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Chapel Hill.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published weekly by the
University ol North Carolina
(or its Bureau o( Extension.
MARCH 6, 1918
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. IV, NO. 15
jBdiiorial Board i E. C. Branson, J. G, deR. Hamilton, L. R. Wilson, R. H. Thornton, G. M. McKie.
Entered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the Postofflce at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24,1912.
THE COUNTRY PASTOR
'■I'iie pastor in this critical time,”
states tlie Kev. Dr. Warren H. Wilson,
the noted rural-life worker, "is respon-
siWe for a great service.’' l''ailiug, as it
does, mwn most of the [>eople who stay
at home, the question of a foorl supply
becomes the acute problem of the war.
“We are threatened with a world famine,
and the farmer alone can save us from
it." fn every instance, the .solution of
this huge food problem begins in the lo
cal community, no matter how large or
small. The country pa-storo and the
county farm and home demonstration
agents should be the pivotal leaders.
Fivery pastor ought to make his pulpit
a blazoned trumpet and preach not only
the gosiiel, but the gospel in terms of our
critical situation. “The great outstanding,
•immediate need” at this time “is for an
active, informed and thoroughly interest
ed leader in every community.” The
country pastor can become a bulwark of
strength.
What He Can Do
Agricultural leaders in thirty States
were recently asked W'hat the country
.mini ster could do to help during the war.
A sumn'.ary of their suggestions is inter-
•estiiig. It shows how intensely practical
a country pastor can make his work;
bow he, C4U1 serve his nation and his
■chui ch; how he can stimulate and ad
minister to his people. These suggest-
ioii,4 are applicable to North Carolina.
Can we carry them out?
1. Offer your services at once to the
■county farm and home demonstration
-agents and prepare to work in closest co
operation with them,
.2. Offer your services to the State
1?'jk1 ‘.-s of boys’ and girls’ ejub work.
3. Oooi>erate with the public schools.
4. I’ut yourself in touch with all ex-
1,sting agricultural organizations in your
community.
5. Make a full and accurate census of
loc ii agricultural needs, and communi
cate with the Director of Extension.
0. ^ Help in the mobilization of farm
latjor.
7. 1 lelp arrange and open your church
for agricultural meetings, canning de
monstrations, forums of discussions, etc.
8. Find a definite task along these
hues for each organization in your
eburdi.
9. If your county has no farm or
hoHie demonstration agent, offer your
aerviees to the Director of Extension,
to si.u'lire these public servants.
1. ). Use-all ot your influence through
:l»uhlic preaching and personal contact in
•fav.,)i' of an increased acreage and yield
of a(i iaiportaiil crops; increased care of
■AHiiuals; precautions against animal dis-
'eises, home gardens for each family;
geuer.'.t economy and consumption and
»,vW i .uice of all extravagance.
Self'Examimation
1 -ot the country pastor ask him.self
tbe.ic questions:
1 ! lave the agricultural leaders of
pState complete access to my community?
2 Are the hoys and girls in my com-
VDiml'.y doing their part?
3 Are all local organizations and iii-
; ’t> 'c:its working together for the common
gooJ?
4- Is my community doing its part in
the- work of relief—in buying Thrift
Eitoty I’.onds, in supporting
TlT2.-i;.?d Cross, The Army Y. M. 0. A.,
.aiiJ si.t on.
What special thing of vital import-
(l.ies my community now need?
T'lo Extension Service will spare nei-
itho.r time nor energy in working with
‘fS'.comitry pastors in developing tiieir com-
^•muiiiU-es. Correspondence is solicited
and '.segaestions and all available help
he very gladly given.—S.C. Kubin-
1 vb'nsiou Farm News.
THE HIGH SCHOOL DEBATES
Three hundred higli schools in 93
juuties have enrolled in the High School
'chatiiig Union for a great state-wide
ffiite thi.s spring on the query, Ke-
lU'eil, That Congress should enact a
pi'oviding for the compulsory arbi-
jtl ill of industrial disputes.
I*i'*paral;ons are being vigorously
made in the schools for the approaching
contest and the indications are that tliis
year’s debate will be one of the most suc
cessful in the history of the Union.
The triangular debates will be held
March 29th and the final contest for the
Aycock Memorial Cup will be held at the
University April 11th and 12th. The fi
nal contest for the Aycock Cup is the
leading feature of the University’s High
School AVeek. Other features include the
inter-scholastic track meet and the inter-
scholastic tennis tournament.
Eobeson county leads the State with an
enrollment of 11 schools. Mecklenburg
has an enrollment of 10 schools. Bun
combe has 9, Guilford 8, Alamance and
Wake 7 each. The following counties
have enrollments as follows: Davidson,
Durham, Gaston, Iredell, Johnston,
Moore, Pitt, Rowan, Scotland, Union,
Wayne, 6 schools each; Bladen, Duplin,
Northampton, 5 each; Beaufort, Cabar
rus, Chatham, Cleveland, Edgecombe,
Forsyth, Granville, Halifax, Harnet,
Haywood, Hyde, Nash, Orange, Ran
dolph, Surry, Wilson, 4 each; Avery
Caswell, Catawba, Craven, Franklin,
Lincoln, Martin, McDowell, Richmond,
Rockingham, Rutherford, Stanly,
Washington, AArilkes, 3 each. Alexan
der, Alleghany, Anson, Caldwell, Car
teret, Cherokee, Colum’ous, Cumberland,
Currituck, Davie, Gates, Henderson,
Lee, Lenoir, Montgomery, Onslow, Pam
lico, Pender, Person. Polk, Sampson,
Stokes, Swain, Transylvania, AVarren,
Yadkin, 2 each; Ashe, Bertie, Burke,
Camden, Chowan, Clay, Dare, Graham,
Greene, Hoke, Macon, New' Hanover,
Pasquotank, Perquimmans, Tyrrell,
Vance, Yancey, l each.
The follo.wing counties are not repre
sented: Brunswick, Hertford, Jackson,
Jones, Madison, Alitchell, AA’atauga.
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESSES
Members of the faculty of the Univer
sity w'ill deliver, in response to invita
tions, commencement addresses for the
closing exercises of various schools of the
State. If your community wishes to se
cure this service from the University, it
will be well to write at an early date to
the Bureau of Extension, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
PACKAGE WAR.LIBRARIES
The University Library has compiled
from books, pamphlets, magazine arti
cles, and the official publications of the
nations at war package libraries on the
topics indicated below. They will prove
of special value to schools and clubs in
the preparation of compositions and club
papers.
America’s Relation to the AA'^ar; Aus
tria-Hungary and the AVar; Aviation;
The Battle of Jutland; British Munitions
Production; The British Navy; Causes
of the AVar; Documents Relating to
America’s Entry into the AA'ar; England
and the AVar; European AV’ar Relief; Ex
periences at the Front; The Future Peace
of the World; (ierman Aims and Ideals;
Germany—Economic and Financial;
German Ideals; German Occupation of
Belgium; German Occupation of France;
India and the AA’ar; Italy and the AVar;
The Manufacture of Munitions; Our
Flag; Pan-Germanism; Prisoners of AVar;
The Red Cross; Russia and the AVar;
Submarines; The Turkish Empire and
Armenia; United States Army; United
States Navy; AA'^omen’s AVork in the
AA’ar; AA’hy We Are at AVar; Y. M. C. A.
War VV'ork. Apply to the University E.v-
tension Bureau.
RELIGION IS THE ISSUE
Surely the future looks black enough,
yet it holds a hope, a single hope. One,
and one power only, can arrest the de
scent and save us. That is the Christian
Religion.
Democracy is a side issue. The para
mount issue, underlying the issue of de
mocracy, is the Religion of Christ and
Him Crucified; the bed-rock of Civiliza
tion ; the source and resource of all that
is worth having in the world that is, and
that gives promise in tlie world to come;
not as an abstraction ; not as a bundle of
sects and factions; but as a mighty force
AN APPEAL TO CHURCHES
Dr. P. P. Claxton
Ministers are urged to preach on the
importance of school attendance as a
patriotic duty this year, and Sunday
school superintendents and leaders of
young peoples’ societies in the various
churclies are asked to make school at
tendance a sjiecial topic, in a letter ad
dressed bj' the Commissioner of Edu
cation to churches and religious papers
throughout the United States. In urg
ing the churches to help in the cam
paign for greater school attendance.
Dr. Claxton says:
It is of the greatest importance that
the schools of the United States of all
kinds and grades—public, private, and
parochial—be maintained during the
war without any lowering of their
standards or falling off in their at
tendance.
This is nec-essary both for the pro
tection of ouf boys and girls against
many unusual temptations to delin
quencies of various kinds, and that
they may have full opportunity for
preparation for the work ot life and
for the duties and responsibilities of
citizenship; all of which will require a
higher degree of preparation because
of the war.
For many reasons there will be
need in this country for higher stan
dards in average of ability, knowledge
and virtue, when the boys and girls
now in our schools have reached man
hood and w'omanhood than we or any
other people have yet attained to.
In the making ol public opinion and
popular sentiment necessary for the
maintenance of standards of efficiency,
to keep children in the schools, and to
prevent their exploitation in the mills
and shops, the churches may do much.
I am therefore appealing to all minis
ters to urge tills from their pulpits,
and to all superintendents of Sunday
schools and all leaders of young peo
ples’ societies to have this matter dis
cussed in their meetings.
To do this is a patriotic duty which
should be performed gladly, both for
the present defence and for the' future
welfare of the country.
THE TEACHER-PATRIOT
ELIZABETH D. ABERNETHT
Dwelling on Peabody’s timely gift to
I the impoverished South in 1867, and
j thinking of the Peabody idea, Education:
! A debt due from present to future gener-
i ations, I remember what an Australian
j evangelist said to me some years ago:
A’ou have the brains here in the South.
You will do things when j'our people
wake up and give attention to present is
sues ; but today you are doing too little
for your young people.
And I knew that he was right—that we
were bound to the past and blind to the
dangers that threaten our future. For
many years our lost cause has meant to
me not the issue of the sixties, but the
cause of the South—Southern ideals.
Southern vision. Southern education.
Southern principles, Soutliern children—
the life and hope of our people.
I Our Saviour’s Cause
i When once we realize that the teachers
I of the South are the custodians of South-
j ern ideals, that the district school is the
training school of our nation, and that
what our public school system is the
South and America will become, then we
will prove our allegiance to our cause and
our comrades by standing together and
working together as loyally and as val-
iently as our soldiers of the furrows or the
trenches.
Ours is a war against ignorance—a war
against the disintegrating ideals that
menace our republic. What is a democ
racy but a nation dominated by the spirit
of Christ? AA’hat is co-operation but ap
plied Christianity? Our line of service is
the conservation, the implantation, and
the cultivation of Christian ideals in the
minds and hearts of Southern youth.
Democracy is our Saviour’s ckuse.
and principle of being. The AA'ord of
God, delivered by the gentle Nazarene
upon the hillsides of Judea, sanctified by
the Cross of Calvary, has survived every
assault. It is now arrayed upon land and
sea to meet the deadliest of all assaults—
Satan turned loose for one last, final
struggle.
The Kaiser boldly threw down the
gage of battle—Infidel Germany against
the believing world—KuLur against
Christianity—the Gospel of Hate against
the Gospel of Love. Thus is the Satan
personified—“Alyself and God” merely
his way of proclaiming it—for his God is
Beelzebub, the Angel of Destruction, his
creed the Devil’s own, his aim and end
a Hell on earth. Never did Crusader lift
battleaxe in holier war against Saracen
than is waged by our soldiers of the
Cross against the German. The issues
are indeed identical.
If the world is to be saved from des
truction—physical no leas than spiritual
destruction—it will be saved alone by the
Christian Religion. That eliminated
leaves the earth to eternal war. For 50
years Germany has been organizing and
laboring to supplant it with Kultur, the
genius of infidelity. Her college profes
sors have been obsessed with it. Her
Universities have seethed with it. In
acclaiming “Myself and God,” the Kai
ser has put the imperial seal upon it.
AA’^hen our armies have run it to its lair
—when they have crushed it—naught
will have been gained unless the victor
ious Banner of the Cross is hoist—even
as Moses lifted up the serpent in ti.e wil
derness—and the mis-led masses of Ger
many are bade to gather about it and
beneath it as sadly they collect the debris
of their ruin for the reconstruction of the
Fatherland.—^Col. Henry AA’atterson,
Louisville Courier-Journal.
PAUPERISM IN CAROLINA
AVhat relation has civilization to pov
erty? AA'’hat are the facts about pauper
ism in North Carolina? AYhat are the
defects in our purposes, plans, and meth
ods? And what are Ihe remedies? These
inquiries indicate the scope of the address
before the North Carolina Club at the
University on Monday night by Hon.
R. E. Beasley, Secretary of the State
Board of Public AA^elfare.
Social Responsibility
Civilization creates pauperism, strange
to say. The more populous and pros
perous communities become the larger
the volume of pauperism, and the heavier
the burden upon the taxpaying public.
The problem is to hunt down the causes
of poverty—personal, economic, and so
cial, to remove the causes, and to abolish
poverty, or so far as such a thing is hu
manly possible.
Here is a fundamental task for modern
society. The poor ye always have with
you, was an expression of infinite com
passion on part of the Master; not a final
prophecy, and not an excuse liehind
which we can hide in careless unconcern,
said Mr. Beasley. Poverty cannot be
cured by alms and doles. Thanksgiving
turkeys, Christmas dinners, and such like
rare attention however generous. Pov
erty must be under laboratory micro
scopes and into scientific test tubes, Mr.
Beasley went on to say. AVe must deter
mine the causes, consequences, and rem
edies with scientific exactitude. AA''e must
study this ulcer of the social body just as
we study cancer in the individual human
body. AA’e cannot absolve ourselves by
throwing sops to Cerberus in casual or
chronic fits of charity.
The Facts in North Carolina
Our pauper population numbers about
6,500 in North Carolina. They are the
(1) inmates of our county homes and (2)
the outside poor who receive small, stated
sums monthly from our county treasur
ies. AA'e spend on these two classes of
paupers about ^250,000 a year. This bill
of costs steadily increases year by year as
the state increases in population and
wealth. In the census year our county
home paupers numbered 1,734 and they
cost us $95,000 in round numbers or
about $75 a year a piece.. In 1914 our
outside paupers were nearly 5,000 and
they cost us $123,000 or $27 a year apiece.
Our almshouse paupers in the census
year were 96 per hundred thousand in-
habitaq,ts, and North Carolina made a
better showing than 33 other states of the
Union—most of them in the North and
East, in the rich industrial areas of the
United States.
In 1917, five counties had no county
homes; 11 counties had homes not gen
erally occupied; 32 had homes with in
mates averaging from one to ten; 26 with
from ten to twenty inmates; 20 with from
twenty to thirty inmates; 6 with from
thirty to forty inmates; and 4 had homes
with inmates averaging over forty. AVe
find the most almshouse paupers and the
greatest expense in the big city counties
where populations and properties are
most heavily massed. The county home,
it appears, is a minor matter in 46 coun
ties.
Our 1,700 county-home paupers are the
aged and infirm of both races; but along
with these we find people of all ages who
are maimed and lame in body and brain
—the crippled and deformed, the feeble
minded of every grade and variety, tlie
subnormal and the abnormal of both
races and sexes. The blacks and whites
are separated, but no other segregation is
attempted as a rule.
Our 5,000 outside paupers in 1914 were
234 per hundred thousand inhabitants.
They outnumbered our indoor paupers
nearly three to one, and they are the big
end of our problem of poverty in North
Carolina. The rates range from 21 in
Forsyth and 22 in Mecklenburg to 614 in
Richmond and 953 per hundred thous
and inhabitants in New Hanover. These
are the poor who manage to keep out of
the county homes and who are allowed
from $1.50 to $5 a; month by the county
commissioners. They live with kiuspbo-
ple for the most part, who receive pittan
ces therefor from the county treasury—
sometimes without excuse. Sometimes
whole families of helpless people are sup
ported at home by the county treasury.
The counties have heretofore exercised
almost no supervision in a personal way
over the $125,000 a year spent in sup
porting outside paupers. This state of
affairs offers temptation to fraud and
graft. The plan salves a social sore; it
does not cure it, or tend to cure it. It
fosters and develops the most mischievous
type of pauperism with which we have to
deal in North Carolina.
A close look at both classes of paupers
forces us to conclude that poverty and
feeble mindedness are causally related;
that they are self-perpetuating in acceler-
,ating ratios; and that the time has come
for us to move on from casual sentiment
to a scientific study of this social ill in all
its relationships. So much for the facts in
brief in North Carolina.
The Way Out
Under our new Public AA’elfare law, the
counties may organize County AVelfare
Boards, with welfare secretaries giving
full time to the details of poverty and all
other county problems of. social sort—
county homes, outside paupers, jail and
chain gang conditions, juvenile offenders,
juvenile courts, prisoners on probationer
parole, juvenile reformatories, released
criminals, and so on and on. It is im
mensely important to educate the public
to the necessity for such detailed social
efforts in North Carolina county by
county.
In the matter of pauperism, a County
AA'elfare Board and its superintendent—
(1) Could make a personal study of
every person or family applying for out
side aid, and supervise every case to see
that the aid extended helps to raise the
recipient to his feet wherever such a thing
is possible, instead of dropping him into
the mire of hopeless dependency.
(2) Could forestall fraud and graft on
the one hand and on the other prevent
the improper use of funds, in election
years, say.
(3) Could get feeble-minded girls and
women into state institutions for school
ing and training in self-support, and for
protection against the immorality that
multiplies feeble-minded children. Most
of our poverty springs from feeble
mindedness.
(4) Could urge dependents and defec
tive of both sexes into the state institu
tions provided for the sub-normal in
mind, the crippledanddeformed, the neg
lected and the wayward, the insane and
epilectic; and if our state institutions are
not sufficiently large they could educate
public sentiment in favor of more ex
tended facilities.
(5) Could aid in making county homes
serve their proper purpose; which i's the
care and comfort of the aged and infirm
and the temporarily poor from accidental,
providential causes.
(6) Could exercise oversight in the
management of the county home and es
tablish a system of uniform reports and
accounts for both outdoor and indoor
paupers.
(7) Could study in each count3' the
causes of dependency, delinquency and
defectiveness and report upon tliese prob
lems regularly to the grand juries, the
commissioners, the welfare board, and
through the newspapers to the public;
and thus develop the intelligent senti
ment that is so urgently needed in North
Carolina in order to attack our various
social problems eft'ectively.
This report is based on the able and in
spiring address of Air. Beasley, and on
•the study of pauperism in North Carolina
made for the North Carolina Club in 1916
by Mr. M. E. Robinson of AA’ayne CpiintyJ