THE FRANKLIN TIMES Issued Every Friday 815 Court Street Telephone 283-1 A. F. JOHNSON, Editor and Manager James A. Johnson, Assistant Editor and Manager SUBSCRIPTION RATES One Year <- $1.50 Eight Months .... 1.00 Six Months 7o Four Months 50 Foreign Advertising Representative AMERICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION New York City Entered at the Postoffice at Louieburg, X. C. as second class mail matter. NEW LIGHTS FOR HIGHWAYS Most of the 40,000 people who are killed every year in automobile accidents meet death on the open highways, where traffic is not unduly heavy but the temptation to take chances on speeding is the greater for that reason. A high proportion of fatal accidents are due to dark ness, and the dazzling lights of approaching cars. Experience has demonstrated that there are few ser ious night accidents 011 well-lighted city streets. Un fortunately, it has been impossible until now to light long stretches of country roads. The cost has been prohibitive. Now two new systems of highway lighting have been invented and have given good results in practice, which are so inexpensive that any rural road district can af ford them. One system, which is useful only for hard paved roads, is based upon imbedding a reflecting ma terial in the road surface, so that the headlights pick out the roadway and show clearly whether there are any ob structions ahead. The other system is an ingenious re flecting device placed on posts or telegraph poles along the roadside, which catches the beam of the headlight and projects it ahead, lighting up the road for half a mile or so. Two or three of these to the mile are said to light the highway almost as well as daylight. Betters-lighted roads and non-glare headlights, which have now been perfected and doubtless will be as com pulsory as safety glass in a few years, will help cut down the ghastly toll of motor deaths. OUR LIBERAL PENSIONS The last Congress enacted pension laws for the benefit of families of disabled veterans, and increasing pension rates for veterans themselves, which are estimated to ; add around 13 million dollars a year to the Nation's pay- j ments on account of services in past wars. The annual cost of pensions is now above 400 million dollars a year, and as time goes on it is inevitable that the total will increase, even if this country never gets into another war. There are now about 850,000 ex-ser vice men and about 250,000 widows drawing pensions. The pressure for "liberalizing" the pension laws and in creasing the pension payments is constant and increas ing. In the last week of June this year there died in Buffalo the last surviving widow of a veteran of the war of 1812. That war ended 123 years ago, in 1815. Darius King, who fought in it, married at the age of 71 a girl of 19. He live^Pto be 89, but his widow drew a pension for 52 years aftaLhis death, until she, too, died at the age of 89. If future Congressmen are as liberal in the matter of ?widow's pensions as those in the past have been, we may have widows of World War veterans drawing pensions "well into the 21st century. THE CONSUMER PAYS There is a great deal of confusion in people's minds these days, which is not cleared up by consideration of some of the policies and practices of the Federal Govern ment. It used to be taken for granted that the most im portant economic problem was that of the consumer. We are all consumers. One may be a Democrat or a Presby terian or an Elk or a farmer, or all of those at the same time or none of them. But whatever his other'-affiliations every one of us is a consumer. That is the only class label or designation which fits every human being. There are two kinds of consumers; those who work for a living and have to buy and pay for their own food, and those who do not work for a living but are fed by those who do, who thus have to pay not only for their own food but for that of the non-workers. Nobody wants to let the non-workers starve, but it would seem reasonable that they should not receive at public cost more food or better food than the workers can afford to buy for themselves. Yet we have before us the spectacle of the A.A.A. buying surplus agricultur al products in order to keep the prices up, and giving them free to people on relief, while the workers who have to pay for their food are thus compelled to pay higher prices, because that presumably benefits the farmers .whose surpluses have been bought up. That sort of thing has been going on with potatoes, apples, flour, canned goods, fresh vegetables, raisins, cheese, butter, eggs, oranges and many other commodi ties. That it benefits the farmers when Government pays them more than the open market would pay for surplus products may be conceded.. That it benefits the non-workers on relief when this high-priced food is giv en to them is apparent. But in between are the great masses of ordinary consumers who are certainly not benefitted. Th?y Are the ones who pay. They pay a higher price for their fobd in order to keep the farmer's prices up, and to feed the non-workers. They can eat only what they can pay for. jj i It sounds a bit screwy to us. - > ft' . A 3 Makes Good The following story by Carrol Dulaney in a Baltimore Daily, st 750.00 Total Debt Service Expenses and Sinking Fund Reqniremente $22,930.00 GRAND TOTAL :. $77, 846. 0ft An itemized statement ot the above Expenses la on file at t3$. l74^ *rr.*. - --W ?;?*. v... T. K. 8TOCKARD, Tewa Clerk. A- N Home Sweet Home ' " ? ? ' H-M-AA-A*pf THOUGHT Yt>U WERE COtN?. TO DO tw' house WORK WHILE I WAS Doing -th' week end buyin? i A PINE UOW-DEt-DO, I'D SAY Just because You wot a swctt ?i