County Can Drop Home Demonstration Agent but Not Welfare Officer, Says Judge Manning, Aug. 23, 1922

Stanly County Makes Vigorous Efforts to Oust Welfare Officer

By Oscar J. Coffin

Raleigh, Aug. 18—Judge J.S. Manning’s ruling yesterday that Stanly County cannot discharge its welfare officer, Zeb V. Moss, until the incumbent’s term expires in July 1923, is being sent out to counties from the state headquarters here.

Stanly County discontinued the welfare work and the home demonstration agency. In the welfare officer’s case the commissioners are limited by the statute which makes cause for removal the only way to remove and then both the welfare board and the commissioners must sit jointly. The law making optional such an officer applies to counties with less than 32,000 people, but once having elected jointly as the board and the commissioners must jointly do, the attorney general rules that the department cannot be discontinued by commissioners’ act.

The Stanly attack on the office is not the first and it will not be the last. The whole department, from the state commissioner down to the smallest county, sustained vigorous assaults in the 1921 general assembly.

From The Kinston Free Press, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 1922.