George Washington Hays

George Washington Hays (23 September 1863--15 September 1927) was born in Camden, Arkansas. He attended public schools in Camden and worked as a farmer. Hays studied law at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

Hays was probate and county judge for Ouachita County, Arkansas between 1900 and 1905. Hays served as a judge with the 13th Circuit Court from 1906 to 1913.

When Governor Joseph Taylor Robinson resigned in 1913, a special election was held and Hays was elected governor. His administration focused on road improvement and enactment of a statewide prohibition law. The Hays administration also enacted a child labor law and completed construction of the new state capitol building. Hays won reelection in a contested election in 1914.

Hays returned to private law practice after his term. George Washington Hays died in Little Rock, Arkansas of influenza and pneumonia and is buried in Camden, Arkansas.

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Arkansas' gross domestic product for 2005 was $87 billion. Its per capita household median income (in current dollars) for 2004 was $35,295, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The state's agriculture outputs are poultry and eggs, soybeans, sorghum, cattle, cotton, rice, hogs, and milk. Its industrial outputs are food processing, electric equipment, fabricated metal products, machinery, paper products, bromine, and vanadium.

Several global companies are headquartered in the northwest corner of Arkansas, including Wal-Mart (the world's largest public corporation by revenue in 2007), J.B. Hunt and Tyson Foods. This area of the state has experienced an economic boom since the 1970s as a result.

In recent years, automobile parts manufacturers have opened factories in eastern Arkansas to support auto plants in other states. Additionally, the city of Conway is the site of a school bus factory.

Tourism is also very important to the Arkansas economy; the official state nickname "The Natural State" was originally created (as "Arkansas Is A Natural") for state tourism advertising in the 1970s, and is still regularly used to this day.

Prohibition was an important force in state and local politics from the 1840s through the 1930s. The political forces involved were ethnoreligious in character, as demonstrated by numerous historical studies. Prohibition was demanded by the "dries" -- primarily pietistic Protestant denominations, especially the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Congregationalists, Quakers, and Scandinavian Lutherans. They identified saloons as politically corrupt and drinking as a personal sin. They were opposed by the "wets" -- primarily liturgical Protestants (Episcopalians, German Lutherans) and Roman Catholics, who denounced the idea that the government should define morality. Even in the wet stronghold of New York City there was an active prohibition movement, led by Norwegian church groups and African-American labor activists who believed that Prohibition would benefit workers, especially African-Americans. Tea merchants and soda fountain manufacturers generally supported Prohibition, thinking a ban on alcohol would increase sales of their products.

Camden is the county seat of Ouachita County in south Arkansas, United States. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 12,024. The city was hard hit economically earlier in the new century by the closing of the longtime International Paper Company mill.

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Camden, Arkansas

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