Newspapers / The Chatham Record (Pittsboro, … / July 4, 1929, edition 1 / Page 2
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PAGE TWO THE CHATHAM RECORD O. J. PETERSON Editor and Publisher SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: One Year sl-50 Six Months 75 TTTTTRQI') \Y Ti l Y 1 11)29. Bibiz ” 1 £ cn : Prey zx i P V •j I \ \ V pVt hFt'll, •*• • i . ' , fO . , .» v< > « i :1 1 fH 4 11 1 1 4 \ • 4 • • • » i . x »_ * tiiii.i • : * ; 1 1 1 v * f • <ii 1 1 1 k r’ 1 \ sv' 11* i('s| \\\ \ ii ,*: s<) Ik‘ * •, . * f tempted.—Oal. <> f t, , ! ft ll’ VYl'lv Most meruit ill Cit'd, f *‘,, . , i i help us to boar ore another s bur- * f dens ami so tullill the law of Christ, f 1 Amen I ft i l We have see n Governor Gardner quoted as saying “There is no comparison be tween the way North Caro linians travel now and what they did a few years ago. Wonder if the Governor really said it, at least that way? We are clipping another piece from The Monroe En quirer about kudzu. Chatham farmers should grow that plant and sweet clover and fill their soils so full of humus that the land may be worked more easily in both wet and drv seasons. ® If the new state constabu lary does not enforce more respect for the traffic laws than they showed for them in their parade through the State, it will be disappoint ing. With their noisy entrance into one town they so excited a man that he died as a re sult. At Kinston they paid no respect to traffic signals. $ The Greensboro News tells of a scheme by which the retail grocers may counterbal ance the advantages of the chain groceries. The grocer is to contract with a responsi ble wholesaler who is to study his needs and supply all the goods withoutthe intermediary of a drummer. But wouldn’t that throw more drummers out of jobs than the chain stores are likely to displace retailers? <§> Mr. Hoover is picking his farm relief board. There is an attempt to get a North . Carolinian on the board. But . why care? The bill is no good. So long as other people are enabled to sell their prod ucts at their own prices by ; means of the protective tariff or the creation of monopolies through the very strength of their enterprises, nothing can ' help the farmer. Two people can not have the same money. Yet Mr. Hoover is quoted as wanting a duty on sugar that will help all parties, includ ing consumers. Let the people best situated to raise sugar j make it. Let Americans buy j it where they can get it the j cheapest. Cuba and the other! sugar producing countries willj then be enabled to buy from us what we can make cheaper than they. The protective tar iff is a robber. If you can not kill the robber, you must hi-! jack some of his boodle. Thai was what the debenture plan was meant to do. But the monopolist’s boodle is sacred in the sight of the Republican administration. , He is to be given further license to rob the farmer and those whose business is related to that of the farmer or dependent upon it. The carpenter gets no job from a farmer who pays the price of needed improvements in his home to the protected industries, or to those great concerns that have reached such a stage of development as to make successful com petition by new or smaller concerns impossible. When the lions have taken the whole of the carcas by what means can the smaller animals get any of it except by combining and taking it away from them. But the lion objects and the administration is a friend to him, but hopes that there is some way to be found that by which the lion may keep what he has hogged and the smaller creatures find a new source of supply. Funny think ers those who think they can let the hen hatch the eggs and have them for the table too! 1 THE DOMINANCE OF IDEAS I Through six hundred years Jof gropings, blunderings, and ]pai nf u 1 readjustments, the | peoples of Europe, and later of • America, have attained ■ their present political, civil, and economic positions. Six I hundred years ago the masses [ possessed neither political nor economic lights, and only a minimum of civil rights. Land and trade were monopolized and lives exploited for the I pleasure and glory oi uie masters. The democratic pol icy of the Germanic tribes had ! long been obliterated, and eco- I nomic, as well as political, tyranny prevailed. Practically | every step of progress was marked by famine, slaughter, jor revolution, usually bloody, j And it was only when definite ideas of the goal desired had j been firmly planted in a few i minds that other than hap hazard progress became possi ble. “The temper of the time, and the larger sympathy of man with man which especial ly marks the eighteenth cen tury as a turning point in the history of the human race,” remarks Green, “were every where bringing to the front a new order of statesmen, such as Turgot and Joseph the Second, whose characteristics were a love of mankind, and a belief that as the happiness of the individual can only be secured by the general happi ness of the community to which he belongs, so the wel fare of individual nations can only be secured by the gen eral welfare of the world.” Os the new school of statesmen was William Pitt the Younger, and if these articles, written ip Pittsboro, should avail to make current, in even a small degree, any ideas helpful to the world, let them be a trib ute to Pitt, the statesman who could see farther than the end of his nose. His knowl edge of finance is compared to that of Walpole’s, though, un like Walpole “he was careless of personal gain.” But today a man' is conceived of as im practical and inefficient if he has not hogged a fortune for himself. Our very governor is said to possess hundreds of thou sands of dollars for which he has given the world no quid pro-quo. Our president has ac cumulated an immense fortune through the exploitation of the world’s resources, and to day, while professedly seeking “farm relief,” is unnecessarily a large-scale competitor of the tillers of the soil, growing onions enough to odorize the breath of every patriot of his, and necessarily holding scores of his fellows in a kind of vassalage . comparatively as unpromising of economic inde pendence as was the serfdom of six hundred years ago. As one envisions the condi tions of the Middle Ages and .narks the tragic futility of the centuries till Joseph the second and William Pitt, and, then attempts to envision the conditions that should prevail in the world in 2500 A. D., he can but wonder if the same plundering and tragic features will mark the progress of the race in the meantime as have featured it the past centuries! The answer is, readily, yes, unless there is an early exten sion of the ideal. Ideas form the lever for the uplift of the human race. The formula, “Love your neighbor as your self,” comprehends the whole scheme of economics as well as morals. But an extension of the application of the prin ciple becomes necessary at each critical stage in history. To a disregard of that precept may be referred all the polit ical, civic, and economic trag edies of the past. Disregard of the principle, however, is traceable in part to ignorance and prejudice. But the love of money (the root of all evil) love of ease, pleasure, or glory, and sophistic evasions, are chiefly responsible for the uni versal disregard of the uni versal principle. As an instance of such evasion, the Christianized German, descendants of pagan men who recognized more nearly than any of the older peoples the rights of all in dividuals, excused their prac tice of slavery on the ground that the Holy Scriptures in (culcate humility, and that THE CHATHAM RECORD, PITTSBORO. N. C. they, accordingly, were af fording their slaves an oppor tunity to develop that Chris- I tian grace. Further, our own I glorious Declaration of Inde ! pendence could declare that all men are created equal, possessing the inalienable right of freedom; yet even ministers. of # the gracious gospel could stand in the pul -1 pits and justify the enslave ment of a race, and slavery i could exist in this fair land ! till put an end to 65 years ago !by a bloody war. Neverthe ' less, it was Wilberforce’s idea ! that blotted out slavery. > The idea earlier gained the J ascendancy in England and was making line headway in Amer ic a, but unfortun at e1 v sectional antagonism arose that case-hardened the conscience of the South, and necessitated that force do what the idea would finally have done direct ly. Nevertheless the idea was back of the force. In Russia, the idea being slow in leaven ing the hearts and minds of the oppressors, retribution sprang up from the very soil and slums. Today the system of oppres sion, of levying tribute upon the sv 7 eat of others’ brows, is more refined, but none the less effectual. We lay down this thesis: The getting and holding of wealth for which no equivalent has been given is immoral, and violative of true economic principles. That is all the common thief is guilty of; and that is what the governor has been guilty of in getting the hundreds of thousands alluded to above. The common thief, maybe, actually needs the money stolen for the support of de pendents. The governor is levying his foim, six, or ten per cent upon the public. But “everybody is doing it.” Yes, and everybody that could six hundred years ago, possessed his serfs as very cattle, and our fathers prided themselves only a few years ago upon the number of their human chat tels. The constitution of so ciety then permitted those evils; the laws and customs now justify and make respect able the evils that are en slaving the masses. Even the very day this is written a Southern bishop is justifying himself for speculation on the New York stock exchange, though it is very clekr that he was induced by the single idea of getting something for noth- ing, a motive foreign to the doctrine of his Master. Yet here we would assure the reader that we know that many stock market transac tions are legitimate in the truest sense. The man who should furnish a thousand cotton farmers supplies during the summer on an estimated price for cotton, would be guilty of more heinous gam bling if he should not hedge on the stock exchange than if he should, else he must esti mate the price of the fall cot ton at a level that might greatly discommode his cus tomers. Similarly, the ordi nary buyer of cotton would have to play a real gambling game unless he could hedge his purchase?; till their dis posal. That practice is merely good business/*’ But, presum ably, the saintly bishop, too good to vote ror a man who really had a vision and had at heart the economic welfare of future generations, could risk the money drained from the little country churches of Vir ginia for the support of their overseers in a gamble. He was merely guilty of the gen erally condoned sin of seeking something for nothing. It is not often that the re sults of one man’s getting something for nothing in a perfectly legitimate way can be illustrated concretely. Usu ally the tribute is distributed so thinly as to be unnoticeable. Yet when a thousand penny tributes have been levied upon a poor man he is out a week’s support for his family. But the writer knows a man who is in servitude within two miles as he writes, and simply because of a profit of several thousand dollars charged him by the man who sold him his farm after holding it only a few weeks on speculation. The buyer walks from home and about -the streets in a brown study. His all is involved in that farm.’ A family of girls is to support, the old home is going to wrack, several bad crop years have intensified the slavery. / The failure to meet installments might mean a sale at public auction at a time when there is no demand for real estate, and the loss of the initial payment as well aS the instalments already paid. If it had not been for the tacking on of that huge profit to the price of the farm, that man would be a free man, his fam ily \vould be. enjoying ease, comfort, and opportunities that it is now impossible for them to enjoy, and he would be a larger consumer of the prod ucts of others. Yet there has been no law violated; each party to the transaction was a free agent. Nevertheless the walker is .laying for the rider’s fine car. He is buying gasoline and pay ing the garage man for re pairs, and in general is doing for the seller what few serfs of old could do for their liege lords. The speculator usually loses, as did the Bishop; yet in the light of the principle laid dow 7 n in these articles, that it is the free dollar that is used . to purchase the sources of i wealth, the more who lose the ; greater the general evil, since : the gains must balance the losses, less the brokers’ charges, and the fewer the gainers the more free dollars are accumulated for use in monopolizing the sources of wealth into the hands of the few. If one man should lose a million dollars on the stock exchange and ten thousand should win the million, it would only be a hundred dol lars each, and no real eco nomic damage would result. But when the ten thousand lose a hundred each and one man gains the million, then the larger bulk of the million may be invested in wealth sources or expended in use less excesses by a wastrel, either of which is a menace to public welfare. Every time a millionaire is created it be comes possible for a large share of the sources of wealth to be forever alienated from the masses, and one more bolt is riveted in the general en slavement more men lose control of their means of live lihood and the number of hire lings is increased. Thus is established the evil of speculation, at least in its worst phases. But the rami fications of speculation are so , far-reaching that laws cannot avail for correction of the evil. The remedy is in the moral ■ idea. Men must reach that moral level where they refuse , to reap where others have , sowed. The evil has not yet , come to full fruition, but when it shall have, it is almost cer tain that means will be found to stop the practice or to nullify the benefits. Getting wealth without ren dering an adequate quid-pro quo is the bane of the age. First, it has been shown that the attainment of such a monopoly, by whatever means, as enables a producer to sell on a world-wide scale at his own price makes it possible for him to turn a steady flow of cash into his tills that not only makes it possible for him to confirm and perpetuate his monopoly but to pile up a mass of free dollars that may be used in the purchase or securing control of other sources of wealth. The r e seems no possibility of this drain upon the resourcse of the world being stopped by legal processes. It has been shown that one concern se curing fifty millions of abso lutely free money a year can buy every dollar’s worth of wealth-producing property in j North Carolina in fifty years, and that fifty such concerns can control the sources of wealth of the nation within the same time. Only consci ence or revolution seems competent to withstand this disastrous trend. Two means of limiting the drift of the wealth of the nation into the hands of the few have been pointed out. Unearned increments in land values may be assumed by the state; the protective tariff, which has helped to foster those monopolies which are draining the dollars of the masses into a few great cof fers, may be gradually reduced or the robberies of the system I counterbalanced by such schemes as the proposed, but defeated, debenture aid to agriculture. Another means of unfairly building up huge fortunes has come through the banking and credit systems of the country. The surrender to the bankers of the governmental privilege of issuing currency has given a lever to financiers that has had its full effect in the build ing up of huge fortunes. It is to be hoped that the stricter banking laws of the states have already, in a measure, stopped the earlier abuses of credit even in one-bank towns. Time was not so long ago when a clique of men in of ficial touch with their town i bank could stand each other’s security time and again and thus monopolize the use of the j bank’s deposits in seizing ev ery fair opportunity for profit able development or specula tion. The foundations of some jof the fairest fortunes in North Carolina.were thus laid during those years when land was not a security for bank loans. But so thoroughly does the nature of business in this age tend to foster monopoly 'and to make possible a snowball increase of a fortune once founded that, with all the gov ernmental reforms available, the process would likely con tinue. Accordingly, in the long run, the economic salvation of the masses, so long as the capi talistic system continues un modified, must chiefly depend upon a broadening and deep ening of the understanding and the benevolence of the masters of industry, and upon the recognition of" new rights of the non-capitalists. For in stance, when the sources of wealth have been monopolized by the few, then must come a recognition of the right of every person to share in the product of those sources, who soever shall own them or howsoever few shall be need ed to operate them to the highest degree of efficiency. That right has already re ceived recognition in Great Briton, where millions of un employed have shared in the products of capital and the ■ employed. That right of humanity to a chance to make a living or to share in what is made by others from the sources of wealth would as well gain recognition now as later. If the owner will not let the calf suck he must feed it at least upon skim milk. The world has passed that stage when the calf may be left to starve. And in the case of the human dependent element, the butch er pen is unavailable. Conse quently, it will not be so im- , i COLORFUL ROOFS ADD BEAUTY TO ALL HOMES You can’t find a home that won’t wear well a roofing of color. There is a suita ble solid color, a combination of colors or an effect for every type home. Architects all over the country realize the importance of color on the house-top and specify shin gles of pleasing color harmony. When you are ready to roof or re-roof, call Budd-Piper and have a representative show you the many beautiful effects you may have in Richardson roofings. A com plete assortment of Richardson roofing products is always on hand here. We have a complete assortment of Colorful Richardson Shingles ' I Telephone F-2121 THE BUDD-PIPER ROOFING CO. DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA I mum-DAi: juu ISA portant who owns the cow 0 f wealth, if all are to share in the milk. But it will be much better for the self-re, spect and the fulness of ]jfg of every individual if he mav be permitted to share, if no V in the ownership of the cow at least in the care of her In view of the -appaw T . inevitable holding of the r sources of wealth by a percentage of the popu one of several conseqv may be expected to ft These with a few ide must prevail if the ind ship, the convoy of cr tion, is not to go upo rocks will be discussed next article. The state public mind will determ event. Correct ideas pr assure happy results, v, r ideas are the mothers of s> NOTICE OF SALS OF REAL ESTATE Under and by virtue of the power and authority upon them coni red by an order of the Superior Cour of Chatham County rendered in the Special Proceeding entitled “S. K, Elmore and others vs. Bessie Pearce Respass and others,” therein pending, the undersigned commissioners will on Monday, July Bth, 1929 at 12 o’clock noon, at the courthouse, door of Chatham County, in Pitts boro, -N. C., sell, at public auction to the highest bidder for cash, that certain tract of land in Hadley Town ship, Chatham County, North Caro lina, which is described as follows: Being that tract of land devised by John Elmore, deceased, to his wife, Mary Ann Elmore, deceased,, for her life, by his Last Will and Testament, which is recorded in the office of the Clerk of the Superior Court of Chatham County in Book of Wills “D”, at pages 116-117; and’ being the 110 acres, more or less,, of land off the West end of the tract of land whereon the said John El more lived at the time of his death,, including the mansion house and all outbuildings and other improve ments; and now known as the Mary Ann Rogers homeplace. This 29th day of May, 1929. WADE BARBER, DANIEL L. BELL, Commissioners. <§> 666 is a Prescription for Colds, Grippe, Flu, Bilious Fever and Malaria It is the most speedy remedy known.. —LET— GOLDSTON BROTHERS Sell Your Land Phone, Write or Wire Today GOLDSTON, N. C.
The Chatham Record (Pittsboro, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
July 4, 1929, edition 1
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