THE WEEKLY PILOT Published every Friday morning by the Pilot Printing Company. STACY BREWER, Manager Entered at the Postoffice at Vass, N. C., as second-class mail matter FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1922"^ MONEY COMING The co-operative tobacco farmers are getting the returns from their patience, for the second payment on their tobacco is about to be paid, and it will come in the form of a check for which nothing has to be given as the work that earns the check is all completed. From indica tions the tobacco in custody of the organization is selling at a good price, and it is believed now that the remaining tobacco will move freely at a figure that will establish the association in the full confidence of all the members and of many outsiders who will eventually come in. This is the first hard pull, and when the top of the hill is reach ed and folks see that the thing can be done, and that it is a good job when done the troubles will be materially lessened. One definite demonstration of results is a more powerful missionary than a hundred arguments put forth by those who have no samples of the goods to show. This second payment will be more influential in backing up the week-kneed brethren than anything else that could have been done, for it shows them that the tobacco is being sold to the manufacturers and in being sold it is moving on the course that the association intended, and according to the plans the association made. That much once settled the rest of it is of less consequence. The co-opera- tive farmers seem to be in a right fair state at this juncture, and it is worth their while to sit steady in the boat. HARD . ROADS The Pilot is asked occasional ly if highway, route No 50, is to have a hard surface, and the only answer that is given is that The Pilot does not know. Probab ly Frank Page has his plans, but as he has enough trouble with out unfolding to every jay that comes along what he is trying to do it is merciful at times to let the man alone. Perhaps there are things that others as well as those in au thority can figure out. Pre sumably the amount of hard sur face roads that will be built de pends on several factors that are yet uncertain. One possibly is the chance that North Carolina may go much farther or but lit tle farther in constructing good roads. The^ good roads are a mighty fine institution, but al ways some one is kicking about the cost. Then inevitably a time is bound to come when we have to let up on road building on such an elaborate scale, for the nak ed truth is that the roads we build we do not pay for. We are teaving that for future gen- e^tions, and even the consci ence of a prodigal spendthrift will at some point check him in his extravagances. We are not going to continue indefinitely to issue bonds. Neither do we know yet just what kind of roads should be built. No one has any positive idea of what the traffic of the future is to be, nor whether the roads we will build in the next two years will be suitable for the traffic that is to come. We thought the sandclay road would make us as permanent highway, but before we have a sandclay system the travel calls for con crete or asphalt. However the prospect is that we can continue to build roads, and that we will steadily build them more substantially, and that as fast as the road con tracts can be reached a hard road will be built by Vass on the route now under construc tion. As a matter of time this road must be settled considera bly before it can have its hard surface put on, and it must take its turn in being finished. It is entirely rational to assume that in three or four years from now a hard road will reach from Ral eigh to Hamlet, and possibly sooner, and that the longer it is delayed the better the road will be when it is built. For the road builders are learning more about roads every day than they know the day before, and Frank Page is a fellow who drags in for to day’s use everything he learned up to bedtime last night. This is the main highway from Wash ington south, with the best route, for it is the route of the natural grade, the fall line of the moutain slope, and the easi est route to build and maintain and travel, and that is a guaran- t^e that it will be put in proper shape in due season. TAXES Along toward the end of the political campaign came a circu lar form the democratic head quarters in Raleigh talking of taxes, and insinuating that the democrats are given to low tax ation and the republicans to the other sort. The circular cited a large proportion of the counties of the state as evidence, but it seems to The Pilot it was an un happy bit of testimony. Moore county is payin;g this year about ninety cents on the hundred dol lars of value, and a large num ber of districts have added a lo cal school tax of from five to thirty cents to the ninety. In spite of this maximum of a dol lar and twenty cents in some of the districts Moore by the re sult of the election still looks like a democratic county. The classification is entirely wrong. High taxes usually in dicates an intelligent county, low taxes the other sort. Taxes this year in Moore are higher than ever, but regardless of the larg er democratic majority these sums of money levied in taxes are laid for a purpose by people who want certain results, and the only way to get the results is to pay for them. We have been wanimg good roads and good schools, and are getting them, and, we are paying for them. In this w