North Carolina Newspapers

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. MAY 16, 1923 CHAPEL HILL, N. C. VOL. IX, NO. 26 Editorial Boardi B. C. Branson. S. H. Hobbs. Jr.. L. R, Wilson. E, W. Knight. D. D. Carroll. J. B. Bnllitt, H. W. ( Entered as second-class matter November 14.1914, at the Postofflce at Chapel Hill, N. C.. nnder the act of Augnst 24. 1912 A MOTORIZED STATE Do you own a motor car? Perhaps not, but you will before many months. Everybody has a car or is planning to get one. At the rate we are buying them today there will be a motor car for every family in the state in three more years! Does it sound impossible? Perhaps so, but listen. In 1915 North Carolina had one motor car for every 140 inhabitants. In that year there were ten counties that had a grand total of eighteen motor cars, and three counties had none. In 1919 the state had one motor car for every 28 Inhabitants. In 1922 she had one motor car for every 17.2 inhabitants. On January 20, 1923, there was a motor car for every fourteen inhabitants in the state, and on April 13 we had a motor car for every thirteen inhabit ants. The number of inhabitants per motor car is being reduced by thr^e each year, so that in 1924 there will be . one car for every ten inhabitants, in 1926 there will be one car for every seven inhabitants, and in 1926, at our present rate of purchase, there will be a motor car for every family, white and black, town and country, in North Carolina. You may not own a car in 1926, but your neighbor will have two, and maybe three or four. In many families today each member has his or her private car. Gaining Momentum We are buying automobiles in this and every other state faster than ever before. In 1916 North Carolina had grand total of 16,410 motor cars, or one for every 140 inhabitants. Many wise ones agreed that we were on our way to bankruptcy with eightmillion dollars invested in motor cars! In 1919 we had 109,000 motor cars or one for every 23 inhabitants, representing an invest iment of nearly 90 million dollars. In March 1922 we had 160,312 automobiles, or one for every 17.2 inhabitants, rep resenting an investment of 120 million dollars. On April 13, 1923, we had 204,600 motor cars, or one for every 13 inhabitants in the state, representing an investment, at $800 per car, of $163,600,000; and we are not broke yet. In fact we are gaining momentum. On January 20 we had 187,880 cars. On April 13 we had 204,600, a gain of 16,620 in less than three winter months. We have bought more cars in eleven weeks than the state possessed in 1915. During the last year from March 1922 to April 1923 we purchased 64,188 motor cars, or at the rate of 4,500 automo biles a month. At the present rate of purchase there will be around 260,000 motor cars in North Carolina by the Christmas holidays. They are being bought at the rate of 200 a day. , Where They Are Where do the people live who own all these cars? Mainly in the central part of the state, from Edgecombe to Ca tawba county, and not in the moun tain nor tidewater areas. There Ls not a single county in either of these vast areas in which there are as few as twelve people per motor car, and only seven of the fifty-seven counties in these two areas are above the state average of one motor car for every fourteen inhabitants. The leading counties are located mainly in the great industrial area lying like a reap hook from Edgecombe, through Wake, Guil ford, Iredell, Catawba and Gaston, a- long the Southern Railway. Guilford leads North Carolina in the total number of motor cars with 10,777, and in people per motor car with one car for every 7.9 inhabitants. Guilford will soon have as many automobiles as the entire state possessed eight 'y^^rs ago. There are enough motor cars in Guilford to take the entire population of the county on a joy ride, by crowd ing in just a bit. By the end of the year there will be room for all to ride comfortably, for Guilford will buy more than 2^600 cars this year. She bought 2,263 last year. Autos and Roads and other types of improved roads. The lack of autos in the mountain and eastern counties is due very largely to poor highways. Now that highways are being built in tnese sparsely settled counties the people are following the example of central counties and are buying cars at an unprecedented rate. Many of these counties purchased more cars last year than they possessed March 1922. They have a long way to go to catch up with the counties which lead today, but give them good roads, and if good roads come can autos be far behind?—S. H. H., Jr. RECORD PRODUCTION With gasoline going up in price and in face of the predictions that the sup ply of gasoline will give out in a decade or two,—we consumed more gasoline last year than we produced, we are manufacturing more automobiles than ever before. Practically every factory is operating at full capacity. In March of this year 346,000 automobiles were turned out, which exceeds by 57,000 the best previous record, made in June of last year. During the first three months of this year more than 867,000 automobiles were made, or slightly more than twice as many,as were made during the first three months of 1922. The prediction is for an output of about three million automobiles in 1923. It is well to remember that in 1916 there was a grand total of two million motor cars in the United States. We are making a million more cars this year than we owned in the entire nation eight years ago. About 60,000 of them will be sold in North Carolina, and they will cost us about fifty million dollars. ^ Our rapid growth in motor cars is due very largely to our great road con struction program. The counties which lead in motor cars are the (^ounties with a large mileage of hard-surfaced The Pity of It The money will go for a good pur pose, for the most part. Every per son who can afford a car, and wants one, should have it. But did you ever stop to think how the automobile busi ness affects the South? Not an auto mobile factory in the entire South. We have a few assembled car and truck concerns but we manufacture practi cally no cars. The money spent for motor cars by southern states repre sents cool cash leaving these states for a good long stay. It goes to Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New York, and the other northern states manufacturing motor cars. These are the states that are growing in wealth faster than any oth er states in the Union. These states occupy an enviable position. They have nearly half the population of the United States working for them. Every owner of a motor car in the South is toilinjg daily for the owners of this vast industry, and the wealth spent on motor cars is being garnered by relatively a few people in a restrict ed area in the North. One automo bile manufacturer owns railroads and coal mines, among other things, and has a checking account of two hundred million dollars. North Carolina will spend around 76 million dollars this year in the purchase and operation of motor cars. Practi cally all this money will leave the state. It will take the gross income from the sale of our great cash crop cotton to pay our motor ^r costs. We will fail to accumulate that much state capital. That is one reason why North Carolina, although she produces an enormous amount pf wealth annually, fails to get ahead in the accumulation of wealth on a per capita basis. And it is true for the entire South. We produce quantities of new wealth but retain too little of it. So far as motor cars are concerned it seems we cannot remedy this, but it is a pity. —S. H. H., Jr. NORTH CAROLINA As soon as you get to No’th Ca’lina The roads and the towns get newah and finah. The people walk with a brisker step. And even your motor has more pep. The hookworm’s banished, the coun try has A lot more energy, pep and jazz; The livest Northerner couldn’t de sign a Livelier State than No’th Ca’lina. The farms look fatter, the hamlets ain’t Quite ignorant of the sight of paint; They’re building roads, and they’re not content With sand and clay, but they use cement. And the schools look good, and the mills are busy And each inhabitant owns a Lizzie, Or a big twin six or some thing finah. As soon as you get to No’th Ca’lina! This State’s not dreaming of days gone by. There’s a modern glint in each mor tal’s eye; And the village belles and village beaux Are as smartly dressed as the crowd which flows On Gotham’s streets. You must give ’em credit, These folks are fully awake, you i^said it! You meet the boostah, you lose the whinah, As soon as you get to No’th Ca’lina. —Berton Braley VIRGINIA HEARS PAGE 1,370 Miles in 18 Months In the spring of 1921 the North Caro lina Highway Commission started its organization in the building of our road system under the bond issue. At the end of 1922--say a year and six or seven months—we have constructed from the proceeds of this $60,000^000 bond issue 1,370 miles of improved roads. Four hundred and forty-three miles of this was pavement and 930 miles of other types. We had, however, under con struction on the last day of December, 1922, projects amounting , to $36,400, - 000, and, to show you the progress that we are making, our contractors’ estimate for the month of November was $2,200,000, and in December, on account of weather conditions, it was materially reduced, but still we paid out to the contractors $1,200,000. Attracts Contractors At the beginning of 1922 the State Highway Commission, realizing the un usual conditions then prevailing in the labor and material market, and the in cessant demands for roads in the state, and further realizing that it was an economic proposition to build roads faster than we at that time contem plated, determined that we would let to contract in 1922 1,000 miles of roads. This large program enabled us to in duce contractors to come in from at least one dozen different states, and by awarding contracts, not in one, two or three-mile sections, but in eighteen, twenty and thirty-hiile sections, we were able to induce the largest and best contractors in the Union to come to our state. Some of these men today on a single project have one quarter of a million dollars' worth of equipment. These contractors came to us from Illi nois, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia, and I say to you that each of these states sustained a distinctive loss when a good contractor moved out of the state. Roads Best Investment Today we are building roads at the rate of fifty miles of pavement and seventy-five miles of other type of roads per month. You say it costs money. You say that we are spending large sums of money. Yes, we are spending large sums of money, but in my opinion it'‘js the best investment that any state Sn the Union can make. The very fact that we had large sums of money to spend enabled us to secure contracts at a much more advantageous figure than if ye had been forced to let these projects in very short pieces. Bond Plan Saves $5,000,000 We are confident that we had a sav ing in the contracts let in 1922 by the method above described of at least $6,- 000,000 over what the roads would have cost if we had been forced to continue this road-building program over several years’ period. It is my opinion that we are going to have at the expiration of the expenditure of this $60,000,000 enough additional tax caused by the expenditure of this road moneyjto pay 1 every single dollar of it, and I want to tell you that some of these new citi zens of North Carolina are going to come to our state from Virginia. We have heretofore populated the Eastern Shore of Virginia by North Carolinians moving to your territory, but now they are coming back home, and when once again they get the “tar” on their heels you are going to lose some goiDd Vir ginia citizens. Schools and Roads North Carolina’s activity is not con fined to our road-building program. We are today spending $26,000,000 in pub lic school houses. We have today un der construction and just being finished 800 new public school houses within the state. We are also appropriating additional buildings at our higher ed ucational institutions amounting to a- bout $6,000,000. What the People Say But to get to the point, what do the people of North Carolina say about this expenditure? We have biennial terms of the Legislature, and just prior to the convening of the 1923 Legislature the State Highway Commission was convinced that we would have our ex penditure for roads so far advanced that we would need additional money before the 1926 Legislature convened, so we prepared a bill increasing our gasoline tax from one cent to three cents per gallon, and asking for an ad ditional $16,000,000 bond issue for road construction. This passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 88 to 9. The Senate Committee took it up with out argument, and approved it. Today I assume that it will pass by an almost unanimous vote in the Senate. This, I think, shows what the people of North Carolina think of our road program. You may be sure that the legislator in North Carolina, and I assume in Vir ginia, has his ear closer to the ground than any animal living, and listening to the rumblings of publicjopinion. Oar Roads Save Gasoline Some of you may say that we are taxing our people to death. No we ^re not. Here are some figures that will prove to you that the people of North Carolina love to be taxed when it is a paying Investment. In 1920 there were shipped into the state 73,997,832 gallons of gasoline. There were at that time 142,284 automobiles in the state, or each automobile in 1920 used 520 gallons of gas. In 1921 there were shipped in to the state 73,492,968 gallons of gaso line, and we had at that time 149,901 automobiles in the state, or each auto mobile consumed during the year 1921 490 gallons of gas. In the year 1922 we had shipped into the state 86,126,- 368 gallons of gasoline, and we had 181,955 automobiles, or each automo bile in 1922 consumed 463 gallons of gas. This will show that a saving of each automobile in 1922 over 1920 was fifty-seven gallons pf gas. This can be accounted for only by the improved roads in 1922 over 1920. This fifty- seven gallhns of gas, multiplied by an average price of 26 cents, was a net saving to each automobile of $14.26, or a saving to 181,956 automobile owners a- mounting to the tremendous sum of $2,692,687.60. This is a saving in gaso line alone, not to mention the saving in oil, time, and the wear and tear of your machine and religion.—Frank Page, Chairman N. C. Highway Commission. MOTOR CARS IN NORTH CAROLINA Inhabitants Per Car in 1923 Based (1) on adjusted population by counties, and (2) on report from the Secretary of State, Jan. 20, 1923. Total number of motor cars in the state on January 20, 187,880. April 13, the registration totaled 204,600 automobiles and trucks, ora gain of 16 620 in less than three winter months. State total' March 1922, was 148,627 motor cars, so during the last year there has been a gain of 56,873 motor cars. State average, one car for every fourteen inhabitants. Guilford leads with 10,777 motor cars or one car for every 7.9 inhabitants. Mitchell, Yancey, and Graham foot the list. F. O. Yates, Union County Department of Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina Rank County Total Inhabs. No. Per Car 1 Guilford ... 10,777 7.9 2 Davidson ... 4,081 9.1 3 Mecklenburg.. ... 8,976 9.6 4 Alamance ... 3,628 9,6 6 Rowan ... 4,864 9.7 6 Wilson ... 3,913 9.9 7 Wake ... 7,811 10.1 8 Moore ... 2,233 10.2 9 Scotland .. 1,492 10.6 10 Forsyth .. 8,202 10.6 11 Lincoln ... 1,670 10.8 12 Catawba ... 3,244 11.0 13 Gaston ... 4,969 11.2 14 Johnston ... 8,626 11.4 14 Randolph ... 2,738 11.4 16 Cabarrus ... 3,086 11.7 17 Durham ... 3,761 11.8 18 Edgecombe ... 3,368 11.9 18 Iredell .. 3,274 11.9 20 Stokes .. 1,682 12,2 21 Buncombe .... .. 6,667 12.4 21 Lee ... 1,133 12.4 21 Montgomery... .. 1,168 12.4 21 Rockingham ... .. 3,764 12.4 25 Richmond .. 2,178 12.6 26 Pasquotank .... .. 1,409 12.7 27 Nash .. 3,393 12.8 27 New Hanover.. ... 3,379 12.8 29 Cleveland .. 2,776 12,9 30 Pitt .. 3,620 13.4 31 Lenoir .. 2,328 13.6 Rank County Hoke Vance Orange Surry Beaufort Currituck .... Cumberland 2,406 Granville 1,879 Yadkin 1,163 Stanly 2,041 904 1,718 1,339 2,364 2,173 492 Greene Wayne Davie Transylvania. Martin Camden Caswell' Harnett 1,163 3,166 899 666 1,412 340 1,030 2,007 Henderson 1,213 13.8 13.9 •14.0 14.1 14.2 14.2 14.6 14.6 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.9 16.2 16.2 16.4 16.6 16.6 16.6 15.6 61 62 63 54 65 56 57 58 58 60 61 62 63 63 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 76 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 86 86 87 90 ^ 91 92 93 94 95 96 ’ 97 98 99 100 Total Inhabs. No. Per Car Union 2,346 Bertie i,6i2 Person 1,176 Alexander 741 Duplin 1,876 Chatham 1,400 Anson 1,648 Craven 1,699 Rutherford 1,894 Hertford 927 Perquimans 620 Franklin 1,464 Halifax 2,612 Sampson....; 2,100 Robeson 3,065 Washington 618 Northampton 1,229 Caldwell 1,060 Warren 1,100 Pamlico 374 Jones 438 Burke 997 Haywood 967 Onslow 690 Bladen 776 Pender 646 Tyrrell 170 Chowan 372 Wilkes 1,173 . Alleghany . Columbus.. Polk Hyde McDowell.. Watauga... Gates Carteret... Jackson.... Brunswick. Cherokee... Madison.... Dare Ashe Avery . 260 . 1,039 309 272 663 402 . 296 400 316 340 319 400 97 . 347 16J Macon 193 Swain 187 Clay 63 Mitchell 94 119.1 Yancey 112 143.7 Graham 29 169,4 16.7 16.1 16.6 16.7 16.9 17.2 17.4 17.7 17.7 17.8 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.2 18.6 18.6 19.1 19.8 20.3 23.1 23.6 23.9 25.1 26.2 26.2 26.7 27.7 28.0 28.6 29.1 29.6 29.8 80.2 30.3 34.8 35.6 39.8 42.8 44.1 48.9 60.1 «3.7 62.3 65.4 66.2 75.7 77.6