Three Generations of Business Enterprise in a Midwestern City: The McGees of Kansas City

Some historians of Kansas City claim, with an arresting simplicity, that the principal reason for that city's growth and prosperity is to be found in the enterprise of its citizens. And, although enterprise is by no means a self-explanatory notion, it seems a compellingly obvious way to account for the circumstances of the city's formative years. Much of that history can be written around a series of crises of decision, urgent moments when poor judgment, or the faulty execution of policy, might have plunged the city into obscurity or downright decadence. Yet such was the city's good fortune, we are told, that at precisely these times brilliant leadership seems always to have been forthcoming, and enterprising men—usually businessmen—can be discerned standing in the storm center pointing the way to safety and success.