tl
I
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 its Bureau of Ex
tension.
APRIL 27,1921
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. VH, NO. 23
Editorial Board i B. 0. Branson, L. R. Wilson, B. W. KniKht, D. D, Carroll, J. B, Bnllitt.
Bntered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the Postofflce at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24,1912.
TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP
TRAINING CITIZENS
Education for Citizenship is the title
of a 30-page monograph prepared by
Drs. J. G. deR. Hamilton and E. W.
Knight, of the University of North Ca
rolina, and recently published by the
U. S. War Department. The publica
tion contains the conclusions of Drs.
Hamilton and Knight, based on close
observation for several months, con
cerning the principles and practices of
the Army education as now conducted by
the War Department.—The Alumni
Review.
EARMARK OF CITIZENSHIP
Service to the Community should be
the earmark of citizenship. We have
gone on these many scores of years
elaborating upon the privileges of Amer
ican citizenship; but outside of a few
movements, such as the Boy Scouts,
we have had little attention directed to
the obligation of citizenship itself. Citi
zenship in these times, and in all times,
is an obligation, not a privilege.—Her
bert Hoover.
tiroes and seasons. The church of to
day ought to realize her mission as a
great agency of social redemption and
that means that the successful minister
or church worker must be a practical
sociologist.
The participation of so many religious
workers in welfare activities has re
sulted in a growing consciousness that
the time has come for the church to as
sume a more positive attitude toward
current problems and mcvements. Ef
forts for recreational and entertainment
activities of the community, endeavors
in regard to public health, the redemp
tion of public affairs, the fight against
ignorance and economic maladjustment;
all these should have a profoundly re
ligious motive. Both the existence and
the servicefulness of the church depends
on her ability to adjust herself and to
interpret the gospel to the changing
atmosphere. The church should antici
pate the world’s need with a liturgy, a
hymnology, and a gospel that will an
swer to the awakened social conscious- i
ness.—Angus S. Woodburne, in the !
Biblical World.
A CITIZENSHIP TEXT BOOK
For years we have wanted the right
sort’of manual on community govern
ment. Dr. E. C. Brooks, State Super
intendent of Public Instruction in North
Carolina believes the right book has
been found in the recent publication.
Community and Government, by Dr.
Howard W. Odum, Director of the
School of Public Welfare of the Uni
versity of North Carolina.
The manual is designed to be of es
pecial use to school officials and teach
ers; county agents; state, county, city
and town officials; ministers; and all
others interested in citizenship, govern
ment and community service.
Read Dr. Brooks’ endorsement of
RURAL CITIZENSHIP
Wherever rural prosperity is reported
of any county, inquire into it, and it
will be found that it depend^ on rural
organization. Whenever there is rural
. decay, if it is inquired into it will be
I found that there was a rural population
i but no rural community, no organiza-
I tion, no guild to promote common in
terests and unite the countrymen in de
fense of them.—George W. Russell.
Community and Government, quoted in I Rurse in Watauga, a county
HEALTH WORK IN WATAUGA
On February 9, 1920, Miss M. Stella
McCartney, under the supervision of
the Red Cross and the State Board of
Health, began work as a public health
in which
part from his editorial in North Carolina
Education, as follows;
Part II treats of Government and
Community Problems of our Towns and
Cities. Every city superintendent
should lay the project and questions
outlined in this chapter before his teach
ers of civics. A text-book on civics al
ready in use in schools could be greatly
supplemented and even discarded in
toto if the teacher knows how to handle
the subject. There is enough material
in this chapter alone to occupy a full
year’s work in the study of community
civics.
Part III, which treats of Government
and Community Problems of County
and Open Country, could well form a
year’s work and be profitably substi
tuted for any reading circle book now
on the list; especially for teachers hold
ing the higher grade of certificate.
Superintendents and principals could
. very well take Part IV, Government
and Public Service of the State, as a
year’s work in professional study. They
would be better executives and have a
better insight into the government and
its administration by making such a
study.
The University Press has published
nothing in recent years that can be
more helpful in our educational life
than this number.
Superintendents, principals and teach
ers who are seeking guidance in teach
ing community civics will find this pub
lication exceedingly helpful.
We may add that seven hundred copies
of this bulletin can be had at the fol
lowing prices: one copy at 50 cents;
three or more copies 10 percent off;
$5.00 per dozen. Address requests to
the Bureau of Extension, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N. C.
THE SOCIAL GOSPEL
The World War brought thousands of
ministers into contact with the real
needs and actual problems of men. The
return of this large body of welfare
workers to their former tasks should
be accompanied by a revival of human
interests in the sphere of organized re
ligion. There has been a shifting atti-
ttMe in these religious workers due to
their close contact with human heeds.
With them the emphasis passes from
doctrine to service and the technique of
religion must be the technique of every
day conduct rather than for specific
ideas of public health in all its phases
was as little developed, perhaps, as any
where in the State. /
Fortunately, she arrived just in time
to make herself very useful in caring^
for the sick in the county’s first serious
epidemic of influenza. That gave her
a chance to prove her usefulness. By
the opening of spring her program was
made and her work well under way.
By the end of the year she had become
acquainted with every community but
one in the county, going on horseback
into the remotest mountain coves. She
made 301 visits to mothers and young
children, advised many of these mothers
in the care of themselves or the babies,
or referred them to the care of a phy
sician or to the State Board of Health
for information. She hunted out and
gave instruction, for fhe first 'time in
the history of the county, to 18 mid
wives, acquainting most of them with
the proper treatment of the eyes of the
new born babes and the importance of
the registration of births, and supply
ing silver nitrate solution and birth cer
tificates to 14 of them. She made 25
visits to tubercular persons, and re
ported 12 cases of various kinds to the
County Superintendent of Public Wel
fare. She made 229 sanitary inspection
visits and was instrumental in securing
the building of 200 sanitary closets. She
visited 60 of the 70 public schools of the
county, made a talk on health habits in
each, and examined 2,030 children for
diseased tonsils and teeth and defective
sight and hearing. She cooperated with
the State Board of Health in a clinic in
which 100 children had tonsils and ade
noids removed. She aided the dentist
furnished by the State in 60 days o-f
dental work for the school children. She
spent 28 days in private nursing in em
ergencies and made 102 visits for pri
vate nursing that consumed each less
than half a day. Home nursing classes
of 24 lessons each were conducted in
four communities, and the Red Cross
certified course of 15 lessons in Home
Hygiene and Care of the Sick was
given to a group in the Appalachian
Training School. Finally, she made
herself so useful that a county that has
persistently refused to spend money for
typhoid vaccination, and farm and home
demonstration work is appropriating
funds to continue the work this year,
with a program that promises to be
richer in results than last year’s.—R.
M. B.
THE GOOD AMERICAN
The Good American is Loyal.
If our America is to become ever
greater and better, her citizens must
be loyal, devotedly faithful, m every
relation of life.
1. I will be loyal to my family. In
loyalty I will gladly obey my parents
or those who are in their places. I
will do my best to help each member
of my family to strength and useful
ness.
2. I will be loyal to my school. In
loyalty I will obey and help other pu
pils to obey those rules which fur
ther the good of all.
3. I will be loyal to my town, my
state, my country. In loyalty I will
respect and help others to respect
their laws and their courts of jus
tice.
4. I will be loyal to humanity. In
loyalty I will do my best to help the
friendly relations of our country with
every other country, and to give to
every one in every land the best pos
sible chance.
If I try simply to be loyal to my
family, I may be disloyal to my
school.
If I try simply to be loyal to my
school, I may be disloyal to my town,
my state, and my country. If I try
simply to be loyal to my town, state
and country, I may be disloyal to
humanity.
I will try above all things else to
be loyal to humanity; then I shall
surely be loyal to my country, my
state and my town, to my school,
and to my family.
And he who obeys the law of loy
alty obeys all the other nine laws of
the Good American. r-J. B. Robert
son, in the Concord Times.
COUNTRY HOME CONVENIENCES
LETTER SERIES No. 50
TAMED LIGHTNING
The following letter in reply to a re
quest for an explanation of the popping
and snapping sounds that occur during
thunderstorms in houses that are con
nected to electric light and telephone
lines will undoubtedly be of interest to
a great many readers.
Your letter of March 30 to the Pro
gressive Farmer has been referred to
this division.
At the outset let me assure you that
there is absolutely no danger to you or
to your house from the popping sounds
which you describe. The trouble is due
to no defects in the wiring, nor is it
likely that the lightning rods have
anything to do with it either. Let me
The remedy for the trouble, and it
can be remedied, is to install lightning
arresters en the lines just outside of
your house. In a word, these lightning
arresters are simple devices which will
provide a still easier path for the dis
charges so that tte lightning will rush
back into the ground through the light
ning arresters instead of along the path
it has chosen heretofore into your
house. We would suggest that you
have the man who wired your house or
der from the Westinghouse Electric and
Manufacturing Company two Type MP,
Style No. 230110 lightning arresters and
install one on each wire at the last pole
before the wires enter your house.
assure you also that the strokes of j These will cost you in the neighborhood
lightning such as you see jumping from ! of eight dollars apiece, plus the cost of
cloud to cloud, or from the clouds to ! installing. The arresters should be eon-
the earth, do not follow the line wires ■ nected to a No. 6 rubber covered wire
into your house. When these direct, which in turn is properly soldered to a
strokes hit an electric wire they almost I length of half inch galvanized iron pipe
invariably break down the insulation | driven into the ground at the base of
A COMMUNITY WORKER
The lay-reader and real leader of a
little Edgecombe country church is the
most successful social worker I know,
even though he has never had any so
cial training in the new sense of the
word and is not a whole-time worker
as that term is used. But he has de
veloped the surrounding community as
few could do. Out of a hornet’s nest
of white illiteracy, ignorance and iner
tia a model community is being built.
The possessor of the most charming
personality, this man, who always has
the right word for each person and each
occasion, is to these people a shepherd,
a legal adviser and a protector. As
his office is in Tarboro, when they go to
town they see him. He stops his work
to talk, to find out about everything at
home—what they are doing and what
they want to do. If they get into a
scrape, he helps them out. If they need
money, he gets it somehow. They
know he is absolutely their friend. Con
sequently he draws them to church and
teaches the social gospel in his Bible
Class. He preaches of a work-a-day
world, its problems, lights, and shad
ows.
The people now come regularly; they
have improved marvelously in appear
ance ; they will play and work and pray
together. Their social functions are as
decorous as could be desired. They
give of their meagre wealth on different
occasions, (such as Thanksgiving, and
Near-East relief), and there as nowhere^
else this last Christmas, when all of
eastern North Carolina was blue over
cotton and tobacco prices, the Christ
mas spirit was present.—Katherine
Batts.
ENRICHES HIS HOME TOWN
The Houston Foundation for public
welfare is the beneficiary of a remark
able will—that of the late Edward
Pinkney Hill, jurist, capit&list, ranch
owner, who died in San Antonio, Texas,
during the summer of 1919. The provi
sions of this will, described in the No
vember issue of The American City by
H. Wirt Steele, director of the Depart
ment of Charity, Benevolence, and Pub-
very close to the point where they
strike and discharge into the ground.
The popping noises which you describe
are caused by what we call induced
charges. When a cloud charged with
electricity approaches a telephone or
electric light line the charge in the
cloud attracts a charge of the opposite
kind of electricity from, the ground on
to the wires. This charge from the
ground creeps on to the wires across
the insulation very slowly, and electri
cal engineers speak of the insulation as
being strained or stretched, much as
you would stretch a piece of rubber.
The Easiest Way
Now when a stroke of lightning oc
curs from this charged cloud it releases
the charge on the wire which has a ten
dency to rush back into the ground
whence it came by the easiest path it
can find. In the case of the line which
supplies you with your power it appears
that that easiest path happens to be in
your house.
the pole.
Entirely Harmless
Should you have any thunderstorms
before you get these arresters installed
I hope that these poppings will not
worry you unduly for, as I said, they
are entirely harmless. It so happens
that the identical condition occurs in
my own home and although I know the
cause and am satisfied of the absence
of danger, it is nevertheless quite dis
concerting, to' say the least, to have
such sharp reports so close at hand.
I am taking the liberty of enclosing
a copy of the University News Letter
of July 7, 1920 containing an article
along this same line. '
We are very glad to have had the op
portunity of explaining this to you and
can assure you that you need not feel
in the least mortified to ask such a
question. If we can serve you again at
any time please do not hesitate to write
us.”-P. H. D.
lie Welfare in Houston, show that its
author recognized a concept of social
responsibility which might be that of
some future utopia.
I give, bequeath and return to the
people of Houston in their corporate ca
pacity as the city of Houston, and the
Houston Foundation as created and or
ganized by and under the ordinance of
said city passed March 22, 1915, and
for the uses and purposes expressed
and defined in said ordinance, all my
property, real and personal, thaft may
own at my death.
Grateful to Houston
“I am enfluenced to this disposition
of my estate by the reflection that I
went to Houston in 1886 with nothing.
When I had made a few dollars above
necessity I invested in city lots and con
tinued like investments while I lived
there up to 1897, before which' time,
after a division of my property, there
remained to me enough to enable me to
retire fropi business. This good fortune
came unearned by me through the in
creased value of real estate, and it
seems appropriate that the city of
Houston should have such share in that
good fortune as I am in a situation to
return.”
Before his death. Judge Hill had sug
gested to the mayor of Houston that
there should be a department of the
municipal government known as the de
partment of public trusts which should
receive and administer estates intended
for public use. These conferences in
spired the passage of an ordinance ere- ]
ating the Department of Charity, Bene
volence and Public Welfare, and provid
ing that:
A Public Trust Bureau
This department shall be under the
control and management of a board of
trustees to be known as the Board of
Public Trusts of the City of Houston;
to consist of seven members, each to be
a resident of the city of Houston, of
skill and discretion in handling financial
and trust matters, of good moral char.-
acter, interested in welfare work and
possessing a knowledge of the civic, ed
ucational, physical and moral needs of
the inhabitants of the city of Houston.
Any one,holding or seeking political of
fice is disqualified from serving on the
board. Women are eligible for service
on the board, but their membership
shall not exceed three at any one time. ’ ’
It was after the passage of this ordi
nance’ that Judge Hill wrote his will
conforming to its provisions.—The Sur
vey.
WHO KNOWS ONE?
Who knows of a country school in
North Carolina that is effectively an
agency of economic and social value,
that is lifting the level of farming and
farm civilization in its territory, that
is welding the community together and
promoting all the purposes of communi
ty life; a school that teaches the old
school subjects well, but that even bet
ter develops the virtues of community
living?
Who knows of a country' church in
North Carolina that is directly busy with
the school interests of the community,
health and sanitation, wholesome re
creation, farm cooperation; that dis
tinctly is developing the virtues of com
munity life, namely, (1) mutual trust or
faith in one’s fellows, (2) fair play or
justice, (3) sagacity or prudential fore
sight, (4) subordination or a willing
surrender of personal rights for the
common good, (5) integrity which
means truthfulness, honesty, law-abid-
ingness and the like, (6) loyalty, com
munity pride, public spirit, and (7)
courage—all of which are distinctly
spiritual virtues?
If you know of such a country school
or such a country church, please give
us the name of it, the teacher or pastor
in charge, and his postoffice address.
We are asking because Mr. A. B.
MacDonald, of Kansas City, who wrote
the inspiring articles on The Country
School and The Country Church in The
Country Gentleman, wants to celebrate
North Carolina if only he can know
what localises to visit.
By the why, we are trying to arrange
the publication of Mr. MacDonald’s
Country Church and Country School ar
ticles in book form. Every preacher
and teacher in this state ought to have
his book.
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