Houck a benefactor in paper's beginnings

With the death of Louis Houck in 1925, Southeast Missouri lost one of its greatest benefactors, and Fred and George Naeter -- publishers of the Southeast Missourian -- lost one of their best friends.

From the time the Naeters, along with a third brother, Harry, settled in Cape Girardeau in 1904, Houck gave them advice and guidance -- and funds which allowed them to build a modern printing plant in 1908.

In an editorial published in the Missourian on Feb. 19, 1925, the Naeters expressed their regard for Houck: "We have lost the best friend we have had in Cape Girardeau. We have lost a friend who came and offered to help us at a time when he really didn't know us. We have lost a friend who came to us frequently and asked if there was anything he could do to aid us in our work. Could anyone have a greater friend?"

In 1908, four years after the brothers resurrected a slumbering publication called The Daily Republican, Houck suggested that it was time to build a new home for their business. The newspaper was then in its second location -- the former Wilson residence at the southwest corner of Broadway and Spanish Street. Houck pointed out that conditions in the house were too cramped to carry on the business efficiently.

Taking matters in hand, he introduced the Naeters to James B. Legg, architect for Academic Hall. He advised Legg to design a newspaper plant and urged the publishers to find a lot for the new building.

With Houck providing all of the money, the brothers purchased a site on the south side of Broadway in the 200 block. The plant was completed that same year. It was used as a newspaper office until 1925, when the current Missourian building was occupied. Later, the old newspaper office became the home of the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce. In 1975, it was razed by the First Presbyterian Church.

The Naeters never forgot the debt they owed Houck. Shortly after his death, a memorial service was held at what is now Southeast Missouri State University, which Houck helped establish. Fred Naeter spoke on "Mr. Houck, the Neighbor." He said, Houck "furnished every dollar [for the 1908 building] without a scratch of a pen to show that he was protected." He only exacted one pledge from the publishers: "Promise me that you will never give any attention to any other business, that you will center your energy on this one business, that you will not buy stock in any other concern. Then there can never be any danger of my getting stuck on these notes."

Houck's own experience as a former newspaper man in Illinois and St. Louis may have contributed to the loyalty he displayed toward the Naeters and their upstart daily.

The son of an immigrant printer, Bartholomew Houck, Houck was born in St. Clair County, Ill., on April 1, 1840. His newspaper experience began early. As a youth, he worked in his father's newspaper plant in Quincy, Ill., and St. Louis. At 17, Houck and a man named Ries established a German-language newspaper in Alton, Ill., publishing the journal several months before Houck sold his interest to his partner and entered the University of Wisconsin at Madison to study English. His studies lasted a year and three months. For a time afterward, he worked at a newspaper in Highland, Ill., and later moved to Belleville, Ill., where he started another German newspaper.

Houck recalled in his reminiscences, published in the Southeast Missourian in 1969, "When the Civil War came on, I was not very enthusiastically in favor of the war, but published my paper during the entire four years of the war and became very unpopular on account of my opposition to Lincoln. In 1863 some soldiers mobbed and wrecked my printing office and threatened me personally."

Houck gave up newspapering in 1865, the year after he was admitted to the Illinois bar, having studied the law in the office of a leading Belleville lawyer, William H. Underwood. He was an assistant U.S. district attorney a year before moving to Cape Girardeau.

Here Houck held a variety of interests besides the law. He is probably best known for his development of short-line railroads that webbed the almost impenetrable swamps of Southeast Missouri.

His railroad work continued into the early 1900s. Eventually, his lines in Missouri linked Campbell, Kennett, Caruthersville, Leachville, Caruthersville, Perryville, Ste. Genevieve and Claryville, and in Illinois Chester, Grand Tower, Carbondale, East Cape Girardeau and Murphysboro.

At the same time he was clearing trees and laying tracks in the swamps of Southeast Missouri, he was extending his influencein education circles. In 1886, Houck was named to the board of regents of Cape Girardeau Teachers College, now Southeast Missouri State University. He remained on the board for the next 38 years. For 32 of those years, he was president of the board.

In 1904, he anonymously purchased 58 plaster reproductions of ancient, medieval and modern works of art by August Gerber of Cologne, Germany. Gerber had displayed the artwork at the St. Louis World's Fair, winning a gold medal. He installed the statues and reliefs in the just-built Academic Hall in 1905.

Houck supported a number of other projects in Cape Girardeau, some more successful than others, including the establishment of a public library, the location of a state prison that was never built here, the extension of the Rock Levee Road, the organization of a pottery business, and the beautification of the Common Pleas Courthouse grounds.

Joel P. Rhodes, an assistant professor of history at Southeast Missouri State University, sees Houck's civic works as his effort to "give something back" to the area: "He feels partly responsible for the loss of the wilderness in Southeast Missouri, or at least starting the process" through his railroad-building efforts.

"We have this great folk image of Houck, and he cultivated that image," said Rhodes. But he was "the perfect example of a Gilded Age entrepreneur in the same mold as Andrew Carnegie."

According to Rhodes, Houck's civic-mindedness and entrepreneurialism "don't seem to be completely mutually exclusive. My guess is that they co-existed in him, probably uneasily at times."

He added, "In this era when capitalists/businessmen were held in very high esteem in American culture, folks in the region didn't begrudge Houck getting rich. They cheered for him because he was on their side, he was one of them, and his rising tide would lift all boats, so to speak."

Again and again Houck returned to the interest of his youth and his father's life's work: printing. But instead of being the mechanic who printed the words, he became the author.

Houck's first publication, aside from his newspaper work, was a book titled "Mechanic's Liens." He wrote the book shortly after being admitted to the bar when, as he said, he had "little to do." The work stemmed from a case he was preparing, when he could find no other source on the subject.

Aside from writings on the law, Houck also authored a number of historical volumes: "The Spanish Regime in Missouri," "History of Missouri," "The Boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase," "The Story of the Settlement and Settlers of Mississippi County" with Thomas Beckwith, and "Memorial Sketches."