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 23, 1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. K, NO. 27
Editorial Board, E. C. Branaon. S. H. Hobba, Jr.. L. K. Wilson, E. W. Knisht, D. D. Carroll, J, B, Bullitt, H. ’
Entered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the PostolHce at Chapel Hill, N, C., under the act of Ausnst 24, 1912
THE TENANCY COMMISSION
The Farm Tenancy Commission ap
pointed during the last session of the
Legislature has just returned from a
thousand-mile incursioiiyinto the Tide
water country. The Commission covered
thoroughly practically every county
from the South Carolina border to the
eastern edge of Hyde county, thence
northwest through Beaufort, Martin,
Northampton, Halifax, and other coun
ties. The main objects before the
Commission were to look into the possi
bilities of the Tidewater country for
agricultural expansion, to look into the
merits of the group settlement idea
ver^s individual settlement, and to
gather information on the financial
policies of successful enterprises. Con
sultations were held with farm tenants,
small farm owners, big landlords, lum
ber companies owning hundreds of
thousands of acres of cut-over lands,
chambers of commerce, and others.
The following are merely a few of the
impressions gathered.
The Tidewater country is a vast area
eighty-five percent undeveloped, with
the greatest agricultural possibilities
of any similar area in America.
It is the most sparsely settled area
possessing equal agricultural advan
tages in America.
It can become the Winter Garden of
America because of warm moist cli
mate, suitable,soils, early maturity of
truck crops, and nearness to northern
markets.
It can become a great livestock area
because it produces grasses as abun
dantly as any area in the United States.
Cattle can be grazed ten months in the
year and no winter housing of cattle is
needed. But in several places where
we ate there was no butter on the
table; and where we had butter, it was
a northern product. The cattle tick
and lack of market for surpluses are
the present drawbacks, together with
population that knows little about live
stock.
Big Landlords
It is the one area in North Carolina
where big landlords reign supreme. A
man with only five or ten thousand
acres is a piker. Thirty thousand acres
demands some local respect. One hun
dred thousand acres is doing right well.
Landlords with three to ten thousand
acres under cultivation were run across
here and there.
The biggest landlord of them all told
the writer that the concentration of
land in the hands of a few people was
the biggest curse of the Tidewater
country. Many people are land poor.
Every cent of capital is tied up in land,
with no money left to develop it. The
land is often heavily mortgaged and
clear title cannot be given to would-be
purchasers.
Great fortunes have been lost in big
drainage projects because no provision
has been made to get actual settlers on
the land. Several individuals and cor
porations offered to give the state ten
thousand acres of drained land if the
state would show them how to get men
on the land. In one project three mil
lion dollars have been spent in drainage
and there is not a farmer on the land.
The Small Farmer
The most frequent cause of failure
on the part of individual settlers is
that they buy big farms, invest all
their capital in undeveloped land, and
have nothing left to develop the farm.
Where farmers have come in and pur
chased small farms and reserved a part
of their capital, they have almost in
variably succeeded. In fact about the
only successes the Commission found
consisted of small farmers, both native
and foreign.
For instance, at Castle Hayne there
are thirty farmers owning from twenty
to thirty acres each and last year they
sold two hundred thousand dollars’
worth of products. Twenty years ago
this same body of land produced a total
yield of five hundred dollars' worth of
crops. One of these farmers owns
twenty acres. His gross sales last
year amounted to $12,000. His net in
come was $8,000. He built a handsome
home out of his year's crops, lost $2,-
700 in a local bank which failed, and
still had cash on hand.
Another is a nurseryman. He owns
a few acres, is actually using still few
er, has been on his place five years and
is worth $76,000. On one acre he had
80,000 plants which will in six years
sell for seven dollars each. Each plant
increases in value one dollar a year. It
beats cotton and tobacco bands down.
Tar Heels Succeed
These people are not all foreigners.
The most successful settlementof them
all is made up of native Tar Heels. The
Commission is not interested in bring
ing foreign-born people into North Ca
rolina. It is interested in placing na
tive Tar-Heel farmers on farms under
sUch conditions that they will gradually
come into tlie ownership of the land.
An intensive survey is being made of
farmers who have failed and of farmers
who have succeeded so that the causes
of failures can be eliminated and the
reasons for successes can be utilized.
The land and other natural resources
of this state are nothing short of mar
velous. We have in North Carolina 23
million idle acres. Nearly half the
farmers of North Carolina are tenants. ,
The Tenancy Commission is trying to
discover measures whereby some of
this vast tenant population can be
placed on a part of this vast area of j
land that is now idle, under the most
ideal social and economic conditions, so
that after a few years they will own
their farms and homes and will be bet
ter citizens of the community and of
the state. The native Tar Heel, if
given a chance, will make good.—
S. H. H., Jr.
CHURCH OFFERS AID
At the recent convention of the North
Carolina Diocese of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, held in Oxford, a
resolution was carried to the effect
that the social service commission of
the Diocese co-operate with the legis
lative commission recently appointed
by the late legislature in the matter of
farm tenancy, looking both to publicity
in matter and to actual service in de
veloping religious life of the proposed
tenantry communities. — News and Ob
server.
RENTERS AND CROPPERS
Seldom has a University put forth a
more pertinent social study than How
Farm Tenants Live, by J. A. Dickey
and E. C. Branson, just issued from
the press of the University of North
Carolina. So much has been written,
in somewhat impressionistic form, of
the “hill-billie” and the “cracker,
that this first-hand, scientific investi
gation has the value of a real revela
tion. The fact that it comprehends
only 61 tenant families living in Chat
ham county does not mean that it is not
a perfect picture of farm tenancy in
the South. There are 817,000 souls in
the families of white tenants in North
Carolina, and the picture given of these
selected specimens in a single North
Carolina county is accurately descrip
tive of them all. The fact that half
the farmers of the South are tenants,
not proprietors, is only one of the dis
tressing facts brought to light; it dis
closes a type of tenancy that is pecu
liar to the South—that is, indeed, a pro
duct of conditions following the Civil
War.
A Different Problem
Farm tenancy is not uncommon in the
North and in the West, but it is very
different in its character from that of
the South. The Western tenant is
usually a man of capital, who hires a
farm and operates it purely as a com
mercial transaction. He is, in a cer
tain sense, a business man; one fifth
the tenants of Chester County, Pennsyl
vania, possess capital ranging from
$3,000 to $9,000 ea Jn, an ’ one hundred
tenants recently discovered in Iowa
were ope]|rating with capital ranging
from $20,000 to $60,000 each. Nothing
like this is found among the farm ten
ants of the South. “Tenancy in the
South is not a matter of deliberate
choice on the part of farmers with op
erating capital; it is a sad necessity on
the part of moneyless men ... It is a
social estate. ” It is necessary first of
all to revise current terminology. Ten-
KNOW NORTH CAROLINA
The New Frontier
Before the vast land area of the
west was penetrated by a railroad,
the late James J. Hill, president of
the Northern Pacific system, and
called “the builder of the west,”
made this famous remark: “Land
without population is a wilderness;
population without land is a mob.”
With our thoughts centered upon
eastern Carolina and its vast unde
veloped area, let us conjure with
the Hill declaration, which is a veri
table economic philosophy. The
west was a wilderness without a
population and since it was an im
mense pioneer proposition, it would
have remained a wilderness without
railroad transportation. The conti
nental railroads cleaved the conti
nent and the west became a ro
mance. Transportation and romance
combined attracted millions of pop
ulation and North Carolina contribu
ted a liberal share of that west-
wardbound population. Many of the
people of Indiana, Ohio and Illinois,
and about 20 states west of the
Mississippi river, can trace their
sturdy ancestors back to the good
Old North State. Whithersoever
Carolinians go, “North Carolina
claims her children,” and it is even
so that she claimed Uncle Joe Can
non, who helped to make Illinois
famous.
The denouement of the western
romance has been reached and the
day of romance for North Carolina
is being staged. Horace Greeley’s
“Go West, Young Man,” has been
replaced by Roger Babson's “Go
South, All who Seek Opportunities.”
Back of the western movement of
population was the urge which ap
pealed to the red-blooded pioneer.
The latter-day urge of Roger Bab-
son appeals to the capitalist and to
the homeseeker for whom opportun
ities in the south are constantly be
ing emphasized by the Boston house
of Babson, known all over America
and Europe. Roger Babson is a
“bull on the south,” and he says so
every day in every way. The south
is on Babson's map and North Caro
lina is in bas-relief on every map.
North Carolina put herself on the
map and it is up to coastal Carolina
to let it be known that it is a mar
velously resourceful and advantage
ous section of progressive North Ca
rolina. If eastern Carolina wants
her share in the new romance of the
times she must figure in the ro
mance. Alluvial Carolina is a rich
land largely without population. It
contains only one-fonrth the popula
tion that it should have and we must
realize that the time to get popula
tion is right now.
The famous remark of James J.
Hill was intended to emphasize the
advantages, the uses, and the re
sults of transportation and surely
we all know what railroads running
into the west did for the unsettled
west. The west had to have rail
roads before it could be pioneered.
Eastern Carolina has long ago been
pioneered and its transportation fa
cilities have been taken care of by
1,800 miles of railways, more than
1,000 miles of interior navigation,
and five ocean gateways. With the
means of transportation at hand and
millions of betterments being pro
vided every year by enterprising
and progressive transportation com
panies, what an immense opportun
ity we have to attract tens of thous
ands of homeseekers into this veri
table Eldorado, with most of the
22,000,000 acres of undeveloped land
credited to North Carolina!
It would really take a book to em
phasize the opportunities here for
us and the right class of newcomers
who can be attracted to this wonder
ful section because of its proved ad
vantages of every description. Wil
mington is the clearing house for
all these advantages and opportuni
ties.
Around Wilmington there is such a
far-flung area to be settled that the
late Secretary Lane called this sec
tion the “nation’s new frontier,”
and it is just that.—Wilmington
Star.
ants are divided into two classes, rent
ers and croppers. The renters have a
certain resemblance to the capitalistic
tenants of the North and East in that
they posse'ss something in the shape of
stock in trade. They own their own
farm tools, their cattle, their household
goods; they can “run themselves, ” as
the phrase goes. They are themselves
separated into two classes, kinsman
renters—sons, sons-in-law, nephews,
and the like, who have been established
on their farms by proprietor-relatives;
and self-help renters, who have only
themselves to depend upon. These two
classes form the economic and social
cream of Southern farm tenants, though
their condition in life is not especially
rosy.
The Cropper Type
The tenant that gives especial cause
for anxiety is the cropper, a type of
agriculturist that is found only in the
South. Though the cropper has been a
feature of Southern life since 1866, and
though there are now about 226,000 in
the Southern States, the word describ
ing him has only recently found lodg
ment in the dictionary. The difference
between a renter and a cropper, lies in
the fact that, whereas the first runs
himself, the latter is run by his land
lord. He possesses no property and has
no permanent habitation. He is con
stantly on the move from farm to farm.
“It ain’t no trouble for me to move,”
says the cropper, “I ain't got nothing
but er soap gourd and er string er red
peppers. All I have ter do is call up
Tige, spit in the fireplace and start
down ther road.” The cropper is as
restless and as itinerant as the Wander
ing Jew; with his bedraggled family he
goes from place to place, cultivating
one farm after another on halves. He
supplies nothing-except his labor arid
that of his wife and children; the land
lord furnishes everything else—land,
dwelling, firewood, work stock, im
plements, pantry supplies, and even
small advances of'money. When the
crop is gathered he gets half, and with
deductions made for these advances,
the landlord gets the rest. This is cer
tainly a strange way to pick up a liv
ing, yet the most discouraging fact is
that the cropper himself, though an
bbject of anxiety to college professors
and social reformers, is entirely satis
fied with his own lot and manages to
extract a considerable amount of pleas
ure from it.
The cropper’s self-satisfaction, how
ever, is purely a manifestation of a
sunny temperament; it has no relation
to circumstances, for the external con- i
ditions of his life are about as hard as
can be found anywhere in this country. i
“’The croppers,” say the authors of
this pamphlet, “are The Forgotten
Men that Walter H. Page wrote a-
bout. ” Their dwellings are wooden
shanties, sometimes mere log houses.
“ In more than half of these dwellings
it is possible to study astronomy
through the holes in the roof and
geology through the cracks in the
floor.” They have an illiteracy rate
of 10 per cent, their sanitary con
ditions are deplorable, their reading
matter consists of an occasional weekly
newspaper, patent medicines serve
them in lieu of the doctor, their wives
are hoe-hands in the fields, and their
children are also set to work at seven
or eight, boys and girls alike. The
church and the Sunday school play little
part in the cropper’s existence, though
inoonshining and boot-legging are well
developed occupations. His average
money income is $153 a year; on this—
less than three dollars a week—he com
monly supports a fair-sized family.
About one fourth of all the white
tenants in the South are croppers.
Though the outlook for this sediment-
arjr population is not hopeful, the con
dition of the other tenants—renters,
both self-helping and kinsmen assisting
—is not so discouraging. These are not
a degenerate race; the /men are virile
and industrious; and the women intelli
gent and fecund; their homes are com
monly neat, though humble; and their
farms are well cared for. Illiteracy pre
vails to a considerable degree; though
the boys and girls frequently reach
the high school grades. But the ioteven
of the renters is a hard one; how many
Northern young men and women would
care to marry on the prospect of a cash
income of $20 a month, which is all that
these Southern renters can look foward
to? The im>»rovement of their oppor
tunities is one of the great problems
facing the Southern States. 'They are
good stock, they are sound morally and
physically, they are intelligent and in
dustrious, they contain the makings of
that robust yeomanry which is the sal
vation of any country. What can be
done for them? California has developed
a system under which the state, by
making properly safeguarded loans to
farmers, enables them to become pro
prietors. Apparently the plan is work
ing well. Professor Branson believes
that this idea, or some modification of
it, can be applied in North Carolina and
other Southern States.—The World’s
Work. •'
NEGRO FARM OWNERSHIP
In North Carolina in 1920
Based on the 1920 Census of Agriculture, showing the percent of all negro
farmers in each county who own the farms they operate.
State average, 29.2 percent of all negro farmers own their farms. In Edge
combe county only 6.6 percent of negro farmers are farm owners, or about ofte
out of every 16 negro farmers. Where negroes are concentrated tenancy is the
rule, where negroes are scattered ownership is the rule. This is true for the
entire United States.
W. L. Whedbee, Pitt County
Department of Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina
Rank County
Percent
Rank County
Percent
owners
owners
1
Dare
100
61
Rutherford
38.8
-2
Mitchell
100
52
Warren
’ 38.3
3
Transylvania
98.8
63
Craven
38.2
4
Graham
92.3
64
Pasquotank
37.3
6
Swain
92.0
66
Cumberland
36.9
6
Jackson
89.0
66
StnkpQ
7
Ashe
88.9
67
Chowan
7
Cherokee
88.9
58
Pamlico
34.4
9
Alleghany
81.6
69
Martin
34.1
10
Brunswick
81.0
60
Lincoln
34.0
11
Wilkes
78.3
61
Duplin
...1... 33.7
12
Caldwell
78.1
62
Vance
33i6
12
Avery
78.1
63
Washington
33.3
14
Randolph
77.9
63
Madison
38.3
16
Watauga
76.9
66
Harnett
33.1
16
New Hanover
76.6
66
Perquimans
33.1
17
Henderson
76.7
67
Iredell
32.1
18
Burke t
76.6
68
Granville
30.9
19
Columbus
74.1
69
Bertie
30.6
20
McDowell
71.4
70
Rockingham
30.2
21
Pender
..... 68.0
70
Montgomery
30.2
22
Surry
63.7
72
Hertford
28.0
22
Macon
63.7
73
Polk.
24
Bladen
62.6
74
Caswell
27.4
24
Haywood
62.6
76
Hyde
27.1
26
Buncombe
61.2
76
Wake
26.8
27
Guilford
67.6
77
Durham
24.3
28
Forsyth
67.5
78
Robeson
24.0
29
Tyrrell
66.3
79
Halifax
23.9
30
Yadkin
.... 66.2
80
Johnston
23.7
31
Carteret
66.2
81
Gaston
23.0
32
Clay
66.0
82
Northampton
23.0
33
Yancey..,
63.1
83
Camden
22.2
34
Currituck
61.3
84
Richmond
22.1
36’
Moore
60.9
86
Nash
21.1
36
Davie
60.7
86
Jones
19.4
37
Gates
48.7
87
Franklin
19.2
88
Alamance
47.2
88
Hoke
18.4
39
Beaufort
46.7
89
Cleveland
17.9
40
Alexander
... . 46.4
90
Wayne
17.3
41
Catawba
43.3
91
Anson
16.8
42
Sampson
42.9
92
Union
13.9
43
Davidson
'41.8
93
Cabarrus
13.8
44
Chatham
40.6
94
Pitt
45
Orange
40.6
96
Scotland
10.1
46
Onslow
40.2
96
Greene
9.6
47
Lee
40.0
97
Mecklenburg
9.1
48
Person
39.8
98
Wilson
49
Stanly
39.4
98
Lenoir
60
Rowan
39.0
100
Edgecombe
6.6