The Rocky Mount Herald??

Published Every Friday at Rocky Mount,North Carolina, by the Rocky Mount

Herald Publishing Company.

Publication Office Second Floor Danieb'Building, Rocky Mount, Edgecombe

County, North CarolinaiSiw?

J. GREEN ....News Editor and Manager

Subscription Rates: One Year, $1.00; Six Months,

60c; Three Months, 35c

'Altered as second-class matter January 19, 1934, atthe post office at Rocky Mount, North Carolina,

under the Act of March 3, 1879.

Advertising rated reasonable flnd furnished toprospective advertisers on request

City Court Salaries

Since the campaign for Judge of the Mu-nicipal Court and the City Solicitor is inprogress, requests have come to the Herald?as to what these jobs pay, and also what paythe City Attorney receives.

We have made an investigation and find,as follows: The Judge of the City Courtformerly received $l5O per month, which hasbeen reduced to the present salary of $135.00per month. The City Solicitor formerly re-ceived $125.00 per month, which has beenreduced to $105.00 per month. These posi-tions certainly do not receive too much fortheir services.

The City attorney, whose supposed dutiesare to advise the Board of Aldermen, hasheretofore received $2,400 per year, or S2OOper month. The salaried position was cre-ated about 1927, and Messrs. Thorpe andThorpd" received this appointment and. theyhave been drawing S2OO per month since

.that time, untilrecently when the salary wasreduced to\slso.oo per month. In additionthereto, they receive fees in all tax matters.They have probably received since 1927, be-tween twelve and fifteen thousand dollars.While we have no breach fbr lawyers, weare constrained to believe that this salary isclearly out of line and we venture to saythat it is probably the highest paid in thestate for a town of this size. ,

Now, it may be said that they are sup-posed to take care of the court cases of thecity. The Herald made an investigation asto this and found in the late Hamilton case,in which Mrs. Charlie Hamilton was injuredby the city, that Messrs. Spruill & Spruillwere paid $450; Messrs. Battle and Wins-low $450 for services in connection with legalmotions which were heard in the SuperiorCourt.

We further find that Messrs. J. P.- Bunnand T. T. Thorne were alsA retained to trythe case before the jury, should it reach thejury, and Mr. Bunn was paid S2OO retainerand Mr. T. T. Thorne was paid $125.00 re-tainer, making a total of $1,225 paid in addi-tion to the salary paid Messrs. Thorpe andThorpe. This case was settled out of courtwithout trial before a jury, the city payingthe damages for this injury.

There are many able law films in RockyMount and certainly as capable as the firmwho at present holds this position, and it isnothing but common justice and fairnessthat other firms should be recognized in thisposition rather than giving a life-time job tothe present holders. There is a rotation inthe bank departments of the city, why notthere be some rotation among the lawyers,all citizens and tax payers of the city ofRocky Mount?

Now is the Time to Make Repairs

There has been some discussion in RockyMount, through views expressed by the citi-zens of the town and through the press, onthe housing situation of the city.

Rocky Mount at one time built more housesof the four and five room type than wasnecessary, as the property owners of the citywere led to believe that this was necessaryas the railroad was contemplating a coachshop. A great number of houses were builtand for a time there was a surplus of housesof this class. There has never been a sur-plus of the better class of houses. The cityhas grown and this surplus has been' takeninto use. During the four years under Mr.Hoover's administration the annual improve-ments and repairs have not takenmuch of our property is now in serious needof repairs, painting and renovating.

We feel nothing could help Rocky Mountmore than having every property owner whois able to immediately go forward with theneeded painting, repairs and renovations,which will make the property more rentable,protect it from decay and will be a moneysaver in the long run.

While we realize that much of our prop-erty has been rented for very low rents andwe hope that the day is not far distant whenthose who rent may receive better wagesand be in better position to pay a reasonablerental, according to the cost ofthe property.After all, the most important thing, andwhich will mean most to our city is the factthat it would give employment to painters,carpenters, bricklayers and mechanics, whoare sorely in need of work at this time.

We think Rocky Mount could engage innothing better than to begin the movementwhich would improve our real estate, for itis the basic property and when real estateceases to have value, nothing else can havevalue.

No matter what you do or how well youdo it there is always a friendly critic whocan tell you how tp improve.

Trying to Popularize the Sales Tax' * ?

Carolina-Virginia Retailer.The arguments employed by certain high

officials of the vState Government in then-efforts to popularize the North CarolinaSales Tax would be ludicrous if the sales taxwere not of such vital importance to everycitizen of the State, and more especially tothat great portion of our citizenship, themiddle and poorer clagses, upon whom thetax bears most heavily.

The latest argument of the said "highofficials" tending to show that the sales taxis a benevolent rather than a detrimentallevy is the dubious comparison of the per-centage of increase in retail sales betweenthe states of North Carolina and Virginia.The interence being that because NorthCarolina showed a somewhat greater in-crease in retail sales during the year 1933than her neighboring State that it is conclu-sive proof that the sales tax has not hurt,but in reality has helped, business in NorthCarolina. .

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If a 3 per cent consumption tax, one ofthe heaviest ever imposed by any state ornation, has been productive of'such fine re-sults, one may well ask why the rate was,not fixed at 5, 10, or 25 per cent, and thusenable North Carolina to revel in prosperitywhile her sister states were groveling in theslough of the depression.

The logic of such an argument is, ofcourse, absurd on its face. Economists uni-versally recognize the fact that where a taxis imposed upon any commodity the, con-sumption of that commodity is curtailed;and this is so even though the rate of thetax is infinitesimal; but when the tax is asburdensome as that inflicted in North Caro-lina it not only reduces the purchasing powerof the buying public to the extent of the tax?in this case between eight million and ninemillion dollars annually?but it retards buy-ing from absolute necessity, and also from <adesire to evade the payment of the tax, whichevasion is accomplished through interstatetransactions, thereby driving from 'the Statebusiness which should and would remain inthe State but for the tax.

Aside from National relief measures,which were also enjoyed by other states,there is one outstanding reason why the per-centage of increase in retail sales in 1933 ascompared with 1932 was greater in NorthCarolina than in her bordering sister states,and that is because the value of our cropswas nearly ninety millions of dollars in ex-cess of the 19J52 values.

In 1933 North Carolina sold approximatelyfive hundred million pounds of tobacco at anaverage price of $16.11 per hundred pounds,compared with sales totaling two hundredand sixty-eight million pounds at $12.21 perhundred in 1932. An increase to NorthCarolina farmers (and but for the sales taxto North Carolina merchants) of approxi-mately forty-eight millions of .dollars fromtobacco alone. To this figure must be addedthe increased prices obtained from our otherprincipal crops, and it will be seen that 1933crop values jumped nearly ninety millionsof dollars over crop values of the precedingyear and, incidentally, placed North Caro-lina within the category of one of the firstfour crop-producing states of the country.

Instead of employing spurious and mis-leading arguments in an endeavor to popu-larize an oppressive and indefensible tax?atax which is taking its unholy toll from thepoorest of the poor and which is enrichingother states at the expense of their ownState?officials of our State Governmentwould render their constituents a real serv-ice if they would give more thought to waysand means of reducing the high cost of gov-ernment and devising plans to immediatelyerase from the taxing system of this Statewhat is properly denominated "North Caro-lina's Biggest Social and Economic Blunder."

If the sales tax remains upon the statutebooks of North Carolina for any appreciablelength of time it will impoverish the Stateand make it one of the most backward andreactionary commonwealths in the country;and if any government official thinks he isfooling the people with his dhatter about itspopularity, just let him seek reelection upona platform advocating the tax. We predictthat any such candidate will be buried underan avalanche of ballots from which therewill be no political resurrection.

Dennis G. Brummit Speaks

Before a gathering of people in Lenoircounty last week, Attorney-General DennisG. Brummit had the following to say aboutthe schools of our state:

"We do have the base upon which to buildschools," he declared, "but nothing is yetto be done. All of our schools have beenkept open largely by the sacrifice of schoolteachers who are working for the wages ofunskilled labor. They ought not to be ex-pected to continue to make so large a con-tribution to the education of our children.Adoption of the idea that conditions are wellenough as they are is pure defeatism."

Personally, the extra price for gold hasn'tworried us.

Religious views, accepted under any formof social pressure, are not worth anything.

The man who can save his money will getahead of the man who can only earn it.'

It's about the season to revive what ( isdescribed as the old community spirit.

No one takes a speech as serious as fheperson behind the voice.

Business is picking up; why don't some ofthe do the same.

Children and Guns.

and liquor will not mix, neitherwill children T and firearms, and parent:*should wake up to this latter fact and keepall kinds of shooting irons out of the reachof the children. Children, and especiallyboys, have it in their nature to want to shootsomething and nothing pleases a child betterthan to give him a minifiture gun or cappistSl at Christmas time. 1

Every week there is recorded the acciden-tal death of some child at the hands of an-other by the Use of a gun or pistol in im-mature hands. And sometimes it is an el-derly person that receives the fatal load ofshot. But every one of these disasters canbe prevented if the gun or pistol is placedout of reach. In many instances it is thesupposedly "unloaded" gun that kills. Theweapon is brought in the house from thehunt, the cartridge is supposed to be ex-tracted, which it was not, the gun is placedin a corner, in comes a youngster, picks itup, points it at his little sister or brother,-perhaps his mother, and presto, the weaponis discharged and another life is needlesslysacrificed.'

Not only does every child have an inalien-able right to be well born, as the sayinggoes, but he has the right to be protectedin his home from the possibility of a guntragedy. Even infants sometimes find gunsunder pillows.

It is the duty of parents, if it is necessary

THE ROCKY MOUNT HERALD, ROCKY MOUNT, N. C., FRIDAY, FEBRUARY "23, 1934 ?

to have weapons in the house for protection,and most homes have them whether they areneeded or not, .to see that their precociousyoungster is not allowed to express his tribalinstinct with a gun, whether it is loaded ornot. So mten they "are notV but they are.Even the air rifles are dangerous and shouldnot be allowed in the hands of a red-Woodedboy under twelve. y

As long as parents leave guns of an£ de-scription unguarded, just so long will child-ren find and use them?although it may beon father, mother or little brother or sister.Every time you read of one of these deplor-able accidents, some one killed by a gun atthe hands of a child, you may be reasonablysifse that some grown person is to blame.Friend, let no» one be able to say that aboutyou.

Wrong Use of Highway Patrol

R. R. Clark, in Greensboro Daily News."As governor of North Carolina I desire

no greater privilege than is accorded thehumblest citizen," says the governor to theAlbemarle judge, asking that the trial go enas scheduled. That's what we would expectof the governor, any governor big enoughfor the job.. Now if Governor Ehringhauswill send the patterrollers to work at the

business to which they were appointed, and£ell Cap'n Farmer if he doesn't keep 'emaway from him the patrol may get a newhead, thfe danger of traffic violations by carNo. 1 will be about over.

INSTRUCTING MIDWIVES

During the summer 0 f 1932 six

stat£ Iburses, engaged m schoolhealth supervision work duringthe school months of the year,were sent into a large number ofcounties having no organizedhealth departments, for the pur-pose of holding classes for mid-wife instruction. They made per-sonal and group contacts with alarge number of midwives in a

\u25a0number of counties where suchwork had never been undertakenbefore. *

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During the last summer thesenurses have gone back to the samecounties that they worked in lastyear, for the purpose of doing alittle more intensive work alongthe same lifte. Their work hasBeen a kind of followup work totheir efforts last summer. Almostwithout exception the reports ofthe nurses indicate a gratifyingimprovement in the class of mid-wife service in many of the com-munities of such counties. Natur-ally the improvement has been in

spots. Some of the midwifegroups who made the worst show-ing last summer have revealed aremarkable improvement in theirpersonal qualifications and intheir equipment for the work/ Theclasses this summer have been at-tended by a much larger numberof midlives and also many phy-sicians, and all of them have mani-fested a great deal pf interest inthe work. «

1 Many of the people in the state;do riot realize the importance of

jthis character of work. We mayagain repeat that the infant andmaternal death rate in North Caro-lina is entirely too high. The im-portance of midwife service isplainly revealed in the fact thatslightly more than one-third of themothers giving birth to babies in1932 were attended solely by mid-wives. The following table showsthe births attended by physiciansand midwives in 1932:

Attended by Physicains45,540 white

6,082 Negro219 Indian

VAGABOND VERSES

By J. Gaskill McDaniel -»

FINALE

This is the end, and yet you too must know,That you'll live on among my souvenirs;

I'll wear a smile, where ever I may go,And I'll be gay, to banish unshed tears.

, Life is a play, and mine a young fo6l's part,Fate draws the curtain on my happiness;

And no one knows the sorrows in my heart,Nor senses tragedy in each new jest.

This is the end, and yet, when shadows fall,I'll see your image in a wind swept sky;

And though, perhaps, it isn't right at all,I still will love you, as the years go by.

Editor's Note: You may secure a personally autographed copy ofVagabond Verses by sending fifteen cents in stamps to the author, incare of the Herald. This pocket sized edition contains McDaniel'sbest liked poems of the past five years, as well as a photograph ofthe Vagabond Poet.

|| AMAZE A M INUTEJ SCIENTIFACTS BY ARNOLD

rs LECTRIC CHAIR CLAIMED PAINLESs/ *

| THE DEADLY ELECTRICAL CURRENT TRAVELS ABOUT SIXTY TIMES

J PASTER THAN THE NERVOUS SYSTEM WHICH REGISTERS THE SHOCK.

HOD

A PENDULUM CLOCK CORRECTLY JIA-JSTSeT AT THE EQUATOR WFHILO GAIN T_

ONE-HAL* HOUR PER WHFT AT THE LONDON MANLUFJITNORTH POLE, BEINC IS MILES NEARERTHE CENTER OF THE EARTH.

° ,MCH LONG HO*HY «*«TB..JFTM TIL«YW4l?<«. | MJ ?

??£ v%" ' ' . n /' :V- ''?

IN THE RACE0

Judge Frank ,A. Daniels, ofGoldsboro, hav»* decided to re-

tire on a pensioifcandidates for theDemocratic nomination for judgeare popping up all over the fourthjudicial district Those so fartentatively in the race are DavidH. Bland, of Goldsboro;- ClawdonWilliams, of Sanford, at present

solicitor; Walter D. Siler, of Pitts-boro; F. H. Brooks, of Smithfield;J. R. Baggett, of Lillington, andperhaps others. The entry ofClawson Williams, into the judg-ship leaves a free-for-all inthe race for solicitor and alreadyJ. R. Young, of Dunn; N. McK.

of Lillington; C. C. Can.ady, of Benson; Norman Shepard,of Sipithfield, and others are get-ting ready to make the race.

o

J. CiypSLEY SEDBERRYTHROWS HAT IN RIHG

' J. Chesley Sedberry, of Rocking'ham, Richmond county, has an-nounced himself a candidate forthe Democratic nomination for ae>licitor of the 13th judicial districtto succeed Solicitor Don Philipswho i&.attempting to unhorse JudgeA. M. Stack, of Monroe. Sedberryin the repeal election last Novem-ber guessed wrong and was the wsfccandidate for the convention fromRichmond county and was over-,

whelmingly defeated. There arenow three candidates for the nomi- v

nation for solicitor in that district?Sedberry, Lane Brown, of Albe-marle, and R. S. Pruette, of Wades-boro.

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B. M. SLEDGE

Spring Hope.?Bunnie M. Sledgt, ,

prominent farmer of Nash County, "

died Tuesday morning at the honeof his father-in-law, J. W. Matth-ews at Momeyer. He was fS

! years old and was born 'n Frank-lin County. The funeral will beheld at Momeyer Baptist Church JWednesday at 1 p. m., the service* v Jto be conducted by Rev. J. W.Nobles, of Bailey. Interment wilt jjbe in the Matthews buryingground. Mr. Sledge is survived byhis wife, before marriage, Mius |Louise Matthews, and one, son r

James. He is also survived by hiamother, Mrs. John Sledge, of- 1Franklin County, andbrothers and sisters. H a

DEACONS INSTALLED AT JPRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 1Ten deacons, W. N. Clark, W. G- [

Weeks, Jr., A. ~F. Harrell, W. S. jWilkinson, E. G. Johnston, Jr., 1Geo. A. Wilkinson, R. C. Brake, T-L. Simmons, E. C. Smith, and Roy TC. Mayo were ordained lastday and were installed alongN. H. Edgerton, who hadly been ordained, -v in thePresbyterian Church here. > M

These'ceremonies were followed aby a sermon, "the Ideal Deacon,* 1preached by the pastor, Rev. Nort ' Iman Johnson. - ajMHtll

Attended by Midwives8,121 white

17,514 Negro

404 Indian 1A glance at the above figures

should serve to convince anyonethat unless the midwife service isfairly competent the price thatwill be paid is a very high rateamong infants, particularly dur-ing the first few days of life, sndamong mothers. Practically > allsuch deaths are preventable.

The primary objective in thenurse work among midwives is totry to make their services saferfor the class of people who areforced by circumstances to dependentirely on midwife attention, al-though the aid of a competentphysician would be much mora de-sirable. ?Ihe Health Bulletin.

Good Government

It is *no idore possible to halvegood government without continu-ing citizen support than it is tohave bad government without con-tinuing citizen support. The dif-ference, of course, is that the citi-zens who support bad governmentprofit financially therefrom andare more likely, to be on the jobguarding their private intereststhan are citizens who are workingfor good government which all toofrequently is but a vague deal intheir own minds. It is necessary,if we are to have efficient andeffective government, to substitutesomething in place of the privilege,or job or patronage reward whichthe party politician gets for sup-porting bad government that theaverage citizen does not get forsupporting gcfod government.?H.P. Jones,-in Public Management.

f~\ THOROUGHBRED

/ BABYCHICKS

ROCKS AND REDSShipments twice weekly.- IWE CARRY A FULL |

*C~-* L LINE OF BROODERS, 1FEEDERS, FOUNTAINS, FEEDS, AND REMEDIES, fjOUR PRICES PLEASE. TRY OUR STARTING 1 1MASH?IT HAS EVERYTHING BESTFOR CHICKS. I

H. H. WEEKS SEED JSTOREIJOPPOSITE POST OFFICE, ROCKY MOUNT, N. C. ||

ROCKYMOUNTJDRUG CO. 11

SUCCESSOR TO HWIGGINS DRUG CO. 1

178 N. MAIN ST. IBNEXT DOOR TO CAMEO THEATRE * SB

IIFULL LINE OF STANDARD DRUGS AND 11PHARMACUTICALS | S

"WE APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS" 15R. E. FLEMING, Manager

; ,J 3. jfl