OLD NEWS

OLD NEWS: How about that newfangled 'excess' tax that’s going to fix the roads?

This ad appeared in the March 3, 1919, Arkansas Gazette. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
This ad appeared in the March 3, 1919, Arkansas Gazette. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

Terms in 1919 were favorable for humor today.

Case in point, newspaper advertisements that ranked breakfast cereal among the cardinal joys of peace. After the supreme test of patriotism that was the Great War, Americans could eat all the Shredded Wheat they wanted to eat.

In other wordy news from 1919, the word "excise" had a little trouble entering general use.

The Arkansas Legislature was considering levying new taxes to pay for roads. Then as now, the term used was "road improvements," but the roads in question were wagon ruts. Road building was needed.

Since 1907, counties had authority to create local road-improvement districts, if a critical mass of landowners along a proposed route wanted a road. These local districts sometimes did a good job raising money and finding labor to create a clear stretch of good gravel. But most of these roads ended at the county line.

Consider Jefferson County's once famous Dollarway Road (search arkansaspreservation.com for "dollarway" and download the PDF "Arkansas Highway History and Architecture, 1910-1965"). "Dollarway" was a newfangled roadbed made of poured concrete topped by a layer of coal tar.

In 1914, the 23-mile Dollarway Road became the nation's longest stretch of continuous concrete. It began near Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff and, to avoid leaving its district, zipped along the borders of Jefferson and Grant counties to intersect with Pulaski County and the old Pine Bluff and Little Rock wagon road. It was so wonderful that drivers could be ticketed for speeding.

Despite that shining success, local districts had little oversight, and no one coordinated where roads began or ended or how they were made — or whether the money was used to make them.

In 1919, with the shortcomings of local districts manifest, legislators were challenged by a novel proposal to pay for state-coordinated roads. Here's the March 1, 1919, Arkansas Gazette:

The Senate yesterday passed the Hester bill, providing for a system of highways in the state, although there was some objection to the measure.

Suggested by Sen. Ezra Hester of Sebastian County, this doomed idea called for the state highway commission to supervise construction of four or five highways — funded by a $15 excise tax on motor-driven vehicles. This annual tax was to be paid on top of the general statewide automobile tax.

After amendments, filibusters and furious debates over back pay for the commission's lawyer, only 32 counties and two local districts would be collecting the excise tax. But there were other provisions and also other bills, and local districts went on forming and failing until by 1921, 500 existed. Add in some corruption, and the cause of reliable roads stalled until the mid '20s, when the U.S. Congress decided to withhold construction funds from states without a central coordinating agency.

All of that to say this one little funny thing: Here's how the Gazette explained the new 1919 idea for car taxes: "Plans Excess Tax on Automobiles for Construction of State Highways."

Here's the paper on March 1, quoting Sen. R.C. Stewart, an opponent of the Hester bill. (For a good time, try reading the word aloud as "aw-toe-MO-bile.")

He said the excess tax on automobiles would not meet with favor in many portions of the state. In some counties, he said, the road would be constructed through a small portion of the county, and yet all owners of automobiles would have to pay the excess automobile tax. He said a small excess tax might be imposed, instead of the $15 tax, which might meet with little or no objection.

An excess tax on autos to pay for roads. What a novel concept.

An ad in the March 2, 1919, Arkansas Gazette for the optical department at Albert Pfeifer & Bro., 406 Main St., berated women who didn't want to wear glasses, saying that the same woman who rejects the glasses that would lend her placid dignity willingly wore "dreadful hats — fit for a cannibal chief.”
An ad in the March 2, 1919, Arkansas Gazette for the optical department at Albert Pfeifer & Bro., 406 Main St., berated women who didn't want to wear glasses, saying that the same woman who rejects the glasses that would lend her placid dignity willingly wore "dreadful hats — fit for a cannibal chief.”

LADIES WHO SIT

A hundred years ago today, the Gazette quoted Circuit Court Judge Paul Little's instructions to a newly empanelled Grand Jury at Fort Smith. First, he disparaged the murkiness of the state's new "bone-dry" law, which had taken effect Feb. 17 with the intention of plugging leaks in earlier anti-liquor laws.

He also urged jurors to investigate the minimum wage law, to ensure that every manufacturing industry protected women and child wage earners. He urged investigation of the compulsory education law, too. And then:

He also urged the investigation of the seats provided for women in stores ...

Women were sitting in stores? What could that mean? The newspaper archives failed to cough up scandals involving rickety seats for ladies or nefarious goings-on involving store sitters, or anything about chairs in stores.

But outside the archives, I found pop-history pieces suggesting that, before the rise of department stores at the end of the 19th century, it wasn't respectable for women to hang out in public. Department store tea rooms and rest areas welcomed them in safe comfort — Macy's in New York could seat more than 2,000. Suddenly women were lingering and spending their days outside their homes.

Whatever his concern, an awful fate awaited Judge Little in fall 1919. But we can sit on that old news until October.

Email:

cstorey@arkansasonline.com

ActiveStyle on 03/04/2019

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