u
People Who
BY At FAIRBR6THER
TEST LIQUOR LAW
11 rrr t r"HTV riTrrr rn Rmr I
FA CE COALSHOR TA GE
A DIVORCE CANON
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a tbab, single copy a CBNTg SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2i, 1916. sxH at Tag xtffg staxds ox tkaix ESTABLISHED MAY; 190a. :
AF
Supreme Court Upheld
Prohibition In S. C
LREADY South Caro
lina's Supreme court has
upheld the new prohibi
tion law in that State
and the gallon-a-month
law and the Webb-Ken-yon
law are upheld,
and the men who are
going totseliilikkker and import likker are now
wondering what about it. There is no use.
Back of these prohibition laws in the South is a
public sentiment and when public sentiment
is strong the law is supreme. South Carolina
a long time had the shameful and shameless
dispensary lavy a law that undertook to put
God in the whiskey business. But happily that
has passed and we believe now that all South
ern states are free of this farcial attempt to
regulate whiskey.
The big fight on in Baltimore means a great
deal to the mail order people. With Virginia
dry the first of the month; with North Caro
lina and South Carolina and Georgia out of the
traffic,' Jacksonville is about the only southern
depot for the mail order business. If Balti
more goes dry Washington could yet do a mail
order business, but that town is liable to go dry
any day if it undertakes to debauch the South
by the mail order route. Congress settles that
and Congress has a half notion to vote Nation
al prohibition. :
Of course our moonshiners are doing a big
business. The stills are being captured all
over the South and as those who- operate them
are never. caught a new still is easily installed.'
BtadaUxt wiIL be t different, r It isn't
going tcr be always that the mountain dew can
be found. Gradually, but certainly surely, the
country is driving Old John beyond the out
posts of civilization.
Misunderstood.
In this old topsy-turvey world, where all the
wrongs come uppermost, many people go to
the grave thoroughly misunderstood. They are
well .iritentioned people, people who mean to
do the right thing but who do the wrong thing
because their intentions are not at all under
stood. ' Public Opinion is said to be a stern old
Judgeit never errs, we are told. Oftentimes
it gets the wrong view point, but it rights itself
and renders a fair and impartial verdict. We
doubt this.
Take the case of the special train composed
of Nevy York women high brows they were,
and mostly rich, but they were human beings,
and their intentions were all right. They were
old time friends and neighbors of Hughes; they
were for woman suffrage, and they conceived
the idea of going through the west in their
special train, thinking they might do him good,
lut, contrariwise, they did him harm. The
west didn't understand, or, if it understood, it
took advantage of what the women really in
tended, and made the trip what plain Anglo
Saxon would denominate a bust.
The scenes at Portland: Oregon, reflected no
credit on those opposed to the special train
but they had an effect that reached farther than
the candidacy of Hughes. By putting up a
wanton to talk against the virtuous women
an old hag who had been arrested for trampling
on the American flag and who had been driven
from a Christian city for another cause,
brought womanhood into the -spotlight in a
manner calculated to do the cause irreparable
' harm. .
Those opposed to woman suffrage seem to
forget that both the democratic party and the
republican party endorse it. Hughes, Wilson,
Kooseve't, Bryan all the big men of the coun
try have unqualifiedly endorsed woman suf
frage, and finally it will be adopted nationally.
But those zealous friends of Hughes, those
kindly disposed neighbors, on their special
train of Pullman cars did the suffrage cause
harm and certainly did themselves no good.
Therefore they were misunderstood.
A Second Trip.
President Wilson has again been as far west
as Indianapolis, and along the route he was
cheered by the multitudes. We do not take
any particular stock in the cheering business
we have heard the wild screams of men fol
lowing Bryan and other defeated ones.- What
we would like to know is: How will the wo
men vote? What arc the farmers of the Mid
dle West going to do on the proposition of
tariff. Those are the two questions that would
settle in advance the presidential result so far
as speculation goes. But it seems that the
woman isn't talking for publication and the
farmer is just as quiet. Therefore it .will take
the result in November to give any of us an
idea of what is what in politics. And it wa$
never this way before.
. And now "injun" summer is on the way.
Urtele Sam Takes Time To
Do This Chore.
IS GRATIFYING to know that
Uncle Sam, although in the busy
throes of a national campaign; al
though bothered about sub-marines
md the Mexican situation, still finds
--:!, time to iook alter a lew mue cnorcb
lli UUltVl lilt; llVUVi ' I
merit of agriculture has just been
making a study of bed bugs. It is disclosed
by Uncle Sam's men that the bed bug will hide
in the day time ; that he will migrate from an
unoccupied building and seek habitation where
he can get a human meal ticket without trou
ble. All the things that women who have
kept house have known for a hundred years
and perhaps ten thousand years, are again re
lated, fresh from the hands and mind of the
man who has been making a study of the pest.
It is proposed to send free, ant: no questions
asked, a booklet on this subject, and those
who want to sleep well, and who object to be
ing eaten alive by the festive bed bug can
write on to Washington and be supplied with
information that most people possess.
However there is nothing like having an
Uncle Samuel to look after these little things.
In these days of the scarcity of white paper
maybe so many bulletins should not be print-;
ed, but in all departments men must be given
some chore to do and when there is nothing
else to study the Bed Bug is always there.
' '' ": o '
About The Brigalia.
It is said that a negro secret order wouldn't
stand five minutes' by the watch were it not for
t he 1 ou d and ."glit.te ri n "brigal ia" . aut horized
by tne ritual. Let a colored man see his broth
er bediked in the brass and gay colors of the
"brigalia" and to secure an application for
membership is as easy as to lift a sleeping hen
off the roost.
And perhaps the white brother has a weak
ness for the gaudy display for when we sec
him diked up in his uniform of many colors he
assumes a strut that is "grander than civilian
clothes will produce. Referring to an order of
the war department concerning the National
Guard, it appears, according to Judge Ruf us
Clark, that the Governor can no longer ap
point colonels and majors on his staff unless
they belong to the National Guard if they ex
pect to wear the uniforms made and provided.
And after turning in the alarm Judge Clark
in his Landmark exclaims :
This is awful. What good will it do one
to be appointed a colonel, captain or major
on the Governor's staff unless he can wear
the brass buttons and gold braid ?
Awful, Judge, why, its worse than awful. It
is appalling. It is heart crushing. It is terri
ble. It is judgment day. Imagine the Govern
or's Majors and colonels coming down the pike
dressed only in their best Sunday clothes no
glittering stars no gold braid nothing to
suggest the insignia of office no "bragalia"-
simply some creased pants and an ordinary
coat. Banish such a thought. Avaunt feverish
dreams and stand not on the order of thy
avaunting. If a man can't be Kernel on the
Governor's staff and wear gold braid and brass
buttons and plumes and filigree work what's
the use of being a Kernel? None, at all, and
t Congress should meet at once in special ses
sion and remedy this defect which threatens
the peace of a commonwealth. Imagine a state
without the Governor's kernels.
V- .-.;:;' ' O : :
What Might Happen.
The last loan of two hundred and fifty mil
lion dollars now being raised by this country
for the allies will make an even billion dollars
loaned those fighting countries. A billion dol
lars more money than any man could count if
it were in bills or coins of the present de
nominations. A billion dollars millions more
than the ordinary mind can comprehend. And
when the war is over and those foreign coun
tries want to pay us back by shipping in their
foreign 'made goods, what will we do? It is
said if we build a tariff wall to keep them out
they will plead they cannot pay, and if we don't
if they undertake to give us a trade balance of
a billion it will put every wage -worker in
America to the soup house. And those men
who have loaned the money, those many mil
lions, may go broke. That may be their pun
ishment for aiding and abetting the allies. For
had America remained neutral taken no part,
Germany long ago would have mopped the
floor with the allies. This country has not
only furnished them the money to carry on
things, but also furnished the munitions and
machinery of war. Arid it may be that we have
something coming to us besides what we call
coin. ' " :
And now some, astrologer has found that the
stars are not just right for, Hughes. When
the astrologer commences to get busy you can
make up your mjnd that-there. is some doubt.
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.-;-:
MAJOR CHARLES M. STEDMAN is
sues a statement in which he says that
because he has been suffering with a kidney
stone, and has been detained in Washington,
he will be unable ta enter the campaign ac
tively. Hi friends tell us that apart from this
temporary trouble he is in the best of health,
and therefore all that is necessary is for those
who want to see our Grand Old Man from the
Fifth returned to Congress by the usual ma
jority to get busy and. see that all demo
cratic votes are cast. .
There is every reason why the Major should
secure a large-majority. His work during his
terms in Congress has been to the credit of the
state. He has held ancbholds important posi
tions; he has attendcdjQ his duties with as
much vigor-asyiirftinCongresSi- He has,
in a word, made goodand as he is the last of
the Old Guard, the last of the Confederate sol
diers we can honor, every citizen of the Fifth
district should feel proud to vote for Major
Stedman, to assure him that while he is tempor
arily disqualified to appear on the stump there
are thousands-' of friends willing to cheerfully
sec to it that the full vole for him is registered.
Everything predicts that the Major will be re
turned by at least three thousand-majority. It
should be all of that and will be all of that if
each friend does his duty.
-" O :
The Good That Is In Us.
It is a true bill that no man is wholly bad.
He may be dissolute; he may be a murderer;
he may be all that the law says makes an un
desirable citizen, and yet there is good in him
somewhere can be found genuine sincerity and
honestr. This is not a paradoxical proposition.
It is a fact. And this fact has always been
known to close observers of human nature
and that is why novelists always found some
thing good and .perfectly natural in the most
abandoned wretch. Brcte Hart found one
virtue in a mountain of vice and this he made
the taking part of the hero's life. John Oak
hurst displayed his goodness when he carried
the pine boughs to keep warm the sleeping wo
men and Mother Shipion, the old abandoned
hag who starved herself that the innocent girl
might live when the Outcasts saw death was
certain exhibited the good part that was left
in her. And all the way through we find, al
ways, evidences, that no matter how much one
may debase himself he cannot destroy that
God-given attribute which men call goodness.
There is something pathetic in the story com
ing from the federal prison at Leavenworth,
Kansas, where a Count named Brunswick, who
claims to belong to the Austrain nobility is
serving time. A little child, a girl, had fallen
into a fire and was so badly burned that the
physicians said she could not recover unless
her body heals and this can only be accom
plished by putting on new skin. The Count
wrote to the doctor and. said, "'if the people
who want this skin to save the little girl's life
have not already received answers to their ap
peal I should be very happy to give a part of
my skin. Although I am in prison, I don't
think that should make any difference. The
child has all her life before her. I have most
of mine behind. Besides, for me it is nothing
but a little skin and for her it means life. I
am so useless here and I'd like a chance to do
something good. I beg you to lose no time
for the child's sake."
Now here was an exhibition of goodness in
all that the word can imply. There were
doubtless many relatives; hundreds of Chris
tian men and women, but no one of them had
come across. The prisoner saw the situation
he felt for the innocent child with a life be
fore her, and was willing and eager to assist.
Such a man is not and could not be wholly bad.
'..-. . o- '
The cost of advertising and subscription will
soon advance. The big papers will next year
be compelled to pay at least eighty per cent
more for whitepapcr than they paid this year.
The contracts expire. The little papers are al
ready paying over a hundred per cent more
than they ever paid.
Just One Thing Ajler Another
Is Always On. .
ir 1 n 1 iv-
O NOW New York claims that
she is facing a coal shortage and
the newspaper people cannot buy
white paper, and all kinds of
. f " . . ,-iti-f t m 1 1 f 1
I ferI arc. cither short or so hijrh in price
they arc hard to yet. The Federal
trade commission has appealed to
big newspapers to curtail the Sunday editions,
to save; enough white paper to keep the little
publishers from being ruined, and men and wo
men are wondering if they will freeze to death
this winter because of a shortage of coal. The
trade commission docs not seem able to get at
the facts, find the cause of the wonderful short
age. It appears before the war abroad there
were some several hundred thousand idle men
and when the munition factories started "all
who wanted work got it. And it must further
appear that we have taken too much time to
help the allies and forgotten our own demands.
Few people realize, or if they realize, refuse to
acknowledge, the serious situation now con
fronting many people. The newspaper man is
up against a proposition that threatens his very
existence and reports indicate that there is no
relief in sight. With a coal famine just as cold
weather approaches well, there is no use to
talk hard luck, but really hard luck seems to be
on the way. Too much prosperity is proving
about jis bad as no prosperity at all.
. o :
Where Jerry Simpsoa Would Have Lost
In Danville, Virginia, that classic city on the
Dan lying just North of us and situated hard
by the North Carolina line, they have a play
house, and at this play house last week a
vaudeville company , put . on. ,, oue . ; attraction
where the ladies wore neither shoes nor stock
ings. The chief of police viewed this shocking ex
hibition of uncovered ankles and feet and told
the managers they must cut it out that such
an exhibition in Danville was indecent. And
the management assured the chief that in no
other town had objection been filed, but of
course he was there to obey the law and the
nude feet would be covered. But the chief
found his orders had not been observed, and
the manager was told to come to cou.t.
The lice writing of the matter said the chief
explained that no patron of the show or no
citizen of the town had complained, but he
thought this was an indecent exhibition, and
what he thought of course had to go.
Funny what particular difference a pair of
stockings or a pair of socks would make to a
Danville audience. Wonder what would have
happened in Danville had Sockless Jerry, the
Kansas statesman undertaken to have done a
song and dance stunt in the "opery" house
when he was out campaigning in other years.
To think that bare footed women dancing to
beat the band would shock a chief of police in
Danville, not only suggests that the world is
growing better but that it is growing better
very rapidly.
o
Some Day.
Some day science will reveal to us the hidden
mysteries of the planets. We arc progressing
in our making of telescopes, and one of these
days there will be completed a glass powerful
enough to bring to our eyes all that exists at
least on the near by planets. Dr. Percival
Lowell, who for twenty-two years has been at
the head of the Harvard Observatory at Flag
staff, Arizona, in a recent speech to the stu
dents of the University of California said that
his latest observations of the planet Mars had
disclosed to him that what erstwhile were
taken for canals were not canals at all, but
wide strips of vegetation, doubtless irrigated
by artificial canals. He said that the smallest
observable spot on" Mars would be at least ten
miles wide, therefore what had been mistaken
for canals were strips of vegetation under hu
man cultivation. Dr. Lowell also said it was
absurd to assume that the earth was the only
planet having intelligent inhabitants.
Slowly, and yet all things considered, not
slowly, we arc getting an insight into far away
heavenly bodies. Perhaps the time will come,
it has been the dream of man and dreams of
men come true, when we Will communicate
with Mars. When we will understand all
about that beautiful planet and when the en
terprising newspaper will have a department
of Maritan news and those predisposed to
boast will doubtless claim some subscribers
there.
o
That woman, Miss Owen, who wrote one
hundred and thirty seven words a minute for a
whole hour, didn't do any gossiping between
paragraphs. She won her thousand dollars and
lowered her own record. Marvelous perform
ance, that.
o
The man who allows a bundle of money to
swell his head and make him imagine that he
is really important, generally hits the ceiling
an,d hits it hard.
Fails to Pass at Episco:
pal Convention:'
HE Protestant Episcopal
church, three years ago
appointed a, joint conlr
mittcc of five . bishops;
five clergymen and fiye
laymen to study jthe
question of . whether.' or
not the clergymen - of
that churehvquld be allowed to solemnize a
marriage'for' a person divorced from a living
spouse. The question had been seriously con
sidered and the committee recommended that
such a provision be embodied in the canons of ,
the church. ... '
But when the question was brought before
the general convention in St. Louis this week,
the house voted it down and the same custom
prevails that did prevail. It was argued that 1
if the law passed there were men who would
defy it, and that scmed to be the reason for
its defeat. That was a very flimsy excuse, as we
view it. There is no law, perhaps, anywhere,
but what is defied, or, rather, violated by
some man. Murder is punishable by death
and yet we sec murders done, and men know
ingly do them with premeditation. ' , . " S
The church, however, sometimes feels1 called
upon to pass certain laws governing its own
body laws that other churches dd not endorse
taws that make the partciular church distinc
tive. The divorce law is one that all churches
have grappled with, and most all lawmakers
outside the church. . ' '- . .
Someday there will be, a general law a gov- ,
erirrmrnt law, and that-wilt perhaps flfratly get "
about what people want. The first general di
vorce law to be passed by the government will '
of course allow divorces for the "scriptural rea
sons," and perhaps some other reasons! Then
the agitators will find in it a new field of en
deavor, and finally, say in a thousand years,
the divorce law will perhaps be where it should
have been in the beginning.
There is much in favor of divorce. Where
the laws seem lame to us is in allowing hasty
marriages. If a man signs a promissory note,
if he has the property he must come across; If
he brings into the world a deformed child he
must care for it and treat it with kindness. He
can't say he guesses he'll repudiate his note
and he can't say he'll strangle his off-spring
because it isn't good looking. But the law has
been made so that a man can take a woman
and use her until he grows weary and make so
much hell in her home that he can find a dozen
reasons for a divorce.
It wasn't very long ago in England that a
man could marry a woman arid finally lock her '
up in a room in her own home ; declare she was '
insane and take to himself a mTstress and she
had no right to secure a diverce and if she went
out into the world, left the roof where she was
held a maniac, the husband was not obliged to
pay for the food she might buy to sustain life.
When that law was tried in this country it was;
held that no Christian civilization could main
tain it. Yet it shows where we once were
True the man is not always to blame." Now
and then in his blinded passion when he mis-v
takes lust for love he harnesses hirriself up with'
a beautiful wild-cat, and she makes life one"
grand thing after another for him. And she,
isn't particular about her morals or her con?
duct and he goes into court and asks a di
vorce but if he has the price he most always
has to pay the -thing we call alimony. .
In Guilford county we have too many di
vorces. Sometimes, one term of court grants a
dozen young people having grown tired C(
each other think it proper to rush in and their,
parents often aid and abet in the separation.
But it has always looked to us like this: That
unless one party or the other is notoriously im
moral there should be no hope for separation.'
This talk about incompatibility of tempera- '
ment; the charge that one party threw a roll-,
ing pin at another part-; the foolish excuses of
fcred should not separate the twain. If the wife,
throws a rolling pin at her lcigc lord and he'
establishes the fact let her be fined for assault;
and battery but leave her still tied to the ap
ple of her eye. If the husband in his endear'-'
rr.ents forgets and breaks a rib or two df beats
his wife to insensibility, let. the courts put'hirrt
on the roads for thirty day; but let him rer.
main the adoring husband of the lady. In oth
er words there are too many to suffer. . It.is.
the same argument advanced and accepted by
a thoughtful world concerning whiskey. If the
man who drank whiskey suffered alone it might
not be so bad. But the innocent are the real
sufferers. And when children are brought into,
the world and arc innocent and are made fath-:
crless simply because a couple of fools cannot.
agree they should be made to agree and make'
the most of a bargain into which they volun
tarily entered. And it will take a national law
to say this no matter what the churches de
cree. ' ' v:J
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