ODDS AND ENDS
The quality in Kansas City which struck Baron d'Estournelles de
Constant, the French statesman and peace advocate, was the enormous
growth and vitality of the place. "Town Development" quotes the Baron as
having called Kansas City a "_cite champignon_," but I am sure that in
saying that he had in mind the growth of the mushroom rather than its
fiber; for though Kansas City grew from nothing to a population of
250,000 within a space of fifty years, her fiber is exceptionally firm,
and her prosperity, having been built upon the land, is sound.
That feeling of nearness to the soil that I met there was new to me. I
felt it in many ways. Much of the casual conversation I heard dealt with
cattle raising, farming, the weather, and the promise as to crops.
Business men and well-to-do women in the shopping districts resemble
people one may see in any other city, but away from the heart of town
one encounters numerous farmers and their wives who have driven into
town in their old buggies, farm wagons, or little motors to shop and
trade, just as though Kansas City were some little county seat, instead
of a city of the size of Edinburgh.
In earlier chapters I have referred to likenesses between cities and
individuals. Cities not only have traits of character, like men, but
certain regions have their costumes. Collars, for example, tend to
become lower toward the Mississippi River, and black string ties appear.
Missouri likes black suits--older men in the smaller towns seem to be in
a perpetual state of mourning, like those Breton women whose men are so
often drowned at sea that they never take the trouble to remove their
black.
Western watch chains incline to massiveness, and are more likely than
not to have dangling from them large golden emblems with mysterious
devices. Likewise the western buttonhole is almost sure to bloom with
the insignia of some secret order.
Many western men wear diamond rings--pieces of jewelry which the east
allots to ladies or to gamblers and vulgarians. When I inquired about
this I heard a piece of interesting lore. I was informed that the
diamond ring was something more than an adornment to the western man;
that it was, in reality, the survival of a fashion which originated for
the most practical reasons. A diamond is not only convenient to carry
but it may readily be converted into cash. So, in the wilder western
days, men got into the way of wearing diamond rings as a means of
raising funds for gambling on short notice, or for making a quick
getaway from the scene of some affray.
Whether they are entirely aware of it or not, the well-dressed men of
eastern cities are, in the matter of costume, dominated to a large
extent by London. The English mode, however, does not reach far west.
Clothing in the west is all American. Take, for example, coats. The
prevailing style, at the moment, in London and in the eastern cities of
this country happens to run to a snugness of fit amounting to actual
tightness. Little does this disturb the western man. His coat is cut
loose and is broad across the shoulders. And let me add that I believe
his vision is "cut" broader, too. Westerners, far more than easterners,
it seems to me, sense the United States--the size of it and what it
really is. Time and again, talking with them, it has come to me that
their eyes are focused for a longer range: that, looking off toward the
horizon, they see a thousand miles of farms stretched out before them or
a thousand miles of mountain peaks.
And even as coats and comprehension seem to widen in the west, so hats
and hearts grow softer. The derby plays an unimportant part. In Chicago,
to be sure, it makes a feeble effort for supremacy, but west of there it
dies an ignominious death beneath an avalanche of soft felt hats. Felt
hats around Chicago seem, however, to lack full-blown western opulence.
Compared with hats in the real middle west, they are stingy little
headpieces. When we were in Chicago that city seemed to be the center of
a section in which a peculiar style of hat was prominent--a blue felt
with a velvet band. But that, of course, was merely a passing fashion.
Not so the hats a little farther west. The Mississippi River marks the
beginning of the big black hat belt. The big black hat is passionately
adored in Missouri and Kansas. It never changes; never goes out of
fashion. And it may be further noted that many of these somber,
monumental, soft black hats, with their high crowns and widespread
brims, have been sent from these two western states to Washington, D. C.
At Kansas City there begins another hat belt. The Missouri hat remains,
but its supremacy begins to be disputed by an even larger hat, of
similar shape but different color. The big black, tan or putty-color hat
begins to show at Kansas City. Also one sees, now and again, upon the
streets a cowboy hat with a flat brim. When I mentioned that to a Kansas
City man he didn't seem to like it. With passionate vehemence he
declared that cowboy hats were never known to adorn the heads of Kansas
City men--that they only came to Kansas City on the heads of itinerant
cattlemen. Well, that is doubtless true. But I did not say the Mayor of
Kansas City wore one. I only said I saw such hats upon the street.
And--however they got there, and wherever they came from--those hats
looked good to me!
Some of the bronzed cattlemen one sees in Kansas City, though they yield
to civilization to the extent of wearing shirts, have not yet sunk to
the slavery of collars. They do not wear "chaps" and revolvers, it is
true, but they are clearly plainsmen, and some of them sport colored
handkerchiefs about their necks, knotted in the back, and hanging in
loose folds in front. Once or twice, upon my walks, I saw an Indian as
well, though not a really first-class moving-picture Indian. That is too
much to expect. Such Indians as one may meet in Kansas City are
civilized and citified to a sad degree. Nor are the Mexicans, many of
whom are employed as laborers, up to specifications as to
picturesqueness.
I feel it particularly necessary to state these truths, disillusioning
though they may be to certain youthful readers who may treasure fond
hopes of finding, in Kansas City, something of that wild and woolly
fascination which the cinematograph so often pictures. True, a large
gray wolf was killed by a Kansas City policeman last winter, after it
had run down Linwood Boulevard, biting people, but that does not happen
every day, and it is recorded that the youth who recently appeared on
the Kansas City streets, dressed in "chaps" and carrying a revolver with
which he shot at the feet of pedestrians, to make them dance, declared
himself, when taken up by the police, to have recently arrived from
Philadelphia, where he had obtained his ideas of western manners from
the "movies."
I mention this incident because, after having labeled Kansas City
"Western," I wish to leave no loopholes for misunderstanding. The West
of Bret Harte and Jesse James is gone. All that is left of it is legend.
When I speak of a western city I think of a city young, not altogether
formed, but full of dauntless energy. And when I speak of western people
I think of people who possess, in larger measure than any other people
I have met, the solid traits of character which make human beings
admirable.
Kansas City is said to be more American than any other city of its size
in the United States. Eighty per cent. of its people are American born,
of either native or foreign parents. Its inhabitants are either
pioneers, descendants of pioneers, or young people who have moved there
for the sake of opportunity. This makes for sturdy stock as inevitably
as close association with the soil makes for sturdy simplicity of
character. The western man, as I try to visualize him as a type, is
genuine, generous, direct, whole-hearted, sympathetic, energetic,
strong, and--I say it not without some hesitation--sometimes a little
crude, with a kind of crudeness which has about it something very
lovable. I fear that Kansas City may not like the word "crude," even as
I have qualified it, but, however she may feel, I hope she will not
charge the use of it to eastern snobbishness in me, for that is a
quality that I detest as much as anybody does--a quality compared with
which crudeness becomes a primary virtue. No; when I say "crude" I say
it respectfully, and I am ready to admit in the same breath that I
dislike the word myself, because it seems to imply more than I really
wish to say, just as such a word as "unseasoned" seems to imply less.
You see, Kansas City is a very young and very great center of business.
It is still engrossed in making money, but, being so exceptionally
sturdy, it has found time, outside of business hours, as it were, to
create its parks and boulevards--much as some young business man comes
home after a hard day's work and cuts the grass in his front yard, and
waters it, and even plants a little garden for his wife and children and
himself. He attends to the requirements of his business, his family, his
lawn and garden, and to his duties as a citizen. And that is about all
that he has time to do. He has the Christian virtues, but none of the
un-Christian sophistications. Art, to him, probably signifies a "fancy
head" by Harrison Fisher; literature, a book by Harold Bell Wright or
Gene Stratton Porter; music, a sentimental ballad or a ragtime tune
played on the Victor; architecture--well, I think that means his own
house.
And what is his own house like? If he be a young and fairly successful
Kansas City business man, it is, first of all, probably a solid,
well-built house. Very likely it is built of brick and is
"detached"--just barely detached--and faces a parked boulevard or a
homelike residence street which is lined with other solid little houses,
like his own. Now, while the homes of this class are, I think, better
built and more attractive than homes of corresponding cost in some older
cities--Cleveland, for example--and while the streets are pleasanter,
there is a sort of standardized look about these houses which is, I
think, unfortunate. The thing they lack is individuality. Whole rows of
them suggest that they were all designed by the same altogether honest,
but somewhat inartistic, architect, who, having hit on one or two good
plans, kept repeating them, ad infinitum, with only minor changes, such
as the use of vari-colored brick, for "character." True, they are
monuments to the esthetic, compared with the old brownstone blocks of
New York City, or the Queen Anne blocks of cities such as Cleveland, but
it must be remembered that New York's brownstone period, and the wooden
Queen Anne period, date back a good many years, whereas these Kansas
City houses are new. And it is in our new houses that we Americans have
had a chance to show (and are showing) the improvement in our national
taste. I do not complain that the domestic architecture of Kansas City
represents no improvement; I complain only that the improvement shown is
not so great as it should be--that Kansas City residences, of all
classes, inexpensive and expensive, in town and in the suburban
developments, are generally characterized by solidity, rather than
architectural merit. The less expensive houses lack distinction in about
the same way that rows of good ready-made overcoats may be said to lack
it, when compared with overcoats made to order by expensive tailors. The
more costly houses are for the most part ordinary--and some of them are
worse than that.
I am well aware of the fact that the foregoing statements are altogether
likely to surprise and annoy Kansas City, for if there is one thing,
beyond her parks and boulevards, upon which she congratulates herself
peculiarly, it is her homes. I could detect that, both in the pride
with which the homes were shown to me and in the sad silences with which
my very mildly critical comments on some houses, were received.
Nevertheless, it is quite true that Kansas City very evidently needs a
good domestic architect or two; and if she does not pardon me just now
for saying so, I must console myself with the thought that, ten or
fifteen years hence, she will admit that what I said was true.
Kansas City ought to be a good place for architects. There is a lot of
money there, and, as I have already said, a great amount of building is
in progress. One of the most interesting real estate developments I have
ever seen is taking place in what is called the Country Club District,
where a tract of 1,200 acres, which, only five or six years ago, was
farm land, has been attractively laid out and very largely built up on
ingenious, restricted lines. In the portion of this district known as
Sunset Hill, no house costing less than $25,000 may be erected. As a
matter of fact, a number of houses on Sunset Hill show an investment, in
building alone, of from $50,000 to $100,000. In other portions of the
tract restrictions are lower, and still lower, until finally one comes
to a suburban section closely built up with homes, some of which cost as
little as $3,000--which is the lowest restriction in the entire
district.
* * * * *
I visited the new Union Station, which will be in operation this winter.
It is as fine as the old station is atrocious. I was informed that it
cost between six and seven millions, and that it is exceeded in size
only by the Grand Central and Pennsylvania terminals in New York. The
waiting room will, however, be the largest in the world. The gentleman
who showed me the station gave me the curious information that Kansas
City does the largest Pullman business of any American city, and that it
also handles the most baggage. He attributed these facts to the great
distances to be traveled in that part of the country and also to the
prosperity of the farmers.
"You see," he said, "Kansas City has the largest undisputed tributary
trade territory of any city in the country. We are not, in reality, a
Missouri city so much as a Kansas one. Indeed Kansas City was originally
intended to be in Kansas and was really diverted into Missouri when the
government survey established the line between the two states. We reach
out into Missouri for some business, but Kansas is our real territory,
as well as Oklahoma and Arkansas. We get a good share of business from
Nebraska and Iowa, too. These facts, plus the fact that we are in the
very center of the great American feed lot, account for our big bank
clearings. In bank clearings we come sixth, St. Louis being fifth,
Pittsburgh seventh, and Detroit eighth. And we are not to be compared in
population with any of those cities.
"Almost all our greatest activities have to do with farms and produce.
We are first as a market place for hay and yellow pine; second as a
packing center and a mule market; third in lumber, flour, poultry, and
eggs, in the volume of our telegraph business, and in automobile sales.
And, of course, you probably know that we lead in the sale of
agricultural implements and in stockers and feeders."
At that my companion, who, because he resided for a long time in Albany,
N. Y., prides himself upon his knowledge of farming, broke in.
"I suppose," said he, "that instead of drawing stockers and feeders with
horses, they use gasoline motors now-a-days?"
"Oh, no," said the Kansas City man, "they walk."
"Walk?" exclaimed my companion. "They _have_ made an advance in
agricultural implements since my day if they have succeeded in making
them _walk_!"
"I'm not speaking of agricultural implements," said our informant. "I'm
speaking of stockers and feeders."
"What are stockers and feeders?" I asked.
"Cattle," he said. "There are three kinds of cattle marketed here;
first, fat cattle, for slaughter; second, stockers, which are young cows
used for stocking farms and ranches; third, feeders, or grassfed steers,
which are sold to be fattened on grain, for killing. In stockers and
feeders we lead the world; in fat cattle we are second only to
Chicago."