President's Wife Leads Crusade Against 'Instrument of Torture' in Her Wardrobe: The Corset, 1907

“Mrs. Roosevelt Leads a Reform” from the Asheville Gazette News, reprinted in the Thursday, Aug. 1, 1907, issue of the Watauga Democrat

If memory serves us well, the actual initiative in the abolition of the vast bustles that made women look like dromedaries was taken by Mrs. Cleveland, while she was mistress of the White House. We believe also that she held in the substitution of the pompadour for the bang, a less important matter. Even men doubted whether the bustle could be discarded and women still look like women, but Mrs. Cleveland worked a transformation in contour, as it were, and men perceived that the objects of their affection were still substantially the same.

Now, we hear, although we do not pretend that it is an authoritative statement, that Mrs. Roosevelt has essayed the role of reformer. It is not the railroads, the corporations, nor the nature fakers that have fallen under the ban of the first lady of the land. According to an intimate friend, the President’s wife has decided to discard her corsets. All of the feminine instruments of torture in her wardrobe will be thrown into the garbage heap and she will hereafter wage unceasing warfare against them. If Mrs. Roosevelt is successful in her crusade the corset will be relegated to the limbo of antiquity, along with the hoop-skirt and the bustle. As a result, the wasp-like waist bids fair to go out of fashion, and the Venus from, long admired but seldom emulated, is to have its inning. The opposition of Mrs. Roosevelt to the corset is based on hygienic facts not unrelated to the subject of the race subject of race suicide. She believes that the compressing of vital organs by means of stays has become a positive menace and a crime against future generations. Such a crusade will not be without its effect in the financial world, since millions of dollars are invested in corset manufacture in this country.

Home Demonstration Club Activities, August 1938

“The Woman’s Touch or What Club Work Means to N.C. Farm Women” by Jane S. McKimmon, State Home Demonstration Agent and Assistant Director of Extension, N.C. State College, in the August, 1938, issue of Carolina Co-operator

Protecting the Health of the State

North Carolina is doing a piece of health work which bids fair to produce far-reaching results in its organized campaign against venereal disease, and women can do much to create the right attitude toward what the Department of Health proposes to accomplish.

Perhaps the outstanding result of home demonstration work here is the change in the attitude of women.

Two years ago if the word “syphilis” had been mentioned at a club meeting, there would have been no more club. But syphilis was the health topic at a meeting in Macon County recently. The disease was discussed, statistics given as to its prevalence, and suggestions made as to what each woman could do to help eradicate it in her community. As a result, each home demonstration club, by a unanimous vote, instructed its secretary to send letters to Senators and Congressmen and support the bill which was then before Congress.

The letters were answered and it was remarkable what an effect they had in giving women confidence and making them realize that their support was worth something when things were to be done in the State.

To set an example of doing what was asked, 75 women had blood tests made and in one family four sons and in another two daughters submitted to the test.

For women to attack the problem as they have done, with no false modesty, is a remarkable forecast of their interest in the health of the State and their faith in what they can do to help.

Sandy Cross Community

Tenants, landowners, and a large portion of the other people of Sandy Cross neighborhood came together to talk over farm and home plans for the community. There were more than 50 people present, and the local minister started things by discussing “what a good community should have.”

It looked encouraging to have five men get up and tell what the home demonstration club had meant to their homes and what they had to say was so good that it did a great deal toward setting home economics instruction in a good light before the other men.

Alamance County Readers

Four home demonstration clubs are now getting all types of books from the Burlington Public Library which are ready members and their families. Preparatory to enrolling for the short course Farm and Home Week at State College, several women reported that they had already read three technical books from the list recommended. Country Kitchen by Della Lutes was pointed out as being especially amusing and instructive.

Union Mills Club Renovating Tenant House

The Union Mills Club of Rutherford County has taken the renovation of a tenant house as a community project and members are hoping to demonstrate with a small amount of money and good planning that many such houses could be made into real homes.

Truly, these women who have done so much with so little for their own homes are the ones to evolve workable plans for others. The club has been divided into groups and each group has taken one room to work out its improvement.

Commercial firms are getting a vision of the possibilities in these demonstrations also and are contributing some of the material needed.

Iron Duff Community Improvement

Men, women, and children in the Iron Duff community, Haywood County, are attending meetings and working together for the betterment of their community. They are playing together, also. An abandoned school house serves as the community center and plans are under way to remodel it. One hundred were present at the last meeting.

Watermelon Time

In addition to being a splendid thirst quencher and palate tickler during the long hot days of July and August, the lowly watermelon has come into its own. It has been learned that it contains as much vitamin C, the antiscorbutic vitamin, as does the tomato, and also that there is a small amount of vitamins A, B, and G.

The pulp, too, is mildly laxative, and watermelon rind sweet meats and sweet pickles have found their way to the table of most Southerners and to the counters of farm women’s markets.

Keeping Up With Farm Women

Be sure to attend Farm and Home Week at State College August 1^st through August 5^th.

Lou Ella Dickerson, Kittrell, Vance County, won a free cruise to Havana offered by the North Carolina Bankers Association to the farm girl who submitted the largest number of farm and home survey records.

Mrs. H.A. Stroup of Bessemer City, Route 1, Gaston County, has completed plans to install ad 10-B ram to pump water to her home and barns.

The home of Mrs. C.E. Bell of Rocky Mount, Nash County, has recently been improved in many ways. An electric home water supply system supplies running water to the kitchen sink, bathroom, poultry yard, barn lot, and wash house. An electric washing machine is ready for washday, the walls have been refinished, and additional windows have been added to the living room.

Good Rolls

I do not know of any everyday food of more mediocre quality than the homemade yeast bread and rolls one finds everywhere.

Sometimes I think we have lost the standard of what constitutes a really good roll, and that is the reason that lightness, crisp crust, and an appetizing flavor are left out of our requisites. Try this one:

1 cup liquid yeast

1 tablespoonful sugar

1 level teaspoon salt

½ cup milk, scalded and cooled, or 1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon lard or butter

Flour

Pour the yeast into a bowl, add milk, sugar, and lard or butter, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Beat until smooth. Then add the salt and enough flour to make a dough just stiff enough to keep its shape when molded. Knead thoroughly. Place in a greased bowl; cover and set in a warm place until it is light (more than double its bulk). Knead lightly. Roll dough and cut with biscuit cutter, grease top of circles and fold for pocket-book rolls. Place in a pan, cover, and let rise until light. Bake and rub the tops with butter after taking from the oven.

If eggs are plentiful these rolls are much improved by the addition of an unbeaten egg to the mixture when it is in batter form.

American Legion Magazine Cover, August 1948

Laying Off Workers in Alamance and Durham Counties, 1939

“Thirty-Three Are To Be Cut Off WPA Roll in the County” from the Tuesday, July 25, 1939, issue of the Burlington Daily Times-News

Number is Smallest in District; More than 250 Must Go From Durham County

The number of persons who are to be cut from Alamance county WPA rolls under the new 18-month ruling was increased to 33 today through the publication of a new list by James McGheady, head of WPA operations for the district which includes this county.

More than 250 persons, most of them in Durham county, are being sliced from the rolls under the ruling which provides for temporary dismissal of all persons other than war veterans who have continuously been on the rolls for 18 months or more.

Persons taken off are eligible to apply for reinstatement after the expiration of a month under provisions of the congressional act.

A previous list of Alamance county persons affected placed the number at 24, however, is among the smallest of any in the district.

America's Dream of Security for All, 1934

From the Editorial Page of the Burlington Daily Times-News, Monday, July 2, 1934

America’s Old Dream, Security for All

Just how far the fall congressional election will turn into a national referendum on Mr. Roosevelt’s new program for social security is a matter for the political wiseacres to forecast.

At this distance, however, two things seem more or less evident.

First, the argument is likely to be over the way of reaching this goal, rather than over the wisdom of trying to reach it at all.

Second, the tentatively outlined program looks very much like a simple extension of the oldest and most tenaciously held dream in American life.

Security for the individual in America, as Mr. Roosevelt sees it, seems to call for three things: Productive employment, protection against misfortune, and proper housing.

Over the details of this program there is room for vast argument; over the way of putting it into effect there is even more. The most conservative of capitalists and the readiest of radicals could endorse these general aims in complete accord, but they’d be apt to have a fine row trying to settle on the best way of attaining them.

Nevertheless, it is a fine thing to have this very general goal set up as an objective.

This kind of security is exactly the sort of thing that led most of our ancestors to come to the new world in the first place. They were under economic pressure in Europe; they felt themselves to be at the mercy of forces that they could never control; over there, in a new land, they hoped that they could construct a society in which human beings could have less fear of hardship of poverty, and of hunger.

The belief in that dream has been responsible for most of the optimism which is so typical of the American spirit. We have felt, for more than a century, that we were somehow building a society here in which the common man would get a better break than he ever got elsewhere.

Seeking to protect the common man against unemployment, against accidents, and against the traditional penury of old age, and trying to guarantee that he shall have a decent home to live in – what is this but an effort to make the old American dream come true?

For the next decade, at least, we shall be arguing about the best way of doing this. Maybe we’ll try Mr. Roosevelt’s way and maybe we’ll try somebody else’s.

But there can be little doubt that in one way or another we shall do our utmost to make the dream come true.

Editor Criticizes Rich "Human Vampire" in High Point, 1914

From the Thursday, July 16, 1914, issue of the High Point Review

By W.L. Stamey, Editor and Publisher

The vampire fattens on the blood of its victim, so does the human vampire, but of the two the human vampire is 10 times the worse, because he knows better. Take the town vampire and look him over and think what a terrible thing he is, how loathsome to look at; think of the widows and orphans he has drawn the life’s blood from by his strategy; of the homes he has destroyed because his money-fingers clutched unmercifully at the throats of those who could not help themselves at the time but who could have come to the surface had they been given an opportunity. Think of the deep stabs inflicted by the backhand movement, of the heartaches and desperation caused by this heartless wretch, the fiend incarnate, who strolls the streets by day and lays awake at night scheming to rob and destroy his fellow man, to get an undue advantage of this or that fellow. He becomes rich, yes, but he fattens off of his poor unfortunate victims; he prospers and is looked up to by those who consider money the standard of character, but there comes a time, a time when the scores of people he has sent to an untimely grave, of those whose lives and homes have been made desolate by his iron hand, all of whom rise up before him like a thousand ghosts to destroy his soul and he retired from the state of action and sinks into the bottomless pit of destruction, to add his gnashing of teeth to the countless thousands that have preceded him. There is retribution in life just as surely as there is life itself and it comes sooner or later and if one included to such dirty tactics could stop for a few moments and take inventory the tale would perhaps be different. The question resolves itself into a solemn fact, “what’s the use of it all, what’s the use to destroy your fellow man when God put you here to help mankind” not simply to eke out a miserable existence but to be of real service. As in all other towns of any size High Point has a few such vampires and they are marked and sooner or later will reap the same reward.

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James Perminter, Age 103, Is Still Dancing, 1907

“Dances at 103” reprinted in the Watauga Democrat, Thursday, July 25, 1907

“I wish you would say for the benefit of certain papers and people who seem inclined to doubt the age and activeness of Mr. James Perminter,” said a citizen to a Chronicle reporter to-day, “that as I understand it his age is a matter of record, and his activity is too well known here for any kind of doubt.”

“That reminds me,” said the reporter, “that some one said the old man is not only active, but that he was seen dancing at the Veterans’ reunion at Richmond.”

“Certainly,” said the gentleman being spoken to. “I saw that and called the attention of several people to it at the time. It was up there in Saenger Hall one morning at the band concert when everybody was having a good time, and they struck up Dixie Weil. It would have made you feel good way down in your shoes to have seen our Mr. Bob Winchester, inspector squirrel-feeder policeman, swing corners with old man Perminter and the two skip around the floor like 16 year old boys.”

“And the old man can dance as well?” ventured the reporter.

“He certainly can, and get around better than many men I know that are not over 60 years. And while we are talking about active old people, I am reminded that the man who wanted to kill all the old men at 60 years, Dr. Osler, has now come out and given soup the black eye. Well, I am only hoping that he will prove as far off in condemning good soup as he was in his chloroform operation on old men. You see such cases as our dancing 103-year-old citizen, and a number of others around here make Dr. Osler feel like 30 cents.

                --Charlotte Chronicle