In the November 1926 issue of Dixie Magazine, a short-lived publication based in Little Rock that was "Devoted to the Development and Upbuilding of the South," Harvey C. Couch, president of Arkansas Power and Light, claimed that "Arkansas and states adjacent have entered an era of industrial development that will make of this section the industrial center of the United States."

Couch noted that Arkansas offered significant resources in cotton, hardwood timber, oil (the development around Smackover having just taken off), natural gas, and "the greatest variety of minerals and crops of any section of the country."

But Couch lamented that few of Arkansas' natural resources were manufactured into finished goods here in the state: "And we will not benefit as we should until we have factories in Arkansas to convert our raw materials into finished goods, and thereby bring to our state and our communities the pay rolls and the increased wealth from the value added to the raw materials by manufacture."

Industrializing Arkansas, and moving it away from a strict dependency upon its agricultural sector, never quite happened to the extent that Harvey Couch dreamed, in part due to the shortsightedness of local industrialists and in part due to national and international developments.

Regarding the former, much of Arkansas' timber industry was strictly cut-and-run. This practice so denuded large parts of Arkansas as to leave them fit for little at all. R.E. Lee Wilson in northeastern Arkansas bought a lot of cut-over land that was considered useless and fashioned some large-scale cotton plantations out of them. When Hernando de Soto entered Arkansas in the 16th century, the Delta region was covered in trees; now, it's hard to imagine it as something other than flat and treeless.

It wasn't just eastern Arkansas. In the Ouachita Mountains, the Caddo River Lumber Company also succumbed to unsustainable practices, clearing out places and

moving their sawmills elsewhere. Much of the Ouachita National Forest was created from old timber land that had been cut over ruthlessly, leaving little behind.

Some companies did behave with an eye toward a longer future, such as the Dierks lumber company, which worked to renew the forests they cut. And there were efforts to develop local industries using local products, as with Turney Wood Products in Harrison, which manufactured church furniture in the mid-20th century using hardwood from the Ozarks, or Fulbright Industries (later Fulbright Wood Products) in Fayetteville, but both of these companies overextended themselves.

However, local shortsightedness was not the only........

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