Page Four
His Standard of Values
Last night Mr. Charles Johnson, the candidate for gov
ernor who is still holding on to the office of State Treasurer,
took to the radio to assure the teachers and parents of
North Carolina that he believed in better schools.
Such an assurance was certainly needed. Mr. Johnson
did not even register in the recent special election held in
Raleigh for the purpose of providing funds for educational
improvement in Raleigh schools.
Mr. Johnson attempted to explain away his abandoned
duty by stating that he was out of town campaigning for
governor when the election was held, and did not want his
vote to count against the proposed improvement. (The
election carried, without his ballot.)
Under similar circumstances another candidate for
North Carolina’s highest elective office drove many miles
to place his vote for better schools in Alamance County in
the ballot box. Actions speak louder than words.
Which then does Mr. Johnson consider more import
ant: his duty as a citizen or his campaign for governor?
Others Have Our Problem
Experience is a dear teacher, we were told this week,
because one seldom learns from his own experience; he
must see the success of others, and observe their failures in
order to gauge properly the efficacy of his own efforts.
We were, then, impressed yesterday when we read of
the trials a.id tribulations of the lettuce growers of the Sal
inas Valley of California. The growers there produce rough
ly a half of the lettuce sold in the United States and receive
an average annual income of $100,000,000 from the leafy
vegetable.
The crop is a gamble. The farmer waits out rainfall
there, hoping for dry weather in the east where his competi
tors operate; for if the weather is dry here, agricultural ex
perts say, we eat more lettuce and our own lettuce crop
is poor.
This year the Salinas Valley farmers are losing their
shirts. The eastern and southern lettuce crop has been
better than usual, and the California growers are not able
to realize production costs for their “green gold.”
The situation was reversed last year, when a heat
wave virtually wiped out the lettuce yield in New York, New
Jersey, and North Carolina.* California farmers realized
$108,000,000 trom their crop. According to one agricultural
expert, the folks out there had never had so much money in
their lives.
“The expected then happened,” the Californian contin
ued. “The farmers made so much money last year, that they
planted nothing but lettuce this year. The Salinas Valley
is going to be a valley of.desolation in 1948 as far as ready
cash is concerned.”
When asked what might be done to help the situation
there the expert replied: '
“The farmers out there are going to have to stop put
ting all their eggs in one basket. Diversification is the best
best answer to our problem, and so far as I can tell, it is
the only answer.”
The parallel which may be drawn in North Carolina is
an exact one. We have long put all our eggs in one basket
that of tobacco. When tobacco sells high, we are rich;
when it sells low, we are paupers. And as Californians
must buck the competition of New York farmers and the
farmers of eastern North Carolina, so we must fight the
ever increasing competition of Canadian, Kentuckian, and
British Empire tobacco growers.
Diversification is the answer to our problem, too. It
is not yet too late to make a beginning this year. Put those
acres to work don’t let us face the spectre of financial
ruin as we have in the past, and as California farmers are
doing today.
Business Helps Business
Home Builders Corporation, according to its manage
ment, is now open and ready for business. The company
has, in fact, already begun work on three new homes, and
has orders for many more.
The company represents a considerable investment, a
creditable addition to the municipal tax books, and will
help the community by providing jobs. This week, for ex
ample, twenty-six men were employed by the construction
firm.
A more subtle asset provided by the concern is the pro
viding of a means whereby other local businesses may grow.
Many a local firm has been hampered in its expansion, not
by a dearth of people willing to work for them, but by the
lack of housing facilities for these employees.
The end effect is the same. Businesses remain small
because of a lack of personnel required for expansion. With
the construction of new homes in Zebulon for rental or sale,
local manufacturing firms may be expected to increase their
activities, with a resulting increase in volume of business
and profit for local retail and wholesale outlets.
The Zebulon Record
This, That and the Other
By Mrs. Theo. B. Davis
Every year the birds eat what
few cherries our young trees bear,
though every year I try to outwit
them. It seems that even a bird
brain is superior to mine, for they
always see through my strategy.
This time I am following a sug
gestion that the trees be hung
with something shiny that will
rustle in a breeze; and the results
look like abortive efforts at a
Christmas tree. I made bows and
rosettes of cellophane and hung
them to the branches with strings,
so that they dangle. The birds
have scolded me roundly, and I
have a feeling that before long I
shall see them ignoring the dec
orations and concentrating on the
cherries as usual.
Once more the daily papers are
full of Mother’s Day ads. Readers
are urged to buy everything from
garden tools to jewelry for the
dear, sweet old ladies who bore
them and guided their childish
footsteps. I saw one plea for
Mother to have a “neckless”
in which case she could hardly
have any place for a necklace —
and one advertiser advised
“sandles.”
Speakers next Sunday will have
my sympathy as they try to talk
or preach appropriately and steer
a sane course between sentiment
and sentimentality. This is hard
By Carl E. BJork
The North Carolina press re
leases carry too often the sordid
details of many cases involving
self murder, or suicide. Such oc
currences constitute news and may
have a tendency to deter others in
destroying self, but again too they
may lead frustrated people to
ward the same solution for their
seemingly insurmountable prob
lems.
The word “suicide” is a com
bination of two words, “sui” and
“cide”, meaning to kill one’s self.
Thus suicide is as much murder
in the moral law as homicide or
fratricide.
True also that sympathy moves
deeply upon those who have de
stroyed their earthly life but the
biblical injunction that one should
not kill ought to be thought of,
How sweet is the name of the one whose love
Is infinite and tender like His above;
Whose hands are willing tools to work for another;
Whom all mankind and creatures delight to call
mother.
With reverence and tenderness that dear name is
spoken
With its power to comfort and heal hearts that
are broken.
In every land by every people her praise they unfold
Yet, the extent of her love can never be told.
Her brow is deep furrowed by long years of care;
Her bright eyes grow dim and gray is her hair;
The roses are gone from her cheeks and every day
She is one step nearer the time she’ll pass away.
Perhaps she is young and filled with vigor and life,
And makes a wonderful mother, a sweet ardent
wife,
But her love is still there, unequalled by another;
For who loves and who suffers for mankind like
mother?
All mothers of bird, and beast, and the rest
Always are loyal and for their young do their best.
The instinct to protect in a true mother lives,
to do, requiring far more study
and effort than it takes to get up
and pour barrels of sloppy praise
over all mothers. Anyway, I wish
they’d talk specially to the young
ones and leave alone those of us
who have in some manner finished
the task of rearing a family. It’s
too late to do us much good and
those just beginning might be
helped.
But who am I to tell a preacher
how or what to preach or a speak
er what to say? Go right on,
brethren, and do as you please.
With the weather what it is, I
keep thinking about the fish-pond
on my brother’s farm up in Vir
ginia. It covers an acre of what
used to be dry land and is fed by
no spring or stream; only by the
rain that falls in and around it.
On three sides the land slopes and
woods are on two sides and part
of another. Depth of water varies
from two feet at the edge to six
or more in the center. The dam
was built with soil scooped from
the surface of the acre taken for
the pond.
My brother said he was at first
dubious when the State experts
selected the site for the pond, but
their judgment seems to have been
vindicated. Rain water filled the
pond and has kept it full, and the
fish are thriving. But I still won
der whether the sandy soil of this
section would hold water as does
the clay of Campbell County.
Bjork’s Tips
and the suicide noted as a vile
murderer and a rebel against the
giver and taker of life.
I have known several persons
very intimately who have gone
the way of self destruction, and I
have buried quite a number with
whom I was acquainted.
One winter’s day there came to
my home an elderly man. He in
troduced , himself to me as the son
of a minister who had been in the
local church many years before.
His request was that I give him
the keys to the church that he
might go in it, and see the famili
ar surroundings of his youth.
I drew aside the curtain and
watched him ascend the church
steps, unlock the door, and enter.
Sometime later he returned the
key, thanked me, and departed
with no other word.
In about an hour I walked down
Mother
By Pattie Rue Denton, March 9, 1928
And she’s quick to forget, every act she forgives.
Oh mother, who has often wiped baby tears away;
Oh mother, whose friendship will last alway
Till the death angel calls and life’s work is done;
The praise of thy name has only begun!
Thy name, it is sacred and the sound of it falls
On ears that shall love it ’til the death angel calls,
And thy dear form is laid beneath the damp sod,
To make beautiful and enrich the soil thou hast
trod.
To mother we owe our life and our pleasure,
To mother we owe all our joy without measure.
For she cares with a heart that is pure as gold,
With a tenderness, infinite, wonderful, untold.
Through all the dark days filled with longing and
care;
The comfort of Mother shall always to tbere ,
And the earth shall be blessed where-ere she is
found
For her spirit of cooperation cannot be bound.
So here’s to the mother, the lover of men,
And here’s to the mother, the bar against sin.
May her life be a blessing to the world every day,
And grow stronger and deeper her love live alway.
Friday, May 7, 1948
Occasionally one or more lines
of poetry will fill my mind and the
words say themselves over and ov
er until I can’t see any peace for
them. Today it has been the re
frain that goes “I have been faith
ful to thee, Cynara, in my sash
• „ 19
ion.
In the poem the gentleman tells
how he has roamed far afield,
dancing, drinking, buying kisses,
flinging roses riotously; he says
he has forgot much, gone with the
wind, (which is said to be where
a certain long novel got its name),
and generally misbehaving. Yet
at the end of every stanza he de
clares to Cynara that in his own
fashion he has been faithful to
her. And that is what worries me.
I keep wondering whether Cyn
are forgave him, hoping that her
shadow and her “pale lost lilies”
might stay with him next time he
felt like straying. I’m afraid she
did. The Cynaras stand little
chance against those who so poet
ically confess and entreat forgive,
ness; although one feels they are
as much boasting as confessing.
“In my fashion” is the big excuse
for too many sins by those who
claim to be individualists; and we
are prone to offer it even when
our fashion of being faithful is
being unfaithful or our fashion of
doing good, doing wrong. This
kinship in spirit to Cynara’s lover
may be the reason I can’t stop
saying the lines in my mind
the village street and saw some
one wandering through the town
cemetery. Upon closer scrutiny I
recognized this man. Os course, I
supposed he was renewing the
sights of his childhood, and went
on my way.
The next day there came to my
home a woman who told me that
this man had been her brother,
and that after returning to his
home some fifty odd miles away,
had committed suicide.
It seefns that he had gone down
to the village station when the
passenger train was due to arrive.
When the train was almost ready
to halt, he leaped in front of it,
and was literally ground to shreds.
She requested that I bury him
from that church wherein he had
been, and in the cemetery where
in he had walked.
(Continued on Page 7)