The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1908-04-09
Capt. S. A. Ashe For
Treasurer.
His Peculiar Fitness for the Office
His Great Services TO- the
State.
Correspondence News and Observer

Correspondence News and Observer.
To the Editor:-It is often said that
the office rarely or never seeks the man
the right man-but that the man has to
seek the office. | never saw this saying
better exemplified than now when Capt.
Ashe has to seek the office of State Treas
urer. For OF all the men in the State he
seems to me to be the man that the
office OF State Treasurer ought to seek.
Time was, in the days of our provin-
cialdom, when this office called for little
more than personal honesty and clerical
aptnes+ With the growth and develop
ment of the State these conditions have
changed. A much larger and broader
man is called for now than then. There
is no reason why man of ability and
trained mind could not be as serviceable
in proportion at the head OF our State
finances as at the head of our National
finances.
Capt. Ashe is well versed in the theory
of fnances-few North Carolinians as
much so. He is a man of practical af-
haps than any other man in it, No man
could love it better or would serve it
with more single hearted zeal.
office to service which entities him to
recognition at the hands of our people
we find his claims equally strong. Few
men have done the State more service.
None surely ever did as much and made
as little stir about it. Not only as for
eighteen years editor of the News and OBJ
server and its predecessors-the palladi-
um of good government in the State
but as adviser and strengthened of the
men who were fighting their battles, his
vast information and clear, practical
sense were of the highest value to our
people.
Other men have since been OF great
service to the State. But they had to
fight only the discounted legions of the
evening though some of them were strong
and put up pretty stiff fight. 1t was
Captain Ashe and his compatriOts that
broke the center OF North Carolina Re-
publicanism. (Which for us stood for
misrule) rendering the later defeat of it's
wings practicable.
Captain Ashes service to the State as
a historian is also great-greater than
will be appreciated It'll, as 1. body, we
come to discriminate between the work
OF the true historian and ri pc scholar
and that of the writer of sugar coated
platitudes.
There would be an interesting coinci-
dence. too, in Captain Ashe, the most de-
voted of our post-bellum historians, Sc
curing this office at the hands of our
people. For it was long held by Colonel
Wheeler, the most devoted of historians
who preceded the war. However, Capt.
Ashe ranks far above Col Wheeler as a
historian, who claimed to be only col
lector OF historical material. Captain
Ashe is fine type OF the true historian
"a man who knows what to collect and
where to find material and, more i'm
portant still how to weave the raw facts
into the finished history that men will
read and keep for their children to read.
Thus have | hastily cited some of my
reasons for believing that our people will
be serving their own best interests and
at the same time rewarding one of their
ablest and worthiest servitors by con.
ferring on Captain Ashe the office of
State Treasurer
o. W. BLACKNALL.
Kittrell, n e..