Arkansas Traveler, 1953

In Arkansas' state senate in the 1870s, according to legend, Democrat James K. Jones thundered a reply to a proposal to change the pronunciation of his state to make it rhyme with Kansas. "Change the name of Arkansas?" boomed he. "Never!" No serious attempt has been made since then to tinker with the name of Arkansas; but one man has tried--with notable success--to change its face. He is a bustling Baptist named C. (for Coulter) Hamilton Moses, chairman of Arkansas Power & Light Co., who has been called the "Billy Sunday of Business." In the past ten years, Industrial Evangelist Moses has been the prime mover in a program to lure industry to his state.

Last week, in Little Rock's Hotel Marion, "Ham" Moses threw a steak dinner for some 700 top Arkansans to report on progress and exhort his guests to still greater accomplishments. Arms waving, tangled grey hair falling over his eyes, Ham Moses ticked off some impressive statistics on Arkansas' ten-year growth:

P: Per-capita income up 225%, v. a 150% rise for the nation as a whole.

P: Bank deposits up 281%, v. a national gain of 131%.

P: Annual volume of manufacturing up 451%, v. 286% for the entire U.S.

Blunt Answer. Part of Arkansas' economic growth was a natural result of the postwar boom. But a great deal of it was due to the energy of Ham Moses and the Arkansas Economic Council and community development program which he inspired. Until recently, Arkansas was especially celebrated as a butt for bad jokes by Northerners. In 1944, Ham Moses went to New York to sell $35 million worth of Arkansas Power & Light bonds, was laughed out of many a Wall Street office. He finally sold the bonds, but, he said: "Everybody thought we were just a state of hillbillies and swampers." When Arkansas tried to lure new industry to one small town, it got a blunt answer from a Detroit industrialist: "The main thing the town is proud of is that it was the home of six Confederate generals. You don't have adequate schools, recreational facilities, and even the streets and alleys are bad."

Realizing that as Arkansas went, so went his power company, Ham Moses organized the economic council, a private organization, and got the state to set up a similar body. The two groups started helping communities help themselves, conducted "foreign" capitalists on tours of the state to show its progress. Nondrinking, nonsmoking Ham Moses became a modern-day Arkansas traveler, ran some of the tours himself in his chauffeur-driven Chrysler, which has a built-in ice box always stocked with Coca-Cola.

Cattle & Metals. Whenever a town wanted to convert such a thing as a surplus military airport into an industrial site, or reorganize its chamber of commerce, or put up a building for a Northern industry, Ham Moses was there with the know-how--and often some Arkansas Power & Light funds. By such tactics, Arkansas snagged $854 million in new plants since World War II, including light metals, petrochemicals, and a growing timber and cattle business.

On the side, Ham Moses also battled public power to a standstill in Arkansas. In one skirmish, when Jackson County was to vote on establishment of a countywide power cooperative, Moses mobilized a force of 50 A.P.L. salesmen, gave them a two-day course in the company's side of the argument, and sent them to spread the gospel among cotton pickers and housewives. Moses himself did two-hour daily stints on the radio. A.P.L. won the fight by better than four to one.

Just as planned, Moses' hustle & bustle paid off for A.P.L. as well as Arkansas, and the utility men of neighboring states are now copying Moses' methods. The company's generating capacity has tripled since the war, its net has risen more than 100% to $6,270,951; this year alone it is installing 2 1/2 times more capacity than it owned in 1946. But Moses thinks there is still plenty of work to be done; for all the progress, Arkansas lost 2% in population from 1940 to 1950, still has 1,250,000 acres of idle farm land. Says Ham Moses: "We've got to out-plan, out-think and outwork all the other states if we are to maintain the pace of industrial growth we've set in the past decade."

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