THAT’S BUSINESS

‘Progress’ edition of 1950 looked to a rosy future for state, U.S.

— A 1950 “progress edition” of the Arkansas Democrat found its way to my desk at work.

The crumbling newspaper tells of America five years after it and its allies defeated the Axis powers, Germany and Japan.

The national economy was on its way to an incredible and long peacetime expansion, the U.S. becoming the world leader in that respect as well.

It was a time to look forward.

Jon Kennedy caught the spirit of the times with his illustration of what the staff at the Democrat thought Little Rock could look like in 50 years.

The futuristic cityscape would be dominated by highrise buildings. An “atomicpowered airliner” appears to be in a glide path to land, somewhere. Helipads were popular. A spaceshiplike watercraft plied the waters of the Arkansas River.

Now, 62 years later, aspects of the somewhat laughable depiction have actually been borne out. There are indeed skyscrapers, though air travel has hardly taken the atomic route, and whirlybirds are mainly for medical emergencies.

But as much as anything these days, nostalgia seems to dominate the city.

Preservation and resurrection are evident, thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars of investment.

The Capital Hotel is a fine example of late-Victorian architecture. Electric trolleys make their circuits through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock, like the trolley on Mister Rogers Neighborhood carrying us into the “Neighborhood of Make-Believe.”

Main Street is reawakening, shaking off its decadeslong slumber.

Buildings with names that speak of the past — Pfeifer, Blass and Cohn — are being saved from the wrecking ball.

The April 23, 1950, Democrat is full of ads for those stores, and many more.

The paper had come up with a way to celebrate “A Half Century of Progress” with its special edition filled with stories and ads — including full-page, and “double-trucks” spread over two facing pages.

It was a profitable edition, without doubt.

But it is also a reminder that newspapers long have — and still do — put out the “first rough draft of history.”

And what is history, but a lesson for those who will study it and learn.

The recap of 50 years of banking reminded readers that in 1930 during the Great Depression and Great Drought (which devastated the agricultural state’s primary source of wealth), 134 Arkansas banks were closed.

Oil, which had been discovered in the early 1920s, gave rise to Murphy Oil Corp. and Lion Oil Co., which was founded by Col. T.H. Barton, for whom the coliseum in Little Rock is named.

Sports writer Fred Petrucelli did a column on Buddy Holderfield, a top professional welterweight prizefighter from North Little Rock and his “career in fistiana” and Holderfield’s observations on contemporaries such as Rocky Marciano, Rocky Graziano, Kid Gavilan, Beau Jack and Jake LaMotta.

Elsewhere in the sports pages, baseball action was just getting under way in the Southern Association, of which the Little Rock Travelers were a member. “Crax Rally Beats Chicks” a headline said. Translated: the Atlanta Crackers (that’s right) defeated the Memphis Chicks, short for Chickasaws, an Indian tribe native to the area.

If that seems quaint, some attitudes don’t. Such as the gratuitous references to race, as in “an 11-year-old negro girl was burned to death” in a house fire.

Some things never change. An editorial cartoon shows a gluttonous Uncle Sam gorging himself as a waiter goes over a lengthy bill titled “Mounting National Debt.”

But the state was striving to fulfill its dreams for the future.

An ad proclaims workers at one business as “The Busiest Arkansawyers You Ever Laid Your Eyes On.”

One wonders whether that kind of attitude, naive as it may seem now, is succumbing to a longing for the past.

If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or e-mail him at

[email protected]

Business, Pages 61 on 12/02/2012

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