THE SHELBY PUBLISHING COMPANY

Tuesday, October 9, 1928

Shelby, N.C.

C. J. Mabry ….. President

J. Nelson Callahan ….. Business Manager

W. J. Cash ….. Managing Editor

Subscription ….. $2.00 Per Year

Speaking of the meanest man, who was that reporter who tracked to earth Mr. Willebrandt who used to be the husband of the Department of Justice person?

_______

We don't blame Charlotte. We wouldn't have a recall either. Not with the city administration of that fair burg furnishing such a three-ring circus--free--gratis. Hang taxes. The people are getting their money's worth.

_______

The innuenda that Simmons is a dotard has always been too silly for belief. The orator is as shrewd as usual and, as usual, knows how to make a fight for "me and my wife and my son, Frank, and his wife."

_______

One thing that makes it hard for us to please our Republican friends is the fact that it isn't a campaign between Al and Herb. It's one for Al and "agin" him. Mr. Hoover is only the incidental beneficee.

_______

McNinch says Governor McLean is laying down a smoke screen when he says that religion is the great issue in North Carolina. The imputing of their own methods, says a military expert, to other generals is the reason most generals get licked.

_______

Headline says: "G.O.P. May Win N.C.". But we gathered from what Frank and Charline Jonas have said that all the "mays" had been kicked downstairs and that Dr. Work had the Tar Baby stuck hard and fast to Sir Hoover. At that, and to mix our Uncle Remus, we shouldn't be surprised if the elephant doesn't find this Tar Baby merely Br'er Rabbit in masquerade.

________

FIRE LOSSES

________

With the approach of cold weather, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States directs attention to the fact that more fires and heavier fire losses occur during the winter months than in the summer. As an illustration of this, loss to property during the first three months of 1928 was more than two and a half times as great as during the months of June, July and August.

Similarly, the number of deaths caused by fire is larger in the winter than during the warmer months. Studies made by the Fire Casualty Statistics Committee of the National Fire Waste Council disclose that the number of fire casualties in the winter is double the number in the summer.

The hazards involved in the use of heating apparatus probably account for a considerable portion of this wide discrepancy. The proper time to inspect heating apparatus is in the fall before fires are started for the winter. Many millions of dollars could be saved each year if inspections had been made of chimneys and flues, soot cleaned out and necessary repairs made before the heating units were put into operation.

Care should be taken never to start or hurry fires by the use of gasoline or kerosene. Hundreds of deaths and injuries occur each year because this dangerous practice is followed. It is better to take a few minutes longer to obtain a good fire than to attempt to expedite it by such dangerous means.

_______

A CURIOUS ARGUMENT

A curious argument for Prohibition is being widely-circulated. It runs like this: the law is a piece of class legislation. We of the upper classes mean to have our liquors, of course. But, from an economic standpoint, it is good for the masses. Therefore for our own benefit and for the benefit of the masses, we of the upper classes see it as our right and duty to maintain the law, knowing that, for ourselves, enforcement will not exist.

We say that is a curious argument. It is, in a land which still insists that it is democracy. If, indeed, we are ready to accept the established fact that we are a plutocracy, that the many exist for the few, it is not curious. For class legislation is, of course, the hallmark of all governments which recognize privileged classes. Particularly is that true of a plutocracy.

There are a great many things to be said against democracy. It too often places in power the image of the lowest. Only at rare intervals does it breed a Jefferson, a Lincoln. But look over the kings of France, of England, the princelings of Germany, of Italy, the aristocracies of all times, and particularly the plutocracies of such commercial states as Venice and one comes sadly to the conclusion that democracy with all its faults is still about the best stupid humorously tolerable to be to date. But to speak of challenged classes in democracy is to talk obvious nonsense.

What we are actually faced with in such an argument is a choice between the Hamiltonian doctrine, that is the wise, the good, the great--meaning the very rich if one follows Hamilton to his logical conclusion--and the Jeffersonian one. Now there is nothing to prevent the people of the United States accepting a plutocracy if they want it. But one cannot hold to the notion of democracy and in a breath talk that argument for Prohibition. Either we want Prohibition or we don't want it. If we do, then there devolves upon all high and low the duty to observe it. We must punish the buyer as well as the seller. If we don't want it then it is our duty to say so. Whether or not it is right morally has nothing to do with it. The American Government is an instrument for the accomplishing of the wishes of the people, not of morality.

Or, if we won't answer that, we will, whether we desire it or no, answer the question as to whether we shall follow Hamilton or Jefferson.

_______

A DISTINCTION

Governor McLean makes a distinction in point when he suggests that the people of North Carolina in the mass, are not properly of the "bigot mind". Fully four-fifths of the population of the state would, we hazard the guess, indignantly repudiate the idea that a man's religion is the business of anybody save himself. And forcefully, there remains a fifth made up of the class which places the blot of illiteracy on the State and of that other class of born fanatics and barn burners who conceive it to be their right to attend to everybody's business save their own. The violent anti-Catholic propaganda originates at the North, for the most part, but it is assiduously distributed by people who ought to--and often do--know better.

THE MOVING ROW "We are no more than a moving row of fantastic shapes that come and go." BY J. W. CASH

I have been reading a quaint tale. Mr. Roy Howard tells it in Collier's incidental to explaining "Why I Am for Hoover". As nearly as I can ferret it out, Mr. Howard is for Mr. Hoover because, though Mr. Hoover is just yet laboring under the belief that Prohibition might work, Mr. Howard confidently expects that the months between now and March 4, 1929 is exactly the span of time it will require for Mr. Hoover to change his mind and become an outspoken champion of change in the laws.

_______

But about the story. Mr. Roy Howard is a very young man with a moustache and spats. It is not to be taken to mean that I have a congenital aversion to spats or even moustaches. Mr. Roy Howard is also chairman of the Scripps-Howard Corporation, engaged in the publication of 26 papers in the United States and the operation of the United Press. Mr. Howard's chairmanship is due to the thoughtfulness of his father who during his stay in this mundane sphere added unto themselves many ducats and pieces of eight.

Recently, Mr. Howard called a conference of his captains of slaves--sometimes brightly designated by an archaic word, "editors". The 26 captains were treated for three days to discussion of various Presidential candidates, with notable references to Sir Hoover. Which is to say that the boys knew six months before that Mr. Roy Howard had a yearn for the gentleman from California. It was all very quaint.

______

The three days reminds me irresistibly of Louis XI, the most delicious of the black guards in the history of France which history is replete with such picaresque fellows. "Further agitate His Eminence". Louis was a bit more forthright than Mr. Roy Howard. He simply placed his captains of slaves under a slow-descending knife and when the knife, after 24 hours or so, became to bite at the skin on the captains' throats, they always showed a marvelous unanimity in--supporting Mr. Hoover! As Mr. Howard correctly observes, it is very beautiful to observe the enthusiasm of youth--all the captains were under 30--for cooperation--and Mr. Hoover.

____________________________________

Those Australian aborigines, discovered by Sir Hubert Wilkins, may carry tails, but they decline to engage in whispering campaigns.

_______

The Chicago Congressman who charges Republican dignitaries with hiding behind the woman's skirts must have lost his eyesight five years ago.

_______

The spurned gallant may try to murmur something about air. But she will have given him that.