Industry was the complement of agriculture during the first fifty years of settlement in Kansas. This relationship was first evident in 1827 when Daniel Morgan Boone, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Gabe Phillebert, settled at Stonehouse Creek and tried to introduce the white man's farming methods to the Indians. Phillebert, a blacksmith, set up his forge and supplied the crude implements needed by Boone and his pupils. When not mending or making ring hoes and plowshares, Phillebert hammered out pots and kettles with which the Indians replaced their primitive utensils.
Flour milling had its Kansas beginning in 1852 when Matthias Split-log, a Wyandot Indian, established a horsepower mill near the site of Kansas City. The first waterpower mill was built five years later beside Mill Creek in what is now Wabaunsee County. The milling industry developed rapidly thereafter, and by 1860, according to census figures, there were 62 waterpower mills and a larger number of horsepower mills in the Territory of Kansas.
In point of income flour milling is today the second largest Kansas industry. In the decade 1927-37 Kansas led all other States five times in the annual production of flour. The yearly output during that period varied between 12 and 17 million barrels. According to the 1937 report of the Bureau of the Census, U. S. Department of Commerce, the wheat storage capacity of Kansas mills (43,000,000 bushels) exceeds that of any other State. The main milling centers are at Salina, Topeka, Wichita, Atchison, Hutchinson, and Kansas City.
In the early years of Statehood the minerals of Kansas were not exploited, although the settlers knew of rich deposits of oil and coal. As early as 1806 explorers had noted that Kansas Indians wore ornaments of lead. Seventy years later lead and zinc were discovered near the site of Galena, and 10,000 miners immigrated to the region. Throughout the 1880's the Galena field was known as a "poor man's diggings" because of the many one-acre claims which were worked with windlasses and hand jigs. Large-scale operations were begun in 1899. The ore production of Kansas increased steadily in succeeding years, mounting to 28,463 tons of lead and 126,307 tons of zinc in 1926. A slump set in during the next decade; the ore output for 1936 totaled 11,409 tons of lead and 79,017 tons of zinc.
A similar decline, caused largely by the increasing use of gas and oil for fuel, has been noted in the coal industry. Following the opening of the first mine in 1866, the annual output increased with the population, reaching a peak of 7,561,947 tons in 1917. During 1936 the 77 mines in Kansas produced only 3,147,225 tons; in the following year 61 mines produced about 2,000,000 tons. But the dwindling part played by coal, lead, and zinc in the State's economy has been more than counterbalanced by the development of oil resources. A. D. Searl, a surveyor, found oil oozing from the earth near the site of Paola in 1855. On returning to his home in Conneautville, Pennsylvania, Searl informed Dr. G. W. Brown of his discovery. Dr. Brown came to Kansas in 1859, verified Searl's find, and organized a company which leased thirty thousand acres in Miami County. In 1860 the company drilled three wells. The first two were "dry holes," the last struck oil and salt water at 270 feet.
Throughout the first quarter century of its development, Kansas oil had a small intrastate sale as a lubricant. The wells were shallow and in some instances the oil was obtained by merely skimming it from the surface of streams. By 1889 the annual production of petroleum averaged five hundred barrels. In that year the Kansas legislature recognized the presence of the new industry by enacting a law that required the inspection of petroleum sold as an illuminating agent.
Kansas oil was vigorously exploited during the first decade of the present century. Wells that pumped one thousand barrels a day were "shot" in Montgomery County in 1903. The annual production of the State soon reached 3,000,000 barrels, at which point it hovered for more than a decade. Stimulated by the opening of the Butler County field, the Kansas output for 1916 climbed to 8,000,000 barrels and rose to 36,500,000 barrels the following year.
During 1937 the 18,000 wells in Kansas produced 69,000,000 barrels of oil. The oil fields extend south from Kansas City crescent-wise to the Oklahoma line, and thence northward through the central part of the State. The wells in the eastern part are shallow "strippers" which yield between 10 and 12 barrels daily. Those in central Kansas pump as much as 2,250 barrels per day. Petroleum refining has become the third most important Kansas industry.
Nelson Acres, an oil prospector, struck a pocket of gas near lola in 1873. His discovery was first utilized in 1889 by the city of Paola, and seven other communities installed gas systems in the following year. By 1925 approximately 27,000,000 cubic feet of gas were consumed annually. This quantity was more than doubled in the next decade, amounting to 57,125,000 cubic feet during 1935.
About two hundred gas wells were drilled in Kansas between 193235. Gasoline extraction from natural gas amounted to 36,900,000 gallons during 1936. The largest pocket of natural gas is the Hugoton field at the southwestern corner of Kansas, and smaller pockets exist throughout the oil producing area. One of the three helium plants in the country is at Dexter. When first discovered in 1907, Dexter residents, unaware of the incombustible nature of helium, piped it to their homes and, by reason of the natural gas it contained, managed to ignite it for cooking and illumination.
The total mineral production of Kansas during 1937 was valued at $156,000,000. It included gas, oil, coal, lead, zinc, sand, gravel, stone, chat, pumice, cement, and salt. The latter mineral was discovered near Hutchinson in 1887 by Ben Blanchard, an oil prospector. Exploitation began in 1888 at the rate of 500 barrels per day. At present (1938) Kansas is third among the States in the production of salt. The largest mines are at Hutchinson; others are at Lyons, Anthony, Kanopolis, and Little River.
Several decades before the first oil well was drilled in Kansas, petroleum scooped from the tops of pools was customarily used to grease the wheels of freighters traveling the Santa Fe Trail. Pack trains began to follow this route in the 1820*5, and by 1860 about 3,500 men were employed in its commerce.
Following the completion of the Santa Fe Railway in the 1 870's, the Santa Fe Trail fell into disuse and its Kansas length was subsequently overgrown with wheat. But the trail left its mark on the economic pattern of the State. According to business analysts, the commerce of Kansas still flows in a southwest direction, and the trade area of a Kansas city generally extends west and south, seldom north and east.
Of later origin than the Santa Fe Trail, but of greater economic importance, was the Chisholm Trail, named for the half breed Cherokee who in 1865 marked off its route with the wheels of his trade wagon (see WICHITA). The Chisholm Trail was the main outlet for Texas cattle in the 1870'$. During the two decades in which the trail was used, about 5,000,000 longhorns were herded over it to shipping points in Kansas. Meat packing plants were consequently established at Salina, Kansas City, and other communities. The first meat ever transported in refrigerator cars was shipped from Salina in 1872. In point of income meat packing is now the largest Kansas industry. The average output of the packing plants at Wichita and Kansas City is valued annually at more than $125,000,000.
In 1937 Kansas had 36 insurance companies, 104 national farm loan agencies, 140 building and loan associations, and 515 state and private banks. Public utility corporations included 4 in water, 23 in electricity, and 36 in gas. There were 338 Kansas telephone companies.
According to the 1935 U. S. Census of Manufactures, Kansas had 1,508 manufacturing plants whose total output that year was valued at $468,690,290. Excluding the three major products already named meat packing, flour milling, and petroleum refining the largest items were, in the order listed, butter, printing and publishing, railroad repair shops, wholesale poultry dressing and packing, stock and fowl feeds, machinery, cement, salt, ice, and structural and ornamental metal work. The same census enumerated 4,621 wholesale establishments, 9,290 service establishments, and 27,433 retail stores.
Contemporary industries include the manufacture of trailers at Augusta, airplanes at Wichita and Kansas City, strawboard at Hutchinson, garden tractors at Galesburg, snow plows at Wamego, and agrol a gasoline that contains alcohol extracted from grains at Atchison. Pipe organs are manufactured at Lawrence, beet sugar at Garden City, paving material at Moline, locomotive parts at Atchison, linseed oil and linseed stock feed at Fredonia, bean-picking machines at Cawker City, carbon black at Hickok, stoves at Leavenworth and Wichita, furniture at Garnett and Leavenworth, soap at Kansas City, steel fixtures at Ottawa and Topeka, ceramic products at Havana, and oil field machinery at Wichita and Independence. Of its raw foodstuffs, Kansas ships wheat in the greatest quantity, one-third of the average annual crop of 170,000,000 bushels going to outer-state markets.
During 1937 about 228,000 part and fulltime industrial workers were employed in Kansas. Of this number an average of 44,000 were employed in trade, 42,000 in manufacturing, 38,000 in transportation, 19,000 in mining and quarrying, 12,000 in service industries, and 11,000 in communication and utilities. The average annual wage in the foregoing industries amounted to $1,233.05.
Kansas industry was, until the second decade of the present century, operated largely on the open shop plan. In the period after the Civil War most of the trade unions in the State reflected the general conditions of the country as a whole, and were mainly local organizations. The formation of national unions was slow.
When the depression of 1873 swept over the country, prices and profits plunged downward. Employers began a tremendous drive to lower wages, which in turn brought about a stiffer resistance on the part of the workers. Labor fought back with the only weapon it had, the strike. This period, therefore, was one of many bitter strikes, among which those of the railroad workers in 1877 were the most outstanding.
The first strike in Kansas occurred in 1877 when employees of the Santa Fe Railway joined a Nation-wide walkout to obtain higher wages. The railroad shops at Topeka, Emporia, and Lawrence were peacefully picketed, but Governor George T. Anthony immediately dispatched militia companies to those cities. The citizens of Emporia termed the use of troops an insult to their persons and their city. The militia was thoroughly discredited when one of their members accidentally shot and killed the Reverend O. J. Shannon, an Emporia minister. Governor Anthony subsequently withdrew the troops and the strike was settled without further disorder.
The first legislation designed to benefit Kansas industrial workers was enacted during the term of Governor John A. Martin (1885-89). The Governor was a member of a typographical union and in sympathy with the general policy of the Knights of Labor, which occupied an outstanding position in the labor movement of that period. In the first year of his governorship the legislature created a bureau of labor and industrial statistics, the establishment of which had been advocated in 1884 by the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor. The same legislature also passed a bill requiring the wage of industrial workers to be paid monthly in "lawful money of the United States." Near the close of the session, however, this bill was all but abrogated by an amendment sponsored by groups that feared to place any restraint on the industrial development of the State.
Two months after Governor Martin had been inaugurated, railroad shop workers at Parsons and Atchison walked out in response to a strike called in Missouri, Kansas, and Texas to resist wage reductions and increased hours proposed by the Missouri Pacific Railway. The railroad officials immediately telegraphed for troops to guard company property. After a survey of the strikers' picketing methods Governor Martin refused to send the militia, noting, incidentally, that the legal right of a railroad official to request the use of troops had not been established by any Kansas statute.
Governor Martin twice proposed that the strike be arbitrated by a disinterested committee; officials of the railroad company twice declined. On March 13, 1885, however, H. M. Hoxie, vice-president of the Missouri Pacific Railway, asked Governor Martin to confer at St. Louis, Missouri, with the board of railroad commissioners, the Governor of Missouri, and a representative of the railroad company. The Governor promptly assented. The company granted the demands of the workers and the strike ended.
The snags encountered in mediating the railroad strike impelled Governor Martin to propose the creation of legal machinery to expedite the settlement of future industrial disputes. At a special session in January 1886 he asked the legislature to establish a tribunal of voluntary arbitration. A bill was accordingly passed on February 18, empowering the district county courts, upon the petition of employer or employee, to set up a court of voluntary arbitration over which an umpire appointed by the district judge would preside.
Kansas, in common with the Nation, resounded with industrial warfare throughout 1886. Strikes occurred among the coal miners, the railroad men, and the smelting and refinery workers. Most serious of these was the railroad strike, which began on March i in Marshal, Texas, upon the discharge of a foreman of the woodworkers in the Texas and Pacific car shops. It affected Parsons on March 6, Kansas City on March 8, and Atchison on March 10. All traffic on the Missouri Pacific Railway came to a dead halt. Shop machinery was destroyed, several trains were damaged, and one was derailed, resulting in the death of the fireman and a brakeman.
Attempts to have the strike settled in Governor Martin's court of voluntary arbitration failed. The situation took an ugly turn at Parsons, following the issuance of an injunction which enjoined the strikers from interfering with the traffic of the Missouri Pacific Railway. The injunction was generally ignored and Governor Martin was besieged with requests for the militia. Reluctantly, and only after all hope of arbitration had been abandoned, the Governor detailed the First Regiment to Parsons on April i. A "Law and Order League" was also organized in the city. No further efforts to stop railroad traffic were made, and the strike was lost. In his campaign for reelection in 1887, Governor Martin was censured by industry for his delay in sending the militia, and by industrial workers for having sent the militia. The court of voluntary arbitration, basically a just and democratic principle, was discredited because of its failure to solve the strikes of 1886. The Governor, nevertheless, was reelected by a considerable majority. At the legislative session of 1887 laws were passed to further the organization of cooperatives, and to insure the wage-payment of miners in "lawful money."
In 1893 the extensive industrial depression throughout the Nation also affected Kansas labor. As in the past, the employers began a general offensive against wages, and the workers fought back with strikes.
The mining area in southeastern Kansas, known as the "little Balkans," was the source of prolonged labor unrest throughout the period. The miners had very real cause for complaint. They mined the so-called "long ton" for a bare subsistence wage that was, until the enforcement of the legislative act of 1887, often paid in company scrip. On July 21, 1893, following the rejection of their demands by the mine operators, the recently formed unit of the United Mine Workers called a strike. The sheriff of Cherokee County telegraphed for the militia. Governor Lewelling, first of Kansas' two Populist governors, assembled ten militia companies on the advice of the attorney general, and held them ready to patrol the strike area. The miners and operators, however, adjusted their difficulties by July 25, and the troops were disbanded.
The larger railroad companies stubbornly resisted the unionization of Kansas railroad men during the 1890*5. Since the open shop preference of the railroad officials was supported by public opinion and the general press, the railroad companies were the more powerful in their disputes with employees. After the 1894 Pullman strike, led by the American Railway Union, one railroad company announced that jobs would not be restored to those who had struck. A number of men thus blacklisted appealed to the United States District Court, the judge of which appointed an investigating committee. The committee subsequently reported that "it is difficult to understand what greater offence an employee could commit than to refuse to work and still insist that no one could take his place." The court thereupon ruled against the blacklisted men, but the effect of the decision was nullified in 1897 when the Populist-Democratic legislature passed a law prohibiting discrimination and the publication of black-lists.
The trade union movement was at a low ebb at the beginning of the twentieth century. The American Federation of Labor became active in Kansas in 1907 but, since it operated largely on a craft basis, the masses of unskilled workers were left unorganized. Kansas labor, through the Western Federation of Miners, was also represented in the Industrial Workers of the World, which was organized in 1905 as a protest against the slow progress of the conservative trade unions.
The post-War unrest of industrial workers affected all of Kansas in the autumn of 1919 when the United Mine Workers in the "little Balkans" joined the Nation-wide strike for increased wages and a six-hour day. As the strike lengthened, the weather became very cold and a shortage of fuel seemed imminent. Governor Henry J. Allen threw the mines into a temporary State receivership. About a thousand workers, many of them college students, were hired to mine the Crawford County "strippers" under the protection of National guardsmen.
Governor Allen called a special legislative session at which a criminal syndicalism and sabotage act was passed, and the Court of Industrial Relations was established. The court consisted of three judges, appointed by the Governor, who were empowered to investigate, try, and decide disputes involving "essential industries." The court regulations were presumably intended to safeguard public welfare through the compulsory removal of all obstructions to production. Labor was to be permanently appeased by its right to appeal against low wages, long hours, and discriminatory practices of employers. Industry was to be benefited by Section 15, which forbade picketing and boycotting, and by Section 17, which deprived labor of the right to strike. Violators of Section 17 were to be penalized by a jail sentence of from one to two years and/or fines that ranged from one to five thousand dollars.
Organized labor saw in the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations a. crystallization of undemocratic forces. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, sounded the tocsin with "Kansas cannot legislate men into serfdom. Kansas cannot put upon her statute books a law that will compel men to submit to involuntary servitude." Governor Allen defended the court on all fronts. More than 40,000 persons were turned away, when he and Samuel Gompers debated the issue in Carnegie Hall, New York City, on May 28, 1920.
Since the Court of Industrial Relations was the first and only attempt to enforce compulsory arbitration of labor disputes, its operations were closely followed by the Nation's economists, union leaders, and industrialists. What was publicized as the first case of its kind in America occurred in November 1920 when seven Topeka mill operators were cited to appear before the court and "show cause why men are being laid off. . . and production curtailed without permission of the court." In the previous year the Topeka mill workers had struck for higher pay and lost, their jobs being assumed by non-union men. The case against the mill operators aroused great interest, since many believed that a precedent for industrial stabilization might be established.
The mill operators were not placed under oath, and the "trial" was in the nature of a formal debate. The testimony amounted to the fact that seasonal adjustments of production and employment were required to make flour milling a profitable pursuit. It was further asserted that flour milling was strongly influenced by out-of -State factors. To this the court agreed, dismissing the case as beyond its jurisdiction.
About 6,500 Kansas members of the Federated Shop Crafts walked out in July 1922 in protest against wage cuts proposed by the U. S. Railroad Labor Board. Militia companies were detailed to the strike centers. Strike-breakers were employed in several instances, and the strike was ultimately lost. A large part of the Kansas public, meanwhile, sided with the strikers. Many merchants placed cards in their windows which read: "We are for a living wage and fair working conditions. We are for the striking workmen 100 percent." Attorney General Richard J. Hopkins, in accordance with Section 15 of the regulations of the Court of Industrial Relations, declared that such cards were a form of picketing and therefore punishable by law.
William Allen White, Emporia editor and longtime friend of Governor Allen, placed a sign in the window of his printing shop that read: "We are for the striking workmen 49 percent." White was thereupon signaled out for "picketing" and held for trial, but the case was dismissed on December 8, 1922. "If I was within the law in contending for the right of free utterance for the public wholly outside the controversy," White said, "I should not have been subjected to a shanghied arrest. ... I was ku kluxed by a court that did not have the guts to pull out their shirt tails and give a ku klux parade."
Employees of the Wolf Packing Company, threatened by a wage cut, appeared before the Court of Industrial Relations, presented their case, and received an order granting an increase in pay. The officials of the packing company appealed to the State supreme court which upheld the decision. They then appealed to the United States Supreme Court which, in a decision written by Chief Justice Taft in 1923, held that the statute creating the Court of Industrial Relations was unconstitutional because it empowered the court to fix a minimum wage, pending the solution of a labor dispute. Two years later it was abolished by the legislature.
Kansas experienced 34 short lived local strikes throughout the decade ending in 1935. In that year, however, the members of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union ceased work in the lead and zinc fields at the southeast corner of the State. The strikers were replaced by non-union workers who were subsequently organized in a company union known as the Tri-State Metal Mine and Smelter Workers' Union, or, more commonly, the Blue Card Union.
The feud between the striking workers and the Blue Card unionists smoldered for about two years, and then burst into flame when the Committee for Industrial Organization undertook to aid the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union. On April 10, 1937, several men distributing leaflets for the CIO at a smelter in Joplin, Missouri, were seized by Blue Card unionists and severely beaten. On the following day about 5,000 members of the Blue Card Union met at Picher, Oklahoma, armed themselves with clubs and pick handles, dispersed a meeting of CIO organizers and wrecked the local hall of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union.
About 500 Blue Card unionists then traveled by automobile to Treece, Kansas, where they demolished another hall of the CIO union. The caravan of cars continued to Galena, Kansas, where forewarned members of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union had barricaded their meeting hall. The mob formed before the hall, brandishing clubs. Firing broke out, and nine men were shot, one fatally. In the ensuing melee the hall was wrecked and the records of the union stolen. Twenty-five members of the Blue Card Union and ten members of the CIO were arrested and released on bond. A week after the riot occurred, six thousand members of the Blue Card Union voted to join the American Federation of Labor, with which organization they were subsequently affiliated.
The Kansas units of the CIO and A. F. of L. have not generally engaged in inter-union competition. As though a mutual agreement existed between both organizations, they have maintained and respected separate spheres of activity. The A. F. of L. has grown to 500 locals with a membership of about 75,000 in the State. The CIO counts approximately 25,000 members among Kansas workers and has concentrated its membership drive among oil, stove, furniture, packing plant, filling station, soap and glycerine, clay and pottery, paper and box workers. The United Mine Workers of America, which is now affiliated with the CIO has approximately 100 locals in the State. The one strike called in Kansas by the CIO a five-day sit-down at the Kansas City plant of Armour & Company was peacefully settled without arbitration. The Kansas Workers' Alliance, an organization of the unemployed, has an estimated membership of 4,500.
During the past few years labor has made considerable gains by the passing of several legislative measures. An industrial hygiene section in the division of sanitation of the State board of health was established in February 1936. Since its organization this section has been conducting surveys of industries in order to determine what potential exposure hazards, if any, exist in the industries, and to study the means of eliminating such occupational hazards as do exist. Silicosis, an occupational hazard existing in the Tri-State area (parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) is not compensable under Kansas laws, and it is obvious that the organization of an industrial hygiene section means a great deal to the workers of the State.
The 1937 legislature passed laws covering all sections of the Federal social security program; ratified the Federal child-labor amendment, and adopted an unemployment compensation act. The 1938 session of the legislature revived the State's former minimum wage law.
Considerable progress is also to be noted in the relationship between the industrial and agricultural workers. Until comparatively recent years, the average Kansan was little interested in labor relationships unless they directly affected him. Except for the Populist movement of the i88o's, there had been no concerted action on the part of the farmer and industrial worker and Populism in Kansas was largely an agrarian movement.
In the last few years, however, a definite movement for joint action by farmers and industrial workers has been developing. Several meetings of the Farmers Union, the United Cannery, Agricultural Packing, and Allied Workers, and Labor's Non-Partisan League were held recently and programs for concerted action were drawn up. Representatives from Kansas participated. Several other such conferences with representatives of organized labor resulted in a greater understanding of each other's problems and increasing cooperation between the Farmers Union and organized labor. A notable example of such farmer-labor cooperation was the calling off of an impending Colorado beet workers' strike, largely through the efforts of agricultural labor union representatives and National Farmers Union officials. It is also of interest to note that the farm program resolution of the CIO convention, recently held in Pittsburg, cited the agreement recently drawn up and ratified in Colorado, under which the Farmers Union will organize beet growers, and the CIO cannery and agricultural workers will organize the beet workers, both to guarantee mutual recognition and collective bargaining.