Return to First Page---ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 39, Summer 1980, p. 107
In the politically sensitive atmosphere of post-Reconstruction, political leaders could not agree on a course of action and ultimately resorted to submitting a Constitutional amendment to the state's voters calling for repudiation of the debt. Voters responded with an overwhelming favorable vote---allowing the state treasurer to default on a large portion of the indebtedness. But even though the state freed itself from this nagging issue, its credit rating received another major setback among East Coast bankers. Public officials were forced to operate state government for the balance of the nineteenth century with little or no outside credit (22).
Lacking the ability to borrow money, state leaders sought to attract capital by encouraging immigration from northern and eastern states as well as Europe. A Department of Immigration, organized in the summer 1868, and funded with a thousand-dollar appropriation, was charged the responsibility of recruiting new settlers (23).
The new bureau chief soon discovered that the state's image was a major liability in recruiting settlers. In an effort to counter the negative image, Commissioner James M. Lewis printed a pamphlet in both English and German, extolling the resources of the state and inviting new settlers to come. It was "confidently expected," he wrote, "that a short time will lapse until Arkansas, rivaling Missouri and Illinois, will stand among the first of the states of the Mississippi Valley (24)." Fifteen thousand copies of the booklet were distributed throughout the United States, England, and Germany, but to little avail. In his 1870 report Lewis complained that, while the fare from Europe to New York or New Orleans was the same, northwest states had agents in the principal seaboard cities, as well as Europe, and were more successful in attracting immigrants. He also noted that these states already had a large population of immigrants which also worked to their advantage. "It is evident," he reported, "that we cannot divert this tide of immigration to Arkansas and compete with these states without corresponding labor and expenditure (25)."
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- 22. For an extended discussion of Arkansas's debt problem, see William Clarence Evans, "Repudiation of
- the Arkansas Public Debt," reprinted in Waddy William Moore, ed., Arkansas in the Gilded Age, 1874-1900 (Little Rock, 1976), 131-141.
- 23. James M. Lewis, Report of the Office of the Commissioner of Immigration and State
- Lands (Little Rock, 1870), 293.
- 24. Ibid., 295.
- 25. Ibid., 296.
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