Railroad building in the country immediately tributary to Kansas City became active at the close of the Civil War, and has continued until the present time (1901), when two new main lines are under construction towards the city. The railway companies with lines entering Kansas City now are the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, the Wabash, the Chicago & Alton, the Missouri Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the St. Louis & San Francisco, the St. Joseph & Grand Island, the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis, the Kansas City Southern, the Chicago & Great Western, the Kansas City & Northern, the Union Pacific, the Suburban Belt, and the Kansas City Belt. Nowhere in the United States can be seen a better demonstration of the wonderful development of the transportation system of the country. Besides its trunk-line railroads the city has two belt railway systems and numerous private tracks, so that its equipment for industrial work is unexcelled. Its street-railway system of nearly two hundred miles is one of the finest in America. The tracks and the equipment are thoroughly modern in every respect. The first newspaper published in Kansas City was a weekly called the _Kansas Ledger_. It was established in 1851, but was sold in about fifteen months, and then sold again and removed to Independence. The city after the death of the _Ledger_ was for eighteen months without a newspaper office. In September, 1854, the _Kansas City Enterprise_ made its appearance, edited by W.A. Strong, D.K. Abeel having charge of the publishing department. In August, 1855, the _Enterprise_ was bought out by R.T. Van Horn, who assumed editorial control in October. In January, 1857, Mr. Abeel purchased a half-interest in the paper and in the following October the _Enterprise_ became the _Western Journal of Commerce_, a larger and greatly improved sheet. The _Kansas City Journal_ grew out of this and at once began to assume the high position among the great dailies of the country which it has since maintained. Theodore Case, in his history of Kansas City, a volume of some seven hundred pages, says of the _Journal_ in 1888 what may well be repeated to-day: "There is one feature that has always characterized this paper, a never-failing devotion to home and local interests, and an unyielding faith in the destiny of the city, that has made it, more than any other interest, the builder and architect of the present City of Kansas. It has furnished more information, historical, statistical and commercial in regard to Western Missouri, the great western plains and the mountains, their trade, resources and capabilities, than any other paper in the Mississippi Valley, and when the history of the New West comes to be written, it is to its columns that the historian will turn for its earliest facts and figures."