Thursday,
May 4, 1916
The old bear that was caught in a trap at Stony Bottom last week, has been roving this county for many years. His head would not go in a flour barrel. He tore down 16 rods of wire fence with the trap.
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About forty Odd Fellows in a body attended the special service at the Methodist Church Sunday morning, the occasion being the 97th anniversary of the founding of the order.
DUNMORE
Died, at her home at Dunmore, Sunday morning, Mrs. Jacob K. Taylor, aged 80 years. Mrs. Taylor leaves eleven children, George, Rev. John A., Dan, William, Ed, Frank, Harry, Mrs. Zinn, Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. Cook, and Mrs. Gilmore. Mrs Taylor was one of our best women, a good neighbor, a good church woman, and will be greatly missed by her friends. Interment at Dunmore beside her husband.
The Warn railroad is completed nearly to Frost.
We notice quite a lot of new buildings going up at Cass and Raywood. F. Hamed has built a very large store house and wareroom at Cass, and has it filled to it full capacity.
A few days ago a school marm asked one of her pupils what a skeleton was. After meditating a little he said: “A man with his insides out and his outside off.” Correct.
BUCKEYE
Nice weather we are having now – good for the farmers; grass is growing nicely and the candidates and worms are showing up.
E. F. McLaughlin passed through Buckeye shaking hands and kissing babies. He was on his way to the lower end of the county. Mr. McLaughlin is good timber for the sheriff’s place.
N. S. Duffield, our next representative in the legislature, was around a few days ago making up with the farmers. M. S. is a dandy all right.
Prospects are good for a crop of fruit this year. Service trees, peach trees and cherry trees all came in bloom at the same time – something we never saw before.
The cattle men are taking their cattle to the mountains.
ALCOHOL AND CRIME
AN ESSAY READ BY MISS AMY BURNS IN W.C.T.U. HIGH SCHOOL CONTEST
For ages the human race has had a firm belief in the value of alcohol and has regarded it as one of the special blessings of heaven. This belief has been upheld by the opinions of medical men of all time and countries. In text books, it has been taught that alcohol aids digestion and prolongs life. The scientific basis of these opinions has been questioned and science is now revealing that this so-called “blessing” is one of the greatest curses and darkest blots on the fair pages of our history.
Drink weakens moral resistance. It silences the voice of conscience. By stupefying the intellect, it obliterates the moral sense. Accordingly all sense of right and wrong become strangely confused and cease to represent moral obligations even moral distinction. No rational appeal can deter from further indulgence in drink, nor from consenting to immoral acts, even to the commission of crime which, the soul, free from the degrading influence of drink, would scorn to consider. This is the cause of crimes which crowd the calendars of the courts and columns of the daily papers.
The rapid development of America has not been unaccompanied by danger. The segregation of people in cities gives opportunity for crime unknown in rural districts. There we find all classes, all conditions, and all nationalities of mankind.
Drink is responsible for the ruin of sixty thousand girls each year. They are taken to the dance halls, theaters, wine suppers, beer gardens; finally to saloons, upon steamboat excursions, and Sunday beer picnics. Drink is everywhere; intellect is stupefied; conscience is hushed; moral resistance is paralyzed; a brief few years of sin and suffering generally begins and ends this awful tragedy. Close beside the saloon are the gambling den and the haunt of the scarlet women.
Dr. Eaton says, “one hundred thousand yearly begin a life of crime because of drink.” This ghastly fact excites no wonder. Why should it? Does not drink rob one both of the desire and the capacity for earning an honest living? Do not drink and drunkenness furnish the incentives and moral conditions for the commission of crime?
The Committee of Fifty affirmed that the condition of thirty percent of the destitute children is charged to the excessive use of alcohol by their parents, and so must be charged to the liquor traffic; that twenty percent of the abject poverty, twenty- five percent of insanity and thirty percent of crime are due to intemperance, and as such must be charged to the liquor traffic…