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.
AUGUST 22, 1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. IX, NO. 40
Editorial Boards
B. C. Branson. S. H. Hobba. Jr.. L. R. Wilson, E. W. Knl?ht. D. D. Carroll. J. B.BalUtt, H. W. Odum.
Entered as second-class matter November 14.1914. at the PostolRceat Chapel Hill. N. C., under the act of August 24, 1912
FARM VILLAGE LIFE IN SOUTH GERMANY
The most impressive and the most
important single fact about farm life in
Europe is the compact farm commun
ity. These farmers live together, close
together, in little groups of four, five,
or a dozen dwellings, in hamlets large
enough to have a name and place on the
map, in villafr^s like Winterbach and
Schorndorf, tiie first with nearly 600
dwellings and the last with perhaps
1,600. But always they live together,
in communities large or small, and never
in solitary farmsteads a mile or several
miles away from a neighbor, a school,
or a church, as in North Carolina and
the rest of -the United States. And
when I say never, like the gallant cap
tain of the Pinafore, I me^ hardly
ever. w
The farm village of Europe and the
East is significant. It is of course the
product pf economic and social forces
operating through countless centuries.
But I cannot now stop to speak of the
origin and development of farm village
life. I merely refer the interested
reader to two books on this subject, and
pass on. They are a volume by Sir
Henry Maine and another by Sims.
A Fundamental Contrast
In America our villages and small
towns are groups of people engaged
primarily in store keeping, banking,
work animals are oxen and cows, com
monly cows.
A Noteworthy Picture
What I am trying to picture is a farm
village in Germany—the kind of village
in which more than two-thirds of all the
German farmers live. The rest still
live in villages but they are farm vil
lages that have changed into factory
towns, for the most part since 1914—
factory towns where work people are
the families of home-owners.
Imagine if you can a little town in
North Carolina as large as Chapel Hill
or Carrboro, or larger than both of
them together, composed of farm
dwellings housing farm animals on the
first floors and farm families above—a
little town of farmers and almost noth
ing but farmers—a little town with a
manure pile in the front yard of every
house no matter how handsomd or pic-
^turesque it may be.
Basis for a New Civilization
Such are the farmers and the farm
village groups of Germany — small-
home-owning farmers living in compact
farm villages. They save the country
civilization of Germany from the un
checked cityward drift of farm popu
lations. They save the factory workers
who live under their own' rooftrees in
buying and shipping cotton, tobacco ' country villages and travel to their fac-
and other farm products, running gar-1 tory'jobs and back daily on the trains
ages, operating movie picture houses, and trams for almost nothing (from
factories—doing almost anything and I Winterbach to Stuttgart and back,
everything but farming. They are re-. thirty-three miles, for less than four
treats, to be sure, for retired farmers; cents a week). They save the cities
who live on rents, or for farmers who from tenement houses and slums as we
farm at long range in automobiles or ' see them in England, Scotland, and the
by proxy with farm foremen. But in j Great Industrial Area of the United
—the main, our small-towh populations States. They, save the producing en-
art- consumers not producers of farm j terprises of capital from the paralyzing
products. 1 effect of destructive socialism—a type
The villages I am studying in South ^ socialism that the great cities of
Germany are in sharp contrast with the | Germany are struggling with, but that
villages I am used to at home. Here j factory owners know little about in the
they are groups of farmers and, until I country villages. In Germany as every-
within very recent years, of nothing 1 where else home-owning farmers are
but farmers, every one of them engaged i opposed to radical socialism. They are
daily in farming. They are not trading 1 conservative in their philosophy of life
centers, they are farm producing cen- i because they own something to con-
ters. They are not banking centers, !
exc^t for the cooperative credit un- ^ animals of their very own. The thirty-
ions of farmers who during the last j million people in the farm village
seventy years have learned how to use | homes of Germany are a steadying fac-
the banks at a distance to finance them-1 national life today, and tomorrow
selves locally. They are not garage, n^^y be the best of all that Ger-
centers, for these farmers do not own
automobiles. Oftentimes they are even
not freight stations, although they are
on or near a railroad. For instance as I
write, I look down upon Pfarrdorf, a
little place of some 600 farm dwellings
. in the valley below. It is within a
stone’s throw of the railway to Nurem
berg, but it has neither a freight nor a
passenger station. Here is a little town
of two thousand inhabitants living
within a five-minute walk of the rail
way and with nothing but a little rain
shelter for occasional travelers on the
local trains. But Pfarrdorf. is like
nearly half of the twenty nearby farm
towns that I am busy with these days.
It is a farm town and almost nothing
but a farm town. It has no factories
•of its own and it furnishes few or no
factory hands for the little factory
towns along the railroad. It is a village
of farmers, all oi them out of debt and
many of them rich. They live in their
own homes and in quiet ways they are
manifestly proud of their estate in life.
many has left to build a new civilization
MarHeting Wares
They sell their surpluses and make
their small purchases in Schorndorf, a
farm village that has turned into a fac
tory town in recent years. It is a mile
or so away. To this place and back
they trudge afoot with their ware% in
baskets on their backs or on their heads
if the beast of burden happens to be a
woman as is usually the case; or in lit
tle wagons that look like the toy wag
ons of our children in America—wagons
of all sizes pulled and pushed by the
women and children; or in larger wag
ons of similar build drawn by an ox, of-
tener by a cow, pulling alone on one
side of the wagon pole, for farm ve
hicles in this region do not have shafts
for single work animals. The rich farm
ers use teams of oxen, and sometimes
a horse or a team of horses. Farm
horses are rare in Wurtemberg. The
Country Community Real
Country Community has come to be
a stock phrase of late years in America
in our text books on Rural Sociology.
We have the phrase but not the fact.
In Europe they have the fact but not
the phrase. The weiler, the dorf, the
mir—such are some of the terms in use
for farm villages in continental Eu
rope. Commune long since passed out
of use as a name for country communi
ties in Europe, even in France and Rus
sia. The farm village has been a fun
damental fact in Europe for long cen
turies, and it will play a decisive part
in the rebuilding of these stricken coun
tries, for when wars and debased cur
rencies have done'their worst, the civi
lization of Europe will begin again with
these groups of home-owning farmers.
Its Significance
Even now they are salting unto salva
tion the civilization of these perplexed
peoples, for, no matter how many boys
and girls may work in factories in the
home town or in neighboring towns,
they live at home and the home is al
most always the home of a prideful
home-owning farmer who holds on to
it as he holds on to life itself. These
young people may work in factories in
other towns but they live as a rule un
der the shelter of their own rooftrees.
They do not leave their village homes
to herd in city tenements in Germany;
they live in the country towns and
travel in vast multitudes to their city
jobs on the work trains in the morning
and back again to their homes at night.;
An Amazing Spectacle
He would be a hopelessly stupid ob
server who missed the immense social
significance of a fact like this. I look
about for the slum quarters of every
German city I get into and I do not find
KNOW NORTH CAROLINA
North Carolina in the past year
has paid into the Federal Treasury
$125,000,000.
Those who view the state debt
with alarm should get a pleasant re
action by regarding the latter figure,
too. A state that is taxed by the
Federal Government for a great deal
more in a year than the total of its
debt is not approaching bankruptcy.
Gilliam Grissom, the cqllector of
internal revenue, announces the fig
ures paid into the Federal Treasury
for the year, and calls attention to
the fact that they are larger than
those in California, the'seventh state
in the Union last year in amount of
Federal tax paid, when this state
stood eighth.
This huge sum that North Carolina
has furnished the central Govern-^
ment was a levy on North Carolina
production. It was paid out of the
earnings of factories in this state,
operated by capital, labor and ma
terials that largely originated within
the state. These resources are not
ephemeral and they are assets of
North Carolina that guarantee that
the state was not pursuing an un
sound policy in investing in tjie fur
ther development of .its territory.
—The High Point Enterprise.
any. • I find areas of poverty, but not
slums as I see them in American cities.
Germany is deliberately preserving her
country village populations and making
city slums impossible, and she is doing
it with railway rates that are so cheap
that they baffle belief. For instance,
I traveled on yesterday from Winter
bach to Baden-Baden, ninety-seven
miles, for eleven cents, which is about
one-tenth of a cent a mile. Think of going
from Durham to Salisbury for eleven
cents! But the country-dwelling fac
tory workers of Germany travel on
commutation tickets for less than one-
tenth of the rates I pay—in fact'for
about the one-hundredth of a cent per
mile. These simple facts explain the
volume of travel in Germany. The
swarming multitudes of country workers
and shoppers moving into and'out of
every German city and little factory
center every day and all day long is the
most amazing spectacle I have so far
looked upon in Germany.
A Firm Basis
Another fact is worth considering.
American farmers have always found
it difficult to get together and to stick
together through thick and thin for any,
purpose whatsoever. So because their
lives are lived in widely scattered coun
try homes, a few to the square mile-
in North Carolina only seven per square
mile on an average the state over.
What cooperative farm enterprise lacks
in America is compact country com
munity life, and this lack is usually fa
tal to farm organizations of every sort.
Successful farm cooperation must be
based on country community life. How
could it be otherwise?
The German farmers—the small land
owning peasants—do not have to bother
about getting together. They are to
gether already, have been together dur
ing a thousand years of history. Their
children play together, sing together in
the village schools, dance together in
the seasonal holidays, practice together
in the village bands and song clubs.
They come to know one another through
and through. They know after awhile
who among them has the grace and
grit to stick tight in a farm organiza
tion-say, in a cooperative credit union,
a type of organization that exists in al
most every farm village in Germany.
Cooperative Farm Credit
Membership in a credit union is a
certificate of character and a badge of
honor—a public acknowledgment of the
fact that the member is a man of in
dustry, thrift, sense, sobriety, and com
plete trustworthiness. German peas
ants have done almost nothing with
cooperative buying or selling organiza
tions—in thesh fields the Danish farmers
have beat them hands down; but they
were the first farmers in the world to see
the fundamental necessity for adequate,
suitable credit in the business of farm
ing and to bunch up to finance them
selves in cooperative credit unions.
Credit is the very first condition of
farm prosperity, they say. In Ameri
ca it is the very last thing our farmers
have thought about and even now they
are thinking not about self-help in
cooperative farm credit unions, but
about government loans on farm lapds,
livestock, and farm products in general.
Essentials for Success
The point I am trying to make is
this: In Germany the cooperative
credit union succeeds because it is
based on country community life—on
the life lived by home-owning farm
villagers who know one another thor
oughly.
In America cooperative farm enter
prise lacks the background of country
community life, and it is a fatal defect.
It must be cured or our country regions
will be progressively depopulated as
the years go on, and farming as a busi
ness will face steadily increasing diffi
culties. It can hardly survive the diffi
culties it now faces, but worse condi
tions are easily in sight unless Ameri
can farmers can get together and stick
together in credit organizations, in
marketing associations, and in coopera
tive buying—I mention these essentials
in the order of causal dependence. But
they are not likely to stick together in
any phase of farm business unless they
live together in farm communities.
Our Imperative Need
We do not need more farmers in
North Carolina. What we need is coun
try communities of home-owning farm
ers—farm colonies like Durham and
Delhi in California. We cannot have
the European farm village, and we
ought not if we could; but farm village
life we must have and it must suit the
conditions «f farming as a business and
as a mode of life in North Carolina.
The MacRae colonies are pointing the
way in the Lower Cape Fear‘Country.
North Carolina must develop her own
type of farm community, and she must
do it rapidly, or the chances are that
every dollar now invested in farm prop'
erties will be lost or in jeopardy in
the next quarter century.—E. C Bran
son, Baden-Baden, May 24, 1923*.
listed below. The Librarian will be
glad to hear of available issues of these
publications.
Railroad Reports
Atlantic and N. C. Railroad Proceed
ings of Stockholders.
Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal Co.
Report.
Blue Ridge Railroad Report.
Cape Fear and Deep River Naviga
tion Co. Report.
Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Rail
road Proceedings of Stockholders.
Charlotte, Columbia, and Augusta
Railroad Proceedings of Stockholders.
Charlotte and South Carolina Rail
road Proceedings of Stockholders.
Chester and Lenior Railroad Proceed
ings of Stockholders.
Fayetteville and Western Plank Road
Co. Report.
Fayetteville and Western Railroad
Report.
Neuse^River Navigation Co. Report.
North Carolina Railroad Co. Proceed
ings of Stockholders. Issues of 1869,
1871, 1901, 1902, 1'910.
North Carolina Railroad Report.
Northwestern North Carolina Rail
road Proceedings of Stockholders.
Petersburg Railroad Co. Report.
Petersburg, Greenville, and Roanoke
Railroads Report.
Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Pro
ceedings of Stockholders. Issues for
1868, 1868.
Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Report.
Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad Re
port.
Western N. C. Railroad Proceedings
of Stockholders, issue for 1870.
Western N. C. Railroad Report.
Wilmington and Manchester Railroad
Proceedings of Stockholders.
Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad
Proceedings of Stockholders.
Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Re
port.
Wilmington and ^Weldon Railroad
Proceedings of Stockholders.
Wilmington, Charlotte, and Ruther
ford Railroad Proceedings.
CAROLINA BANK CAPITAL
The state of New York has nearly
twice as much bank capital and surplus
as all the Southern States combined.
Pennsylvania has almost as much
bank capital and surplus as the entire
South.
New Jersey has nearly three-times
as much bank capital as North Caro
lina.
Rhode Island, no larger than one
county in this state, has two-thirds as
much bank capital and surplus as North
Carolina.
We have nearly twice as many peo
ple as Connecticut, and rank ahead of
her in the total value of farm and fac
tory products, but she has nearly 50
percent more capital and surplus.
We far outrank Virginia in agricul
ture, manufacture, and population, but
she has sixty percent more bank capi
tal and surplus.
Is there any legitimate reason why
Maine should have 35 dollars of bank
capital and surplus per inhabitant while
North Carolina, with all her agriculture
and industry, has accumulated only 21
dollars?
The answer lies largely in the differ
ence between wealth production on a
total basis, and wealth production and
accumulation on a per inhabitant basis.
But aside from that, the habit of thrift
is a big factor. Until we become more
thrifty we will continue to pay tribute
to the people in other states who buy
our bonds^ who supply us with the
money ^ith which to build our roads,
our schobls, to make our town improve
ments, and even to carry on much of
our trade.
COMMUNITY LIFE
A community is ideal just in the de
gree that its citizens as individuals are
self-respecting, considerate, loyal, and
sympathetic; and its business interests
intelligent, cooperative, [and energetic.
Tnere is nothipg-mysterious about the
progressive and forward-looking com
munity for these terms are converti
ble with humanj nature at its beat.
When business rivalries^beget harsh,
unjust and malicious antagonisms, not
only is community progress arrested,
but social standards are made to suffer
and personal attributes lose their virtue.
To enter fully into the spirit of these
verities, it is only necessary to re
collect that the community is but the
individual amplified.
A community is what its average
citizen makes it, for leadership can do
nothing more than leaven the lump,
and the standard is low or high just in
the degree that the lump is receptive
and capable of rising.—Wilmington
Star.
ASSEMBLING RECORDS
The University Library is interested
in completing back files of North Caro
lina periodicals, documents, reports,
proceedings of societies, and the like, for
the North Carolina Collection. Some
of the reports of road, railroad, and
canal companies to be completed are
TRAINED WORKERS WANTED
The School of Public Welfare of the
University reports a large demand at
excellent salaries for men and women
trained to do community work, both in
administrative and field work. The
educational institutions also are calling
for teachers of the social sciences at
salaries ranging from $2000 to $4000. A
young woman who just completed a
year in the School of Public Welfare is
community worker and probation judge
and is happy, in her work with an un
usually good salary. The call is now
for students of rare ability to enter in
to training for social work.
GROWING BETTER COTTON
The proportion of cotton of improved
varieties grown in North Carolina has
increased 50 per cent within the last
eight years, according to reports to the
United States Department of Agricul
ture. Community crop improvement
work with cotton was begun in the state
by agricultural experiment station and
extension workers eight years ago. The
plan followed has been to establish com
munity test farms throughout the state
to demonstrate the best variety of cot
ton to grow in the locality and the value
of the use of selected seed. Efforts are
made to secure the growing Of this va
riety alone in the community. When
the work was begun, it was estimated
that 90 per cent of North Carolina cot
ton was produced from seed of low
yield and mixed, small boll varieties.—
Press item, U. S. Dept, of Agriculture. ■