PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW
1 (Continued From Page One)
th? Young family, that of the little girl,
■ away, the big boy was not at all disturbed, i
fully aware. But four years’later, the Ruggles
family, came South, and, To, in the course o &
few years the paths of the lad and lassie crossed
in the sandhills of North Carolina and- marriage
resulted. E. W. Buggies .is one of the conse
mteneies of that marriage. Bur father is- dead^.
but his mother, Mrs. A. S. Ruggles* still lives at
Southern Pines and is the oldest person, m re
spect to residence in the town of Southern
and an authority 'upon the events of the band
hills. Some of these lirfifts I hope to see her ana
. fiiL up on the history of the wonderful Sandhills
development.
With Mr. Ruggles the other day as I talked
with him was a youthful doctor of philosophy,
W. W. Cfcuze, hailing from Tennessee, a Ph. D.
graduate of Peabody of the class of 1934. He
is one of the two teachers of psychology at State
and one of Mr. Buggies’ extension workers. At
that time lie was teaching a class at Warsaw.
A Man Who Kept Working.
Mr. Sv }. Adams is the competent chief clerk
of the Wake County auditor’s office. The county
commissioners, for some reason fixed his wages
at $3£0 a day, though the sum of $1,800, the
usual .salary, had been budgeted. Mr. Adams
couldn’t very well accept the .$3.00 wage, but
somebody had to do the work. So he kept plug
ging , away, bat was able, being an old bachelor,
and with a rainy-day provision laid up, to keep
on the job without any pay. A bill has been in
troduced in the legislature to restore his salary,
but; nobody quite knows, it seems, what he will
get for those months which he has worked with
out salary.
There are three men in that auditor’s office,
all gray-headed, when and where any hair is still
left, but there is no office in the state that has a
better reputation for its output. When Auditor
Holding says it is thus and so, it has always
turned out that it is just that way. It is hard to
beat ye old-timers.
Half of the Republican Senator*.
I am going to tell you here about half of the
Republican senators. It is Senator J. P. Gibbs,
- of the 30th district. He lives at Burnsville,
Yancey County. He was in the house in 1921.
Mr. Gibbs had one year of study in the U. S.
Grant University, Tennessee, a school which was
consolidated with another in Chattanooga. He
is so much of a Republican, you see, that he even
went out of the state to attend a college named
• for a Republican president.
Nevertheless, he is a sensible and likeable cus
tomer. ■
Mr. Gibbs is a- farmer, growing the grains and
raising fine-blooded Guernsey and Herefords for
sale to breeders. Not only that; he is the owner
of feldspar and mica property, which minerals are
mined for him on a royalty basis.
The Mechlenburg Delegation.
Mechlenburg is one of the few counties which
have three representatives. They are Wm. F.
'Scholl, lawyer; Edwjard T. Tonissen, and Paul
R: Erwin, lawyer. . ' :
Mr. Scholl is a native of Wake, reared right
- up here at Holly Springs. and. having relatives
at Angier and probably at other points in Har
nett county. He is a fine young man. He is
the author of a bill to kill the absentee ballot
law, but will have to fight for it on a minority
• report. But here’s hoping that he and his two
- Mechlenburg colleagues will make a gallant fight
against the abomination. You will find Mr.
Scholl's picture in this paper. <••••■
‘ Mr. Tonissen is a native of New York, a son
of ah immigrant from the Scandinavian coun
try. He came south about thirty years ago. He
is approaching his fiftieth birthday. He is the
Southern manager of the Consolidated Cork Cor
poration, and an expert for the N. C. Railroad.
I api disposed to consider Mr. Tonissen a
mighty solid citizen. E. W. Price so adjudges
him, and I place much confidence in the judg
ment of the secretary of the Industrial Commis
sion. ' •
Paul Erwin is the youngest of Mecklenburg’s
trio. He is a graduate of Duke University, re
ceiving the degrees of A. B. arid'LL.’B. in 1931.
lake the other two. Representative Erwin is not
a native of Mechlenburg County. Though he
has been practicing so short a while he has been
recorder pro tern of the Mechlenburg county
court.
The three Mechlenburgers sit together and
geem to dwell jn the utmost harmony.
The fight against the liquor evil began in the
churches and wiB always fee the concern of all
those who- have the common good of their felTows
at heart, -the group which Mr. C. A. Paul calls
religious. Ttre word Christian- would be far
all the Bible I kBOw of ho words- which bet
ter define a true Christian or a truly religious
person—no better test to apply to 6«” te>
-ascertain his real spiritual condition, tharr these:
“Ye know ye have, passed frdrri death unto life
if ye love the brethren.” In short there is no
guess work, about it. Yon are- sure that you pos
seas the spirit of Jesus Christ ire your h^art if you
have a genuine interest in the spiritual,, physical
and economic welfare of your f ellowmaru
And it follows if such are your- feelings, you
cannot fail to concern yourself over the world’s
oldest and greatest social evil, the thing which
blights brilliant minds and makes strong men
weak, pitiable and helpless and their children
born but to die.
Bootleggers No- Political Menace.
As time went on and the power of the liquor
interests increased to such an extent that they
became a menace to our msthtotions. of free gov
ernment, some ©f the politicians joined with the
members and leaders in the churches to throw
off their stranglehold. The activities, of the
’Brewers Association had become so jabnexions
and so dangerous that the Senate ordered an in-,
vestigation in which our own late Senator Over
man took a prominent part, and if you would
see the dangers we face politically now,, you have.
but to read this record. It should be remembered
that in the old days the Brewers owned a large
percentage of all the saloons and manipulated
large blocks of votes of those who were connected
with the saloons or patronized them. And the
records say that 90 percent of the drunks were
drunk on beer.
The fight which began away bacK in uie seven
ties with women praying in the streets before sa
loons or upon their sawdust floors, and culminated
in the passage of the eighteenth amendment, was
long and bitter. Contests involving the liquor'
question have always been attended with a good
deal of bitterness, more formerly than now, be
cause of the strong entrenchment of the liquor
interests.
The 1933 Election Expressed Stale’s
Sentiment
We had a right to hope that the matter was set
tled, at last for a while. But those who think
more of gain than they do of the welfare-of their
fellows never rested until they brought about re
peal, and the situation which We as a State now
face. Because the liquor question has become
more or less of a political baseball and human na
ture what it is, there are some politicians who
will compromise and make liquor the goat, as the
opponents of the sales tax, or some of them, are
now doing. Also some other supposedly dry in
dividuals.
“But we have liquor anyway, why not legalize
it and get the revenue?” you say. Yes; but cer
tainly there is no one who can say that the State
government is controlled by any organization of
bootleggers or is in any danger of being. It can
and will be controlled by the organized liquor in
terests if we allow them to do business in this
state. Out of every dollar of revenue received the
slate will have to pay out many times as much in
providing for an increase in police officers and
in caring for those whom an increase in poverty,
misery, insanity and general wretchedness has
made incapable or unable to provide for them
selves. It is a strange paradox and state of af
fairs which keeps! a man from getting a decent
job if he drinks, and would punish- severely all
drunken drivers, and then even considers" going
into the liquor business and making more men.,
drunk and incapable of driving or getting em
ployment.
Then conies the matter of advertising. When
the traffic becomes legal the liquor concerns im
mediately begin to advertise! to increase con
sumption of its products and the^ consumption
does increase day by day, and year by year, until
we have many more drunkards and potential
drunkards than we hav,e under prohibition, I
don’t care how black you paint it. To me it is
worth keeping the liquor folks out not to be faced
at every turn with their advertising. Three out
of every ten drinkers become drunkards, statis
tics prove. There may be many speakeasies in
Baleigh where liquor is sold, but so far they are
not apparent to the casual observer and not so
obnoxious as to make it unsafe for any lady to ~
go about safely night or day. It was not so in
the old days. I agree with my friend Peterson
There are ‘thousands' of ugly, Unsightly hog pens
in North Carolina, but if one's mind does not run
to the Ugly; thieycfe-notsee them. T prefer that
the-ugly arrodttyh- things- hr my city should be kept
6ut of the sight of the young.
tegwhzwtfem Would Be Betrayal,
Ja the fail of 1933 the church people of North
Carolina, opposed by. almost every politician then
in power, voted against the return of the legal
liquor traffic by a very large majority. All were
advised by the leaders of that campaign that a
vote against repeal was1 a vote against liquor, and
a warning to oar nest legislature, and the out
come was ao interpreted. This intensive cam
paign was waged for no* other reason than be
cause these so-calied religious people really be
Eeved that the liquor traffic is against the well
being of their fellow men. I f this group of peo
ple seem hither and write ugly letters to their rcp
iJesewtatives, it» because they feel that they have
been betrayed and their indignation is righteous,
and justified.
Enforcement of Prohibition the
Easiest “Centrol.”
ft has always seemed to me that the best way
to handle the liquor business is to prohibit it and
then to ,enforce the law insofar as it is possible.
And right here, let me add that prohibition can be
enforced much more easily than, all the prohibi
tory clauses in the HiW bill. It was because the
liquor-dealers broke every law made to control
their business that prohibition came into being.
We may start the vicious circle all over again,
■but if this generation legalizes it, the next will
outlaw 'it, because the liquor traffic is inherently
evil and conditions surrounding it become intol
erable to saint ahd sinner alike. It is against the
common weal, the supreme reason for the exist
ence of all law and of government itself and the
heart of all true religion.
What Is Ahead Of The
United States?
(Biblical Recorder.)
Charles A. Beard, the historian, has an article
in the New Republic with the title, "That Prom
ise of American Life," in which he makes some
modest suggestions about what we may have in
the, United States in the near future. Knowing
his history, Mr. Beard advises us that, as the po
litical, social, and religious backgrounds of our
country are different from those of the countries
of the Old World with their inheritance of the
feudal system and state churches, so our develop
ment may be .expected to take a different course.
We take this to mean that we are not going to
Communism,.Fascism, or Nazism, in Mr. Beards
view. In the past American life has been eco
nomic and realistic, a conquest of material things.
W,e have learned to produce; our problem now is
to do the most with what we produce. Mr. Beard
believes that three ideas with reference to this
have found lodgement in the minds of the people
of the United States'. These are: “(1)” L’s
possible for great technology to provide a high
standard Of -life for the whole mass of the Ameri
can people; (2) on the side of engineering ra
tionality, the immediate task is to make a stand
ard-of-life budget for the! whole mass of the
American people and to indicate the technologica
operations necessary: to bring that standard into
being through - management and labor-;- (3) the
fullest possible mass, production cannot he effect ed
under inherited capitalistic practices and the lat
ter must give way to any extent required to fu
fill the Jaw ..of ..mass-production economy.”
It will be observed that Mr. jj,eara nas me ..
idea as the President. With our immense pm
duction in this machine age, every man shou
have a decent living ;*there is enough for all, °r
there may he ifour gteat resources and new m
ventions and improved machinery are used f°r
the common good. Jtis't how the proper adjm
ments are to be made Mf. Beard does not pro
to know/ but-he believes that the promise wi
come to realization since the American Pe0Pe
have so determined in their minds.
Here goes one copy of The State's Voice with
out a long, heavy article.
Senator Spence’s amendment to the Hill bid
would require White Lake, Pace’s Lake, ^
Waccamaw, and other points^without police
have liquor stores if the Hill bill should heC°
law. Senator' Spence, doubtless, has the *
county resorts in mind. .J'