The news in this publi
cation is released for the
press on receipt.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina Press for the Univer
sity Extension Division.
APRIL 11, 1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. DC, NO. 21
Editorial Boards B. C. Branson, S. H. Hobbs, Jr„ L, R. Wilson, E. W. Knight, D. D. Carroll, J. B. Bnllitt, H. W. Odum.
Entered as second-class matter November 14,1914, atthePostofficeat Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24, 1912
CRY OF OUR CROPPER CHILDREN
THE FARM TENANT’S CHILD
The white farm tenants in North Ca
rolina number sixty-three thousand
families of three hundred thousand souls.
Which is nearly one-fifth of the entire
white population of the state.
Almost exactly one-fourth of these
white tenant families are croppers—a
type of farm tenant almost unknown
outside the South.
These white cropper households in
North Carolina contain twenty-eight
thousand bright-faced children of school
age, and they are being hardened day
by day by the conditions in hopeless
homes.
It may be that little can be done for
the grown-ups in these poverty-stricken
homes, but surely much can be done
for their children.
What can be done for them is a prob
lem for teachers and preachers, Sun
day-school teachers and superintend
ents, home and farm demonstration
agents, state university and state col
lege extension services. Here is the
most insisteht home-mission problem in
this state and the South.
The cry of the children of the crop
per cannot go unheard in North Caro
lina.
Twin-Born Social Ills
White illiteracy and farm tenancy
are twins at birth and boon companions
throughout life. Tenancy breeds illit
eracy as in the cotton-tobacco counties,
and illiteracy breeds tenancy as in
the foothill and' mountain counties
where the ownership of farms was al
most universal in the earlier days.
As long as we have farm tenancy we
shall have illiteracy. Neither can be
cured without curing the other. To
gether they spell farm poverty, and
farm poverty menaces the country
chiK^ch and the country school, country
community enterprise and common- j
wealth progress as a whole. Ninety
percent of the white illiteracy of North
Carolina is in our country regions. Of
the 105,000 white illiterates of the state
only 10,000 are in our towns and cities.
White illiteracy is almost entirely a
country problem, and it cannot be
cured by schools alone, of any grade or
type. Its cure lies (1) in better coun
try schools, (2) in re-directed country
churches, and at the same time (3) in
better chances to rise into farm owner
ship—these three together. Apart
they will fail. Under the best circum
stances, the cure of farm illiteracy,
farm tenancy, and farm poverty is a
complicated difficult social problem,
and it calls for well directed effort
throughout long years. It was so in
Denmark and it will be so in North
Carolina.
The Farm Child’s Friend
And if only we can hear the feeble
cry of the 28,000 children in the white
cropper homes of North Carolina, we
will set ourselves to the task of jacking-
up the bottommost levels of life in this
state, with the same fervor that we
give to the same problem in Korea and
China and the far-away lands of the
East. '
No man In America has heard the
cry of country children with any keener
sympathy than Mr. Charles E. Gibbons,
the rural research worker of the Na
tional Child Labor Committee. His
studies have taken him into the country
regions of Michigan, Ohio, West Vir
ginia, Kansas and Nebraska, Okla
homa, Texas, and North Carolina in
recent years. And no man better
knows that child labor is not mainly a
city problem or a factory problem.
North or South, but that it is mainly
a farm problem, the bulk of it con
sidered—a problem of the beet fields of
the West, the cranberry bogs of the
North and East, the cotton fields and
tobacco patches of the South, and the
trucking areas everywhere; that farm
children are an economic asset and in
tenant homes an economic necessity.;
that the children in cropper homes
must work if they would live, no matter
l»w little they go to school; that the
tenant child in the South and the street
rat in the cities of the North and East
sre the largest and most difficult of
all the problems of child labor. His
chapter on Child Labor on Farms, in
Rural Child Welfare, is the very best
chapter on this subject in print. This
chapter and this book ought to be read
by every man and woman of heart in
North Carolina.
Gibbons in Carolina
When the State Farm Tenancy Com
mission settled down to the critical
task of determining in detail the field
schedules of its three county surveys
in 1922, Mr. Gibbons was called in as
an expert by the ^tate University. He
rendered invaluable service in perfect
ing the schedules so as to yield the
data that gave heightened social signi
ficance to the University bulletin on
How Farm Tenants Live in Mid-State
Carolina.
He gave a month or more to the task
of making field schedules, exploring the
field to be surveyed by the University
representative, and in schooling Mr.
Dickey the surveyor. He gave his
time and genius to this work without a
cent of extra compensation, and for
this superb service he was released to
us by the National Child Labor Com
mittee without cost to the university
and the state. It was fine and generous
on part of Mr. Gibbons and his organi
zation. I celebrate him as The Lover
of Country Children. —E. C. Branson.
THE FARM LOAN COMMISSION
Several members of the Farm Loan
Commission appointed by the General
Assembly of 1923 will probably go to
Oklahoma and North and South Dakota
to study state-aid projects now on foot
in those states, and one member of the
commission will make extensive invest
igations in Europe, it was decided at
the initial meeting of the commission
in Raleigh on March 16.
The commission organized by the
election of Senator D. F. Giles, of
McDowell, as chairman, and Repre
sentative R. M. Cox, of Forsyth, as i
secretary. R. C. Chappell, of Raleigh, [
was appointed clerk to the committee. ;
Dr. E. C. Branson was appcunted pub-'
licity director, but will be in Europe 
for the next year and during that time !
the publicity will be handled by Dr. j
C. C. Taylor. The full commission is
composed of Senators D. F. Giles, of
McDowell, and Charles U. Harris, of
Wake; Representatives W. H. S. Bur-
gwyn, of Northampton; R. M. Cox, of
Forsyth; and T. L. Gwynn, of Haywood;
Dr. E. G. Branson, of the University
of North Carolina; and Dr. C. C. Tay
lor, of State College.
The commission was appointed after
defeat of the Giles bill, which provided
for a bond issue of $2,600,000 for farm
aid. The original bill called for aid of
the individual tenant, but a substitute
was later offered embodying a plan of
farm colonies and a committee from
the General Assembly was sent to Wil
mington to inspect the Castle Hayne
development, promoted by Hugh Mac-
Rae.
The amount of the bond issue pro
posed in the Giles bill was successively
reduced to $1,600,000 before defeat of
the measure and Senator Giles stated
yesterday that in his opinion the com
mission will recommend an even small
er sum, to be divided into four or five
settlements with a combination of the
plan for aid to the individual tenant
farmer.
Plan of Investigation
The commission yesterday adopted a
comprehensive plan of investigation
which was divided into four divisions,
(1) the study of land settlement in
foreign countries, (2) in the United
States, (3) land settlement policies of
the several states, and (4) land develop
ment in North Carolina. The report
to be made to the General Assembly
will contain an analysis of the condition
of tenants and Croppers in North Caro
lina and recommendations for state aid
to landless farmers.
The study of conditions in other coun
tries will be made by Dr. Branson who
will leave next Saturday for a year’s
stay in Holland, Denmark, and Ger
many, where he will study land settle
ments in those countries, the reasons
for undertaking the same, their practi
cal operation, and the extent to which
the various governments have partici
pated.
The study of the various federal land
KNOW NORTH CAROLINA
A Georgia Verdict
Mr. J. A. Hollomon, the tax ex
pert of the Atlanta Constitution,
has just delivered an address at the
University of Georgia Chapel in
Athens in which be called atten
tion to the fact that the amount al
lowed the Georgia institution for
maintenance is something like $80,-
000, while last year the State Uni
versity in North Carolina was given
$440,000, and under a new budget
program, $650,000 is being asked by
that institution for its maintenance
this year. “Negro normal schools
in North Carolina receive more than
the State University of Georgia
does,’’ he said.
When asked what form he thought
the tax changes in the state should
take, Mr. Hollomon said that he sees
a classification tax with segregation
of funds for particular departments
like the University, the Normal
School, State Asylum, etc. He be
lieves that the property tax in Geor
gia will never be abolished, but he
does see in the future a modification
bf this tax.
M. Holloman did not say so, but
in 1921 the State of North Carolina
built four great dormitories and
made improvements at her State
University costing $1,400,000, push
ing the University of North Caro
lina equipment ahead of the Univer
sity of Virginia, so that the institu
tion of the Old North State stands
today as the strongest in the coun
try. They made room for 600 more
students. There''are now nearly
2,000 students at Chapel Hill. At
the same time, the state enlarged
the normal schools at five places.
The same day that Mr. Hollomon
made his speech in Athens the At
lanta Constitution said:
“And yet Georgia is doing less for
education, less for the maintenance
of her higher institutions, less for
good roads, less for the develop
ment of her state properties than
any other state in the South in pro
portion to resources and population
—a condition that is as regrettable
as it is inexcusable.’’—The Savan
nah Press.
ers, those who own their work stock
and implements, have for themselves
and families an average daily cash in
come of 12 cents per person. The 8-
cent men are the croppers, who are
staked to everything by their landlords.
Walter Page called them “the forgot
ten men.’’
Those astounding and pitiful facts are
brought out in a recent University of
North Carolina Extension Bulletin,
“How Farm Tenants Live,’’ by Mr.
J. A. Dickey and Dr. E. C. Branson,
based on investigations by Mr. Dickey
in Baldwin and Williams townships in
Chatham County, conditions there be-
ing typical of the whole state. It shows
that the Tarheel white farm renter has
an annual cash income of $261, the crop
per $163! Says the bulletin:
“The average income per person in
the 329 farm families investigated,
white and black owners and tenants,
was only 23 cents a day! How could
anybody live on less money and live at
all? How can white tenants on a daily
cash income of 12 cents a day per per
son ever buy and pay for farms of their
own? They do it—57 of the white farm
owners of this particular territory have
done it during the last 20 years. They
do it, but how they do it passes under
standing. And moreover they have
done it by self-effort alone. Can this
record be beat in any other state of
the Union? This is what I have in
mind when I say that God Almighty
made North Carolina to be a paradise
for poor folks—that is to say, for the
average poor man content with merely
keeping soul and body together.’’
But that is not enough. All North
Carolina, empire in size and fairyland
in fertility, must be made a paradise
where the poor rise up and cast off for
ever the fetters of their poverty. In a
word, the white tenant of North Caro
lina must be educated into the wisdom
of buying land. What is more, the
state must make it as easy as possible
for him to accomplish that which makes
a man a sovereign being, ownership
of home and soil.—Asheville Citizen.
projects in this country from the time
of the disposal of the public domain
down to and including the present sys
tem of federal farm loans will be made
by Dr. Taylor.
Group settlement projects in Cali
fornia and other states will be studied
by correspondence but members of the
committee plan to visit in person the
states of North Dakota, South Dako
ta, and Oklahoma, where plans similar
to that embodied in the original Giles
bill are now in operation. If assur
ances can be obtained from the various
states that the investigations can be
made under favorable conditions the
members of the commission will prob
ably visit the three western States in
June of this year.
Present conditions in North Carolina
and public and private attempts to
solve the problem of the tenant and
the cropper will be studied by the full
committee while the Agricultural Ex
tension service will be asked to gather
figures on the number of applications
that will be made by tenants in the
state.
THE FORGOTTEN MEN
While we are building more good
roads, why not build more good peo
ple? There are in this state 317,000
persons who, if they are not to be an
insupportable weight on the advance
ment of North Carolina, have got to
have better bodies and better equipped
minds. They are the families of the
63,000 white farm tenants in the state,
some of whom live on a cash income of
8 cents per person per day. The rent-
powered, if the new law is adopted, to
levy on industries in order to finance
the scheme, and the government will
augment these levies pound for pound.
It is calculated that one penny on 100
pounds of butter would be sufficient
for the dairy industry. For sugar, a
levy of one half penny, per ton is sug
gested.—News and Observer.
SELF-FEEDING FARMERS
Farmers should grow more of the
food they consume and buy less of
food produced outside their immediate
locality is the consensus of opinion of
26,000 farmers in all parts of the coun
try recently questioned on the subject
by the Agricultural Department. The
survey showed that of the food con
sumed by farmers and their families
70 percent is produced locally, and
nearly 30 percent is brought in by rail
road. In the judgment of the farmers
79 percent of the food they consume
could be economically produced locally.
In a general way the survey indica
ted that the more isolated farmers pro
duce more of their foodstuffs than the
less isolated, and that the more pros
perous sections seem to buy more than
the less prosperous. The thought back
of the survey was that inasmuch as
high freight rktes have had a tendency
to reduce the prices of .products which
farmers sell and to increase the prices
(.f the things they buy, they might eco
nomically produce more of their home
requirements and thus become less de
pendent upon the railroads and the out
side world.
In comparison with the rest of the
country, it will probably be of interest
to those who have been unjustly criti
cizing the South for not producing
more foodstuffs to know that the East
South Central States including Ken
tucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Miss
issippi led in the volume of production
for home consumption with 75.2 per
cent. The smallest volume of home
production is in the New England
States with 68.1 percent.—Manufactur
ers Record.
A SUBSIDY TO FARMING
The Legislature of Queensland, Aus
tralia, is considering legal assistance
and financial backing to the Queensland
Primary Producers’ Association, formed
for the marketing of Queensland pro
ducts at home and abroad. Under the
proposed law the state would be divi
ded into 19 agricultural districts, each of
which would elect a district council.
District councils would elect a member
of the Council of Agriculture which
would be the executive of the associa
tion. The State would appoint six
members, making the full board 26.
The Council of Agriculture will be em-
THE BADGE OF THE GREAT
The gifted man bears his gifts into
the world not for his own benefit, but
for the people among whom he is
placed; for the gifts are not hi§, he
himself is a gift to the community.
That is the way Life gives gifts to the
people; it wraps them up in men, and
sends them forth.
If then the bearer purloins the gifts
for his own use, and turns his ability to
serve into an excuse for over-lordship
and exploitation of those who need him,
he is a traitor to the Universe.
Every kind of ability or superiority
is an obligation. Here is the solution
of all racial, national, class, and indi
vidual problems. Service is the badge
of the great. There is no greatness
without it.—Dearborn Independent.
ILLITERATE NATIVE WHITES
Ten Years Old and Over in 1910 and 1920
Based on the 18th and 14th Censuses. Average of white illiteracy in tha
United States, 8 percent in 1910 and 2 percent in 1920. Average in North Caro
lina 12.8 percent in 1910 and 8.2 percent in 1920. Only two states made a poorer
showing—Louisiana and New Mexico.
The white illiterates in Denmark are only 2 'per thousand inhabitants; in
North Carolina they number 82 per thousand, or forty-one times as many.
Almost nobody but the feebleminded are illiterate in Denmark. Illiteracy
does not mean feeblemindedness in North Carolina as in Denmark—not yet at
least, but someday in the early future it may have some such significance i«
this state.
Department of Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina
Rank
States
1920
1910
Rank States
1920
1910.
Perct.
Perct.
Perct.
Perct.
Illit.
Illit.
Illit.
Illit.
1
Montana
.. 0.3
0.4
26
Ohio
.. 0.9
1.5
1
Idaho
.. 0.3
0.3
26
Indiana
... 1.3
2.1
1
Wyoming
. 0.3
0.3
27
Colorado
... 1.4
1.6
1
Utah
.. 0.3
0.4
28
Vermont
... 1.6
1.9
1
Washington....
.. 0.3
0.3
29
Maine
... 1.6
2.0
6
Massachuse,tts.
.. 0.4
0.6
30
Delaware
... 1.8
2.9
6
Connecticut...
.. 0.4
0.6
30
Maryland
... 1.8
2.6
6
North Dakota..
.. 0.4
0.5
32
Missouri
... 2.0
2.9
6
South Dakota..
.. 0.4
0.4
33
Arizona
... 2.1
4.2
6
Minnesota
.. 0.4
0.6
34
Oklahoma....
... 2.3
3.8
6
Nebraska
. 0.4.
0.6
36
Florida
... 2.9
.6.0
6
Nevada
. 0.4
0.4
36
Texas
... 3.0
4.3
6
Oregon
. 0.4
0.4
37
Mississippi....
... 3.6
6.2
6
California
.. 0.4
0.6
38
Arkansas
... 4.5
7.0
16
New York
.. 0.6
0.8
39
W. Virginia..
... 4.6
6.4
16
Iowa
.. 0.6
0.8
40
Georgia
... 5.4
7.8
17
New Jersey....
.. 0.6
0.9
41
Virginia
... 6.9
8.0
17
Kansas
.. 0.6
0.8
42
Alabama
... 6.3
9.9
19
N. Hampshire.
.. 0.7
1.1
43
S. Carolina ...
... 6.5
10.3
19
Rhode Island...
.. 0.7
1.3
44
Kentucky....
... 7.0
10.0
19
Michigan
.. 0.7
1.1
46
Tennessee .,..
... 7.3
9.7
19
Wisconsin
.. 0.7
0.9
46
N. Carolina....
.... 8.2
12.3
23
Pennsylvania...
.. 0.8
1.3
47
Louisiana
...10.6
13.4
23
Illinois
.. 0.8
1.3
48
New Mexico .
...11.6
14.9