Greenville, N.C.
December 24th. 1917.

Governor T. W. Bicket,
Raleigh, N.C.

Dear Sir,

You, as a spokesmand for the National Government in North Carolina, are called on, most humbly to remove Mr. J. J. Laughinghouse from the exemption board for Pitt County. He is not giving the Pitt County men a square deal, and almost every body knows and have very little respect for him. There are over thirty six hundred men registered in Pitt County and over sixteen hundred were examined to get about three hundred and fifty soldiers. Other counties exempted only about half the number examined. Now, comes another trouble, 180 questionaires are being sent out each day, to be returned in seven days. Mr. Laughinghouse and the several ladies working in his office do help fill out the answers, and he calls people “slackers” and cusses at so many people that it is a hard job to get people to fill out the answers. Every body has to go to the lawyers and they cannot fill out the answers fast enough, and some of us are not getting a fair deal. Pitt County people are fair and want to do all they can to help the government, but they do not want anything to do with the present chairman of your board.

You know something of the trouble he has given the people, and your conscience should have prompted you to name a fair minded man for that important position. Want you please give us a fair deal. Put a fair man in the place you put him. Remember how he cursed and abused both, Gov. Aycock and Gov. Craig. You are in a high position and should be as strong as they were? You can protect yourself, but we weaklings over whom you have placed him, must go to the trenches out of order to suit his unfair whims. Send a plain-clothes man to Pitt County and get the information of his unfair deals in this work. He cannot get all, but a few of them. Get the facts as to S. D. Tucker’s boy, the Langley boys; his own son, and many others.

Respectfully,

A. Trencher

Copies Chief Officers,

Rec'd DEC 27 [stamped]

Enclosed in: 1917, Dec. 28 Johnson to Bickett.