CHAPTER XIV.

THE ST. LOUIS AND MISSOURI BUSINESS.--THE

IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST.

THREE COMPANIES

I wrote this reference to St. Louis in the great southwestern metropolis itself, in the autumn of 1879.

The influx of strangers may be owing to the attraction offered by the annual great fair at the spacious and agreeable grounds in the suburbs of the city; but many of the country merchants (with whom the hotels are so full that I found it impossible to obtain a "single room" in any of them) have been drawn hither by their want of goods to meet the unusual demand.

The common carriers are beginning to be very busy, and in some wholesale houses there are daily increasing evidences that St. Louis is to have her share of the general business prosperity now advancing like a big wave from the Atlantic States, to refresh and energize the long-dormant enterprise of the whole country.

This city is not so swift to indicate the coming epoch of business revival as I found Chicago was. That city is manifestly more like New York than any other, and it quickly reflects every great commercial change, either for better or worse, experienced in the great money-center. In New York city business vitality is double what it was last year, or any year since 1870, and it is already felt in these great western cities.

The difference between St. Louis and Chicago, it strikes me, is that which is generally found between young and sanguine manhood and a more mature, staid and circumspect period of life. Chicago is more like an energetic business man of from 25 to 40 years of age; St. Louis may be better compared to the slower, more cautious and (perhaps) wiser merchant of from 45 to 60. It may be owing to the fact that there is in St. Louis a much larger foreign element in the oppulation engaged in trade than in Chicago, and on the whole

the foreign-born (with the exception of the Irish, of whom there are comparatively few in trade), are more conservative than Americans and less enterprising; and so hold St. Louis. back.

Of course this does not apply to the expressmen. There is a very decided homogeneousness and resemblance among Express employees, and difference of localities does not affect the fact. Our brethren here share in the acuteness, activity and rush of our race.

The "American" has in St. Louis in daily operation, 36 horses, 16 wagons, and 16 drivers. It has about 40 employees on its pay-roll.

Edwin Hayden, the resident director, is fortunate in retaining the services of a number of employees of many years' experience in the business and fully devoted to their respective duties. J. W. Heaton and Wm. McDonald have been with the company about twenty years. Clarence E. Rood, correspondent (acting as agent in the absence of his principal), has been a very efficient and useful man, in and out of the office, for about six years; his urbane and pleasing address greatly recommending him to the shippers.

The United States Express Co.'s business, under the judicious attention of Agent D. T. Packer, is a feature of St. Louis, but is not so large as it was before the loss of the way-expressing on the Northern Missouri Railroad (700 miles), which it could ill afford to relinquish. Its through freight passes to destination without hindrance.

Parker was formerly agent at Leavenworth. It is now a quarter of a century since he entered his present calling. He has under him from 50 to 55 employees, besides the 31 messengers who run to and from St. Louis.

Hunn (not him of the firm of Huns & Vandals, but "C. B.," Mo. Div. Supt.), is in the same office, looking back to 30 years of Express life. So is our still fat and fair friend, T. W. Radcliffe, the cashier, who yet looks young, though he has seen 25 years of faithful service.

The "U.S." has 7 single and 15 double wagons and 42 horses, and they have to move around pretty lively under the present rush of trade.

That is the case, too, with the Adams, with its 15 drivers and 35 horses, and full complement of handsome wagons. The Adams employs 62 men, and the head one is worthy of the highest position in the gift of the great company which he has served so many years to its entire satisfaction, and so acceptably to the community, in which he has no superior as a citizen.

C. C. Anderson, agent of the Adams, is identified with the mercantile life of St. Louis, which no class of residents has done more to cultivate than our Express brethren. Like others, here and elsewhere, whom I could name, his value to the business cannot be measured by any of the ordinary methods.

Doubtless Anderson has had very faithful assistants. Certainly he has 22 good messengers, speeding like so many Mercuries in and out of St. Louis, east, west and south, to do the public's long-stretch errands.

The Adams is taking a strong hold upon business in Colorado and the Territories. It has many agencies in Kansas, and the Indian Territory south of that; but, from St. Louis to Sedalia (its first point in Kansas), it is dependent upon the U. S. Express Co.'s car for its connection (1879), a defect which it hopes to remedy. It takes a large business to be remunerative, but the Adams, with its usual good luck, makes it pay.

There is an immense amount of wealth in St. Louis. Already it has come to be regarded in the west as an old city. At the outset of the Express service in the east (1839), St. Louis was like a bustling, self-confident, demonstrative youth of 19 or 20 years; more show than substance. From 1828 to 1836 it grew rapidly. Its business men and land-owners, Chouteau, Lucas, and the rest, counted upon its becoming a great metropolis, very early. Some forethoughted mothers, with a keen eye to economy, make their children's clothing two or three sizes larger than necessary, in order that they shall not outgrow them in a hurry. So those city-fathers, looking for a marvelous growth in St. Louis, made arrangements accordingly, and bought up all the corner lots. The thriving river town was filled with men ready to take hold of the ex

pected business, and enrol their names as permanent citizens. The St. Louis steamboats were the glory of the southwest. In short, business was overdone; competition became sharp and ruinous, and the place was overrun with lawyers, and clerks, etc., out of employment. The hard shot of the panic of 1837 struck St. Louis business "below the waterline;" and in 1838 and 1839 it was no better off. It shared in the general collapse of commerce and credit, and its old hurrahs were changed to a still, small song, suitable to its humiliation. Even "Cap. Gould” and his gorgeous steamers whistled more quietly.

After a few years, St. Louis business-what little remained after so much hard squeezing-became settled down upon a firm and healthy basis; and it has prospered ever since. Men like Lucas, early owning much land within the limits and holding on to it, became rich doing nothing; and some foreignborn merchants and manufacturers, by close economy, accumulated wealth. Enterprising expressmen and merchants from the east and south, and steamboat owners and railroad companies, have done the rest; and St. Louis is a great city.

The Southern Express Co. is well represented in St. Louis, by a southern man, C. H. Albright. Its office is at 212 Fifth

street.

It does not do, as yet, a large business in this city; but I see its wagons in the streets. Richmond and St. Louis are regarded as its most easterly points, notwithstanding that its president has an office in New York. This company runs an Express over the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad, and all its branches; total, 665 miles.

Agent Albright is from the tar State, North Carolina, and sticks well. Beginning as a messenger, in 1871, he afterwards was promoted, for appreciated service, to the agency at Jackson, Miss.; and again, in April, 1878, to his present more important position in St. Louis.

There are 10 messengers of the Southern Express Co., who report at and issue from this office. Their freights average

from 10,000 to 15,000 pounds daily.

The business, good already, promises, like the rising generation, to grow.

St. Louis was for many years almost entirely dependent upon its river passenger and freight transportation, and boat traffic.

With the incoming of the railroad system, its business by boats fell off more and more as time rolled on, and the magnificent floating palaces, which were at once the comfort and the glory of the "Father of Waters" (as the Mississippi was often called), with such able and popular captains as Emerson Gould in command, as commodores and landlords, became fewer, and at length the business was only nominal.

After many years of attenuated existence, the steamboat business revived in some degree, and grew into an appreciable value.

At present, the river commerce is a source of wealth to its owners. There are many nice steamers, as well as the more common river craft. The "W. P. Halliday," is a very beautiful passenger boat, built for Captain Gould, and run by him, assisted by his son, E. W. Gould, Jr. She runs between St. Louis and New Orleans.

L. U. Reavis (who has done me the honor to quote from my volume of 1858), has compiled and published recently a very valuable octavo of about 400 pages, upon the "Railway and River Systems of the City of St. Louis," which ought to have a place in every library of practical books. In it he says that Emerson W. Gould, president of the Kansas City Packet Company, is probably the oldest active captain on the western rivers; has been forty years in the service; has built more than twenty-five passenger steamboats, and has lost but one boat, and the life of but one individual. At the age of 68, Gould is as acute and active as many men at 50.

Of all the great railways for which St. Louis serves as an entrepôt, the "St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern," is the most affluent source of her wealth. Including branches, it operates 709 miles. The "Mountain," as its name implies, is nearly all iron ore. Hence, Missouri may be regarded as the most ironic State in the Union. This is a joke, but the fact itself is solid; and it serves to illustrate the St. Louis boast, that her foundations are not for a day, but (like the Express), for all time. Still, they are constantly digging at that moun