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Show It's Unusual, Therefore News MANY THOUSANDS of words have been written in the past few days about the strsnge union of a 9-year-old mountain girl in Tennessee and a hulking 22-year-old man of the hill country. Very naturally the incident stirred emotion over the nation. It recalled another incident that kept the name of Dayton, Tenn, on front pages day after day a dozen years ago .the almost forgotten hippodroming of the "monkey trial" down that way. Much of the comment has seemed to go to great lengths to paint Tennessee as a backward state, center of ignorance and stupidity, a place where social progress has not entered. This, of course, is unfair to a great state where, against some odds not presented elsewhere, pronounced advancement has been marked for many years and where this has been greatly stimulated in the past few years. Likely to be overlooked Is this fact: That it is the unusual thing that makes news of a certain cer-tain sort The court battle over evolution was news, and very unusual news not because it was a court battle over evolution but because) -Clarence- Barrow and -Williem-Jermmg Bryan ' were the central figures. If it were the usual , thing for 9-year-old girls to marry 22-year-old mountaineers in Tennessee, this recent wedding would have occasioned no notice, would scarcely have been telegraphed over the country as news. It, too, was unusual hence it was news. Tennessee doee not differ vastly from other states In the union. It is carrying on about the same sort of social programs, has an excellent school system, is building roads and bridges, if attracting a vast number of new industries, prohibits the employment of children under 18 in its workshops, factories, mills and mines and the state is the laborstory where the greet T V A project is being carried forward with pronounced social and economic effects in its neglected areas. Tennessee has every right to boast of such communities as Memphis, Nashville, Nash-ville, Chattanooga, Knoxville and smaller but none the less thriving communities. No state should be called upon to don sackcloth and ashes simply because two unusual occurrences happen to have been peraded before the nation as part of the dally grist of news from everywhere. every-where. - |