Voters Will Decide if They Want Home Demonstration Agent, Agriculture Agent, Superintendent of Welfare, Oct. 10, 1924

Grabbing Hard After Pennies. . . Commissioners Would Abolish Inexpensive Offices If Votes Will Do It

Claiming that the people of Pasquotank County have protested so much against the expense, the County Commissioners have hit upon a possible way to abolish the offices of Superintendent of Welfare, the County Home Demonstration Agent and the Agricultural Agent, by passing the buck to the voters in the November election. Ballots for this purpose were prepared Monday by the Commissioners.

Now let’s see how much money the Commissioners are going to save the taxpayers in their penny pinching zeal to make a record for saving the taxpayers’ money. These three officers to be found in every progressive county are serving Pasquotank on nominal salaries, half of which are furnished by the State and Federal Governments. Pasquotank is paying only $225 a month on the salaries of these officers.

If the Commissioners do away with these offices, or if the people vote them out of the county, they will save each taxpayer about 1 cent on every $100 of property. For instance, if a farmer owns property valued at $5,000, he will save 50 cents a year.

This done, every farmer will lose the services of a trained farm expert capable and always available to give valuable assistance and advice on many farm problems, a man who is now giving his services toward making a fair in Elizabeth City by refusing the customary $100 that has heretofore been allotted. Every farm girl and farm woman will then be denied the services of the Home Demonstration Agent, who now rides from school to school, teaching the girls to make better bread, cakes, preserves, jelly, to be better housekeepers, to take more price in their homes, and make better wives for the boys who are growing up on the farms today.

Doing away with the County Welfare Officer will deprive Pasquotank County of a woman whose valuable work is known all over the state, who is tirelessly working for the kind of unfortunate and underprivileged people who sometimes without the comforting stay of such influence become a burden on society. Pasquotank would do away with this type of woman who did not hesitate to bring to the courts E.E. Clarke, the man who preyed upon small girls, robbing them of their childhood innocence and blasting their reputation.

“The man with the canker in his system to vote away these advantages in order to save a few dimes a year should never show his face in Pasquotank County again,” said one man this week. “The Commissioners say they have been begged by the people to do away with these offices. If these are the only kind of people the commissioners ever advise with, then sorry indeed are the commissioners. Perhaps the clamor brought to the commissioners has been somewhat magnified, for with over half of the property in the county owned by residents of Elizabeth City, is it not strange that nothing of the kinds is heard from Elizabeth City folks?

From the front page of the Elizabeth City Independent, Friday, October 10, 1924

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