The
ROANOKE RAPIDS HERALD
Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina
HALIFAX COUNTY’S LARGEST NEWSPAPER
North Carolina’s Only TABloid NEWSpaper
^ARROLL WILSON, _Owner and Editor
Catered u Second Claaa matter April 3rd, 1914, at the poat offiee
•I Roanoke Rapida, North Carolina, under Act of March 3rd, 1*79.
PRINTING - EMBOSSING - ENGRAVING
PRESIDENTS PLEA FOR TEMPERANCE
It should be gratifying to drys and sensible wets to read
President Roosevelt’s plea for temperance made in his proc
lamation repealing the 18th amendment on December 5, 1933.
Urging that no state permit the return of the saloon,
the President warned the people against excessive drinking
and called for a national policy of education towards great
er temperance.
He asked for a restoration of greater respect for law
and order by refusal on the part of citizens to deal with any
other than licensed and regulated dealers.
Of course, this last request can not be followed by citiz
ens in dry states, who will continue to break the law by deal
ing with bootleggers and will probably do so with more ven
gence than before when their neighbors in an adjoining state
are purchasing their liquor legally. The law against bringing
liquor into dry states will also be broken, both by rumrun
ners and by citizens who will bring- in their own stock.
But the nation as a whole will be far more temperate.
In our heavily populated states, there will be no more need
for persons to make hogs of themselves and drink up all the
liquor at one sitting.
Perhaps at first there will be some celebration, but after
the first flush, the business will settle down to normalcy as
it did when beer became legal.
In wet states, juries are going to be harsher on iiquor
violations with a subsequent decrease due to laws backed by
public sentiment.
INFLATION
All of the discussion over the money question, as far as
we understand it—and that isn’t very far—seems To come
down to this.
There are a great many sincere persons who believe that
the only economic salvation of the nation lies in increasing
the volume of money in circulation. That, broadly, is called
“inflation.” And there is another group of persons, most of
them doubtless equally sincere, who think that “inflation”
can end only when the entire nation has been plunged into
bankruptcy, once it is begun.
These two groups probably are both wrong. It does not
seem to us that what is needed is more actual currency, but
a more rapid circulation of the currency already available.
If we read the reports of the Treasury correctly, there is
enough gold reserve in the hands of the Government and the
Federal Reserve Banks, to warrant the issuing of practically
twice as much currency as is now in circulation and still re
main well within the limits of what has always been regard
ed as the most conservative finance. Against our four and a
half billiort gold reserve there is little more than five
billion of currency outstanding; yet a forty percent gold re
serve is considered extremely high.
We do not think that either the Administration or the
Federal Reserve Board is so unpatriotic, so deaf to the dis.
tress of the people of the United States as to withhold its
hand if there were any way untried of getting more currency
into the hands of the public short of outright gifts. We think
they are working toward getting money into the hands of
the public, in a dozen different directions, and that they are
making progress. Farmers and many other industries are
getting more money for what they have to sell, more men
are earning wages and immense sums are being spent for
public works and other enterprises which put money into cir
culation. But we do not regard these normal processes as
“inflation,” at least not in any derogatory sense of the word.
As for the rabid anti-inflationists, who see in every
move to make the dollar cheaper in terms of commodities
and services a threat to the investments of the creditor class,
we think they have very shaky ground to stand on. We hope
to see it possible soon for debtors to pay their debts in dol
lars that are no dearer than were the dollars they borrowed.
I THE ANNUAL RACE - ' ~—-By Albert T. Reid
^.UTOCAtr I.N
'■—gg-rpg
RURALIZATION OF INDUSTRY
We were impressed by what Secretary Wallace said in
a speech in Chicago not long ago. He remarked that the
President’s land policy “may in time be recognized as the
most important since the Homestead Act.’’
As Mr. Wallace interprets the program of the Admin
istration—and he ought to be in the best position to do so—
the definite aim is to restore rural life to millions who have
been herded into the cities. That does not mean settng many
millions more people at work in the highly competitive busi
ness of farming, as Mr. Wallace explains it, but it means the
establishment of local industries, utilizing local raw mater
ials, in country districts where the farms and forests can
supply the materials readily on the one hand, and where the
local population will be the primary customers for the out
put of those industries.
As an ideal to be aimed at, this cannot be too highly
praised. Taking the lumber industry as an example, and
the goal of Mr. Wallace’s program of reforesting all the less
desirable agricultural land as having been achieved, what
could be more natural, even inevitable, than the establish
ment of local woodworking plants in every reforested dis
trict, to say nothing of such other industries as depend upon
wood products for their raw material, like certain kinds of
rayon, methyl alcohol and other chemical processes.
Such a program as that will take time and a lot of it. It
ought not to take so long to get industries established in
agricultural regions where the raw materials are the pro
duct of annual crops, like cotton, corn and wheat.
We hope this general idea will be stimulated and en
couraged. It seems at the moment doubtful whecher many
of the big industries will regard it as economical to manu
facture their products in thousands of scattered plants; yet
Henry Ford does just that, and does it successfully. It is
time that the concentration of industry in big factories in
big cities, which began when steam power was introduced,
were done away with. With electric current universally dis
tributed it is as easy to operate power machinery on the farm
as in the city.
"You know, I am a bit surprised
that Russia has been recognized.”
“Me, too. With beards like they
have got, I think we took a darn long
shot in telling them they’re recog
nized. They may be Eskimos disguis
ed. Of course, their Mr. Litvinoff was
forced to shave his whiskers off to
get a passport over here. But who
the others are, I fear, is something
we may never know while they per
mit their beards to grow.”
iou win recognize a good investment, however, when you
investigate those attractive Roanoke Rapids B. & L. shares.
Roanoke Rapids Building & Loan Assoc.
<•
12 W. Second Street DIAL R-444-1
ZOLUCOFFER
—And—
ALLSBROOK
Attorneys at Law
IMPERIAL THEATRE BLDG.
Dial R-324 Roanoke Rapids, N.
'V. Lunsford Long
J Winfield Crew, Jr.
LONG & CREW
Atlomey-At-Law
ROANOKE RAPIDS,
North Carolina
W. C. WILLIAMS
Funeral Director
FUNERAL PARLOR
UP-TO-DATE EQUIPMENT
AMBULANCE SERVICE
TACTFUL ATTENTION
DAY—Dial R-340
NIGHT—Dial R-389
Roanoke Rapids, N. C
Eyes Examined and Glasses
Fitted. Office near Rosea 10*
store. Up stairs. Hours 9 to 12
and 1 to 5. In every day except
Mondays.
Dr. E. D. Harbour
Optometrist \
Roanoke Rapids. N. C.
Dr. E. P. Brenner
CHIROPRACTOR
Roanoke Rapids, N. C.