Tke «ew9 in this publica-
m IS released (or the press on
eeipt.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published weekly by the
University of North Carolina
for its Bureau of Extension.
jrOBER 27,1920
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL VL NO. 49
Board 1 B. O. Branson, L. B. Wilson, E. W. Knight, D. D. Carroll, J. B. Bullitt.
Entered as second-class matter November 14, 1914. at the Postofflce at Chapel Hill, N, C., under the a«t of An-gust S4, 1911
OUR OVER CROWDED COLLEGES
NOT keeping pace
The University of North Carolina is
swelled up over having enrolled 1,100
idents on the opening day of the col-
^ year. And indeed it has cause for
de, for that is a record enrollment,
hear that the University is reaching
arger number of the younger citizens
North Carolina than it ever reached
fore is the best of good news. And
.+—1
A few days later the University of
innsylvania opened with an enrollment
11,000!
If the state of Pennsylvania were 10
nes as big as North Carolina, or 10
nes as rich as North Carolina, or if
c University of Pennsylvania were 10
nes as old as the University of North
irolina, the proportion would be just,
at least explicable. But the Univer-
;y of NorHh Carolina is older than the
nivcrsity of Pennsylvania. The state
Pennsylvania is only a little over
ree times as big, in population, as
orth Carolina. The wealth of Penn-
Ivania is not listed for general taxa-
)M.purposes, but New York, richest
all the states, certainly richer than
iB»sylvania, lists only a little over
1,000,000,000, wheras North Carolina
,ts this year $3,000,000,000.
If the state of North Carolina were
jeping pace, in proportion to her pop-
ation and wealth, with the state of
iinnsyivania in education, the Univer-
ty of North Carolina should have more
an 3,000 students, instead of 1,100.
Moreover, .the fault cannot be laid at
e doors of the people. They are wh
ig to send their sons to school, and
e boys are willing to come. Chapel
ill is crammed to suffocation with stu
nts this very day. The state has not
ovidcd room for the young men who
e thirsty for knowledge.
And yet, we have so much money in
« treasury that we don’t need any
iB«ral property tax this year I—Greens-
ro Daily News.
state to care for the state’s young men
to the utmost extent of its resources.
But it has reached the point at which
it can no longer discharge to the full
this responsibility. What the final num
ber of young men will be to whom it
will this fall have to deny admittance,
I do not yet know. I do know that it
will reach several hundred.
The Next Step Forward
The question of providing adequately
for their institutions of higher educa
tion, public and private, faces the peo
ple of North Carolina every whit as a-
cutely as a decade ago it faced the prob
lem of providing an adequate system of
high schools. College enlargement is
the next step, the inevitable step made
necessary by the very success of the
stage’s public school policy. Every
North Carolinian who really believes in
education must realize that it is a pro
gram on which hangs the future great
ness and prosperity of the state. It is
a program to which, both as concerns
publicly and privately supported insti
tutions, the University of North Caro
lina stands committed, just because it
wants to see developed to the full the
potential human resources of North
Carolina.
PACKED TO THE DOORS
COLLEGE COLLAPSE
Dr. H. W. Chase, President of the
iBiversity of North Carolina in a letter
D the editor of the Greensboro Daily
lews, comments as follows on the edi-
)rial reproduced above:
May I take the liberty of making
ome comment on your editorial of yes-
srday regarding conditions at the Uni-
•rsity? We are even more crowded
han you state, the registration being
ow over thirteen hundred and still
limbing. You are absolutely correct
R your statement that there is already
R the state a passion for higher educa-
ion which is packing the University
,Bd all other institutions for higher edu-
atkm. Not only this, but hundreds—
irobably thousands-of young men and
Tomen in the state are this year being
leprived of their opportunity for a col-
ege education just because our colleges
aek resources to teach, feed, and house
hem.
To realize the immense task that con-
'ronts us it is only necessary to consider
bat the, graduates of four-year public
ligh schools in the state have increased
:rom eight hundred five years ago to
bree thousand last spring, an increase
if three hundred percent in five years,
ind tiiat the enrollment in these schools
s steailily mounting. Surely we cannot
plaBt withki the hearts of these boys
girls the passion for a higher edu-
^atioB amd then deny them the opportu-
»Hy they crave. Could all the colleges
IB th« «t*te double their plants today
their reso»rces would be no more than
ideqnate.
It is folly for North Carolina not to
build adequate dormitories, recitation
rooms, laboratories, and equipment for
the proper education of its sons and
daughters. Nothing in the world is
plainer than this. It is utter folly to
turn away 1,000 students who have
knocked in vain at the doors of the Uni
versity since June 1st. But this is ex
actly what we have done. The one
thousand and first managed to get in
recently after writing to twenty-six
different officers, village boarding houses
and homes, in effort to get a room I And
if he hadn’t gotten that, no college in
North Carolina could have taken him in
and given him the courses he wanted,
because the situation obtaining in Beth
lehem 2,000 years ago obtains through
out the college towns of North Catolina
today—there isn’t room within the inn.
As President Chase said in his address
to the alumni in June, the capacity of
every college in North Carolina should
be doubled. Certainly the University’s
should be and that immediately.—The
University Alumni Review.
THINK IT OVER
Ovr Manifest Duty
So lar as the University is concerned,
t is a public institution. Its manifest
krty is to deny to no worthy young man
B Worth Carolina who wants to enter
ts doors the right to become a member
its student body. It is the only pos-
libk platform on which a public insti-
b»SoB which believes in equality of op-
portuaity can take its stand. The Uni-
forsity is crowded. It has taken as
naaay ^students as it can possibly care
for because it has felt its responsibility
as the UBiversity of the people of the
A COLLEGE CREED
Inscribed upon the outer lintel of
the Dexter Memorial gate at Har
vard, where it arrests the attention
of every entering student are the
words: Enter to grow in wisdom.
And upon the inner lintel where
every retiring student may read are
these solemn words: Depart to bet
ter serve thy country and thy kind.
These two brief sentences of four
teen words are a complete college
creed and they are Dr. Eliot’s re
buke to culture of the egoistic, pre
datory type that strangely lingers
on and on in the colleges and univer
sities of the great world.
State does for her, will, in a greater
measure than in any corresponding
period in her history determine what
her service to North Carolina shall be.
Think it over. —The Alumni Review.
TOBACCO BANKRUPTCY
Last year North Carolina produced
310 million pounds of tobacco and sold
the crop at an average of 53.6 cents a
pound.
This year the crop in sight is esti
mated at 382 million pounds.,
The country over, the crop of 1920
runs ahead of last year’s crop by 90
million pounds, and 72 millions of this
increase is in North Carolina alone.
The average price paid for our tobac
co in August in the 27 active warehouses
of 11 market centers was 26.42 cents,
or less than half the price of last year.
Our farmers are appalled. It is a
tragic calamity for the entire state. It
looks like bankruptcy, and it is bank
ruptcy in 19 of our counties—the big
tobacco counties where many of the to-
COUNTRY HOME CONVENIENCES
LETTER SERIES Ne. 32
BANISH BLUE MONDAY
VI
Make your wife happy. She will never
grow old. You can make her happy'
with religion. I plead for a happy re
ligion—it is the best preventive for gray
hairs and a wrinkled brow. It beats
any powder rag or hair dye that was
ever made.
And the wife who is worth her salt
is worth praising. She would be, too,
if she had a husband who was any ac
count. Men have done a good deal for
the world, but women have done more.
Many a man wouldn’t have amounted
to a hill of beans if it hadn’t been for
the little woman behind him nagging
him on. How thankful we ought to be
that God has made woman for us. She
has always been the inspiration of the
world, from the making of mittens for
the Eskimo and the making of mosquito
nets for the Hottentots to going with
out butter on her bread to send' the
Gospel to the heathen.
And she has sold all the oyster soup,
she has baked all the beans and all the
sponge cake, she has kept the church
steeples from falling down from Man
hattan to the Golden Gate. She has
run all the bazaars and rummage sales
and kept the old Ship of Zion off the
rocks.
Now, in conclusion, let me say that
some of the biggest lies ever told are
found on gravestones. Every good wife
would rather have the flowers that are
going to be put on her coffin scattered
through her life where she can admire
them. There are too many big rose
wood caskets, tuberoses, anchors, gates
ajar, wheels with spokes broken out of
them, bought with the money that ought
to have been spent for a hired girl.
Many an old reprobate hides his wife’s
coffin with flowers who never gave her
five dollars or a word of praise in his
life.
Lots of men never say anything good
of their wives until they carve it on the
tombstone. Oh, the mocking irony of
putting on a tombstone “At Rest,’’
when the poor slave was worked to
death.—Billy Sunday, in the Country
Gentleman.
the first seven months of last year to
149 million dollars during the same pe
riod. The quantity was less—hurley
more than half, but the value was great
er by 18 million dollars; exported cigar
ettes jumped from 8 to 10 billions in
number, and from 17 to 24 million dol
lars in value, in round numbers;
while cigars, cheroots, plug, smoking
and all other kinds of exported tobacco
were less in quantity but greater in
value by six and a half million dollars.
Larger export prices for fewer pounds
of exported tobacco is the showing for
the first seven months of this year.
These are some of the facts which
doubtless lead the Wall Street Journal
I No electric-lighted or screened houses
—no running water.
! No hospitals, nurseries, or kindergar
tens.
No district nurses or community work-
, ers.
i No Y. M. C. A. ’s, no swimming pools
: nor skating rinks.
I No friendship between Capital and
Labor.
No divisions of dividends—no bonuses!
Still there are some people who con
tinually sigh for the “good old times’’
of long ago! Good Lord, we thank Thee
for Today!—The Shuttle.
bacco farmers have all or most of their i say: “Sales are running from 20 to
eggs in this one basket. | 25 percent ahead of last year
The buyers explain the drop in prices ;
in North Carolina by calling attention
to overproduction, to the slackened de
mand for export types, and to the low
grade of the leaf on the warehouse
floors of the state. It is reported to be
and with
the increase in business there is every
reason to believe that profits will be
! maintained’’.
■ The skies may be clear for the manu-
fucturers and dealers, but they are
dark as night for tobacco growers in
The University must have more mon
ey for its faculty. With a salary scale
for full professors of $3,600, after fif
teen years of service, in contrast \^ith
salary scales elsewhere ranging from
$2,000 for instructors," up to $6,000 and
$8,000 for professors, the present line
up cannot be maintained indefinitely on
hopes and promises. Twenty of the
seventy-three faculty members who
rank above instructors, have been sought
by other institutions in the last eigh
teen months, and they cannot be held
indefinitely on our present salary scale.
Similarly, such losses in the headships
of departments as those of Dean Stacy
and Dr. Raper cannot be properly filled
and likely young men, the sort essential
to the upbuilding of expanding depart
ments, cannot be secured and worked
into service. The demand for skilled,
productive instructors, due to the rush
of students to the colleges of the coun
try (Michigan enrolls 12,000 this winter)
and to the failure of college men to en
ter the profession of teaching in recent
years, forces Carolina into full compe
tition with the big Universities and
compels her to pay the price which they
can afford. And it is unescapable that
she must pay it if she is to hqld her
own.
Our alumni are not alive to this situ
ation.
The Review is not indulging in any
scare heads. Nor is it squealing. It’s
doing its best to watch the situation
here on this hill in relation to the situa
tions obtaining in North Carolina and
the nation, and to tell the alumni about
what its conclusions are. To its mind,
the next six months are months of vi
tal concern to this institution. What
the alumni do for her, and what the
light and thin as a rule, and much of it '
spotted; it is deficient in body, texture,
color, and flavor, they say—due for the
most part to the wholesale damage of j
the August rains.
Ihe Carry-Over
However, our farmers know or have
a chance to know that the total carry
over by the big manufacturers and
dealers was 36 million pounds less on
April 1 than on even date of last year;
that the chewing, smoking, snuff, and
export types carried over were 76 mil
lion less; hurley .6 million pounds less;
dark fired types 40 million pounds less;
bright yellow leaf grown in Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia 19 million pounds less. They
were 25 million pounds ahead in cigar
types, grown mainly in the North, East
and Middle West, but behind in almost
every other kind of loose leaf stock. i
The Wisconsin and Connecticut crops
of cigar tobaccos are this year esti- |
mated as being a little ahead of the '
crops of 1919, but the markets in these
states opened with an advance of 30 per- |
cent over last year, says the Wall Street
Journal. I
On the other hand, the bottom has
dropped out of the market for the low-
grade hurley and the dark-fired types
of Kentucky, although the new crop is
28 million pounds short of last year’s
total, due, says the Wall Street Jour
nal, ‘ ‘to the accumulation of large stocks
by speculators who now find themselves
without ready markets’’. The Kentucky
growers are in a state of mind that ap
proaches civil war frenzy, and no won
der.
Tobacco Exports
Our export of domestic- tobaccos in
1919 amounted to 766 million pounds in
round numbers. The quantity exported
was three times that of 1917, but the
value was more than five times as great.
During this same period exported cigar
ettes jumped from 7 to 16 billion in num
ber and the value rose from 13 to 38
million dollars.
Moreover, the total value of exported
leaf rose from 131 million dollars during
North Carolina and Kentucky, where
more than half the total crop of this
country is grown.
Explaining the mystery of tobacco
prices is like explaining the way of chain
J lightning in the sky—or perhaps better,
' the way of a serpent on the rocks, to
use a phrase of Solomon’s.
We are not undertaking to solve this
mystery, but we are passing on to the
general public a few fundamental facts
gathered from the recent Census Bu
reau bulletin on Stocks of Leaf Tobac-
f CO, from the Monthly Summary of For-
' eign Commerce of the United States,
July 1920, from the Monthly Crop Re
porter of the Federal Department of
Agriculture, September 1920, the Sep
tember number of the North Carolina
Farm Forecaster, and a recent issue of
the Wall Street Journal.
TROUBLE AHEAD
TWENTY YEARS AGO
Twenty years ago—
Nobody swatted the fly.
Nobody wore wrist watches.
Nobody wore white shoes.
Farmers came to town for their mail.
The hired girl received $1.50 a week
and was happy.
The butcher threw in a chuak of
liver.
The merchant threw in a pair of sus
penders with every suit.
Nobody listened in on the telephone.
To Which We Will Add:
Mill people worked eleven hours a day
for $1.00.
Worked sixty-six hours a week for
$6.00.
Every employee cleaned off his or her
machinery.
If ten minutes’ time was lost, 20 or
30 were made up.
Was docked or discharged for imper
fect work.
Drank water from filthy buckets.
One dipper or gourd was used by a
whole department. Ugh!
There were no cement sidewalks.
How can the farmer be helped to get
this year’s crop properly cultivated and
harvested? This is a subject which is
engaging the concern of governors, leg
islatures, boards of trade, and daily
newspapers.
In one Ohio city 2,000 business and
professional men have announced that
they will give one day’s service each
week to farmers. City men are being
urged to spend their vacations as farrti-
hands. College men and high-school
students are being especially urged by
the newspapers to give their long sum
mer vacations to farm-work. The mem
bers of Colgate University’s crack foot
ball team, it has been announced, will
do their summer training in the corn
fields and potato patches of central New
York.
In Michigan an organization has been
formed to recruit men in industrial cen
ters and place them on some of Michi
gan’s eighteen thousand abandoned
farms. In Massachusetts the legisla
ture is preparing to make appropria
tions to encourage the organization of
farming-camps from which students
and others can be sent where they are
most needed by the farmers. In addi
tion to this the Governor of Massachu
setts has called upon the people of the
State to cultivate peace gardens, to
supplement the production of the farms
and to bring down the cost of living.
The Boston Chamber of Commerce has
sent out an appeal to every o»e in New
England to have a home garden this
year. Such appeals are being made by
the newspapers everywhere. There is
greater need for a garden this year,
says the Rochester Times-Union, than
there was during the war.
The farmer has never received a fair
measure of profit; his work must be
recognized at its fulljvalue, and if farm
ing does not yield a fair return and if
farmers’ children are not given a fair
chance compared with the children of
the cities, then trouble is ahead, says
The Manufacturers Record.
The farmer, in the opinion of the
Los Angels Orchard and Farm, is de
termined to place himself upon an equal
plane with his city brother—to have
good roads, good schools, home conven
iences, an automobile, and an income
for his labor sufficient to buy the things
that other men buy.— The Literary
Digest.
.^1
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