EDITORIAL
Kittyhawk, transatlantic radio broadcast, Wizard of Oz, U.S. Dept. of Commerce and Labor, Ford Motors, Tour de France, Pulitzer Prize, World Series, Hays Free Press.
Yes, 1903 was a very good year.
It was also one of extremes – a drought so bad that Niagara Falls quit flowing, and then New York City gets 11” of rain in 24 hours; President Teddy Roosevelt is villified because he shuts down a post office in Mississippi for refusing to accept an appointment postmistress ... because she was black, while the first Teddy Bear was introduced in the U.S. by Morris and Rose Michtom in honor of Teddy Roosevelt; Dr. Helen Bradford publishes “The Mental Traits of Sex,” showing there are very small differences between the sexes as she tested for physical coordination, sense of pitch, perception of light and more from 25 college-educated men and women, but during the same year, women’s wages were 1/3 as much as men’s and women were excluded from unions ... thus resulting in the formation of the National Women’s Trade Union.
The glory of 1903 and the troughs of depression were all reported in newspapers throughout the nation, and in Hays County and Kyle, in particular, the Harwell family forged the Kyle News, the precursor of the Hays Free Press, into a rambunctious community newspaper, covering history, sports, politics and community news.
And that’s what the Hays Free Press does today, and will for another 100-plus years.
No matter what medium starts up here, no matter what format the public wants, no matter the growth this area sees, the news of Buda, Kyle and Hays County will always be at the forefront of our thoughts here at the Hays Free Press. It started 109 years ago, with coverage of local news and events.
And today, we continue the same drive for hyper-localized news.
We hope you have enjoyed the last 108 years. As we turn our volume number to 109, we start our next year thinking ahead, knowing that we’ll still be here in 2111, 100 years from now. In the meantime, keep the phones ringing, the emails coming, the photos flowing, and the pages flipping. The stories continue, and so will we.
