On this date 100 years ago, readers of the Arkansas Gazette or Arkansas Democrat had no excuse for failing to understand the nation was at war.
Pages were loaded with battle maps and lists of draftees, deserters, casualties and items of a more nagging intent. For instance, page 7 of the Gazette presented this full-page ad:
"Piker Patriots"
A Piker Patriot is a man who talks a lot about patriotism but doesn't DO anything.
A Piker Patriot is a man who loudly cheers the marching soldiers but keeps a padlock on his pocketbook.
A Piker Patriot is a man who goes home every night to a comfortable fireside and a happy family, who enjoys all the blessings and opportunities that America gives, who has a good job and good wages, but doesn't even buy a $50 Liberty Bond on easy payments.
A Piker Patriot is a man who bought a Liberty Bond last June, one-tenth the size he could have taken, and now when approached by a Liberty Bond salesman, sticks out his chest and says "I've bought one."
A Piker Patriot is a man who can easily take ten thousand dollars' worth of Liberty Bonds but only takes a thousand.
A Piker Patriot is a Corporation Director whose Company can take a million dollars' worth of Liberty Bonds without making any sacrifice at all, but who raises an awful howl if anyone suggests their taking more than a hundred thousand.
There is no room in Little Rock for Piker Patriots, for Little Rock is no Piker city.
If you are that kind you'd better move to some piker town. You'd better go where you'll have some piker friends. For Little Rock during the coming weeks and months is going to be the lonesomest place on the face of the globe for Piker Patriots.
Go to Any Bank And Get Your Liberty Bonds Today
This space contributed by A. Karcher Candy Company, of Little Rock.
YOUCH!
Tell us how you really feel, Mr. Karcher. Don't be shy.
Although that tongue-lashing seems personal enough to have been dictated in a rant by one indignant righteous bond-buyer, full page anti-piker ads appeared in newspapers across the nation in October 1917, during the closing days of the U.S. Treasury Department's second campaign to sell Liberty Bonds.
The very same ad, almost word for word, appeared in the Democrat, with the cost "patriotically borne" by the Bankers Trust Co. of Little Rock.
In the New Philadelphia, Ohio, Daily Times readers were exhorted not to put themselves on record as piker patriots: "If there is anything Picayunish about your soul, for goodness sake, don't show it now."
In the Muncie [Ind.] Evening Press, another ad ranted:
Shame on you! Why do you hesitate when it is only a simple financial arrangement, and Human Agony and American liberty is at stake? So you are the individual yellow to the core that patriotic people call a "slacker?" Shame on you! With all your slacking, shirking, shrinking Americanism, don't forget Uncle Sam will bankrupt you before he lets you bankrupt American freedom! He will take your money! ... Shame on you! Wake up to your duty!
An auto-parts manufacturer sponsored that one.
In the Batesville Daily Guard, the piker ad included words that, to my ear, do read as though composed by an Arkansan:
A genuine Piker is one of those who sets back and depends upon the "Let George Do It" way of doing. He don't want his boy to go to war. Oh no. Let's win through by sending the other boys. He's got money too but he thinks he is especially gifted to make larger returns on it than anyone else and gets by by letting others furnish the Government their money. He's a Piker and more than a Piker. He's something else and in the war and afterwards he is going to be found out by all the real true-blue Americans and be pointed at as the real slacker in the greatest war time on the face of the earth.
PERSONAL ENERGY
U.S. Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo was in Little Rock for four hours on that long-ago Oct. 23, on the last lap of a national tour to nag common folk into buying the bonds, which amounted to loans to the government for the prosecution of the war and would return 4 percent interest. The last day of the issue was the 27th, and the Gazette reported the campaign was failing.
That headline read: "Liberty Loan Will Fall Under Mark: Only Avalanche of Dollars Will Reach 5,000,000,000 Goal." The take was about $2.25 billion that Tuesday.
McAdoo arrived three hours late because of track repairs in Texas. He appeared "keen-eyed and alert and very nervous, possibly on account of the strain of the speaking tour," and made four speeches, the Gazette reported. One was before a crowd of "husky men in overalls" at Baring Cross.
Rep. H.M. Jacoway had warmed them up with a lecture about the insults to the flag by "that national highwayman, the German kaiser." McAdoo -- "the tall angular cabinet member" -- walked in while Jacoway was speaking, and then Gov. Charles Brough introduced him to the loudly cheering husky men. McAdoo denounced the "infamous military despot who sat in his palace in Berlin and ordered us not to use the high seas."
He added: "Who will say that the blood of Arkansas has run yellow? Nobody but pacifists, and they are traitors in disguise. We're finding the slackers with German money in their pockets, and we don't intend that they shall stab our boys in the back while they are facing German bullets."
Everywhere McAdoo went, the paper reported, he was "promiscuously introduced" -- a phrase that deserves to be used more often.
At the Palace theater, when he arose to speak, "something happened":
A committee of five leaders of the negro race were on the stage, and their spokesman, Scipio A. Jones, came forward and in a few chosen remarks presented the distinguished visitor with a check for $50,000, the contribution of the Mosaic Templars of America, with headquarters in Little Rock, to the Liberty Bond campaign. "And if you need $100,000 more, you'll get it, Mr. Secretary," Jones said.
McAdoo, who appeared touched, praised the "colored men," saying a lot of well-intended words that would make us wince today and ending up, "They have set an example which all patriotic citizens would do well to emulate."
Next week: Little Rock Now Is Without Coal
ActiveStyle on 10/23/2017