Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1912-03-29
The Carroll Outrage.

Under the heading of Mountain
Outlaws. in referring to the Vir-
mia tragedy in Carroll county, a
newspaper affirms that "such MUIR
derous deeds are due, in majority
of cases, to the Illicit distiling of
VIII iskey."
The death of such men are Il dis
tinctly individual loss to civilization,
more especially with the two higher
educated gentlemen, Judge of the
Circuit Court Massie and Attorney
for the Commonwealth Foster, and
if less valuable from a professional
and educational standpoint, none the
less so from the standpoint of citizen
ship, was Sheriff Webb, in whose
grim. courageous hands lay the duty
of preserving public peace and decor
UNI, though the toll were life itself.
If these gentlemen fully recongized
their own danger, and the contingent
danger to others in crowded court
room, IS seems to have been the case
they were and are now justly amena-
BILE to public criticism for failing to
provide against such contingency.
There is courage which can be both
discreet and indiscret. The indiscre-
tion of their courage lost to them
their lives and those of others and
placed upon the annals of Virginia a
page that would be blotted out with
tears if those who weep had access to
il.
Facing, as they best knew, the
courage of class of men who have
awlays defied the Federal govern
ment's internal revenue tax upon
whiskey, and who in many respects
are good citizens, whose wrong doing
was largely the sequence of this an
facing, l repeat, known
courage and determination inspired by
their belief of the unfairness and the
iniquity of the government tariff in
favor of the whiksey trust. Judge
Massie should have directed his sher-
if to provide against such possible
tragedy. 1t was unnecessary for him
to prove his courage at the risk of his
own life and that of his associates in
governmental functions, and of those
of others. part of peaceabe public
assembly.
The late Federal District Judge
Paul, of Virginia, recognized in the
leniency with which he treated in his
court this class of public offenders,
and gave them due credit for their
failure to accept the principle that
the government had right to con-
tinue war tax in time of peace.
That great statesman, "Old Joe
Brown" of Georgia, was always
defender of the moonshiner, or rather,
! should say, of the right these peo-
Pile claimed to make their own corn
and apples and cherries and peaches
into whiskey and brandy. without
government tax or supervision.
Are these people greater offenders
than those people who have forced out
of the government service the great
pure food and pure whiskey advocate,
DR.. Wiley, that they may be permit
ed to sell their damnation" all over
the country, robbing the government
as well as the individual, at many
times it's real value?
The greatest menace of his repub-
lie, in its government as well as the
lowering tone of morality which 1t
engenders by the awful adulterants
that 1t is PERMITTED. by the processes
of the government, to place on the
market to the exclusion of COMPETE
tion of pure goods, is the whiskey
trust. They are mainly responsible
for the defeat of local option. of boot
Logging and speakeasies. 1t is their
business to discredit temperance
everywhere, as we'll as to destroy the
competition of the moonshiner.
Nobody seeks to apologize for the
terrible crime, but the cause of the
crime has long existed, and has beer
fully recognized.
Virginia needs all her men, ant
most of all such men as Massie ant
Foster and Webb.
| The oppressive tariff taxes of tn,
Federal g0carnment in the interests
| of class and prir'lege have no RICH
to exist.
EFT s.