Poor poor pitiful me

Well, actually poor Arkansas actually, but I can never resist a Warren Zevon song*

I was talking to Ray when he visited last weekend, and one thing he observed was 'I don't understand why Arkansas is so poor**, it's been settled a long time (by midwest standards anyway), it's great land, copiously endowed with mineral wealth and a pleasant climate. We didnt really come to a conclusion over it at the time, and I was talking to Cat about it this morning.

She thought that the deepseated racism might be the cause, and I'm sure that that is part of it, but after a bit of consideration and comparison, I think it may have stemmed from a different cause, namely the railroads.

Back before the Civil War, the railroad companies drove two enormous lines across the country to the west, one in the north and one in the south, completely missing Arkansas in both cases. Each of them of course had spur lines, so instead of classic ribbon-development, the railroad lines spurred a broader swathe of progress, more like 2 wide belts. Both of them still missed Arkansas.

Of course, without easy access to markets, manufacturing was reluctant to move here, and farming remained local - thus smaller, less efficient, and less prosperous. Without the expanding tax base to fund improvements, the state infrastructure developed more slowly, also discouraging industry.

Just to reinforce that, as education is funded at a local (county) level, that means Arkansas remained (and remains) more poorly educated, which again discourages industry moving here, as they depend to some extent on an educated workforce: and also discourages innovation and invention, plus creating an urban drift for the smarter, getting out of Arkansas to places offering more opportunity (something that is a bit of a major thematic theme in America, of course).

I have no real idea if this is correct, but gosh! it sure is a pretty theory :)
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Update: Ray has observed (to good effect):

The Mississippi river is a huge artery of transportation and yet Arkansas seems to have not benefited from it. Education is locally financed as you say, yet Arkansas seems to have missed out in the old days when public education (as known in America) was more basic. Not so much a money issue I think as a culture issue.

My fatuous opinion is that Arkansas is a paternalistic society, not a yeoman society.



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* Who couldn't love the writer of Werewolves of London, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, and the immortal lines - "Send lawyers, guns, and money, the shit has hit the fan"
** And it really is poor, by American standards. It's generally in a neck&neck race with Mississippi and sometimes Alabama for lowest income, education, desirability, you name it: whatever it is, those three are always pretty much on the bottom of the pile. But Arkansas is a much nicer climate and place to live than the other two (especially before the advent of air conditioning).