Carthage Woolen Mill, a dominant pioneer industry and a contributor to the cause of civilization on the frontier, disappeared in the early part of the 20th Century with few to mourn its passage or chronicle its memory. Many of those who labored there in the 1870s, 1880s and early 1890s already had gone to their final resting places, while a few of the younger workers had found jobs at far distant places. Consequently, when their former work site faded silently into community memory there were few to bid it farewell and to note anything more than disappearance of a longtime landmark that had become an eyesore.

 The files of The Carthage Press from that time, however, reveal its moment of glory for benefit of many subsequent generations, as one of many evidences of how important newspaper files are to the preservation of local history in every community. On Feb. 28, 1903, The Press noted for posterity:

 “A commentary on the rapid march of civilization and the progress of invention is the sale of machinery of the Carthage Woolen Mill as junk. For some time the dismantling of the plant (beside North Main Street and near Spring River) has been going on, some of the machinery, the mules and new looms being sold for use in mills elsewhere. Two of the boilers were sold to the Mattison’s Peoples Ice  Factory. Seventy of the old looms, used for years by Carthage weavers, are completely out-of-date and were sold to A.C. Cutsinger, the junk merchant, as old iron. He gets about 40 tons of the old woolen mill metal and has been at work a month tearing it down and loading it.”

 The few jobs made available during the final year of the woolen mill already had been supplanted by other industrial enterprises, however. At that time of the final dispersal of equipment there was particular excitement about activities of workers at the growing blasting powder manufacturing industry that would be a major contributor to the Carthage economy during a large part of the century just beginning.

 The following week, in its March 3, 1903, issue, The Press stated, “Elmer Bowers, a powder maker at the works southwest of town, was badly burned at his boarding house near there last night. His clothing had absorbed a little glycerine during the day and when he struck a match to light a lamp at the boarding house the evaporating liquid was ignited and set his clothing on fire. Fearing he was doomed, he rushed downstairs and thrust his burning hands into a tub of water. Other boarders, realizing the danger at once threw water over him and saved his life. He came to town to have his burns dressed.

 That deed was accomplished by a local physician at the office of the medical worker.
 The episode again brought to the forefront of community attention the intermittent campaign led by a group of women formed nearly a decade earlier into a service order determined to raise sufficient funds to finance a hospital at Carthage.

 The matter was stirred to the point that a mass meeting of concerned persons was held March 5, 1903, at the City Council chambers at the Jasper County Courthouse.

 At that time, it was revealed the King’s Daughters effort had received a total of $1,500 toward such a project and a so-called Hospital Board had been established as a step toward development of a hospital association. The board members included Samuel McReynolds, G.C. Howenstein, W.W. Calhoon, F.W. Flower and C.O. Harrington. 
 Fueled by  concern that others might face a fate even more serious than that of Bowers, the hospital campaign immediately became a matter of major community-wide concern and steps toward further fund raising, site selection and building design were launched.