The Green Forest tribune., 1907-06-28
ARKANSAS SEVENTY-FlRST
 BIRTHDAY

Having attained and passed
 it's three score and ten, it finds
 itself only atthe dawn of its
 etrength and greatness.
 Its seventy-one years have
 been fraught with stress and storm, with victory and defeat with evil and good report, but through it all the State has lived and overcome.
 It is not yet so old that tn sre are not remaining yet among its honored citizenship some of the hardy pioneers who carved the young and struggling State from the wilderness while the nine- teenth century was coursing up- wards towards it's meridian.
 There are still among us a few who had a part in the affairs ol the State before it became the jousting ground for fraternal strife, and greater number who participated prominently in the stirring, history taking epoch that followed that war, and deaths among their ranks call attention to the fact that Arkansas is be. coming more and more removed from the old regime.
 Arkansas has in many things been favored and has made a record of which it may we'll be proud.
 Itis rapidly taking a place in the sisteIhood of States where it needs no apologist, and when the man who says abroad, sI'm from Arkansaw, now laugh, darn ye," is a sorry press agent for the State, which has every reason to be proud of the many things that make for greatness.
 Arkansas has flourished from the beginning, save for that aw- full period when sixty thousand of it's citizens took up arms for the cause they cherished, and the darker period which followed when a triumphant victor left in his administrative wake trail of misery and oppression.
 Frederick J. Haskin, syndi- cate writer, in discussing the of Arkansas, recogniz. ing the true value of the State, and the unfavorable conditions under which it has labored, sets for other writers an example they should follow, when he says:
 Arkansas has suffered more than any other State because of a joke. The Arkansas Traveller was a good story that was kept alive by ripping good tune for the average fiddler, and there may have been backwoods prototype for the man who was so monumentally indifferent to patching his roof. But no State would care to be known to fame by the standard of it's most shift. less citizen. Therefore Arkan- sas rebels against the Arkansas traveller idea.
 Few of the States have more varied or abundant resources. The buckshot soil of the Missis- sippiu bottoms in Arkansas pro- duces cotton in almost incredible The western part of the State has as good corn land as may be found anywhere. The hills and mountains grow apples that cannot be beaten in the world for quality or quantity. Coal and zinc and lead underie her hills in great abundance. Her forests have scarcely been touched by the ax, and there is greater percentage of Virgin timber here than in any other state.
 MT. Haskin has read carefully the truthful prospectuses of those who have endeavored, and not in vain, to present the State in it's proper light to knowledge ol the world.
 The negative apology is giving away to the affirmative declara- ton, and the world is being in. vited to participate in the bes,uti full resources of the state, re. sources that offer superior ad yantages to investment anx home- seekers.