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Entered at Post Office, Franklin, N. C.. as second class matter
Published every Thursday by The Franklin Press
Franklin, N. C. Telephone 24
WKTMAR JONES . . .
BOB 8. SLOAN ....
J.P.BRADY
HISS BETTY LOO FOUT8 .
CARL P CABE ....
FRANK A STARRETTE . -
DAVID H. SUTTON . . .
CHARLES E. WH11T1NOTON
Editor
. . . Business Manager
News Editor
. . . . Office Manager
Mechanical Superintendent
. Shop Superintendent
Stereotyper
Pressman
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
Outbids Macon County Inszdk Macon County
One Year $3 00 One Year $2.50
BU Months 1.79 81* Months 1.75
Three Months 1.00 Three Months 1 00
Radical? Well, Maybe
Macon County people and public officials would
do well to ponder the following six suggestions for
improving county government :
1 ? Give the counties "home rule" over strictly
local matters.
2? ? Abolish every elective office within the county
structure except that of commissioner.
1
3? Provide for the appointment, by each county
board, of a county manager.
A ? Abolish the offices of sheriff, register of deeds,
and clerk of court ? replacing the sheriff with a
rural chief of police and reducing the other two of
fices to clerical operations supervised by the coun
ty manager.
5 ? Provide that all county recorders and solicit
ors be licensed attorneys, appointed by the county
commissioners.
6? Limit countv commission service to a single
four-year term, with the board places arranged on
a "staggered" basis.
"Radical", did you say as you finished reading
them? "Theoretical"?
Well, maybe. But before you damn them as too
radical to consider and too impractical to put into
effect, consider who made them.
They did not come from a political science profes
sor ; nor from a newspaper editor. They came, in
stead, from a county commissioner. His name is J.
C. Leigh, Jr., and he is a member of the Richmond
County board of commissioners.
He offered the ideas to Chairman J. C. Ellis, of
the State Association of County Commissioners,
who had asked for suggestions.
In making the Leigh proposals public, Mr. Ellis ?
and he's also a county commissioner ? commented:
"If these suggestions were actually put into ef
fect, I am sure that it would shake the foundations
of all the old county courthouses: but they need to
be shaken. People do not go to the county court
house now to transact their business in a horse and
buggy. When they get to the courthouse they
should not be required to have their business han
dled by a horse and buggy system."
Big Job
Our congratulations and best wishes to the new
ly elected' officers <>f Macon County's 21 home
demonstration clubs.
Theirs is one of tbe most important jobs in the
county.
Why? Because their objective is better homes.
And better homes mean a better county and better
citizens.
The one direct, solution of most of our present
day problems is by building better homes." That
truth may be trite, it is a trite truth that a lot of
people have forgotten.
Must Protect Ourselves
In cases appealed from New York and Ohio, the
U. S. Supreme Court lias held invalid laws permit-1
4ing state censorship of movies.
Such censorship, says the high court, is an invas
ion of the rights of free speech and free press.
How, then, is the public to be protected from in
decent, vicious, and just plain bad movies? The
answer seems obvious: Under our system, it is up
to the public to protect itself. It can control the
kind of movies it gets, the .kind of radio and tele
vision programs it gets, the kind of newspapers
it gets, by patronizing them or withholding patron
age from them.
That is a terrific responsibility for the public.
But it is one, in a democracy, the public must
shoulder ? and for a good reason:
With every freedom there goes a responsibility,
and the freedom soon is lost if the responsibility is
not assumed ; can have the freedom of speech and
press only if we are willing to assume the responsi
bilities that go with those freedoms.
Besides, what independent American is willing to '
permit some state agency or some expert or even
some church organization or official to determine
what movies he shall see, what radio and television
programs he shall enjoy, what newspapers or books
he shall read?
Same Predicament
? The State of North Carolina this month found
itself in an embarrassing situation.
I
On January 1 the state government put into ef
fect the new motor vehicle safety responsibility act.
But it seems it did not occur to state officials, un
til the new law had gone into effect, that the state
itself is the owner of motor vehicles, thousands of
school buses and state automobiles.
A quick estimate showed it would cost about a
million. dollars to buy liability insurance for all of
these ? and the state just didn't have the money.
I
A lot of individuals who have just had to buy
liability insurance under the new law will feel a
profound sympathy for the state in its predica
ment ; a lot of them were in ju^t that predicament
quite recently.
Others' Opinions
NEITHER SNOW ? NOR HARD WORDS
(New York Times'
ErVin F. Spratt, postmaster at Elkhart, Iowa, not far from
Des Moines, does not make rounds, but if he did we trust that
neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night would stay
him from their swift completion.
Mr. Spratt was appointed postmaster at Elkhart (pop. 249)
in 1944. He maintains the post office in what our dispatch de
scribes as his "sundry shop." His wife assists him. Mr. Spratt,
who does not claim the protection of the Fifth Amendment
when asked whether or not he is a Democrat, has a modestly
good thing in his postmastership.
But Mr. Spratt is a man of moral courage. In spite of the
gathering mass of evidence that it is far better for a man in
public employment to do practically no thinking and to talk
about nothing at all except the weather, Mr. Spratt is said to
have expressed doubts as to the ability of the Postmaster
General. He is also accused of not liking President Eisenhower
as much as the Post Office Department assumed that he would.
A postal inspector charges that he called the President a
"blank, blank, blank, blank." and threatens to see that he
(Mr. Spratt) is removed.
Mr. Spratt denies that he called President Eisenhower or
Mr. Summerfield a "blank, blank, blank, blank." He refuses to
resign.
We think that President Eisenhower and Postmaster General
Summerfield might well ask not what Mr. Spratt's personal
opinion of them is but whether or not Mr.- Spratt is delivering
letters or causing them to be delivered in the Elkhart neigh
borhood in spite of weather conditions or the time of day or
night.
Membership in the Democratic party ought hot to affect the
fate of fourth-class postmasters, such as we assume Mr. Spratt
to be. We hope that his and Mrs. Spratt's public employment
will continue, that the mail of Elkhart, Iowa, will continue to
be swiftly delivered, and that the Spratts will long be able to
buy all the fat and all the lean that their respective appetites
require. "
SHIELD Or All MEN
Dissenting Opinion
Raleigh News and Observer
Jay Jenkins reports from Charlotte that when a gambler In
the investigation of alleged police corruption there invoked the
Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that no
person in America may be required to testify against himself,
Superior Court Judge J. C. Rudisill upheld his Constitutional
right but added:
? "I don't agree with it but it's the law of the land."
Certainly when a North Carolina Superior Court judge ques
tions the wisdom of this item in the American Bill of Rights,
it may be time to look at it. A good many unjudicial people
have been expressing irritation at this American right. Some
of them think that no right should exist which interferes with
the exposure of the disloyal. Their feeling is that the proof of
treason should be made ea.sy. The founding fathers did not
agree with that either, holding that in dealing with so serious
a crime as treason "no person shall be convicted of treason
unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt
act, or on confession in open court."
Maybe the men who wrote the Constitution and the people
who Immediately added to It a Bill of Rights which set out the
particulars of American liberties were both wrong. Maybe not
OUR DEMOCRACY t? m*
NEVER AN *OFF YEARS
Because there a km mo national offices at stake ,
THIS IS KNOWN AS AN *OFF YEAR* ELECTION.
theke /s ao 'opf- -ye a it' in rue responsibilities
OP GOOD CITIZENSHIP!. -
W4f?V
Across the country, many state and local offices
WILL se FILLED, MANY ISSUES WILL SC UP FOR DECISION.
CITIZENS ALERT TO THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES WILL
CAST THEIR BALLOTS, RECOGNIZIN6 THAT THE
RIGHT TO VOTE IS ONE OF THE GREAT PRIVILEGES
OF OUR DEMOCRACY.
only in the case of both the disloyal and a little gambler in
Charlotte old individual liberties should be dispensed with.
Any doubts should be resolved in favor of the nation or so
ciety ? or, as they say in too .large a part of the world today,
of the state.
That is a tenable doctrine. At least it is held by millions of
people today in that vast area which we roughly describe as
behiiy} the Iron Curtain. It has been dramatized there in the
purge trials. A noble cardinal of the Catholic Church was con
victed and punished on the basis of testimony he gave against
himself after he had been "convicted" by his persecutors. We
have only recently had the news of the forced "confessions" of
American prisoners in North Korea. Communist justice against
those within its power has been effective against those who not
only were denied any right to refuse to testify against them
selves but were "encouraged" to do so.
From the point of view of the prosecutors such justice has
been effective. It has not only rolled heads; it has quieted dis
sent. It has been the basis of a terror before which the free
world is appalled ? and against which it is arrayed. In such a
struggle it can hardly be safely forgotten that what the free
world opposes is the disregard of liberty. Indeed, if the free
world has any superior characteristics, they are the freedoms
which it is ready to defend ? not disregard.
Maybe the founding latners were old-iasnionea. Mayce tney
lived in a safe and simple world. They did not think so. They
had just emerged from one war with a great world power and
in the lifetime of many of them that same power was to dem
onstrate that the Atlantic which was supposed to be wide and
safe then could be crossed by a military force which would
burn the capital of the United States. In their times there was
revolution and terror in Europe. There was in the world a
dictator who held as foothold in this hemisphere the whole
interior of the United States. Treason was not unknown to
men, many of whom had trusted Benedict Arnold. No one pro
posed relaxing the Constitutional guarantees at the treason
trial of Aaron Burr.
There were fearful men then, of course. There were those
who undertook to make it a criminal offense to criticize the
government. And almost as important as the adoption of the
Bill of Rights was the American rejection in places of power
of the men who would have cut American liberties to the
pattern of their fears. Not even those fearful men dared,
however, propose the deletion of the Bill of Rights ? or any
one of the rights there listed ? from the Constitution of the
United States.
Maybe Judge Rudisill does not like the Fifth Amendment.
Some others have expressed irritation about it. Some com
panies and colleges have held that a man who invokes his
Constitutional right in the Fifth Amendment should be de
nied the right to a job even in private and non-security po
sitions. Undoubtedly they meet a mood of bur times in which
our liberties seem less important than our fears. The fact,
however, is that the only thing America has to fear is the
loss of liberties.
Of course, it is too bad if a little gambler in Charlotte or
even a Communist can hide his wrong-doing behind the Fifth
Amendment. It still cannot be forgotten that it is the shield
of all other men, too. It is the only defense in our law against
requiring men to help convict themselves of the crimes of
which their prosecutors would like to convict them. That means
that it is the shield not only of evil men but of all men. It
is the b?r against the forced confession, the purge trial testi
mony, the brain washing techniques whicfc shock us in the
world.
i
The founding fathers were" not fools. The one thing most
essential to the continuance of America as the guardian of
freedom is that it keeps its own faith in individual liberty.
As long as we hold to the good sense of the founding fathers
we shall be secure. When we lose . that good sense not only
i crooks and Communists but judges and citizens, too, may be
brain washed en masse and by ourselves here at home.
News Making
As It Looks
To A Maconite
? By BOB SLOAN
The newspapers are at least
50 per cent wrong In their at
titude about governmental bod
ies meeting In closed session, I
think. Most of them take the
position that no legislative or
governmental group should
ever meet In closed session for
even discussion purposes, "rtiey
proclaim that to allow these
men to meet together even to
discuss their problems of gov
ernment is to fetter freedom.
They would do well to consider
that freedom as an absolute
would eliminate government ?
government came about because
of the need to restrict some of
men's freedoms. We here think
that Democracy, where a man
may have his say and vote
about which freedoms shall be
regulated. Is the best form of
such government.
Do the newspapers believe
this?
They must know that one of
the foundation^ upon which a
Democracy rests is confidence
in fellow man ? faith that a duly
elected representative will to the
best of his ability speak and
vote for the welfare of his con
stituents. Persons not believing
that had best advocate anoth
er form of government. Perhaps
they do not realize that faith
in fellow man brings forth bet
ter .response, than over the
shoulder or down the collar
vigilance.
I would like to illustrate this
in the following way:
In our shop we do not have
a time clock to keep constant
check on the hours and minutes
that men work for us. We place
complete confidence in our men
to turn In their time. This ex
ample of our trust In them has
repaid many times over In bet
ter work on their part. Further
more we are not tempting men
to develop ways to "beat tht k
clock". This is not to say that
through the years that there
has not been a single employee
who has failed to give his time
correctly. But I still feel that
trust is better than a time
clock.
The part where the news
papers are right is that the
actions taken by the group
should be made known to the
public. But to demand that the
newspapers be allowed to pass
judgment on all their discus
sions (and as long as they de
cide what is and what isn't
news they are passing judg
ment) is to breathe down the
legislator's neck. I do not be
lieve that men of the highest
calibre are inticed to work
under such conditions.
Continued On Page Seven ?
Do You
Remember?
(Looking backward through
the files of The Press'
50 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Henry Cunningham was at
home a few days of the past
week. He has secured a place
as flagman on the Murphy
branch of the Southern Railway
with headquarters at Asheville
The Macon High School has
enrolled 115 pupils. Prof. J. N.
Bradley and brother and sister
arrived last week. The music
class has 20 pupils under Miss
Ballard. An annex of 16 by 24
feet is being built to the acad
emy.
Snow fell yesterday morning
for about a.n hour commencing
about daylight.
25 YEARS AGO
Woodrow Dowdle, eleven years
of age, ought to make a pretty
fair living showing his elders
how to grow corn.
We hope someone will offer
a reward of $10 for a lost dog,
in which case we will quit the
newspaper game and go dog
hunting.
Postmaster Green, of Waynes
ville, was visiting relatives in
Macon County a day or two this
week.
Mr. Joe Palmer left last Fri
day for Akron, Ohio, where he
has gone to work.
10 YEARS AGO
The Rev. Carl W. Judy is
visiting his parents, Mr, and
Mrs. W. M. Judy, of Charles
ton, W. Va., this week.
Mrs. John Davis and Miss Ed
dis Holden have returned to
Winston-Salem after a visit to
their parents, Mr. and Mrs.
James Holden, of West's Mill.
Mrs. W. R. Potts, Miss Peggy
Potts, and Miss Caroline Hall
spent Sunday with their eighty
four-year-old aunt, Mrs. A. E.
Taylor, In Speedwell.