Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
There is a popular notion that Arkansas is a “bowie-knife” State, a
lawless and an ignorant State. I shared this before I went there. I
cannot disprove the ignorance of the country districts. As I said, more
money is needed to make the public-school system effective. But in
its general aspect the State is as orderly and moral as any. The laws
against carrying concealed weapons are strict, and are enforced.. It is
a fairly temperate State. Under the high license and local option laws,
prohibition prevails in two-thirds of the State, and the popular vote
is strictly enforced. In forty-eight of the seventy-five counties no
license is granted, in other counties only a single town votes license,
and in many of the remaining counties many towns refuse it. In five
counties only is liquor perfectly free. A special law prohibits
liquor-selling within five miles of a college; within three miles of a
church or school, a majority of the adult inhabitants can prohibit it.
With regard to liquor-selling, woman suffrage practically exists. The
law says that on petition of a majority of the adult population in any
district the county judge must refuse license. The women, therefore,
without going into politics, sign the petitions and create prohibition.
The street-cars and railways make no discrimination as to color of
passengers. Everywhere I went I noticed that the intercourse between the
two races was friendly. There is much good land on the railway between
Little Rock and Arkansas City, heavily timbered, especially with the
clean-boled, stately gum-trees. At Pine Bluff, which has a population
of 5000, there is a good colored Normal School, and the town has many
prosperous negroes, who support a racetrack of their own, and keep up a
county fair. I was told that the most enterprising man in the place, the
largest street-railway owner, is black as a coal. Farther down the road
the country is not so good, the houses are mostly poor shanties, and
the population, largely colored, appears to be of a shiftless
character. Arkansas City itself, low-lying on the Mississippi, has a bad
reputation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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