CONDITION IN THE EAST

CAN HARDLY BE EXAGGERATED SAYS MR. KERR.

The Story Tells itself to the Man who will Stand on the Street Corner and Hear and See. Men in the West will Go to the Rescue.

Mr. J. P. Kerr, of the Asheville Citizen, who has been on a tour through Eastern Carolina observing negro rule in its favorite haunts, was here yesterday on his return. While away he visited Edgecombe, Halifax, Pitt, Craven, and New Hanover counties.

“Did you find that published reports exaggerate conditions in the East?” he was asked.

“It is practically impossible to exaggerate conditions. The white people are really in a state that is pitiable. They feel humiliated and degraded. They are to-day submitting to outrages that five years ago would have precipitated a riot. Take Newbern, for example. The white girl who was brutally slapped in the face on the public street by a negro in as highly respected as anybody in the town.

“Within a stone’s throw of one house six burglaries were committed in a single night. At one house the thieves stole all. the chickens one night and came back the next and tried to force the front door. A neighbor frightened them away with a pistol. It is hardly too much to say that burglaries in Newbern are committed at will so far as the authorities are concerned.

“The story of negro rule in eastern towns tells itself. No one heed say word to you. You can stand on the street corners and tell that the town in under negro rule. It is next to impossible for any man to realize what the conditions are until he has seen for himself.

“The white men of the section practice all forbearance, but the insolence and arrogance of the negro increases daily. The man who goes there and studies the situation as it is can not fail to reach the conclusion that as matters now stand the fartherest point of endurance will be reached sooner or later. The only thing that can prevent such an occurrence will be the restoration of the rule of intelligence. In Wilmington alone there were more than 100 burglaries in as many nights,”

“Do you think the people of the West can be made to realize the real situation in the East?

“I think the people in the West can be made to understand the outrageous way in. which white towns have been negorized (sic). The people of the West are white men and understand what negroizing means. They will not vote in favor of it. They will get together as the negroes are doing. A negro Democrat in Newbern recently declared that he would hereafter vote the Republican ticket; that it was simply the negro against the white man, and he was going with his color.

“There can be no doubt that the negro in the East has made up his mind to hold all the offices. The whites are sending up the Macedonian cry to their brethren in the West. The arrogance and insolence of the negroes is not all. There is an appalling abuse of official power and crime is rampant as a result. The negorizing (sic) manifests differently in different places. In some it has progressed much further than in others, but there is a tendency toward the same low level.”

Mr. Kerr left on the afternoon train for Asheville.