The log cabin Democrat., 1921-09-15
NEW YORK WRITER
 SPENDS DAY HERE
PROBES TIMES CHARGES
Sherman Rogers of Outlook Investi. gating Propaganda Against Ar
 kansas Improvement Districts.

1 in New York City, was in Conway to- day in the course of tour of the state which he is making for the pur- pose of Investigating the truth or fal- sity of the unfavorable publicity given by the New York Times and other papers in a series of articles about Arkansas improvement districts last spring.
 Arkansas has suffered millions of dollars of damage as result of this publicity, Mir. Rogers said, land have come to the state with an open and unbiased mind for the purpose of ascertaining the real truth about the state and it's improvement dis tricts. l have already spent several days in close personal investigation and have yet to find any facts which would justify such statements as have been published concerning the confs- cation of lands by reckless expendi- lures of improvement districts"
 MT. Rogers said his inquiries in New York and since he had reached Arkansas indicated that practically all the information upon which the Times articles were based was se- cured by a member of it's staff from railroad attorney of southeast Arkan- sas and Judge P. H. Prince of Con- way, both of whom have been leading intellectual legal fights against high way improvement districts
 "I have interviewed some land owners who have said their improve ment taxes were burdensome, but even they admitted the benefits to their lands overbalanced the cost of the improvements" he said. "I asked one landowner in southeast Ar kansas who complained about the amount of his taxes how much he would take for his land One hun- dred and fifty dollars an acre-not a cent less was the answer. I then asked him how much the land was worth before the road was built and he said about $75 an acre.
 Ut was of course unfortunate" MT. Rogers said, that just as Arkansas was entering upon an ambitious road building program, cotton, the chief crop of the state, should have dropped almost overnight from 40 cents to 1C cents a pound. This naturally inn posed tremendous hardship upon the state, and the manner in which it is emerging from the disaster is almost miraculous. But I have yet to find a single instance where the amount of taxes for highway improvements equals or exceeds the value of the land taxed, as has been charged, and l find higher percentage of tax col lections in road districts in Arkansas than l have observed in almost any other state. This is enough to refute the charge that the lands would be forfeited and the bonds defaulted"
 While here MT. Rogers talked with commissioners of the three road i'm. provement districts in Faulkner coun. ty, with merchants, farmers and land owners. He visited the courthouse and interviewed Sheriff w. M. Brady, who told him that outside of the rail- roads taxes, which were still in liti- gation, practically 99 per cent of the landowners of the county had paid their road taxes, many of them hay. ing paid them prior to the payment of their general property taxes. He also read the papers on file with Chancery Clerk w. F. Whiddon in the suits brought by Judge Prince against the road districts, which were dismissed by Chancellor W. E. Atkinson in June.
 The Outlook, the periodical which MT. Rogers represents. is one of the leaders in it's field in the United States. Theodore Roosevelt was for a number of years after he retired from the presidency one of it's asso. ciate editors, and it's staff includes a number of the country's distinguished men, As it's industrial and financial representative MT. Rogers has done much Investigating work for the Out. look, one of his notable tasks being a series on the packing and stockyards industries. His article on Arkansas will probably appear in the issue of October S. he said today.
 MT. Rogers is making his tour o1 the state by automobile, in order tt get in the closest possible touch with the improvement district situation He was accompanied from Little Rock to Conway by w. K. McMullen of the Arkansas Democrat staff and Clauc Thompson. The party left Conway for trip through Conway county 1T continuance of Mir. Rogers investiga