slaughtering and meat-packing houses. Especially in the South-west markets Kansas City has an advantage over Chicago, St Louis, and other large packing centres (except St Joseph), not only in freights, but in its situation among the "corn and beef" states; it shares also the extraordinary railway facilities of Kansas City, Missouri. There are various important manufactures, such as soap and candles, subsidiary to the packing industry; and the city has large flour mills, railway and machine shops, and foundries. A large cotton-mill, producing coarse fabrics, was opened in 1907. Natural gas derived from the Kansas fields became available for lighting and heating, and crude oil for fuel, in 1906. Kansas City was founded in 1886 by the consolidation of "old" Kansas City, Armourdale and Wyandotte (in which Armstrong and Riverview were then included). Of these municipalities Wyandotte, the oldest, was originally settled by the Wyandotte Indians in 1843; it was platted and settled by whites in 1857; and was incorporated as a town in 1858, and as a city in 1859. At Wyandotte were made the first moves for the Territorial organization of Kansas and Nebraska. During the Kansas struggle Wyandotte was a pro-slavery town, while Quindaro (1856), a few miles up the Missouri, was a free-state settlement and Wyandotte's commercial rival until after the Civil War. The convention that framed the constitution, the Wyandotte Constitution, under which Kansas was admitted to the Union, met here in July 1859. "Old" Kansas City was surveyed in 1869 and was incorporated as a city in 1872. Armourdale was laid out in 1880 and incorporated in 1882. The packing interest was first established in 1867; the first large packing plant was that of Armour & Co., which was removed to what is now Kansas City in 1871. Kansas City adopted government by commission in 1909.