Part IV
Chapter Eight
While much of Missouri life related to agriculture, there was one factor in particular that impacted the lives of nearly every Missourian during the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries: the railroad.
With the expansion of the railroads throughout Missouri, massive population growth occurred, both in small agricultural communities such as Marceline and large metropolitan areas like St. Louis, and from small towns on the Mississippi such as Hannibal to cities along the Missouri River like Kansas City. Nearly every town established throughout the state during the last few decades of the 1800s was situated along one of the major rail lines, providing service to locomotives and passengers, identical to those provided along the Santa Fe in Marceline.
The presence of the railroad in these towns often led to the arrival of major industries to the area. For example, with Kansas City serving as a major hub for almost a dozen different railroad lines in the 1870s, it soon became a railhead for cattle drives, where herders known as cowboys pushed many thousand head of cattle from the south to the railroad before the animals were slaughtered and shipped to major cities in the east. Armour and Company, a meat packing business with a branch location in Kansas City, thrived as a result of the booming cattle industry in the area, with an increase in production of canned beef from approximately 779,000 units in 1880 to more than 4 million units a mere five years later. The success of companies like Armour led to improvements in Kansas City’s own stockyards, located along the Missouri River in an area known as the West Bottoms. From the establishment of the yards in 1871 until 1901, the number of animals slaughtered in Kansas City tripled, with numerous new companies springing up to challenge the success of Armour and Company.
During the 1870s, a devastating plague of grasshoppers destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of crops throughout the Midwest United States. With their fortunes literally devoured, farmers and their families were particularly attracted to the opportunities that industry and transportation infrastructure offered in Kansas City, choosing to descend on the riverside metropolis rather than take their chances in the fields. As a result of this influx of migration, during the last decade of the nineteenth century, the population of Kansas City increased from approximately 132,000 to 164,000, becoming the second largest city in the United States west of the Mississippi River, second only to San Francisco, California.
With this growth came more industry. By 1900, almost forty rail lines stretched across and through the city, serving as the primary mode of transportation for livestock, grains, and other agricultural products. The city developed elevators and grist mills to store and process grains, sawmills to cut lumber, and infrastructure to support the hundreds of trains that passed through town every week.
Kansas City was soon a bustling hub of industry, business, and transportation, with trains chugging down iron rails, horse-drawn wagons sharing the streets with early automobiles, and the occasional riverboat sloshing through the murky waters of the Missouri River. Industry spewed smoke and steam into the air, while the influx of people moving to the city, native-born American and immigrant alike, caused pollution on the ground.
As early as the 1880s, William Rockhill Nelson, the new owner and editor of The Kansas City Star, began pressing for city beautification and civic improvements. This campaign gained more momentum as the City Beautiful Movement swept the United States, calling for better city planning, architecture, parks, and pollution controls to improve the lives of middle-class urban dwellers. Joining forces with landscape architect George E. Kessler, Nelson began planning for open spaces and vast parks for his growing city, with a new boulevard system spearheaded by Kessler and costing approximately $40 million to be completed in 1910. By 1920, Kansas City boasted almost 2,000 acres of parks, 700 acres of parkways, and 90 miles of boulevards.
These grand improvements further encouraged migration to Kansas City, but rather than low-skilled industrial labourers, immigrants, or failed farmers looking for new opportunities, the bustling business hub attracted middle-class Americans who were impressed by the opportunity for investment, the beautiful green spaces, and the growing suburbs that began to spread outward from the city’s downtown. More leisure time activities were drawn to the area to entertain these middle-class masses, including vaudeville halls, theatres showing moving pictures, and amusement parks.
As a result, when the train carrying the Disney family pulled up to the platform of Union Depot in Kansas City’s West Bottoms neighbourhood in June 1911, Walter’s new home was about as different from what he was used to as possible. Stepping off the train, the three children even noticed that the air was different: while the fresh breeze often smelled of sweet grass in Marceline, the stagnant air of Kansas City’s West Bottoms was sour with the stench of slaughtered livestock not too far away.
Uncle Robert had sent a buggy to carry the family and its possessions southeast to the opposite side of the city, where they had rented a small house located at 2706 East 31st Street. Flora was disgusted by the new residence and was happy that they were only renting temporarily. While she had become used to having an outhouse at their Marceline farmhouse, the act of using one in the backyard in Kansas City offered much less privacy due to the urban nature of their new home. Flora was also frustrated that the house was located along a busy street, and as a result, the tram line often passed the home. She made sure that her husband knew of her frustrations over the lack of privacy, complaining that those riding the trams could see into her front parlour. Elias’s response to his wife’s complaints was to install a set of curtains.
Shortly after getting settled in their home, Elias and Roy journeyed downtown on 1 July to the red brick building that housed The Kansas City Star, answering an advertisement for the opportunity to purchase a paper route. Delivery Route No. 145 served approximately 700 subscribers located within the boundaries of 27th Street in the north, 31st Street in the south, Prospect Avenue in the west and Indiana Avenue in the east, a total of twenty-four residential blocks. While many of the subscribers received both The Morning Times and The Kansas City Evening Star, the route included an additional 176 subscribers who received the Sunday edition.
At first, the Star wasn’t keen on giving 51-year-old Elias ownership of the paper route: they believed he was too old, and as a result, would be unable to fulfil the duties of the job. They were, however, willing to sell the paper route to 17-year-old Roy. Elias forked out over $2,100 to purchase the rights to the route, and in return received a contract and map of the route.
Having left Marceline without many possessions and after losing his investment on the failing farm, Elias didn’t have sufficient capital to hire delivery boys or newsies to sell the papers. Instead, he expected his two youngest sons to contribute to the family business. Every day, Roy and 9-year-old Walter would pull themselves out of bed at 3.30 am and meet the horse-drawn wagon that delivered the papers to their home. The brothers would take a stack of papers and begin to distribute them across the route, which luckily included the Disney home that acted as a base to pick up additional papers throughout the morning.
Walter and Roy were meticulous about how they positioned the newspapers, as per their father’s commands. Elias, already in middle age, had become frustrated and disappointed due to the numerous failures he had experienced in his various careers as a hotel owner, railroad machinist, construction worker, residential contractor, and farmer. Not wanting to experience the embarrassment of failure as the de facto owner of the paper route, he was sure to instil in his sons how to properly leave the Star for its paying customers.
Elias wanted to ensure that his customers recognised the difference in service provided by his family. While delivery boys often rolled newspapers and flung them into yards from the seat of a bicycle, Elias refused to allow his sons to do this. Instead, he expected the personal service of hand-delivering the newspaper to each door so that customers didn’t have to leave the comfort of their homes to retrieve their papers. Elias also expected that his two delivery boys protect their product from the elements: any newspaper wasted was one he would have to reimburse the Star for later. Instead, he instructed Walter and Roy to place a stone or a brick on top of the folded paper on windy days, and inside the customer’s screen door to protect it from getting wet on rainy days. Because of the importance placed on community and one’s neighbours at the turn of the century, everyone knew where the newspaper delivery boys lived. If young Walter did something wrong or he forgot to secure a paper or accidently missed a house, his father heard about it and discipline was levied. While it frustrated Roy to still be physically disciplined by his father at the age of 18, he was even more exasperated that their father expected him and his little brother to work for free. The boys each received a monthly allowance ($3 for Roy and 50 cents for Walter), but when it came to working as newspaper delivery boys, their hard work earned them room and board.
Once the route was completed, Walter and Roy returned home where they enjoyed breakfast from Flora. The rest of their morning and afternoon was spent revelling in the numerous pursuits the city had to offer. At times, Roy would pay for Walter and Ruth to ride the tram to Electric Park, located near the intersection of 46th Street and The Paseo, along Brush Creek. Electric Park had originally been opened in 1899 north of Kansas City by the Heim Brothers as a method of selling more beer produced by their brewery in the East Bottoms. When this park became successful, the brothers decided to move it to a location with more land south of the city. The amusement park was incredibly popular with Kansas Citians, giving visitors the opportunity to bathe in a large lake, ride a roller coaster, explore a fun house, and take in shows. The park took on new life after dark, when more than 100,000 lights illuminated the grounds and its numerous attractions. While the brothers’ second amusement park was prohibited by city government from selling beer, there were scores of other examples of moral turpitude the Disney children were exposed to, such as dance halls and women’s exposed skin. While there was little Elias could do about Roy partaking in the fun of Electric Park, he was furious to learn that his two youngest children were running around there and forbade them to pass through its gates. As a result, when Walter was in the mood for enjoying the sights and sounds of the park, he would take the tram south to stand with his face between the bars of the fence, watching the action inside.
Roy also engaged his siblings in entertainment closer to home. He often threw horseshoes with Walter and Ruth in the backyard or taught them how to play tennis, and on rainy days they played a hand of pinochle in the parlour. On special occasions, the trio would go to a nearby theatre to enjoy a movie at Roy’s expense or get a bag of candies from the drugstore.
In the autumn of 1911, Elias and Flora enrolled their children in school: Roy started his senior year at the Manual Training High School, while Walter and Ruth began second grade at Benton Grammar School. The boys’ daily responsibilities on their father’s newspaper route continued, and as the Star transitioned its newspaper delivery system from cart and buggy to automobile, the papers were dropped off at the Disney residence at 2.30 am, requiring the boys to get up even earlier. Over the next few hours, Walter and Roy would wander the neighbourhood, delivering papers, before stopping at home for a quick breakfast and rushing off to school.
Once again, as at Park School in Marceline, Walter wasn’t an ideal student at Benton Grammar. Much of his time was spent daydreaming or doodling in the margins of his textbooks. Likely due to his lack of sleep, the boy had a difficult time concentrating and instead spent hours honing his hobby of artistic representation. Much to his teacher’s chagrin, his assignments and drawings were often fantastical. In one instance, when expected to illustrate a field of flowers, the creative boy instead decided to represent the flowers with human faces instead of buds and arms ending with hands instead of leaves.
With the dismissal from school every day, Walter quickly made his way home where he met Roy to organise the evening edition of the paper before once again making his way through the neighbourhood to deliver 635 individual copies of the Evening Star. After a dinner kept warm by Flora, the boys did some schoolwork followed by some quiet reading time when Walter enjoyed a novel by Twain or Dickens, before an early bedtime to do it all again the next day. Unfortunately, he was so busy he didn’t have time for playing or spending time with the other kids in the neighbourhood. To compensate for his lack of playtime, Walter would often find himself in the dimness of dawn playing for a few minutes with the toys that children along the paper route left on their porches before continuing on to the next house.
As 1911 transitioned into 1912, the paper route only became more difficult for 10-year-old Walter as a series of blizzards made their way across the American Midwest, dumping more than 170 cm of snow on Kansas City. Even the hope of an early spring was dashed, with more than 100 cm falling in the month of March 1912 alone. Ever the hard worker and recognising the importance of income to support his family, Elias’s expectations for the paper route didn’t diminish during this severe winter. Walter and Roy continued to rise well before dawn, bundling themselves up as best they could, making their way through knee-high accumulations, the night-time winds often whipping by, making their eyes water and their faces chapped. At times, Walter would have to climb over snowdrifts higher than himself to get to the front door of a subscriber’s home, often falling through the thin layer of packed snow down to his waist, crumbles of snow making their way up his trouser legs and down into his shoes.
Luckily for him, his route included a series of apartment buildings, which allowed him a chance to thaw out in the steam-heated lobbies and hallways. Walter would often stop to sit next to a radiator in the apartments to warm himself before venturing back into the cold, inevitably dozing off before snapping awake in a panic that he had slept through the rest of his route.
With the paper route being the family’s primary method of income, Flora took it upon herself to utilise her skills as homemaker to once again make some additional money. Maintaining her contacts in Marceline, Flora imported cream from the Marceline Creamery Company on a weekly basis. Elias would pick up the cream from the Railway Exchange office in downtown Kansas City, and Flora would spend days turning the cream into her famous butter. Elias also sent for fresh eggs from a Marceline farmer, an expensive luxury for urban dwellers in the early 1900s.
Elias thought it would be odd for a grown man to be delivering newspapers, which is why he consistently used his two sons as delivery boys. However, his pride and hard work ethic made him feel guilty that he wasn’t doing anything to make money for the family himself. Once Flora finished turning the cream into butter, he would load it and the fresh eggs onto a cart and travel throughout the neighbourhood, selling the farm-fresh products to his neighbours.
On rare occasions, Elias would have a flare-up from his past illnesses of malaria or diphtheria, rendering him unable to make the deliveries. Instead, Flora would take Walter out of school for the day, as he was more familiar with the newspaper route than she, and together they would push the cart through the streets to sell to those who subscribed to their farm products subscription service. Walter loved and respected his 43-year-old mother very much and didn’t want her to exert herself, offering to push the cart down the street as his mother delivered the goods. Flora, however, insisted in pushing the cart herself, much to the boy’s chagrin.
As Roy and Walter conducted their studies in the big city throughout the 1911–1912 school year, they began to find themselves slowly drifting apart, developing new hobbies and friendships with large groups of kids, opportunities that weren’t available in the small rural community of Marceline. One thing in particular that appealed to Roy was the prevalence of girls in Kansas City. While he had enjoyed a steady relationship with Fleta Rogers in Marceline, the large number of city girls allowed Roy to become more social in the world of eligible bachelorhood. This also meant there were more young men to compete with. Using his allowance, as well as money he’d earned conducting odd jobs, he purchased nice outfits and ties to impress the young ladies in his social circle. Always looking up to his older brother, Walter would often don one of his brother’s new ties and wear it to school to show off to his friends. He would inevitably spill his lunch, which was often chilli and beans, on the tie. Before meeting Roy on the curb to deliver the afternoon edition, Walter would quickly put the tie back, being careful to hang it up exactly the way Roy had placed it. Unfortunately for the eligible bachelor, he would put the tie on for his next date, only to realise too late that it was still covered in chilli and beans. Needless to say that the conversations with his little brother later that night were not terribly pleasant for Walter.
Roy finished his studies at the Manual Training High School in the spring of 1912. The young man had grown as tall as his father and sported a similar slim physique. But while Elias was becoming frail due to his numerous illnesses and ailments and had just experienced his fiftieth birthday, Roy was instead a strapping specimen. He was frustrated that Elias refused to pay him for his efforts on the paper route, even though it was technically owned by him. One evening, as the boys lay alongside each other in bed, Roy propped himself up on his elbow and shook his dozing brother awake.
“Hey, kid,” Roy muttered. Walter stirred, his eyes fluttering open to look at his brother who was hovering over him. “I’m running away to work in the harvest fields. I need you to stay here and work the route. And don’t put up with father’s beatings anymore.”
Halfway between the worlds of sleeping and waking, young Walter begged his brother and best friend not to leave. Convinced that if he remained awake he would be able to stop his brother from leaving at the appointed time, he did all he could to keep his eyes open. Hours later, when his door opened and Elias called for his two sons to get up for the route, Walter realised that Roy was no longer in bed next to him; instead, a mannequin constructed of rolled up bedsheets and clothes was fashioned to resemble his slumbering brother.
After sending Walter out onto the route alone, Elias and Flora sat and discussed the departure of their third son. Flora wept, wiping her tears on the corner of her apron, as Elias furiously paced the floor of the kitchen, throwing curses upon the name of Roy Disney. It was decided that additional boys from the neighbourhood would be hired to help Walter on the route, but unconsciously, the bitter ire of the father was turned upon his youngest son, hoping to shape him into the man he had been unable to become himself.