We’ve always contended, and we’re going to keep right on contending, that the people who live out in the country have just as much right to come into Reidsville and enter your yard and break down your flowers and fences as you have to drive out to their homes and commit similar depredations. If a stranger stopped his auto in front of your home and climbed the fence and broke off the limbs of a favorite tree, or snapped off a handful of your prettiest flowers you couldn’t get hold of an officer quick enough. And you’d prosecute him to the last ditch.
That is as true as gospel. And yet in the face of it we hear frequent reports of someone from town stopping in the rural districts to break off limbs of trees, to break or dig up shrubbery or, as has been the case more than once, to enter some farmyard and carry away choice flowers. And just where there is any difference between town or country desecration of property, or just plain down-right stealing if you want the real definition, we are unable to determine. We can’t draw a line between he two, because it is just as criminal, just as despicable, in one case as it is in the other.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea if everyone would pause for just a second and pledge himself or herself to treat other people’s property just as they wish their own to be treated. We’d have a better community, and a good deal prettier one, to say nothing of better and more pleasant relations between town and rural citizens. If you live in the town your property is your own and no one has any right to deface or destroy it. If you live in the country, the same thing is true. So try and be a better citizen by remembering this next time you see something you want that belongs to someone else.
Stop St From the editorial page of the Reidsville Review, May 30, 1923
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