The Caucasian. (Clinton, N.C.) 188?-1913, 1903-03-19
THE RECENT LEGIsLATURE

the Watts Bill. The Class OF Men Who
Ar. Doing the state Harm.
To the Editor of the Charlotte OBJ
server:
To a man up a tree, or, in other
words, 10 North 'arolinian living
outside Of the State, "there be-
curious sights visible in the old
land, as gathered from pen pictures
appearing in the newspapers daily
and weekly.
The late Legislature was dandy.
1t seemed to favor everything and
was positively opposed TO everything.
IL was come ", drama farce and
tragedy-mostly farce. That com
mittee report a. to alleged cruelty
to convicts was a fine bit of humof
and ought to go down in history as
such. Every charge proven aup
admitted, but nobody guilty, nobody
punished, not even a reprimand.
Back in the halycon days Of fusion
few desperate, worthless negroes
were guilty Of rape, the victims
being white. We were told by the
papers of the Josephus stripe that
this was all due to- the fact that fus-
ion encouraged negroes to commit
such crimes; in fact that was one of
the issues. / notice that such
crimes have been more numerous
under a Democratic administration
than ever before. Is it retrlbutiOn?
Only recently a negro repeatedly
insulted white girl on the streets
of Winston before he was arrested,
The penitentiary report, which
has furnished material for a con-
. tinOus performance entertainment
for many years. out did itself at the
beginning of this year Generally it
has merely reached the "selfsup-
porting" stage, with lengthy serial
story added in which large surplus
would have been shown but for the
spring floods or some other prOvi-
dental interference But this year
an actual surplus, on paper, of $40
600 was shown. BY adding three
ciphers. at very small cost, the re-
port would have shown surplus of
$40,00O,000. The penitentiary
management might have shown at
least $4,000 more profit if only two
gallons of corn whiskey had been
given 1888 cold, wet prisoners at
Marion, instead of three gallons.
But of course, the temperance NIL
crobes have BEEN at work in the
hearts of the people and it Is SUR
prising that the poor convicts were
allowed even five drops of corn
damnation each.
BY the way, speaking of whiskey,
am reminded that North Carolina
is now in charge of The Pure in
Heart. One of the surprises in this
matter was a report that so many
leading Democrats, Senator Sim
mons included, were favorable to
such dry bit of legislation as the
Watts bill. A great many Demo
Gratis can't drink whiskey, but, gen
orally speaking. / thought it was
a case of the fox guarding the goose
But correspondent writing to one
of the Raleigh papers from Yadkir
county let's the cat out of the bag
He rejoices at the passage of the bill
to force distillers into incorporated
towns and gives as one of tn
reasons that it will benefit anC
strengthen the Democratic party
Continuing he says that the distill
cries in Yadkin county were merel
"recrulting stations" for the Re
publican party and that count
would have been Democratic lon
ago but for the distilleriers, et(
That explains the whole thing.
But what change! Only fe'
years ago the Democratic manage
locally if not generally, appealed
the moonshiners and liquor me
generally in the ''dark corner" an
elsewhere to help them to get CO
troll of State and nation and pror
ised them all sorts of good things
"they'd be true" Now thew hay
turned on their help and are tryir
to destroy the liquor business
little at time. Politicians ma
deny this, but no considerable nur
Der of liquor men will. Base i
gratitude. to say the least of it.
A few short years ago most of
were bowling calamity and fl
coinage of silver as panacea. '
really believed 1t was necessary
restore prices and general prosperi'
Our goldbug friends said we We
mistaken. Who was right? F
lowing the settlement of the fins
cial question by the goldbug rou
we have gone up against unheard
prosperity-10 cent cotton, dol
wheat, 80 cent corn, 40 cent chi'
ems, 40 cent butter-in fact, hi
prices for everything, even lab
The Spanish and PHILIPPINE war
the South African war had Sol
thing to do with it by curtail
production and increasing consur
ton. The influx of gold from
aska and the increased output
our mines affected the status of
fairs, Then, too, the governm