THE STATE’S VOICE
O. J. PETERSON, Editor and Publisher
Published Twice-a-Month at Dunii, N. C.
FOR state wide circulation
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: $1 a Tear; 3 Tears $2.25
Entered at the Postoffice at Dunn, North Carolina,
asr Second-Class Matter.
Jtural EJectrificatiqn A Real
-Problem.
Months "ago,- and official of the’ Carolina
* Phwer and Light Company asked me-if I could
' suggest *an economic use -t)f electricity by fafm
‘6Fs- that would, justify..the expenditure.necessary
to provide. .atrrent Jop., thpiy,, use, ^ A *ter discuss
ing vvit,h,hnn the preliminary cost of installation
of electric, .equipment. and the exceedingly small
.-average demand ,for current.on the -part of fatm
n,«rs>«il had, toconfess..that, I .couldn’t suggest any
means of making installation .economically
.profitable. > . . ..
:,.W»e(.agreed thap the,average.farmer, nor those
J... tnuchl above .tlie average;. would not be: justified
i s -in paying • severalhundred ‘ dollars preliminary
> costs and monthly fees? for service ■ in order to
-have electric-lights. Also, it seemed unreason
.i able .for. men. with wood- growing on their places
to install electric' coble stoves' or "other heating
''mechanisms." We could see how* an occasional
'fanner might find occasion to-use power in con
siderable quantities; Jbrut not all.lt was also ap
parent: that. the power - company could ribt af
ford to expend the'hundreds of dollars per cus
tomer preliminary to the turning on of the cur
rent and expect to get pay for the current, for
- the up-keep of lines and for bookkeeping and
collecting services, plus an adequate interest on
the investment, out of the fees that the farmers
would as a rule be willing to pay, or would be
justified in paying. And that was not consider
ing the difficulty of financing the lines.
But the latter matter has been somewhat sim
plified by the government's liberality. But the
government surveys, , even here in Harnett
county, have confirmed the difficulties which we
foresaw. The commission on electric surveys
for communities desiring electric service has re
ported that the average estimated cost for lines
to the farm homes in the communities surveyed
would be $268 and the average expected returns
in fees for service would be only $36. The pre
sumption is that the $268 does not include the
expense of wiring the home and equiping it
with electric apparatuses. Therefore, it is evi
dent that the farmer would pay very dearly for
his limited use of electricity and that the com
pany would not be adequately rewarded for its
own expenditure and service.
But Harnett conditions are much more favor
able than tllfe average for all the surveyed areas
of the state, for the line cost for the average
rural home in the state is estimated to be $328,
as compared with that of $268 in the surveyed
areas of Harnett, while that of the revenue from
the average state prospect is only $32, as com
pared with the $36 for Harnett prospects. And
$32 is only 10 percent of the required invest
ment of $328, which, in view of constant repairs
and occasional rebuilding of the lines, would
leave nothing at all to pay for the current and
the other overhead expenses.
ine confluence ot tne above considerations is
that it seems rather hazardous for any company
or for the government to undertake to build elec
tric rural lines except in areas where the popu
lation is dense enough to reduce the cost of line
installation and prosperous enough to justify the
expectation of a considerably larger average reve
nue that the $36 of Harnett prospects or the $32
of, state prospects. And it must not be forgot
ten that the farmer who finely that he is pay
, ing too dearly for the advantages of electric cur
rent for. its limited use in his home can have the
current cut off at any, time. Many a North
.' Carolina rural telephone line has gradually lost
,» its customers till service became practically im
possible and thg lines went to wrack. Similar
results. v may, be expected with respect to rural
electric lines not shoeing.,,a considerable mar
i gin of safety. :
\' A pity it is soJ( bpt jhat, seems to be the status
of affaire* r \ ;t- ,
" -Another thing-^f .^ush it didn’t so often hap
• pen that -two er 'thnee’of my good friends: run
i.ioE 1 the same-office. <1 am already beginning, to
rfed embarrassed'jOfver.; the choice, -in two or three
P ca9es, Jhar^ mtlit make bext June. Sometimes
r J solve the prbhlehi tgr ♦voting ior neither.. '; 1 ?
Interment Newspapering During a
Third of a Century
Here are those two pages devoted to human in
terest material to fill again, and still my contacts
are confined to a very limited range as compared
with that of the previous two years, when 1
ranged free and far about the state. Perforce,
I must again depend upon the grist that comes to
mind as I sit heating the keys of the typewriter.
I had already forgotten my proposal of the last
issue to give the two volumes of the Lumberton
Argus I possess to the first of three institutions
which should ask for them. Three hours ago
came a letter from I>r. A. R. Newsome, of the
Historical Commission at present, with a request
for them, and to the Historical Commission they
shall go. Incidentally, Dr. Newsome writes:
“Historians were slow in discovering the value of
newspapers as source material, but for more than
a generation now no historian has dared write a
monograph without consulting them.”
Now, those two volumes contain comparatively
little history, with the exception of the McMillan
■articles referred to in the foregoing article. But
they do contain what were in that day esteemed
■ gome of the snappiest editorial paragraphs car
ried by any paper in the state. I recall that the
late Professor John B. Carlyle, who had the op
portunity to siee many of the state papers, told
me that the Lumberton Argus was more fre
quently quoted than any other paper in the state.
As I glance over those volumns I wonder whither
have gone the pep, ginger, vinegar, and even sul
phuric acid of those early days of the century.
There were no long, deep-digging editorials in the
Argus. Yet there were the fewest state, national,
and world problems during that Lumberton resir
dence from 1901 to 1906 that I have known dur
ing a similar period in my career. One could
give a synopsis of the world news in.two columns
of K)-point type.
The Alliance, free silver, the Spanish-Ameri
can War, and white supremacy agitations were
all history. The increase of the world’s supply
of gold had served to relieve somewhat the
money stringency. There was little to require
lengthy discussions, and, if there had been, I
knew too little to justify the undertaking of such
articles. However, those were lively days in old
Robeson. My first war was against political
bigotry run mad after the white supremacy cam
.. paign and making it very uncomfortable, if not
impracticable, for any citizen to vote otherwise
than straight Democratic. There I began a bat
tle *for fair elections which I have not yet let up.
These bright newspaper youngsters sent out by
Oscar Coffin know nothing about hot newspaper
stuff. I had only Ihree fights, however, in Lurr
berton—and, mirabile dictu, Kdidn’t get a licking
in any of them.
Over in Sampson, I note, a dozen years of ad
ditional maturity, together, with the benefit of
linotype composition, had made me considerably
more prolific, the Democrat usually containing
two yards of editorial paragraphs that won that
paper a reputation for sprightliness that I could
give no paper now, since my mind has become so
involved in national and world problems. It was
quite a task to have set the two pages of home
print that served the first two or three years of
my publication of the Argus. The last two vol
.umes, one of them containing the article that
made my editorial career in Robeson memorable
till this day, “The Fly in the Ointment,” are not
preserved, unless by the Robesonian to which pa
per the Argus was sold in 1906.
The first two volumes of the paper, the first
edited by John Charles McNeill and therefore
quite valuable, should be in the hands of the
present owners of the Freeman Printery at Lum
berton. A hint to the wise is sufficient.
A Big Compliment Comes Occasionally
Of one who for a dozen years published popu
lar papers it- required some sacrifice of amour
'Propre to deliberately set about a publication that
was foreseen would appeal to only a small per
centage of the people. But occasionally comes a
compensatory compliment that , counterbalances
the loss of many smaller ones. Here, for in
stance, is Bayard Clark saying that I long ago
should have been on the^ditorial staff of the New
York Times at a big salary. Bayard, of course,
is my congressman, and supposed, perhaps, to be
disposed to flatter. But if it is any comfort to
him, I can assure him that one of the brainiest
and most scholarly men in North Carolina, one
generally recognized as such, in.cold b’ood, wrote
me several years ago that he was a regular reader
of both the New York Times and the Chatham
\Record and- that - the editorials in the latter were
otra ftarwith those in tla». Times, 6r words to that
effect. Bayard,- leFs-take it. that your compli
ment- simply shows that y^are a than<& stipd^
rior judgment, just as I am when I say that your
congressing is suiting me mighty well. That
should he a satisfactory conclusion for both of
us.
And here is one of Bayard’s. Wilmington eon
stituents showing the same good sense as his con
gressman, Mr. G. H. Hutaff, renewing right on
the dot and saying, “I have enjoyed reading your
paper very much.” G. H. is one of the Fayette
ville tribe of his name, though I believe the fam
ily drifted from Wilmington to Fayetteville. The
Hutaffs are the Coca Cola kings of the Cape Fear
section, the dad running a plant in Fayetteville,
Henry in Lumberton, G. Hf, I guess, in Wilming,
ton, and Charlie in Dunn, and a cleverer bunch
of gentlemen it is hard to find.
WANDERING AND WONDERING
AMONG MEMORIES’ MAZES
(Continued from Page Two)
knew they were akin. But if Malcom Peterson
was not Scotch, he was possibly a brother of
iFleet, who was born at least as early as 1790,
and who had a grandson named Malcom Peter
son, the name’s only appearance in more recent
Peterson records in Sampson. That looks a lit
tle favorable, and as Fleet Peterson seems to
have been a grandson of the Patriot Fleet
Cooper, who lived not so remotely from Dismal
township, Malcolm as a grandson of Fleet would
the more easily have drifted to the site located
Jby Mr. Faison. . But suppose that is the solu
« tion, what a swarm of Cooper kin those Georgia
Petersons have, as well as those ot the reterson
and McPhail' strain—three of the most prolific
groups of Sampson county! Old man Fleet’s
progeny’s name is already legion. For instance
the wife of W..H. Weatherspoon, attroney for
the Carolina Fower and Light Company, of Ra
leigh is a great-granddaughter of Fleet Peterson,
her father R. E. Lee of Laurinburg a grandson;
while at Wake Forest College Woodrow Wilson
Peterson, a great-grandson, has been sweeping
the scholarship deck these last few years.
I am inclined to think that the Fleet Peterson
line is the one for Mrs. Lane to trace. There
was no Peterson family in the eastern part af the
state listed in the 1790 census except the seven
families in Sampson and one in Northampton,
though there seems to have been a ship captain
in the Beaufort section, but not listed, and even
Mr. McMillan’s Robeson Scotch family was not
listed in the. census report.
It is interesting to note that my first-cousin
Dexter Averitt, whom Win. A. Parker and L.
W. Alderman were recorded a month ago as vis
iting and whose daughter Rosa was the recipient
of one of those silver spoons, lives right in Mrs.
Lane’s town of Statesboro. This paper sent to
the Georgia historian will probably make her an
early visitor of Dexter’s.—And it is fair to say
that the space given here to the subject is in a
measure for Mrs. Lane’s benefit and for the bene
fit of those Georgia Petersons whose ancestors
came from old Sampson. Thus I can count upon
at least one interested reader of this lengthy
“chat.” If Mrs. Lane would run over ‘to Savannah
she might find R. L. Peterson, a half-brother o
mine, who can orally give her a long list of the
tribe, for he is* several years older than I. The
early swarm of people from this section to sout
Georgia and that of the opening of the turpen
tine industry down there are bound to have
made a large part of southern Crackerdom 0
Cape Fear region stock. And Mrs. Lane states
that there are Faisons down there, of the N°rt
Carolina stock. And the Lanes could well have
gone from Sampson, as the Lane family was long
quite prominent in the old county.
A Plea for the Salvage of “Should
Just now I read a paragraph in the Greens
'boro News in which a well known is twitted tor
■using “whom” where the construction requites a
nominative. Catching that) -error is one
that paragrapher’s favorite sports. But it oc
curred to me that the most serious disintegration
in grammatical construction in modern Eng1S
consists in the slovenly formation of conditions
clauses. "While scores of writers are draggin&
in the -abominable double connective if amd
thousands have abandoned the use of shall an
should in conditional clauses and have there y
introduced mode and tense,forms that are ou^
rageously inadequate to convey the nuisances
tense and condition. I. found, yesterday, w ®
I should at least expect it, the following sen e
or clause : “He threatened to sue if the debt w
not paid.”—But why say more? If the
shouldn’t see at a glance the -utter gramma i
• .I..6._a whole
impropriety in the use of that was,
volume wouldn’t open his eyes-to what is wrong*
But . this hint. The paying waa to be in
11* * i m : -
the fa'
5'