Brazenly unmasked bandits held up the Arkansas Transfer Co. 100 years ago in Little Rock. They weren’t the only bold characters in the county that week.
As the Arkansas Democrat reported on the afternoon of Aug. 2, 1920, two young men had walked into the office at 314 Scott St. shortly after midnight that morning. They leveled revolvers at night manager W.D. Jamison's head and then rounded up three employees who were working on cars in the back.
The robbers demanded the key to the safe. When Jamison told them his boss had the keys, one gunman moved to strike him, but just then a passing truck sounded its klaxon, and the moment passed.
After some pilfering and the turning out of pockets, the robbers marched their four victims out into the lamp-lit darkness of downtown, telling them to walk toward the Arkansas River. They didn't go that far. At the edge of Third Street, Jamison looked behind and realized the gunmen were gone.
With them went $60 in cash, two gold watches and a small diamond valued at $250.
A daring crime; but this company — which transported passenger bags and freight to and from the train station — did the crooks one better in the cheek department. The next day's Democrat carried an ad crowing about that robbery:
You see, the Bandits Know We Are Open
at All Hours!
We had a little hold-up in our office early Monday morning — which proves that we are open throughout the night, as well as throughout the day. We are open for one purpose, and that is to give service at any time.
Chutzpah is our theme today.
A century ago this week, the Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette were packed with fine, fat examples of audacity, overconfidence, boldness, discourtesy, deceptions, possible calumnies and appeals to illogic.
Yes, it was election season in Arkansas.
The Democratic primaries of 1920 were one week ahead — Aug. 10. Both newspapers were loaded with advertisements for would-be mayors, governors, senators. I wish I could go into each of these races in depth, tell you who won and where they came from and what-all they went on to accomplish, but in the immortal words of Phoebe Buffay, "Oh, I wish I could, but I don't want to."
Still, politics can be amusing when you aren't burdened by concern about consequences. So I have loaded a few of the cunning old ads into a photo gallery for you. Behold:
Too many guys were running for governor.
Here's what you need to know: According to most candidates, there was a ring of corrupt politicians at Little Rock known as the Little Rock Ring. Everybody was in it, and everybody was not in it. But there was one somebody named Smead Powell who was the ringleader, and all the little city and state officeholders — who were bankers and not real farmers and who had mahogany offices — were in on his ring of conspiracies.
Candidates accused one another of causing a young military veteran — Bob Brown Jr. — to run for county judge. Apparently, that was shady of them.
One of my favorite ads touted gubernatorial candidate Harry E. Walsh by attacking the voter:
Don't be a Demagog! ... If you want what I advocate, it is up to you to get it. My services have cost you nothing. WHAT ABOUT YOUR MORAL COURAGE?
The race for U.S. Senate was simpler, having two main contenders. The Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas has helpful essays. You could look up "William Fosgate Kirby" and "Thaddeus Horatius Caraway."
Kirby was the incumbent, and he was opposed by Caraway, whose name Casual Reader likely recognizes because he was married to the famous first elected female Sen. Hattie Caraway. In 1920, Thaddeus was still alive, and so she wasn't famous yet.
Did you know there was a tradition in Arkansas that candidates should make no speeches in the home county of their opponents? Oh yeah. Old tradition. Well, turns out, Kirby had secretly renounced his citizenship in Miller County and taken up residence in Pulaski County back when he wanted to block the appointment of (1920 gubernatorial candidate) W.E. Floyd as postmaster at Little Rock.
Caraway had recently learned of Kirby's deceptive desertion and so would soon commence making all the speeches in Miller County that Miller County had been longing to hear.
Kirby is a little bit interesting and not only because he had been the compiler of Kirby's Digest of the state laws. As Caraway's full-page advertisements helpfully explained, in 1917, Senator Kirby was a member of "the willful few" — 11 senators led by Sen. Robert La Follette of Wisconsin who opposed President Woodrow Wilson's evolving opposition to Germany, then engaged in the Great War in Europe and beginning to threaten U.S. merchant vessels with U boats. Wilson meant to arm merchant vessels for self-defense: armed neutrality.
These willful senators used the filibuster — unlimited debate — to thwart Wilson for a while.
"A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible," Wilson said then.
Their brief success inspired Wilson's faction to add cloture to the Senate armamentarium in 1917.
In 1920, Caraway wanted Arkansans to remember that Kirby had opposed the war, the righteous war. Ads proudly labeled as not approved by Caraway warned voters they would never shake "the stigma" of "Kirbyism" if they sent him back to D.C. for a second term.
An ad from Kirby mounted a defense:
The Democratic custom of a SECOND TERM is as old and as broad as our nation. Washington, "The Father of His Country" and first President of the United States, inaugurated the SECOND TERM. ... Thomas Jefferson ... Andrew Jackson ...
Woodrow Wilson, who was elected President for SECOND TERM on the slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War," approved the custom of a SECOND TERM, and it has become "The Unwritten Law of Democracy." ...
Why should Senator Kirby be refused a SECOND TERM when no one is demanding his defeat except his opponent and the MEAT TRUST?
Oh no, not the Meat Trust.
Each candidate had ardently supported woman's right to vote and yet had opposed woman's right, from the outset. Caraway quoted suffragist Mrs. Florence B. Cotnam as praising his work. Mrs. Florence B. Cotnam then placed an ad insisting that she was for Kirby, and that Caraway knew it so well he had not dared to ask her permission before using her name in his advertisements.
Meanwhile, Charles Ponzi was in the headlines every day, paying off debts to hundreds of investors who lined up on the sidewalk outside his Boston office.
Talk about brazen.
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