Arkansas and the New South, 1874–1929

Carl Moneyhon

• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN: 9781557284907
• eBook ISBN: 9781610755528
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This study is the first published in the Histories of Arkansas, a new series that will build a complete chronological history of the state from the colonial period through modern times. Under the general editorship of noted historian Elliott West, this series will include various thematic histories as well as the chronologically arranged core volumes.

In Arkansas and the New South, 1874–1929 Carl Moneyhon examines the struggle of Arkansas's people to enter the economic and social mainstreams of the nation in the years from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Great Depression. Economic changes brought about by development of the timber industry, exploitation of the rich coal fields in the western part of the state, discovery of petroleum, and building of manufacturing industries transformed social institutions and fostered a demographic shift from rural to urban settings.

Arkansans were notably successful in bringing the New South to their state, relying on individual enterprise and activist government as they integrated more fully into the national economy and society. But by 1929 persistent problems in the still dominant agricultural sector, the onset of the depression, and heightening social tensions arrested progress and dealt the state a major economic setback that would only be overcome in the years following World War II.

Expanding upon scholarly articles that merely touch on this era in Arkansas history and delving into pertinent primary sources, Moneyhon offers not only an overall look at the state but also an explanation for the singular path it took during these momentous years.

Arkansas Faces a New Era

In 1875 Arkansas emerged from fourteen years of turmoil when Congress voted to recognize Augustus H. Garland as the victor in the previous year’s disputed gubernatorial election. Garland’s assumption of power ended an upheaval marked by four years of war and nine years of Reconstruction. Many contemporary Arkansans believed that the Garland administration would establish a framework of political stability within which the state’s resources would be developed and its people would prosper once again. Some even dared to hope that a “New Arkansas” would emerge upon the ruins of the old. The formula for success included the restoration of traditional commercial agriculture to its prewar levels of production, the invigoration of the farm economy through product diversification, and ultimately, the development of a supplemental manufacturing sector in the state.

During the fifty-four years prior to the Great Depression, Arkansans tried desperately to improve conditions within the state. In their attempt to bring the state within the nation’s economic mainstream, they were like others across the region who envisioned an economic revolution that would produce what commonly was referred to as the “New South.” At times, economic conditions suggested progress was being made toward this goal. Social and cultural changes also indicated that circumstances within the state were being transformed. In the end, they failed to achieve the radical changes that many hoped for in 1875. Still, what was accomplished drastically altered the Arkansas that had existed at the end of Reconstruction. While not the world they envisioned, it was nonetheless new. To get there, Arkansans experienced some five decades marked by individual initiative and struggle, volatile economic transformation, and social change and conflict.

The optimism for the future held by many Arkansans, especially whites but also some African Americans, at the end of Reconstruction originated in many different circumstances. Since political turmoil appeared to have ended, many thought that returning stability would encourage economic development. In addition, by 1875 the economic panic that had engulfed the nation in 1873 appeared to have run its course. Investment capital was once again available and prices for wholesale goods, especially agricultural products, had stabilized. The state’s transportation system had been expanded with the advent of the railroads and the basic skeleton of a statewide system. All in all, the time seemed ripe for growth.

This new confidence infected individuals throughout the state, although it was articulated most vigorously and loudly by the members of Arkansas’s relatively small business community. These individuals constituted a complex social group. Men from the north and foreign immigrants worked with Southern- and Arkansas-born citizens. Former Confederate soldiers cooperated with their Federal counterparts. Capitalist, industrialist, and planter joined as New South idealists. Among the most vocal spokesmen for this cause were newspapermen such as William E. Woodruff Jr., who had guided the Arkansas Gazette immediately following the war until 1876, and James Mitchell, who afterward edited both the Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat.

Those Arkansans who wanted to be part of a New South, however, found their hopes challenged by the existence of a local economy and a society that resisted all change. Agriculture committed largely to the production of a single crop dominated the economy, consuming capital and limiting efforts at diversification. In rural communities, social institutions and government organized people to ensure the operations of the farm economy, but at the same time stood as obstacles to innovation. If a New South was to be created, Arkansans not only had to overcome economic barriers but the limits of society as well.

The economic system that defined Arkansas in 1875, upon which the basic wealth of the state rested, and that proved so resistant to change was tied almost totally to agriculture. In 1870, census estimates indicated that the value of farm products accounted for over 93 percent of the total value of farm and manufacturing goods produced in the state. Capital invested in farming represented over 97 percent of the total agricultural and manufacturing investment statewide. Most of the people at work in the state labored on farms or were part of the commercial community that provided services for the agricultural population. Over 97 percent of the state’s residents were considered rural.

By the 1870s the vast majority of Arkansas’s farms had a commercial purpose; few remained that aimed merely at subsistence. The commercial farm raised a product that could be sold for cash at market. The extent to which the individual devoted resources to a commercial product varied according to factors such as the fertility of the land and the accessibility of transportation, but the aim invariably was to make enough money to get ahead, and that required producing something that could be sold. In the search for cash income the Arkansas farmer faced limits. The product that had the greatest value throughout this period was cotton, which sold in national and international markets to the textile manufacturers of Europe and of the northeastern United States. Farmers who grew wheat and other grains, hay, fruits or vegetables; dairymen; or stockmen and herders who raised animals for sale had access to more limited local and regional markets, and in these both demand and price fluctuated greatly.

Geographic conditions played a major role in determining whether farmers turned to cotton or developed other marketable crops or products. Where land was fertile and transportation to markets available, cotton was the inevitable choice of most. Where land was poorer or where access to national markets was more difficult, farmers had to be content with producing whatever they could for the local market. Geographical lines tended to divide the state into two major agricultural systems—the lowlands and river valleys devoted to the culture of cotton, and the uplands devoted to other agricultural goods. A line drawn from the northeastern corner of the state to the southwestern corner was the rough boundary, although not a precise one, between these two systems.

Farms varied according to the crops produced, but they also differed by the method of operation employed, particularly regarding the nature of labor that was used. Two major types of units typified the state’s farms, both in the cotton and noncotton regions. The 1880 census indicated that the majority of farms within the state, almost 70 percent, were cultivated by the person who owned the land. The other type was operated by a tenant who worked someone else’s land. In 1880 the majority of tenant farms were in the lowlands, particularly in the old plantation areas of the state. The proportion of tenants to actual landowners ranged as high as 77 percent in Crittenden County, with other cotton counties ranging over 60 percent. Despite its concentration in the old plantation region, however, tenantry existed throughout the state.

Understanding the tenant system is to perceive how the existing agricultural order limited the creation of greater economic diversity within the state. Tenant contracts varied. There were some cash renters, leasing lands in 1880 that varied in price from $1.50 per acre in upland areas of Dallas County to $10 per acre for improved tracts in the Mississippi River Delta. The majority, however, farmed on shares, using a system that had emerged in the plantation regions of the state in the years immediately following the Civil War as a response to market forces and as a resolution to the differing demands of landowners and former slaves. Whatever the specific financial arrangement, the landowner wanting a crop that was easily marketed typically specified in the contract that the tenant would grow cotton. These arrangements usually called for the sharecropper to provide the labor while the renter provided the land, farm animals, equipment, seed, and perhaps even a house and furniture. When the crop was harvested, the landowner received as much as one-half of the cotton and one-third of the corn in payment. The tenant received the rest.

The financing of both owner- and tenant-operated farms rested on a system of credit known as the crop-lien, which also compelled farmers to devote their resources to producing a cash crop for market. Credit was critical to the farmer, since he had to buy supplies at the beginning of each year with no promise of an income until the crop was sold at market at the end of the season. Often lacking savings to make such purchases, the farmer invariably borrowed money to start the year. In the antebellum years, farmers had often put up the value of their slaves or their land as collateral. After the war, slaves no longer existed and the value of land had collapsed, so the only property of any value held by most farmers was their crop. As a result, they used it as security against the loan, giving the creditor a lien (or the legal right) to the crop insuring payment of the debt.

The source of credit for most tenants was the landowner, usually backed by merchants in the major market towns. Additional credit was often provided by country merchants, who sold goods and even advanced cash against the tenant’s share of the future crop (an arrangement known locally as the “truck system”). The country merchants were also the primary funding source for the small landowning farmer.

Creditors profited in this system by charging interest on the money they advanced and by securing the right to market the farmer’s crop. Their role in directing the local economy was large. Wishing to secure the loans with a readily marketable commodity, creditors generally insisted that the farmer plant cotton. For those who wanted to put more land in food crops or to experiment with new products in the hopes of diversifying, credit was not as easy to obtain. Thus, the merchants controlled, within limits, what crops the system produced and how much land was devoted to particular crops. Credit, as the local newspapers often complained, played a major part in swaying Arkansans to devote so much of their energy to the production of cotton as their principal cash crop.

Determining the profitability of this system for Arkansans in 1880 is difficult. The situation of each individual farmer varied greatly over the state at any time, but for most in 1880 cotton farming was a risky enterprise. In that year a family of five, with four members fully committed to working fields, could have cultivated about thirty-two acres of cotton. In a good year on average land, this would have produced a crop for market of about sixteen bales (eight thousand pounds), after 10 percent of the harvest had been used to pay for ginning. If they could have received the New Orleans or Memphis market price of twelve cents per pound, which most small operators could not, that would have brought in $960 at the end of the year. For a tenant, half of this would have to go to the landowner, leaving $480 for a year’s labor.

While farm income is relatively easy to calculate, the cost of farming and the cost of living that this income was measured against is more difficult to determine. The Department of Agriculture estimated the cost of growing a crop of eight thousand pounds of cotton in 1880 to range from $400 to $680. Department of Labor estimates of the cost of living for laboring families in 1900, which were roughly the same as in 1880, showed that a family of five in the South might spend as much as $292 on food alone during a year. Any other expenses, ranging from clothing to medicine, drove the cost of living further upward. Even though such measures are only approximations, the sum of the cost of production and the cost of living on a family cotton farm indicates how close income was to expense and how easily the landowning farm family could sink into debt. For the tenant family, the prospects were even more bleak.

With the promise of profits always so unpredictable, most farmers tried to ensure success by cutting expenses as much as possible. Thus, farmers were most resistant to consuming the goods that became available in stores in the late nineteenth century and tried, as best they could, to produce as much food and clothing on the farm as possible. If a farm could be self-sufficient, profits were more likely. Unfortunately for most, self-sufficiency was only an ideal. Some necessities could not be produced on the farm and had to be purchased: coffee, sugar, and salt were among these essentials. While many articles of clothing might be made at home, overalls and shoes were usually purchased. Blacksmith services, particularly repairs to equipment that could not be done on the farm, demanded money. Taxes were perhaps the most unavoidable cost that required the farmer to have cash. With the expansion of markets later in the century, temptations grew to purchase the many new goods that became available. A farm family had the potential for making money in 1880, but many variables had to fall into place for that to be accomplished. Without profits, farmers had few opportunities to change their lives.

In the end, agriculture was not just an economic system. It was a force that helped to define a way of life. Basic social and political institutions were closely connected to the agricultural economy and ensured the stability and order in the rural communities necessary for agrarian operations. For most of the 802,525 Arkansans who lived in the state in 1880, these institutions were central to their day-to-day existence. In that same year some 96 percent of the state’s residents were considered rural, living either in the countryside or in villages with less than twenty-five-hundred persons. Statistics showing population density, that is, how many people on average lived within a square mile, confirmed this rural character. In 1880 Arkansas had only 15.1 persons per square mile, compared with 20.7 in neighboring Louisiana, 24.4 in Mississippi, and 31.6 in Missouri.

For these rural people, day-to-day life centered primarily on activities taking place on isolated farms. While Arkansans might make contact with the wider world at a crossroads village with its country store or church, they seldom saw or participated in the life of the larger town. Farmers commonly went to the county seat or to a larger community only twice a year: first, to secure credit and procure supplies in the spring, and then to sell crops, pay taxes, and buy winter provisions in the fall. Except for the head of the household, such trips might be even less frequent. Life involved contact with few persons other than family members and the closest neighbors. For these people, three major social institutions became central to life—family, class, and race. Each of these helped define the lives of rural folks. They also sustained the status quo and served as checks to change.

Family, often extending beyond the nuclear unit and at times even including servants and laborers, was clearly the most important social organization. It not only filled conventional biological and educational functions, but the family was also the primary economic unit in the agricultural economy. Every member had an important role as a farm laborer and was essential to ensuring the economic survival of the whole.

The problems associated with farm life meant that survival in the countryside was difficult for single men or women. Economic success practically required marriage, and the process of getting ahead almost always began with finding a spouse and having children. A young man who wanted to be on his own, free of his parents, not only needed land but labor, and a wife and children gave him that start. As a result, marriages tended to take place early. It was not uncommon for boys to be married by the age of seventeen and girls by sixteen. Romance probably helped partners select one another, but necessity often drove them together. Working side by side, young couples often made their first crop together, taking the first step toward their own economic autonomy and establishing the basis for their future.

Economic need, plus high infant mortality rates, encouraged couples to have large families. Prior to the development of modern medicine, many children did not survive to adulthood, which threatened the continued existence of the family line. Equally important, however, was that children provided the principal labor force on many farms, and more children meant greater agricultural productivity. In 1880 the average size of an Arkansas family was 5.2 people, a figure that does not reflect the actual number of childbirths within a household. This was not unlike family size throughout the United States at this time, although more urbanized and industrialized communities began to experience the development of smaller families. In Massachusetts, for example, a family in 1880 averaged only 4.7 people.

Accepted social traditions plus the nature of farm work defined gender- and age-specific roles for various family members. The normal family was considered one in which the father played the dominant role in matters related to the outside world and the final judge in domestic concerns as well. Men traditionally directed the farm work, which involved an enormous commitment of energy. In 1875 on the farm of George Boddie, a fifty-four-year-old farmer located in the Ouachita River bottoms north of Camden, the agricultural year began with the spring planting of corn, wheat, and some vegetables in early April and cotton at the end of the month. By June, Boddie, his family, and what workers he could hire were chopping cotton, plowing the corn to get rid of weeds, and planting vegetables such as peas. In July he had to harvest the wheat, while the cotton still required plowing to clear it of weeds. By late August, Boddie was in the field picking cotton, a task that continued through early December, then commenced harvesting corn by mid-October, planting winter wheat in November, and slaughtering hogs in November and December. Around January 1876, Boddie ginned his cotton, hauled it to nearby Camden, and personally supervised its sale. In addition to these numerous tasks associated with the farm’s products, Boddie and his family built fences, repaired and built other structures, and attended to numerous jobs necessary to keep his farm running.

Women’s work ordinarily revolved around the domestic or household economy. Tasks such as food preparation, which in the nineteenth century still included slaughtering small animals; growing, gathering, and preserving fruits and vegetables; as well as the actual cooking of foods; consumed large amounts of time. A woman’s work even included tending to the garden and the chickens and pigs that would become the family’s food. Washing was an arduous task that involved carrying water, boiling clothes in a large kettle heated by firewood, hand rubbing each garment to get out dirt, and then rinsing the wash before hanging it out to dry. On most farms, women still were responsible for making their own soap. While more and more clothing was purchased during this era and weaving cloth had been practically abandoned, most households still produced their own socks and underwear and women frequently fashioned dresses out of store-bought fabric. All this, in addition to child rearing, was the province of the farm woman.

The boundaries of women’s lives extended outside of the household and into the surrounding neighborhood at times. When they could get away from home chores, neighborhood women assisted each other through many of life’s crises. They gathered to assist each other in childbirth, providing assistance and support at a time when doctors were seldom present for that event. Women often sat with the dying and then took charge of the burial rituals for the dead, offering not only a practical service but comfort for those left behind. In these ways women helped create a world apart from the men.

In the farm family, childhood as a special phase of life different from adulthood lasted for only a short time. By the age of five or six, children were expected to help their father or their mother in their tasks. Boys took care of milking cows, feeding animals, and ultimately went to the fields with their fathers. Girls learned homemaking skills and assisted in rearing younger children in the family. The time of childhood and play passed quickly, replaced by practical education. In the course of assisting with chores on the farm and in the household they learned the tasks appropriate to their sex and necessary for them to perform adult duties in their own family in the future. In addition to learning these critical skills, they also contributed to the family’s well-being through their work.

These patterns represented what was considered a normal role for family members, but actual situations required flexibility. Real families rarely resembled the ideal. The role of women was particularly susceptible to change. Injuries, illness, death, or even the inability of a husband to do what was expected often forced a wife to assume traditional male roles. At critical times during the year, particularly at harvest time or if a family did not have access to labor, women were expected to work in the fields alongside the men. A community’s definitions of the proper role for a man and a woman gave way quickly in the face of need.

Economic endeavors consumed much of the time of rural family members, but the family provided the framework for other activities as well. Much of the education of children took place within the household as children worked with their parents in carrying out farm tasks. For a young person who intended to remain on the farm, there was actually little need for the classical knowledge that formed the basis of traditional schools. Basic reading and writing skills and the ability to do simple arithmetic were important, but beyond these capabilities little formal education was necessary. Statistics for the 1880s and 1890s showed generally that in the countryside only about 50 percent of school-aged children ever went to school, a figure equally applicable to both whites and blacks. Entries in biographical dictionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries testify again and again to the success of the young farmers with only a minimum of formal education but the ability to learn from experience.

As in the case of education, the rural community’s entertainment and leisure activities were informal and often took place with...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 - Arkansas Faces a New Era
• 2 - Forces of Change
• 3 - Urban Development
• 4 - Plight of the Farmers
• 5 - Working Class Protest in the New Arkansas
• 6 - Turn-of-the-Century Prosperity and Challenges
• 7 - The Progressive Years
• 8 - The End of an Era
• Bibliographic Essay
• Index