At the Kansas City levee, more than 10,000 people gathered to cheer the Lora on its arrival. The Missouri river had been proved to be navigable.

It fell to the lot of Lawrence M. Jones to not only take the initiative and prove the Missouri river to be navigable, but also to head the movement that resulted in the organization of the Kansas City Transportation & Steamship company, with a capital of $200,000, for the purpose of maintaining regular steamboat service on the Missouri river between Kansas City and St. Louis. A state charter was granted to this company April 29, 1907. The following board of directors was chosen to serve for the first year: Lawrence M. Jones, president; William Volker, treasurer; J. C. Lester, secretary; O. V. Dodge, A. G. Ellet, C. E. Faeth, A. H. Munger, J. F. Richards, Leon Smith, J. J. Swofford, J. P. Townley, J. H. Wiles, Jerome Twichell.

Not waiting to build boats suited to the Missouri river in its unimproved condition the steamship company bought two steamboats, the Chester and the Tennessee, and operated them during the season of 1907 with success. The boats carried freight at approximately two-thirds of the railroad rates, affording a substantial saving to shippers.

An expert boat builder was employed to submit plans of boats best adapted to the navigation of the Missouri river and these boats were to be ready for service with the opening of navigation in the spring of 1908. When these plans were well under way, the financial depression of 1907 became evident and the directors thought best to cease operations along these lines until financial conditions improved. Therefore the contracts for the new boats were not let and the company operated the Chester and the Tennessee during the season of 1908. The season was successful, much more freight being offered than could be handled

The efforts to navigate the Missouri river have impressed the whole country, including the officials at Washington, and have been of great value in bringing the importance of the Missouri river as a carrier to the attention of the general public. The short session of the Fifty-ninth Congress appropriated ample funds for operating snag boats on the Missouri river this being the first appropriation in aid of navigation of the Missouri river made for several years. Thus the Missouri river was restored to the "map" of navigable streams entitled to Federal aid. In addition, provision was made for a report by engineers upon which appropriations may be made for improvements of the Missouri river in the future.

The Missouri river has the greatest navigable length of any other river in the United States. The Missouri constitutes 5 per cent of the entire navigable waterway of the United States, including the Great Lakes. It has 14 per cent of the navigable waterway of the region drained by the Mississippi river. Its navigable length is greater than the distance by rail from St. Louis

to San Francisco. It has a navigable bed above Sioux City, Iowa, of 1,475 miles or 500 miles more than the entire length of the Ohio. It is the one interior river, except the lower Mississippi, which it feeds, that has a water supply sufficient to make every city along its course for 800 miles a seaport. From the mouth of the three forks of the Missouri river, northwest of Yellowstone park, to its mouth it is a distance of 2,547 miles and from the three forks to the Gulf of Mexico it is the distance of 3,823 miles. The Missouri river is longer than the entire Mississippi river and more than twice as long as that part of the Mississippi river above their confluence. The Missouri river drains a watershed of 580,000 square miles, or one-sixth of the land surface of the United States, and its total annual discharge is estimated to be 20 cubic miles, or a rate of 94,000 cubic feet per second, which is more than twice the water discharged by the upper Mississippi river. The Missouri river is the most rapid and the most turbulent stream of the two and its muddy water gives color to the lower Mississippi river to the Gulf of Mexico. The Missouri should be regarded as the main stream and the upper Mississippi as the tributary. The name of the former should have been given precedence, and the great river, the longest river in the world, should have been called the Missouri-from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Missouri river is nature's gift to the commerce of one-fourth of the United States. Improved according to the recommendations of governmental engineers, it would have a freight-carrying capacity equal to that of 600 railways, fifty times the capacity of all the roads running between the Mississippi river and the lower Missouri and more than twenty-five times the capacity of all the railroads running from the Mississippi to the Missouri at all points. The cost of improving the Missouri river, from its mouth to Kansas City would be less than that of paralleling the Wabash railroad, the short line between Kansas City and St. Louis. The economy in the operation of transportation lines on the improved Missouri river would be such that boats could make large profits in carrying freight at greatly reduced rates.

Government engineers estimated that the Missouri river could be given. a permanent twelve foot channel from its mouth to Sioux City, Iowa, at a cost of 40 million dollars. The entire amount expended by the United States government to 1907 was $11,141,000. The Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Water project calls for a 14-foot channel and this minimum depth could easily be obtained in the Missouri river below Kansas City with small additional cost. The engineer's estimate of the cost of the work is 20 million dollars below and the same amount above Kansas City. Owing to the bend in the Missouri river at Kansas City, it is practically the point farthest west for inland navigation. Accordingly, when the improvement of the Missouri river is completed to Kansas City the freight rates of the entire West will be affected.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE CITY CHARTERS.

Kansas City's first municipal corporation was by order of the county court at Independence entered February 4, 1850, and again entered June 3, 1850. The town was incorporated under the name of "The Town of Kansas." Its first legislative charter was granted to the "City of Kansas" by special act of the state legislature on February 22, 1853. Subsequent amendments to this legislative act were made, the most important being by act of March 24, 1875, which was called the "amended charter of the City of Kansas." With some modification and supplemented by other acts, this continued to be the charter of the city until the people adopted the charter of 1889 and changed the name of the city to Kansas City. This latter charter continued, with amendments, as the organic municipal law until superseded by the charter adopted August 4, 1908.

Aside from the general state regulations of the city's police and election machinery, and aside from the supremacy of the fundamental laws of the state, Kansas City is self governing and its self-created charter is the law for the citizens. Although Kansas City did not take advantage of its charter making power until 1889, that power was conferred by the state constitution of 1875 and made operative by a legislative enabling act. The Constitutional provisions which are thus the foundation of the city's charter rights, are as follows:

"CONSTITUTION.

"Provisions Relating to Organization of City.

"ARTICLE IX.

"Of the Constitution of the State of Missouri.

"Section 16. Cities of Over 100,000 Inhabitants May Frame Their Own Charters-Procedure-Amendments.

"Any city having a population of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants may frame a charter for its own government, consistent with and subject to the Constitution and laws of this State, by causing a board of thirteen freeholders who shall have been for at least five years qualified voters thereof, to be elected by the qualified voters of such city at any general or special election; which board shall, within ninety days after such election, return to the chief magistrate of such city a draft of such charter, signed by the members of such board or a majority of them. Within thirty days thereafter, such proposed charter shall be submitted to the qualified voters of such city, at a general or special election, and if four-sevenths of such qualified voters voting thereat shall ratify the same, it shall, at the end of