From Days Gone By Nov. 19, 1921

November 19, 1921.
    The present status of law and order, the continuance of lawlessness and depravity in Johnson County has the people questioning the safety of their homes and firesides. It has grown to a pretty pickle when brazen-faced bootleggers, blind tigers, pistol carriers, blood-thirsty, dirty loafers roam around at will, degrading the moral stamina of the county and besmirching its fair name. "Cyclone Mack" fittingly describes a blind tiger as a cross between a buzzard and a polecat.
    Whether a man and his family may dwell in this county in saftey and have enjoyments of life is a question before us at this time and a question for the courts with their juries to decide with unflinching support of the citizenry in redeeming it from this terrible state of lawlessness. Civilization and lawlessness cannot live in the same land. When a man is slain in a private quarrel the crime is not a private one but a public wrong, done against all the people, impairing their security and threatening the destruction of it.
    The murders and other crimes are more or less directly traceable to the moonshiner who has the crimes on his hands and the blood stains covering his front doors show the bloody trails he is leaving behind him as he dispenses the poison which is demoralizing the county and lowering its standards as a quiet, law-respecting community. Johnson County people who really care do not relish such conditions, do not uphold them and blush at their committals. And Johnson's true-blue people resent its continuance with their vigor and manhood, all at their command, and arise to ask from slumbers, are our homes safe? Is our citizenship protected? True nerve and backbone of the good folks of the county must answer these questions.
    We must help our sheriff put down this wave and re-establish law and order, remove the causes of the lawlessness. It is grossly unfair to the schools and the churches, to the future citizens of our county to give its very existence to the moonshine stills and non-responders of the law of every character. Shame on us if we can't do something and do it now.
    Sheriff Lewis Davis has made a statement to the Headlight in which he says he nor his office can't do anything with this whiskey business and other petty and bad crimes of the county without the backing of the good people of the county. He is ready and willing at any time to go after any sort of law breaking whenever it is put before him.
    He says that the chaingang is as full now as it has ever been, there being 43 inmates there at this time, and according to Warden Stanley it has never been any higher. These prisioners are there for making and selling liquor, stealing hogs, pistol toting, gambling, assualt and battery, murder, etc.
    The sheriff states that this is the result, although there was no court in May and no Superior Court in September or there woul most likely have been more on the gang. Since he went in office the first of this year he has handled 111 prisioners through the county jail for this county, to say nothing of the large number he has handled for other counties. There are 4 now in jail and between 120 and 130 out under bond for both the courts, according to the cases on file in the clerk's office.
    Sheriff Davis believes in law and order and the strict enforcement of all laws on the statutes and regards the crime wave bad. He expresses the hope that it will subside and most respectfully seeks the moral backing and strong support of the good people of the county in surppressing it.