North Carolina Newspapers

The aews in this publi cation is released for the press on receipt. THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA a I Published Weeldy by tht University of Nortli Caro lina for the University Ex tension Division. MARCH 5.1924 CHAPEL HILL, N. C. THE UNITEESITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS VOL. X, NO. 16 BiitoriKl Boardi S. C. Br'jnaon, S. 3. Hobbs, Jr., L. R. Wilaon, B. W. Kniifht, D. D. Cairoll, J. B. Bollitt, H. W. Odum. Entored aa sfteond-elasa matter November 14, 1914, atthoPjStofHceatChapoUlH^ N. C.. under the act ef August ?.4. 1913 SCHOOL EXFENDITUIES !M U. S. TSIUMPSANT DEMOCRACY North Carolina, A Story of Trium phant Democracy, is the title of an .ad dress recently made in Atlanta by John Sprunt Hill of Durham. It is by far the best and most complete story yet told of the rise of North Catoiina into the position of leadership m tue South. The address is now in print and per haps you can secure a copy from Mr. Hill. The address is both information al and inspirational and it should be read by every citizen of the state. Mr. Hill treats in turn the develop ment of public education, public health work, industries, roads, agriculture, and closes by paying tribute to the great leaders who have labored for the welfare of the state. Good Roads Speaking on the topic of roads^- Mr. Hill says in part as follows: The state road bill providing for the construction and maintenance of a State System of hard surface and oth er dependable roads, connecting county seata and other principal towns of every county in the state, and provid ing- for a bond issue for road construc tion amounting to $50,000,000, quickly became a law of the state, by the over whelming majority of 101 to 9 in the House and 39 to 10 in the Senate. A few days before the passage of the State Road Law a joint public session of the Committee on Roads of the Sen ate and House was held in Raleigh and thousands of business men from all parts of the state gathered there clam oring to be heard in favor of the new Road Bill. I shall never forget the J wonderful outburst of feeling as repre sentatives of one by one of the great rich counties of the central part of the state cheerfully walked up to the altar of their country and freely laid on it millions of dollars already expended in hard surfacing their roads, and joined hands with their poorer brethren in the mountain sections of the West and in the waterbound sections of the East, and took their places in the line ‘ ‘all for one and one for all,” every section and every county to share on the same basis in the allotment of funds under the proposed bond issue for building roads. The passage of the R6^ad Bill was not only a great physical accom plishment but it was a great spiritual uplift that touched the minds and hearts of the people of the whole state. Until some of the rich cities to the North of us and to the West of us em ulate the self-sacrifice and the patriot ism of the rich cities of North Caro lina by rising to the occasion and giv ing up some of their ancient rights and and special taxing privileges, there is not much chance of any road legisla tion that will lift out of the mud their hosts of poorer brethren in the coun try districts. How Financed The bulk of the funds for construct ing the System of State roads comes from bond issues. Federal Aid funds are allotted just as funds from road bonds.. There is no advalorem state tax in North Carolina levied for roads or for any other purpose. The miuntenance of these state roads, and the payment of interest on all road bonds, and the retirement of the serial road bonds falling due each year is guaranteed by funds received by the state from license taxes on automo biles and from a three-cents tax on gasoline. On January 1st, 1924, there were registered in North Carolina 230- 000 passenger automobiles and 23,000 trucks. The automobile license fees and the three-cents gasoline tax brought into the State Treasury ap proximately $7,000,000 during the year 1923, an amount now amply sufficient to maintain the State Highway System, to pay interest on the bonded indebted ness for highway construction, and to retire all serial bonds in less than forty years. In 1919 when the State High way Commission was ^formed, there were in the state 210 miles of improved roads. At the end of 1923 the state bad completed 1,933 additional miles of I' • 'uiproved roads and had under con- uclion 1,425 miles to be completed in In the year 1923 it completed 1,044 miles of road at a cost of $21,- 840,000. Of this mileage, 544 miles were of the paved type and 600 miles were of the progressive types using gravel, top soil or sand clay as tempo rary surfacing material. Projects under construction, but net completed in 1923, consist of 1,022 luiks of road of which 761 miles are of hard f?urface pavement and 861 miles are of progressive road types. The contract prices on uncom pleted roads amount to $28,918,000. It is contemplated that during the year 1924 we will let additional contracts for approximately 500 miles of pavement and 800 miles of progressive road types estimated-to cost around $18, 000,000. Savings on gasoline alone will more than pay the interest on money bor rowed by North Carolina for building roads. In 1920 there were consumed in the state 73,997,832 gallons of gas and there were 142,284 cars, or each car burned 520 gallons of gasoline. In 1923 there were consumed in the state 103,123,000 gallons of gas by 247,300 cars, or each car consumed 446 gallons of gas, hence, there was a saving in 1923 over 1920 of 74 gallons of gasoline per car. This multiplied by 247,300 cars, and gasoline estimated’at 26c per gallon, will make a yearly saving to the people in North Carolina of $4,677, 000 in gasoline used. MARKETING TOBACCO More than a million pounds of tobac co a day have poured into the co-opera tive warehouses in Virginia and North Carolina during the past week, bring ing total deliveries of the organized growers to well over 150,000,000 pounds of tobacco from the 1923 crop to date, according to today’s announcement of the warehouse department of the to bacco association. Fully 75,000,00,0 pounds of the Old Belt bright tobacco have now reached the pool and 16,000,000 pounds of dark fired and Virginia sun cured-tobacco have been delivered. The Virginia co ops are delivering 66 per cent of the entire dark crop to association houses, Members of the association at sev eral points have recently reported that the three payments made on their 1922 crop brought theirj average • to over 40 cents a pound. Although such cases are comparatively rare' for the crop of 1922, thej increased cash ad vances being paid by the association oa the present crop have greatly strength ened the faith of the Old Belt growers in co-operative marketing. One of the high advancesjjpaid for deliveries last week was that received by Eli Nelson of Walnut Cove, whose load of 2,092 pounds of tobacco brought him a first cash advance of $496.23. A- mong the hundreds of new members who have signed up with the associa tion this month, W. R. Waggoner of Walnut Cove has .becomeHone of the staunchest co-ops, because for the four grades of tobacco for^which he was of fered on the auction ^market $12.75, $12, $10, and $8, he received $16, $16, $12, and $8, respectively, at the as sociation receiving point, according to the co-operative manager.—Greensboro News. BUNCOMBE COUNTY Every citizen of Buncombe .county is indebted to the Buncombe County Club of the University of North Caro lina for the laboratory study of this county just off the press under the title ‘‘Buncombe County: Economic: and So cial.” It is the work of five Buncombe county students at the University—A. M. Moser, F. J. Herron, P. S. Ran dolph, J. C. Cheesborough, 1. E. Monk; and in recognition of the value of the studies presented and their bear ing on the future development of the county’s life in every direction, the Central Bank and Trust Company has generously borne the expense of publi cation; The subjects of the 12 articles in the booklet are: A Brief History oflBun- combe County, Natural Resources, In- duUries of Buncombe County, Facts About the Folks of Buncombe County, Wealth and Taxation, Farm Conditions and Practices in Buncombe County, Rural Schools of Buncombe, Home- EBUCATION ^ DEMOCRACY The chief business of democracy is education: the" chief business of education is democracy. The school is the training place for preserving this. The only way our common wealth can outlast the tests put to it depends on the lives of the boys and girls now in the hands of the public school teachers. Youths with a national bias rather than with a bent for books, service rather than scholarship, a great education of purpose rather than a selfish ambi tion merely to get ahe^ in the world, are what the country has the right to demand of its schools. Jef ferson had in his drawer the consti tution of many democracies that had failed. Yet he had faith to try a new one. His proposal for uni versal education as a safeguard of democracy was accompanied by a statement of purpose partidUlarly essential now: ‘‘to teach men what is going on in the world and to lead each to desire to make his part of it go on right.’’ — Newton D. Baker. Raised Food and the Local Market Problem, Livestock and Fruits, Co-op erative Marketing, Things to Be Proud of in Buncombe, Buncombe’s^Problems and Their Solution. Each study is readable, stripped bare of ^excess ver biage, packed full of facts and pervad ed with enthusiasm and faith in the future of a spiritually jjfiner and more materially splendid Buncombe county. No one can read this study of Bun combe county, in its social2-’and eco nomic aspects, without finding informa tion needed by every one who desires to be well informed and with(ut receiv ing inspiration to take some part in the building up here of a finer type of life in all the ways by which men and wom en rise from good standards to stand ards higher.—Asheville Citizen, Feb. il, i924. Free copies of Buncombe County: Economic and Social, can be secured by applying to the Central Bank and Trust Company, Asheville, N.'-C., or to the Department of Rural Social Economics, University of North Caro lina, Chapel Hill. SCHOOL EXPENDITURES Elsewhere in this issue will be found a table which shows the total school ex penditures for all purposes in each state for the school year 1921-22, per inhabitant. The table is based on in formation secured from the office of the superintendents of public instruction of the respective states. The table in cludes the total amount spent for all school purposes, operation, mainte nance, and outlay payments for build ing and the like. The study concerns all schools under the supervision of the state superintendents of public instruc tion. Wyoming rani^ first in* school ex penditure per inhabitant in 1921-22. Her total public school expenditures averaged $30^96 for each inhabitant of the state. The other far western states follow in rapid succession. Of the eighteen slates that rank highest in school expenditures per inhabitant only one is an eastern or urban state. They are all, with the exception of New Jer sey, far western or middle western stated. Following this western agricultural group we find that the rich and largely urban states of the North and East come next. They fall in almost a solid group. The third group, the states that ralik lowest in school expenditures, is alto gether southern. Two southern states, Louisiana and Oklahoma, fall in the sec ond group with respective school ex penditures of $12.18 and $14.36 per in habitant. Of the southern group Geor gia cotnes last with $6.80, while North Carolina ranks midway, spending $8.17 per inhabitant for all public school pur poses. ^h.y High or Low It is naturally to be expected that the wosterr- states would rank highest in school expenditures per person. As a rule these states have large farms, a large per capita wealth in farm proper ties, sparse population, and large white population ratios. Living costs are high in this area. Large amounts have been spent on modern school buildings, school term averages eight months or more, and teachers and other school officials receive salaries which to us seem extremely high. Under such con ditions the annual cost of schools per inhabitant is necessarily large. Smaller school expenditures per in habitant in the northern states do not mean that they do not have as good schools. Because of dense population the best of school facilities can be pro vided at a lower unit cost. The unit cost of schools of equal value is lower in a densly populated urban area than in a sparsely populated farm region. Therefore the wealthy urban states rank neither^ high nor low but, largely be cause of density of population, they are able to maintain excellent schools at a moderate cost per inhabitant. Again it is natural to expect the southern states to rank lowest in a study of this type. Many reasons ac-1 count for our meagre average expendi- i tures in public schools. In the first j place the perinhabitant wealth is small-1 est in the South. Along with our lack ! of wealth there has not been a very | keen and widespread desire for the j best educational facilities. A third i factor is our overwhelming farm tenant [ population, and a fourth is our large ; negro population ratio. Practically every southern state has | made great progress during' the last • decade or so, but even with a program i such as North Carolina has recently ■ undertaken it will be several years be-1 fore our schools are on a par with' those of the average state at the pres-; ent time. For the entire South the j school expenditures per inhabitant are only about one half as great as the average for the United States. The average for North Carolina is only half as much as the average for all the states, while Wyoming spends nearly j four times as much per person on schools as North Carolina. Expenditure Purposes ' The net expenditure for all public school purposes in North Carolina in 1921-22 was $21,649,696. This total was distributed as follows: teaching and supervision $13,767,400; • administration $463,354; operation and maintenance of school plants $1,300,066; and outlays for buildings, sites, repairs, and debt service $6,118,887. Of the total the" rural schools with an enrollment of 687,472 pupils cost $13,148,553, and the 3ity schools with an enrollment of 166,- 226 pupils cost $8,601,148. Gratifyiug Progress It is very likely that North Carolina has made more progress in public edu cation during the last decade or s« than any other southern state. We are gradually working out of the cellar position which we so complacently oc cupied for so many years. The best evidence of progre.'''^ ir the large increase in expenditiir..i' fur school purposes. The total school fund in North Carolina in 1903 was only $1,- 912,047. The total expenditure for Schools in 1910 amounted to only $3,- 424,768, and in 1916 to $6,132,213. The most marvelous gains in public educa tion have occurred since 1915. During the last eight years millions have been invested in modern school buildings, gratifying,progress has been made in consolidating small weak districts into large effective ones, teachers are uni formly superior in training and fitness, and teadjer salaries have been mater ially increased. The best evidence of recent progress is that total school expenditures have increased from a little more than six million dollars in 1914-16 to about twen ty-three million dollars in 1922-23. New buildings erected last year cost more than the ontire public school system in 1914-15. - But even with our marvelous gains within recent years the present cost of public education is relatively low in North Carolina. . Including Colorado for which definite figures are lacking, 39 states spend more per inhabitant annually on public education than does North Carolina; The eight states that rank below us including Mississippi, for which we lack data, kre all south ern, and most of them have larger negro population ratios than ours. We are making splendid headway but we certainly have not reached the point where we can boast of our large school expenditures, nor complain . about ex cessive tax burden for public school support. At the present time the total cost of public education in North Caro lina is-only half as great per inhabit ant as the average cost for all the states of the Union. In proportion to our taxable wealth per inhabitant as reported by the Fed eral Department of Commerce for 1922 public education cost less in North Ca rolina than in any other state in ♦the Union. All of which is extremely grat ifying in view of the fact that North Carolina schools are undoubtedly super ior, to those of several southern states. Considering the relatively small cost of our schools per inhabitant it appears that we are getting our money,’s worth. —S. H, H., J^r. SCHOOL EXPENDITURES IN THE UNITED STATES Per Inhabitant for the School Year 1921-22 The table is based on information furnished by the Superintendents of Pub lic Instruction of the respective states showing the total amount spent on public education during the school year 1921-22, including outlay payments, divided by the population as estimated by the Census Bureau. Wyoming ranks first with total public school expenditures averaging $30.96 per inhabitant. The average expenditure per inhabitant was smallest in Geor gia with only $5.30. Colorado and Mississippi are omitted because of our in ability to secure information. Colorado-i^anks near the top, while Mississippi ranks near the bottom. During the school year 1921-22 North Carolina spent a total of $21,649,696 on public schools, exclusive of higher education. The total expenditures aver aged $8.17 per inhabitant. Seven states, all southern, spent less per inhabitant for public school maintenance and outlay than North Carolina. S. H, Hobbs, Jr. Department of Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina Rank State School Ex penditures per Inhab. 1 Wyoming $30.96 2 South Dakota 28.40 3 Montana 26.24 4 California 25.16 6 North Dakota 23.13 6 Nevada 23.08 7 Minnesota 22.80 8 Nebraska 22.66 9 Iowa 22.46 10 Utah,.... 22.30 11 New Jersey 21.66 12 Oregon 20.43 13 Washington 20.23 14 Arizona 20.10 16 Indiana 19.68 16 Kansas 18.89 17 Ohio 17,87 18 Idaho*... 17.73 19 New York 17.60 20 Co -.iFi :icMt 17.34 21 Wisconsin 16.90 22 16.63 23 Pennsylvania ” 14.39 Ma;';'.eancG only, i 1922-23. Rank State School Ex penditures per Inhab. Oklahoma $14.35 Michigan* 13.90 Massachusetts 13.66 New Mexico* 13.67 West Virginia 12.32 Louisiana 12.18 New Hampshire 12.15 Vermont 11.92 Missouri 11.80 Rhode Island 11.50 Delaware 10.93 Maine 10.73 Maryland 10.06 Florida 9.52 Virginia 8.78 North Carolina 8.17 Texas 7.66 Kentucky 6.94 Tennessee 6.67 Suath Carolinat 6.48 Arkansas 6.95 /.liiuarna 5.87 Georgia 5.30