Ozark Oligarchy

Arkansas is a "backward commonwealth" according to Arch-Lobbyist Joseph R. Grundy of Pennsylvania (TIME, Nov. 11). His criticism was economic, not social. Last week out of the Ozark back country trickled bits of news which illuminated the Grundy epithet in a new and startling manner.

To the St. James District of the Arkansan Ozarks last winter came Connie Franklin, a shell-shocked War veteran escaped from the Arkansas Hospital for Nervous Diseases. He worked as a farm hand, wooed 16-year-old Tillir Ruminer. One evening last March they set out along a lonely path to be married. Suddenly nine men fell upon them. Tillir the attackers raped. Franklin they emasculated, tossed to death on a flaming woodpile.

Tillir Ruminer dared not tell the sheriff what she knew. One of the attackers threatened to kill her, whipped her father and mother, carried away her brother as a hostage.

For months Sheriff Sam Johnson vainly quizzed terror-muted hillbillies. At last an intercepted note furnished him a clue with which he wormed needful testimony from the girl and others. Five men, arrested last week, were held in separate jails to protect them from mobbery.

The sheriff's investigation revealed a medieval oligarchy in northern Arkansas. Two intermarrying, farm-owning clans on Dry and Cagin Creeks hold baronial sway over their hilly domain. With hickory whips and squirrel rifles they drive indigent, illiterate citizens to farm work at serf's wages. Claiming seigniorial "first right" to all women of the community, the clansmen had exerted their claim on the Ruminer girl, killed Franklin for defying them.

Governor Harvey Parnell of Arkansas, scandalized at the revelations, promised to send investigators to the Ozarks. Said he: "If those hill barons enforce peonage, there are federal statutes to punish them."

As disproof of their "backwardness," Arkansans point to Senators Joseph Taylor Robinson, Democratic leader, and Thaddeus H. Caraway; also to Major 0. Lee Bodenhamer of Arkansas, Commander of the American Legion. No veteran himself, Governor Parnell worked for Bodenhamer's candidacy, helped to insure his election at Louisville (TIME, Oct. 14).

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