Newspapers / The University of North … / April 28, 1920, edition 1 / Page 1
Part of The University of North Carolina News Letter (Chapel Hill, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
The .news in .this publica tion is released for the press on receipt. THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA NEWS LETTER Published weekly by the University of North Carolina for its Bureau of Extension. kPRIL 28, 1920 CHAPEL HHX, N. C. VOL VI, NO. 23 Jdilorlal Board . B. C. Branson, L. K. Wilson, E. W. Knight, D D. Carroll,B. Bullitt. Entered as second-class matter November 14, 1914. at the Postofflce at Chapel Hill, N, G , under the act of August 24, 1913 WEALTH AND COMMONWEALTH CAROLINA IN THE MAKING For five years the North Caiolina clul) )f the University of North Carolina has leen projectinit toe North Carolina of tlie nture. Public allairs in this state will ■ventually toonform to lliese projections. Ttiis will not be liecanse the fonimlae ind conclusions have been worked out by he university, nor fjecause tlie men who ;o out from ilie university will take co^i- rol of the state, but because the work of his club is indicative of tlie trend of the bought of tlie young men of today under he guir^ance of the educational leader- hip of today. There is also a rapidly increasing con- ideralion of public matters on the part if woman collegians. Without prejitdice o the weight and inllitcnce of the men md women who do not attend college, ve may fairly expect state ami commnni- y leadershi,p to be in the hands of the nen and wometi from the colleges. It has alwa>s lieen a fairly dependable nle, and there is no reason why it.-should le less so in the futttre. The ratio of col tge trained ,tneii to the whole potml'ation 31 growing larger. AVith the improvenieiit f the public schools, there are more ami [tore men and women in their faculties ,ho hav’e been thoroughly educated. The thought of tlie ablest and soundest hiirkers of the state is getting nearer and earer to the mass of the people, and that merit and substitute in its stead a brand new scheme of administrative consolida tion Itased largely on Covernor Lowden’s reforms in 1 llinois. Under tlie sclieme, recommended for the committee by W. D. Harris, of Hae- ford, tlie governor would liave largely in creased power and all the state depart ments, boards, commissions, and inslilu- tional governing bodies would be re grouped under 10 main state departments, not counting ilie secretary of state’s de partment. The 10 main departments would be (1) Finatice, utider wtiich wouM come the state auditor actiiig as comptroller, pre paring a budget and suiiervising uniform county accounting and auditing'; tlie state treasurer; tlie lax commissioner, who wou'd also have cliarge of tire atttomo- bile license business now carried by the secretary of .state; (2), Public V'orks and buildings, inclmling tlie state liigliway commission, public buildings and grounds, die tislieries commis.'ioti, and the geolog ical and economic survey; (3) Kiluca- tion; (4) I’nblic heailii;. (5) Lalior and printing; (6) Commerce, iiuluding tlie corporaiion commission, tlie present de partment of insurance,, and tlie c inmis- sioiier of banking; (7) Cliarilies and pub lic welfare, including state board of pub lic charities and puhlie welfare; a slate prison board having tlie parcoiitiig pow er; and tlie commissioner of piiiilic wel THE COMMON GOOD Edward K. Graliatn Where shall we begin this necessary task of realizing our dream of com- inonwealtli that will be satisfied witli nothing less than tlie common weal of all? Where, but hero and now? Notliing can act but wliere is is. Our greatest lesson is to learn tliat tliese streets and stores and fields—tlie earth and tlie sky in all of their daily man ifestations—are but ‘folds across tlie face of God’; tliat ‘Thy will’ for wliich we, daily pray will be done here and now or nowliere; and tliat agricul ture, business, freedotri, education, and religion are but instruments in our hands for finding tlie common God in tile common good and making His will prevail. COUNTRY HOME CONVENIENCES LETTER SERIES No. 8 MAN POWER VS ELECTRICITY leans a gradual subsidence of tlie inertia, (gj The attorney' general; (9) Tlie adjutant general; (10) Agriculture. Tne heads of tliese departments sliould all be appointed by the governor, tlie committee recomnu ndeii, except wliere ^ the state constitution provided otherwise. AV^itliout stopping to catch its breath liere, tlie coininictee favored the princi ple of tlie sliort ballot, urged tlie adop- lion of tlie Australian ballot, demandeil a he unsound thinking, the response to usound leadership, which to large ex- ent govern in public m itter.s. Indeed, dncatioii is a progressive force, or it is lotliing. The Carolina Club AVhen, ilierefore, we study a piece of rork from the North Carolina club, we ,re contemplating a cross-section of the abric of the thinking of tliat group of budget, insisted on a umlorm system of len, from all tlie colleges of tlie state, accounting for courties, depaiUneiits, Uiich is presently to lie shaping policies ’""‘i institutions, ami called lor a state md determining im tl.ods and measiire.s. constitutional convention fo revise tlie f allowance must be made for the ten-^fonstilution. leiicy of youtli to radical doctrine, wliicli i Oaroliiiastill endures tlie curse endency, some assert, it must also be ’ ^’^rpetbaggers’ constitution,” said onsidered tliat tliere is the guiding in-, M. M. Jernigan, of Umiii, chairman pi luence of niatnrer minds. | committee. ‘‘We don’t ask for During the last few years many pliases ' “'erelj for tlie sake of cliaiige, f state affairs, county affair.^ comimmity ^ut for the sake of progress and of en- •onceriis, have been studied hv tliis or-, government.” -anizatioii in tlie most tlioroiigli inaiiiier. j 1“ t‘sp«‘.ial need for a state L’iie laboratory metliod lias been applied, I constabulary, tlie committee tliougbt, lie facts have 1 emi patiently dug out, i convinced tliat a state piir- heresnlLshave been fully analyzed. All | «geiiey was a practical benefit, his work has been preserved in a body )f literature which has come to he a coni- irelieiisive exposition that goes to the leart of most of the iTolilenis of North daroliiiians, as to their government and nany allied activities, it is a light to luide the feet of the people, and it is iii- sonceivable tliat the people will eoniiiine o walk ill darkness when there is a oathway in the clear light. -Lenoir Cliainbers. WEALTH AND COMMON WEALTH Carolina Tomorrow It is to he concliidi'd, ilien, that the After two and a half centuries North (larulina is getting busy with lier ]irob- leins of social well-being. Within tlie last four years we have enacted 35 pub lic welfare laws, covering a wide range of social concerns. We have made great er progress in legislation of tliis sort than any otlier state in tlie South. In a par- North Carolina of tomorrow will liave a : ticular or two -we lead tlie Union, for instance in our state-wide system of man datory county juvenile courts and wel fare boards, and in oar free dental din- simplified state goveriimeiit; a systema tized administration, wliere jiower will lie lodged in a few liaiids, and responsi bility, full and definite, will accompany it. The office of the governor will be great ly magnified, for one thing. Tlie people will look to him for the whole administra tive result; lie will choose his own iii- atrnmeiits and agents, they will be an swerable to him, and he will be answer able to the people. These tilings will not and cannot come to pass any too soon. Already the gov ernmental concerns of the state have grown to be so immense, so vitally im portant to the welfare and tlie interests of the wliole people, that the necessity for Imainess methods, for co-ordination, for constructive and economical ability of the highest order, begins to be startiiigly ap parent.— Greensboro News. STATE REFORMS The oldest politician who ever walked into the capiiol at Raleigh would not havejS'ccognized tlie state government as it was reconstructed here by the North Carolina club of the University of North Carolina. Meeting to discuss state civic reforms, the :club heard recommendations by a special committee whicli would rip to pieces the existing form of state govern- ies for sciiool chiidreii. Nor liave we stopped witli mere legis lation. We liave 'been erecting pulilic welfare machinery, state and county, and our newly created public welfare of ficials already number more than 600. They are county welfare superintendents, county welfare board members, juvenile court judges, juvenile court attaches, county public liealth boards, county sciiool supervisors, town and county pub lic heall.h officers 'and public health nurses, child labor inspectors, and so on and on. Social Needs in Carolina Already tliey are discovering multi form social needs of urgent sort. We need to keep wayward hoys and girls out of our jails. We need to take the chil dren, tlie epileptics, and tlie insane out of our county homes. We need juvenile detention homes in every county. We need greatly Increased facilities for the 7, 500 feebleminded children of the state. Tlie Jackson Training Sciiool needs to he greatly enlarged. AVe need at least tliree more reform schools for wayward boys and girls, one for negro children, and two more for white chiki^en. We need to plan for tlie Tiny Tims of the state far beyond the capacity of the Babbing- toii Home in Gaston county. AVe need county or county group hospitals, dis- poiisaries, and clinics, and they need to be built, equipped, and staffed for ser vice within the liext few years. We need 100—not 23—coniity health departments. We need public ' healili nursi's— at least one to start within each county, and more as rapidly as they can be found and salaried. We need to develop our child placing agencies. Our jails and chain- gang camps need to be emptied of con victed ini.sdemeatiants, and a state farm establisheii for them upon the Indiana plan. We need organized community life in our country regions. W^e need wholesome social recreation everywhere, and these needs call for coinmunity or- i ganizers and Red Cross home service seiTctaries. We need to inventory our social necessities comprehensively and accurately and to set ourselves definitely to tne tasks of |)revention as well as pal- | liatioii. I We need traiiieii social workers in 1 North Carolina'. AVe need tliein in mnl- | tiplied hundreds. They need to have a comprelieiisive grasp of social subjects, ; and coiiipeteut skill in handling social situations. VA’e need public liealth courses in scliools of every grade and sort, and such instruction outrlit to be mandatory in all scliools receiving state aid. AVe med a great social science school at the University, and a great suinmer term devoted to public welfare instruction for our public welfare workers. You may be interested to know tliat tlie University is already erecting such a scliobl and is this suinmer offering full college-term courses in public service and public welfare subjects. A Billionaire State So much for a hasty sketch of our so cial needs and tlie lines along which so cial jirogress in North Carolina needs to move forward. Onr sons and daughters liave propliesied, our young men have . seen visions, and onr old men have dream- . ed dreams of more abundant coniiuoii- vvealth life, and now it is pertinent to inquire whether or not North Carolina is rich enough to support these various welfare, enterprises and activities. As a matter of fact, is onr wealth equal to the necessities of:social well-being in Nonli Carolina? The answer is yes, and it is tlie only answer. North Carolina is not a poverty- stricke'n state, as we liave long been ac customed to think, but a billionaire state, as we have suddenly discovered almost avernigiit—a billioiiare state not merely in the wealth we have accumulated but a billioiiare state in the wealth we annual ly create. Look at die volume of primary wealth produced in North Carolina in 1919; Crop wealth .$683,000,000 Livestock ami livestock products, estimated 100,000,000 Cotton seed 30,000,000 Firewood cut 25,000,000 Alines and quarries....... 6,000,000 Fisheries 3,000,000 Manufactured products, ad ded values, e.stiinated 400,000,000 Lumber aud planing mill products 150,000,000 AAY saw a table in The Progressive Fanner the other day giving the amount of wages paid for common farm labor in several states, among tliem North Caro lina. These wages ranged from $25.50 to $87.12 per month, and the average amount paid in North Carolina was given as $32.40 with board and 3(45.00 witliont board. Alan power is therefore costing the Nortli Carolina farmer about one dollar and a half a day. A comparison of this man pnw'er witli electric power, such as can be obtained from a farm lighting set, is interesting if not in fact startling. It is n.snally estimated that a man can work at tlie rate of about one-tentli of a horse power. At tliis rate, and allowing for rests, he can do about one and a lialf million foot-pounds in one day. Scienti fically speaking ilierefore, ii costs the North Carolina farmer one dollar and a half for one and a half million foot pounds of work. / Now the ordinary farm lighting set is designed to deliver electric power at the rate of about three-quarters of a kilowatt, and, what is more important, it can do this hour after hour without having to stop to rest. This means, therefore that one of these plants can deliver about twenty million foot-pounds of work in a day as against tlie one and a half million of man-power. But that is not all. Al lowing for interest and depreciation, and taking the fuel consumption as shown by an actual test run on one of these plants, this twenty million foot-pounds of electric power would cost the'fariner only a trifle over one dollar. To be sure some of these'twenty million foot pounds of work are wasted in the electric motors that are used in order to apply the electric power to the job to be done. But after allowing for this the fact remains that man-power is from six teen to twenty times as expensive as elec tric power! Of course the ordinary farm liglitiiig set is not large enough for a great many of the jobs about the farm, but the camparison holds good just the same, in fact for tlie bigger jobs, if the farmer is fortunate in liaving a good water power site near at hand he can develop his elec tric power from this source oftentimes cheaper than he can get it from a farm lighting set.—P. H. D. and we dare to say that it understates ratlier than overstates tlie amazing total of primary wealth created in North Caro lina in a single year—the year 1919. AAliich is to say, in one year in North Carolina we create a greater volume of wealth than we have been willing to put on our tax books in 250 years—more by a half billion dollars. In 1912 the Census Bureau estimated the true wealth of North Carolina at two billion dollars. Our tax revaluation officials are today discovering that the total true wealth of North Caro lina approaclies five billion dollars. Oh yes, we are rich in North Carolina, as riclies are counted in tliis and other southern states. For instance, we have 166 million dollars invested in liberty bonds and war stamps; and the interest money that comes into North Carolina year by year out of the federal treasury is nearly equal to the total cost of our state government at present. AVe have 100 million dollars in bank account sav ings in banks of all sorts; which is near ly a five-fold increase in four years. AA^ithin the last ten years we have invest ed 100 million dollars in automobiles, and v\e are now buying motor cars at the rate of $100,000 a day ineludiiig Sundays. Our wealth in automobiles is three limes the amount we have been, willing to in vest in church properties in two and a half centuries.. It is nearly four limes the value of all sciiool properties of every sort in North Carolina. In 1919 we were rich enouglT to pay 101 million dollars in federal taxes alone —and tills in a single year. Fewer than 4000 corporations paid more taxes into the federal treasury in 1917 than all the taxes paid by all the taxpayers in North Carolina for municipal, county, and state jiurposes combined. A bare iiandful of our people in 1917—just twenty-three tliousand of our two and a half million people —paid more money into our feder al treasury as taxes on personal incomes and excess profits alone than all the tax 1 payers of the state paid into our state treasury in taxes on real and personal property. Figures may be tiresome but these fig ures are immensely significant. Th^^y embody facts tliat bring us to understand for tlie first time in our history that North Carolina is a rich state. No competently informed person can ever again ball,us a poverty-stricken people. Tlie simple fact is that we are ricli—ricli euougli to do aiiylliiiig that we really want to do, rich enough to realize any dream of social progress that any mortal has yet dared into Commonwealth, and Commonwealth into common weal. Private wealth ought to be riglitly related to community W'el- fare and well-being. Everywhere it ought to be the free aud willing servant of the common good. And it must be so, else we shall witness progress and poverty, magnificence and misery side by side, among men till the end of time. Social progress is related to material pro-perity. It is easy, of course, to liave material wealth without social progress, but it is not easy to liave social progress without material wealth. It is so difficult indeed that it is well nigh impossible. It has always been so. Not one of our new born social enterprises can survive in ail atmosphere of small-scale thinking and two penny philosophies, no matter how great oiir wealth. Cii the other hand big-scale thinking is of little avail in a poverty stricken aiea. The great spiritual awakenings of his tory have always been preceded by waves of great prosperity. Cut of the material well-being of the masses in England in the 15ih century sprang Lollardry, out of the trade prosperity of Fliigland sprang Pnritanism, out of the improved wages of English toilers sprang Alethodism. An abundance of corn, oil, and wine was the prelude to Joel’s vision of the Great Day, says George Adam Smith. AAValth and wickedness are not neces- saiily one. Aloiiey is not the root of all evil, It is the love of money that Paul de nounces as the radical source of human ills. And poverty does not always mean piety; far oftener it means dirt, disease and death, misery, sin and crime. However, it is needless to multiply words about matters of common know ledge. But like Lovpy Alary “AA"e know these things all the time and forget them every minute.” Total $1,397,000,000 This total is conservatively figured out of the/reports of the federal Census of Alanufactures, tlie Internal Revenue Ser vice, and the Bureau of Crop Estimates, to dream in Nortii Carolina. AVe have the wealth. Tlie question is, have we the willingness to convert our wealth into welfare and well-being? If 23 thousand people and 4000 corpor ations in North Carolina are able to pay 23 million dollars into the federal treas ury in income and excess profits taxes alone, how mucli could the rest of our two and a half million people pay into our state treasury for scliools and roads and public health purposes—that is to say, if only, we were minded to do it, if only we really believed in education, health, and highways? The Common Weal Cur problem in North Carolina is the conversion of wealth into weal, wealth I Alarch 26, 1920. A Vital Question Almost the most vital question in North Carolina today is, what shall we do with onr amazing stores of sudden new wealtli? Shall we be ennobled by it or grossened and coarsened by it? Shall vve wear our riches as a crown of nisdom, in Solomon’s fine phrase, or as a badge of selfish folly and shame? Shall we swallow down our riches, as Zopliar says, only to vomit them up again? Shall we trick ourselves out m harlequin liverie,=, and let the souls of the children of Nortli Carolina go naked and ashamed? The development of a commonwealth or a community depends upon the wil lingness of its peop'e to convert their wealth into welfare and well-being. AA’e liave the wealth, wealth at last in over flowing measure. AAliat we need is wil lingness. AA'^ealth is an everlasting re proach to the people unless it can be used to make ‘this dirty little spot in space that men call earth’ a deader place for cliildreii to be born into, a safer place for boys ipsd girls to grow up in, a happier place for men and women to live in, and a more joyous place for departing souls to look back upon. In Solomon’s day and now. There is that maketh himself rich, and yet hath nothing; there is tliat maketh himself poor and yet hath great riches. There is tliat scattereth and yet iucreaseth; and there is that withholdelh more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. Our main business in North Carolina is not the making of gold, but the making of men that are finer than gold, and tlie making of women that are like the King’s daughters, all glorious within. But it is a vain and unavailing task if out of the abundance of our riches we withliold more than is meet. Surely men will not decay while' wealth accumulates in North Carolina.—FI C. Branson, Tlie State Social AA^ork Conference, Goldsboro, . i - I'E ih M
The University of North Carolina News Letter (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
April 28, 1920, edition 1
1
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75