OCR Text |
Show Tmm KEEILB T Til Jc )Jsj J MlAiicsilu I SHE MIGHTY activities and marvelous progress the world has seen in the past 100 years are strikingly illustrated in the centennial celebration of the incorporation incor-poration of St. Louis. Picturesque pageants with everything in the way of the spectacular which is most likely to stir the imagination of the spectator into appreciating the work ot the past through contrasts con-trasts with the present feature the week's program. The greater part of the history oi early St. Louis is really more fit for the unwritten American epic poem than it is for mere prose. Its work as a frontier town in the first half of the nineteenth century made it the mid-continental city of the United States in the second half. Its pioneer trade routes are now the great routes of steam transportation between the Rio Grande and the Canadian border and between be-tween the Mississippi and the Pacific. It established the first water routes from the headwaters of the Ohio to the mouth of the Missouri and of the Illinois, opening the first water connection for steam transportation between the Ohio and the upper Mississippi and Missouri, developing the Ohio river states on both sides of that stream. Every state now on the map west of the Mississippi was penetrated by its business pioneers, establishing the first centers of trade. The whole west is interested with St. Louis in celebrating this great event, because in founding the first great city of the trans-Mississippi west the pioneers made the western beginnings now explained in WRIGHT AEROPEAYf CARRYING ORWJJ-E WRIGHT France. Laclede landed at the foot of what Is now Market street, organized the village and resided there for 14 years. He named the new site St. Louis in honor' of Louis XV., the reigning sovereign of France. The territory was transferred trans-ferred by France to Spain by secret treaty in 1762, but it was not announced in the new village until October, 1764. In 1803 Spain retroceded the sovereignty to France and on April 30, 1803, France sold all the territory west of the Mississippi Missis-sippi river, known as the Louisiana purchase, to the United States for $15,000,000, Napoleon remarking: re-marking: "This accession of territory strengthens forever the power of the United States." With less than a thousand inhabitants when the whole country "had not quite seven and a quarter million in 1809, St. Louis emerged from the era of the keelboat and pirogue to pioneer the atpflTTihnat nn western rivers Tnadine- ita first scores of other western cities and in actual thousands thou-sands of other incorporated towns, which, if they are not already great, are not unduly modest in their expectations of becoming so. The invitation invi-tation to a thousand mayors of American cities to participate in the festivities shows that St. Louis fully appreciates its position as the pioneer city of the great west. As there were less than 200 houses, including outhouses and barns, in the St. Louis which incorporated incor-porated in 1809, it could not have had much over 900 people. The town was already the chief seat of the western fur trade, with its trading stations pushed to the headwaters of the Arkansas and far towards the sources of the Missouri and the Yellowstone. Yel-lowstone. Doing business wholly by barter, with almost no money in hand, in sight or in circulation, circula-tion, with resources represented almost wholly by the spirit of its 900 people; with the ax and rifle and blacksmith's sledge as its implements, with the one-horse cart, the keelboat and canoe as its transportation facilities, the little town, when it incorporated, already looked on its work as that of opening up the United States of the future to tie Rocky mountains and beyond them to the Pacific Pa-cific In 180S it had lost Meriweather Lewis, but lR , - "J the ' rowoHG or n ST LOWS BY LACLFDC I BY SPSCIIL PCftMISSIOf FROrtUY THE PAItlTM6 BYfTLJ TODDmD 11SSI2Z1PP! RIVER KPEL30AT JV J609 mind. In point of fact in St. Louis it T is only a matter of the third generation between keelboat and aeroplane. In 1907 the first airship air-ship on record as crossing the Mississippi Missis-sippi river- crossed it at St. Louis during dur-ing the international internation-al contests of that B year. It is something 1 to remember now as part of the record to I which belongs the his-i his-i tory of the first loco-jg loco-jg motive crossing the I Mississippi at St. Louis I in 1852 to complete I the work of the St. 9 Louis argonauts of 1849, crossing to the I Pacific in their "prai-a "prai-a Tie schooners." 9 If we suppose aero-1 aero-1 planes and airships S circling in the air I above the St. Louis I keelboat landing of a I hundred years ago we may imagine, if we can. how they appear OLIVE STREET TO0AY rf steamboat in 1S17, it had more than doubled its population of 1810 in 1820. From 4,000 in 1820, two decades of steamboating gave it 16,469 in 1840. About that time it began its great transcontinental work with the "prairie schooner," reinforcing the steamboat in overland transit. With the transcontinental trans-continental overland movement, to Oregon as well as California, growing, in 1850 it had 77,860 people and was beginning its work as the first pioneer of railroads to the Pacific. After bringing the first locomotive west of the Mississippi in 1852, it more than doubled its population in that decade, reaching reach-ing 185,587 in 1860. With the foundations of the states now west of the river, already laid along its first trade routes in 1860, it advanced in the next two decades to 350,552 people. Chicago was passing pass-ing it in population then, without being able to take from it its historical place as the "first great city of the west," the pioneer and founder of the west of the present. Since 1880 it has doubled its population once more, advancing from 350,000 to over 700,000. At its present rate of increase, responsive re-sponsive to that of the Mississippi valley, St. Louis is doubling business in a little over 10 years. Its bank clearings increased from $292,000,000 in 1869 to $3,074,000,000 in 1908. Its tonnage of merchandise merchan-dise received and forwarded was 20,162,000 tons for the first six months of this year. Its bank resources reported June 23, 1909, at $385,881,000, more than double the total of the tenth year back. Such figures illustrate much more than local progress. They are mid-continental before they become local, in the sense that the people of the whole area between the Allegheny and Rocky mountains are now exerting new energies and utilizing util-izing new forces of growth, unforeseen even as late as 10 years ago. As the percentages of this growth are of course greatest west of the Mississippi Missis-sippi river, St. Louis has almost "made itself over" in 15 years in growing up to the new growth of the country. Since it began work for the world's fair, celebrating the Louisiana purchase, it has learned to look back on itself in the last decade of the nineteenth century as "old St. Louis." In looking back to the older St. Louis of 1809, it can boast that as a frontier outpost it led the progress of the continental United States. In looking forward, for-ward, in its centennial year, it can see that the greatest results of the history it has made are only the beginnings of greater results, which belong to the immediate future of the continental United States, whose progress makes the frontier town ol 1S09 the midcontinental city of 1909. It still had his companion explorer, William Clark, to stand for the spirit of the American and French "makers of destiny" who thought little more of starting a thousand miles into the unknown un-known west from St. Louis.than the average St. Louisas now thinks of starting for the Pacific coast in a sleeping car. From a village of 900 inhabitants to the fourth city in the United States, with a population of three-quarters of a million, is a wonderful achievement, but it sinks into insignificance when compared with the giant strides of the past century cen-tury in the world of science, commerce, the arts and every field of endeavor which makes for a higher and better civilization. It is a severe strain on the imagination to attempt at-tempt to bridge over the gap between the meaning mean-ing of an airship crossing the Mississippi river at St. Louis this year and what the ancient keel-boats keel-boats of 1809 meant, as they landed at the foot of Walnut street, where the town was founded in 1764 by the pioneers who had paddled and cor-delled cor-delled their bateaux painfully up the river from Hew Orleans under Laclede as he advanced in the bold attempt to control the fur trade of half a continent with his handful of men. The keelboat then was no more out of date than the airship is now. It was the best modern boat in 1809 which could be equipped by the capital capi-tal of St. Louis, of New Orleans or of Philadelphia. Philadel-phia. Because of it Philadelphia and St. Louis commanded the east and west movement of business busi-ness as thet north and south was commanded by New Orleans and St. Louis, as soon as their first fleets of keelboats were regularly organized. It helped to make great history, even if it did have to be pulled up stream by a rope dragged by men on the bank. This distance in point of change in the way tilings are done is almost imparsable for the I i to the men whose grandfathers not only navigated the river in keelboats, but lay flat behind the goods the boats were loaded with while they were being shot at by Indians along the banks. It is almost if not quite as hard now to imagine imag-ine what the' world meant before the age of steam as it is to think out what will be its meaning mean-ing in the age of the perfected airship and aeroplane. aero-plane. Every contrast possible in the St. Louis centennial week of pageants is a challenge to look backward and forward in the attempt to And out what a hundred years already mean, as the first success in the attempt to find what it is to mean shortly, for this generation and for the grandchildren of this generation in 2009. The makers of the centennial week program were keenly alive to the opportunities for spectacular spec-tacular effect suggested by the most striking events of the world's progress. The aeronautic events such as balloon races, aeroplane and dirigible diri-gible balloon contests, suggest the future possibilities possi-bilities of transportation in contrast with those of 1809. For comparison with automobiles and aeroplanes the bateau of Laclede's day, with its stumpy mast, its cordelle and its sweeps, is an educational feature of the water pageant, which includes crafts of all the kinds which now ply the waters of the Mississippi. The Veiled Prophet's pageant, unique and picturesque, is another feature fea-ture which is full of romantic interest. The educational edu-cational parade, the parade representing 3,000 of St. Louis' industries, the procession of a thousand thou-sand mayors and the other events which find a place on the program all suggest that as a great week for St. Louis its centennial week is still greater, as it belongs to a hundred years of history-making for the continental United States. The city of St. Louis was founded by Pierre Leclede Liguest in 1704. The territory west of the Mississippi river was then in possession of |