging to Mr. Stewart. Both of these gentlemen were formerly of Philadelphia. Many other similar places would have been in sight, but the great fields of corn on every hand hid them from our view. The new wheat, which has been sown in abundance, was just coming through the ground, and gave a fresh, green look to many a field.
We reached Hutchinson in time for dinner, and could hardly realize that we had driven over twenty miles.
After a sumptuous dinner at the Brunswick, we visited the chief points of interest in Hutchinson; with the mayor and leading bankers of the city. We were driven past its twelve salt works to the packing-houses of Fowler & Underwood, and Tobey & Booth, and the great lard refinery of Fairbanks & Co., the ice factory, the banks, the home office of the Empire Loan and Trust Company, and to the office of the Hutchinson _Daily News_ (Ralph L. Easley, Esq., President and managing editor), then to the Santa Fe Hotel, where a banquet had been spread for us by the members of the Hutchinson Clearing-House, who were accompanied by their ladies.
This hospitality was an entire surprise to us. Hon. Darwin R. James, Hon. John Jay Knox, and the Hon. D. O. Bradley expressed our thanks to the citizens of Hutchinson for the courtesies and hospitality extended to us. We take the following from the Hutchinson _News_:
“Before leaving the dining-room the _News_ reporter took occasion to inquire of several of the gentlemen how they were impressed with Hutchinson.
“Edward Merritt, Esq., President of Long Island Loan and Trust Company said: ‘We have been delighted and surprised at the wonderful development of the State of Kansas. The growth and progress of Hutchinson are marvellous. The discovery by Mr. Blanchard of the salt fields underlying this section of the country must certainly add largely to the wealth of the city and its inhabitants. The natural advantages of its situation together with the inevitable growth of its industries make the future of Hutchinson, in my judgment, sure beyond doubt.’