LITTLE ROCK — Recently, I lost myself for a few hours reading Arkansas newspapers from January of 1913-a month which encapsulated the onrushing change then upon Arkansas, as well as the many forces still keeping the state poor, unhealthy and uneducated. Here are a few observations from the first month of 1913-which document the competing forces tugging at Arkansas.
The year was hardly under way before news reached Little Rock of the death on Jan. 3, 1913, of U.S. Senator Jeff Davis of Arkansas. This would set off a chain of events that changed the face of state politics. But this same time period was ushering in an era of immense change that was in the early stages of reshaping how people worked, traveled and communicated in the early 20th Century. It was a time when, finally, Arkansans were looking critically at their state-with the ultimate objective of actually entering the American economic and social mainstream.
The Jan. 1, 1913, issue of the Arkansas Gazette informed Arkansans that the state prosecutors were up in arms over outgoing Gov. George W. Donaghey’s recent pardoning of 360 convicts. This wholesale emptying of the prisons was Donaghey’s final attempt to put an end to the state’s decades of leasing out convicts-which often resulted in horrible mistreatment, virtual peonage and rampant corruption. Donaghey’s actions are today seen as an act of courage, but at the time the Arkansas Prosecutors Association had no trouble condemning the governor’s actions as “an insult.”
That same issue of the Gazette carried a report out of Wynne in Cross County on efforts to get a new east-west highway across the county. This article highlighted one of the most pressing concerns facing the state during the early years of the century-how to transition from horses and wagons to the new automobile age. Roads-their shortage and condition-would bedevil the state for generations to come.
It is humorous today to look back a century and note the growing pains presented by a whole new system of transportation. For example, automobile drivers were expected to drive slowly in downtown Little Rock. The Gazette reported that a “negro chauffeur” had been arrested for driving 40 miles per hour on Louisiana Street, and the constable warned that “he will arrest every one he catches exceeding the speed limit, irrespective of color or position.”
People had places to go and things to do as the new year dawned. For instance, new movie houses were being built all over the state. In Arkansas City (in Desha County), a new motion picture house named The Electric opened its doors with the new year. The Bex Theater in Argenta reopened on New Year’s Day after having been closed “while opera chairs and two new picture machines were being installed.”
Crime did not take a vacation for the New Year’s celebration. A large craps game on New Year’s Eve at Trumann, “a sawmill town” near Harrisburg in Poinsett County, resulted in 20 arrests, including two women. Newspaper reports on the same day told of a trial in Argenta of a physician charged with illegally selling cocaine.
The first newspaper published in 1913 at Osceola in Mississippi County included great concern over a growing number of meningitis cases. The mayor of Osceola called a public meeting to discuss the possible need for a quarantine, and the city board of health authorized a quarantine. Widespread train travel proved to be especially challenging to quarantine inspectors. Fortunately, due to the hard work of Gov. Donaghey, the state finally had a state health department to deal with matters such as communicable diseases.
Arkansas newspapers in 1913 were documenting dramatic changes flooding the state. Some things, however, retained their old rhythms-peddlers still guided their one-horse carts from one isolated farm to another, preachers still mounted the pulpits, and hunters still took to the woods.
In January of 1913, the Van Buren County Democrat carried a report of an old practice in those rugged mountains west of Clinton-trapping. But the two trappers had come up with an animal wholly new to them. It bore a close resemblance to “a cross between an o’possum and a mud turtle,” and the trappers killed the beast in order to take it to town since they were “unwilling to jeopardize their credibility as upright, sober and truthful citizens. . . .” After a great deal of speculation and resorting to an encyclopedia, it was finally concluded that the animal was a South American mammal called an armadillo.
This is the first instance I know of an armadillo being discovered in Arkansas. It would not be the last.
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Tom Dillard is an historian and retired archivist. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial, Pages 72 on 01/06/2013