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.
JUNE 29, 1921
CHAPEL HHX, N. C.
VOL. Vn, NO. 32
EdUorial Board ■ E. C. Branson, S. H. Hobbs, Jr., h. H. Wilson, B. W. Knight, D, D. Carroll, J. B. BuUltt, H. W. Odum, Entered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the Postofflce at Chapel HIU, N. C., under the act of August 24,1912.
A COMMUNITY COVENANT
, i „4. down from the platform of Memorial
We declare our purpose to accept all
YTV X- r Tj-ll ^4. ,-4, r XT XU
the duties of American citizenship.
We are forming an association to se
cure all the benefits of community life,
and affirm the right of our community
to each one’s best effort.
We support all individual rights just
so far as their use does not harm our
fellows.
We agree that the public is superior
to any private gain obtained at the ex
pense of community welfare.
We recognize and acknowledge the
gracious infiuence of practical Christi
anity in Community life.
We ask that our homes be guarded
by social conditions throughout our com
munity.
We declare the duty of the commu
nity to provide good schools, community
recreation, safe, sanitary conditions,
improved highways and encouragement
to thrift and home ownership.
We propose to make the neatness and
attractiveness of our homes and farm?
assets of distinct value to the township.
We agree to do our share in the crea
tion of public sentiment in support of
all measures in the public interest.
We agree to put aside all partisan
and sectarian relations when dealing
with community matters.
We state our conviction that the best
rewards from this organized effort lie
before each one in a deepened interest
in others and in an increased ability to
cooperate the one with the other for the
good of all.
We, citizens of Plainsboro Township,
incorporated by the Legislature of the
State of New Jersey, approved April
1st, 1919, and accepted by us on May
6th, 1919, subscribe to this declaration.
—N. C. Community Progress.
successful work behind them, stepping
DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITIES
The fate of democracy is wrapped up
in the future of community life.
The salvation of the democratic com
munity is in the released wisdom and
cooperative enterprise of all the mem- ident Chase
bers of the community.
If the individual is really to become a
full member of a community he must
become something of a community with
in himself. He must have the habits
and customs of the community and
something of its truest emotions, its
hopes and fears, its loves and hates, its
wider interests and its lasting responsi
bilities. Thus he will become not only
a real member of the comnaunity, but
the community itself will live and be
secure in him; in his habits the guaran
tee of its continuity and stability, m his
innovating impulses the guarantee of
its vital criticism, and in his growing
intelligence the guarantee of its con-
tinuous reconstruction.
The hope of community, local, national
and international, is the world’s great
est hope, and in the furtherance of this
hope social intelligence is justified in
attempting to break down, not ruth
lessly and ignorantly, but carefully,
thoughtfully and yet persistently, all
intervening obstructions. This is the
practical significance of the social
sciences: they must point the way by
which society may achieve this larger
social organization.
The whole structure of our education
must be made over—in motive, in spirit,
in atmosphere, and in projected out
come— until the old blatant individual
ism passes away and in its place comas
the new sense of individual responsibil
ity for the common good, which is the
foundation of community.
Democracy cannot abide the isolated
worker, lost in the routine of his voca
tion or profession. Every member of
the democratic community ought to be
a worker, and every worker ought to
be a real member of the community.
The destiny of the community is in
the keeping of the community. J. K.
Hart, in Community Organization
Hall at the University of North Caro
lina, Wednesday morning, June 15, their
diplomas in their hands, brought to a
climax the 126th commencement at the
university.
The undiluted flavor of straight Tar
Heelism pervaded the four days of com
mencement activities. From the chief
executive of North Carolina, Governor
Cameron Morrison, the graduates re
ceived their jealously won diplomas,
and from that other towering Tar Heel,
former Secretary of the Navy Josephus
Daniels, they listened to the last words
of admonition most of them will hear
on the university campus. Throughout
the four days of commencement, from
baccalaureate sermon to the final ad
dress, North Carolina figures, preach
ers, students, alumni, and state officials,
stood out in the fore-front of an All-
North-Carolina event.
The baccalaureate sermon, preached
by the Rev. Charles E. Maddry, secre
tary of the Baptist state convention,
ushered in the first day of commence
ment, Sunday morning, June 12. For
Dr. Maddry the event was a home
coming in itself; eighteen years ago
almost to the day he stood on the same
platform and delivered his senior ora
tion which won for him the highest ora
torical honor in the university, the
Willie P. Mangum medal. At twilight
on the campus under the historic Davie
Poplar the Rev. W. D. Moss, of the
Chapel Hill Presbyterian church,
preached the Y. M. C. A. sermon.
The big gathering of alumni, chiefly
from ten classes which had special re
unions, dominated the campus on Al
umni Day, June 14. John Motley More-
head, of New York, presided at the an
nual alumni luncheon in Swain Hall.
Talks were made by Governor Morri
son, attending his first commencement
as governor, by Josephus Daniels, and
by Walter Murphy, of Salisbury,
Charles A. Jonas, of Lihcolnton, and
Alfred M. Scales, of Greensboro. Pres-
addressed the business
meeting of the alumni and talks were
made by representatives of each of the
reunion classes, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891,
1896, 1901, 1906, 1911, 1916, 1920.
Chapel Hill has rarely enjoyed a more
delightful commencement. For four
days the seniors, students, alumni, vis
itors, mothers' and fathers and best
girls surged backward and forward
across the campus, attending final meet
ings, renewing old associations, joining
in at class dinners, musical concerts,
baseball games, dramatic productions,
atid listening to addresses on nearly
every possible subject.
And after the last diploma had been
presented, the commencement dances,
attended by more than 150 visiting
young ladies, started in Swain Hall
Wednesday afternoon and continued
until the final ball on Thursday night.
Swain Hall was specially decorated and
the' Weidemeyer Orchestra of Hunting-
ton, West 'Virginia, furnished the music.
—Lenoir Chambers.
CAROLINA COMMENCEMENT
The largest number of graduates that
ever received degrees from a North
Carolina institution, upwards of 180
men and women with a long record of
COMMUNITY DEADHEADS
Thomas Brooks Fletcher, of Ma
rion, Ohio, the other editor of Presi
dent Harding’s home town, speaks
of community deadheads as follows:
A community deadhead is a citizen
ostrich, with his head buried in the
sand. He is a man who opposes
everything new; who votes No on im
provements, expects salvation be
cause it’s free, but would not seek
it if it cost him anything; erects
spite fences and divides his town in
to cliques, north, east, west, south,
and outsides.
He is negatively good and there
fore positively bad. He is the man
who refuses to cooperate, and who
thinks more of prosperity than he
does of posterity. He is the man
who never does anything for his com
munity until he dies. — Albemarle Ob
server.
The registered voters who did not vote
wera 818.
In Louisburg there were 277 votes
for and 191 votes, against. ^But the
minority won. The registered voters
not voting were 260.
How to Defeat Bonds
How to defeat a school bond issue is
plainer than print. ' First, decline to
sign the petition calling for an election.
Second, sign it with no intention of vot
ing. And third, stay away from the
polls on election day. Simple, isn’t it?
Our belief about suffrage in demo
cratic communities is equally simple.
First, all elections ought to be de
cided by a majority of the voters vot
ing, and not as at present by a major
ity of the voters registered.
Second, a citizen who does not vote
ought automatically to be deprived of
citizenship and the right to vote unless
he is providentially hindered.
Third, restore the delinquent to citi
zenship upon payment of a substantial
sum, provided it is paid within a stated
reasonable period.
People who do not care or do not dare
to vote when public issues are at stake
are useless as citizens, or worse than
useless, in democratic areas.—E. C. B.
DEFEATING SCHOOL BONDS
Eighty-seven! school communities in
North Carolina have voted $8,255,000 of
bonds for new school buildings since
January 1, of this year—and this in a
year of hard times! It is proof posi
tive that we are not yet bankrupt [in
spirit or in purse.
School bond issues have failed to
carry in very few communities. Two
of the recent failures are Hamlet and
Louisburg. Hamlet fell down the Other
day in a fifty thousand dollar proposi
tion, and Louisburg in a sixty thousand
dollar proposition, and both these cities
are rich as compared with fifty other
communities that went over the top
with a rush. Bunn, for instance, a little
neighbor of Louisburg’s, voted school
building bonds amounting to fifty dol
lars per inhabitant, touisburg balked
on a proposition amounting to thirty-
one dollars per inhabitant.
In Hamlet 296 votes were cast in
favor of school bonds, and only 96 votes
were cast against the issue. But the
minority vote defeated the proposition.
TEACHING COOPERATION
For years we have been told that
farmers would not cooperate. Nor did
they want to, for they were fully occu
pied with production and had little time
for selling. But driven to it by eco
nomic pressufe they are meeting the
situation successfully. It is no longer
a question whether farmers can coop
erate. [They are cooperating. The
only question is how far they will be
driven to cooperate by our fool distri
bution system.
The Federal Bureau of Markets cred
its cooperative organizations with in
creasing the farmers’ returns in one
year $2,080,000 in Michigan and $1,500,-
000 in Mississippi. A state market di
rector of California is aifthority for the
statement that cooperative associations
handled $250,000,000 worth of farm pro
ducts in that state in one year.
There are now at least fifteen thous
and farm cooperative organizations in
this country. So rapidly is the number
increasing that even the Government
cannot give exact figures.
Agricultural colleges formerly con
sidered that their duties stopped with
production, but gradually they are go
ing in for selling. They know the dif
ficulty many cooperative enterprises
experience in getting ..competent mana
gers; so courses in marketing and fural
advertising have been offered for some
time. In Nebraska, where farmers do
over a hundred million dollars’ worth of
cooperative business each year, the
agricultural college is starting a course
in cooperation, to help supplytrained
men and further the cooperative move
ment among producers. It williinclude
training in marketing, accounting and
grain grading. Colleges in other states
plan similar courses.
COUNTRY HOME CONVENIENCES
LETTER SERIES No. 59
THE FARMER’S WIFE AND HER CITY SISTER
Fundamentally, the countrywoman
and her city sister have the same major
interests—children, and home. The only
real difference is that the country
woman works—actually works, with
hardened hands and brittle fingers—
harder and longer. And yet, while the
city woman had an electric clothes
washer long ago, the farm woman still
bends over a washboard in the yard.
But the farm woman today is rapidly
learning that too much of her time is
taken up with the tasks that do not
even concern the town housekeeper.
The Facts in the Case
In the city, for example, the light
ing of the house seldom receives a
thought in the daily routine; in the
country, the cleaning and filling of oil
lamps is just one of the messiest of the
necessary daily jobs.
The daily delivery of the morning
milk and bread gives the city house
wife another hour to lie in bed. In the
country, not only do many farmers’
wives help with the milking and sepa
rating, but 88 percent of them wash
the milk pails and 66 percent clean
the cream separators; and, because in
the country one can’t run to the corner
for a loaf of bread or pound of butter,
94 percent of farm women make their
own bread and 60 percent their own
butter.
In the city, running water is a con
venience one appreciates only when the
pipe freezes; in the country, many
women still carry buckets of water—
ten buckets a day, or 46 tons of water
a year!
In the city, the multiplicity of con
venient stores has almost made sewing
a lost art in the home; in the country,
95 percent of farm women do their
own sewing.
In the city, the midday lunch, with
its tasty snatches of left-overs from
the day before, is often a welcome res
pite for the housewife. On the farm,
the heavy midday dinner not only for
the farmer husband but for all the
hungry farmhands is another of the
burdens falling on the farm wife.
A Real Necessity
These are only a few of the thoughts
in the back of the farm wife^s mind
when she hears the words “labor
savers,” The electric bread mixer is
much more real as a labor saver to a
woman who must make her own bread
or do without. The electric sewing
machine; the fireless cooker; the iceless
refrigerator; the motor-driven churn;
the washing machine; the iron; the
vacuum cleaner; the electric milking
machine, cream separator and bottle
washer: these are all associated in her
mind with tasks that are necessary, not
optional. Like the pockets in a man’s
coat, they are conveniences that be
came necessities even before they were
invented.— Electrical Merchandising.
Why Farmers Cooperate
Farmers in Limestone County, Ala
bama, built up a fine hog-raising indus
try, but they were far from any central
market and sold their animals to pro
fessional buyers. The returns to the
farmers were very disappointing. They
organized the Better Farming Associa
tion and marketed their hogs coopera
tively. On twenty carloads sold in this
way they received four cents a pound
more than was offeredby the local buy
ers. Their saving in one year was a-
round $12,000.
Farmers around Orchard, Nebraska,
organized a cooperative association and
marketed $147,850 worth of their pro
ducts. 'When they assembled in Or
chard a short time ago one of the local
merchants furnished an orchestra for
their entertainment. His trade had
increased fourfold since the cooperative
association began operations, he said.
The town had become a popular trading
point with farmers who had patronized
it but little before. Moreover, those
who had been steady patrons had more
money to spend because they were no
longer dividing their profits with sev
eral sets of buyers and sellers.
Farmers in a small Southeastern Mis
souri town sold a carload of melons to
an out-of-town buyer for sixty dollars.
The buyer said that was all he could
pay as the city markets were glutted.
But there were other buyers in town
who knew the city markets were not
glutted and they started a spirited bid
ding. Those melons were resold four
times before they left the town and
the last price paid for them was $340.
But only the sixty dollars paid to the
farmers remained in the community.
Such practices led to the organization
of the Southeastern Missouri Melon
Growers’ Association, which sells the
farmers’ products cooperatively. Re
turns to the farmers in many cases
have been increased to four or five
times the amount received under the
old method of selling to chance buyers,
—The Country Gentleman.
In North Carolina
The drop in cotton and tobacco prices
in North Carolina last fall cost our
farmers one hundred sixty-two million
dollars. No wonder they are desperate.
Led by J. Y. Joyner, Clarence Poe,
W. B. Kilgore, and others, they are
organizing both for production and for
marketing.
United they stick; disunited they are
stuck, is the way one tobacco:;.farmer
puts it. If calamity teaches that lesson
lastingly, it is worth all it costs.
HERE IS THE ANSWER
Why are our boys leaving the farm?
There are many reasons, simple and
complex, that are distressing and even
maddening. But to turq from the crit
ical to the constructive, we may ask,
why do some boys develop into such
splendid men while they stay on the
farm? Why do some educated boys
preferably remain in the country in
spite of the cityward drift? For there
are such boys. Could we not note the
reasons and use them as constructive
suggestions in solving the Farm Life
problem? Which essentially is the prob
lem of maintaining a standard people
upon the farms.
I am therefore citing the story of
two exceptionally fine boys, boys who
will make splendid citizens, who are
living and working and developing on
the farm. They are Benjamin and
Henry Gray Shelton of Edgecombe
County.
These boys are fifteen and fourteen
years old and are now attending a near
by high school. They have lived in the
country all their life. But theirs has
been an ideal farm life. For twenty
years their father, Mr. B. F. Shelton,
has been growing live stock, and all
sorts of hays, and foodstuffs that have'
been overlooked by North Carolina cot
ton-raising fiends. The small amount
of cotton planted yields practically as
much as the more extensive areas once
did, due to the fact that the raising of
stock and beans, peas, wheat, clovers
and hays is continually improving the
fertility of the soil. The Sheltons raise
enough of all foodstuffs for the farm
and some to sell.
In all this the boys have a partner
ship interest. They be*long to the Corn
and Pig Clubs, have cattle of their own,
help feed and look after all the stock,
and receive part of the dividends. In
fact they are their father’s partners.
They have an interest in the business.
They attend farm meetings and make
exhibits both of livestock and field, pro
ducts at the fairs. Indeed last year
they had charge of and actually pre
pared all the Mapleton Farm exhibits
at the Coastal Plain Fair at Tarboro.
Everything was beautifully shown, and
the Herefords looked as if they might
have had' even their cream-white fore
locks curled.
I do not wish to eulogize, but these
two boys are as attractive and gentle
manly as any boys of their age I know.
Yet they are real boys and are per
fectly happy and contented on the farm
even though they know and enjoy cities
and travel.
Certainly wisdom like this will tell in
the future. It is building a beautiful
structure of character now. — Cather
ine Batts.