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...
Source: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2026/sep/06/harvey-couch-versus-the-data-centers/
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