From the Durham Dispatch and
the Watauga Democrat, February 1914
DURHAM--Judge Jeter C. Pritchard today registered his
protest against the tango and the turkey trot and the slit skirt in the fifth
of a series of meetings for men being held at the Baptist Church. Judge
Pritchard was heard by over 1,000 men, and many amens and nods of the head
greeted what he had to say about the present-day fashion of the feminine part
of the North Carolina population.
“The Conservation of Manhood” was the subject on which Judge
Pritchard spoke, and he outlined a number of ways in which the fathers and
mothers of the State could conserve the manhood of the rising generation. The
distinguished jurist spoke with a seriousness characteristic of all his
discussions of moral issues. He talked in a conversational tone, but none of
the addresses that have been delivered in Durham have been listened to more
attentively.
His speech was filled with illustrations of the results of
the failure of parents to give their children the proper home training. All of
these illustrations came from the observation of the speaker while he was on
the bench, in the Senate and in his present position.
The proper home training was the first means advocated for
the conservation of the boys and girls of the State, and the second was
prohibitive and repressive laws.
In the first case Judge Pritchard said that he knew of many
instances in which the fathers left the whole training of the children to the
mothers. That this was bad was shown from the fact that there are always times
in the life of boys and girls when the strong arm of the father’s authority is
needed.
That the prohibition law was not an interference of the
personal liberty of any man, but an effort to take the temptations away from
the people, the young people of the State, was the position taken by Judge
Pritchard on the whiskey question. He recalled some of the scenes from the
early history of Madison County, and said that while he was practicing law in
that section of the country he defended 57 murderers. The dockets of the county
were crowded with murder cases. He told of the fight made against whiskey in
that country, and finally wound up with the present day conditions of Madison.
The duty of the South in the enforcement of these laws was
stressed. The duty rests heavier on the South than on any other section of the
country because of the fact that the South is the most American part of the
country, and hence on her depends the preservation of the American Institution.
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