Rebellion Aft The
Dipping Vaft
Пн I»
I in llircnlonocl to build
»
fence
around Ihe w liolo county.
«•# Л1Л
l\ M. F«l\TAI\
Many of the issues of the local and
stale scene have come ami gone in the
past sixty years, hut hardly any of
them can surpass the controversy and
violence associated with the great
tick-eradication program in eastern
Carolina in the 1920 s. Local politi¬
cians often made or turned a political
career on how they stood on the busi-
ness of w hether a person had to have
his cattle run through a narrow con¬
crete vat where every animal would be
complete I \ submerged in a tick-killing
solution.
But the total picture was much more
complicated than the dousing of a cow
or two m a neighboring hole-in-the-
g round, with concrete walls. In fact, it
had international implications, as well
as local entanglement. Australia, new
Zealand, and other areas where the
shipping of live cattle was a major in¬
dustry were subject to quarantine, un¬
less their herds could be certified as
free of ticks. In self-defense, stock-
raisers in those regions developed the
whole system of cattle-dipping in order
to render their stock eligible for ship¬
ment. For the most part, the program
was not opposed, but was considered,
not only a means of complying w ith the
law. but also good business.
Hut in eastern Noith Carolina the
conditions were quite different. Cattle
and other live stock loamcd freely in
the open range, while farmers put
fences around t licit fields, ralhei than
around their animals. Through a major
part of each ycai , the cattle were self-
supporting. as the grasses and low-
growth bushes came into spiing green¬
ery. Any interruption or variation from
this routine met violent opposition
from the owners.
(•«n eminent Intrusion
The recent discovery of a dipping
vat. virtually intact, on a farm in west¬
ern Onslow County, has brought all
these things to the minds of local histo¬
rians. who have heard from patents 01
grandparents stories ol the violence
and local enmities tied into the pro¬
gram. w hicli in that area was at its most
active stage in the years immediately
after World War One. Among other
confusions, the program was spon¬
sored by the State, those far-off au¬
thorities who were always trying to
push something over on the local
dweller, up against the branch-heads
and the county line. These authorities
were typical of the book-learning folks
who knew nothing about how to grow
or to take care of a bunch of cattle bom
and raised right there in the barnyard,
until of self-supporting age.
Or so the people thought. It was in¬
vasion of privacy. It was an intrusion
of a bunch of know-it-alls against the
sense of the fellow who had been doing
it this way for generations. It was a
denial of the lather-son traditions of
many, many family successions.
After the excitement of the War had
subsided, and a minor depression had
aroused the people to the dangers of
exterior overlordship, feeling ran so
high that violence was hung over the
head of any property-owner who
would allow one of these damnable in¬
stallations to Iv placed in his field or
forest. But the woik went on very
slowly, and to the tune of roars in the
middle of night, as great dynamite
blasts ruptured the concrete walls, and
let the foul-smelling liquid soak into
the ground I he muflled boom of these
explosions developed a peculiar and
recognizable sound that led many of
the people to mutter in the middle of
the night, that there went another of
the accursed invations of all the indi¬
viduality that had been left to the
community.
Some Fence!
Concurrently, the so-called Stock
I .aw . w hich was simply a rule that the
open range, which had been in use
since the arrival of the white settlers,
was to be scrapped, and all livestock
kept m pens or fenced pastures, be¬
came a subject of debate in the l.cgis-
von to» dipping coftle. recently .dentiticd in
Onilo- County, -ere und only
о
le- time», and
etcoped fKe dynomitert
lature. as well as ut the local political
campaigns. At one time. Duplin
County scriousl> considered installing
a fence around the whole county, thus
taking itself aw.iv from any titling a
foolish and misinfoi med l egislature
could make. The expense attached to
such project, as well as keeping control
of the many gates at all the piincipul
roadways, rendered the project im-
piactical. even before it began.
Some years earlier the town of
Kichlands. though it had been an in¬
corporated legal entity for nearly forty
years, thumbed its nose at outside au¬
thorities by erecting gieat metal gates
at each of the main highway entrances.
These barricades were arranged to be
triggered open by a treadle device,
which was supposed I»» open the gate
as a vehicle came for entrance, and
then to close again by action of the
same vehicle as it passed into the town.
Hie mechanism worked reasonably
/
Continued on /uigc M>t
i6
THE STATE. June 1979
