Newspapers / The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, … / Sept. 19, 1907, edition 1 / Page 15
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WHY STOKES COUNTY IS ADVANCING BACKWARD. Seventy- Five Per Cent. Of Our Prosperity has Come From Our Wooded Hills--Killing the Goose That Lays the Qolden Egg. Mr. Editor : At first glance the above caption will seem contradicting in its make-up, but often things are not what they seem to be, and I have selected thiß subject for that very reason. I want to reason with our people along the line of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. I know that many of us, and especially those of us who have been voting the Republican ticket, are confident of the fact that we are basking in the sunshine of a widespread and glorious prosperity, handed down and bequeathed to us by him of the spectacles and big stick. That our seeming prosperity is an ignis fatuis or false and imagin-j ary condition, is the object of thiß letter, and I expect j some will at once brand me as the jack-o-lantern, flying the red flag or danger signal, when there is no real danger, but I shall call back to such the fact that there have been vampires in all ages trying to lull to sleep their innocent victims. Well to the subject: One would say our people are our of debt. 1 They have had good crops and have plenty of many things beyond the necessaries of life, and I must admit such is a fact, but where does it all come from ? A good portion, of course, may safely be credited to favorable seasons, which have given us hog and hominy in abundance from our fields, but the larger part, by far, perhaps seventy-five per cent., of our prosperity is now and has for several years been taken from our wooded hills. Only a few days since a friend of the writer, Editor Chaa. McMichael, of the Madison Herald, told me that in a drive out from Madison to Prestonville on the morning of the 26th inst., he met and counted thirty-five wagons on that ten miles of road loaded with Stokes county lumber and cross ties going to the railroad at Mayodan. A saw-mill man near me told me he had loaded and shipped from Sharp's siding the past week five car loads of lumber «>nd had put on the railroad seven hundred and fifty cross ties, all this being cut at one mill in one week from Stokes county forests. Another gentleman tells me that Mr. J. E. Shelton, of Sandy Ridge, has at his shop and at his mill yards now, cut and stacked up, more than twenty-five hun dred thousand feet of lumber, and that he has five mills cutting for him. Another mill man recently told me that since he had come to Stokes, now nearly a year ago, he had averaged about one hundred thousand feet of lumber cut and stacked or put on the car every month since he had begun sawing, making in round numbers a mil lion and a quarter feet of Stokes county timber trees cut down and gone. These figures show what only three or four mills are doing. Multi ply these by the nearly one hundred mills that our tax books show are doing the destructive work in our county, and it can readily be seen where we are drifting—where our seeming good and prosi)erous times are coming from. The writer recently made a 30-mile railroad trip in company with an agent of the railroad and when we started I asked him why there was so much freight piled up at his station and his answer was : "I have sent off ten car loads this week. We can't get cars to take it yas fast as the mill men pile it up o.i us." And at every station and side track it was the same way. At one station the agent estima ted that there was more than sixty car loads waiting for shipment and that along the 90 miles of road there was.not less than three hundred car loads of lumber ready to be loaded. Mr. C. A. Mitchell, of Dillard, a gentleinnn doing business 8 miles from the railroad, tells me that he has in the last three years put out something like 75 enr loads of cross ties. Mr. J: C. Flinn estimates that 1(X),(XX) have been put on the road at Pine llall. Well, that looks like we are doing some business down in this neck of the Woods, don't it, and don't you think we ought to feel prosper ous. Well, most of us do feel that way at present, but take my word for it and see if in the near future we don't awaken to the fact that we have been advancing backward like the frog in the well that jumped up two feet every day and fell hack three feet every night. Lender the glamor of the above described false prosperity we have over looked the fact that our young men, in increasing numbers, con ' tinue to leave us and that laborers are scarcer today than at any time since the squally times of the Cleveland panic With the neglect of farming lauds and farm premises, generally at tendant upon.the cross tie and lumber business, we will notice only a few farms showing real advancement and these are these whose own ers have turned their attention to some other crop than tobacco. I know there are in n few neighborhoods in the county some few men who seem to make money on tobacco. J. Spot Taylor and the Petrees and some others we could mention, and thus the small farmer and the renter are led to hope to do as well as they. A case of the ox leading his brothers to the slaughter. You know in the great slaughter houses of the west they have an ox trained for the purj oseof leading the herd into the place where the animals are killed and just in the nick of time this trained leader steps to one side into a place left for the pur pose while his deluded victims go on to the deadly hammer, and just L so it is with the common farmers who try to follow Spot Taylor and ■Athe Petrees. Yes, it is only a question of time when our timber supply will give out and the sun of our prosperity will set and we will find ourselves suffering with the cramps of financial rheumatism and with nothing to fall back on, having killed the goose that lays the golden egg. We are far worse off than we were twenty years ago anil with nothing to show for it, having spent the price of our birthright—our forest tim ber—for new binaries, nice clothes and easy living generally. THE LAST EXAMINATION. Will Be Held At the County Seat Of Each County On Oct. 11th and 12th—Certificatea Valid For Three Years. Raleigh, Sept. 12—Directions to applicants for high school teach ers' certificates were mailed yesterday from the State Depart ment of Education to all these applying foil certificatea and to county superintendents. Another examination will be held at the county seat of every county Oc tober 11th and 12th. This will be the last one of the year for; high school teachers. These certificates are valid for three years and subject to renewal without exarnimffion T)y"the/JState Board of Examiners, upon terms prescribed by the board. All applications for thia exam- : ination mnat be filed with thej State Superintendent of Public Instruction on or before Septem ber 90, 1907-. Questions for the examination are being prepared by the State Board of Examination and will be in the hands of the oounty super intendenta in ample time for the date fixed. The examination will oover the usual high aohool subjects, including history, State, national and general; Engliah, German, composition and literature; ad vanced mathematics, algebra and goemetry; civil government, theory and praotice of teaching. In addition to the subjects mentioned above, examinations will be given in physics, agricul ture, Latin, Greek, French and German. To teach any of these subjects the teacher must hold a certificate covering the same, and ao applicant may become principal of a publio high school whose certificate does not cover one of the following: Latin, Greek, German or French. FIFTH DISTRICT POLITICS. A Live Piece of Gossip from Surry —The County Put In sth Dis trict So as to Send a Man From It to Congress. Morganton, Sept. 11.— A gen tleman whose home was formerly in the fifth district was here a few days ago and let go a live piece of political gossip regarding the moves of the politicians down that way. As is known, Surry county, up to the meeting of the last Legislature, WHS in tlmHtli dis trict, but was transferee! to the fifth in order, it was stated, to make the eighth securely Demo cratic. This man states that the real motive behind the transfer was to get a Surry man in that district and send him to Congress next year. The recent election of Mr. Chatham to the State chairmanship and the bringing out of Professor Holt to divide Guilford county with Mr. Brooks, is all H part of the game tlint is being worked on the political chess board of the fifth district aud at the "physiological" moment the Surry man will be sprung on the convention and the delegates will try to be stampeded for him. Such a thing happened at Wins ton-Salem some six years ago when Mr. E. B. Jones was nom inated for judge, who was not even a candidate before the con vention. It is believed that the trick can be turned again. Mr. Walter Hawkins, of Sandy Ridge Route 1, was here Monday. Mr. Hawkins has recently erected a nice dwelling bouse and was looking for a man to paint it. ■a—BßS!!**—-■SBB—HB™H"«HBHB!B—B"-"BBB"-B"™BH5—BBBB— —■ ♦ WATCH OUT NEXT WEEK ROSENBACHER HAS BOUGHT THIS SPACE. LEARN THE WAY -J2_Simpson's And "THE PIEDMONT" WINSTON'S Two Leading Drug Stores The Most Delightful Drinks, the Purest Drugs, at the Lowest Prices.
The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Sept. 19, 1907, edition 1
15
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