The Russellville Democrat., 1878-09-26
In ssThe Good Old Times. .'---Lct
 Us Banish the Reproach
By Inaugurating and Fostering
 Better School System,
And Thereby Usher in an Era of Higher Intelligence, More Prosperity and Better
 Government.


 crat of the 26th the following letter from q well posted correspondent in Pope county. We reproduce tue letter because it is on a subject which needs discussion, which needs thought, and which needs the atten- tion of the people. Itis upon sub ject which is of vital interest to our people, and contains much food tor reflection, giving also some figures and facts which all may not have had an opportunity to be acquainted with.
 Let us all, and more especially those of us who control the press of the State, and those who make the laws for the State and administer the same, strive to make such prog ress in this matter that the census and statistics which may be taken when the children of our State who are now of school age shall have be- come twenty-one years of age and upwards, shall know that Arkansas is keeping pace with the most pro- gressive of her sister States in edu- cational facilities. With the room which we have to show progress In this matter, it would be stinging shame and bitter reproach to us if we do not do it:
 PopE Co, ARK, Sept. 19, 1878, Editor Arkansas Democrat:
 In reading the Russellville DEMO GRAF of this date, found your article on the Gazette's 'sgood old times" in Arkansas, and the very timely and pointed comments of approval from the editor of the DEMOCRAT, who, must say, is fast becoming if he has not already become one of the ablest. most enlightened and progressive men of the state. His eyes, unlike those of Bourbon, are in the front, not the back of his head. Thous- ands of young men of your age Tn Arkansas will fully but sadly re- spond to your declaration that you and they ''were swiGdled out of a common school education by men who were in authority prior to the war" and it would be very singular indeed if they did not very seriously object to seeing any more of such ''good old times.' Good old times they were for the few the very few slave owners, but they were the bad old times" for all other classes. No common or even private school houses where there ought to have been hundreds, the slave-owners generally sending his children to the towns and villages or out of the state to be educated, leaving the children of the masses, who were poor, to grow up in ignorance, while the common school funds were squandered under a state govern ment controlled by the very men who now wish to bring us back to those good old times" As to the condition of Arkansas Tn an educa- tional point of view, in 1860, and under the rule of those Bourbons, we give below a few facts from the United States Commissioner of that date, under the heading: "School attendance and illiteracy;" the num- Der of persons over twenty years of age who could neitherread nor write, was 23,665; of this number, 9,379 were males, and IA, 263 were females The total white population of the state at that time was 2l2,SS6. Divide this number by five, and we will have about the number twenty one years of age and upwards, I am using the compendium of the census, and it does not, believe, give the total white population twenty-one years of age, as that is fair way of estimating the number of voters to the aggregate population, and we have the number of voters, 42,577, of which number 9,379 can neither read nor write. More than one-fifth of the voters had to get some one to read their own ballots to them, as stated by the editor of the Democrat It is safe to say that nearly all of these voters, and males and females over twenty years of age, were rear. ed in Arkansas during the twenty years next preceding the year 1880.
 Inasmuch as the Gazette has spo- ken of the common school system of the state previous, matter which many Arkansians think, for the credit of the state, had better never been referred to, I give below the total white population of Iowa, a state admitted to the Unlon about the year lS47: Total white popula- ton in 1860, 673,779; total number of twenty years of age who could neither read nor write, 9,951: show ing that Iowa, that was a territory long after Arkansas was a state, in 1860 had more than three times the population of Arkansas, and yet three thousand less iu population who could neither read nor write. 1t is not desirable to compare the educational condition of the two