At the close of the war in 1865, Kansas City had three banks, one insurance company, one daily and two weekly English newspapers, one German weekly and one bi-monthly medical journal. The churches were two Methodist, one Baptist, two Presbyterian, one Roman Catholic and one Christian. There were two lodges of Masons, two of Odd Fellows, one of Good Templars, a Turn Verein, a Shamrock Benevolent Society, a girl's school, a rectory school, and a German school. The census of 1860 showed a population of 4418. Now the city stands first among the cities of the land in the agricultural implement trade, first in the Southern lumber trade, second in the live-stock trade, first in the horse and mule trade, second as a railroad centre, second in the meat-packing business, tenth in bank clearings, nineteenth in the value of its manufactures. It has 50 public-school buildings, 626 teachers and 34,142 pupils. It has the second largest park system in the country, having over 2000 acres. It handled in 1900 $130,824,270 worth of live-stock; 32,625,850 bushels of wheat; 7,290,000 bushels of corn; 3,035,600 bushels of oats; 156,000 bushels of rye, and 12,000 bushels of barley. It did a wholesale business of $265,000,000, its packing houses turned out $100,000,000 worth of products, slaughtering 1,000,000 cattle, 2,900,000 hogs and 650,673 sheep. Its bank clearings were $698,755,530. Its banking and trust company capital was $8,000,000; it had two hundred miles of paved streets, twenty-seven grain elevators with a storage capacity of 6,484,000 bushels. [Illustration THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, KANSAS CITY.] On the non-material side the city has made a progress even more remarkable. It is not devoted entirely to money-getting. The humanities have been remembered. There are some thirty-four hospitals, asylums, and benevolent homes. It has eight hospitals proper for the reception of the sick, disabled, and diseased, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company maintaining one. There are five children's homes, and one industrial home. There are three homes for the aged, one of which is for colored people entirely. There is one convent and an institution each for the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy, besides others of lesser importance. In some cases the buildings may not be pretentious, but they are all ample in size, and in many instances would not discredit the cities of the largest population. The exceptional intelligence of the people is proved by other unmistakable signs. Strong, clean newspapers, beautiful opera houses, first-class hotels, hundreds of churches, modern schools, great libraries, charming clubs, beautiful parks and streets, fine hospitals, fine public buildings, admirable public utilities, and above all an enormous proportion of beautiful homes,--these are some of the signs that tell of the fruition of the highest hopes of the hardy pioneers who first gave battle to savagery and the wilderness at this point.