"I suppose," said he, "that instead of drawing stockers and feeders with horses, they use gasoline motors now-a-days?" "Oh, no," said the Kansas City man, "they walk." "Walk?" exclaimed my companion. "They _have_ made an advance in agricultural implements since my day if they have succeeded in making them _walk_!" "I'm not speaking of agricultural implements," said our informant. "I'm speaking of stockers and feeders." "What are stockers and feeders?" I asked. "Cattle," he said. "There are three kinds of cattle marketed here; first, fat cattle, for slaughter; second, stockers, which are young cows used for stocking farms and ranches; third, feeders, or grassfed steers, which are sold to be fattened on grain, for killing. In stockers and feeders we lead the world; in fat cattle we are second only to Chicago." CHAPTER XXIV COLONEL NELSON'S "STAR" "What do you expect to see in Kansas City?" I was asked by the president of a trust company. "I want to see the new Union Station," I said, "and I hope also to meet Colonel Nelson." He smiled. "One's as big as the other," was his comment. That is a mild statement of the case. The power of Colonel Nelson is something unique, and his newspaper, the Kansas City "Star," is, I believe, alone in the position it holds among American dailies. Like all powerful newspapers, it is the expression of a single individuality. The "Star" expresses Colonel William Rockhill Nelson as definitely as the New York "Sun" used to express Charles A. Dana, as the New York "Tribune" expressed Horace Greeley, as the "Herald" expressed Bennett, as the Chicago "Tribune" expressed Medill, as the "Courier-Journal" expresses Watterson, as the Pulitzer papers continue to express the late Joseph Pulitzer, and as the Hearst papers express William Randolph Hearst. Besides circulating widely throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and western Missouri, the "Star" so dominates Kansas City that last year it sold, in the city, many thousand papers a day in excess of the number of houses there. Other papers have been started to combat it, but without appreciable effect. The "Star" continues upon its majestic course, towing the wagon of Kansas City. To me the greatest thing about the "Star" is its entire freedom from yellowness. Its appearance is as conservative as that of the New York "Evening Post." It prints no scareheads and no half-tone pictures, such pictures as it uses being redrawn in line, so that they print sharply. Another characteristic of the paper is its highly localized flavor. It handles relatively little European news, and even the doings of New York and Chicago seem to impress it but slightly. It is the organ of the "feed lot," the "official gazette" of the capital of the Southwest. While contemplating the "Star" I was reminded of a conversation held many weeks before in Buffalo with a very thoughtful gentleman.