A “prominent citizen” of Hertford is quoted as saying that if the man who sold George Moore, railroad engineer slain the other day at Winfall, his liquor could be caught and hanged, justice would be visited upon the man really responsible for the engineer’s death.
But followed a bit further, this prominent citizen’s reasoning might involve some of his respectable neighbors as responsible for the alleged murder and as likewise deserving of hanging along with the bootlegger. For the bootlegger would never ply his trade if there were not an active demand for his product. Indeed, The Advance will go so far as to say that robbed of his “respectable” patronage, the bootlegger would be on the way to being put out of business. It is the folks who drink liquor and don’t get into courts over it that constitute the gravest menace to society. Judge E. Yates Webb hands folks of this class a decided jolt when he says:
“The curse of America is its rich men, the breeders of anarchy, who in order to satisfy the appetites, violate the prohibition law, and, at the same time, decry the idea of giving the same privilege to the masses.
“The majority of the people can do anything under the American system of government. This majority saw fit to enact an amendment to the Constitution, known as the prohibition law. But the upper class continue to drink whisky, because they feel that they are above the law. It is awful, they say, for the workers to drink but ‘we are a privileged class.’
“These men are breeders of anarchy and America’s hope is that the stuff they insist on drinking will rot their insides out and their race will vanish from the face of the earth.”
From the editorial page of The Daily Advance, Elizabeth City, N.C., Saturday, Oct. 9, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074042/1926-10-09/ed-1/seq-4/
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