The news in this publi
cation is released for the
press on receipt.
JUNE 8, 1927
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina for the University Ex
tension Division.
E.C. Branson, S.H.Hol,b,. J,.. L. R. R. w. K„«h.. D: D. Ca.roU. J. B. Bum,., H. W. Od„„'
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
the university of north CAROLINA PRESS
VOL. XIII, No. 30
CARING FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED
CAaiNG FOR FEEBLE-MINDED
The table which appears elsewhere
ranks the states according to white
inmates in state and private institu
tions for the care of the feeble:minded
per one hundred thousand population.
The parallel column gives the number
of negro inmates in institutions pro
vided for the care of the feeble-minded
per one hundred thousand negroes.
There is this point to keep in mind
while reviewing the table: The rank
of the states is due almost altogether
to difference in provision made for the
care of feeble-minded, and is no evi
dence of the extent of feeble-minded
ness. As a matter of fact the states
do not vary greatly in the proportion
of the total population that is feeble
minded. Out of a hundred thousand
inhabitants there will probably be as
many feeble-minded in North Carolina
as in New Hampshire, but New Hamp
shire's rate of inmates in institutions
for the care of feeble-minded is more i
than five times as high as North Caroli- ■
na's. Which simply means that New j
Hampshire is more adequately caring for |
such unfortunates in institutions pro-1
vided for their care. j
Few in Institutions
Only a small part of the feeble-1
minded in the United States are in,
institutions provided for their care. !
The vast majority are in the com-;
munity, where many of them get along :
reasonably well and are partially or j
wholly self-supporting. Numerous
others are found in almshouses and in
penal and reformatory institutions.
The feeble-minded are usually di
vided into three classes: idiots, im
beciles, and morons. An idiot is a
mentally defective person having a
mental age of not more than thirty-
five months, or, if a child, an intelli
gence quotient of less than twenty-five.
An imbecile is a mentally defective
person having a mental age between
thirty-six months and eighty-three
months, inclusive, or, if a child, an in
telligence quotient between twenty-
five and forty-nine. A moron is a
mentally defective person having a
mental age between eighty-four months
and one hundred and forty-three months,
inclusive, or, if a child, an intelligence
quotient between fifty and seventy-
four.
Caswell Training School
North Carolina has one institution
for the care of feeble-minded, the
Caswell Training School, located at
Kinston. This school was authorized
in 1911 and opened in 1914. There is
no private institution in the state for
the care of feeble-minded. The Cen
sus Bureau reports that on January
first, 1923, there were three hundred
and eight inmates in the Caswell
Training School. Our rate of inmates
in this school is 17.3 per one hundred
thousand white ihhabitants in the
state. Thirty-four states provide for a
larger proportion of their feeble
minded. The states that rank be
low us are seven Southern states,
and five far western frontier states
that are too new and young to have
developed much beyond the individual
istic point of view.
An outstanding fact is the rapid in
crease ip^ recent years in the number
of states providing special institutions
for their feeble-minded. The first state
to establish such an institution was
Massachusetts, in 1848, followed by
New York in 1861. Fourteen states
were maintaining separate state in
stitutions for their feeble-minded in
1890, twenty-one in 1904, twenty-six in
1910, forty in 1923, and forty-four in
1926.
South Ignores Negroes
A most glaring fact is that although
about ninety percent of the negro
population of the United States live in
the South, no Southern state had
provided an institution for the care of
feeble-minded negroes as late as 1923.
There was a private institution in
Louisiana that had seventy-one in
mates. North Carolina has a training
school for negro boys similar to the
Stonewall Jackson Training school for
white boys, but no institution for
the care of feeble minded whites, also
have institutions for feeble-minded
negroes. In three of these four excep
tional states there are practically no
negro inhabitants. Seventeen states
have higher rates of negroes than
whites in institutions for feeble-minded.
Were feeble-minded negroes admitted
to institutions on the same terms as
feeble-minded whites it is probable
that the rate for negroes would be
higher in all the states.
The establishment of separate state
institutions for the care of epileptics
is a comparatively new development in
the care of this class. In 1923 there
were only nine state institutions for
epileptics, located in the following
states: Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mass
achusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New
York, Ohio, and Texas. In North Caro
lina the institution for epileptics is
not a separate one, but a department
of the state hospital for mental dis
eases at Raleigh.—S. H. H., Jr.
HOMES FOR TEACHERS
There were 436 teachers’ cottages in
the state of Washington at thg end of
the school year 1926-1926, according
to the state Department of Education.
This is an increase of four over the
number reported one year previously.
Thirty-eight of the thirty-nine coun
ties in Washiagton now have teacher-
ages. The number of teachers’ homes
in.Mississippi increased from 226 in
in 1923 to 330 in 1926. Throughout the
I United States the number of teacher-
ages in connection with rural schools is
steadily increasing. School patrons are
finding that comfortable and attractive
rooms or homes must be available if
desirable teachers are to be secured and
retained in rural schools.
Modern buildings, varying in size
from the small two room cottage for
the teacher of a one-room school to the
large type building for the dozen or
more teachers of consolidated schools,
are found in nearly every state. Fre
quently there are one or mere large
teacherages in connection with con
solidated schools located in small vil
lages or in the open country and in
addition one or more small cottages for
faculty members with families. Cali
fornia, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Texas,
Kansas, and Minnesota, among other
states, are providing teachers’ homes
in many rural communities.—Rural
America, May 1927.
feeble-minded negroes. Exclusive of
the Southern states, all other states
except four that have institutions for
A LIBRARY ON RAILS
The Library Car operated by the
Missoula County Free Library in coop
eration with the Anaconda Copper Min
ing Company is a new development of
library extension service according to
the American Library Association. The
library on rails is a freight car twelve by
forty feet, painted grey, and carries the
sign Missoula County Free Library, re
ports Elizabeth B, Powell, the librarian.
A pair of wooden steps lead to the
entrance and when the car is moved
from one camp to another the steps
are raised and then lowered when the
librarian is again ready for business.
It is moved by a locomotive as the log
ging advances and the men are work
ing farther in the forest.
The inside of the car is well lighted,
heated, and comfortably furnished with
a long table with arm chairs. Open 1
book cases extend around two-thirds of
the walls and at one end is the libta-
rian’s office. Here the necessary cleri
cal work is done and small bundles of
books are made up to be packed,
either by man or by horse, to camps
perhaps five or six miles from the car.
The librarian is an employee of the
company and being a lover of books is
thoroughly interested in the work, re
ports regularly to the county librarian
and sends in special requests as they
are made. One man was helped to
obtain a patent on a water-power device,
another supplied with material for his ■
correspondence course, and to a young '
college student were sent plays and
books upon the drama.—American Li
brary Association.
KNOW NORTH CAROLINA
Our Cotton Mills
North Carolina leads the nation
as the greatest cotton goods manu
facturing state, according to the
recent biennial report of the State
Department of Labor and Printing.
There has been a substantial growth
in the textile industry during the
last ten years, but it was not until
two years ago that the state at
tained first place in the manufacture
of cotton goods.
Massachusetts has more spindles
in place than North Carolina, nearly
twice as many, but North Carolina
leads Massachusetts in cotton spindle
hours by more than a billion spindle
hours or about six percent. During
the last five years the aggregate
spindle hours per year for Massa
chusetts has decreased more than
four billion, while North Carolina
increased her aggregate spindle
hours by three and a half billion.
The aggregate spindle hours for
North Carolina is now approximately
twenty billion per year, against
less than nineteen billion for Massa- ^
chusetts. I
Gaston county leads the state in
spindles in place, her eighty-eight
mills have 1,116,760 spindles, (.)f
the seventy-three counties in the
United States with more than one
hundred thousand spindles twenty-
one are in North Carolina.
The cotton mills of the state re
ported 83,528 employees, with about
two dozen mills failing to report on
this item. Of these employees 49,
792 are men, 30,582 are women, and
3,144 are children between the ages of
fourteen and sixteen. Nearly sixty
percent of all cotton mill employees
are adult men. The number of em
ployees between the ages of fourteen
and sixteen is decreasing.
Making due ' allowance for the
mills that failed to report, it is esti
mated that the capital stock of the
four hundred and six cotton mill
companies of the state amounts to
approximately two hundred and
thirty-five million dollars.
Sixty-one mills failed to report
the value of output. Making due
allowance for these, including the
mills that were idle, it is estimated
that the value of output of the cot
ton mills of the state for 1926 was
three hundred and fifty million dol
lars, which was considerably more
than the total value of all crops
produced in the state last year.
The above data do not include the
knitting mills. |
were used in the United States during
the school year 1926-1926 transporting
pupils to and from 14,000 schools, ac
cording to a recent interesting study,
the results of which appear in the Feb-
ruary issue of Bus Transportation. In
j performing this service these 33,000
I school busses traveled more than 300,-
000 miles each morning and evening of
every school day, transporting 876,000
children to and from school.
The study also shows that for this
service, school motor transportation,
more than $23,000,000 was expended in
all the states; school motor busses
were operated in each of the 48 states
and the District of Columbia; the num
ber of such vehicles varied from one
for approximately every 2,000 inhabi
tants in the three states bordering the
Pacific Ocean to one for approximately
every 4,000 inhabitants in the New
England states; and that there was a
school motor bus for every 8,226 per
sons in the United States.
TAXES—AND OTHER THINGS
We are told that the expenditures for
all governmental purposes in the
country are now around ten or eleven
billion dollars yearly.
This is the subject of much comment.
Some believe such vast expenditures
are unwarranted, that they are due to
waste and extravagances on the part
of public officials, that public funds are
being untimely and i^wisely spent, and
that the burden of taxation is almost,
if not quite, unbearable.
I doubt if things are as bad as they
are represented. We spend upwards
of fourteen billion dollars annually in
' purchasing, maintaining and operating
automobiles; two billion for cigars,
cigarettes and other tobacco products;
one billion for beverages, exclusive of
amounts paid bootleggers; one billion
for entertainment, and then after pay
ing taxes we find the wealth of the'
nations is increasing at the rate of
twenty-five billion annually. I main
tain that a people who can spend the
amounts enumerated for the purposes
named and add to their combined
wealth twenty-five billion dollars
yearly, can afford, without undue hard
ship, to pay ten billion—a little more
or a little less—for all the advantages,
benefits and blessings of government.
Constant repetition of the statement
that the federal government is contin-
. ually reducing taxes and expenditures
while the states and their localities
; are continually increasing theirs, causes
I many to believe that state and local
! officials are spendthrifts, while federal
; officials have the characteristics usually
j attributed to Scotchmen. A fair, im- '
partial study of the facts does not sup
port this assumption.—Mark Graves,
in Commerce and Finance.
UTILIZING COTTONSEED
An early example of what chemistry
has done in the utilization of agri
culture wastes is the working up of
cottonseed into useful commercial
products. Fifty years ago, when the
industrial utilization of cottonseed was
in its infancy, the disposition of the
refuse seed which accumulated about
the cotton gins was a most serious
problem. In some cases the seed was
thrown into steams, but the pollution
of the river water, which was caused
by this practice, led to the passage of
laws, still in existence, attaching a
penalty to this wasteful method of
disposal. In other cases the seed was
allowed to decay in large piles, which
because of the objectionable odors
became a nuisance. Chemists were,
however, busily engaged in studying
the potential wealth contained in this
wasted material with the result that
to-day the utilization of cottonseed for
the production of fertilizers, cattle
feeds, oil, soap and other products is
the second largest manufacturing in
dustry of the South. The seed which
was formerly wasted is now converted
into products which are worth many
millions of dollars. But the end has
not yet been reached, and the efforts
of chemists are now being directed to
wards the study of methods for con
verting cottonseed meal into a valuable
food for man. A serious obstacle in
this direction is the presence in cot
tonseed of a toxic substance known as
gossypol, which, when consumed in too
large an amount in certain meals, has
caused the death of farm animals. A
study of this toxic substance and of
best methods for its removal is now
being undertaken in a collaborative
research by the Bureau of Chemistry,
Department of Agriculture, and the
Interstate Cottonseed Crushers As
sociation. There is every reason for
believing that the valuable protein
constitutions of cottonseed before many
years will be made into safe and pala
table foods for human consumption.—
Hon. W. M. Jardine.
OUR ADVERTISING BILL
Economists and sociologists have
lately given much consideration to
advertising as a business and social
force. The American Newspaper Pub
lishers’ Association calculates that last
year 3,600 national advertisers invested
$236,000,000 in newspaper space alone.
Among these, 309 of the largest ad
vertisers spent $100,317,000. A lit
tle analysis of this list shows some
interesting details.
For instance, 21 motor car manufac
turers spent $19,067,000; nine tobacco
concerns spent $9,563,000; 24 drug,
chemical and toilet preparation concerns
spent $7,882,000; 13 oil companies spent
$6,030,000; 17 railroads spent $4,979,000;
six radio concerns spent $1,420,000; five
steamship companies spent $800,000.
Other heavy advertising buyers are
electric washing machine and electric
I refrigerator makers; baking powders,
I meat packers, publishing houses, motor
tires, clothing, and prepared foods.
The complete list presents quite an
astonishing variety.
The Gastonia Gazette explains that
“the Advertising Bureau of the Ameri
can Newspaper Publishers’ Association
is endeavoring to make the fullest
possible survey of the advertising field,
the results of which would be of much
value to both advertisers and publish
ers. Apparently more money is spent
to reach motor car buyers and users, by
the automobile and oil companies, than
on behalf of any other single group. ”
Advertising, and especially news-
paj>er advertising, is on^ the increase
for the man who has something to sell
realizes more and more each year that
he must give his commodity a name
through advertising before he can sell
it on a large scale.—Concord Times.
FEEBLE-MINDED INMATES IN INSTITUTIONS
Per 100,000 Inhabitants, Both Races, Jan. 1, 1923
In the table below, based on a Bureau of the Census report on Feeble-
Minded and Epileptics in Institutions, the states are ranked according to the
number of white patients in institutions for feeble-minded per 100,000 white
population. The parallel column gives the number of negro patients in similar
institutions per 100,000 negroes.
New Hampshire ranks first in the care of feeble-minded whites, closely
followed by Oregon. The rate of feeble-minded negro inmates in institutions
is high in the New England and Middle Atlantic states where institutions are
provided for such negroes.
The South makes a poor showing in the care of feeble-minded whites
and only one Southern state reported an institution for the care of feeblel
minded negroes.
The rank of the states is due primarily to differences in provision made for
the care of feeble-minded, and is no evidence of the extent of feeble-minded-
ness.
Department of Rural Social-Economics. University of North Carolina.
TRANSPORTING CHILDREN
Approxiipately 33,000 motor busses
White Negro
inmates inmates
per per
Rank State 100,000 100,000
white negro
popula- popula
tion tion
1 New Hampshire ...88.4 322.1
2 Oregon 86.8 139.9
3 Minnesota 79.6 46.4
4 Massachusetts 77.2 211.1
6 New York 68.8 138.6
6 South Dakota 68.0 120,2
7 Wyoming 66.8 ;
8 Iowa 66.6 47.4 |
9 Maryland 64.2
10 Wisconsin 63.2 76.9
11 Washington 60.7 29.1
12 Maine 60.1 534.4
13 Rhode Island 60.1 199.3
14 Idaho 68.7 217.4
16 Nebraska 68.4 30.2
16 Michigan 68.2 69.9
17 Indiana....; 64.1 30.9
18 North Dakota 52.7
19 Pennsylvania 61.7 41.8
20 New Jersey 51.2 65.7
21 California 60.4 33.5
22 Vermont 60.3 349.7
23 Ohio 43.6 46.1
24 Kansas 43.2 46.6
Rank State
White
inmates
per
100,000
white
popula
tion
Negro
inmates
per
100,000
negro
popula
tion
26 Connec^jeut 40.6 42.8
26 Virginia 39.8
27 Illinois 37.7 45 1
28 Colorado 27.6 36.3
29 West Virginia 26.1
30 Delaware 26.0
31 Kentucky 24.4 —
32 Missouri 24.1
33 Florida 21.9
34 Oklahoma 18.1
_5.5 North Carolina 17.3
36 Montana 16.8
37 Louisiana 9.0
38 Mississippi 8.8
39 Texas
40 Georgia
41 Tennessee
42 Arkansas
43 Alabama (1) ...
43 Arizona (1)...
43 Nevada (1)...
43 Mew Mexico..(1)...
43 Utah (1)...
6.9.. .
2.8.. .
0.8...
0.6...
(1) These states had no state or private institution for the care of feeble
minded.