A Look at the 1930s
through Newspaper Advertisements
By Jacque Nicholson
Hartshorne
is home to The Hartshorne Sun, the
oldest newspaper in Pittsburg County and tenth oldest paper in the state of
Oklahoma. When The Sun published its
first issue in February 1895 under the editorship of B. Wilson Edgell,
Hartshorne was a fledgling coal mining town.
Within
its first decade The Sun had five
editors, and Hartshorne became a coal mining boom town and home to a diverse
group of immigrants. T.W. Hunter was editing The Sun when the Oklahoma and Indian Territories combined to become
the State of Oklahoma in 1907.
Coal
was king and the future of Hartshorne looked bright. According to an article in
a 1923 issue of The Sun, "That
the coal crop of Pittsburg County is annually bringing in and distributing to
the miners, merchants and coal producers of Pittsburg County, the enormous sum
of six and a half million dollars is a fact disclosed by a report just prepared
by J.G. Peterbaugh, president of the McAlester Fuel Company."
Hunter
left the paper in 1907, but returned as editor from 1913 through 1923. During
those ten years Hartshorne suffered, along with the rest of America, through
a World War, a deadly influenza epidemic, and Prohibition. But Hartshorne
was also facing an economic crisis with the decline of its major industry.
Shortly after World War I diesel fuel began to replace coal and slowly, but
steadily, more and more miners found themselves without work.
Then
in 1929, on Black Tuesday, the stock market crashed and millions of Americans
would spend the next ten years surviving through the hard, desperate times of
the 1930s. It was in this atmosphere of uncertainty and hardship that The
Hartshorne Sun was purchased by Elmer and Juanita Thrower.
Twenty-two
editors have come and gone during The
Sun's 108 years of continuous operation. Jim F. Nicholson has edited the
small weekly publication since January 1992, however The Hartshorne Sun has become synonymous with the Throwers who
owned, operated and edited the paper for 35 years, the longest tenure of any
owner or editor.
The
Throwers bought the newspaper on December 3, 1931, a time when most businesses
were struggling and when many ultimately had to close their doors forever due to
the impact of The Great Depression. But under their leadership not only did The
Hartshorne Sun survive, it thrived.
The
following advertisements are taken from the pages of The Hartshorne Sun during the 1930s. They are a true reflection of
the economic situation of the times.
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