North Carolina Newspapers

I THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA T he news in this publica tion is released lor the press on receipt. NEWS LETTER Published weekly by the University of North Carolma for its Bureau of Extension. FEBRUARY 16, 1921 CHAPEl HILL, N. C. VOL VII, NO. 13 fiditorial Board t C. Branson, L. R. Wilson, E, W, Knight, D. D. Carroll, J. B. Bullitt. Entered as second-class matter November u 19U at tire ‘•'osT-vfhci- at. f’hapel Hill. N« C., under the act of Augusi 24, 1913. THE NEW DAY IN NORTH CAROLINA EXCESSIVE RURALISM North Carolina has long been an agricultural civilization both in popu lation and in wealth production. An overwhelming majority of her produ cers of primary wealth live in the coun tryside, and the bulk of her new wealth from year to year has been farm wealth. The aggregate of this wealth has grown into enormous pro portions. In 1919 it was seven hun dred and fifty million dollars, count ing crops, livestock, and livestock pro ducts; it was more than a half bil lion dollars in 1920, or something like three times the total of ten years ago. In agriculture the producing unit is the farm family, and our farm fam ilies are scattered throughout the vast open spaces of North Carolina, not in farm communities but in solitary dwellings, only seven to the square mile the state over, fewer than four to the square mile in ten counties, and fewer than seventeen in our most populous county. They were settled in social insulation in earlier times, and so they remain to this good day. Agricultural production is small-scale production by small producing groups that are or may be self-sufficing, ex istence necessities considered. The inward urge to mass organization for business or social or civic advantage is therefore feeble, and the result has been poor country roads, poor country schools and excessive illiteracy, inadequate attention by country people to health and _ sanitation, an inadequate sense of civic as well as social responsibility in local areas, honest but inefficient and wasteful county government as a rule and, all in all, small-scale thinking about the big-scale concerns of the commonwealth. The mass-mind of North Carolina —what we call the genius of our people—must be spell ed at in abc terms of this sort, and he knows little of the state who knows the story of political events apart from radical conditions and causes like these, for out of them our civic structures have grown. The glory of North Carolina lies in the fact that it has always been a land of free democracy—^unpurchasa- ble and unroutable, unafraid and un abashed. We have always been what Emerson celebrated—free, unternfied American citizens. But also it is a land of overweening individualism, and imperious localism. It has al ways been so and inevitably so, be cause our civilization has been rooted in ruralism. Our fish and game laws perfectly illustrate this fundamental fact. Think of fourteen different deer seasons in nine contiguous coun ties, forty different quail seasons in the state at large, and even a larger number of local laws in our fish and oyster areas. And so it has always been in every field of our civic life. The excessive private-local public laws of the state, perfectly express the dominant private-local minded ness of North Carolina. The rural mind is private and local—almost inescapably so. And the culture of the countryman has long been the maiii- spring and the measure of our civili zation. As the countryman thinketh in his heart, so are we in North Caro lina—or so it long has been. Both the best and the worst of us lies in this fundamental fact. A New Day in Carolina But there is a new day in Carolina. The transformation has been wrought in quite unconscious response to the elemental urges of life and livelihood during the last few years—mainly the last five years. Agriculture has given place to manufacture as the pri mary interest of North Carolina. A machine-made civilization is condi tioning and supplanting the old-time homespun, hand-made civilization of the state. The day of great cities is at hand, and the fullness of their greatness in the coming years does not yet appear. Out of fractional we have moved into integral suffrage and sovereignty. Out of private-minded- ness we are moving into civic and so- cial-mindedness; out of pinching pov erty into abundant wealth; out of small-scale into big-scale thinking about the vital matters of a noble civilization. The new day in North Carolina is a day of industrial establishments and enterprises, a day of swiftly growing cities, a day of abounding wealth, a day of increasing willingness to con vert our wealth into commonwealth culture and character, and a day of undivided civic privilege, undivided social wholeness, and undivided sov ereign integrity. A Day of Industrialism The day of industrial supremacy is at hand in North Carolina. We lead the South in the number of in dustrial enterprises, in the number of wage earners employed, in the var iety and value of our industrial out put. And we are distinguished among the states of the Union by a large number of small enterprises rather than a small number of large enter prises. Which means that so far we have escaped the concentration of wealth that has always meant in every land and country progress and poverty, magnificence and misery side by side. The remarkable diffus ion of wealth is a fundamental fact in North Carolina. None of us are very rich as yet, but few of us are very poor. We have more cotton mills and more spindles, we consume more raw cotton and produce a greater vol ume and variety of cotton textiles, than any other state in the South. In cotton manufacture, we doff our hats to Massachusetts alone, remembering the while that her almshouse and out side paupers outnumber ours five to one. We have right around 600 cot ton mills—nearly 100 in a single coun ty. We are expanding our textile in dustry more rapidly than any other southern state. Last year we built thirty-one new mills and brought in to operation more than a half million new spindles. Three-fourthis of the new spindles and new looms in the South last year were set going in North Carolina alone. Not only does North Carolina lead the industrial South, but factory communities in North Carolina at last produce great er wealth than all other occupational groups combined. The rise of manufacture into undis puted primacy is the startling story of a brief five-year period in our his tory. Agriculture no longer leads in North Carolina; manufacture leads for the first time in the history of the state. It means that North Caro lina has moved up from small-scale farm production on domestic levels into big-scale factory production up on commercial levels. The volume of wealth created by our factories has been doubled and trebled and quadrup led in quantity since 1914, and its val ue has been increased even more amazingly. The creation of industrial values shows nearly a sixfold Increase during the last five years, against a three fold increase in the value of our agricultural output during the last ten years. A Day of Great Cities Developing industries necessarily mean rapidly developing cities. Our tovTi and city dwellers ten years ago were barely more itian a half million all told. Today they number some eight hundred thousand souls. The increase has been around sixty percent in ten years. Until recently North Carolina has been distinguished as a state of small towns and cities; and we still have sixty-eight counties in the state containing no town of as many as five hundred families. Twenty years ago we had only twenty-seven towns of twenty-five hundred inhabitants or more; today we have fifty-seven such towns, and two of them are near the fifty thousand mark. It is a day of great cities foundationed on great in dustrial enterprises; and the cities of this state with superior geographic, economic, and residential advantages will grow so large during the next quarter-century that in the coming years we shall many-a-time rub our eyes in amazement. I venture noth ing in venturing this prophecy. North Carolina is at last moving into the flood tide of modem industrial ism—belatedly to be sure, but -with marvelous speed since the early eigh ties. We have long been rural, but ten years ago we were being urban ized more rapidly than thirty-six other states of the Union, and the cityward drift has been immensely accelerated of late by the expulsive power of country life on the one hand and the attractive power of industrial centers on the other. The cityward drift of country peo ple creates a host of new problems economic, social, and civic. Cities are everywhere human aggregations; what they everywhere lack is social integration—on a territorial basis, which is democracy, and not on an occupational basis, which is sovietism. The forces that unite men must some how become stronger than the forces that divide. The crowds in great cit ies look like nothing so much as a lot of crabs in the bottom of a bucket, each crawling over all the rest trying to get on top. It is a sorry spectacle. It keeps a body wondering whether or not an enduring civilization can be fashioned in this wise. The cityward drift spells the doom of drowsy little towns lacking civic pride and enterprise sufficient to de velop superior residential advantages When country people move they go with a hop-skip-and-jump over dull little towns into census-size cities— in this and every other state. As a result, ninety-three of our little towns dwindled in population during the last ten years, and forty more faded from the map. The lesson the 1920 census reads to small-town capital ists who own building lots, enjoy rent, revenues, own stores, and operate banks is, “Make your home town the best place on earth to live in, develop local manufactures set in garden cit- ties, or move in self-defense into pro gressive centers, or reconcile your selves to stagnant community life with all its menaces to family integ rity and business opportunity.” If the 414 little country towns of North Carolina can be brought into right relationships with the surrounding trade areas—as for instance in Gar nett, Kansas—they will not only save themselves, but also the country re gions round about. The small-town approach to country life problems is THEGOVERNOR’SPROGRAM FOR BOND ISSUES I am not unmindful of the solemn responsibility of advising the expen diture of the vast amount which the program I have suggested requires, but the things mentioned ought to be done. Sound buisness principles re quire that they should be done speed ily and without delay. We cannot progress in our spiritual, intellect ual, or material development unless they are done. They will be done, either generously and in a manner to give us as a state the full benefit of doing them, or they will be done by patch work and over a period of years, and in such manner as will largely dissipate the benefit to the state and at greater cost in the long run. The entire program which I have suggested will require great sums of money, but in our ability to find the money we are one of the most fortu nate states in the republic. The pub lic indebtedness of our state is trif ling when compared to that of most of the states. If we credit our state’s indebtedness with the value of our railroad stocks, it would be almost wiped out. North Carolina has heretofore created practically no public debt for future generations to pay, and we would, if this program is carried out, transmit to those who come after us a heritage nobler by far with the in debtedness than it would be without it. The necessary improvement at our institutions for the care of the unfor tunate, the large expenditure re quired to place our university and colleges for higher learning in a po sition adequate to meet the demands upon them, and for the construction of the state highway system of roads ought to be met by a sale of the state’s bonds, and an increase of its public indebtedness. a hopeful approach, if only country bankers, country merchants and coun try ministers can be brought to real ize it. But also the cityward drift means that the long neglected problems of the open country must now be at tacked with sympathetic intelligence, and by the only people on earth who can solve these problems—namely, the country people themselves. Else the economic and social ills of sparse populations, unrestrained individual ism, and social aloofness will pro gressively destroy our country civili zation—as surely in this state as in the great industrial areas of the North and East. The country civilization of Carolina can be saved if the culture of the farmer can be rightly related to the farmer’s agriculture; if his home and children can be set distinctly above his fields and farm animals and barns and bank balances; if the eighteen hundred thousand open coun try dwellers of the state can come to a keen realization of country-life de ficiencies and develop mass organiza tion for community advantages. But in the main it is the job of the coun try people themselves, and so far their attention has been absorbed by the hazards of farming as a business and by business organization for econ omic advantage. Country people have given scant attention to the social pro blems of the countryside; they only dimly realize that country homes, country schools, country churches, and county governments must func tion on far higher levels if the coun try end of our civilization is to be a rich asset in commonwealth develop ment in the days at hand and ahead. To this end there is need for a Coun try Life Association in North Caro lina—an association of country people related to the State Social Work Con ference on the one hand and the Am- ei’ican Country Life Association on the other. The State College of Ag riculture and Engineering could or ganize and lead such a movement with clear chances of success. A Day of Abundant Wealth The new day in Carolina is a day of abundant wealth, town and coun try, farm and factory. We have grown rich during the last five years and apparently we are innocently un aware of it. The state has at last moved definitely and finally out of a long period of pinching poverty into overflowing wealth—out of two and a half centuries of deficit-economy in to a new era of surplus-economy; and what we need to learn is to reckon with present problems and future ne cessities in terms of wealth instead of penury. Since 1915 our farms and factories, forests and fisheries, mines and quarries, have been creating brand new wealth at an average rate of a billion dollars a year—all told, five billions of brand new wealth with in this brief period of time. And the increases have not been in values a- lone, but in quantities as well—in lar ger crops of cotton, tobacco, and corn; in the doubled and quadrupled out put of our cotton mills, tobacco fac tories and furniture establishments, in immensely increased trade activities, bank resources, and bank account sav ings; in material good things in multi plied abundance in and around our town and country homes. We have two hundred and fifty million dollars safely laid away in liberty bonds, war stamps, and bank account savings, and we are drawing an interest income of ten millions a year from these investments alone. There has never before been anything like this state of affairs in the entire history of the state. True, we shall have two hundred and forty millions less of farm money this year, and it is a cruel calamity for merchants and bankers as well as farmers; but it is childish to conclude therefore that the state is facing bankruptcy, and it will be fatal to sacrifice birthrights for pot tage in the famine-fashion of Esau. The fundamental fact is five billions of gain against two hundred and forty millions of loss. Tl;e people of this state are still solvent by a safe mar gin of many billions. We are still rich enough to spend one hundred and fifty-seven million dollars a year for manufactured tobacco, automobiles and automobile parts, carpets and superfine clothing, and candy. What the people of this state spent last year for state support, church support, and college education, was forty-three thousana dollars a day. What we spent for motor cars, manu factured tobacco, rich apparel, and candy—these four luxuries and com forts alone—was four hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars a day. ' It is plainer than print that we have money in abundance in North Caro lina to spend for anything we really want, and if we do not spend money abundantly upon commonwealth en terprises, church causes, and college education, it simply means that in our heart of hearts we do not believe in church causes, commonwealth enter prises, and college education. If we will not invest liberally in public schools, public health,public highways and public welfare, it simply means that in our heart of hearts we do not believe in public schools, public herlth, public highways, and public welfare. Debates upon commonwealth invest ments can no longer turn upon the poverty of the people of North Caro lina—not when we are rich enough to pay one hundred and sixty-three mil lions of taxes into the federal treas ury in a single year—not when we are rich enough to spend one hundred and fifty-seven millions a year on tobacco products, motor cars, luxurious cloth ing, and sweetmeats alone. People who spend fifty millions a year on manufactured tobacco and twelve millions on public schools, for ty-seven millions on motor cars and six millions on churches, thirty-five rnillions on fine apparel and seven mil lions on state enterprises, twenty-five millions on confections and two and a half millions on colleges, may be pov erty-stricken in spirit, but they are not poverty-stricken in purse. And if we will not mend these shameful ratios somewhat we stand convicted of wanton self-indulgence and grace less unconcern about the vital things of a noble civilization. Our leaders need not hesitate to lead. The highway of civilization is strewn thick with the wrecks of par ties, but it is yet to be recorded that any party was ever wrecked on a pro gram of progress in education. Party supremacy in North Carolina is and forever ought to be related to states manship in education, health, and highways. That party will live long est that dares most for the vital causes of the commonwealth. A Day of Public Spirit North Carolina is moving at last out of private-mindedness into civic- and social-mindedness. The new day is a day of great thinking about th)e great concerns of the state, and there in lies the immense significance of the inaugural address of our new Gov ernor. We are at last thinking a- bout education, health, and highways in terms of millions instead of paltry thousands. We have been willing to double our investment in public school properties during the last six years. And our public school fund for sup port rose from six to twelve millions in a single year. In thirty-five years we have moved up from two thousand to three hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year for public health work. And in expenditures, activities, and values. North Carolina ranks among the first ten states of the Union in pub lie health affairs. During the last six years, forty-one laws of social import have gone on our statute books. It is a new kind of legislation in North Carolina, and during the last few years we have moved forward in so cial legislation faster than any other state in the South. It has been epoch- making legislation, and it ushers in a great new era in North Carolina. Our state public welfare board, our county welfare superintendents, our juvenile courts and probation officers m every county and in every city with ten thousand inhabitants or more, our county school supervisors, our ru ral township incorporation law, our state commission charged with rural organization and recreation, the social agencies of the state and the public welfare courses of our state institu tions, have all together put us dis tinctly in the lead in the South. North Carolina is no longer a valley of hu miliation located between two moun tains of conceit, as we have been ac customed to confess to Virginians and South Carolinians; it has suddenly be>' come the Valley of Decision that the Prophet Joel saw in his dream. But with Virginia lying on the north and South Carolina lying on the south, it has been difficult to get the truth a- bout North Carolina, is the way a wag puts it. Madam How and Lady Why But space forbids any discussion of certain large sections of my subject, I therefore hurry on to say in con clusion that the mothers, wives, and daughters of the state at last stand side by side with fathers, husbands, and sons in suffrage rights, civic privilege, and sovereign integrity. Whatever else it may mean, it means a new kind of attention to civic housekeeping in North Caro lina, and, approve it or not the stu pidest politician among us is already sensitively aware that hereafter he must reckon with Madam How and Lady Why. Now, civic housekeeping is one thing and civic housebuilding is another. The one has been the job of men dur ing the long centuries; the other is woman’s job—her main job in her new estate. Our civic structures, ma terial and institutional, have been reared by men. Our Capitols and our courthouses and city halls, our poor- houses and jails have been built and officered and for the most part filled by men. Our state and national con stitutions, our statute laws and muni cipal ordinances, our court principles, processes, and procedures, have been fashioned by men—primarily to pro tect property and incidentally or ac cidentally to safeguard life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and men are great housebuilders but poor housekeepers—so because they lack the housekeeping instincts. Our civ ic structures have been magnificent to look upon without, but within they have been bare and ill-furnished or unfurnished. Oftentimes they have been offensive to physical senses and moral sensibilities alike and uncom fortable or unsafe for human habita tion. Perhaps our civic structures—that is to say, our social institutions, do not need to be rebuilt from ridgepole to cornerstone, but they do need to be swept and garnished from garret to cellar, to say nothing of deodor izing and disinfection; they need to be furnished and outfitted throughout and redded up daily for society to in habit in comfort and safety. They need and have long needed the civic housekeeping that is necessary to an improved social order. And if woman can only conceive her particu lar task in large ways human welfare problems will speedily come to be the largest concern of legislatures, con gresses, and courts alike. The rapid multiplication of homes and home owners, the safeguarding of home life and community life, constructive wholesome recreation, the renovation of jails and county homes and chain- gang camps, liberal investments in community and commonwealth pro gress and prosperity, adequate care of defective, dependent, neglected and wayward boys and girls, child-placing and mothers’ pensions, county i r nn- ty-group hospitals, regional clinics and dispensaries, law and order leagues and so on and on—these are some of the tasks of civic housekeep ing that only within very recent years have challenged the attention of our legislators and that are never likely to receive anything like adequate at tention until our civic housekeepers get busy at their tasks. Not the fill ing of offices but the fashioning of offices fit to be filled and the choos ing of choice spirits fit to fill them, IS the largest detail and the largest order in civic housekeeping. I have the faith to believe that the part women will play in the new day in Carolina will make a most signifi cant chapter in the history of the state. It is woman’s nature, you know, to see the things that ought to be done and straightway to set about do ing them whether they can be done or not; to see the Palace Beautiful at the top of the Hill Difficult and not to see the lions in the way. You may remember that it was Chris tian, not Christiana, that saw the lions ahead, and that Timorous and Mistrust, the calamity-howlers of The Pilgrim’s Progress, were men, not women. This keen look into the es sential nature of woman is but one of the many flashes of genius that place Bunyan alongside Milton and made these two, in Macaulay’s opin ion, the foremost figures of the sev enteenth century. I am, therefore, venturing the pro phecy that what North Carolina vi tally needs she at last stands a chance of receiving in this new day of our history. I close in the faith and in the words of Henry Timrod— “Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye that by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Oh! could you like your women feel. And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of steel Beneath the victor’s arch!” E. C. Branson, Kenan Professor of Rural Social Science, University of North Carolina, Presidential address. State Social Work Conference, Ra leigh, January 25.