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 for the University Ex
tension Division.
JANUARY 13. 1926
CHAPEL HILL, N C.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
VOL. XII, NO. 9
Editorial Boardt E. C. Branson. S: H. Hobbs. Jr.. L. R. Wilson. B. W. Knight, D. D. Carroll. J. B. Bullitt, H. W. Odum.
Entered as second-class matter November 14. 1914. at the Postoffice at Chape! Hill. N. C.. under the act of August 24. 1
THE NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
[This concludes the article by C, R.j resources for clothes. The family of
Fay. eminentJ.'British economist, on Dodd had four boys and four girls. The
North Carolina and the New Industrial i boys worked on the home farm, and
Rev.'lution, published in the E'‘onomic , with the improved price of cotton were
Journal of the Royal Economic Society, , glad to “stay with it.” (They were at
London, June, 1925.]
the moment climbing Mount Pilot, on a
(6) Finally, North Carolina has a labor j Sunday afternoon, having parked their
supply, plentiful, adequate, and cheap.
In the cotton factories this labor is al
most entirely white: in the spinning
and weaving rooms exclusively so.
Colored Ihbor is used inside and outside
all industrial establishments for clean
ing and carting: on all elevators: in to-
bscco factories in the stripping depart
ments: in cottonseed and oil plants under
white foremen: in cotton factories in
the opening and dyeing rooms. Inside
a factory, in contrast with work on the
face of a quarry, colored and white
rarely work side by side. In short, in
the industries of North Carolina colored
persons do the work that newly-arrived
immigrants would do in the North. The
rohd construction gang is generally col
ored, though the state in constructing
its highways used a certain amount of
white labor; for the bootleggers are
mainly Anglo-Saxons.
Native-Born Population
The population of North Carolina, as
noted in the opening sentence, is 3 to 1
white, and the proportion is not declin-
iag. This population is not maintained
by immigration either from the North
or from Europe. Italian stone cutters
are to be seen at Mount Airy: there are
small settlements of Italians and Scan
dinavians in the truck lands by the
coast. But almost the whole of the
population, white and colored, was born
inside the state. Between 1910 and 1920
the population of North Carolina in
creased 16 percent, “due almost en
tirely to the virility and fecundity of
our country people, white and black . . .
We lead the entire U. S. A. in cradles
and baby carriages, with a birth-rate
of 31.6 per 1,000 iubabitants against 23.7
for the total registration area of the
U. S. A.” (North Carolina Industrial
and Urban: N. C. Club Year Book,
1920-1921.) Between 1910 and 1920 the
economic incentive to increase of popu
lation was doubly strong. The cash
crops of the state, tobacco and cotton,
were rising steadily in value; and the
wages offered in the factories, though
tower than those paid in the North,
were very much higher than anything
heretofore enjoyed by these country
people. Between 1910 and 1920 the
numbers employed in manufacture and
commerce rose by 74,000, and so strong
was the cityward drift that 19 out of
99 counties in the state showed a de»:
dine of population.
Pure Anglo-Saxon iftocH
Many of the country whites live in the
mountains. They are of pure Anglo-
Saxun stock, which has been there for
more than a century untouched by the !
tide of industrialism. Till recently the j
crack of the rifle has been heard more
frequently than the honk of the motor
horn; but the undeveloped water sites
of the state are on the further side of
the great Blue Ridge, and state high
ways are building for the attraction of
tourists. When these are completed,
mountain-bred school-children will be
conveyed to consolidated schools in auto
trucks, and the mountain veil will be
forever rent. In and around Winston-
Salem are the intelligent and vigorous
descendants of the Moravian Church,
which founded Salem in 1763. All over
the state Scotsmen (and, of course,
many others) own garages, and one
county is called Scotland. The writer
met two families with familiar Midland
names, Biggs and Dodd. The family of
Biggs came from fifty miles east of
Durham, English one side and Scotch
on the other. They lived in a cottage
rented at $35.00 a month (taxes, as al
ways on this continent, included). The
old mother of the family was keeping
house, while her girls were making $20
a week in the adjacent mill, and her
boys as much as forty dollars on silk
knitting machines, but she feared the
spinning-rooms with their risk of T. B.
Her husband had been a farmer, grow
ing cotton and keeping “a big gang of
sheep,” while she, as a young wife,
spun and wove. It was then reckoned
a disgrace to be dependent on outside
THE MAN IN BLACK
We owe an obligation to the man
in black; we brought him here; he
served us well; he is patient and
teachable; we owe him gratitude,
above all we owe him justice. We
cannot forget his fidelity and we
ought not to magnify his faults. The
white man in the South can never
attain to his fullest growth until he
does absolute justice to the Negro
race. If we fail to administer equal
and exact justice, we shall in the
fulness of time lose power ourselvesf
for we must know that the God who
is love, trusts no people with author
ity for the purpose of enabling them
to do injustice tothe weak.—Charles
B. Aycock.
car at the foot.) But the girls looked
hungrily towards factory life with its
regular wage, its ornamentation of
clothing and amusement, and its escape
from the isolation and never-ending
work of farm life. The supply of coun
try labor is still plentiful: “two or three
as many more ready at band in the
country regions of the state,” it was
estimated in 1921. (N. C. Club Year
Book, 1920-1921.) This plentiful supply
is exceptionally fitted for textile factory
work.
Home Industries
“Many of these mountain women
have for generations been spinning and
weaving cotton in the way of bed
spreads and other things, and in some
cases dyeing them with home-made dyes
which apparently never fade. Some of
the bedspreads show an unusual degree
oi skill in design and production, and
many of the dyed spreads indicate re
markable ability in combining colors
and in producing at home these fine
dyes. Nearly all of these spreads bear
some name and the same patterns have
been made for generation after genera
tion. The people who are today making
them do not know the origin of the
names, but it is known that they can
be traced back to England.” (The
South’s Development, p. 336.) The
last stage of the spreads is the back of
a Ford car,‘ where they envelop the
bulging volume of tobacco on its way to
the auction-rooms.
Nearly all cotton factory work is in
dividualistic and comparatively isolated.
By contrast, the colored workers in the
stemming-room of a tobacco plant enjoy,
shoulder to shoulder, the group life of
the old plantation. Laughter and jest
roll along the work-tables, and now and
then from the most religiously minded
section of the American continent a
hymn such as “Rock of Ages” rises
cheerfully above the hum of machinery.
In places where white and colored are
together the white man enjoys a variety
of supervision, with an eye now on bis
machinery, now on his help, and now
on the pace of the room’s output.
Wage Scales
The labor is cheap, perhaps only
half as costly as Northern labor, but it
is not the kind of cheapness which is
costly to the employer. For white and
colored supply, the one, skill and pace,
the other, muscle and contentment.
Detailed wage statistics are lacking.
The reports of the North Carolina De-1
partment of Labor give only the wage
range between the highest and lowest
paid, male and female. It is a subject lina. Winston-Salem, the largest, had
on which the casual stranger cannot a population in 1920 of 48,000 (estimated
easily obtain full information, but the in 1924 at 66,000). Most of the cotton
following series is compiled from indi- mills are in small towns or factory vil-
vidual examples, which are believed to lages; and in the latter the cottages are
be representative. All through the state generally owned by the employer. The
the normal working day seems to be ten workers pay 50 cents per room per
hours, with a half-day on Saturday, week, with lighting free and often
England; for High Point sells also to
millionaires.
(2) Cotton and Hosiery Mills, Greens
boro and Durham.
Cotton: men, $6.73 to $2.32; women,
$4 88 to $1.60.
Hosiery: men, $6.00 to $1.66; women,
$3.33 to $1.33.
Workers on piece rates, especially in
the hosiery mills, will sometimes exceed
these maxima.
(3) Tobacco Factory, Winston-Salem.
Men, $7.00 to $2.00; women, $4.00 to
$1.60.
Here, as in (2) and (4), the lower
figure may be assumed to be for colored
labor or beginners. In a tobacco stem
ming room of a plant belonging to the
Imperial Tobacco Company the colored
workers were making 18 cents an hour
at the rate of 6 cents per pound of stem
removed.
(4) Furniture Factory, Winston-Salem.
Men, $5.00 to $2.00.
The great mass of furniture is of
standard suites; for the industry pre
sents the acme of standardization both
of process and of pattern. The suites
pour forth by hundreds a week; and
after a bait in the hands of the retailer,
which adds at least 100 percent to their
price, pass into standard homes. If
the town is building a big hotel by com
munity subscription, the 600 or more
identical suites will pass at wholesale
rates into 600 or more identical bed
rooms, of which three-fourths will be
with” and one-fourth “without” (sc.
in England a bath).
(5) Machinists and auto mechanics.
Men, $6.00 to $6.00.
The drivers of Jitney Services (“care
ful driving, easy riding”) are said to
command a wage of $160 a month.
They drive the whole day long, but how
a high-powered car, in winter at any
rate, three-fourths empty, and charg
ing considerably less than the railway
for a ride of equal distance, can afford
such a scale of pay it is difficult to
understand.
Living Conditions
There are no big towns in North Caro-
The Manufacturers Record correctly
appraises the value of all this from the
employers’ point of view, when it says:
“Many of the greatest cotton mills of
New England which long held a domin
ion in this industry are moving to the
South and others will soon follow.
These people are moving South to
escape the conditions which prevail
of high taxes and labor legislation
in New England. They have no de
sire to carry their New England labor
South, but, on the contrary, they are
moving South to escape New England
labor conditions.” (The South’s De
velopment, p. 337.)
Unions Vs. Education
In the interest of the welfare of women
and children a counter-pressure is
needed. The larger employers treat
their workers very well; but they should
remember that they have the unique
privilege of setting to work a store of
accumulated rural energy still new to
the cash wage stimulus. One counter-
pressure is the labor union, with its
inevitable accompaniment of strikes,
which damage the worker as well as
the employer. Moreover, where white
and colored work in the same com
munity, class warfare places white
workers in an ambiguous racial relation
ship and might create among colored
workers a mass unrest, which would
destroy the satisfactory balance which
now exists between black and white.
There remains as an alternative to the
labor union the public schools and all
that they will accomplish when teachers
are properly paid. And in America,
when the community is behind the
schools, no power can resist them, and
no big men would long desire. With
the schools lies the conservation of the
present generation of country-bred men
and women; and on the schools will fall
the cultivation of that next generation
to whom country life would be but the
memory of a home farm whither their
parents for a time repaired when fac
tory work was slack.—C. R. Fay.
Daily wages are given.
(1) Building Trades.
Within this group occur the few occu
pations which have escaped the degringO'
lade of manual skill.
Greensboro bricklayers, $8; plaster
ers, $8.76.
Mount Airy Granite Quarry: cutters,
$8 (head cutter, who instructs the ap
prentices, $10 to $16).
Some of the latter were Scotchmen
or Cornishmen who had made the
familiar trek; first the Scotch village or
small English town: then the winter-
cold North, Maine, Vermont, Ontario,
and now North Carolina, where in the
first week of January outside work is
comfortable and exhilarating. To this
group may be added the process of up
holstering in the furniture factory.
High Point, N. C.: upholsterers, $10
to $12.60.
Upholstering involves a number of
difficult band processes—fitting ^ the
springs; stuffing; stretching and tack
ing down the upholstering material.
The writer watched an Old Country
craftsman upholstering a ‘ ‘non-.-^tandard”
suite with a tapestry imported from
small garden where food-stuffs can be
grown. When there is no work, no
rent is charged. The big firms super
vise the boarding of their female help,
the charge being, say, $5 per week per
girl for board. Though the prospect of
home ownership is as 3 to 1, and in
some mill villages nil, the workers have
great latitude in their abode. For, if
they live at a distance, the few who
lack a car come down to the factory in
machines belonging to fellow-workers,
who pay for them by operating thus an
informal jitney service. In Winston-
Salem some of the negro shacks and
shops are very dirty and mean. This is
disconcerting when it is remembered
that the net profits of the largest to
bacco company in Winston-Salem rose
from $3 millions in 1914 to $23 millions
in 1923. In North Carolina there is no
law of compensation for industrial in
juries. It is one of six states lacking
such a law,
In North Carolina the maximum hours
of work for children are eight. Thirty-
three states have a shorter working day
for children.
In North Carolina there are no labor
unions.
RACE COOPERATION
Constructive race cooperation between
the whites and the blacks in the South
ern states will be realized. It is now
being realized, according to Mr. A. F.
Raper, who recently presented a paper
before the North Carolina Club on Race
Cooperation for Town and Country Ad
vancement.
The big house and the surrounding
cabins represented the economic and
cultural unit of the old South. Then
came emancipation, which gave the
Negroes neither land, capital, training,
nor leadership. The old order was dis
rupted, but the Negroes retained the
same relative position in Southern eco
nomic and cultural life; they were at
the bottom as slaves, they were at the
bottom as freemen. Emancipation did
afford the Negro freedom of movement;
his exercise of this freedom has been
most far- reaching in results. The threat
to move is the only effective defense
weapon the Negro has had which he
could use against his employer. Further
than this the Negroes have become
racially conscious of their status in mov
ing from place to place. This mobility
has resulted in certain characteristic
fixations of residence according to in
come, and is expressed in terms of
spatial segregation.
Negro Segregation
The growth of Negro freedom may
be seen as a cause and as a result of
Negro segregation. First, the Negroes
are compelled to live in the cheap rent
area, for they occupy the lowest place
in economic life, and consequently must
necessarily live where others least de
sire to live. Second, the Negroes desire
to live together. They can have no
status outside their group. This condi
tion helps the Negro in that it compels
the aggressive members of the race to
identify themselves with their own
group in order to secure additional
status. The Negroes are not being ab
sorbed by the whites as are the immi
grants, but the Negroes are developing
a culture of their own.
The Negro neighborhood is primarily
the result of competition; but it attracts
others of like status, and through a
process of growth it becomes a cultural
world with institutions, leaders, and
characteristics of its own. With the
industrialization of the South this segre
gation is being accentuated. The old
characteristic primary relation between
the whites and the blacks is being sup
planted by an impersonal type of rela- ‘
tionship. This gives the Negro a chance
to develop things Negro, to develop his
own institutions. Alongside this re
cently developed Negro community is
the older and more dominant white
community.
Must Be Organized
Race cooperation in the highest possi
ble degree for town and country ad-
vancement is possible only when each
race is organized, it is desirable ^or
the whites and blacks to have separate
institutions; separate institutions mean
separate cultural units.
Ihe characteristic life in the larger
Negro urban communities attracts the
rural-Negroes. The leaders in these
communities cooperate readily with the
leaders of the white communities in
such matters as public-health programs,
public nursing, school attendance, de
velopment of supervised playgrounds,
street improvement, and so on.
The County Unit
In the small urban communities the
Negroes often find themselves between
two conflicting tendencies: on the one
hand their own weak institutions and
half-emancipated leaders tend to center
their interests on things of their own
race, while on the other hand they tend
to conform—outwardly at least—to the
standards which the whites expect them
to follow. The most practicable way of
advancing race cooperation where the
Negro settlements remain small is by
the further development of the county
as the administrative unit. This sug-.
gestion is in harmony with the present
trend in North Carolina. This will tend
to create a Negro cultural unit in each
county where the numbers are sufficient
to warrant it. This administrative
organization unit will furnish ready
means by which the race leaders can
present programs for race advancement
to their people. It appears that this
county unit is the only way to reach the
widely scattered rural Negro popula
tion, and even then, if they constitute
but a small proportion of the popula
tion, as is often the case, there is but
little chance to improve present condi
tions, for they are not numerically
strong enough to support adequate sep
arate institutions, and separate institu
tions are required.
The whites are fearful of social
equality. This doubtless aids the Negro
group most directly, since it forces the
capable Negroes to identify themselves
with their own race as the only means
by which they can obtain higher status
for themselves. The whites recognize
the Negro who is capable of correctly
leading his own people, and that Negro
who can please his own group and at
the same time command the respect
and the recognition of the whites is
correctly leading the Negro race. Ad
vancement may be slow by this method,
but it is the only way in which it can
be effected constructively under our
present conditions. This method is
cumulative in that the results of each
successful experiment in the field of
race cooperation will automatically serve
as evidence for further cooperation.
COLLEGE GRADUATES
Less than one percent of American
men have been college graduates, yet
this one percent has furnished:
66 percent of our Presidents.
36 percent of our members of Con
gress.
47 percent of our Speakers of the
House.
64 percent of our Vice-Presidents.
62 percent of our Secretaries of State.
60 percent of our Secretaries of the
Treasury.
66 percent of our Attorney-Generals.
69 percent of our Supreme Court
Justices.—Home, School and Community,
DOES AN EDUCATION PAY?
Answering the above question we
give you a few figures regarding the
262 members of the Princeton class of
1916. According to statistics recently
made public they are earning an aver
age annual income of $7,603. Unearned
incomes bring this total up to more
than $10,000 a year.
Twenty-six of the class, now manu
facturers, report an average income of
$12,435; forty-three bankers, an aver
age of $12,312; education and the min
istry rank last, yielding $2,826 and
$3,133, respectively.