One hundred years ago, the Arkansas Senate passed 72 bills in one day. That was a record, but it wasn't all they did Jan. 28, 1920. They also introduced 65 bills.
This happened during an extraordinary session. Such special sessions are extra gatherings of the state General Assembly, which regularly meets for 60 days once every two years. The 42nd General Assembly's regular meeting was from Jan. 13 to March 13, 1919. Its subsequent sessions would have been extraordinary even if they hadn't been so special.
The January 1920 special session was the third special session called by Gov. Charles Brough. For the senators and representatives who left family and business in their home districts and traveled to Little Rock for these sessions, it wasn't necessarily fun, especially over gravel roads, especially in the winter. But better roads was a goal of this session, so ...
Brough called his third special session because the state Supreme Court nullified all the work of the second special session.
What happened was, Brough failed to give the constitutionally mandated 30 days' notice in 1919 that he was calling that second special session and what he planned to promote. Proper notice mattered because people needed time to waylay, buttonhole and politely inform their representatives what they thought about whatever actions the governor had announced he wanted the special session to undertake. W.I. Booe of Prairie County sued, and the state Supreme Court agreed with him. It threw out all the laws passed in the second special session.
Most of them were to create "improvement districts" for roads, levees, drainages and schools. After the second session, many projects got underway and were competing for scarce and pricey building materials. Improvement districts were local groups of landowners empowered to decide what was needed and how to pay for it. Property owners carried the burden of paying. This system failed as an essay in the Central Arkansas Library System Encyclopedia of Arkansas explains: Bonds issued by many districts became impossible to repay, even after federal funds were allotted to improve roads used as postal routes. By 1922, the encyclopedia says, Arkansas landowners were stuck with enormous debt from their improvement districts, and the roads they'd built "slowly devolved into muddy trails."
So, anyway, the third special session was a remedial session for the second and it began Jan. 26. It was also the fourth meeting of 1919's Legislature, and, as the Arkansas Democrat reported, a joke was going around that it was a "fourth quarterly conference."
I don't know whether this joke arose the evening of Jan. 26 during the Arkansas Bar Association's fifth annual Gridiron Club dinner at the Hotel Marion, but that's plausible. Then as now, Gridiron included comedy. Representative title of one speech: "He who drinks near beer has no kick coming."
As the Arkansas Gazette described the dinner, the 200 in attendance maintained an average temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
The pink shaded lights upon the table paled before the brilliance of the legal lights about the board, while the flowers, which earlier bloomed to adorn the scene, faded before the flowers of speech which outshone them at a later stage.
To see why "fourth quarterly conference" was considered a joke, it helps to know that:
◼️ Quarterly meetings were a reference to Methodists, being church business meetings held four times a year;
◼️ Methodists, in general, had been ardent supporters of criminalizing the sale of alcohol, and
◼️ Federal Prohibition was the talk of the town, the Volstead Act having taken effect the week before.
Here's how Brough responded, during a dinner given by the Good Roads Bureau of the Little Rock Board of Commerce for legislators and road commissioners the day after the Gridiron:
"You know I am a Baptist," said the governor. "They have accused me of calling the 'Fourth quarterly conference,' indicating that I have become a Methodist. But please let me remind you again that I am a Baptist, and do not forget that Baptists believe in the fifth Sunday meetings ..."
Implying, the Democrat explained, that if the current special session did not answer his demand for road-building laws, he would call a fifth session.
I don't know why this all tickles me, it just does.
Before the session was able to re-pass all of those road laws, the House needed to elect a new speaker. The old one, Speaker Clarence P. Newton, had become the state's Prohibition inspector. There was a bit of stalling by some who said Newton had failed to resign and so his office wasn't vacant. But Rep. Joe Joiner of Columbia County was elected, and the re-passing commenced.
HOUSE RULES
As the Gazette reported Jan. 19, 1920, federal Prohibition did not overrule Arkansas' existing "bone dry" law except where there was a direct conflict between the two laws. The state's bone dry rules remained in place.
For one, under the 18th Amendment, a person who was sick might get a doctor's prescription for alcohol and have it filled at a drugstore. Under the state law, the Gazette noted, it wasn't clear how a pharmacist could get the alcohol to sell. No common carrier could deliver a consignment to anyone but the purchaser.
Speaking of sick people, public health officers were reporting another outbreak of influenza. On Jan. 29, 1920, the Democrat reported 164 cases at Fort Smith with two deaths. Other reports in both papers showed smaller outbreaks around the state, including in the capital. Not a healthful time to gather crowds of legislators and lobbyists in overheated rooms.
Flu was not funny, but, mixed in with the new Prohibition rules, it inspired the jesters who wrote headlines for the Gazette. Example:
A Way to Get Booze Found; Get the "Flu"
The Jan. 27 paper reported that in Oklahoma City, the health department was giving 10-day permits to influenza patients for one pint of confiscated booze apiece.
Following the announcement this afternoon that whiskey will be issued, the reports of cases jumped from 34 to 123 within a few hours, the City Health Department announced.
But that was Oklahoma City. In Muskogee, Okla., as the Gazette reported the next day, the U.S. marshal said he only had patent medicines and a few quarts of moonshine on hand and was not going to respond to the barrage of requests he'd received from sick people.
The Gazette's headline?
Sounds Like Mean Joke on the Oklahoma Boys.
And then Memphis police arrested a man with two jugs of gin and refused to accept his story:
"Flu" Fails as Alibi for Having Booze
Not all that funny. But there's really no accounting for humor.
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Style on 01/27/2020