VOLUME FIVE NEWPORT, ARKANSAS, JUNE, 1905 SOUVENIR NUMBER
444444444444AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
T▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼¥▼▼▼▼▼▼
| INTRODUCTORY j
AS a birthday number in holiday attire, having
L adopted the more comely style of the magazine
for this anniversary event, The Independent
greets the friends and patrons, who have made this
edition possible, and the stranger who would seek
a new home in the sunny southland among a hos
pitable and progressive people.
April 22, 1901, was our natal day, and the com
mencement of our fifth year is marked by this mile
stone, set like other monuments, a little late. May
it serve to correctly and adequately portray the re
sources of our section, the advantages of our city,
the industry of our people, and be the means of
helping to turn the tide of immigration and direct
the eyes of capital toward a comparatively un
developed wealth of natural resources. Such is the
no mean purpose of this labor and the hope of the
editor.
Though the brilliance of a Southern spring-time,
the rhapsodic inspiration of the season, might urge
on the pencil to overdrawn description, here there
is no call for such exaggeration as is frequently
resorted to, and it shall be our constant endeavor:
throughout this edition to be faithful to fact. It
may be the bright side of things, of-prospects and
of hopes, but optimism is healthful. It breeds en
ergy and ambition that strive tor and accomplish the
reward it promises—success. Our citizenship are an
optimistic people; the bounty of a rich soil, the easi
ness of a livelihood have made them so, and thus it
is in nowise strange that their confidence in the
ultimate realization of our crimson future is supreme.
In the period of five years this paper has chron
icled the progress of our development, no boom of
this city, no rush of home-seekers into our county
has been recorded, nevertheless the improvements
and advancement of each year have been marked.
They are manifest in cleared timber lands, now
planted in cotton and corn, in more improved farms,
and in Newport, in handsome brick buildings, paved
streets and better walks. Of these accomplishments
would we tell, of the splendid opportunities yet open
would we speak, that the magnificence of our un
rolling wealth may be realized.
The compiling of this magazine has been an ardu
ous task; the printing and distribution of a book of
7,000 copies over states of the North and East have
exhausted the direct profits, yet there is generous
payment in the belief of its future usefulness to in
duce the immigrant to cast his lot with us and to
show the investor why this is a desirable field. For
the support of the good people of this city, county
and section, who have made possible the edition,
The Independent is grateful and to them is dedi
cated the measure of its success.
PEW ../rr,... ....-..
fARKANSAS f
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦*
RIDICULE is an effective weapon when
wielded by ingenious and prolific
writers such as Opie Reed and a
score of others less talented, who have con
tributed most liberally to the “news butch’s”
best selling wares and the marts of popular
priced literature. And while these authors
were feeding the credulity and ignorance
of an outside world, the baneful effect of
their writings was not apparently lessened
by the mythical foundation and flagrant dis
tortion of their misrepresentations.
Arkansas Cotton-Picking Scene—Takes the Whole Family.
BUSINESS BUILDINGS.
1—Creighton Hotel. , , 2—Bank of Newport. 3—Chastain Building.
4—Hotel Hazel Block. 5—Wolff-Goldman Merc. Co.
. The Arkansan has been, as a rule, an easy-going individual. A
living he found was easily made here and consequently not to be
worried about. It was not sloth which led him to place a higher
value upon ease, comfort and pleasure than dollar-making, but
rather an independence from the hard labor required in more rigor
ous climes. Smiling skies and copious rains brought forth in
abundance from a rich mother earth the South’s great Sipple along
with the products of Northern prairies. What cared the native of
such an inheritance for the amusing slanders of an outside world?
And even if he had, was il not preposterous in his conception that
others should accept such jokes as facts and form opinions that
were prejudiced by anecdotes of hoary age, rejuvenated under
Ancansas titles, given life by fictitious application to our people
and garnished with pretty imagery and word paintings of nature's
wealth in this clime?
Kansas suffered for supposed erratic and notionate ideas; Mis
souri became the rendezvous of train robbers, the earlier “holer
m-the-wall, by reason of the James boys, but these misconceived
ideas of the East and North have been rudely shocked in an
awakening era by contact with their people, and thus it is with
Arkansas. The story of the “Arkansaw Traveler” is revered only
as..^“e yarn JtLs author intended and to this statement others are now
willing to subscribe and make amends for the prejudice of former
years.
* K
lhese injurious impressions have gradually given away before an
intermingling of our people, just as sectional barriers have been
cast aside by business and social intercourse, and to the credit and
praise of the recent St. Louis Exposition let it be said, without
fear of contrad’ction, that the State of Arkansas did much to remove
these illusions by a creditable exhibit.
One of the brightest stars acquired by Old Gloiy in the Louisiana
purchase, it contributed to that promise foreseen by Napoleon when
he thought by enriching Uncle Sam to one day humble the pride
of John Bull. The timber of her forests, the cotton and com of her
fertile lowlands, the fruits of her orchard hills, the hidden treasures,
of her recesses, all herald the development that is in store and invite
the stranger to make his home with us and “we will do him good”
Arkansas is a commonwealth within herself. Fenced about from
intercourse with the world, her resources are self-sustaining. All
grains are indigenous* to her soil; likewise are the rewards of her
chmaterftfilinificent in horticulture; the severity of Northern winters
is sufficiently removed to make cotton a staple product. In her
mountains stre monuments of natural granite, from the secret treas
ure houses of her mines are zinc, coal and other things needful to
man. Build this wall of isolation, necessity would produce the mills
and the raw material of our fields and mines would call forth the
hum of manufacturing enterprises.
Many home-seekers from the North make the climate of a section
their first concern. They do not hesitate to say that one of their
objects in conrng south is to find more moderate winters, where