Mountain Echo · Yellville, Arkansas · 1905

Don't interfere with the boy in the tree

A boy watched the ball game from a tree outside the fence and kept his fifteen cents. The Mountain Echo saluted his financial acumen and told the town to leave him alone.

Admission to a Yellville ball game in 1905 was fifteen cents, and one local boy decided the view from a tree outside was worth exactly that much. The Mountain Echo took his side in print.

The paper credited him with “the financial acumen that will lead him to climb a tree on the outside to watch a base ball game and thus save his fifteen cents,” predicted he “will be heard from later on,” and closed with a civic instruction: “Don’t interfere with him.” An editorial endorsement of fence-jumping economics, from the town’s own newspaper.