Category Archives: history

This Was a Just a Farm Once. This is About What Grew There 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

This was farmland once.  Flat. Open. Three hundred-twenty acres owned by a family named Pressley. The city was five miles, a few hours’ buggy ride, to the east and south.  But then a guy named Carl Fisher showed up—this was late in 1908—and with three partners bought the place for $72,000.

In time, the railroad would bring passenger cars loaded with people to this place. In time, automobiles would navigate the muddy roads to the countryside. Eventually there would be paved streets and Pressley farm and the agricultural land around it would turn into a small town and people would build hundreds of homes and businesses and schools on farmland around the farmland where Fischer and partners James Allison, Arthur Newby and Frank Wheeler had invested an additional quarter-million pre-World War I dollars into their new business venture.

Four years after buying the Pressley farm, the four partners laid out a planned residential/industrial community that would not rely on horses and instead would emphasize the automobile.  Many of the residents would work at a chemical company and an engine manufacturing company.

They named their town for their business venture.  Speedway. It’s now a town of about 14,000 people entirely surrounded by Indianapolis, just across Indianapolis’ Sixteenth Street from the first race track in the world to bear the word “speedway” in its name.

The race track these four men built covers 253 acres, not counting the areas around the track that cover hundreds of acres more and are used for parking, camping, tail gaiting,  partying, concession stands and 14 holes of a golf course (the other four holes are on the infield).

And every May, this former farm field becomes a shrine.

Various comparisons have been made to show how massive the development of the site by Fisher and friends has become.  It’s big enough, it is said, to hold SEVENTEEN Yankee Stadiums.  It’s big enough to hold all fourteen Big Ten Football stadiums.  Put another way, says the IndyCar Series, it could hold EIGHT nationally and internationally-famous sites;

Trains no longer bring thousands of spectators to the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”  There are wide, multi-laned streets and nearby intestate highways and on a few days each year those streets and roads become huge traffic funnels pouring tens of thousands of vehicles ranging from beater cars to multi-million dollar luxury motorhomes to this 253 acres.

A crowd about forty or fifty-thousand people larger than the entire population of St. Louis descended overnight on this area, drivers and passengers often stalled in enormous traffic jams for three or four hours, the smart ones turning off their vehicle’s engines because they weren’t going to move a vehicle’s length for several long minutes.

Only a few could park inside the track.  The front yards of residential areas with their two-lane streets around the track became private rental parking areas for race fans. Huge open fields turned into parking areas by today’s Speedway owners were packed.

Knowing they would face all of this, they came.

Knowing very bad weather was moving in from the west, they came.

Knowing they might not see a race because of another storm system was behind the first one, still they came. A hundred thousand.  Then two.  Then three.  And then as many as fifty thousand more.

And then came the lightning. And the rain.

The grandstands were ordered cleared with tens of thousand of people taking refuge under the concrete floors of the giant infield front-stretch grandstands and in the tunnels under the track and other safe places.

All those people. In those crowded spaces. Many of them brought coolers full of food and drink because the race was going to be underway at lunch time.

Hungry people.

Thirsty people.

Wet people

People knowing the weather might mean no race at all that day.

And you know something?

We saw no fights.  Nobody got stabbed or shot (at least nobody that we’ve heard about in these two days after all of this).

345,000 people, one out of every one-thousand people in this entire United States, jammed into 253 acres of damp disappointment.

And nothing happened while nothing was happening.

Then it quit raining.  And the track-drying machines came out, marvelous pieces of engineering designed only to transform two and a half miles of wet asphalt into dry asphalt.

It is in situations such as this that people-watchers have a field day.

The fans looked for ways to entertain themselves before the race could start—including appropriately-attired folks rooting for children in a footrace near the souvenir stands, including a volunteer flag man at the finish line.

(The track is nicknamed “The Brickyard” because the pavement for the race for many years was millions of bricks.  Today the finish line is a yard of bricks.)

(Incidentally, the real flag man for the race, known as the Chief Starter, is Aaron Likens and he has just brought out a book called Playing in Traffic, My Journey From Autism Diagnosis to the Indy 500 Flagstand.)

Patriotism is always big at automobile races.

And coveralls with the Speedway logo accessorized with “gold” chains, again with the famous winged wheel logo that has in one form or another represented the great old track from its earliest days.

After years of personal experience people watching at the Speedway, we can note that you have seen only the most moderate of outfits typical of the events. (We’ll do a commentary on going-to-the-car-races clothing in a later entry.)

Driver Pato O’Ward, one of the young guns and one of the favorites, entertained fans by signing hats and shirts dropped from the grandstands into the garage area.

Or chatting with fans—

But the intense work paid off on the track.  The asphalt turned a lighter gray and it was time to go racing, time for 32 men and one woman to hurtle at 230 miles an hour into a near-flat left turn, the first of 800 left turns they would make before the finish, fighting to get through each of those turns ahead of the other cars.

The skies remained grey; although the weather outlook brightened; maybe the entire race could be run before the next storm.  Time to roll out the cars In the end, only one car would complete the challenge of making those 800 left turns ahead of all others in one of the most dramatic races in the 108-year history of the Indianapolis 500.

Time on the grid for a few moments with family—Josef Newgarden showed his two-year old son, Kota, the “office” where he would spend the next three hours or so defending his championship of the 500.

The race lasted one minute and eleven seconds short of three hours  and featured 49 lead changes among 18 drivers, more than half of the starting field, the last lead change coming time when Kota’s dad broke O’Ward’s heart by passing him on the outside of the next-to last turn and holding on to the finish.

It’s Newgarden’s second straight 500 win, both coming with a last lap pass—his victim last year was the 2022 winner, Marcus Ericsson—who had held off a last lap charge from O’Ward that year.

O’Ward remained slumped in his car for a time after the finish, his helmet still on, admitting later, “It was wet in there.”

Newgarden is the sixth driver to win two of these races in a row.  He will try in 2025 to become the first to do a threepeat.

Helio Castroneves almost did it after winning the race in his first two years and finishing second in 2003.  Al Unser Senior also finished second after winning in 1970-71.

Bill Vukovich came with eight laps of winning in 1952 before a part of his steering failed, returned to win in ’52 and ’53 and died while leading on the 57th lap of the 1955 race.

Wilbur Shaw came close to winning not three but FIVE straight.  He won in 1937, was second in 1938, won the next two years and crashed while leading with 48 laps to go in 1941. That was the year a fire roared through the garage area.  It is believed some of the water used to fight the fire washed chalked words “use last’ from an out-of-balance wheel that collapsed, causing his wreck.

But we’ll have to wait a year to see how that pans out.

Thousands of fans remained in the stands as evening clouds thickened and the light grew dimmer while Newgarden and his wife took the traditional victory lap in the pace car then kissed the bricks and went on to celebrate until the late hours.

Newgarden’s victory was worth almost $4.3 million of the nearly $18.5 million in prize money. O’Ward got more than one million for being second.

Thousands of the fans were deadlocked for hours in their parking lots as traffic oozed  back to the nearby interstates or moved through downtown Indianapolis.  This reporter’s car didn’t turn a wheel for more than three hours in the parking lot and was another hour, at least, before getting to his overnight accommodations—with a stop at a gas station because he was down to his last thirty miles of reserve fuel and would have run out had he not shut off his engine for at least 45 minutes of the three hours it took to get to his parking space in the morning and never firing it up again until seeing other cars start to move.

By Monday evening the former farm field was quiet and empty, except for volunteers earning money for their groups by picking up tons and tons of trash left behind by the one-out-of-one-thousand Americans who found themselves packed into those 253 acres where one of the nation’s greatest holidays was celebrated.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR star Kyle Larson left Indianapolis as the race’s Rookie of the Year but disappointed with his 18th place finish.  Larson was among the five fastest qualifiers in his first IndyCar ride, and was running sixth when he drove too fast into the pits with seventy laps left. He had to do a drive-through penalty that set him too far back too late in the race to recover all the positions he had lost.

Still, he was only 9.4846 seconds behind Newgarden at the end of the 500 miles and averaged 167.6 mph. Newgarden averaged 167.8.

Larson had planned to run the 500 and then jet to Charlotte for NASCAR’s 600-mile traditional Memorial Day race. But bad weather, including rain and lightning, caused NASCAR to decide to end the race after 249 of 400 scheduled laps with Christopher Bell declared the winner.  Brad Keselowski racked up another second-place finish, his third runner-up finish of the year.  Larson had arrived at the Charlotte Speedway in  uniform and helmet on just as the race was stopped because of rain.  NASCAR determined restarting the race would make it end at about 3 a.m., Monday, at best and decided to call it a night. Larson never got to turn a lap for the second half of his “double.”

But there is next year.  The deal between Hendrick Motorsports and McLaren racing in IndyCar us a two-year contract.

0-0-0

After the Charlotte race, former NASCAR champion Tony Stewart and his partner, Gene Haas, announced they would be shutting down their team at the end of the year.  Stewart-Haas fields four cars in the series this year but will sell all four of its franchises for several million dollars.  The team has two championships and 69 victories. Stewart is driving a full National Hot Rod Association schedule (His wife is an NHRA competitor) and Haas wants more time to spend with his Formula 1 team.

(FORMULA 1)—The Grand Prix of Monaco is the third major race held on America’s Memorial Day Weekend.  Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc became the first Monaco native to win there.

Now the stick and ball sports that usually lead these entries;

(MIZ)—The Missouri Women’s softball team lost the last game of the super regional tournament to Duke Sunday. Duke goes to the world series. The Tigers come home with a 48-14 season record. (ZOU)

(BASEBALL)—The Cardinals are heating up as the warmer weather settles in.  They won 8 of their last ten after Sunday’s weekend wrap up and had moved in top third place and were only one game under .500.  Sonny Gray is up to 7-2 now.

The Royals continue to be the prime candidate for comeback team of the year and were 13 games above .500 before last night’s game against the Twins. The Royals didn’t get their 34th win last year until August.

The Royals had not had an American League Player of the Week since Vinnie Pasquantino in August, two years ago.  Bobby Witt broke that dry spell last week when he went 10 for 26 in six games with four homers and 11 RBIs. One of those homers was his longest ever, 468 feet.

(HAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks  dropped to 6-3 last weekend as the Arlington Renegades turned three interceptions and two fumbles into a 36-22 victory.  The ‘Hawks are still in the running for the top playoff spot in the XFL Division, though.

Quarterback A. J. McCarron missed his second game because of a bum ankle. He’s considered day-to-day.

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

A “Day” in the Life of the Senate

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This Senate Journal for Monday, May 13, 2024 also is the journal for Tuesday and Wednesday because of a record filibuster, led by Democrats demanding so-called “ballot candy” be removed from a resolution saying no constitutional amendment could be adopted unless it carried in a majority of the state’s eight congressional districts, even if the overall vote was favorable. Democrats, already opposed to the resolution, objected to language added by the House duplicating existing law but making the proposal more appealing to the public—the “ballot candy” opponents wanted removed.

This might be dry reading to those who are not as immersed in state government as your obedient servant has been for most of his life.  We are doing this to place these events in a better record than the Senate Journal provides.

The journal for the “day” that turned into the “fifty-hour filibuster” led by the ten Democrats in the 34-member Senate is covered on pages 1059-1061 of the daily journal (the daily journals are compiled at the end of the session into one large volume, thus these page numbers pick up with the journal page number of the preceding day).  The rest of “Monday’s” journal is made up of messages from the House telling the Senate it has approved its own bills, has changed Senate bills and needs Senate approval of the changes, requests for conference committees to work out differences between the two chambers on various bills, and other routine legislative business.

Because the House of Representatives’ rules limit debate time, filibusters do not occur there.  But the Senate has no such restrictions and a parliamentary procedure called “moving the previous question,” which—if approved—immediately ends debate and calls for a vote, is seldom used.

Because the journal is a record of actions, not a by-word recording of the debates, the only indication that a filibuster occurred is the listings of the names of those who presided over the chamber at various times. The number of names is an indication of the extensive length of the filibuster.  The fact that there are no journals for Tuesday and Wednesday is another indication.

Legislative “days” are not calendar or clock-determined.  A legislative day ends with adjournment. In this case, a “Monday” lasted until Wednesday on the calendar while, for journal purposes, the legislative day was still Monday.  Adjournment in this case did not occur until some Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats in sending the bill back to the House with a request for a conference.  The House on Thursday rejected the Senate’s request, telling the Senate to pass the House Committee Substitute.   Senate leadership knew that the minority Democrats would resume their filibuster if the bill was returned to the floor unchanged and would run out the clock at 6 p.m. on calendar Friday.  Because there was no use spending the last day of the session in a filibuster, the Senate adjourned after a ten-minute session Friday.

We have consulted the Senate archived recording of this long “Monday” to ascertain the exact amount of time the filibuster consumed.  We have done this because this event was unprecedented in Missouri legislative history and smashed a previous unprecedented 41-hour filibuster a few days earlier by the right-wing Senate Freedom Caucus.

Monday, May 13, 2024:   Sponsor Mary Elizabeth Coleman moved that the Senate adopt House Committee Substitute for Senate Substitute Number 4 for Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Joint Resolutions 74, 48, 59, 61, and 83.  That sounds complicated but it represents the path the bill had taken to that point.

There were five similar resolutions on this issue filed in the Senate.  A Senate Committee combined those resolutions into one but not before the entire Senate had debated the bill and three substitute versions were voted down, leaving the fourth that gained enough voter for passage.

The amended and combined Senate resolution went to the House where a House Committee substituted its version. The House passed the revised bill.  The changes had to be approved by the Senate before the proposition could be put on a statewide ballot.

Monday, May 13 was the first day of the last week of the 2024 legislative session. Democrats, outnumbered more than 2-1, knew the clock was their greatest friend when it came to getting this proposition changed or killed.  They launched a filibuster that blocked a vote that surely would have sent the issue to the November ballot.

Our legislature records its debates and archives them.  We went to the May 10 audio journal and tracked how much time was spent on this bill in each day.  The Senate archive recording resets to 0:00 at the end of each 24 hours.

Day One, Monday, May 13.

0:00:00—The Senate begins its “day” with a prayer from Reverend Stephen George.

0:04:52—Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman moves Senate approval of  HCS/SS4/SCS/SJR 74, 48, 59, 61 and 83.

0:06:15—Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo makes substitute motion to send the bill back to the House and to ask for a conference committee to work out the differences between the House version, which had “ballot candy” added to it, and the Sente version.  This is the beginning of the filibuster.

“Monday” part one (Monday-Tuesday on the traditional calendar): 24 hours, of which 23 hours, 53 minutes and 45 seconds were spent filibustering the resolution. Running filibuster time: 23:53:45.

“Monday” part two (Tuesday-Wednesday on the traditional calendar): all 24 hours were involved in the filibuster. Running filibuster time: 47:53:45

“Monday” part three (Wednesday on the traditional calendar); 02:15:36  Roll call vote begins.  Roll call results announced: 02:18:06. The motion to send bill back to the House passed 18-13, with eight Republicans crossing party lines. The filibuster is official ended.

02:24:41: The Senate adjourns until Thursday morning.  “Monday,” the longest known “day” in Missouri Senate history, has finally come to an end.

Total filibuster time: 50:11:51

Total time of “Monday, May 10, 2024” in the Missouri Senate: 50:24:41.

Miserable, Just Miserable

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The Missouri Constitution establishes a definite date each year for adjournment of the Missouri General Assembly.  This was one of those years when adjournment couldn’t happen soon enough.

This miserable session will be remembered as the session that a handful of Republican senators calling themselves the Freedom Caucus ran into the ground because a majority of their party didn’t buy their demands.  They accused the majority of their majority party of being RINOS, a nickname our former president likes to apply to any Republican who does not love him. There is considerable reason to consider far-out clusters such as this as the real Republicans in Name Only.

This will be remembered as the Session of the Filibuster.  The Freedom Caucus kicked off the session with a lengthy discussion of Senate procedure, filibustered for eleven hours trying to force colleagues to act quickly on bills making it harder for citizens to create laws through initiative petition. That led President Pro Team Caleb Rowden to strip four members of the Freedom Caucus of their committee chairmanships and (this seemed to be the most terrible punishment to some of them) took away their parking spaces in the Capitol basement.  Senators Bill Eigel, the ringleader of the caucus, Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Andrew Koenig lost their prestigious positions, after which Eigel stopped action in the Senate for four more hours so he could question several Senators who seemed to support Rowden’s action.

Rowden calculated in late January that the Senate had been in floor session for 17 hours and 52 minutes in 2024. He said the Freedom Caucus had filibustered “things of no consequence whatsoever relative to a piece of policy” for 16 hours and 45 minutes of that time.

And it only got worse. But in the end, the filibuster bit the Freedom Caucus—uh—in the end.

As the session reached May and the crucial last couple of weeks, including the week in which the state budget had to be approved, the caucus stopped things cold for 41 hours—believed to be the longest filibuster in Missouri legislative history—because its priorities were not THE priority of Senate leadership.

But that filibuster record was to be broken in the final week when Democrats and some Republicans fed up with the Freedom Caucus’s behavior got in the way of final approval of the resolution changing the way the state constitution can be changed. Those who had lived by the filibuster died by the filibuster.

The final filibuster lasted FIFTY hours and change. It succeeded where the Freedom Caucus belligerency failed. The Freedom Caucus’ bull-in-a-china shop philosophy of government was repudiated by a Senate that seemed to, in this case at least, rediscovered bipartisanship. But the damage done by this group could not be reversed.

The 2024 legislative session was the least productive in modern memory—or even ancient memory, for that matter.  Only 28 non-budget bills were passed.

That beats the record of 31 in the 2020 session.  But remember, that was the Pandemic Session when the legislature did not meet for several days then operated on a limited basis for several other days.

Eigel disavowed responsibility for that miserable record.  “A lot of bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the people standing behind me,” he said in a post-session Freedom Caucus press conference. His words probably didn’t carry any water with Senators and Representatives who had worked hard and conscientiously on bills that would have done GOOD things only to see them disappear into the ongoing mud fight in the Senate led by Eigel and his band.

Eigel has dreams of becoming Governor.  Denny Hoskins thinks he’d be a peachy Secretary of State. Andrew Koenig thinks being State Treasurer would be wonderful. Rick Brattin just hopes to get elected to another term in the Senate.

There are some folks who have watched them this year who hope they still don’t have parking places in Jefferson City in 2025.

The 50-hour filibuster deserves a closer look. We’ve taken that look to establish the exact length of it so that future observers will know when they have witnessed an even more regrettable example.

Incidentally, it is believed the longest filibuster by one person in Missouri history was Senator Matt Bartle’s futile effort to block some gubernatorial appointments in 2007. He held the floor for seventeen hours.

If Our History Were Written West to East 

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Ignorance of history is helping fuel the controversial White Christian Nationalism movement. There are plenty of people in our political world who prefer to keep things that way.

To base our understanding of our nation’s history on Jamestown, Plymouth, Pilgrims and Puritans and interpretations of their reasons for coming here—and the reasons behind more than a century of explorations before they arrived—is a grave mistake. It shortchanges our future as a nation and as a nation’s people.

One of the best cases for understanding our history differently is in a letter written by our great poet Walt Whitman after he had been invited to compose a poem to celebrate the 333rd anniversary of the settlement of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It is dated July 20, 1883. It is critical of those who think our history began on the rocky shores of Massachusetts and Virginia.  The invitation to deliver the poem arrived too late, he wrote, so he had to decline. “But I will say a few words off-hand.”

We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed and in widely different sources. Thus far, impressed by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States have been fashioned from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only—which is a great mistake. Many leading traits for our future national personality, and some of the best ones, will certainly prove to have originated from other than British stock. As it is, the British and German, valuable as they are in the concrete, already threaten excess. Or rather, I should say, they have certainly reach’d​ that excess. To-day, something outside of them, and to counterbalance them, is seriously needed.

Thus seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else, are, in my opinion, but a vast and indispensable stage in the new world’s development, and are certainly to be follow’d​ by something entirely different—at least by immense modifications. Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are yet to be establish’d​ , through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic and democratic attributes—not one of which at present definitely exists—entirely different from the past, though unerringly founded on it, and to justify it.

To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander historic retrospect—grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor. (It is time to dismiss utterly the illusion-compound, half raw-head-and-bloody-bones and half Mysteries-of-Udolpho, inherited from the English writers of the past 200 years. It is time to realize—for it is certainly true—that there will not be found any more cruelty, tryanny, superstition, &c., in the résumé of past Spanish history than in the corresponding résumé of Anglo-Norman history. Nay, I think there will not be found so much.)

Then another point, relating to American ethnology, past and to come, I will here touch upon at a venture. As to our aboriginal or Indian population—the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the North and West—I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle as time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. As America, from its many far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts, entwines, faithfully identifies its own—are we to see it cheerfully accepting and using all the contributions of foreign lands from the whole outside globe—and then rejecting the only ones distinctively its own—the autochthonic ones?

As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is certain to me that we do not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its race element. Who knows but that element, like the course of some subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two years, is now to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action?

If I might assume to do so, I would like to send you the most cordial, heart-felt congratulations of your American fellow-countrymen here. You have more friends in the Northern and Atlantic regions than you suppose, and they are deeply interested in development of the great Southwestern interior, and in what your festival would arouse to public attention.

Very respectfully &c.,Walt Whitman

Here we are, 141 years after Whitman’s letter, being encouraged by the “seething, materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else.”   Whitman’s letter still calls on all of us to realize history written west to east is a valid subject and that the more comprehensive history will bring about “character, literature, a society worthy the name…through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic, and democratic attributes.”

It is a national shame that so many prefer “devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else” to understanding the reverse geographical truths of our history that will allow us to achieve “the broadest flow” of the representative democracy we only partially understand, and in only partially understanding it continue to further disadvantage our country.

(Photo Credit: PBS “The American Experience”)

 

The (Robert) Reich Stuff 

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We subscribe to several newsletters at our house, liberal and conservative, because we kind of want to take the pulses of the various parts of the political spectrum. One of those we enjoy is by Robert Reich.

He worked in the administrations of Republican Gerald Ford and Democrats Jimmy Carter, and was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor. He also was part of President Obama’s economic transition advisory board.

He’s been the Chancellor’s Public Policy Professor at UC-Berkeley for eighteen years. He used to be a lecturer in government at Harvard, and a prof of social and economic policy at Brandeis University. Time magazine said he was one of the ten best cabinet members of the Twentieth Century (2008) and ranked sixth on the Wall Street Journal’s list of Most Influential Business Thinkers.

So it appears he has some pretty solid bipartisan credentials.

A few days ago, he explained why prices remain high despite the slowing of inflation. His explanation recalls a warning I heard thirty years ago or more from Abner Womack, an Ag-Econ professor at the University of Missouri, a co-founder of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.  He warned of the dangers of vertical integration in the agriculture industry—a time when only a few companies controlled the agriculture industry from providing the seeds, providing the fertilizer, processing the harvested product, and marketing it to consumers, and doing the same thing with the livestock part of agriculture. In effect, he was talking about the growing tendency of creating agricultural monopolies.

In his column on February 16, Reich began with a chart:

The chart shows corporate profit trends from 1946 through the third quarter of 2023.

This, he says, is why President Biden is not getting the credit he deserves to improving the economy—-corporate monopolities are unnecessarily increasing prices, or charging the same prices but reducing the size of the products.  For example, he says—

“In 2021, PepsiCo, which makes all sorts of drinks and snacks, announced it was “forced” to raise prices due to “higher costs.” Forced? Really? The company reported $11 billion in profit that year. 

“In 2023 PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.

“How can they get away with this? 

“Well, if Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which — surprise, surprise — announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi, and also kept its prices high in 2023.

“The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.” 

And that is why, he explains, consumer prices are still high even though inflation is down and prices are rising “far more slowly” than in the past couple of years. However, those trends are not reflected in the prices of the products.  The result is that the corporations can “get aay with overcharging you” because corporations have few competitors who can force them to lower prices to compete for customers.

Why are prices thirty percent higher than they were in 2020?  Because “four companies now control processing of 80 percent of beef, nearly 70 percent of pork, and almost 60 percent of poultry.”  He suggests, but offers no proof, that these companies coordinate price increases.

Reich says it’s time federal antitrust laws be enforced, noting the Biden administration has been more aggressive in this field than any administration for the last forty years. It has acused the meat industry of price fixing. The administration is suing Amazon with “one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.”

He points to legislation suggested by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others. She says, “Giant corporations are using supply chain shocks as a cover to excessively raise prices and sometimes charging the same price but shrinking how much consumers actually get.”  Among other things, the bill would force public companies to divulge more about their costs and pricing strategies.

But, he says, don’t expect this idea to go far because Democrats have only a slim majority in the Senate and Repulicans have a slim majority in the House that enables them and their business allies to blame the Biden administration instead of solving the problem by going after that important constituency for the GOP.

So ends Robert Reich’s basic economic course for the day. He’s clearly a liberal but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s not worth appreciating any more than a conservative’s thoughts are automatically worthy of dismissal.  And those who wear the label “conservative” honorably will find some points of agreement with him, perhaps.

Late in the 1890s and early 1900s, it was popular in politics to be a “trust buster.”  Reich has suggested targets for a new generation of them.

It’s time to get started.

One Man’s Vision—8   

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We’ve shared with you in the last four weeks one man’s vision for a greater Jefferson City (well, actually two men, as we wrote about Mayor C. W. Thomas—who inspired this series—in our first entry).  Our list is far from inclusive of all good ideas nor is having a vision my exclusive domain. You have been invited to share your visions and I hope you will do that now that we are wrapping up this series.

All of this ambitious talk about places to meet, places to visit, and places to live has overlooked a lot of our people who have few or none of the opportunities to participate.  If we are to be a great city, we cannot overlook them.

At the library, we sometimes hear about our “homeless problem” and there are those who tell us they won’t visit the library or bring their children there because of “them.”  Those patrons and other critics demand we “do something” about them.  “They” make people uncomfortable.

The library does not have a homeless problem. The CITY has a homeless problem and the public library is an uncomfortable participant in it—because we have to be.

We are a public institution and whether a person owns a mansion or sleeps in a box, that person is part of “the public.”  There is no place for them to go during the day after their overnight accommodations shut down.  We are their warm place on frigid days. We are their cool place on oppressively hot days.  We are their bathrooms.

I’m sorry that some people are offended because “they” don’t dress as well as most of us…or smell as good as most of us and they hang around our building.

We do not often have any problems with these folks although there have been times when we have called police and some have been banished from our premises.  We have signs throughout our building reminding our homeless visitors not to sleep there. Our staff can’t be a dozer police, though, because of their regular duties.

But most of them are okay. We do not judge them on various criteria any more than we judge any of you. You are the public, constituents using a public place in a personal way, too.

I have not had a chance to ask our critics what their solution is.  But ignoring the issue or saying it is someone else’s problem to solve is something for the Old Jefferson City—-at a time when a BOLD Jefferson City should be our goal.

Celebrations of things such as bicentennials of becoming the state capital can work in more ways than one. We should make sure our bicentennial observance doesn’t leave “them” out.  They are people, the public, fellow citizens.  And they deserve—by their presence among us—respect.

Great cities do not become great by only catering to people who smell good.

To do any of the things I have discussed in this series to move a good city toward greatness without facing the problems of those to whom greatness is just a word is irresponsible.  As citizens of this community we are responsible to and for one another. That’s what the word “community” implies.

I can’t tell you how to make these things discussed in these entries happen. Many of you have the expertise I lack.

Leonardo daVinci made drawings of flying machines. The Wright Brothers made the machine that flew.  Humphry Davy, Warren de la Rue, and Joseph Swan made electric lights but Thomas Edison created the incandescent bulb. Carl Benz created a gasoline-powered automobile but Henry Ford showed how to manufacture them.  John Fleming invented the vacuum tube but Guglielmo Marconi created radio.

Some have ideas. Others have the expertise to realize them.

So I’m going to leave you with three statements that have motivated me most of my life and I hope they encourage you to become active in this quest.

The English playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote a lengthy play called Back to Methuselah, retelling some of the earliest stories of the Bible. He creates a conversation in which the snake convinces Eve she should want to learn, that she should eat from the tree of knowledge instead of just living mindlessly in the Garden of Eden.  The snake appeals to her curiosity by saying, “You see things, and you say ‘Why?’   I dream dreams that never were, and I say, ‘Why not?’”

I am asking today, “Why not?”

The German philosopher Johan Wolfgang von Goethe continued that thought when he advised, “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”

I am asking you to dream bigger dreams than we have dreamed, bigger even than a new convention center.

Goethe’s  tragic masterwork, Faust, includes this observation:

Lose this day loitering—’twill be the same story
To-morrow–and the next more dilatory;
Then indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.
Are you in earnest? seize this very minute–
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it,
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated—
Begin it, and the work will be completed!

I am asking our city to be bold.

A bicentennial’s greatest value lies not in dwelling on the past, but in building a foundation for the TRIcentennial. It still will not be good enough to be the Capital City.  What more can we be….if we lay the foundation for it now?

I want our bicentennial to be characterized by a sense of boldness that turns a “good enough” city into a great one, that discovers the genius, power, and magic in boldness.

A century ago, a mayor who had seen this city become a modern city that in his lifetime fought off two efforts to take the seat of government elsewhere—Sedalia’s 1896 statewide vote on capital removal and efforts after the 1911 fire to build a new capitol somewhere else—and who modernized our town died dreaming of a convention center.

His spirit of progress is worth recalling and becoming a motivator for becoming a greater city.

You’ve read one man’s vision for accomplishing that.  What is yours?

How can we do it?

One Man’s Vision—7 

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We recognize that not everyone wants change.  The status quo is comfortable, predictable, and requires little effort or participation. Life is good as-is.

And it’s cheaper than trying to be better.  Better equals more taxes. More taxes advocated by those who want their city to BE more are a burden to those who think they cannot afford to live in a greater city.

It’s hard for some to see the benefits that come with a desire to be better.  But the business world shows us that people want better things, will buy them, and the commerce generated with those purchases lifts both ends of economic boats.

But still, there are those who will say “no.”

Decades ago, while working at The Arcola Record-Herald, a small-town Illinois newspaper that provided my first journalism paycheck, I came across “The Knocker’s Prayer,” published in 1918.  Some of the language is dated but the sentiment is contemporary for some people.

Lord, please don’t let this town grow.  I’ve been here for thirty years, and during that time I’ve fought every public improvement.  I’ve knocked everything and everybody, no firm or individual has established a business here without my doing all I can to put them out of business.  I’ve lied about them, and would have stolen from them I had the courage.

I have done all I could to keep the town from growing and never have spoken a good word for it. I’ve knocked hard and often. I have put ashes on the children’s slide and I’ve made the Marshall stop the boys from playing ball on my vacant lot.  Whenever I saw anyone prospering or enjoying themselves, I’ve started a reform to kill the business or spoil the fun.

I don’t wany the young folks to stay in this town and I will do all I can by law, rule and ordinance to drive them away. It pains me, O Lord, to see that in spite of my knocking, it is beginning to grow, Someday, I fear I will be called upon to put down sidewalks in front of my property and who knows but what I may have to help keep up the streets that run by my premises.  This, Lord, would be more than I could bear. It would cost me money, though all I have was made right here in this town. 

Then, too, more people might come if the town begins to grow, which would cause me to lose some of my pull.  I ask, therefore, to keep this town at a standstill, that I may continue be the chief calamity howler. Amen.

But great, or even good, futures are not made by those who choose to stand pat, who argue against daring to be better.

The American Revolution was led by a bunch of rabble-rousers who found British subservience intolerable.  The frontier was expanded by those who dared to cross the Alleghenies. The Civil War was fought because the status quo that allowed one people to own other people was no longer acceptable. The Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails were populated by the minority who left comfort behind for greater opportunities (and, we have to admit, destroyed the status quo of the Native Americans in their way) west of Missouri.  Everything of modern society comes from those who saw beyond what-is to what can-be.

The status quo and its costs are not static. The expenses of maintaining the status quo, usable streets for example for example, increases.

The future IS expensive but so is maintaining the present. For a little more, we can reach for a little greatness. And history shows leaders always drag the “knockers” along with them.  And the “knockers” enjoy the benefits of progress, too.

There are always going to be “knockers,” the people who say, “We can’t do this” or “Why do this?”

The pioneers, the leaders, the people who still embody the American spirit of making life better for themselves and those they know and will never know, are the ones who ask, “How can we do this?” and then find the answer to their own question.

The first gubernatorial inauguration I covered as a reporter was that of Warren Hearnes, who was sworn in, in 1969 for his historic second term, and said in his inaugural speech:

To do and be better is a goal few achieve. To do it, we are required to make sacrifices—not in the sense of shedding our blood or giving of our lives or the lives of those we love, but sacrifice in the sense of giving of a part of those material things which we enjoy in abundance. A great people will sacrifice part of that with which they have been blessed in order that their children will be better educated; their less fortunate more fortunate; their health better health; their state a better state.

We must never fear as a city to ask better of ourselves, for ourselves, and for those we drag along with us.

There’s another group that risks staying behind when others reach for something better.

In our concluding post in this series, we’ll talk about those we should not overlook in our search for greatness.

One Man’s Vision—4 

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A state-of- the-art comprehensive Jefferson City/Cole County History Museum, at the old prison—discussed in the previous entry in this series—should be only a start.

Let’s shoot for the moon.

What really would be a giant step toward greatness would be he acquisition of another museum, one destined for a Smithsonian-quality reputation.

Six years ago we had a shot at getting the Steamboat Arabia museum to move here from Kansas City. But our planning group never got beyond talking, talking, talking and the expertise I hoped would develop when the group was formed never did develop. In effect, we decided we are good enough, as is. And one important business leader straight-out told me it wouldn’t work here.

None of the people I thought would take the practical lead did. But another smaller, more ambitious town went beyond talking and what it discovered for itself speaks volumes of what Jefferson City would have discovered had there been some initiative generated by all of that talking and should be a challenge to Jefferson City to show it wants to be more than the state capitol, more than a convention center can give us, more than we are.

City leaders in Marshall reportedly raised $150,000 for a feasibility study of a steamboat museum at I-70 and Highway 65. The initial investment would be high. The payoff will be large and long-lasting

The findings show that the payoff of this major commitment will be multiples of what was forecast for the Marshall/Sedalia/Lexington area.

I took a lot of notes at the meeting where the findings by the consulting firm of Peckham, Guyton, Albers & Viets (PGAV) were revealed three years ago.

PGAV called the museum proposal “a chance to put something iconic in Central Missouri.’  It described a state of the art museum with a national and regional strategy. It addressed continued investment that renewed the museum’s life cycle, the development of supporting amenities, the financial sustainability for generations, and the leadership the project would provide for future development.

The company looked at tourism strategies—attracting people to the area, creating support for the project, and connecting the museum to other parts of the country by defining a larger region to draw from.

They saw the museum as being a local draw and, more important, a destination attraction. PGAV calculated the trade area for the museum south of Marshall at more than 7.5 million people within a three-hour travel time.  The study forecast the operating costs would be about $2.4 million a year, based on an $18 adult admission fee, retail sales, and food and beverage income, among other things. It could be operated with 18 fulltime employees.

The first phase would be a 77,000 square foot museum (about double the present footprint, that would hold the Arabia and a second boat (we’ll discuss that later) and provide support and storage space on 3.7 acres, including parking. Estimated cost: $37 million.  That’s what we built the Center for Missouri Studies for in Columbia—a three-story, 77-thousand square feet building.  By the time the third phase of the steamboat museum would be completed, the complex would cover 8 acres, including parking

PGAV’s site analysis pointed to the great visibility of the museum from I-70 and to the great amount of open land at Marshall Junction.

The company found that museums are “economic engines” for an area—that non-profit art and culture attractions have an economic impact of more than one-billion dollars in Missouri (that’s a 2015 study).  They calculated that $1 generated by such a museum would generate $3.20 for the economy.

The study identifies several financial tools created by state law—Community Development Block Grants, Neighborhood Assistance tax credits, Community Improvement Districts, and ta exempt bonds issued by the Missouri Development Finance Board.

Additionally, PGAV calculated the national 250th anniversary celebration in 2026 will create federal funding capabilities for projects with about two-billion dollars allocated for state signature projects—and the museum, they said, would be a prime choice that a signature project (Jefferson City benefitted from the Bicentennial in 1976 by getting funding for restoration of Lohman’s Landing when it was declared a statewide bicentennial project).

In Summary, PGAV concluded that the Marshall-centered market would be enough to support a destination museum that would be an anchor for other tourism assets in the region (Arrow Rock, Sedalia and the State Fair, Santa Fe Trail sites, etc.  It would develop tourism synergies for local tourism in a three-county region (or broader), it would trigger multiple development opportunities near the Marshall Junction interchange and would create an economic development opportunity when combined with other attractions.  The study indicated the museum would draw 3.7 million visitors when phase one opens in 2026.

If that is true for Marshall, consider what it would mean for Jefferson City.

The population of Columbia, Jefferson City, and Fulton tops 182,000.  The combined populations of Marshall, Sedalia, Lexington, Boonville, and Moberly is about one-third that.

Seven state or private institutions of higher education within thirty miles of Jefferson City have more than 44,000 students. Another thirty miles, north and south, are Moberly Area Community College and the Missouri University of Science and Technology that add another 12,000 students. Sporting events and parental visits bring tens of thousands more people to those schools.

Add tto that, that Jefferson City is on the way to the Lake of the Ozarks. Lake Expo recently estimated 2.5-million people visit the Lake every year, 75% of them between May and September.

Increased tourism is only part of the benefit. The steamboat museum here could offer academic opportunities in technology, archaeology, textile preservation, museum management, American Western history, and other programs at or through those higher education institutions. The museum could benefit them and could gain benefits from them.

And think what a museum dedicated to grow in coming years or decades to capture the history of  the golden decades of Missouri River commerce and frontier development (1820-1880) could do.  The goal of the museum is to have artifacts—and maybe complete steamboats—excavated from past river channels, now farm fields from each of those decades.  Arabia museum President Dave Hawley has one of those boats located and test borings indicate the Malta might be complete enough to bring up as whole as possible. He would love to open a new museum with an 1841 steamboat in it.

Think about that.

Six years ago, we had the chance to raise about five million dollars to pay the costs of excavating the Malta and having it here, keeping the museum project highly visible while he rest of the project developed. Only one person was asking, “How do we do that?”  Nobody answered.

At the time, major fund-raising was focused on the Bicentennial Bridge or on the Missouri River Port.

I wrote at the time that I didn’t see hundreds of school buses with thousands of school children and their adult chaperones visiting a river port or taking in the view from Adrian’s Island as they would visit a steamboat museum.  To be clear, I think Adrian’s Island will be appreciated more in ten years than it was then or might be appreciated now. I can’t recall the last time I heard anything about the riverport but it’s not likely something I will take visiting relatives to see.

The Arabia museum is running out of time before it closes and the collection possibly moves to Pennsylvania, significantly, in November, 2026. Making the acquisition of that museum for our city as the official Capital City Bicentennial Project would be about a $50 million initial commitment. But it would transform our city and it would be an incredible driver to prison redevelopment as well as an incredible complement to the convention center/capitol avenue restoration and redevelopment effort.

Based on my conversations with Joe and Josephine Jeffcity, the steamboat museum would enhance chances for approval of a bond issue for the convention center, the library, and the historical museum, together or separately.

How can we make this step toward greatness happen?

Why should we do it?

Some of us are old enough to remember President Kennedy’s September 12, 1962 speech at Rice University when he set the goal of a manned moon landing within the decade:

“But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”

The steamboat museum can be, should be, Jefferson City’s moonshot.

At the risk of sinking into hyperbole, bringing this museum to Jefferson City could be the greatest reach for greatness in city history since civic leaders organized the construction of our first Missouri River bridge that helped blunt Sedalia’s effort to steal the capital in 1896.

How can we organize and measure the best of our energies and skills to make it happen?

How can we do it?

 

One Man’s Vision—3 

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I am writing this series of entries—six of them in all at this point—not entirely comfortably because they are intimately personal thoughts, and suspecting that they might be perceived as self-aggrandizing and presumptuous, two characteristics I have not much appreciated in the people I covered in my long life as a political reporter.

Why am I indulging in this exercise that involves unflattering questions about whether our city is so self-satisfied as the capital city that it is reluctant or even resistant to striving to be not just good but great?

And who am I to do it?

Asking the second question is a partial answer to the first question.  Why sholdn’t we expect more from ourselves, FOR ourselves, and for those who come after us?

This city is where I have had a successful career, where I have raised my family, where I have participated in its activities, and where I long to return to regardless of what part of the world I have been in.

I have never sought or wanted to seek public office—-although I have been asked a few times if I was interested. I’m just one of forty-thousand or so citizens living on a quiet street, retired from daily job responsibilities but involved in a few church and civic activities.

I care passionately about my town and what it can be.

—-because I know what it has been and what it is.

That’s right. MY town.  I have a proprietary interest in it, as do you, or as should you. And I want it to be better.  I look around and I see ways that it could be and I wonder if it has the courage to reach for greatness.

I came to Jefferson City fifty-seven years ago to report news for a radio station that no longer has its studios here.  Fifty years ago this November, I joined with one of my best friends, Clyde Lear, to create The Missourinet.  At the time, I was the Secretary of the Jefferson City American Revolution Bicentennial Commission—-I count the successful 18-month effort to bring the American Freedom Train to the town named for the principal author of the Declaration of Independence as one of the best things I’ve ever done for my city.

I am now the president of the regional library board, a member of the Cole County America 250 Committee—a group formed to commemorate, in just two years, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—a life member of the Cole County Historical Society, and Past-President of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

My sixth book, all of which deal with some part of Missouri and/or Jefferson City history, is under consideration for publication with the University of Kansas Press.

It is a mistake to think that historians live in the past.  We don’t. We use the past as lessons to consider the future, and I have been thinking a lot recently about the future of my town, and yours.

A coincident combination of recent events and circumstances has triggered all of this:

—The decision to give up on the penitentiary as the site for a hotel and convention center.

—A “for sale” sign in the window of our former family pharmacy

—The defeat last August of the library’s proposed levy increase to bring our 1970s library system into the third decade of the 21st century, thanks to a secret committee that spread a giant lie to voters throughout the county.

—An ongoing effort to keep an irreplaceable historical resource from leaving the state

—A legislative refusal to fund a major restoration project filled with the lessons of history, and

—-And a citywide social problem

All of this has come together as we look the bicentennial of the City of Jefferson becoming the seat of state government on October 1, 1826, and the bicentennial of the first legislative session held here, beginning that November 20th.

So far I have heard of no plans to celebrate the city’s bicentennial as the state capital.  And I think that says something about the cultural character of my town.

I believe the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Jefferson City becoming the capital city of Missouri could change the way we see ourselves and the way others see us going forward.

Inspired by the story of Mayor Cecil Thomas, recounted in the first episode, I am offering this one man’s vision requires us to be better—no, to be GREATER—than we are.  I hope you have, or will have, your own vision.

I have formed the opinion through many years of observing my town that we have a split personality.

First, we seem to think that being the state capital is good enough.

That has never been true.

Being “good enough” is not good enough.  Great cities do not become great by being “good enough.”

I do not want to hear anyone tell me, “We can’t do this.”  Cities don’t become great because they think they cannot accomplish great things.  They become great by asking, “How can we get this done?”

Another impression I have is that we waste too much time comparing Jefferson City to Columbia.  If that is, indeed, the case, we need to get over it. And this is a good time to focus on what we can be, not what we are in comparison, or what they have that we don’t.

And third, I wonder if we are in some respects a cubicle city in which many of us go to work each day, spend the day in our own little cubicle—seldom standing to look around or to communicate with people in other cubicles—and then go to a larger cubicle that is our home. It is hard to think outside the box if you spend your life in a cubicle.

Our family drug store closed last fall. The historic soda fountain that was a landmark part of our city culture remains.  When the “for sale’ sign went into the window late last year, I began to worry about what would happen to that soda fountain under new ownership of the building—and how it needs to be saved and preserved somewhere if it is to be removed.

But Jefferson City has no place to put it, or to preserve other important artifacts from our county’s past that tell the story of how we have become what we are..

While all of this was happening, I was asked to speak at a fund-raising Tea sponsored by the ladies of the Cole County Historical Society. They wanted me to talk about the history of the society, which this year celebrates the 80th anniversary.

And the Cole County America 250 Commission was being formed about then to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

After I saw the “for sale” sign in the Whaley’s window, I sent an email to the Historic City of Jefferson and to the Cole County Historical Society suggesting it is time for the two groups to get together and start planning a meaningful county history museum.

We do not have a museum that preserves the history of our other communities in Cole County.  There are no exhibits about Wardsville or Taos or Russellville or Osage City, Elston, or others including the little communities that winked out; no exhibits about The Foot or Munichberg.  Where can we go to learn about what an international city we are?  Where will we find the stories of Steve the Tailor, Arris the Pizza-maker, Helmut the Restauanteur, Yannis the Coffee Merchant, the pioneers of Temple Beth-el, the stories of those who serve us food from Thailand, China, Japan, Vietnam, India, Mexico—and Ireland.

Where can we learn of the migration of African-Americans, northern Missouri slaves, who crossed the river to come here to escape guerilla warfare, knowing they were safe in the first state capital to be occupied by the U. S. Army in wartime?  We need to show how Lincoln University came to be and how it has transformed through many decades into an institution of higher learning that has served this community far better than we seem to acknowledge. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people of all races in our area are walking around with degrees and advanced degrees from Lincoln.

And sports—where can we learn about Pete and Ray (Adkins and Hentges), and who WAS Dwight T. Reed?  Or where can we learn about our five (at least) major league baseball players and the five, so far, Jefferson Citians with careers in professional football? Or even the story of tennis star Althea Gibson.

We have two historical organizations, neither of which tells the story of our city and county as well as many local museums I have visited—in much smaller towns—have told about their cities and counties.

We need a city/county history museum built inside the old prison that meets modern museum standards for story-telling and is a true value to the people here and to visitors—a museum within a museum. I mentioned this at the most recent meeting of the America 250 Committee as a project that would be our legacy and committee members seemed attracted to the idea.

Developing such a museum would mean a new location for the Cole County Historical Society museum, which now occupies a 150-year old building with severe limits on space with costly upkeep costs that impede expansion.  The building would be desirable to associations or entities such as those that already occupy large amounts of building space close to the Capitol. Instead of the building being a financial drain, the sale of it would provide part of the financial foundation for a truly representative center of Cole County history.

That’s not the only important public institution that needs a new home that would fit well within the renovation of the old penitentiary and be a legacy from this generation to tomorrow’s  greater city.  We’ll explore that possibility next.

(We are sharing our vision for a greater city.  We are interested in what others hope for a better city for our grandchildren’s grandchildren.  Take some time and let us know in the response box below)

One Man’s Vision

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I was reading a newspaper the other day and I came across this comment from the mayor:

“Jefferson City cannot obtain conventions of any size because of our lack of a suitable hall. Conventions and public gatherings are the finest sort of advertising for the city, and would naturally gravitate to Jefferson City, as the capital of the state if we had a hall. Then, too, we should have a community center such as all the progressive cities of the time are establishing which could house public charities, civic organizations and the like and at the same time furnish an auditorium space for local gatherings and celebrations. I think the time has come when the people of the city should take the lead in this behalf, and build the hall themselves. It will pay for itself in the volume of business and the expenditure of money by visitors brought here as a convention city.

“I would not advocate for these improvements, nor advocate for a bond issue if I did not believe the town could not afford it.  We are in excellent condition financially and our taxes are not high. Our credit is perfect and now is the time to extend ourselves to the point of providing these things which the prosperity and growth of the city demand.”

You probably missed seeing that article, because—

The Mayor was Cecil Thomas who had been elected by a large majority to his fifth two-year term and was speaking to the DAILY CAPITAL NEWS 99 years ago, on April 9, 1925.

Now, in 2024, an important step is being taken to finally realize the dream of Cecil Thomas. The abandonment of the prison as the site for a hotel and convention center is the first major step. The agreement with a developer is the continuation of a bold step finally being taken to materialize Mayor Thomas’s dream.

His announcement came just six months after a huge event was held to dedicate our new state capitol.  It came about eighteen months before the centennial of Jefferson City becoming the state capital city.

Today, we are about seven months away from the centennial of the Capitol dedication and we are about 18 months away from the BIcentennial of Jefferson City becoming the capital city.

A century has passed during which we have talked and talked and talked about a convention center.  Two centuries have passed since we became the capital city—-and it is time to examine the character of our city and the foundation you and I are laying for the people who will live here for the capitol’s bicentennial and the capital city’s TRIcentennial.

Will we just talk and talk and talk or will we start a spirit of boldness that will lift a city that sometimes seems too satisfied with the things as they are, with the image of being the Capital City being enough?

I propose we begin to confront that issue and that we opt for boldness and Mayor Thomas is an inspiring example.

Why use this long-forgotten mayor as our guide?

Cecil Thomas’s vision of a convention/community center died with him on October 3, 1928 when he suffered an apparent stroke or cerebral hemorrhage (the phrase at the time was “apoplexy) while on a business trip to Chicago.  He was just 56 years old and was nearing the end of his sixth term. Congressman William Nelson, who turned aside Thomas’s bid for Congress in 1924, said, “This city of beauty, progress, and achievement is a fitting monument to him who was so long its mayor.” Nelson represented Central Missouri for nine terms in Washington.

First National Bank President A. A. Speer, a former House Speaker and Vice-Chairman of the commission that built the capitol, called him, “Jefferson City’s foremost citizen” and suggested, “Jefferson City should build a monument and on that monument I would inscribe, ‘He lived for Jefferson City.’”

The DAILY CAPITAL News commented, “A history of his activities would read like an account of the growth and improvement of Jefferson City.”  Among the civic enterprises in which he had a hand:

—Construction of the street railway system.

—Construction of the High Street Viaduct

—Development of several additions including Forest Hills

—Promotion of the plan whereby the Missouri River bridge was taken over by a local company and is to be made a toll-free bridge.

—Promotion of the place which led to the construction of the new Missouri Hotel here.

—Active in building up the sewer system and all major projects for improvement of the city, including fire and police departments, and street improvements.

He was one of the founders and early presidents of the Jefferson City Commercial Club, now the Chamber of Comerce, a member of the Rotary Club and an active member of the Presbyterian Church.

One last project Mayor Thomas backed never materialized—a concrete tunnel on West McCarty Street “to improve and open up tht section of Mccarty in order tht Vista Place might be connected with a main artery of the community.”   At the time, the street was unimproved and was considered impassable.

The newspaper reported news of Thomas’ s death came “like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky” and “cast a pall and shadow of gloom and regred over the Capital City…He was so much a part of the integral life of the community, so closely connected with every activity looking toward a bigger and better city, and such a familiar figure pon the local streets that the full realization that he was no more dawned but slowly.

“The uptown business district streets were lined with flags, all at half-mast out of respects to the departed mayor—one of the best friends Jefferson City ever had or ever will have.”

The city was reported to be “at a standstill” during his funeral. “All businesses were closed, street cars were stationary, and the middle span of the bridge over the Missouri River…swung open for a brief period.”

The POST-TRIBUNE of August 21, 1929—about ten months after Thomas’s death—reported that returning visitors to Jefferson City were ‘surprised” by the city improvements.  “The automobile and the determination of the late Mayor Cecil W. Thomas, backed by a citizenry that favored street building were definite factors favoring this progress,” said the article. “Gone are the miles of muddy, dusty streets, which even with oiling, brought despair to women who attempted to rid their homes of the dust.”  It also cited the lighting of High Street and later other parts of town and the development of new subdivisions such as Wagner Place, Vista Place, Forest Hill, the Jordan Addition, the increased building-up of the Houchin Tract, and to the south the Morris subdivision, and of Washington Park as major improvements in the city.

The newspaper forecast the improvements had paved the way, literally and figuratively, for “still greaer growth in the next ten years.”

But it didn’t happen.  Mayor Thomas was dead.  Two months later, the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression set in.  World War II and post-war developments wiped out Thomas’s thoughts of continued growth toward greatness for his city.

Thomas’s widow, Celeste, was the granddaughter of Jefferson City’s first mayor, Thomas Lawson Price.  Their marriage in 1902 in the Price Mansion was the last social function in the historic house that stood where the Missouri Supreme Court building is today. It drew 500 friends and relatives.

When they returned from their honeymoon, they moved in with Celeste’s widowed mother at 428 East Main Street (now Capitol Avenue). Celeste outlived Cecil by 25 years. Their home, advertised for sale in the JEFFERSON CITY NEWS TRIBUNE after her death, is now the site of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce  and Industry state headquarters

Only John G. Christy, for whom the present city hall is named, served longer than Cecil W. Thomas, who died six months short of twelve years in the office.  Christy served three full four-year terms.

A city hall is named for Christy.  But there is nothing—yet—-that honors Cecil Thomas, who suggested a century ago that Jefferson City have the convention center it is now more seriously than ever finally considering building.

Cecil Thomas was a man who saw Jefferson City as a good city and who had a vision to make it a greater city.

The convention center was then and remains now a step toward that greater city and at last, Jefferson City leaders are re-kindling that dream from a century ago.

We offer a gentle hint about the convention center, however, whenever, and wherever it becomes real, at last, for our city.  Should A. A. Speer’s 1928comment about a monument to this forgotten mayor and his vision for our city be considered when naming the center?

Jefferson City doesn’t even have a street named for him.

What else can be done? We are going to explore those possibilities in subsequent entries.

What is YOUR vision for the City of Jefferson?   Let us know.

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(“One Man’s Vision” is the title of a speech I gave to the Noon Rotary Club a few days ago that began with the story of Cecil Thomas’s wish for a convention center and covers several other possibilities in addition to the proposed center.  If you have a group that would like to hear them, stick around for later articles here, or invite the author in for a talk.  Meals served at such meetings are not required but are always appreciated).