The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1933-10-06
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
A MATTER OF HISTORY

| If and when the 18th Amendment is repealed
North Carolina is certainly going to have the Dur
den of liquor control on her hands. Those who
remember Beaver Dam" with that odious smell
and that dabolical influence welded by saloons
and their friends will agree for open bar
rooms or saloons to return. The Gastonla Gazette
gives history as it relates to CASTOR county
that might be duplicated in this community to q
great extent. This history is so impressive and APP
plies to such an extent to this town and community
that quote The Gazette:
If there was ever, in America, county which
suffered cruciixion at the hands of King Alcohol
it was CASTOR county, North Carolina, your home
and mine.
Until its people, in righteous wrath and disgust
at ntolerable conditions, arose in their might and
drove out the nefarious business before the state
or nation ever went dry, it was county where
poverty, ignorance, crime, immortality and every
other deadening influence known to man made it
little short of hell on earth
Drunken brawls, bloody fights and disgusting
inebrety marked every public gathering, even
those sponsored by churches
Ignorance stalked the highways, as is proven Icy
the almost negligible pittance spent on public edu-
cation.
Women could not walk the streets of CASTOR
towns at night, and not in the day time Satuc-
days and holidays, with any degree of safety
No woman dared ride one of the night trains
from Charlotte to Gastonia unless it were case
of absolute emergency. DRINKS and DULLES ruled
the trains.
Liquor ruled local politics almost one hundred
per cent Government revenue agents could not
hold their jobs without winking at the evasion Of
the payment of the liquor tax. There was ten times
the amount of bootlegging and moonshning that
there is today-and that's saying a good deal. The
major portion of the citizenship of the county was
either directly connected with this graft or had
guilty knowledge that it existed.
These are not wild statements made by an out
slider. They the facts as given us by scores o.
the older citizens who know whereof they speak
from actual experience and observation. They are
confirmed by a reading of the columns of the
county newspapers of fifty years ago.
Twenty-Five years of prohibition, despite the
laxity with which the laws have been enforced and
despite defects of the laws themselves, has wit
messed a transformation that has but few if any
parallels in the history of American economics.
From the banner whiskey-manufacturing county
in the South" to the "Combed Yarn Manufacture
ing Center of America in brief quarter of a
century is a record that we can boast of with
pride.
On November 7th CASTOR county will vote on
the question of the repeal of the 18th Amendment,
the national law that gave prohibition. Indca-
tons are that the nation whole will vote for
repeal 1t is hardly probable that North Carolina
itself as a state will do otherwise.
Yet We maintain that CASTOR county, in the light
of its past history not do otherwise than stand
by its guns and remain dry, though all the world
goes wet. Right is right, regardless of time and
circumstance. CASTOR countians should give proh;-
biton a vote of confidence for what is has done
for her people through quarter of century,
though the heavens fall.-Marshville Home