FROM DAYS GONE BY May 16, 1919

May 16, 1919.

Recent occurances and carousing would tend to show a decided increase in the illicit traffic and use of intoxicating liquors in this immediate part of the country. Shootings, homicides, murders, killings in cold blood, accidental woundings and other malicious crimes have been committed through drinking "blind tiger" whiskey, the kind which arouses the lowest-down spirit in a man. We say its use is increasing.
It is apparent that the prohibition of the kind we have or pretend to have now is radically a failure, a failure because it positively does not prohibit to any appreciable degree. Take any court and see how many appear as defendants in criminal cases from this one cause directly. Have you compared the figures even in Wrightsville's Mayors' court? They would startle you. The illegal trafficking in moonshine goes on and on. The end isn't in creation yet.
There is a decided increase in crime all over the country from records of the past. People are entirely too slack now in the observance of criminal statues of the law of the land. Every crime in the entire category is being committed and almost every community has been startled with criminal depredations.
The reason has not been made apparent and if there is any reason there is certainly no excuse for the increase. Murders are being committed openly and no regard for this very serious crime any more than for those of petty natures. People take the law in their own hands with a pistol or shotgun along with it and commit awful things, mostly murders.
"Pistol toting" reigns supreme. The machine comes in handy at all times and on all occasions. Is light and easily carried. Its strike carries death in its path. It has been the means of many a good man's death, which had it not been there the man would have been living.
Drinking and carousing is too prevalent. Crime is thus increased and the jails are being filled. Too slack, too slack. The law is no law that's not enforced.
This was the feelings of the editorial board of the Wrightsville Headlight on the first part of 1919.