Newspapers / Carolina Watchman (Salisbury, N.C.) / March 13, 1936, edition 1 / Page 4
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Carolina Watchman Published Every Friday Morning By The Carolina Watchman Pub. Co. SALISBURY, NORTH CAROLINA E. W. G. Huffman_President SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Payable In Advance One Year _$1.00 6 Menths_ .10 Entered as second-class mail matter at the postoffice at Sal isbury, N. C., under the act of March 3, 1879. The influence of weekly news papers on public opinion exceeds that of all other publications in the country.—Arthur Brisbane, POPULATION DATA (1930 Census) Salisbury _16,951 Spencer _3,128 E. Spencer_2,098 China Grove_1*258 Landis _1,388 Rockwell_ 696 Granite Quarry_ 507 Cleveland_ 43 5 Faith - 431 Gold Hill _ 156 (Population Rowan Co. 56,665) FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1936 EVIDENCES OF RECOVERY The best index of the state of business confidence at any time is the values which are placed upon stocks and bonds by the buyers and sellers on the New York Stock Ex change. That is not to say that prices at which stocks sell always reflect the actual values behind them. What they do reflect defi nitely, however, is the belief of the business community as to whether business is improving, so that the stocks which they buy will have a higher value, or whether it is fall ing off, in which case they sell their stocks, fearing that they will dimin ish in value. Up to the end of February in this year there had been 11 conse cutive calendar months of advanc ing prices of securities on the na tion’s Stock Exchanges. Since the rise began, in March last year, the average price of 50 representative stocks moved upward from $77.92 to $119.21 a share. Th*ee years ago every bank in the United States was closed. Since that time the average increase in the price of stocks has been 136 per cent. Last year on all of the registered national security exchanges 661 million shares of stocks changed hands. It is foolish to regard these stock transactions as pure gambling. A fair percentage of stock trading is done by speculators, but the vast majority of these transactions are purchases by investors of dividend paying securities, which enable them to earn more than bank in terest on their surplus funds. They buy stocks and bonds rather than real estate because of the existence of the stock exchanges, providing an open market in which any listed se curity can always be sold imme diately at a price. The very best evidence of a gnu ine business recovery, and that the world of business believes in it, is the evidence provided by the record of the stock exchanges during the past 11 months. THOSE AMAZING JAPANESE To the American mind nothing that has occurred in recent years has been so amazing as the story from Japan of the assassination of several of the nation’s high officials by hot-headed young army officers. The workings of the Oriental mind are beyond the power of most of us to follow. Apparently the soldiers who slew their statesmen were merely trying to protest against the anti-militaristic policy of the gov ernment, which has attempted to restrain the army’s activities in Manchuria and Mongolia. It was a demonstration against the growing control of Japan by industry and finance, instead of by the military caste. The leaders of the move ment regard themselves as patriots bent on restoring the ancient syj tem. One authentic tale of true hero ism comes over the cables. Th assassins were reported to have kill ed the premier of Japan, Keisuk Okada. Three days later Premie Okada tumd up, alive and unharm ed. The man whom the rebels ha< killed at his house was his brother law and secretary, Col. Denzo Mat suo, who looked so much Tike th premier that, when he offered him self for sacrifice, there was n doubt about his identity. That in cident reveals another phase of th Oriental mind, its indifference t human life, even its own. Altogether, the Japanese episod suggests that the nation is far fron being a unit in its aggressive polic of conquest on the Asiatic main land. TODAY AND TOMORROW —BY— Frank Parker Stockbridge SAP .... the season It’s "sugaring-off” time now, up in my home county of Berkshire They are tapping the maple trees ir every "sugar bush.” It’s great fur —and profitable, toq. The av erage maple tree yields about 25 gallons of sap. It is gathered in buckets—old-timers still use the old wooden "sap-pails”—and poured into barrels on sleds, which the oxen or horses draw to where the big iron sap-kettle stands over the log fire. For every barrel of sap boiled down you get about a gallon of maple syrup. Boiling the syrup down still more, leaves a residue of sugar, which is worth in trade at the store from 10 to 20 cents a pound. The owners of the biggest "sugar-bushes” pack their own sugar under their own brands, for the city markets. 4c 4* * SUCCESS .... one business I am always interested in men who started at the bottom and have worked up to the top in one busi ness. Perhaps they are more in teresting to me because I have never had the temperament and disposi tion to climb the ladder a rung at a time. I’ve always tried to go faster than that, and if there were too many above me on one ladder, I’d try another. However, I take my hat off to men like Oscar W. Smith, presi dent of the great drug manufactur ing house of Parke, Davis & Com pany, who has just celebrated the 50th anniversary of his connection with the same concern. He start ed in as an office boy when he was 16, in 1886. Now at 66, he has been the head of the business for fourteen years. FARE .... and passes The Interstate Commerce Com mission has ordered all the Eastern railroads to reduce their passenger fares to two cents a mile, with an other cent for the privilege of rid ing in a Pullman car. This is bringing railroad rates back to the pre-war standard with a venge ance that cuts the rate between New York and Chicago from $32.17 to $18.17, and other trips in proportion. It is the idea that the lower rate will induce more people to travel, and I am inclined to think that is true. The biggest passenger-car rying road in New England, which is the New Haven, runs many trains, even in the summer tourist season, over 100-mile stretches with not one more than a dozen passen gers to a car except at week-ends. Personally, I have always ob jected to paying railroad fares sinct the roads stopped giving out passes to newspaper men. * a KING .... styles King Edward is starting out to be just as good a salesman for British Empire products as he was when he was Prince of Wales; He went to a commercial exhibit of Empire-made goods the other day He stopped at a booth where they were showing pipes made on the Island of Malta, and bought one of them. The immediate result was that the Malta pipe makers were swamped with orders—enough to keep them busy for a year and a half. He admired some African ostrich feathers and wondered why the ladies had stopped wearing them in their hats. A big boon in os trich feathers started overnight. I have often wondered why the fashion for ostrich feathers went out so suddenly. I imagine the war had something to do with it. 1 remember when no lady considered herself well-dressed unless she had two or three "willow plumes” in her hat, which cost $15 or $20 apiece or even more. I remember one night in a theater in Columbus, Ohio, when somebody stole two willow plumes off my wife’s hat, which she had pinned to the seat in front of her. That set us back about $35. <*r -r -r TITHES .... abolished One of the rules laid down in the laws of Moses for the Children of Israel was that every farmer must give one-tenth, or a "tithe” of his income to the temple and the priests every year. The practice of tith ing continued for many centuries after the beginning of the Christian era. It was revived by Queen Anne of England in 1712 to pro vide a fund, called Queen Anne’s Bounty, to support poor churches whose members could not afford to pay the ministers a decent living. At that time the tithes produced about $100,000 a year. They have grown, with the increase of farm incomes, to about $11,000,000 a year and the farmers of England have been protesting against them for a long time. The British Parliament the other day voted to abolish the tithing system and instead provided a fund out of which to pay clergymen of the Church of England whose congregations could not support them. I have always thought the found ers of the Republic were very wise in providing in the Constitution that there should be no relation be tween the Federal Government and any church. 10 INJURED IN GAS BLAST Corpus Christi, Tex.—Ten men were injured—five of them critical ly—by an explosion of gasoline va por in a 30,000 barrel tank at the Humble Refinery. Workmen said the explosion was caused by a short-circuit in an extension cord attached to a light by which they were working. i SINCE THIS is leap year, it is J st st st HARD TO know what to expect >t st st s FROM THE ladies. If you are st st St j NOT MARRIED, and you are a st st st MAN, IT would be a pretty ° St St st 5 GOOD PLAN to keep your eyes st st st ; OPEN. YOU might be taken St St St , UNAWARES. BUT let us be on st st st WITH OUR story in order that st St st WE MAY justify our warning. St st st It [HAPPENED right here on Main st St St STREET THE other night. "I’m | ^ if SURE THERE’S a man following if- if- if US”, SAID one girl to another as st st st THEY WALKED up the more or st St St LESS DARK street. "Gosh, what st st st SHALL WE do?” asked the second st st st GIRL. "I’LL tell you,” said the st St St FIRST LASS. "Let’s St st st MATCH FOR him.” st St St I THANK YOU. Man Who Was Hanged Tells the Story of ‘Death’ New York—A short squat mar who helped decide a State electior after he was hanged S 2 years ago came out of the bayous of Mississ ippi recently to describe how it feel: to "die.” William Isaac Purvis, of Purvis Miss., was hanged Feb. 7, 1894, be cause they said he shot and killec Will Buckley. They led him to th< steps of the yellow pine gallows strapped his arms and legs anc wrapped a thick silk bandag* around his eyes. "Have you anything to say?’ they asked. Purvis choked back th< tears, because he was 19 and had much to live for, and answered: "Before God I am innocent.” They cut the rope which sprang the trap door and Purvis plunged down to what should have been his death. But the knot slipped or un tied—no one remembers now—and Purvis crashed eight feet to the ground. The tough hemp rope seared his neck, tearing the flesh, and Purvis collapsed, unconscious. A prison deputy scratched "executed Feb. 7, 1894” after Purvis’ name, but the 62-year-old Bayou farmer lives to day as the world’s only executed prisoner who can discuss his own i 1 ucam. Will Buckley was killed from ambush June 22, 1893, while rid ing back from Columbia, Miss., with his brother Jim, where they told a grand jury how the Ku Klux Klan had beaten a Negro to death. Purvis was a member of the "White Caps” and that same night he was arrested at his home near the town named after his family. Jim Buckley said he recognized a figure through bushes as Purvis. Purvis was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to die Sept. 6, but an appeal was carried, to the State Supreme Court and the execution w^s delayed. Then the court affirmed the verdict and the execution was set for Feb. 7, 1894, and the 19-year-old youth prepared LU U1C. Purvis, a ruddy-faced man with a barrel-sized chest, described it in his slow halting speech. "I had given up all hope,” he said. "I really didn’t see the crowd. They were just a blur of faces. Maybe I was sobbin’, 1 don’t know. You see, I was so young then. But they didn’t have to carry me up the steps like they did some. I went myself. "You can’t explain the feeling a man has, when he’s about to die for a crime he didn't do. I can’t de scribe it, I just suddenly felt all alone and cold, and a second later my feet dropped from under me and everything went black.” C. C. McDavid, a friend of Pur vis and publisher of the Percy County Herald in New Augusta, took up the story from there. "When the crowd saw the rope slip, some of the women fainted,” McDavid said. "A strange hush fell over the 4,000 people. Then a minister leaped forward and _1 IViVUUlWU • " 'This is an act of God. It is a sign of Providence that this man is innocent. Shall we let him die?’ "They all shouted: "No!” and cook Purvis away from the Sheriff. Later he was returned because an 3ther appeal had been made to the State Supreme court.” The court, however, refused to admit that Purvis was legallv exe cuted, asserting that he "did not hang, by the neck until dead.” Purvis’ second execution was set for Dec. 12, 1891, but a few weeks before that date friends stormed into the jail and rescued him. For three months he remained in hiding as A. J. McClaurin, candi date for governor, campaigned across the flat water regions of Mississippi with the commutation of Purvis’ sentence as one of the planks in his platform. McClaurin won, and when he took office the third week of 1896, Purvis surrendered. McClaurin who later became U. S. Senator, commuted the sentence, and after Purvis served 22 months on convict farms, granted him a full pardon. ■- < ROBBED OF $5 5,000 IN JEWELS New York—A burglary in a 12 room Park Avenue apartment left Mr. and Mrs. Kurt M. Simon minus jewelry and a mink coat valued, police said at $5 5,000. The rob ber was equipped with a pass-key and a hacksaw, said police, and ap parently rode up the front eleva tor. an BOYS WILL BE BOYS-t>y a. b. Chapin I F T”—————r— - “ ' t THIS WEEK IN WASHINGTON (Continued from page One) eordance with long-established po litical customs. In other words, Mr. Tugwell doesn’t play ball with politicians, and that is the real reason why the politicians don’t like him. THE POLITICAL SITUATION Politically, Washington seems to have its mind pretty well made up that Governor Landon of Kansas is going to be the Republican nomi nee. A great deal, however, de pends upon Mr. Landon’s accept ability to former President Hoover and his following, and of Senator Borah and his following. Very little evidence is at hand either way as to where these two figures stand in regard to Mr. Landon. The Democratic strategy is be ginning to develop. Nobody questions seriously Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination. It would be silly to imagine anybody else heading the Democratic ticket this year. So far as there are any doubts they concern only his reelection. On the point of reelection, the President himself has not the slight est doubt. Numerous recent visi tors to the White House, some of them friendly to him and some of them opposed to him, have reported unanimously his extremely cheerful r-j_-1_L- :11 i__ CUU11UW1JLVV Hint win wv » in November. The Democratic strategy seems co be to cultivate the confidence and good will of the conservative elements in business and finance. There has been quite a steady stream of business men in and out of the President’s office recently, at his invitation. Many of these visitors have commented upon the reassurance tone in which he has told them that he was trying to de stroy the capitalistic system but to preserve it by attempting to cure its defects. It is on that point (the charge that he has been trying to substi tute Socialism or Fascism for the existing capitalistic system) that the Republicans are expected to make their major fight on the Presi dent. OTHER ACHES A good deal of interest is being shown in proposals to change the present method of subsidizing American shipping. It is now on the basis of mail carrying con tracts given to ships by aid of Ship ping Board loans, at the rate of $2.50 a mile, whether they carry any mail or not. That some other method will be substituted for this is reasonably certain, but the mat ter is now a political tangle, with the Postmaster General on one side and some of the Senators and Rep resentatives on the other side. The most unpleasant news to reach some of the boys on Capitol Hill was the announcement the other day that Columbia Universi ty had granted Rex Tugwell an other year’s leave of absence from his professional duties. There are those in Congress who lack confi dence, either in Mr. Tugwell or in his rural rehabilitation program, which is to cost $350,000,000. $350,000,000 is a lot of money and there are a good many members of either House who can put up a good argument to demonstrate that he should have something to say about having some of that money spent in his own district. With the fund in Tugwell’s hands, the boys know it is hopeless to try to get it distributed in ac DEMOCRATS TO MEET JUNE 10 (Continued from page One) pressing regret over the recent death of Thomas D. Warren of New Bern, four times chairman of the committee. p' Mrs. C. W. Tillett, Jr., of Meck lenburg, vice chairman, proposed amendments to the party plan of organization to let women be chairmen or vice chairmen of pre cinct committees and to have coun ty committees composed of chair men and vice chairmen of the pre cinct groups. Opposition flared to the proposal to double the size of the county committees, now composed only of chairmen of precinct groups, and the committee decided it did not have power to act and voted to recommend the amendments to the State convention. Governor Ehringhaus spoke briefly to the committee by in vitation. He said the record of the party in State and nation was one of which no Democratic or other citizen need have any sense of shame or sadness. He said he was prepared “as a private in the ranks” to carry on the fight he had always waged for the party. He urged a united front. In recounting progress made in financial, welfare, prison, and oth er matters during his administra tion, the Governor commented, “And now we are faced with the problem of getting fair prices for tobacco. Those in high places in democracy will meet this with courage and fairness, as they have other problems. All we want to know is where we are going before we go too far.” Plan Drive To Enforce Drivers License Law Raleigh—An intensive drive to enforce provisions of the State’s driver’s license law probably will start next Monday as indications were the Highway Safety division will complete issuance of applica tions on hand by today. Arthur P. Fulk, director, said 660,668 permits had been issued through last Saturday, and of this number 1,807 have been revoked since last November 1 when the act became effective. In addition, 376 applications have been denied due to incompetency of the drivers. An average of 200 to 300 new applications are being received daily. Besides checking as to li censes, highway patrolmen will in vestigate brakes, steering equip ment, lights and horns on cars. Seed Shortage In Corn Belt Des Moines, Iowa — Midwest agronomists said the corn belt faced a shortage of high quality seed corn unparalleled in ydtrs, as farmers planned their 1936 plantings, scarcely two months away. The agricultural experts termed the situation serious in Iowa, Illi nois, and Minnesota, with good seed scarce in Wisconsin, Kansas, Ne braska, Missouri, and South Dako ta. They warned, however, against "panic buying” asserting the solu tion of the problem lay In locating and distributing the seed from abundant areas to deficient ones at fair prices. They advised farm ers to test seed now, even though tests were run in the fall. The shortage, the agronomists said, was induced by a wet fall, an early freeze in some regions, and the severe winter which prevented the corn from properly drying. The high moisture content of last year’s crop also caused disease. A. J. Surratt, federal agricultur al statistician for Illinois, said the seed corn situation there was the worst since 1917. DOUGHTON DEFENDS F. R.’s TAX PROGRAM (Continued from page One) "Second, impose a graduated tax on that portion of corporatin profits which is not distributed to stockholders in dividends. Estab lish rates for this tax which will yield just about the same revenue to the government from these un distributed profits as if they had been distributed and personal in come taxes had been paid on them. At the same time, make all divi dends received from corporations by individuals subject to the same tax as any other personal incomes They are now exempt from the normal tax. This exemption would be abolished. "Thus there would be only one corporation tax instead of three, double taxation would be ended and there would be one system and scheme of taxation that would af fect all alike. These are the plain facts to bear in mind about what has been pro posed. It will be well to bear in mind amid all the confusing and misleading voices that will be raised, many of whom will speak from the standpoint of self inter est and partianship. While I be lieve the principle of reform em braced in the President’s message to be sound, it must, of course, be applied constructively and with the definite view in mind of doing no injustice to any taxpayer or to any legitimate industry. A thorough and careful study is now being made of the entire sub ject by our committee to the end that the amount of revenue re quested by the President may be raised by the most equitable meth od possible.” • Patronize Watchman Adver tisers.
Carolina Watchman (Salisbury, N.C.)
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March 13, 1936, edition 1
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