The Little River news., 1921-07-13
Much Ado About a Little
 River County Road Case

Editorial from the Arkansas Gazette:
 Many people outside of Arkansas have been misinformed and misled by statements published concerning the decision recently handed down by the United States Supreme Court in the case of the Kansas City Southern Rail- way against Little River Road I'm provpment District No. 6. The New York Times, which eagerly seizes on everything it thinks will serve the purpose of the campaign it has so long conducted, said on its first page, in headlines over it's Washington dis patch dealing with this decision:
 DECIDES ARKANSAS
 ROAD LAW IS INVALID.
 The first paragraph of the New York Times dispatch read:
 The first of the Arkansas road dis trict cases to reach the Supreme Court has been decided, and the decision is victory for the appellants from the decision of the Arkansas courts, which had held the road law to be a valid enactment.
 The United States Supreme Court did not hold any road law invalid. What the Supreme Court held was that when an assessment of $67,9O0 was made against 92 miles of the track of the railroad company the discrimination amounted to a denial of equal protection of the law. Lit tie River District No. 6 is just as valid today as it was before the Su- preme Court handed down it's decision, and, of course, the Alexander law, un- der which Little River District No. was created, is absolutely untouched by the Supreme Courts decision. The only effect of that decision will be that the Arkansas Supreme Court will set aside the assessment of $67,9O6 against the Kansas City Southern railway and order new assessment made.
 The Washington dispatch printed by the New York Times said that man familiar with the whole Arkansas road situation had pointed out that "the "importance of this decision could mot be overestimated." AS mat ter of fact, there was nothing new in the decision. Any property owner has the right to appeal to the courts against any improvement district as- sessment that he considers excessive, and many property owners have done so in the past.
 The Washington dispatch in the New York Times ended with these words:
 While the special law creating Dis trict No. in Little River county is the subject of the Supreme Courts decision, it should be pointed out that all the special district laws are in all essential details identical. That are all patterned after the same model.
 It should be pointed out, as we have pointed out, that District No. 6 in I title River county was created under the Alexander law and not by spe- cial act.
 In it's mention of this case Com merce and Finance said "the Arkan- ''sas good roads law seems to have "met it's Waterloo when it ran afoul "of the Kansas City Southern" Commerce and Finance had evidently gotten the erroneous idea that gen. eral law under which our highways have been and are being built had been invalidated by the United States Su- preme Court. But after it's attention had been decided to the true situation Theodore H. Prices paper explained in it's next issue that the only thing the United States Supreme Court had held invalid was the particular assess ment involved in the suit.
 The Montgomery Advertiser is an- other publication that has misappre- hended and misinterpreted the Su- preme Courts decision in the Little River case. It seems an editorial ar ticle with the statement that "The famous Arkansas road tax law was badly jolted in the decision handed down by the Supreme Court" It Is only necessary to repeat that all the Supreme Courts decision means is that too high an assessment was part upon the propery of single tax payer, the Kansas City Southern rail- way, in a single road district.