JONES JOURNAL V " fl
JACK, mom. Publisher
, , MORSEL KEDG9R, Business Manager
Published Bvery Thursday by The Lenoir County News Company
Inc., 408 West Vernon Are., Kinston, N. C., Phone 5415
Entered as Second Class Matter May 18, 1840 at the Post Office
at Trenton, North Carolina, Under the Act of March S. 1878.
By Mail In First Zone—$380 per year.
Subscription Rates Payable in Advance
Never Forget That the Editorials in The Journal are
' the Opinions of One Man, and Be May Be Wrong.
The New Year
This year we are entering now bolds a great deal of fear
for many people. A fear that is bom largely from the fact that
a large percentage of the businesses now in operation has grown
tip completely under the Democratic Prosperity of the past 20
years. It is natural to fear the unknown that lies ahead.
If we may be permitted a moment of optimism let’s look at the
situation from our local angle and see if there is much or little
foundation for such fears of the unknown, remembering all the
time that this is just our opinion and may certainly be wrong
when history has written the answer to the questions that dog
us today.
The Lenoir County area, and a 30 mile radius around are to
a great and happy degree insulated against the ordinary storms
and recession-winds that may blow in the next fej*r years, and
months in this nation. This insulation comes with the opening
for operation of this area’s major industry, the huge Dacron plant
of Du Pont just northeast of Kinston.
At present there is a general belt-tightening in the farm econ
omy. The prices farmers have been getting for their products
have been going down and the prices continue to rise on the
things that the farmers have to buy. That was evident in the
recent tobacco selling season which ended with the Kington mar
ket passing out some three and a half million dollars less this year
than last. Lesser quality was not the entire story behind this
multi-.trillion dollar decline.
This of course, has hit the farmer where it hurts. But the
business people of the Kinston area are still able to boast, on
the whole, that their 1952 grogs^ was above that of the previous
year, in spite of this
has been taken up
an even
school at
the KlrisffWW|l WU&Ja.r tuUH Whan. at the
bulk of the consM^Hppayroll has left this section due to the
migratory habits of meniajority of the construction workers.
This year the “permanent party” folks will ije on hand at
Du Pont and although the 1500 to be employed to the plant will
not all be NEW to this section they will be holding down NEW
jobs and putting NEW paychecks into the economic channels of
this section.
Presuming that the average wage at the plant will be $50 per
week, which is an absurdly low presumption, the 1,500 new pay
checks would add up to $3,740,000. Each additional dollar per
week that these Du Pont workers may average will drop another
$78,000 per year into the local cash registers . And this will come
with major construction still continuing at the plant surd with
the contract flying school still running at top speed at least until
November 1953 and likely for much longer than that since such
great emphasis is being put on air power for the future.
That part of the local business life which is geared totally
and irrevocably to farming will have to do some belt-tightening.
Other phases of the local economy which may share in the vari
ous aspects of the NEW income have nothing to fear except pessi
mism.
afferent way* and waattm* any Und
er, who owns and lives on his land, cam
Building trades ana supply dealers ui wiat nature win eujuy
another full year. The auto dealers will not have quite the elys
ian fields of the past but will stiU live happily on the little they
manage to eke out.
The farmers may find some small solace in the knowledge
that there is a way out for them on the treadmill of selling low
and buying high that has kept them running and getting no
where fast for the past two years. The way out, however, is not
a simple or easy one.
Eastern Carolina farming has come a long way in the past
20 prosperous years. That is particularly true insofar as mech
anization is concerned. The better, perhaps majority of farmers
have fairy well whipped the problem of production. If they are
still farming and eating they have to learn how to produce more
on less land and with less labor.
The one big problem that the average farmer has not yet
tackled Is FARM MANAGEMENT. The big reason for failure In
that area has been the very prosperity mentioned above. He has
not HAD to cut comers, to watch the pennies and nickels. With
thousand dollar per acre tobacco and 20-cent hogs the farmer
could coast along and live high in spite of the wastefulness of his
methods. .
Those larger farmers who have to use tenants and sharecrop
per* are in the worst condition. Better hom*^ trill bring better1
tenants-and better tenants will bring better profits, but this calls
of capital investment in Mg hunks and on the faint hope Chat to
bacco controls will be retained by the Republicans after they ex
pire in 1954. •
A wide-open tobacco crop would force a big peroriipge of
paragraphs
by jack rider j
Since I belong to that family
of characters that spends regu
lar periods talking Into a little
gadget called a microphone, it
is natural that I take close in
terest'in what my "Brethren”
are doing locally. It is perhaps
fitting, if laughable, that the
brightest new star on the radio
horizon around Kinston is Aunt
Reddle, who furnishes the phil
osophy on Carl Caudill’s “Cof
fee Shop’ from 7 ’til * each
weekday morning. Aunt Reddle
sort of backed into the radio
limelight since she is not regu
larly a scheduled air waves per
former but has been a general
handy woman around WFTC,
ministering to the needs of its
pbdlant collection of primes
and donnas.
But one cold lonesome room
ing Caudill got tired of listen
ing to himself on the radio and
struck tip a conversation, on the
air, with Aunt Reddle, who was
polishing up an adjoining studio.
It turned out an interesting
conversation and Caudill, not an
unperceptive lad, .sensed that
folks might -like to hear more of
Aunt Reddle’s answers to Cau
dill’s questions and so the pro
gram marched rapidly forward
as perhaps Kinston’s most pop
ular generated program—per
haps the exception is one small
five minute newscast given by
a big, fat, modest fellow of my
acquaintance.
Caudill is a pretty sharp tack
(matches his head) and is in
my opinion the begt all-round
radio man e+ef 'fo hafig his
ails over a
his professional make-up. But
on the disc jockey side of the
fence, a»„ ap MC on any kind of
informal show or as a first-rate
clown with tears In his eyes the
roost secure is the small business!
and who can, in a pinch, “mind
landowners and larger business c
ri3k, but then if they win they
their gamble should be a longer i
Of course, no one needs wo
economy. Since cream always ris
times and in bad.
All in all it still looks as if tb
frontier and as if Eastern Carol!
land.
Such Hostility
We recently received a copy of a speech made by a Du Pont ex
ecutive before a Wilmington, Del., audience and in it he was seek
ing to evaluate the role that “Big Business” must play in the new
'Republican Administration. His feeling that business is really
behind the eight ball and must produce something more tangible
than screams is certainly well put but there was one little line,
stupid it seems to us, in which said Du Pont Executive pointed out
“that 20 years of governmental hostility to business was now
about to come to and end.”
All we have to say and you may quote us, is that we should
have 20 years of such hostility aimed at our small business. If
Du Pont got where it is with all this government hostility, then
we’re going to Washington and spit in the government’s eye and
see if they’ll get hostile toward us in the same billion doliar fash
ion they have been' hostile toward Du Pont:
Senator McCarthy
This must be a big, strong country to,be able to absorb
such ignorant idiots as Joe McCarthy and still progress. After ly
ing and lying some more all through the recent years about
communists in government he has now decided to stop hunting
communists and instead look for “communist thinkers.”
Why does Washington, the Senate, Wisconsin and the Nation
put up with such an obyious psychopath? if he (lived in a a
town and spread his malicious lies and slanders as he has dq
at the national level somebody would long ago have kicked ev
one of his teeth down h*5 lying throat, •
yMWhen be starts policing the thinking of the individual, he
. even beyond Hitler and Stalin, who at their very worst hav
tried to control the actions of men. &e, this McQarthy imbe
the very worst aspect of American bigotry and
is
Honorable Caudill is quite a boy.
But in spite of all of his savoir
faire on the air lanes it now
evolves that he will become best
known In Sinston for his discov
ery and careful treatment of
Aunt Reddie.
The nicest thing about the
Aunt Reddie-Caudill banter is its
freshness and sincerity. But as
the top man in radio and tele-j
vision, The Right Honorable^ Ar-!
thur Godrey, has oft said, “Be;
yburseli kid, be yourself.” That’s
the only formula for success,
either on or off the air. The
minute some character goes “up
stage” with a new. voice and ac
cidentally acquired vocabulary
tris the minute that raid
is really headed off
„Aqnt Reddie
of
aiming over the
ply came when Caudffl^hoarse
ly whispered through his cough
nan who has few labor problems
his own business.” The larger
wners, of course, run a lot more
win more, so it is natural that
ihance.
nr about the top levels in our
es to the top of the milk in good
e South is the Nation’s economic
la is the frontier of the South
drops one morning with an in
quiry about “What do you do
for colds?” Aunt Reddle replied,
“I take three sixes” and then
after a thoughtful pause she ad
mitted, “I don’t know which is
worse; a cold or three sixes.”
Anyone who’3 ever tasted that
well known ‘ bitter dose” which
is written “666" does not need
imagination even early in the
morning to know that Aunt Red
die is cooking on the front burn
er.
Caudill has to be a pretty
clever fellow to lead Aunt Red
die along in the right direction
toward the witty, often philoso
phical things that Aunt Reddle
says in reply. There is one
small thought Fd like to leave
with those who read this word
“Coffee Shop” and
forget
ston’s most
grams every morning ipftf
losing a second of cither’s price- ^
less moments.
Bill Page who is nominally the
boss down at WFTC has a pretty
good; aggregation around him
now and there is only one thing
that separates his station from
being a really good one. Peculi
arly enough it is the thing that
should be the most obvious to
Page but for some reason, per
haps money, WFTC keeps look
ing in the other direction and
is missing a big boatload of lis
teners because of one missing
link in its programming. For a
price, ril tell him.
Here I have spent this many
minutes writing about WFTC
and I work (?) for WELS but
then Linwood Scott, who owns
most of WKLS, advertises on
WFTC, so what’s good for the
Gander
goslin.
that is a perverted
you should see the
Rider figures, in
I’ve gotten