The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [82]
Jacob Ingledew was not a great governor, but he was a good one. His administration began without a dollar in the treasury, yet by the end of his term every cent of expenses had been paid, with a surplus of $270,000 in the vaults. His strong suit was a near-genius for raising revenue. He taxed everything that could be taxed, and many things that could not. He was the inventor of highway taxes: for the upkeeping of streets and roadways the provost-marshal was ordered to collect a highway tax of two weeks’ labor or fifty dollars from every citizen between the ages of eighteen and fifty years, actual government employees excepted. Most people preferred working for the government at low wages to gain this exemption, and there was no dearth of cheap government labor. At one time, Jacob had working at the governor’s mansion alone three majordomos, six butlers, seven coachmen, nine maids, eleven cooks, thirteen valets, and thirty-two yardmen. The grounds were immaculate, but the yardmen began fighting among themselves with their shears and spades, and Sarah sighed.
Jacob also managed, adequately if not adroitly, the orchestration of the three separate branches of government. It has been pointed out (or if it hasn’t, it has been now) that the three branches of government may be compared to the three levels of personality as seen by Freud: the legislative body is the id, the executive body is the ego, and the judicial body is the superego. Jacob got along splendidly with his legislature, who were for the most part simple country men like himself, some of them uncouth, many of them illiterate, all of them loud and hard-drinking and tobacco-chewing. Superciliously the Little Rock Daily Republican observed that Jacob’s legislature was composed of “at least a few worthies who, we may assure our readers, are able to sign their names without running out their tongues or distorting their countenances in the effort, and thus acquit themselves handily.” The judiciary branch, on the other hand, was composed mainly of city men, or citified men, sedate, grave, and disapproving. They disapproved of most of Jacob’s taxes, declaring the taxes unconstitutional.
Jacob did not get along very well at all with his supreme court. He did not like city men to begin with, as we have seen. City men who were also justices were as intolerable to him as our superegos are to our egos. But the superego, I think, is gullible, and Jacob gulled his justices. He would invite them into his office, and take a gallon stone jug from a barrel filled with straw, and offer them “whiskey so good you kin smell the feet of the boys who plowed the corn.” The justices would sniff their noses and at first decline, but he would urge his real mountain dew upon them and, while they became progressively intoxicated, he would tell them tall tales, wild stories, fish stories, which they believed. He would tell them of having caught a four-hundred-pound catfish which he hadn’t been able to drag out of the water. “Yes,” one of the justices would remark, “I suppose it’s difficult to land those big ones.” Jacob would explain how he tickled the catfish’s whiskers, and stroked its head, causing it to leap out of the water and follow him around like a dog. The justices would nod, declaring that they had heard that catfish are easily tamed. Jacob would say, “I jist throwed a bridle on her, and rid her plumb home.” When none of