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 19,1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. IX, NO. 44
Eaitoriat Bi>ardi E. C. Bransort. S. H, Hobba, Jr.. L. R. Wilson, E. W. Kniyht, D. D. Carroll, J. B. Bullitt. H. W. Odum.
Entered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the Postoffice at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24, 1911
-INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY IN SOUTH GERMANY
My business in'JJEurope this year is
not with the great cities and the great
industrial areas, but with the country-
end of things on this side of the ocean
—in particular with country community
life and cooperative farm enterprise.
Farm village life and farm credit unions
have kept ray mind busy in Baden,
Wurttemberg and Bavaria these last
ten weeks. Nevertheless I should be
stupid not to see the new factories of
every sort and size, the old plants new
ly enlarged, the new factory suburbs,
the brand new factory communities, the
new freight and passenger stations, the
new trackage in the station yards, the
double tracking of main lines, the new
lines finished or under construction, and
most wonderful of all, the new hydro
electric plants little and big, some of
them enormous, in the hill country of
South Germany.
I rub my eyes in amazement and ask
myself how these things can be in
a country whose currency is almost
worthless, whose fluid capital is ex
hausted, and whose public credit is near
ly nothing at home or abroad. It is a
staggering paradox and of course my
mind has puzzled at it. In explana
tion I may say that two things are fairly
clear.
The Will-to-Worh
1. First the will-to-work of the Ger
man masses. In no other land or coun
try have I ever seen manual laborers
work as these people work. I have
yet to see one of them dawdle at his
job or trifle with his task. Nobody
loafs in the country regions or in the
cities of Germany. Everybody works,
men, women, and children, even the old
men and women, many of them too old
' and feeble to be taxed by any sort of
physical exertion. The German mass
es have always worked hard. They
have been bred to toil through long
centuries. But during the war and
since, the women, the children, and the
old people have worked as never before.
They work in the fields at farm tasks
from daylight to dark. In the cities
their particular job since the war is
the delivery of parcels. They are the
substitutes for delivery wagons and
motor trucks. From my corner seat
in the central park of a nearby city I
watch these old men and women filing
by with packages on their heads, or
stacked high in wicker baskets strapped
to their backs, or piled in little wagons
pulled and pushed along by old couples,
or a group of women and children.
The farmers with their older sons and
daughters work in the factories of the
village or nearby villages, or so they
are doing more and more in recent
years, because they get a larger return
from factory labor than from farm work,
Which leaves the old folks, the mothers
and the children to keep the farms gO’
ing at full productive capacity. The
farmers are seemingly satisfied with a
debased currency. They get more
marks for their factory hours on the
one hand, and on the other more marks
for their farm products. They know lit
tle and care less about foreign exchange
value of marks. When the mark fell the
other day to 181,000 to the dollar, I
travelled on a 7:27 morning train crowd
ed with home-owning farmers going to
the factories along the line. We'll
get more for our fruits now and we’ll
ask more for our work in the factories,
they said. It was all they said about
the headline in the morning papers
and apparently all they cared.
Country Prosperity
The country people of Germany have
not been impoverished by the war. On
the contrary, they have been enriched
beyond their wildest dreams, and their
riches are not hoarded marks but sub
stances of value in the production of
other values—lands, work-animals, farm
tools and the like. And mind you,
these factory workers are home-own
ing farmers all over rural Germany.
They are a cross-section of three-fifths
of all the German people.
The landless salary earners in the
large cities and the impoverished secur
ity-owners everywhere also have the
will-to-work, they must work if they
would live, no matter how the mark is
quoted in the daily exchange list.
But as a matter of fact the wage-
earners in the factory centers are far
ing better these days than ever before
in all their lives. Factory wages have
so far risen faster than the cost of
living. The result is that the industri
al wage-earners in the cities are living
better and spending more than ever
for pleasure in the simple ways of Ger
many. I hear these declarations many
times a day, and my observation fully
confirms their truth.
So long as the toilers of Germany
are willing to work and to accept paper
marks for their work, factories can of
course be built and operated, new rail
way lines laid down, and new hydro
electric plants established.
Who the Poor are
And speaking of poverty, let me say
that the poor in Germany are the civil
servants, the pensionnaires, the in
heritors of security wealth, and the
marginal people in general—the old
and infirm, the weaklings in body and
brain, and other defective and de
pendent classes. The falling mark
has reduced life to its lowest terms
for them, and the result is poverty
of a sort that Germany knew al
most nothing about before the Great
War. Berlin and the Ruhr are full of
such poverty. But Berlin is not Ger
many and the Ruhr is only a part of
her great industrial system—an essen
tial part of course, but after all only i
part. The great masses of factory work
ers do not live in the Ruhr valley and
the great cities, they live in the country
regions in the farm villages, they are
home-owners in the main, and it is silly
to say that they are poverty-stricken.
On the contrary they are rich as they
count riches, and they are very well
satisfied with things as they are. I am
surer of nothing than I am of this.
Results of Cheap Money
And I am sure of another thing,
namely, that the soul of Germany can
not be sensed in Berlin. Poverty
flaunts itself in the great cities and the
great factory areas, but in the country
regions it can hardly be discovered with
a microscope. Farm villages pepper
the map of Germany as pepper grains
lie on one’s soup. In these little farm
and factory centers the farmers are rich
and the factory owners are rich. In
the cities of every size the merchants
are prodigiously busy, and it is not for
nothing that the factories are operating
at full speed and that the shop windows
and shelves are crowded with goods
amazing in quantity, bewildering in
variety, and bewitching to the eyes of
buyers. The shopkeepers were busy
in April and May before the tourist
season opened and they are busy today
with almost no tourists in southern^
Germany. It is the German people
who are buying the rich goods of the
stores. Not a few but many people
have money in Germany and they are
spending it freely in the shops. What
I see is merely what can be seen in
any land in any period of abundant
cheap money.
Factory Capital
2. So much for the will-to-work
of the German classes and their eco
nomic-status. Let us now consider the
part that factory enterprisers have
played in the marvelous industrial ex
pansion of recent years. Where did
they get the capital to build and oper
ate the new establishments I see on
every hand? The explanation is simple.
During the war and since, they sold
billions of construction bonds, stocks,
certificates of indebtedness and the like.
Eager investors in Germany and abroad,
especially German-Americans in the
United States, bought them as fast as
the printing presses could turn them
off. Later on these factory owners de
manded and secured from the Reichstag
the right to pay in paper marks the
interest on gold-bearing bonds, and to
redeem these bonds at maturity with
the same cheap money. Not all the
factory enterprisers are guilty but
many or most of them are. There are
still left some captains of industry
in whom the people have faith and
these enterprisers are still receiving
from the public the billions of marks
INCOME TAXES
North Carolina ranks high in total
taxes paid annually into the federal
treasury. In 1923 she paid more than
140 million dollars'* into the federal
treasury and only four states exceeded
that amount. They were Illinois, Mich
igan, New York, and Pennsylvania.
But the bulk of our federal tax is
paid by the tobacco concerns, six-sev
enths of the total in ordinary years.
The tax in reality is paid by the tobac
co consumers of the nation. In the
payment of income and profit taxes we
take low rank when the states are
grouped on a comparable basis.
In 1921 out of every 1,000 inhabitants
in the state 17.2 filed income tax re
turns and on this basis only two states
were below us.
The table presented elsewhere in
this issue of the News Letter shows
how the counties of the state rank in
the number of people per 1,00£ inhabi
tants who pay income taxes. New
Hanover ranks first in the state. In
that county 97 of every 1,000 inhabi
tants filed returns in 1921. In Caswell
county only 15 returns were made, or
less than one return for every 1,000 in
habitants in the county.
City People Pay
A study of the table reveals clearly
the fact that income and profit taxes
are paid by urban people. New Han
over has the largest urban population
ratio in the state and ranks first. All
of the counties which rank high have
large towns and a fairly high urban
population ratio. On the other hand
the counties that rank below the state
average are invariably agricultural
counties, and the higher the rural ratio
the,lower the rank, with minor excep
tions. Sampson, for instance, is one
of the big agricultural counties of the
state, and only 90 people in Sampson
filed income tax returns. Probably the
bulk of these returns were made by
the professional men of the county.
That city people pay the bulk of fed
eral income taxes can be shown by a
few typical illustrations. Guilford
county reported 3,686 returns and 3,440
came from Greensboro and High Point.
In Forsyth county 3,268 returns were
made and 3,046 came fror^ Winston-
Salem. In Pasquotank county 466 peo
ple filed returns, of which 460 were re
ported by residents of Elizabeth City.
Mecklenburg county alone filed more
income tax returns than the last 68
counties combined listed in the accom
panying table.
Very few farms in North Carolina
produce a net income of taxable size.
Naturally it is harder to reach farmers
with this type of tax, but even so,
after proper deductions are written off
the farm that could justly be taxed
would be exceptional. The tax that
the farmer pays is usually local or
county, and goes to educate his chil
dren, to pay for the roads over which
he rides, and for other direct local ben
efits. The farmers we have seen lately
are not satisfied with the prices paid
for farm produce, but they do feel
that they are getting value received
for taxes paid. They are not losing
sleep over a slight deficit in the state
treasury for the simple reason that
they are satisfied the money has been
spent wisely and economically.
Greensboro First
Of every 1000 inhabitants in Greens
boro 140 filed income tax returns in
1921, and she led the cities and towns
of the state. This seems to show that
Greensboro affords opportunities for a
large number of people. The following
table ranks the towns of the state
which lead in reporting net incomes
for federal taxation.
Rank City Rate per
1000 Inhabs.
1 Greensboro 140
2 Rocky Mount 108
3 Charlotte 100
4 Raleigh 96
6 Asheville 91
6 Wilmington 87
7 Henderson 78
8 Durham 09
9 Fayetteville 68
10 Salisbury 67
10 Wilson 67
12 Burlington 63
12 Winston-Salem 63
14 Greenville 61
15 Hickory 67
to-work of the masses is broken
down by an unredeemable currency, then
will come the inevitable collapse.
Why shouldn’t we pay interest and
dividends in paper marks? Why should
n't we redeem our gold bonds with
paper marks? they asked. It is what
the government itself is doing with
its imperial war bonds, and why should
n’t we be allowed to do the same thing,
they said. The Reichstag yielded.
No party resisted. There was nothing
but paper marks with which to settle
either public or private security-debts,
or so the Reichstag said.
A Karl Marxian View
The situation was explained to me on
the train last week by a Karl Marxian
socialist, who by the way learned his
English in New York. “First we un
loaded the German war debt on the
German people at home and abroad,’’
said he. “We don’t mind having the
masses mad with the government.
Next we unloaded the factory debts on
the holders of stocks and bonds, and
gave these properties to a handful of
mine and factory owners. We don’t
mind having the masses mad with the
mine and factory owners. When the
masses are mad enough with the gov
ernment that authorized these spolia
tions, and with the capitalists who
planned these wholesale robberies, then
they will be mad enough, we hope, to
vote with us to overturn the German
Republic, take over these capitalistic
properties, and nationalize the wealth
of Germany. The only thing in the
Iway, ” said he, “is the little farmers
' and the big estate owners. It isn’t
' easy to nationalize land in a country of
home-owning farmers. We couldn’t do
it in Russia, and we can’t do it in Ger
many, unless we can make the farmers
mad enough with Berlin and the bloated
factory millionaires. Already they have
voted with us for an eight-hour work
day, because it gives them more time
to work on their farms before and after
factory hours. At present we’ve got
the clericals and the peasant farmers
bunched with the socialists against the
junkers and the capitalists, and if we
play the game properly Germany will
soon be just such a state as Karl Marx
planned.” All this with a dreamy, far
away look in a pair of steady blue
eyes.
An Effective BulwarK
Simple, isn’t it? But dreamer as he
is, he saw the obstacle in the way.
To say it in a word, the recent in
dustrial expansion in Germany has been
based (1) on the toil of sweaty workers
willing to work and so far willing to
work for the vast volumes of cheap
money they receive as wages, (2) on
the fact that the paper mark has still a
purchasing power in trade circles at
home—trade circles that are essentially
schieba in character, schieba being
the German word to name the
way everybody in a community gets
rich by taking in everybody else’a
washing, and (3) on the destruction of
security wealth, fluid capital, and cur
rency values, all of which are but
phases of the way in which the Ger
man masses have had their pockets
picked while fascinated by a national
Punch and Judy Show.
One thing that became all the clearer
to me in the talk of my voluble chance
acquaintance on the train was the con
viction that I have long held as a fun
damental belief, namely that t^e day is
approaching, in every land, when the
only effective bulwark against destruc
tive socialism will be the land-owning
farmers in the country regions and the
home-owning wage and smary earners
in the cities and industrial centers.
Civilization is salted unto salvation
by the home-owning, home-loving,
home-defending instincts.—E. C. Bran
son, Berlin, July 2, 1923.
INCOME TAX RETURNS
In North Carolina in 1921
Based on the 1921 Report of the Treasury Department and the 1920 Census
of Population, covering the number of people in each county making income
tax returns, divided by the population.
In New Hanover county 97 out of every 1,000 inhabitants filed federal in
come tax returns. In Caswell county only 16 people made returns, or less than
one for each 1,000 inhabitants. State average, 17.2 per 1,000 inhabitants filed
returns, and our rank in the United States was forty-sixth.
W. F. Lovin, Scotland County, and R. G. Little, Pitt County
Department of Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina
that the toilers are still willing to take
for building and operating new indus
trial plants. When the faith of the
public is finally exhausted and the will-
Rank County Returns per
1000 Inhabs.
1 New Hanover 97.0
2 Mecklenburg 62.2
3 Buncombe 48.6
4 Guilford 46.4
6 Edgecombe 46.3
6 Forsyth 42.1
7 Durham 40.1
8 Wake 33.3
9 Rowan 32.2
10 Pasquotank 26.7
11 Richmond 24.0
12 Wilson 22.1
13 Cumberland 20.6
14 Craven 20.4
16 Vance 19.7
16 Lenoir 17.9
17. Alamance 17.6
18 Gaston 16.8
19 Halifax 15.3
20 Rockingham 16.1
20 Wayne 15.1
22 Chowan 16.0
23 Moore 14.4
24 Lee 14.1
26 Beaufort 13.8
26 Henderson 13.7
27 Iredell 13.6
28 Cabarrus 13.3
29 Pitt 13.1
30 Catawba 13.0
31 Haywood 12,6
32 Davidson 12.0
33 Scotland 11.2
34 McDowell 10.4
36 Transylvania .... 10.2
36 Crange 10.1
37 Carterel;, 10.0
38 Union 9.2
39 Granville 9.1
40 ■ Surry 8.9
41 Warren 8.8
42 Stanly 8.7
43 Robeson 8.3
44 Lincoln 8.1
44 Burke 8.1
46 Caldwell 8.0
47 Cleveland 7.8
48 • Swain 7.5
49 Rutherford 7.0
60 Polk 6.7
Rank
51
62
63
64
64
54
67
68
69
60
61
62
62
64
66
66
67
68
68
68
71
71
71
74
76
76
77
77
79
79
81 y
81
81
84
85
86
87
90
90
90
93
93
96
90
97
98
98
100
County Returns per
1000 Inhabs.
Person 6.6
Martin 6.4
Perquimans 6.2
Johnston 6.1
Anson 6,1
Columbus 6.1
Montgomery 6.8
Duplin 6.7
Harnett 6.4
Randolph 6.3
Washington 6.2
Cherokee 4.9
Wilkes 4.9
Davie 4.7
Alexander 4.0
Brunswick 4.0
Mitchell 3.9
Northampton 3.7
Jackson 3.7
Franklin 3.7
Hoke 3.4
Currituck 3.4
Chatham 3.4
Tyrrell 3.1
Hertford 3.0
Bladen 3.0
Dare 2.9
Avery 2.9
Camden 2.7
Macon 2.7
Nash 2.6
Stokes 2.6
Yancey 2,6
Bertie 2.6
Sampson ’ 2.4
Madison 2.4
Hyde 2.3
Pamlico 2.2
Greene 2.1
Cnslow 2.0
Pender 2.0
Graham 2.0
Gates 1.8
Watauga 1.8
Alleghany 1.3
Yadkin 1.2
Ashe 1.1
Jones 1.0
Clay 1.0
Caswell..., S