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.
OCTOBER 17,1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. IX, NO. 48
BiiUorial 3 >«rilt B. G. Branson. S. H. Hobba, Jr., L. R. Wiiaon, W. JCnight, D. D. Carroll, J, B.Ballitt, H. W. Odam.
Entered aa aecoad-claaa matter November 14, 1914, at the Poatoffice at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24. 1911
XIV-HUNNING AROUND DENMARK
I am beginning this letter in Odense,
propped up in bed at three in the morn
ing, working with a letter pad on my
knees, Mark Twain fashion. One of
the penalties I pay for modern discom
forts is having the honk of an infernal
automobile explode a bomb ip my brain
at some ghastly hour of the night, and
being unable to get to sleep again. It
is no new experience. I have had it in
Chapel Hill times without number. So
I feel about for my pencil and paper,
and go to work as usual, without wor
rying about sleep. It is a trick I
learned years ago—an idiosyn-crazy,
as Mr. Dooley properly pronounced it.
A Prophet's Home Fame
Odense is Hans Christian Andersen’s
home town. His humble birth plaqe is
only a little way down the street from
my hotel, but I |3ad great difficulty in
finding it and I stumbled on it at last
quite by accident. Not one of a gang
of youngsters half a block off gave any
signs of ever having heard the name of
Odense^s most famous son. I had the
same trouble in Derby, England, fif
teen years ago, trying to locate the
little pigeon-box of a house in which
Herbert Spencer was born. Not a po
liceman Iran across knew anything a-
bout it or had ever heard of Mr. Spen
cer. But such is fame!
The Hub of the Univer.se
The hub of the universe sticks visibly
out in the center of the city park of
Odense. It was the distinguishing fea
ture of Boston CommoDS in Oliver
Wendell Holmes’s day. But it has
been moved, or so I gathered yesterday
afternoon from an exuberant Dane
three miles out in the country at the
_Husmanfiskole. Which) means the
school of farm manager.'irnt and house
wifery for the sons and aaughters of
the little landers or small farmers of
Funen. “The island of Funen, ” said
he, “is the center of Denmark and
Odense is the center of Funen. You
needn't look any further for the center
of the universe. If you are in any
doubt about it, please look at our cows
and their butter fat records.”
I did. And furthermore I went
through the creamery, the bacon fac
tory, and the egg-packing plant, and
heard at length about the 110 steam
boats that carry the farm products of
Denmark into every large port of the
world. Every one of these huge enter
prises is organized, owned, and operat
ed by the farmers themselves or their
higHly salaried agents. And what
Odense is every other town in Den
mark is—a center of cooperative farm
business.
Culture and Cooperation
The Dane’s argument went without
contest. He is no uncommon figure in
Denmark, I may say in passing. He is
a farmer, a country school teacher,
botanist, a political economist of note,
an author, and a translator of Ameri
can books. Men of his type hold ex
actly half the portfolios in the King’s
cabinet. Whatever may be true of the
farmers and the country school teach
ers of other lands, they sit at the head
of the table in Denmark.
Culture and cooperation have made
these farmers rich, ^nd a prosperous
agriculture has dotted the map with
prosperous cities. To be sure of this
fact, you have only to move about
Denmark a little. Not only are the
Danish cities rich but they are modern
in the last degree, and beautiful every
one. I have found no lovelier city than
Odense, not even excepting Pasadena.
Comfortable Living
I am this minute quartered, for in
stance, in the beat hotel I have seen
this side of California—not the largest
or the most flamboyant, but the most
comfortable. Ten electric lights are
blazing in my bed room as I write. I
have a table light and a telephone
within easy reach at the head of my
bed. On my arrival I ran into the in
evitable cattle show, and the only room
not filled with farmers was the bridal
chamber in The Grand Hotel. The
landlord is charging me bridal chamber
prices and I am doing my best to sleep
in both the beds, I am only trying to
get my money’s worth, the same being
section one article one of the constitu
tion of every born American. And I
am succeeding very well, but for the
two fat feather beds- which on tho con
tinent here you are expected to sleep
under, not on. It is incredible, but the
Danes do it the year around, even in
the fag end of July. It must be so,
because there is no other bed cover in
the room. If I could get safely away
with one of these daintily draped feath
er bed covers, I’d take it home for L.
R. Wilson, and let him give bis electric
bed-warmers a rest in the Dog Days.
Spying Out the Land
My first month in Denmark is being
spent in spying out the land and taking
an intimate look at the things I have
been reading about and lecturing on
for many years. Two weeks were de
voted to Zeeland, the island on which
Copenhagen is situated, and to Falster,
Laaland,’ and Funen, which are the
other important islands of the compact
group in the Baltic. It is on these fer
tile islands that the town and country
life of Denmark is most intense and
most significant. I have'^lived day and
night in trains, steamboats, motor
cars, and hotels, taking such space and
such accommodations as the farmers
have left, for the farmers have pre
empted every thing in Denmark.
Farm-Owned Transportation
Travel is comfortable and compara
tively inexpensive. Indeed it is the
least expensive thing in Denmark. The
explanation lies in the fact that the
state owns the railroads and the steam
boats that bridge the water gaps in the
state system of transportation. But
the farmers own the state—lock, stock,
and barrel, and they run the railroads
in the interests of agriculture. The
freight and passenger rates are thare-
fore made as 6heap as it is humanly
possible to make them in Denmark.
For instance, it was a sixteen-hour trip
on fast trains from Copenhagen to Es-
berg and up the west coast to Viborg
in north Jutland, and my fares in the
best compartment coaches amounted to
only forty-nine kroner, which is $8.62
in our money. A sixteen-hour day-
coach trip from Greensboro to New
York, as I remember it, costs around
$17.00. If I had traveled third class,
as most Danes travel, the fares would
have been less than $6.00. The short-
haul freight rates show the same con
trasts. All of which benefits the farm
ers and the country regions, and at the
same time the merchants, the manufac
turers, and the cities of Denmark in
general. Wiien I suggested that the
roads were being run at a loss, my
traveling companion, a leathergoods
manufacturer in Odense, replied: “No
body is bothering about a deficit in the
state railway account. The taxpayers
settle it, the burden falls on everybody,
and anyway it is too small to talk a-
bout. The state has re-arranged the
rates so as to wipe out the insignificant
losses and we shall have no deficits
hereafter. We are satisfied to take
pot-luck with the farmers. They are
making money hand over fist and so are
we. So what’s the difference?”
COOPERATION
Co-operative cotton marketing is
an indictment of the waste and
sharp practice of the present system.
We boast the efficiency of American
commerce, and it is efficient in many
respects, but it fails miserably in
the supreme test, which is the total
cost of getting the commodity from
the producer to the consumer. The
American farmer is the best farmer
in the worldin that he produces more
per man, but he receives less of the
consumer’s dollar than the farmer
in any other enlightened country.
That is the *_damning charge which
commerce must meet. The farmer
is in revolt. He may be defeated in
this attempt; he may fail by his
own blundering, but he will win
ultimately by one means or another.
They are blind who do not see in the
present movement a desperate reso
lution of those who feed and clothe
the world to receive a more equit
able share of the world’s income
and accumulation. Heretofore the
American farmer has been conserv
ative; his cooperative 'undertakings
for self help and self protection are
conservative. Let commerce be
careful not to make him radical.—
Commerce and Finance.
in the land, said he. Flanders proves
it. Every inch of it was once a sand
bed, and that was not so many centur
ies ago. Today it is the garden spot of
Belgium. And west Jutland proves it
against the heavy odds of barren sand
plains, and peat bogs that defy drainage
because they are the remains of lakes in
the pocke'ts of a glaciated area. The
soils of Denmark are generally poor or
indifferently good even in the most fav
ored regions for mainly they are beds
of moraine pebbles, sands, and clays in
various mixtures. The Danes have had
to build their soils everywhere. But
while they have been building their
soils they have been building their own
big market businesses and credit insti
tutions.
Farmers Good Business Men
The Danes are not the best farmers
I have seen, but they are far and away
the best business men among all the
farmers of the world. “They are the
only farmers on earth”, says Jacob E.
Lange, “who have proved that they
can stand on th^r own feet alone and
unaided and go forward on their own
initiative without outside help, for
they won their successes long before
the state came to their aid with rail
roads and loans to landless farmers.”
I shall be looking into the eastern
farm belt of Jutland before I get back
to my headquarters in Copenhagen.
The letters that follow will detail the
farm prosperity of the Danes, the ways
and means of it, and the effects of it
upon city prosperity, national life, and
legislation.—E. C. Branson, Viborg,
July 26, 1923.
A Port City •
I am now exploring Jutland, the pen
insular mainland and larger portion of
Denmark. My trip this week is taking
me from Fredericia on the east coast
straight west'to Esberg the new port
city built on the sandbars of the North
Sea. Its harbor was digged out of an
inlet that offered more difficulties and
fewer natural advantages than Beau
fort enjoys. Esberg is some twenty
years old and already has a population
of 20,000. It is the terminus for fast
freights from all parts east and the
point of steamboat departure-for Eng
land and the rest of the world. The
boats on every trip go loaded to the
gunwales with the bacon, butter and
eggs of the Danish farmers. I am
proudly informed that Esberg is the
Chicago of Denmark. A similar rapid
transit freight and passenger service
has been established from Copenhagen
through Gedser into Germany. The
Danes long ago learned the trick of
running solid trains upon boats and fer
rying them across twenty-six miles of
sea. All these enterprises have been
developed in recent years to promote a
farm business that has risen into large
commercial proportions. The export
able farm -surpluses last year were
$260,000,000 reckoned in our money.
And mind you, they are enterprises on
part of a state with just about the
population and less than one-fourth the
size of North Carolina.
Realization of a Dream
Yesterday I spent nine hours in slow
trains from Esberg north through the
low-lying sandbars of the west coast
and on across the sand hills and heath
lands to Viborg, a picturesque little
city in the middle north. It is the cen
ter of a region that Steen Blicher made
famous in poetry, and that Dalgas a
social-minded army officer began to re
claim fifty years ago. I traveled in
slow trains, because I wanted a good
look at exactly such a country as you
see on a trip from Wilmington to Aber
deen and Southern Pines. And what I
saw along the way completely reversed
my notions of west Jutland. There
are sand bars, sand dunes, marshes and
heath lands, to be sure, but it is a re
gion in process of rapid reduction to
agricultural uses, the shifting sands
and soils set the grasses and pines im
ported to reinforce the native ling in
the battle against the winds, grass cov
ered dykes as wind-breaks, newly for
ested waste lands planted and carefully
cultivated to the same end, cattle,
dairy cows and horses everywhere in
the fields, farm buildings in squares
surrounded by trees to shelter them a-
gainst the fierce winter winds of this
high latitude. They are the homes of'
prosperous, big-scale, livestock farm
ers, for here as everywhere else in
Denmark the basis of a safely balanced
agriculture is livestock, beef cattle,
pigs and dairy cows in’ particular. I
say they are prosperous farmers, be
cause of the surprising number of farm
establishments I feee in this region of
marginal lands, the size of these estab
lishments, the gleaming white of fresh
ly whitewashed homes and barns, the
shinning red of the new tile roofs, the
new farms recently brought under cul
tivation, and the brand new railway
towns, every one of them a center for
cooperative farm enterprises, cream
eries and bacon factories mainly. It is
a realization in Denmark of just such a
dream as Governor Morrison has for
Tidewater Carolina.
Man Vs Nature
I am coming to believe that the
marginal land that Ricardo figured into
his theories of rent is land that does
not exist anywhere in Christendom.
There are marginal men but no margi
nal lands, was Sidney Lanier’s notion.
There’s more in the man than there is
EXTENSION CLASSES
As part of its extension service, the
University of North Carolina will con
duct at certain centers throughout the
State extension classes. These classes
will be taught by regular members of
the University faculty, and the work
offered in these classes will correspond
in every particular, as to class require
ments and credits, with that given in
similar courses at the University. Uni
versity credit may be secured upon
satisfactory completion of an extenMon
class by those who meet the entrance
and other requirements of the Univer
sity. Extension classes will not con
flict with, or duplicate, the work offer
ed in local high schools through either
day or evening classes; the work is dis
tinctly of a college or university grade.
The Purpose
Extension classes are offered to serve
the needs of ambitious men and women
of any age or training who desire the
advantages of University training but
who cannot attend a university or col
lege. Extension classes afford a me^s
by which the University can carry the
advantages of University training to
the people of the State; they make the
State the campus of the University.
Courses of both a vocational arid cul
tural nature will be offered.
Who Are Eligible
Any man or woman over twenty
years of age may enroll in any exten
sion class, unless the instructor of the
class has sufficient reason to believe
that the student cannot profit by the
course. In certain instances, where
the student in question is a graduate
of a high school, for example, persons
under twenty years of age may be per
mitted to enroll. The best work can
be done, however, when students more
nearly alike in training, ability and in
terest comprise a class group. This
fact needs to be fully realized by local
people interested in working up ah en
rollment for any prospective class.
Extension Centers
Any city or community in the Slate
in which the University conducts ex
tension classes, is called an extension
center. Many different courses may be
offered in a single extension center.
Due to the fact that most of the ex
tension classes for the present will
have to be taught by members of the
University faculty who have teaching
schedules at the University, most of
the Extension centers for the first year
or two will have to be near Chapel Hill.
Full-time extension teachers have been
added to the faculty of some depart
ments at the University, however, and
this makes possible the organization of
extension ^centers anywhere in the
State.
Courses Offered
It is not practicable to offer through
extension classes some courses now be
ing given at the University. In gen
eral, however, wjjenever the nature of
3 course now being offered at the Uni
versity is such that this course may be
offered through extension centers, and
when as many as fifteen students in
any extension center desire the course,
the department of extension teaching,
by conferring with the proper depart
ment at the University, will try to pro
vide an instructor. The number of ex
tension courses which can be offered
will be determined by the resources
which the University has at its com
mand. At present facilities are such
that extension classes in the following
subjects are offered: EDUCATION,
PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, RU
RAL SOCIAL ECONOMICS, AC
COUNTING, BANKING. ADVER
TISING, SALESMANSHIP, ECO
NOMICS, ENGLISH and MUSIC.
Other subjects may be added to this
list. The first communities to secure
the necessary enrollment for courses in
these subjects will be the first to' be
provided with instructors.
Term and Fees
The extension class teaching year
will be divided into two terms of six
teen or more weeks each. The first
term of each year begins the first of
October and ends with the month of
January; the second term commences
February 1 and ends in May.
A registration fee of $10 will be
charged each student for each course
in which he enrolls in any extension
term. This fee goes to pay the travel
and subsistence expenses of the in
structor.
Class Meeting
Each class will meet at least once a
week in some satisfactory building con
venient to the students, and at some
hour convenient to both students and
instructor. Generally these classes '
will be held in the evenings commenc
ing about seven-thirty. Each meeting,
unless otherwise arranged in cases of,
non-credit courses, will be for an hour
and forty-five minute period. There
will be sixteen such meetings—gener
ally one meeting each week until the
course is completed.
For further information, address;
The Director of Extension Teaching,
Chapel Hill, N. C.
OUR CHEMICAL INDUSTRY
Our Leather Tanneries
All North Carolina wears shoes or
uses leather in some form or other.
Hides are one thing, usable leather
goods are another. A pjrocess known
as tanning converts hide material into
leather. Dehaired and defleshed hides are
treated with tannic substances obtain
ed by extraction of the oak, chestnut
or hemlock bark, which substances
cau^ the formation of a very tough,
stable compound with the fibrous mat
ter of the hide. This tanning action
ean be produced much more cleanly,
more uniformly and exactly by the ap
plication of the chrome (chemical) tan
treatment. The tanneries constitute
an important industry in civilization.
We are interested in knowing^the posi
tion which this industry occupies in the
industrial life of our state, and how
much of the leather goods we use
comes from within our boundaries.
The first tannery to be incorporated
in North Carolina was that of the Kist-
ler Lesh Company in Morganton in
1891. Before 1900 there were four
plants in aeration. At present there
are twelve plants tanning leather or
producing the extracts for tanning
purposes. Three plants are making
extracts alone, while some of the tan
neries make their own tanning materi
al. The entire tanning industry invol
ves a capital investment of $8,300,000,
and a plant valuation of $6,600,000.
The value of the annual output is about
$10,650,000. Thirteen hundred men
employed in this industry receive an
annual wage of $1,300,000. Four of
the plants have a capital investment
and annual production of over $1,000,-
000 each. These latter plants are lo
cated at Andrews, Sylvia, Rosman
and North Wilkesboro.
Since there is a constantly growing
demand for leather products and the
raw material is lagging behind the de
mand, leather must be made better
and produced more cheaply. This can
come about only by having men in
charge who understand the application
of scientific principles to the industry.
— S. C. Smith, Division of Industrial
Chemistry, Department of Chemistry,
University of North Carolina.