Newspapers / The State’s Voice (Dunn, … / June 1, 1933, edition 1 / Page 1
Part of The State’s Voice (Dunn, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
t A PAPER FOR THINKING PEOPLE VOL. I. DUNN, N. C., JUNE 1, 1933. NUMBER 10 More Meandering And Scribbling T WO \\ ctrivo “su "“''n '-cxiiit; num pre?s and the Dunn Dispatch followed upon its heels bearing- a batch of his editorials, the editor; felt as dry as his old ad-valorem cow of 1931 fame. He told jd* wife that he didn’t know -whether there would be another issue oi the Voice or' not. But unlike the ad-valorem cow during the past two years, the real cow. milked dry goes busily about her grazing and lo at the next milking (or is ic milching?) time, without thought or worry the udders are again full. The journalist must b<S that kind of beastie. That ad-valorem cow which we described as dry hi the spring of 1931 but which the legislature would persist in trying to milk, or milch, didn’t so readily fil] her udders. Half of that fifteen-cent levy is still uncollected and the state has the bag to hold to the extent of two million dollars of non-existent school funds. The formen Chatham Record editor can well say “I told you so.” The recent legislators w-£nt to Raleigh at last aware that the ad-valorem cow was dry and decided there was no use in try ins to get a single speen from he^. But they still slued clear of the vaulting power and tobacco hei fers. and turned to another cow that is not giving enough milk to keep the calf thriving. Two years a so there was a much larger well fed salary group that should have been milched with a luxury tax than now. The net income group has almost dried up too. But-the poor simps of legislators think they can take thfee speens of the’ hundred light) ones that have been going to the calves. It is fixed v. that the merchant milkmaid must get. those! three speens or suffer thcvuooetffiKPces,..- ■ Pope. Pftmsnaftid.. and poor calves! une Angry wercnani ytv last trip down into Robeson revealed more of the feelings of the merchants than we had for merly discovered. At St Paul we found Mr. L. L McGoogan sizzling. He had worked like a Trojan -against the levy of a sales tax. The event had left him sore and grieved at what he foresees as the consequence. He cannot see himself taking three percent of the poor washwoman’s dollau and l%e can not see how the merchant can survive and not pinch the pooi\ already black and blue from the pinchings of cruel circumstances. Mr. ■ McGoogan knows how tef (express himself vigorously and we have asked him to write an arti cle for the Voice when he shall have discovered the real contents of the sales tax bill. He was not sure, nor was I, whether the limit of ten dollars upon any one article was Retained in the bill or not. K is was, such ai limitation Is enough to make any fair-minded man sizzle as Mr. McGoogan was sizzling. For instance, imagine a poor wo ma n st'dining to buy a ten conar coai having to pony up ' her three per cent tax wliile the rich lady invests in a $500 coat need pay only, a ten dolar tax; or the purchasers of a Ford o-| a Packard having to pay the same sales tax’. Both of us hoped that that discrimination nad heon omitted from the latter measure. But if, Mr. McOoogan does send us an article be sure to head it. if it doesn’t burn the leaf before it reaches you. St. Paul Then and Now St Paul, or St Paul’s, is no new burg to the wri tor.Yet it is difficult to identify the fine httle city Of nearly 3000 people with the village of thirty years ago. '‘Sandy”^JWcEachern is the only link left, be tween the old and the new. Thirty years ago/St. Paul’s consisted of the stores of "Sandy” McEachem and Lauchlin Shaw and >-be I*t-sbyterian church. I left Rbbeson just as Wilton McLean and his group of promoters were about to start the construction of the railroad through St. - Pauls to Hope Mills. That railroad, busted as it Probably is, was the making of. St. Paul’s and pos siby of Elizabethtown—if that old county seat has yet been "made”. For dui^ng those sixteen years •since the sojourner’s return from Louisiana he has, ret laid eyes upon Queen Elizabeth’s North Caro lina memorial. The McLean railroad forked at St. Paul, one branch going to Luniberton and the other to Elizabethtown. St. Paul immediately became a cotton mill town and “Sandy” McEachem the cot T.an mm mogui. I fauna him busy watching the ticker. Cotton was going down that day. Cotton prices mean much to the great cotton producing and manufactutjlng county of Robeson^ as they do to Harnett and Sampson, which produce more large ly than thej^ manufacti^e. Give Robeson, Sampson and Harnett 12 br 15 cent cotton and see them splu’^e. L£t cotton go to six cents and see the “bustedest” people in Not£h Carolina, except when the huckleberry drop saves Sampson. While “Sandy McEachem was the only surviving cftisen of old St. Paul’s, it was not difficult to lo cate the sons of a number of old Robeson friends— such as the Powers and Howards, and there was a former principal of the Pittsboro school now a fix ture at St. Paul, where there ante actually three schools for the whites, all of which Mr. Franklin superintends. For several years he has had one oi his old Pittsboro pupils with him as a teacher, Miss Lucille Farrell, whom it was a pleasure to greet. And the»|e, as at Red Springs, we ran up with another of the numerous brothers of Dunn's well known druggist, Mr. Geo. K. Grantham. Both the St. Paul and the Red Springs blathers are druggists also. We had Mr. H, Grantham at Red Springs to give us a list of the numerous Grantham brothers and siste*!3. There are eleven of them suviving. If there were enough of them and we kept finding them, we should have no difficulty in making a go of the State’s Voice. At Smith field, St. Paul, and Red Springs we registered members of the family, while at Chapel Hill Mrs. Puglr, a niecei of the a' subscriber - . There _ih_ one away down in Louisiana. We must send Mm a copy and see if hie) ean<«et, «r turpentine dollar, for he quit the drug’ business forty years ago and per sued the turpentine industry in its Westward flight from Georgia, thtjough the wieslern off-shoot of Florida, through Alabama and into Louisiana, the most western of the pine states, except the south eastern cot-flier of Texas. At St. Paul I find Attorney John S. Butler, son of that former stalwart Sampson citizen Robert N. Butter. John S. has represented Robeson in the legislature. And in the wife of Cary Powers I dis cover that former buxom and fine spirited Miss Ma bel Rivers, a resident of Clinton during the wail period. She was Mrs. Peterson’s partner during the influenza epidemic. They went out into the woods to the poorest and most wretched homes and Mabel scourled floors and worked like a negro and seemed •to' enjoy it. Now she has a nice little home and two fine children. Cary Powers was a lucky young ster. At Red Springs A night spent in the old Bed Spiiings hotel re vived memories of auld lang syne. It.was/ hi that old resort that our good friend Sheriff George Mc Leod had that notable barrel of ‘ books” during the Robeson ‘ homecoming’’ about 1904, which homecom ing afforded the incentive for that famous “Fly in the Ointment” editorial that is sjtill remembered both by the Scotch and non-Scotch of Robeson, county. O these were lively old days in Robeson! Those biting Af feus editorials of thirty years ago make it possi ble to get Voice subscriber^ in any town in Robe son county. Fifty of the leading citizens of Lum berton had subscribed three months before the first copy came from the p^ss. I riled the~Scotch; they boiled for a while but were soon as friendly as ever and I count them, among my greatest friends in North Caroina. It was good to see either the old fellows or their sons. I sat and taked with J. N. Buie for an hour. He introduced me to the younger group and to the new comer as the#“meanest ’ editor in North Carolina. That cognomen would not have been far amiss in those old days. Something just had to be done m the old Argus to make people •■want it. If it were only a three-line sizzen it was therfc and did the work. ; • _ \ didn’t get) to talk with Mr. Ben Townsend as I /desired and expected to do. Ben has been one hustler. He is probably the biggest farmer in Robe son county, and, what may surprise you, he S«HJ* buying fa^ms and making money on them. Mr. ' M-'.ttR’-it' -V" "*■ *. * -i «■ - S -»-tV ■ Thrower, the biggest merchant in Red Springs, was just launching his business thirty years ago. Jvlar tin McKinnon, who thep was one of the big mer chants of the town, like his brother Sandy of Max ton, has long passed over the river. , A. P. Spell, a son of our old friend Sheriff J. ML* Spell of Sampsn county* had come as a young law yer to Red Springs. He is now older than his father when I first knew him. It was a genuine pleasurjo to be with him and his good Sampson county wife at dinner. A visit to Mr. Rufus DeVane showed him older too. He married a Clinton, lady, Misa Ashford, a sister of Col. Ashford and of the genius Tom Ashford, who spent his latter days in Kinston, where his sons now thrive. One of his daughters has been teaching right here in the Dunn schools. Joh A. Oates’ mother was a sister of Mrs. DeVane, who died two years ago. But a Red Springs without D. P. McEachem, Hamilton McMillan, J. ' E. Purcell, George Hall; and other old-timers doesn’t seem the Red Sp'jings of old. We did desire to renew acquain tance with Dr. Vardell, but he and his successor as president of Flora McDonald 'College were both cut of town. The tough litte editor Branch of earlier days is replaced by a Mr.' Benson. Dr. Frank Mc Millan was ill, but has al son following on in hia footsteps as a minister to the ill, and another who is solicitor, in Judge Buie’s court. E'jnest Graham, was back from his long stay in the General Assem bly and probably cgnsiders that two five-month terms is enough tor an^Kobeson couniy mercnam. There is one thing, to the c'tedit or the Robeson members All three -of tSSrir^#efi»tor Divid and 'Representatives Graham and Thompson, the. latter fdemerly the Maxton editor but who was succeeded by Mrs. Thompson! during his stay in Raleigh, all knew their minds and stuck to their prescribed course. No otheq county delegation voted more consistently than Robeson’s. 1 Liquor Gets in its Ruinous Work J. N. Buie, who held down the job of register of deeds during our sojourn in Robeson, has served as Judge of the Recorder’s court in Red Springs for a score of years. Robeson is generous in the mat ter of recorders courts, having six of them, each with a county-wide jurisdiction. There are as many rural policemen. Two of them. Messrs. Pete Chason and Smith were on the job that moaning. The court had an annoying case—a nian who should, from his heredity, be a decent man and good citizen, had allowed liquor to ruin him- and his home and was charged with shooting at his poor crippled wife* The fellow tamed down when he got a year’s sen tence to the roads, finding that he really would have suffer for his cussedness. He was finally let loose to support his wife and seve;^jal small children on the understanding that he would go to the roads for the year the first report of his dunking or other misbehavior. Judges these days have more real rhjnblems to solve than ever before. It is as Judge Wiebb says—liquor does not hurt the drinker worst, but his family. When ned springs was a ncaon Red Springs and Jackson Spilings were long North' . Carolina resorts. The mineral praters are still there and of medicinal value. The old hotel which used to affo'0 a Southern hospitality to many summer visi tors is still in use and is kept by Rev. and'Mrs. Tf. D. Pridgen, poor health having forced the former fi)om his pastoral, work. Mr. Pridgen had Just ha<J calls from his two preacher sons, both of Whom are pastors in the city of Charleston, who were on their way to the Southern Baptist Convention In Washington City. It is unique for one poor country preacher to furnish the same city two pastors.1 . That old hotel building, constructed, of heas.t lumber of long-strawedi Pines, will apparently stand inde finitely. Changing times, however, have eclipsed its former glory, as they have that of Jackson gpringp ■and probably in a less measure Seven Springs in ■Wayne county. The wafers of Seven Springs have too much medicinal yalue to be entirely neglected.' From the seven springs a water may be found for ^•(Continued On Page Three- i- L ■ • ['j '' ' ' ‘ r4 • *' „
The State’s Voice (Dunn, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
June 1, 1933, edition 1
1
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75