CHAPTER XIV.

THE MARKETS AND PACKING HOUSES.

History of the Texas Cattle Trade-Its Final Concentration at Kansas City - The Growth of the Market and Character of the Present Supply-The History of the Packing Business—Why it Came to Kansas City-Its Statistics-The Grain Market, When and How It Started-Its Development and Circumstances Attending It-Its Present Facilities and Magnitude.

When Cortez overran Mexico in the sixteenth century, he introduced into this new Spanish possession the long-horned cattle of Spain, and they became the cattle of the Spanish possession to the exclusion of all others, and continue to this day to hold undisputed possession, although the control of the country has long since passed from Spain to the republics of Mexico and the United States. These cattle thrive best on the plains of western and southern Texas, though they prosper in New Mexico, and, it has been found since their settlement, in Colorado and Kansas also. Old Mexico has not had a surplus of them during this century, because of the disturbed condition of society which makes all property insecure, and the natural triflingness of the people who prefer pillaging each other to honest industry. The plains of western and southern Texas became their great pasture ground after that State was annexed to the United States, and orderly government gave protection to property.

THE FIRST NORTHWARD DRIVE.

These plains soon became the source of beef supply for the southern States, and largely of Mexico also; but the production was in a more rapid ratio than the growth of the demand, and as early as 1857 the stock growers of that State began to look for other markets. The first attempt to drive them to the north on record was in 1857, when about 20,000 head, with some horses and mules, were driven to Missouri, passing through Kansas City and crossing the river at Randolph Ferry, three miles below town, in June of that year. This is reported to have been an unfortunate venture, except so far as the mules were concerned, which were sold at remunerative prices. There was at that time great demand at Kansas City for oxen and mules for the Santa Fe trade, and in 1858 larger numbers of cattle and mules were driven hither from Texas, and such cattle as were suitable were sold to the freighters for oxen. Many others were sold as stock cattle to immigrants to California, Utah and Oregon. In 1859 and 1860 the business was continued, and the droves were larger, and during these two. years attempts were made to get fat cattle suitable for beeves through to Chicago, but with what success is not recorded. The breaking out of the war in 1861 stopped the rapidly growing trade.

During the war the market for Texas cattle became exceedingly restricted. In the earlier years of the struggle the southern States and Confederate armies made a fair demand for them, but this was practically cut off by the occupation of the Mississippi River by Federal troops in 1863. Cattle could, after that event, be got to the southern States and Confederate armies only by running the blockade of the Mississippi, which was attend with such hazard that the business was not profitable and, hardly possible.

THE BEGINNING OF THE DRIVE NORTHWARD.

Owing to these causes, and the continued rapid increase of cattle in Texas, that State was utterly overrun with them at the close of the war, and there was

no market for them. The southern people were not in a condition to buy and Mexico needed but a small part of the annual increase. It is said that cattle men then almost wholly neglected their herds, and a prevalent mode of estimating a man's poverty was by the number of cattle he owned-the more the worse. Cattle that could be bought for from three to six dollars per head, were worth ten times that amount in the northwest. This fact soon becoming known, the drovers began to prepare in 1865 and 1866 to drive to the north, and the movement began in 1866. The exact number of cattle that crossed Red River that year for the north is not known, but it has been generally estimated at 260,000 head. These herds passed through the Indian Territory, and attempted to enter southwestern Missouri in the general direction of Sedalia and other points on the Missouri Pacific Railroad in Central Missouri. The story that these cattle spread the fearfully fatal Spanish fever among the native cattle of the north, and that contact with them was certain destruction to natives, led to the most determined resistance to their entrance into the settled parts of Missouri and Kansas. This resistance afforded an excellent opportunity to lawless characters to pillage the drovers, and beside the farmers who honestly opposed them from good but mistaken motives, there were mobs organized by men who had no property to be injured and for the sole purpose of robbery. These mobs attacked the drovers and lynched many of them, managing meantime to stampede their cattle, after which it was easy to steal large numbers of them. But few of the herds of 1867 got through to shipping points, while many were turned back, so that the new field of inviting profit and speedy fortune was realized only as a field of wrong, abuse and ruin.

OPENING A PLACE OF RENDEZVOUS.

The attempt and the struggle, however, widely advertised the quality and cheapness of Texas cattle, and hence attracted much attention throughout the north and northwest. They became as determined to have the cattle as the Texas drovers were that they should have them, or the farmers of Kansas and Missouri that they should not be driven through these States. The next point then was to find a point to which Texas cattle could be driven where northern dealers could buy them, and where there were adequate shipping facilities.

In the study of this problem it occurred to Mr. Joseph G. McCoy, now of this city, but then a cattle dealer in Illinois, that a common point might be found somewhere in western Kansas or the Indian territory outside of the settlements, or somewhere on the southern rivers, from whence cattle could be shipped by boat. Before he had fairly decided in his own mind which would be best, he had occasion to visit Kansas City. Here he met some parties who were interested in Texas cattle, and talked over the project to them, and with their encouragement he went up the Kansas Pacific road to look at the country. Impressed with the favorableness of the situation he returned, and, in an interview with the officers of the Kansas Pacific, they told him that they thought it might pay; that they would encourage it, but were not sufficiently sanguine of its success to put money into it. He got an understanding, however, that if he would erect shipping yards at his own expense, they would arrange with him so that he should have shipping facilities and a fair share of profits. With this understanding he went to St. Louis to ascertain from the Missouri Pacific what rates of freight would be given from Kansas City to that place. He went before the president of that road and explained the scheme, when the president remarked that it occurred to him that he (Mr. McCoy) had no cattle to ship, and he had no assurance that he ever would have. Very soon afterward Mr. McCoy made an agreement about rates with the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad.

THE MARKET AT ABILENE.

He then closed up his business in Illinois and went to Abilene, Kansas, where he built the necessary stock yards and a hotel for the accommodation of drovers, and by the time the herds of 1867 began to reach Kansas, he was ready for them, and that year received into the yards about 35,000 head. As the place was wholly unknown as a cattle market, Mr. McCoy and his associates in the yards were about the only buyers. They bought and shipped to Chicago about 3,000 head; of the balance, a large number were shipped through in first hands and packed in Chicago on the owner's account, but many were driven further north. The first shipment from Abilene was on the 5th of September, 1867, and consisted of twenty car loads. The shipments from Abilene that year reached about one thousand car loads, all of which went to Chicago by the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, except seventeen car loads which went to St. Louis by the Missouri Pacific. The railroad bridge at Kansas City was not then finished, and the proprietors of the Abilene yards, thinking Leavenworth a more eligible place for crossing the river than Kansas City, built the necessary feeding and transfer yards at that point, and shipped their cattle by that place. Leavenworth, however, took no interest in the movement and offered it no advantages, besides which it was found that the advantages for forwarding cattle were much inferior to those at Kansas City. Hence, the next year, 1868, they transferred their trans shipping business to Kansas City.

THE MOVEMENT IN 1868.

Owing to various causes the operations of the year 1867 were not satisfactory to the drovers, chief among which was their failure to meet buyers at Abilene or elsewhere in Kansas. The proprietors of the yards, comprehending the situation, spent about five thousand dollars in the winter of 1867-8 in advertising Abilene as a cattle market, both in Texas and northwest, assuring the one that buyers would be there in 1868, and the other that many cheap cattle would be offered there. This had the desired effect, and that year there were an abundance of buyers, and the number of cattle arriving there was fully seventy-five thousand head. Fortunes were made this year, and the Texas drovers were encouraged to make larger drives the next year.

Many of the cattle bought at Abilene in 1868 were shipped immediately into the feeding districts of Illinois and other western States, and soon spread the Spanish fever over the country. Its destructive effects were such as to call forth hostile legislation in most of the western States. It was much investigated and at last ascertained that there is no danger of it after frost; hence after that year it became the practice to hold the cattle on the plains, where they thrive and fatten until after frost. Such as were bought for packing or for beef. were, however, shipped when needed, as they did not go into feeding districts, or come in con tact with native cattle, and hence were not liable to spread disease.

NEW YARDS AT KANSAS CITY-GLORY AND DESTRUCTION OF ABILENE.

In 1869 not less than one hundred and fifty thousand cattle were received at Abilene, while many more went further north, some to feed Indians, some to government posts and to Utah and Montana, while many found their way to market by the way of the Union Pacific Railroad. This year success attended the drovers, and in 1870 they drove not less than three hundred thousand head. The yard facilities at Kansas City having been found inadequate, in 1869 the North Missouri, Hannibal and St. Joseph, and Missouri Pacific Railroads all built yards of their own.

That was the year of Abilene's glory, and her great prosperity attracted the attention of other towns and raised up a host of rivals. The next year the

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe road induced some parties to build yards at Newton, when that place and other points along the line of the Kansas Pacific began to compete successfully with Abilene. There already existed a strong feeling against the trade among the farmers in the country adjacent to Abilene, and catering to that sentiment the representatives of the country in the Kansas Legislature procured the enactment of a law at the session of 1871 that drove the trade from Abilene.

With the completion of the Missouri River, Fort Scott & Gulf, and Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroads to the southern line of the State of Kansas in 1870, both began to compete for the trade, the unsettled country over the line in the Indian Territory affording ample pasturage and feeding grounds. For two or three years these roads secured a liberal share of the trade, and would have been preferred because of the shortness of their lines to Kansas City, but for the fact that the Indians levied a tax upon the herding of cattle or the driving of them through their country that made it unprofitable to drivers and supressed the trade.

Meanwhile, the receiving and forwarding of cattle began to be divided between Ellsworth, on the Kansas Pacific, and Wichita, on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, and so continued for several years, and until cattle fresh from Texas ceased to be forwarded into the Northwest. For two or three years the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe attempted to take all cattle it received by the way of Atchison to Chicago, but the lack of adequate yards and bridge facilities were found to be an insuperable barrier, and in 1873 it turned over its cattle to the Missouri Pacific at Atchison for shipment to Kansas City, and the next year effected arrangements for delivering them here itself.

ORIGIN OF THE KANSAS CITY MARKET.

In 1868, 1869 and 1870 Kansas City was merely a re-shipping and feeding point, and this was done in the yards belonging to the railroad companies Four packing-houses were that year operating here, but packers had to send to the prairies for most of their cattle and send to the adjacent country for their hogs. This was out of their line of business, and made a demand for the employment of another class of men, who should attend to that part of the business and furnish the stock.

Again, the large number of cattle passing through the railroad yards at Kansas City required better attention than could be given them by railroad employees or the shippers themselves accompanying the stock in transit. There was a need of commission men located here, to whom the stock could be consigned, and who would take care of it.

There was a great need, also, of better yard regulations. A single yard under one management, where feed and water were provided and which should be used alike by all the railroads was much needed.

These facts led to the formation of a joint stock company in 1871, and the construction in time to receive the shipments of that year, of the Kansas Stock Yards. When these yards went into operation, June 1, 1871, Jerome D. Smith was elected superintendent. It soon became evident that with this additional convenience men were going into the live stock commission business here, and hence a building was erected to furnish offices for them. When the season opened there were several commission firms ready to begin operations. A. Rogers was one of the first to engage in business at the Kansas yards.

William

This was the beginning of the live stock market in our city. Packers finding that they could supply themselves here ceased to go to the prairies for their stock. Feeders and others purchasers from the northwestern States had always regarded it as a great hardship to have to go to the frontiers of Kansas to buy their stock, and they, too, welcomed the new market with pleasure, and began at once to give it their patronage. The packing demand for hogs led the commission men

to make an effort to attract that class of stock to the market, and they were soon in control of the crop of Kansas and western Missouri. Sheep came as a matter of course, and by the close of 1871 this city had an established live stock market. The development of the market from that time has been rapid. All the receipts of cattle in 1871 were Texas cattle, and probably not more than one-third of them were sold here, the other two-thirds going forward in first hands. By 1872 the number sold here was nearly equal to the whole receipts, and in 1873 cattle ceased to go forward in first hands. From that time the Kansas City market controlled the Texas cattle, and has been steadily better than any oher market, as is shown by the fact that no man escaped loss who attempted the business of buying here for sale in other markets. Money has been made, however, in buying and shipping into the feeding districts on orders.

The market for hogs grew as rapidly as for cattle, and as early as 1873 this market controlled the product, not only of Kansas and all the country west and south, but the adjacent parts of Missouri half way to Quincy, and northward into southwestern Iowa. For all this country and southern Nebraska, this city has been found to be better market than any other. Packers have taken all suitable offerings, while the country adjacent and west of this city has demanded all stock hogs that could be had. Receipts steadily increased until in 1874, when the short crop incident to the destruction of the corn crops that year cut down the supply.

In 1872 native and wintered Texas cattle began to come into the market and since that time the proportion of natives has increased until the larger part of the receipts are of that class. Texas cattle driven to Colorado have stocked up that young State, and for the past few years Colorado cattle have become almost as prominent a feature of the market as those from Texas.

The following statement of the number of cattle driven from Texas is as nearly accurate as can be made. Since 1872 it is nearly exact :

The following table shows the receipts of different kinds of stock into the Kansas City market. Receipts prior to 1871 were bought in the country and shipped here for packing and for beef: