DougR - Chili with beans is indeed chili, it is just not ORIGINAL chili.   Beans were added by boarding house cooks in the late 1800's as a way of stretching the dish.   Cowboy cooks on trail drives would not have had the time to boil beans for the dish hence it was created sans beans.   Of course this fact sort of takes the ... wind .. out of Mel Brook's scene in Blazing Saddles.

Chili has many regional variations. AUTHENTIC Texas chili would not use beans of course, but there are still hundreds of variations. It was a meal of convenience and sustenance.

Now I am hungry.

Ron