A Week in Ignorance of Assassination

Part of Jefferson Where Citizens Did Not Know of President Being Murdered.

     Jefferson county [sic] may not have within its bounds moss-back Democrats who are still voting for Andrew Jackson, but there are rural sections in the county where the people are in ignorance of the news of the world for days and days together.
     County Superintendent of Education I. W. McAdory, who returned from a tour of Jefferson county [sic] yesterday, addressed a school, not twenty-five miles from Birmingham in which not one of the children had heard of the shooting of President McKinley a week after it occurred.
     In his talk he alluded to the terrible deed of the assassin, and when he had finished every one present, teachers and pupils, gathered around him and asked for the particulars. It was the first intimation they had had of the tragedy. Mr. McAdory said the poor mail service in the outlying sections readily accounted for such ignorance, or rather for the slow way in which these people received information about events happening outside of their neighborhood. The rural delivery system, soon to be in operation, would, he said, change all this; would be a great thing for the county.