Newspapers / The State’s Voice (Dunn, … / March 15, 1935, edition 1 / Page 4
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THE STATE’S VOICE O. J.. PETERSON, Editor and Publishe* • Published Twiee-aMonth at Dunn, N. C. : FOB STATE WIDE CIRCULATION SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: $1 a Year; 3 Years $2-25 *>'■ Entered tit tlie Postoffice at Dunn, North Carolina, as Second-Class Matter. Either Reduce Sales Tax to Two Percent or Take It Off Staple Foods Entirely. The sales tax as incorporated in the finance bill is an indefensible hardship upon the poorer people of North Carolina! The staple foods should be excepted as during the last biennium or the tax reduced to tw;o percent. The State’s Voice is convinced that the tax in the proposed form will work hardships upon tens of thousands of the people of the state that they should not be suffered to bear. Tens of thousands of families buy sugar, say, in two-pound lots. The tax wouldn’t be a 3 percent tax, but a 10-percent. That is only one example. A pound of stew beef, which at pres ent prices will be as much as many a family can buy at a time, will pull a six and two-thirds per cent tax. Anything purchased between ten cents and 33 cents, inclusive, will tax the pur chasers at rates from 3 to 10 percent. Any pur chase from 35 to 65 cents will likewise levy a tax of from three to nearly six percent. Pur chases of 66 to 99 cents will pull taxes of from three to four and one-half percent. That leaves only purchases of less tnan ten cents, purchases of 34 and 35 cents and purchases of- exactly a dollar which do not pay more than 3 percent. After passing the dollar price, the tax approaches more nearly the 3-percent level. This is an outrageous situation. The pur chaser of goods coming to less than a doUar will, nine times out of ten, have to pay a tax averag ing-at least, I believe, five percent, if not more. When the tax was assessed two years ago nine cents, wjhich has no tax. levy, wpujd buy some thing. Now .it will not buy even a half-pound of white side. Hundreds of-thousands buy, from necessity, in quantities priced less than a. .dollar. These families, the poorest people of course, are under the propOSed tevy to pay a five percent tax upon their food purchases, while the people who buy in quantities priced over a dollar pay more, nearly on the three percent level. This is ah outrage. ' A two percent tax upon foods, with the same starting and rising points, 10, 35, arid 65 cents, ■would cause: purchasers of quantities priced less than a dollar to pay an average of something like four percent, or more than the 3 percent bill calls for ripon more than dollar purchases. If it were possible to place a 1 1-2 percent jtax upon purchases under a dollar, the tax Would be fair iind just upon the poor, if such a tax can be justified at all. It would not make that class of purchasers pay the highest tax rate charged any group. But it would be difficult to levy the 1 1-2 percent tax. Two cents also .makes the tax on under-dollar purchases too high. The removal of the tax from food products seems the fairest solution. The State's Voice in sists that no such-outrageous burden be placed upon the poorest people of the state—not the ones upon the relief rolls but the ones who have lived hard, even skimped, perhaps suffered, in order to keep off the relief lists. And there are thousands of such people. The, State's Fotce- insists upon the prevention of this threatened outrage. And in this case, at least, I believe that The State’s Voice echoes the voice of the State—certainly of those people who understand the injustice threatening the tens of thousands of people who are on the verge of constant hunger, but decline fo ask for aid. They are brave; they deserve consideration.' They do not 'deserve to be penalized. Let them pay their proper fate,' but let them not he charged a double tax rate; It is much fairer to take $1,000 from a net income of $16,000 than to take one cent of a poor washerwoman's 16-cents when she'goes to buy. a pound of' the cheapest meat on the market. Slandering Honest and Efficient^ — ..... Officers^-.:; . Any charge against enforcement officers with- • out exception, is ft' slander against hundreds of' men who have labored faithfully to enforce the’ prohibition laws! Thera are doubtless some’who have not1 done their duty, softie who have proved venal. But hundreds of officers, including shef ids, deputies,. constables,; > '.awd policemfert, ' hftVe done -their'. full' duty as-fa# 'as ctrCtriiistancfes' Swapping $36*0$),000; for $3,600,000. Senator Hill may be a financier; but his propo sition for the people of North Carolina to spend $36,000,000 for out-of-state, liquors to .stodgt quor stores fr#m,which a;tax fund of $3,600, may: accrue to the. state, appears more the propo sition of a crazy man than that of a financier. The finance committees have toiled two months, seeking sources from , which to secure $31,500,000 for. state, purposes—to support the schools, the eleemosynary institutions, to build and maintain roads, to support the courts, feed prisoners, to support the state government proper and provide funds for a thousand and one dif: ferent things. Here comes the Hill bill with the proposition that the people of North Carolina expend more than that sum for liquors manufactured out .of the state—a sum which w'ould mean the taking of a third of a million dollars a year from the average county for liquor to 'produce relief funds for the alleviation of the poverty which the expenditure and the demoralization resulting from the drink would have helped produce. The gross receipts from the next cotton crop-selling for 12 cents a pound would scarcely pay the sum that the Hill bill, supporters propose for North Carolinians to 9pend for liquor. The net re receipts for the cotton crop would pay scarcely half the bill. Everybody knows tnat it is easy to gei wx money when the people have money. , Sending $30,000,000 out. of the state a year is hardly the way to create a prosperity which affords tax funds a plenty. What' fools we mortals can be! Easy to Make Errors. Wonder if anybody caught the word fornica tion turned into fornification in the previous is sue of The -State’Voice? And in an earlier issue what should have been apiary came forth, and through the writer’s own fault at that, as aviary. . It is lucky that we writers get by with so few mistakes. In that: off-hand debate in the senate Thursday I heard two senators make er rors worse than the average newspaper man, writing off-hand at top speed, would make in a month, and one of the speakers made his at least a half-dozen times. The other merely used good when well should .have been used.. ^he more: serious offender against construction used that instead, pf in which time after time; But that wasn’t a bad score for a half-dozen men making off.-hand speeches. . . . . jCarl Goerch Has a Dictionary The first time I heard Carl Goerch pronounce Catawba as Cat-a-wa-ha I thought that he' glanced at his notes, caught the cat and didn’t bothet to^ correct., The second if catne iout too big and definite to be a slip. I take it that somebody had guyed Carl about the first* slip and that, he emphasized the error for fun. I guess that was the way of it, but it was an amus ing slip when I detected it and wondered if oth ers did. And, by the way, Carl has taken our suggestion and bought him a book—a dictionary. —and has reported, that heis finding it interest ing to glance through it and note the pronuncia tion of words, We suggest that he look up border. It may surprise him to find that it is not “boarder counties’’,—\But Carl is one of the most interesting and versatile institutions in the state, It may be that the New. Yorker" from Irving’s Tarrytown really has never caught the pronunciation of Catawba, though “Catawba grapes ’ should he a phrase of more than state wide familiarity. Liberty Magazine Two Years Behind Thfe State's Voice Mr. E. W. Price, -secretary of the Industrial • Commission, Sends ,us a copy of Senator Owen’s article in Liberty Magazine on “How to Pay the National Debt,” with, the-folio wing comment: “Liberty is two years later than The State’s Voice with this.article—youcarried it first.” As sumably, Mr. Price means that The State’s. Voice carried the essence, not the wording, of the article.-J ( .i' • Incidentally,' you may expect jnany things that have apjpeared in The State’s Voice to make ap* . pearapce elsewhere later. . ' , -- ,,. .; the .way* TJip Liberty article is aslqng\as. ahy> that. has appeared i in^ The State’s Voice, or longer, being rated as requiring twenty-two and, one-half minute for. reading. £ takes apaee to carry a ma^-si?e .discussion of a 'man^size sub ject..... •• . ...... . . .... ...v would sufferfhemto ’46 it, and to include, them in a‘wholesale indictment is‘unjust and dhfaif. •: . ' - -!? y v :-»•*** . -''.y.'..': > S..“. -■ - l v . ... . ' f: It Tune For An Offensive. J The jSill bill has little chance of passing the senate; none, ,we believe, of passing the house In case it should go to the people, its chance of gaining their approval would be even less than -that of passing the two houses. Senators Horton and Gravelly expressed the proper sentiment in the debate Thursday. If we are to retain the prohibition law, as is prac tically assuded, it is time to awaken to conditions and put an end to them. Senator Horton ex pressed his willingness to vote for an appropria tion of $250,000 for an enforcement fund, pro vided the people favoring prohibition will help to create a sentiment for its enforcement. Sena tor Gravelly expressed a similar ,sentiment. It is time for an offensive. For years prohibi tionists have had to take the defensive against assaults upon the laws. That gets us nowhere. Prohibition* can be enforced.' In fact, I believe it more easily enforced than any control law. Let the Hill bill pass and it is certain that the blind tiger would still remain in his lair until driven out. If he is'to be driven out after li quor stores are established, the sensible thing is to drive him out before they are established. It is foolishness to undertake to provide the funds for enforcement “of any liquor law by spending $36,000,000 with out-of-state distillers as a preliminary, it is better to save the expen diture of that sum, dr any other sum, for liquor and vote directly trom the treasury a sufficient sum to provide real enforcement. All factions in the senate bewail’the evil of drink. Legal ized liquor, even if. we had that alone, is as damn able a curse as blockade liquor. Then, why not accept the suggestion of Senators Horton and Gravelly and vote a sufficient enforcement sum? No other slim'appropriated by the general as sembly would afford more valuable results than money spent to secure real enforcement of the liquor laws. " The savings in the cost 6f crime would more than repay the cost'of enforcement. Besides, the savings in the purchase of liquor, whether blockade'or legalized, would amount to several times the sum needed to afford a real enforce ment. And the reduction of the amount of liquor drunk1 would diminish the disgrace, disruption, and the impoverishiheht of families, and as an economic proposition- would repays the cost of en forceemnt by the lessening of the funds needed for relief. Preventing the need of relief funds is much better thap, providing ,a: relief fund by a process which creates the, need of relief. Senators Horton and pfavelly. have suggested the real solution of the state’s problem, All, pro fessedly,. desire to see the evil of drink elimi nated. All deplore /the dominance of blockaders and bootleggers, ReaJ enforcement, then, should satisfy all who sincerely, deplore the curse of strong drink. Enforcement, as indicated above, would increase the wealth of the state, diminish crime and suffering, reduce the cost, of relief, and in every other way work for the welfare of the people of the state, even of the youth, who are said now to be so largely the victims of the bootleggers and who, by the very terms of the Hill bill, would still continue to be their victims, since they would be forbidden to buy from the state stores. It is time for an offensive against the law violators. North Carolina; cannot afford to sur render to the coterie of ^rascals who have tram pled her sovereign law under foot and menaced the morals and the bodies of both old and j'luung. ... ... - Let’s see a real .enforcement law pushed through the legislature. Tens of thousands of people who have the wplfa^e of- the state at heart will applaud the, man or the group which intro duces an4,:pushes to the front a bill which will end, the shame that all factions deplore. Commends Article on Moral Education . * f1 ; ; , We have the following note from Father Gal lagher, oT#^ ( " ;1 , “J congratulateyou upon your recent article about, the ^for^l ,Training of the Young, so greatty needed,in our, day. ,4The Roman Catholic Church has always held that there Lare three distinct parts to the human being, the soul*.the body, and the mind,... To neg lect 'the spiritual while training the mind and bodjr results hr £ deyelpped' barbarian—a very dangerohs fi^urt, bbth to the individual and to the State. Hence, The State’j Voice is to be corn mended tip<m the stand tafcen and so ably de* . fended. ‘Mbre^^er fd ye,^as the Irish say* ^ “ ! * - t -> - . I *. .• , i ']
The State’s Voice (Dunn, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
March 15, 1935, edition 1
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