Ingram's May 2024

1975 Exhibition of Archaeological finds of the People’s Republic of China at Nelson Art Gallery. Kansas City fire fighters strike. Artist Thomas Hart Benton dies. Oak Park Mall opens.

1976 H. Roe Bartle Exposition Hall opens. Republican Party National Convention held in KC. Municipal Stadium demolished. Joe Teasdale becomes first native Kansas Citian elected governor of Missouri.

1977 Flooding of Brush Creek kills 25 people and causes $100 million in damage. Blue laws repealed in Jackson, Clay and Platte counties. JC Penney Distribution Center opens in Lenexa.

1978 Right-to-work amend ment rejected by Missouri voters. Royals win Western Division—and lose to the Yankees, this time in four games. Coates House Hotel fire kills 20 people in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

River Quay area destruction as a result of arson, bombings and a probe of organized crime involvement. Royals win Western Division, lose again to Yankees in 5 games in the ACLS. KCMO School Board of Education OKs desegregation plan.

Kansas City the hub of opportunity for the future.” 1977 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER Too Many Strings Attached — Federal Dollars and Local Government “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die,” someone once said. This could have been referring to the mixed emotions local officials harbor on the subject of federal aid and the inevitable control it brings. Federal aid to state and local governments, including cities, coun ties, school districts, and numerous spe cial governmental jurisdictions, began just after the Korean War and took the form of special categorical grants for singular pur poses. From its meager beginning, federal aid to state and local governments has be come so dependent upon federal funds for the provision of basic governmental ser vices that to discontinue federal financial assistance would be catastrophic. It would mean a complete reshaping of governmen tal programs which affect every aspect of the lives of American people.” 1978 If anyone needs reminding about the importance of agribusiness to the metro politan Kansas City economy, a look at a new Midwest Research Institute study puts things in perspective. The study shows that sales and receipts from agri business and agricultural production in metropolitan Kansas City (Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas and Jack son, Clay, Platte, Cass and Ray coun ties in Missouri) totaled more than $5.6 billion in 1976. This amount is equal to DECEMBER / JANUARY Agribusiness Big in KC

two-thirds of the total sales and receipts derived from all manufacturing activity within the metropolitan area. In addi tion, $700 million was loaned to farmers and agribusiness from the city’s financial institutions, $323 million in farmland was sold by Kansas City real estate firms, and, in 1977, approximately $26 million will be spent in the city by people attend ing agribusiness conventions. Wages and salaries of more than 94,000 employees supported by agribusi ness activities amount to more than $869 million annually. This is equivalent to 85 percent of the total employment in all manufacturing industries in the metro politan area. It’s 17 percent of total metro employment. MRI figures that, conserva tively speaking, one out of every six people in the Kansas City workforce is directly or indirectly supported by agribusiness. DECEMBER / JANUARY Farmland: The Giant Grows Even Bigger This year, Kansas City-based Farm land Industries Inc. jumped from 123rd to 67th on the Fortune 500 list of the larg est U.S. industrial corporations. The big jump occurred last May 2, when Farm land’s merger with Far-Mar-Co. Inc., the nation’s largest grain marketing coopera tive, was consummated. 1979 Louis Rukeyser of Wall Street Week calls the proposed new futures contract based on the Dow Jones 30 industrial stocks average index “An ingenious new concept that could make Kansas City one of the legitimate financial nerve centers of the nation.” The contract, commonly referred to as the “industrial future” and APRIL / MAY The Big IF in KC’s Trading Pit

carrying the ticker tape signal “IF,” is awaiting approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It could be traded on the Kansas City Board of Trade as early as April or May of this year. Ap proval of the contract by the CFTC promises to revolutionize traditional investment theories long-practiced by American stockholders, large and small. MAY Grand-Theft Computer The executive who says “It can’t hap pen to us” is a prime target for a crime by computer. This is a scare story. Its inten tion is to get top management off its col lective seat and into the EDP area, figura tively and literally. If a computer center is a part of your operation but you don’t concern yourself with that area or its security (“It’s some one else’s job”), skip this article and save yourself the few minutes it will take to read it. But in a fraction of that time, your company could be ripped off by a light fingered computer embezzler to the tune of $430,000. What’s more, this crime may never be detected, but even if it is, and the perpe trator is caught, the odds are strong that he or she will never spend a day in jail. Strong statistical evidence exists for each of the seemingly outlandish statements you’ve just read. Why a figure like $430,000? Accord ing to the Federal Bureau of Investiga tion, that’s the average take per heist in electronic breaking and entering via computer. A lowly bank robber, by com parison, nets a paltry $10,000 for his ef forts. No wonder FBI Director William Webster said his agency is giving high priority to white-collar crime, a variety of wrongdoing that used to be referred to as the crime of the future.

JUNE / JULY Raising The Minimum Wage

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May 2024

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