A state rebounds
By 1960, the state was pretty much at rock bottom. Arkansans had been dealing with a string of natural and man-made disasters that dated back to the Great Flood of 1927.
That flood (Arkansas had almost twice as much farmland under water as Louisiana and Mississippi combined) was described by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover as “America’s greatest peacetime disaster.”
Hoover, a Republican who would go on to defeat Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith the next year, said that a disaster “felt by Arkansas farmers, planters and residents of river lowlands was of epic proportions.”
The flood was followed by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the Great Drought of 1930-31 and another big flood in 1937.
The drought cut farm income by 62 percent in a state where the economy was dominated by agriculture.
Historian Michael Dougan of Arkansas State University describes the Great Depression in Arkansas this way: “Many small-town banks could not cope, and a wave of closures followed. The biggest hit was taken by Aloysius Burton Banks, who had created a statewide chain of more than 50 banks. The state’s leading financier of the 1920s went to jail while many towns and counties were left virtually without a credit system or even a circulating currency. . . .
The hit taken by Arkansas industries would have received more attention had there been more industries. The state had 300,000 wage earners in
1929. The Depression cut that in half, and wages fell from almost $40 million in 1929 to $15 million in 1933.”
Population growth slowed. Arkansas’ population only increased from 1,752,204 in 1920 to 1,949,387 in 1940. After World War II, the rapid mechanization of agriculture led to tens of thousands of sharecroppers and tenant farmers leaving the state. A number of them headed to jobs in manufacturing plants in the upper Midwest.
The state bled population for 20 years. By the 1960 census, the population was down to 1,786,272. Arkansas went from seven districts in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 82nd Congress of 1951-53 to just four congressional districts by the 88th Congress of 1963-65.
Arkansas’ economic woes were exacerbated by the negative media coverage of the Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis of 1957 and the closing of all public schools in the capital city in 1958-59.
“As machines replaced people, depopulation, often up to 90 percent, occurred in the plantation areas,” Dougan writes. “The small towns dependent on the cotton trade faded. Often, the efforts of residents to lure industry were frustrated by landowners who opposed change for fear that industries would pay competitive wages and thus lure away their workers. The Delta started dying, a process that continued into the 21st century. The upper Delta counties, which were less a part of the plantation system, fared better. Jonesboro had what’s now Arkansas State University and low electricity rates from its municipally owned utility. Paragould also had locally owned power. In the early 1950s, many shoe and textile factories moved to the region, providing low-paying jobs, predominately for women.”
Arkansas began gaining population again in the 1960s, and that growth continues to this day. The state’s population topped 3 million in 2017. According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, Arkansas’ population grew from about 2,990,000 residents in 2016 to 3,003,000 in 2017. Year-end estimates released Dec. 19 show that the state added another 11,000 residents in 2018. Arkansas has surpassed Mississippi, which has 2,986,530 residents. Since 2010, Arkansas has had a 3.4 percent population increase. Neighboring Louisiana (10,840) and Mississippi (3,133) both lost residents in 2018.
What led to the change in Arkansas’ trajectory? This state’s history is complex, but I can put my finger on four major things.
The first was the fact that seniority gave Arkansas a strong congressional delegation from the 1960s into the 1970s. Three of the most powerful committees in Congress were chaired by Arkansans at one point—Sen. John L. McClellan was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. J. William Fulbright chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Rep. Wilbur D. Mills headed the House Ways and Means Committee.
It was an era when veteran members of Congress could bring home the bacon, and Arkansas’ congressional delegation did just that. Witness the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which at the time it was completed was the most expensive civil engineering project in the history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Witness the many Corps impoundments across the state—Bull Shoals, Beaver, Norfork, Greers Ferry, Ouachita, Greeson, DeGray, Millwood, Blue Mountain, Nimrod, De Queen, Dierks, Gillham and others—that not only controlled flooding and provided electricity but also turned poor rural areas into recreational centers.
The second factor is what now amounts to a 52-year run of pragmatic governors. Beginning with the election of Winthrop Rockefeller in 1966, the state has had nine governors. Five of them (Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, Bill Clinton, Jim Guy Tucker and Mike Beebe) have been Democrats. Four of them (Rockefeller, Frank White, Mike Huckabee and Asa Hutchinson) have been Republicans. None of them governed from the far left or far right sides of the political spectrum. They’ve been pragmatists, willing to cut deals with the Legislature in order to prevent the type of stalemates that have become the norm in Washington.
The third factor was an amazing group of entrepreneurs (think Sam Walton of Walmart, J.B. Hunt of J.B. Hunt Transport, Don Tyson of Tyson Foods, William T. Dillard of Dillard’s Inc. and Charles Murphy of Murphy Oil Corp.) that built nationally known companies and kept their headquarters in Arkansas, providing the state with thousands of jobs.
The fourth factor was one that I originally folded in with the entrepreneurs. I broke it out separately when several business leaders convinced me that two natives of Prattsville in the pine woods of Grant County gave Arkansas something that states of similar size never had. Brothers Witt and Jack Stephens built Stephens Inc. of Little Rock into one of the nation’s largest brokerage firms. They had the capital and Wall Street knowledge to take the entrepreneurs’ ideas to the next level.
Walmart, Tyson Foods, Dillard’s and Alltel were among the companies the brothers invested in, advised or took public through the years. After Stephens Inc. helped underwrite the initial public offering of Walmart in 1970, Jack Stephens served on the Walmart board for almost 15 years.