Excerpt from Address of Honorable Charles H. Brough, Governor of Arkansas, at Annual Meeting, Missouri Bar Association, at Saint Louis, September 20th, 1918

I once heard your State described by one of your distinguished Governors, Governor Herbert Hadley, as the land of the big red apple, the little red hen and the much-read Bible; and I want to tell you one thing in connection with that about my own State. You have heard Arkansas referred to as the land of the Arkansaw Traveler, with his coonskin cap, coming to the fork of the road, not knowing which fork to take. My friends, I just want to remind you that we are living in altogether a different State now; in a State that really lives up to the fact that she is especially favored of the Lord in being the only State in the Union mentioned in the Bible - for we read in that Book of Genesis that Noah looked out of the ark and saw. (laughter and applause.) Our economic resources are limitless, and we could build a Chinese Tartary wall around our State and every one of our people be practically independent of the outside world. Our apples have captured the first prize at the last six International Expositions, and the largest apple ever placed on exhibition in the world was an apple raised near Sulphur Springs in Benton County, which weighed 29% ounces. The soft blushes of our famous Elberta peaches nestle in the snow-white virginity of our fields of cotton, and the only solid carload of peaches that was ever shipped abroad was sent to London some three years ago by Mr. Bert Johnson, an Arkansas truck-grower, living at Highland, in Pike County. With a cotton yield of approx imately bales, we have advanced within the past five years from seventh place to third place as a cotton-producing State. Our corn and other cereal acreage this year, under the inspiration of the Profitable Farming Movement, has increased fully 35 per cent, and our rice crop for 1918 will approximate bushels. We have the largest acreage yield of rice in the world on the beautiful prairie stretching from Little Rock to Memphis. Eighteen of our counties have valuable deposits of semi-anthracite coal, and the smokeless coal now used by the United States in Saline County. We rank first in the production of ash, cottonwood and red gum; third in the pro duction of hickory and oak, and fifth in the production of yellow pine in the United States. We have the only diamond mine on the western hemisphere in Pike County, a mile and a half from Murfreesboro, from which over genuine diamonds have already been taken. Our lead and zinc mines in northwest Arkansas are beginning to rival the famous mines in Joplin, Mo. Montgomery County, Arkansas, could furnish you all the slate that you need to roof every house in your great city.

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