Editing Dyess, Arkansas (section)

===Early administrative structure===

The colony was carefully planned and administered by Dyess and a board of directors, who managed the day-to-day activities of the colonists.<ref name=Smith54>Smith, ''Trouble in Goshen,'' pg. 54.</ref> A turnover of this top leadership took place on January 14, 1936, however, when Dyess and his top lieutenant, chief accountant and finance director Robert H. McNair Jr., were killed in an airplane crash returning to Arkansas from Washington, DC.<ref>The January 1936 air crash, which killed all 17 people aboard, was at the time the worst aviation disaster in American history. Smith, ''Trouble in Goshen,'' pg. 54.</ref>

After his death, leadership of the Dyess Colony passed to [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] attorney and Arkansas Department of Labor statistician Floyd Sharp, a personal friend of Dyess, and Lawrence Westbrook, a [[Texas]] rancher who had been recruited by Harry Hopkins to work at FERA.<ref>Smith, ''Trouble in Goshen,'' pp. 54-55.</ref> Westbrook was fired by Hopkins in 1937 for a highly absentee work ethic and for attempting to imperially micromanage the colony's affairs from his desk in Washington.<ref name=Smith56>Smith, ''Trouble in Goshen,'' pg. 56.</ref>

Two [[cooperative|cooperative associations]] were incorporated by the board of directors of Dyess Colony Inc. — a consumer cooperative which operated a colony store and other businesses and a producer cooperative which coordinated the processing and sale of cotton farmed by residents of the colony.<ref name=Smith59>Smith, ''Trouble in Goshen,'' pg. 59.</ref> The colony also launched its own cooperative [[credit union]] not later than 1938.<ref name=Smith59 />