OLD NEWS

Riggs was high-flying politician, inventor

John A. Riggs, after a photo in Fred Allsopp’s 1922 History of the Arkansas Press for a Hundred Years and More
John A. Riggs, after a photo in Fred Allsopp’s 1922 History of the Arkansas Press for a Hundred Years and More

Since this winter brings a centennial for women's suffrage in Arkansas, expect to hear a lot about how the foremothers collaborated, sacrificed, argued and marched to win the right to vote. Even your lazy friend Old News, who pretty much knows nothing but what she reads in the newspaper (archives), is thrilled about that long-ago campaign.

Thank you, ladies ... and gents.

As I mentioned last time, in January and February 1917, the state General Assembly was in a lather over "the Riggs bill" or, more accurately, Riggs bills. The first bill would have changed the state Constitution to enfranchise women. Its author, Rep. John Andrew Riggs of Garland County, lofted it without consulting the organized women suffragists in Little Rock; he soon withdrew it.

His second, better considered bill became Act 186 of 1917.

Signed March 6, 1917, by Gov. Charles Brough, Act 186 provided, in part, that "subject to all the provisions of the laws of this State as to age, citizenship, payment of poll taxes ... every woman in this State shall have the right to vote at any primary elections held under the laws of this State."

A woman had to swear an oath, if requested, that she actually supported the political party and that she gave "her moral support" to every last pea-picking one its nominees (not the exact wording).

The act almost amounted to full suffrage, because Democrats were so dominant that nearly all state offices were filled by those primaries. A strategy recommended by national leaders in the movement, it was a clever move by the suffragists, including the governor and this fellow Riggs.

Riggs was quite the pioneer, as you can learn by reading the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture and Fred Allsopp's charming 1922 History of the Arkansas Press for a Hundred Years and More.

Riggs served only a few years in the state House, from 1917-19 and 1923 (in the 41st, 42nd and 44th General Assemblies). In between, he ran for governor, losing the Democratic primary to Thomas Chipman McRae (the last Arkansas governor who'd served in the Confederate Army).

Born Nov. 5, 1867, in the online encyclopedia, and Nov. 5, 1866, in Allsopp's book, Riggs was the oldest of six children. When he was 10, his people moved from Illinois to Sumner County, Kansas, the southern part of which was still Indian Territory. He grew up on a too-dry, too-hot, too-windy farm 40 miles south of Wichita. He helped his father raise cattle and sell supplies to soldiers in the dangerous country.

Riggs was 22 for the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. If you haven't read about this amazing event, see bit.ly/2kk8N20. More than 50,000 white settlers lined up for 100 miles along the border of about 2 million acres of arable land taken from the tribes when they were compressed into smaller reservations. At a signal on April 22, men raced to claim 160 acres apiece.

For $14 ($1.25 per acre) Riggs staked his homestead in what became Sheridan, Okla. The next year, he went back to Kansas to fetch his girl, Ida Louise Callahan. They farmed in the Oklahoma territory and ran cattle for 11 years, during which Riggs served as a constable and coroner.

Also, he opened Fence Post Johnnies', a trading post named for one of his inventions: lightning-proof fence posts.

He patented his post in 1899 in the United States (patent No. 623181) and in Canada (No. 63859), and you can see his submission along with its diagram at bit.ly/2kHq6aJ.

His filing doesn't mention lightning. It describes a "non-rotatable" and fireproof "combination of an outer, metallic, hollow casing, having a slot in the upper portion thereof, and a wooden filling mounted in said casing and exposed through said slot, the said filling being provided with a sheet-metal covering, substantially as described."

The couple moved their four children back to Kansas in 1901. They sold grain in Wichita, where Riggs bought a half interest in an over-the-counter nostrum, Lopez Medicine Remedy. Later he acquired the whole company, and when he moved to Hot Springs in 1905, he sold Lopez from a storefront on Broad Street.

In an online archive of the 1913 Journal of the American Medical Association, I found a letter from one Dr. C.S. Bliss of Coggan, Iowa, complaining that the Lopez remedy was a "fraudulent cure for syphilis" that was "getting people afraid of mercury." Bliss wrote that government chemists who analyzed the remedy during a (failed) federal case brought against Riggs for misbranding had found it to contain 27 percent alcohol and also potassium iodide, podophyllum (mayapple), sarsaparilla, stillingia, eucalyptus and gentian.

We're just getting started with John Riggs enterprises.

In 1908 he partnered with a pilot, Joel Rice, incorporated as the Hot Springs Airship Co. and sold shares in their venture to build dirigibles. The Gazette reported May 23, 1908, that they expected to launch their first airship in a week. The editorial page wisecracked on May 26, "Hot Springs is to have an airship, which is one vehicle that can navigate the road between Little Rock and Hot Springs without getting any hard jolts."

Which was funny because Riggs was one of the assessors of the Little Rock-Hot Springs Highway.

But by Oct. 2, the airship still wasn't ready, and a crowd that had gathered based on a rumor was told to go home until Rice could acquire more sulphuric acid. Really. Eventually they realized the gas bag was just too small. Riggs and Rice sued its manufacturer in California.

But in July 1909, they went to New York months ahead of a massive two-week celebration of transportation there and to build the largest dirigible in the world. Their steel-framed American Eagle went up once, in November 1909, only to be damaged in a storm.

Riggs lost faith in the airship and over the next year, he and Rice fell out, as it were.

He ran for mayor of Hot Springs but lost. In July 1911, he accidentally acquired a newspaper, the Daily Bulletin, "through endorsing a note for a man," Allsopp says. Riggs shut it down one day and reopened it the next as the New Era. Later it took over the Daily News, becoming Garland County's only afternoon paper.

He published the Era until 1929, when he sold the paper to Clyde E. Palmer, who was building a family-owned chain of papers. (The Palmer Newspapers evolved into WEHCO Media Inc., Palmer's daughter, Betty, having married Walter E. Hussman. Their son Walter E. Hussman Jr. is the publisher of today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.)

Riggs died of cancer in 1936. He is buried beside Ida Louise and other family members in Greenwood Cemetery at Hot Springs.

ActiveStyle on 02/06/2017

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