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.
SEPTEMBER 5, 1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. IX, NO. 42
Boardi E. C. Bcanson, S. H. Hobbs, Jr., L. R. Wilsoa, B. W. Kaight, D. D. Carroll, J. B. Ballitt, H. W. Odum.
Entered aa second-class matter November 14,1914, atthePostofficeat Chapel Hill, N. C.. under the act of August 24, 1918
CHANGES IN FARM OCCUPANCY
IX—WILL GERMANY BLOW UP?
The losses and disbursements of
Germany on account of the war amount
to fifty-six and one half billion gold
marks, her national wealth has shrunk
fifty per cent, and her fluid capital
ninety-nine percent, said the German
Chancellor to the Reichstag the other
day. The figures may be a bit of
special pleading by a retained attorney,
but true or not true it is some such
state of affairs that provokes the ques
tion I hear discussed daily—Will Ger
many blow up and when will it-happen?
I have heard this question so often that
I have had to pull down on my safety
valve and blow off steam.
An Attempt to Answer
So here is an attempt to interpret
the mind of the home-owning farmers
and factory workers in the little coun
try towns of Germany. They and their
families are around four-fifths of all
the German people and how they feel
about tlTings is a fact and a factor of
importance. I say feel, because what
the back-sweaters of every land do for
the most part is to feel in dumb, dull
ways, and to think, if they think at all,
in inarticulate fashion. Here is a fact
that makes interpretation difficult. But
also it makes the effort of the social in
cendiary still more difficult.
Is the soul of the forty-six million
home-owning farmers and factory work
ers of Germany seething with revolt? |
My answer is No, or not that I can [
discover after two months in the
country regions of Germany. My con-1
elusion is that there will be no revolu-
^ tion in Germany, and there will be
short shrift for the fomenters of revolu-1
tion if they start anything that even.
looks like a revolution. The home-1
owning common people are in the sad- \
die at last in central Europe. To be
sure, they are but dimly aware of
themselves as yet, but they must be
reckoned with today and in all future
years in this new republic. They have
known exactly what to do with the fal
ling mark, and they are well ahead of
the game. The peasant farmers are
rich and getting richer every day—not
in marks but in substantial properties.
No matter who may be poor in Germany
the home-owning farmers and factory
operatives are rolling in wealth, such
wealth as they never before enjoyed in
all their lives. They know it, and they
do not want to be disturbed. The land
less wage and salary earners in the
cities, and the owners of secondary
wealth-stocks, bonds, mortgages and
the like—are in sad case, but they are
relatively a very small element of popu
lation. Besides, they lack leaders
strong enough to organize revolt. Ger
many has no Lenin or Trotsky. And
clearly she has no Bismarck. It is a
day of small men, and her greatest
peril lies in this one fact.
I am moved to write by the anxious
inquiries of a Californian with whom I
traveled from Constance to Carlsruhe
last Sunday. “Will this state of things
end in revolution? Will Germany go
the way of Russia?” he asked. “I
have been living ten months,” he said,
“on the quivering crust of a volcano
crater, expecting the blooming thing to
blow up every minute. Isn’t that the
way you feel in Germany? Aren’t you
afraid to stay on any longer?”
No, I responded, decidedly not.
Whereupon I proceeded to ease my mind
somewhat.
Where Agitators Fail
You have been spending iyour time
and money, I said, in^Berlin and the
Ruhr towns, or so I judge. You have
been living in an atmosphere super
heated by the phrenzy of labor leaders,
the fierce debates of party|chiefs, and
the wild cries of security-owners beg
gared by a debased currency, while I
have been living out among [the home-
owning farmers and factory workers
in the country towns of^Germany. These
people are toiling on and plodding
along almost as placidly as their oxen in
the fields. They are not excited about
anything. Indeed 1 have seen but two
excited men, so far, injtall South] Ger
many. One was a walking delegate on
the tram from Hohenheim to Deger-
loch at the noon hour. Factory work
ers crowded the cars, going to dinner
in their country village homes along
the line. The workman beside him
was a wit, and every once in a while
he would interject a remark that set
the car in a roar of laughter. The
radical labor leader with his heated
talk of revolu tion retreated to Stuttgart
on the next car, cheered on his way by
the good-natured raillery of his fellow
workmen. So far and no farther does
Bolshevism get in the country regions
among home-owning farmers and wage-
earners.
Fundamental Cravings
Berlin and the Rhur may be subject
to brain storms, but not the country
regions of Germany. . Berlin in 1923 is
not Germany any more than Paris was
France in 1789. The revolution that Paris
started in that year was fought out
and at last settled by the masses of
France, that is to say, by the home-own
ing peasant farmers and the little people
possessed of small shops and businesses
in the towns and cities of the prov
inces. They were a majority of the
French people then as they are now.
What they really wanted was not liber
ty, equality, and fraternity, but proper
ty, peace, and security. Not Paris but
the home-owning poilus are France. And
not Berlin but the home-owning peas
ants are Germany today. They own
the land and who owns the land rules
the realm. No lesson of history is
plainer. What they crave is peace and
security in the new social order. It is a
fundamental human nature craving in
every land and Democracy means lit
tle more anywhere than an attempt to
satisfy this craving.
Reckoning with the Masses
The people I have been closest to in
Germany—the country dwellers in the
farm villages—are the people John
Bright had in mind when he said, “The
nation in every country dwells in the
cottage. Crowns and mitres, palaces
and stately mansions, great armies,
wide colonies, and a huge empire do
not make a nation. A nation is built
on the security, comfort, and content
ment of the masses of plain people.”
And these people as I see them day
by day are planning no war, they have
had enough of war, they are fleeing
their homeland in millions to escape
war. They want no radical socialism
of any type and Bolshevism least of all.
They will listen to nothing that threat
ens their newly acquired wealth, and
I miss my guess if they do not reckon
savagely with any man that confuses
the peace and quiet of their daily lives.
Democracy a Fact
There will doubtless ^be repeated
party uplteavals in Berlin during the
next fifty years, but there will be no
social revolution in Germany, in my
opinion. Democracy is a fact in Ger
many and it has come to stay, as I see
it. There will be no slump into Com
munism and no return to Monarchism.
So, because the home-owning masses
of Germany are opposed to both. Most
of the talk about these things is talk by
the impoverished upper and middle
classes on the one hand and by radical
socialists on the other. And nearly all
of it is in the large cities and the Oc
cupied Area. But the infected section
of population is a very small minority
of all the German people. The owners
of the substantial, producing properties
of this land are a vast majority and in
stinctively they are thinking inj self
defensive terms.
But They Need a Bismarck
First, about stabilizing the mark on
some level, any level of assured value.
They talk about almost nothing else,
and they see that it cannot be done un
til the question of Reparations is defi
nitely and finally settled. And second,
they are agreed upon the critical neces
sity for a strong man at the head of
things—a man big enough and brave
enough to solve the Reparations puzzle—
a man like Bismarck, for instance,
whose name I hear many times a day.
H a man of his sort and size cannot be
produced by the party in power, a new
IT PAYS TO BOOST
There are a few people in the
State who claim we are doing too
much boasting in North Carolina.
We have been likened unto a man
with new plumbing installed in his
house who is anxious to show it off
to the neighbors. ’ If there is a new
bath tub in the house we see no
reason for not telling the family
about it. ^
Happily there is nothing of that
feeling in Buncombe County. If
there is a county in the State that
advertises its wares it is Buncombe.
If there^s a city in the South that
tells the world of its fine points it
is Asheville. Neither hides her light
under a bushel. And it is not bad
business. The total valuation of
real and personal property in Bun
combe in 1920 was $88,010,204. This
year it is reported to be $110,301,836,
a gain of $22,291,368 in three years!
There are a good many counties in
the State that would; be proud to
have as much on the tax books as
Buncombe has gained in taxables
since 1920. Many counties have less
taxable wealth today than in 1920.
Not so with Buncombe. She shows
a large increase each year; perhaps
larger gains than any other county
in the State.
Buncombe and Asheville are or
ganized to tell the world what
awaits it in the Land of the Sky.
Western North Carolina, Inc., is a
child of Buncoipbe and Asheville and
is being brought up by the capable
Dr. Pratt. The tax books of Bun
combe present a mighty strong argu
ment in favor of boosting your com
munity and your State. —S. H. H.,
Jr., in the Asheville Citizen.
government seems imminent in Berlin
—not a revolution -but a party reversal.
“If only we had a man like Bismarck
in office, ’ ’ my chance acquaintances say,
“he’d settle things and settle them
promptly; and whether we understood
his decisions or not we’d follow him im
plicitly, no matter what it cost.” I
hear this said or sometjhing like it al
most everywhere I turn. And, by the
way, I never hear Bismarck’s name
without recalling the ideal and the
warning he gave toGermany fifty years
ago—“The unity, the development, and
the security of the Empire, but no
game-cock business,” with emphasis
on the last phrase.
Devil’s Dance of the Mark
But going back to the mark. When
I was in Germany fifteen years ago my
dollar bought four marks. It bought
sixteen thousand marks when I sailed
from New York ten weeks ago. Last
Friday it bought sixty-six thousand
marks. The day before it was worth
fifteen thousand marks less; the day
following it was fifteen thousand marks
more. Today it buys eighty-seven
thousand marksj^ Such is the dance
of the mark from day to day and
even from hour to hour. Like Peck
sniff’s pony its motion is mostly up and
down. If Germany were deliberately
bent upon destroying her upper and
middle classes, there could be no surer
way than the way of the falling mark.
It is just as effective as the more sav
age way of the Bolshevists in Russia.
It is the gentle art of murder, in De
Quincey’s phrase.
Its Tragic Results
For instance, I stood beside a frail
little woman in black at the coupon
window of the Rheinland Credit Bank
in Freiburg the other day. She was
drawing out the semi-annual interest
on her bonds. What she received was
thirty-eight thousand marks, which
meant in the old days some ten thousand
dollars in our money. It was worth
just sixty-one cents the day she cashed
her coupons. On this pittance she must
manage to live during the next six
months—that is to say on six pounds of
meal or even less. The tears streamed
down her cheeks as she counted her
money and silently turned away. The
eyes of the cashier had a hint of mist
in them. “No use,” he ^aid, “I see
this sort of thing every-day and all day
long. I've no feeling left. She’ll soon
stop coming like the rest. She’ll die
of this thing before her next interest
day.”
It is in this fashion that the falling
mark slays its thousands day by day.
They are holders of the fluid capital
accummulated in Germany in the long
centuries since the Hanse towns began
to create such wealth in Central Eu
rope. They are the owners of bank
account savings, stocks, bonds, notes,
mortgages and other forms of bankable
paper. What we call solvent credits in
North Carolina are not worth the pa
per they are written un in Germany.
The effect upon the moral standards
and sensibilities of city wage and sal
ary earners is deadly—these classes in
particular because they have no chance
like the farmers and the factory owners
to turn their marks into productive
properties. Why save a mark when it
will buy less tomorrow than today? The
only way to save it is to spend it, they
say. Seize upon the day, eat, drink,
and be merry, for tomorrow we die,
becomes a settled philosophy of life.
It is the pagan philosophy of Omar
and Horace. The sense of thrift is be
ing slowly but certainly destroyed, and
thrift is a foundational virtue, because
it means prudential foresight and hardy
self-denial. And more, it is thrift that
accumulates in one generation the so
cial surpluses that become the capital
wealth of succeeding generations. Cap
ital wealth is the material body of a
civilization, related to it very much as
a man’s body and blood are related to
his life. The destruction of the capital
wealth of a people is very like the
death of a man’s body. When the cap
ital wealth of Russia was destroyed,
the result was chaos, and Russian civi
lization will have to be built anew as
our mountaineers used to build their
houses—from the stump up, as they
say.
Spotlight on Stark Facts
The physical properties of a people
are one thing, their fluid capital wealth
is another. I trust my readers have
this distinction clearly in mind. An
inflated currency stimulates a stricken
people as oxygen stimulates a pneu
monia patient and it is the feverish
semblance of life that I am looking on in
Germany these days. Destroy the
physical properties of a locality by
earthquake, fire or flood, and they
can be rebuilt almost over night with a
sound currency and an unimpaired
credit. San Francisco is a perfect
illustration of this fact. But destroy
the capital wealth of a country, and
the untouched physical properties of it
fall into decay. Petrograd is a perfect
illustration of this contrasting-fact.
So much by way of throwing into the
spotlight Cuno’s statement that the
fluid capital wealth of Germany has
shrunk ninety-nine percent. If it be so,
and from what I see I can well believe
it, Germany is mortally stricken for all
the charming outward look of things.
With half of her national wealth lost
and wasted in war, with her fluid
capital reduced to one-percent, with a
debased currency steadily destroying
both her capital and the owners of it
and at the same time destroying the
very instincts that create such wealth,
Germany’s look ahead is desperate—so
desperate that the Reparations question
is now a question of life or death for
German civilization. The mere delay,
whatever the cause, has already de
stroyed more of her fluid capital than
all the gold marks she has ever offered
to France, more indeed than France
has ever demanded. Delay—delay alone
—is deadlier to Germany than all the
armies of France are. Only a little more
of it and the German mark must go the
way of the Austrian Krone and the
Russian rouble. In which event the day
of Germany’s recovery is moved for
ward many years or even many cen
turies. And the pity of it is that this
fundamental fact is lost in the wrath
of resentment and resistance—a wrath
perfectly natural but utterly fatal.
Germany’s Safeguard
When delay has wrought its deadliest
damage, then it will be the owners of
farm lands, water powers, mines, quar
ries and industrial plants—the owners
of the producing properties of Germany
—who must rebuild German civiliza
tion. And they must do it in the inescap
able ways of toil and self-denial that
made Germany great in the days that
followed Waterloo. These are the
people who today stand opposed to
revolutions and revolutionaries. So
because they menace the only form of
wealth that is left in Germany today.
And the opposition lies in deep-seated
self-protective instinct. There will be
no general social upheaval in Germany
as in Russia, or not if I have read these
people aright.
The German masses are inured to
painful toil and pinching self-denial—to
what they call Genugsamkeit. It is an
outstanding national characteristic.
They are good-humored, even-tem
pered, and patient almost beyond belief.
The peasant farmers like all untutored
people in every land are opposed to
taxes of any sort for any purpose what
soever, but they will pay taxes to the
last mark if only they can see a settled,
certain way ahead. But no matter
what taxes they pay into a Reparations
fund they will pay them with no
thought of revolution, or so in my opin
ion. And so for Bolshevism or anything
like it, their pitchforks are a ready
argument which they have the art and
the will to use.
So on, and much more to the same
effect.
I conclude by saying that I earnestly
hope the unwary reader of these notes
may not be as limp as my California
friend was when, I finished with him.
—E. C. Branson, Munich, June 13, 1923.
CHANGES IN FARM OCCUPANCY
In theU. S. in 1922
Based on the Report of the U. S. Department of Agriculture showing the ,
percent of all farms in each state which changed owners in 1922, and the per
cent of all tenants who changed farms.
For the United States 6 percent of all farms had achange of owners, and 27
percent of all farm tenants moved to new farms. In North Carolina 7 percent of
all farms changed owners and 28 percent of all tenants moved into different
homes. A total of around 270,000 farm people, mainly tenants, in North Carolina
each year play fruit basket. Farm tenancy is a constant menace to the safe,
sane, and stable agriculture found where farmers own their lands and homes.
S. H. Hobbs, Jr.
Department of Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina
Rank
States Farms with Farms with
new owners new tenants
1
percent
Maine 4
percent
3
21
percent
Washington 6
percen
18
2
Massachusetts
4
4
21
West Virginia
6
18
3
Connecticut
7
6
27
Utah
9
19
4
Rhode Island
4
7
28
Idaho
8
20
6
New Hampshire 4
11
28
Minnesota
6
20
6
New Jersey
7
11
28
South Dakota
6
20
7
California
6
12
28
Vermont
8
20
8
Pennsylvania
6
13
32
Indiana
6
. 21
9
Illinois
4
16
32
Iowa
5
21
9
Maryland
5
16
32
Virginia
7
21
9
Nebraska
4
15
36
Missouri
5
- 22
9
New Mexico
5
16
36
Florida
5
25
9
Wisconsin
6
16
87
Colorado
7
26
14
Arizona
5
16
38
Louisiana
6
27
14
Kansas
6
16
39
North Carolina
7
28
14
New York
6
16
40
Kentucky
7
31
14
Oregon
6
16
40
South Carolina
7
31
14
Wyoming
6
16,
40
Texas
4
31
19
Montana
9
17
43
Alabama
6 .
33
19
North Dakota
6
17
44
Arkansas
7
34
21
Delaware
6
18
44
Tennessee
8
' 34
21
Michigan
6
18
46
Mississippi
7
36
21
Nevada
2
18
47
Georgia
7
36
21
Ohio
18
48
Oklahoma
5
38
Rank
States Farms with Farms with
new owners new tenants