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The news in this publica
tion is released for the press on
receipt.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS
Published weekly by the
University of North Carolina
for its Bureau of Extension.
JANUARY 26,1921
CHAPEL HHX, N. C.
VOL VII, NO. 10
P . sdilorial Board i B. C. Branson, L,. B. Wilson, E. W. Knight, D. D, Carroll, J. B. Bullitt.
Entered as second-class matter November 14, IflU, at tho Postoiflce at Chapel Hill, N, C., under, the act of August 24,1912,
THE ALUMNI RECORD
These are the facts;
Alumni and their friends have put up
sixteen of the twenty-four buildings of
the University of North Carolina.
Alumni established four of the five
loan funds which hundreds of North Ca
rolina boys have used to stay in college.
Alumni established the two lecture
foundations, McNair and Weill, which
bring to North Carolina annually the
leading scholars and thinkers of North
America.
Alumni established the fund which
provides half of the new books and pe
riodicals that the Library puts annually
at the disposal of the students and the
state at large.
An alumnus built the athletic stadium,
Emerson Field.
Alumni and students largely built the
Y. M. C. A. building and help support
it annually.
Alumni, students, and friends have
subscribed for a new social center build
ing for the student body.
Alumni and families of alumni have
■provided for twelve of the University
professorships, notably the Kenan pro
fessorships and the alumni professor
ships. This fund has saved to North
Carolina some of the most distinguished
scholars and investigators in America.
Alumni, students, their families and
friends (except for one gift from the
state to relieve professors who served
through the Civil War and the haphaz
ard income from escheated lands) sup
ported the University for the first 88
years of its existence.
An alumnus of the University endowed
the Carr Chair of Philosophy in Trinity
College, gave the grounds on .which
Trinity stands, contributed to and led
the movement which recently raised
$200,000 for a memorial building to J araes
,H. Southgate, chairman of the Board
of Trustees of Trinity College, and him
self an alumnus of the University.
Alumni of the University, A. M. Scales
and R. G. Vaughan, contributed to and
led a movement which raised $400,000
for Davidson College. The Moravians
of North Carolina entrusted their cam
paign for Salem to Howard Rondthaler,
and Francis Osborne put through the
Episcopal drives for St. Mary’s and
Sewanee. Alumni of the University in
Chapel Hill and in the state rejoiced to
contribute to the $840,000 fund for Wake
Forest College and will take a generous
part in the coming campaign for $700,-
000 for Trinity College.
The University plant of $2,000,000,
largely built by the alumni, is the unre
served possession the people of North
Carolina, open to all who can crowd into
her congested doors, among whom today
are 478 Methodists, 356 Baptists, 235
Presbyterians, and 159 Episcopalians,
here by their glad right as citizens in a
democratic commonwealth.
This University of the people is going
to become the greaT University of the
South, a peer of Wisconsin, Michigan,
California, and the other great univer
sities of the Western democracies in so
far as the people of North Carolina see
the critical needs and take hold of their
urgent opportunity now.—The Alumni
Review.
the ppint is. North Carolina is not do
ing her duty by herself or by the world
until she has exhausted every effort
that is within her -power to make to
produce from the most valuable of all
her resources the finest product possi
ble. In the eduation program the legis
lature is not faced with a great oppor
tunity alone; it is also faced with a
sacred duty that it is under obligation
to discharge.— The Greensboro News.
THE CAROLINA SPIRIT
Parsimony in education is another
name for extravagance. We have been
guilty of this kind of extravagance, and
if our representatives do not heed the
challenge of the new day, if they do not
think in terms of millions instead of
thousands, they will misrepresent their
constituents and do violence to a public
sentiment that will no longer tolerate
any temporizing with its demands.
North Carolina is aroused from ocean
to mountain and college education de
mands instant and adequate action. The
blended voices of the past and the pres
ent and the future are calling to us as
they have never called before. Come
to the top, they cry, you shall nq longer
follow but lead. Thus and thus alone
will you achieve your historic destiny
and place the laurel wreath of fulfill
ment upon the hopes and dreams and
strivings of the unconquerable spirit of
North Carolina.—C. Alphonzo Smith.
THE GO VERNOR S PROGRAM
FOR EDUCATION
We must make the common schools
for the training and education of our
children as good as any in the world.
We want to go on, and ever on, until
the precious boys and girls of our
state have an equal chance with any
in the wide world for a modern and
up-to-date education.
It is no disgrace that our common
schools have been so successful as to
NOTHING TO FEAR
A SACRED DUTY
We spend infinitely more* energy and
money preparing raw materials for the
market than we have ever dreamed of
spending in preparing our toys and
girls for service in the world.
If we were doing all that we could,
there would remain little to be said.
There might be some lamenting, but
there could be no recrimination. But a
state that can afford to spend $20,000,-
000 a year for gasoline to run its motor
cars , can afford to spend $3,000,000 a
year for six years in order to give its
young men and women an even chance
with the young men and women of
other states; and if it doesn’t spend the
money, it isn’t doing all it can for its
own people.
Education doesn’t make geniuses, but
neither does cultivation always make a
tobacco crop. In both cases a great deal
depends upon factors absolutely beyond
the cultivator’s control. The youth of a
state is its most valuable resource, and
We need have nothing to fear, then,
from any party or any politician when
we make liberal provision for educa
tion. But if there were opposition, our
duty would be none the less clear.
It is demonstrable that wealth in
creases as the education of the people
grows. Our industries will be benefited;
our commerce will expand; our railroads
will do a larger business when we shall
have educated all the children of the
State.—C. B. Aycock.
POOR-HOUSE VISIONS
Human nature is very much akin, is
the way Josh Billings said it. And he
is right, remarked a Georgia cracker
friend on the train the other day. Where
upon he recited a bit of personal history
provoked by the poor-house talk of a
Tar Heel in the little party of smokers.
In 1901 and 1902, when cotton prices
dropped below eight cents and real es
tate was a drug in the market, I lived
next door, said he, to the richest man
in my state. He developed a nervous
fit, began to walk his office floor and
wring his hands, saying again and again.
My wife and I will die in the poor-house.
We carried him home and guarded him
day and night for three months. He
died of paresis, worth three and a half
million dollars, in the probate court. .
I travel this state and the South over
from end to end, and North Carolina is
by long odds the richest state in my
territory; but with billions of wealth
you folks seem to have my rich friend’s
vision of dying in the poor-house. North
Carolina -may die like my crazy rich
neighbor, but if the state dies any time
soon it will die rich. It may die of fear,
but it cannot die of poverty.
A BULL ON CAROLINA
North Carolina has more cotton mills,
more spindles, more cotton mill opera
tives, a larger annual pay-roll, consumes
more raw cotton, and turns out a great
er variety of cotton textiles than any
other state in the South.
All told, we have more than 600 cot-
overcrowd our institutions of higher
learning. But it will be a badge of
shame and degradStion if the higher
institutions of learning are not
promptly made adequate for the de
mands which the success of our effort
to educate all the people have so
rapidly made upon these institutions.
The grand army of young men and
young women marching to our uni
versity and institutions for higher
learning from the standard high
schools of our state, and other pre
paratory schools, asking for training
and higher learning, will be tremend
ously increased year by year. We
must make the state’s University,
the Agricultural and Engineering
College, our State College for Wo
men, our Teacher Training schools,
every one of our institutions for
higher learning, adequate to dis
charge the glorious opportunities
which our progress places before us.
The duty is clear and cannot be es-
caped.
We'must not look upon this con
dition as a liability and financial dif
ficulty. It is our state’s greatest
asset, and splendid as odr accumu
lation of material things has been
for 20 years, it is all of less value
than the triumph of our great edu
cational awakening. It is not a duty
.which must be performed and can
only be performed in sacrifice and
self-denial. It is, rather, a glorious
opportunity to make an investment
which is absolutely certain to result
in greater profit than any invest
ment which our people could pos
sibly make, and which will result in
increased prosperity and strength to
every industry in North Carolina. —
Governor Cameron Morrison, Inaug
ural Address, Jan. 12, 1921.
COUNTRY HOME CONVENIENCES
LETTER SERIES No. 40
D, C. VS. A. C. GENERATORS FOR FARM USE
It has been the writer’s experience
that many people in considering the in
stallation of a lighting plant for home
or community use are puzzled about the
choice of a suitable electric generator.
They have a vague idpa thac there are
two types both in common use in the
electrical industry, and ns a rule they
are at a loss which to select. This letter
purposes to give a brief ‘rrtv- ■ ■•ison of
the two types, setting forth their rel^i-
tive advantages and applications.
As intimated in the preceding para
graph, generators are classified in two
main groups and are designated as be
ing either alternating current ( A. C. )
or direct current ( D. C. ) generators.
These names are not ones taken at ran
dom but rather express literally the
manner in which current is delivered
from each. Thus the direct current
generator sends a current out over the
line to the receiving circuit which is
uni-directional; that is, the current in
any one wire of the circuit is always
flowing in the same direction. The
alternating current generator, as the |
name implies, is a machine which sends
out an oscillating current, that is, the
direction of the flow of the current
rapidly reverses, flowing first in one
direction along a wire and then in an
opposite way. The most common rate
of reversal is 120 changes per second.
The two machines are similar in many
points of construction but cannot be
used interchangeably. Direct current
generators are more compact and in
small sizes cheaper than alternating
current machines. They are made in
j sizes ranging from a fraction of a kilo-
j watt to several thousand kilowatts and
I for voltages from a few volts to about
; 600 volts. Special machines are some
times designated for higher voltage.
I On the other hand alternating current
■ generators are rarely built in sizes
: smaller than seven and a half kilowatts
^ but can be obtained in larger sizes up
to about 50,000 kilowatts, and for vol-
' tages ranging from a few volts up to
I several thousand.
On the average farm the generator
is usually driven by a gasoline engine
which makes the presence of a storage
battery almost a necessity in the make
up of the eletric plant. Storage batter
ies deliver direct current and require a
direct current generator -to charge
them. Alternating current will not do
for this purpose.
Alternating current generators are
universally used in power develop
ment for transmission of power over
long distances and have the advantage
over direct current generators in that
by the use of transformers the voltage
can be changed to any desired value. It
is not economical to transmit direct
current power long distances nor is it
possible to use transformers to change
the voltage. Either type of power
once generated will serve equally well
in most instances for performing the
same tasks; however, the farmer usu
ally finds it to his advantage to use di
rect current for his individual needs
and alternating current for community
service where houses are widely sep
arated.—W. C. W.
ton mills—nearly 100 of them in Gaston
county. Last year we built thirty-one '
new mills, against a total of fifty in the
entire South including Maryland. The
new spindles brought into operation
during 1920 in the southern states were
711 thousand, and 543 thousand of these
spindles were set up in North Carolina
alone. The South added nineteen thous
and new looms, and fourteen thousand
of these were in North Carolina. '
Our textile people are puzzled over
the collapse in the market price of cot
ton goods, and a good many mills were
temporarily closed 'down during the
holiday season. Nevertheless they know
that no area in the known world offers
greater opportunities for expansion in
textile industries than the South offers
today and in the indefinite future.
Fat years and lean years follow one
another with something like the regular
swing of a pendulum now as in Pha
raoh’s day. Cotton mill owners for the
most part are banking with undisturbed
optimism on North Carolina. And in
fat years they have had sense enough
to hedge against the hardships of lean
years—a lesson that the rest of us seem
to learn with difficulty.
I am a bull on America, said Pier-
pont Morgan, and he sat tight with
undisturbed equanimity when the com
mon stock in his steel corporation was
selling at ten cents. And the result is
the richest single business in America
today. This may be a lean year in North
Carolina, but there are numberless fat
years ahead. Timid people are paralyzed
by fear. Intelligent, courageous people
are bulls on the Old North State, quite
in Morgan’s humor.
A MYRIAD-MINDED MAN
Daniel Augustus Tompkins, who died
at Montreat in 1914, was a common
wealth builder, and more—he was one
of the builders of the New South. He
was born in Edgefield, S. C., received
his college training in the University of
South Carolina, and his technical train
ing in Rensselaer Institute. His ap
prenticeship in industrial enterprises
was in Bethlehem, Pa., in engineering
offices in New York city, and in con
structive industrial experience in Ger
many. For fourteen years he lived in
the North, but even in the dark days of
the early eighties he visioned the mag
nificent manufacturing possibilities of
the South. In 1882 he turned his back
upon the busy North, came back to the
South, settled at Charlotte, and estab
lished a one-man business—a business
that soon grew so large that his concern
built 250 or more of our cottonseed oil
mills. And he was almost equally busy
organizing and building cotton mills.
We call him myriad-minded because
he was interested in almost every phase
of life—in common schools, agricultur'
al and engineering schools, in building
and loan associations—primarily for the
ownership of homes by mechanics, in
newspaper ownership and editorial work,
in text-book writing, in public speaking
on almost every field of work and
thought, in literature, science, landscape
gardening, domestic economy, birds and
children. The most inspiring look into
the soul of this remarkable man comes
to us in his love for little children and
young people.
He was truly a myriad-minded man,
so busy with generous enterprises for
others that he had no time left for the
sorry business of thinking of himself—
a useful and therefore a cheery, bright
faced, happy man, even in the long days
of lingering affliction during the last
years of his life.
We are saying these things to call at
tention to Dr. George Tayloe Winston’s
recently published Life of D. A. Tomp
kins. The literary craftsmanship of
this book is superb. Dr. Winston tells
a fascinating story from lid to lid. The
college student who does not read it has
missed a large chapter gf real culture.
And just here we may say that some
day somebody will do for the South
I what F. J. Turner did for the Middle
j West, namely, write the story of our
; institutions as they rose out of funda
mental economic and social xjonditions
and agencies of development. Not to
know the South in terms of foundation
al mass urges, is to know in only super
ficial ways the story and the status of
our civilization.
Meanwhile, it is a mortal error for
any reader, thinker, or leader to be un
familiar with Otken’s Ills of the South,
Thompson’s From Cotton Field to Cot
ton Mill, and Scherer’s Cotton as a
World Factor, along with Winston’s
Life of Tompkins. The college student
who misses these books is just so much
the poorer in intellectual stimulus and
outlook.
BICKETT TO THE FARMER
Governor Thomas Walter Biekett
possesses an abundance of hard, com
mon sense. In his State papers, as has
been remarked more than once in these
columns, he strikes at the root of a
problem. A recent case in point is his
response to a request from J. S. Wan-
namaker, president of the American
Cotton Association, to call a session of
the North Carolina legislature to consid
er the grave problems facing the farm-
er.
After discouraging arbitrary legisla
tion designed to close gins, and the agi
tation for the deferring of tax pay
ments, the governor likens the farmer
to an army cut off from its base of sup-
plies, and says:
It IS as plain as day that if the farm
ers of the cotton belt would produce
their own food and feed crops, then
they would always be in a position to
adequately deal with an emergency like
the one that now confronts us. So long
as cotton farmers line up in a fight of
this kind, with empty supplies, they
are as helpless as the man who goes
into battle with an empty gun in his
hand.—Monroe Journal.
PRIZES FOR ESSAYS
There is no preachment quite so elo
quent as the simple story of achieve
ment. There are proverbs amany to
testify that a man’s deeds out-volume
his words. Which, for our present pur
pose, is but another way of saying that
the history of ruralxiommunity progress
is written not in our well-spun argu
ments and verbal pronouncements but
m the deeds of country people who in
the nurture of successful institutions
are creating a new and finer country
life. The piled-up actualities of every
countryside have the only real signifi
cance. Here and there, in this or that
country church or school community
there is a story that is well worth the
telling. That patieni^ far-seeing leader
—the story of his work would hearten
many another working against great
odds. Common-place it may be, but
vital and therefore interesting.
That at least is our belief. To test
it we are conducting three prize con
tests, the details of which will be sent
upon request, by Dr. H. N. Morse,
Editor of Home Lhnds, 156 Fifth Ave
nue, N. Y. Anyone who has a story to
tell is invited to enter one or all of these
contests.