Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans

Ben Pearson

Ben Pearson Arkansas has been the home to a surprising number of very successful and innovative entrepreneurs. One of the most daringly successful Arkansas manufacturers was Ben Pearson, an internationally known pioneering maker of archery equipment and a resident of Pine Bluff. Ben Pearson was born November , , at Paron in Saline County. The family moved about, and Ben received only a few years of education, though he was a gifted child. What he lacked in education , however, was more than compensated for in other natural gifts, including a deep sense of determination. That drive helped young Pearson land his first real job.In later life, Pearson recalled that he long had “a little hankering for electricity.” He studied with single-minded determination,and before long he was employed as an electrical appliance repairman and ultimately with the Little Rock Railway and Electric Company. In  he took a job with Harvey Couch’s Arkansas Power & Light Company (AP&L). In , at the height of the Great Depression, Pearson left AP&L and went into business on his own. He sank his savings of $ and a great deal of sweat on an experiment to grow plants by starting them in hotbeds heated by electrical cables. Pearson reasoned that the use of electricity allowed him to start plants much earlier than in conventional solar-heated hotbeds. He was also growing dewberries “on a large scale for shipment to Eastern markets.” The Arkansas Democrat ran an article with three pictures on Pearson’s revolutionary hothouses. The article portrayed a brash young man whose shock of thick wavy hair would come to symbolize his penchant for taking risks. With a straight face, the newspaper reporter told of Pearson’s strongly held theories on marketing agricultural products: “He thinks he has a plan by which this can be largely overcome, if not entirely so. However, he is not making public any of his plan until he develops it a little further.” Grand marketing plans and determination were not enough to  save Pearson’s foray into farming, and he soon found himself selling Caterpillar tractors in Little Rock. He would have an interest in large farm equipment for the remainder of his life.At night,he made arrows in his garage, for himself and for sale. Pearson developed an interest in archery as a child. A model he found in a Boy Scout magazine enabled him to make a replica of an English longbow. In  Pearson made his first bow, which had a ninety-pound pull, named “Old Hickory.” It was important to be able to make bows and arrows, for they were not readily available for purchase at that time. Also in , at the age of twenty-eight, Pearson entered the Arkansas State Archery Championship in Little Rock.The results were humbling, but he set about to make better archery equipment and to practice more intensively. The following year he won the state championship .He competed nationally for the next decade,ranking seventh in the  National Archery Association’s Nationals. In March , Pearson incorporated the Ben Pearson Company, issuing its first catalog the same year. The catalog offered only “arrows of distinction” at first. Though he was able to stay in business, profits were limited by a lack of capital, not to mention the continuing Great Depression. About , a wealthy Oklahoma oilman by the name of Carl Haun appeared on the scene asking to buy some of Pearson’s arrows. When Haun left for home at the end of the weekend, he was an investor in Ben Pearson, Inc. With increased capital,the company built a new plant in Pine Bluff that included several machines either designed or modified by Pearson himself. Production soared to thousands of arrows per day. Income soared too, and by  Pearson was the largest manufacturer of bows and arrows in the nation. For years Pearson’s bows tended to be traditional long bows—the kind of bow he had learned to use with incredible accuracy. Pearson, who was a skilled showman, put together a traveling archery extravaganza that played in arenas throughout the nation and Mexico. At first,Pearson,like hundreds of generations of Native Americans before him, used wood from the native bois d’arc tree (also known as Osage orange) to make his bows.His employees often went home with yellow hands, testifying to the yellow sap of the bois d’arc.  ENTREPRENEURS By , average daily production exceeded , bows and about , dozen arrows...