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 University Ex
tension Division.
JULY 27, 1921
CHAPfiL HILL, N. C.
VOL. Vn, NO. 36
Editorial Board
B. 0. Branson, 9. H. Hobbs, Jr., L. E. Wilson, E. W. Knight, D. D. Carroll, J. B. Bullitt, H. W. Odum, Entered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the Postoffioe at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24,1912,
FARM TENANCY IN 1920
tenancy, gains and losses
We are carrying in this issue of the
■News Letter a table ranking the coun
ties of North Carolina from low to high
in farm tenantry, and opposite the col
umn showing the percent of all farmers
who are tenants is a column showing
whether tenants are a decreasing or
an increasing ratio of all farmers.
For instance, ten years ago 35.2
percent of all thj farmers in Cherokee
county were tenants. Today only 21.3
percent of them are tenants; the
tenant ratio has dropped 13.9 percent.
’Again, ten years ago only 25.9 percent
of the farms in Forsyth county were
cultivated by tenants, while in 1920 the
tenant farmers were 40.5 percent of all
farmers, the tenant ratio having in
creased 14.6 percent. All the counties
of the state range between these ex
tremes in losses or gains in the ratio of
farmers who are tenants.
Scotland Leads
Scotland county holds first place in
tenancy in North Carolina with 79.6
percent, or nearly four-fifths, of all her
farmers tenants, or four out of every
!:ve farms in the county cultivated by
tenants. Edgecombe with 79.4 and
Greene w'ith 78.2 percent are close com
petitors for this position, and if during
the next ten years they continue to in
crease as they have during the last dec
ide, both will be ahead of Scotland in
ionancy and behind in the percent of
farmers who own the land they culti
vate.
Dare county, although not an import
ant farm area, leads in the percent of
farmers who own the land they culti
vate. There are only two tenants in
the entire county.
A Tenant State
Every decade finds not only more ten
ants in North Carolina but a larger per
cent of all the farms cultivated by ten
ants. Twenty years ago 93,008 farms,
or 41 4 percent of all farms, were cul
tivated by tenants. In 1910 we had
107 287 farms, or 42.3 percent cultivated
by tenants. In 1920 we have 117,459
tenant farmers and they are 43.5 per-
oent of all farmers. We have 24,461
more tenant farms today than 20 years
ago. Nearly half of all the farms of
our state are tenant farms and nearly
half of our country populations cultivate
land that belongs to other people and
have ho roof of their own. All told, the
tenant farmers ahd their families num
ber six hundred thousand souls. They
makeup the unstable, wandering ele
ment of our population, for 62 percent
of them, or 300,000 of our farm tenant
population, find new homes each year
During a ten-year period every tenant
farmer moves five times upon an aver
age. They are continually on the move,
either from choice or necessity.
Where Mainly
The farm tenants of North Carolina
are to be found mainly in the Coastal
Plains counties and in those counties of
the Piedmont belt on the north that cul
tivate tobacco, and on the south tha
cultivate cotton. Tenancy is oim in
, this state wherever cotton and tobacco
are cultivated and it is not found to any
large extent in any county that does
not produce either of these two crops.
Four-fifths of all our tenants are in cot
ton and tobacco counties. No Mountain
county even approaches our state aver
age of 43.6 percent. Of the 42 counties
above the state average all but nine are
located in the eastern half of the state
and these nine are four tobacco coun
ties along the Virginia border and five
cotton counties along the South Caro
lina border. All counties between and
west of these nine are counties where
farm ownership is the rule and where
each decade finds a larger percent of
the (arms cultivated by owners and ten
ancy a decreasing practice. The Moun
tain and Hill counties that produce
food and feed crops have never been
and can never be tenant counties. Ten
ancy seldom exists outside of cash crop
areas. The Tidewater counties which
have no cash crop rank high in farm
ownership and are not moving over into
tenancy except where cotton and to-
bacco are claiming this area.
It can be laid down as a law that in
proportion as a county produces cotton
or tobacco in the same proportion is she
a tenant area. Scotland, for her area,
produces more cotton than any county
in the state and she ranks first in farm
tenancy. Edgecombe, Pitt, Wilson,
Greene, and Lenoir are combination
cotton and tobacco counties and seventy-
six percent of the farmers are tenants
in this area that leads the world in to
bacco production and ranks high in cot
ton cultivation. The Coastal Plains
counties rank in tenancy in proportion
as they are producers of the cash crops,
cotton and tobacco, and as you move
west and east from this area tenancy
decreases.
Ideal Tenant Crops
Cotton and tobacco are ideal tenant
crops because they can be produced by
unskilled .labor. These two crops are
admirably suited to the farm labor in
this belt. In some of the counties more
than half of the farmers are negroes,
and many of the white tenants would
be failures at any other type of farm
ing. Both cotton and tobacco are ready
cash crops and can be sold in the fall
immediately after harvesting and all
farm accounts closed in one transaction.
Credit can be secured to run the farmer
even before the crops are planted
through our crop-lien system. Both
crops are non-perishable or practically
so, and can be retained by the landlord
or merchant for long periods, or until
the market suits. Both crops are easi
ly transported from place to place and
have large value for their bulk. Neither
crop can be eaten by man or beast,
making it safe to trust the tenant with
them. They are hand-made crops, pro
ducing high per acre yields, giving the
landlord maximum returns for the land
leased. Not only so, but the two crops
HUMANISM
To look with wide and sympathet
ic vision over all human affairs, near
and remote, recent and ancient; to
enter freely and sympathetically in
to all worthy kinds of human exper
ience, directly through participation
and observation, and indirectly
through conversation and lecture and
wide reading; to range with quick
ened mind through the rich and in
spiring fields of science and art and
philosophy and religion; to feel a
oneness with one’s race, and to be
fired with its highest aspirations; to
act with one’s fellows vigorously, joy
ously and whole-heartedly in the co
operative provision of a full and rich
life opportunity for every human be
ing,—such as these are humanistic
experiences. Those experiences in
which man realizes his full humanity
constitute the substance -of human
ism.—Bobbitt—The Curriculum.
save the enormously high interest rates
they now pay, they could accumulate
wealth and in time bu.y farms as they
have done in Denmark, where now 90
percent of the farmers own their land.
Cooperative credit unions and coopera
tive marketing are our two big needs
in the field of cooperative activity in
the south.
The last, surest, and best method is
to produce all the food and feed crops
needed for consumption in the South
and then produce the two best cash
crops on the face of the earth, cotton
and tobacco, of which we have a mon
opoly, and bank the wealth secured
from the sale of these crops. This prac
tice, if followed for ten years, would
make southern farmers the richest on
earth and would enable us to accumu
late a surplus with which to buy farms
and move from farm tenancy over into
farm ownership.
doing something like this for high school
instruction all over the state, I am told.
'The million dollar high school building
in Fresno is soon to be opened with a
grand fete. I hope to be present to
judge the high school fervor of these
California people.
Ontario Schools
Here in this little town of Ontario
with 7,500 inhabitants, the high school
and junior college property is valued at
$600,000. The campus is 105 acres, in
citrus fruits 30 acres, and in deciduous
fruits 66 acres. They spent $21,000 get
ting this last experimental plot ready
for orchard farming; The buildings, in
Spanish architecture, are an adminis
tration and liberal arts building, a
science building devoted mainly to agri
cultural arts, an auditorium and library,
building with a $25,000 pipe organ, a
trades school building, gymnasium build-
! ing with a plunge, automobile sheds,
tennis courts, an athletic field, and so
on. The grounds are a dream of beauty
—verily so. There are three $5,000
irm ownership. men in the faculty, a score of $3,000
Our leading tenant counties should I men, and the lowest paid instructor gets
begin to look for'some sensible solutions j $1,800.
to the tenant problem. If the practice ; Jhe Tax Rate
of 60 years continue^ eastern North ; ^^gOO pupils with 128
Carolina wll be a laird , ^ ^ Raleigh is three times as
lords and many tena • . . ^ gg Ontario, but I am guessing that
es us the peril of this condition.-S. H. as many^high
H-- Or. j ggjjOol pupils or half as many graduates
I yearly. And these people work these
wonders on a city tax rate of $2.43 on
Mr.
ing new fields. This spells disaster to
schools, school attendance, school con
solidation, church membership, attend
ance and support. It spells disaster to
good roads development, public health
sanitation, law and order, community
organizations and enterprises for prog-
' ress and prosperity, welfare and well-
are thoroughly protected by law and i being. It spells disaster for coopera-
perfectly protected-by business meth-1 tive marketing associations. A land-
ods. There are no crops on the face of j less, homeless, wandering tenant popu-
the earth that are so admirably adapted I lation cannot become a cooperative
to tenant farming as our two big cash 1 machine. Cooperation is rooted in land
crops, cotton- and tobacco. And our ownership, and a farm civilization
Coastal Plains counties have no peer in rooted in tenancy can hardly succeed
the production of these two crops, and with cooperative enterprises. A coop-
the 20 combination cotton and tobacco erative enterprise, to succeed, must
counties have no peer in tenancy ratio, have a stable membership.
The Eastern Half Increases | Tenancy And Illiteracy
If a state or county desires to in-1 Tenancy and illiteracy go hand in
crease the ratio of farmers who own hand. The states of the Union bulk up
the land they cultivate, if a state or ! in illiteracy , as they are grounded in
county desires to stabilize its popula- ^ tenancy. So largely with the counties
tion and reap economic and social values I of this state. Tenancy and illiteracy
to be derived therefrom, it had better : are twin-born social menaces. They
not cultivate cash crops exclusively. ; are twins at birth and boon companions
We are not advocating the cessation of - throughout life, as professor Branson
cotton and tobacco production but are | puts it. Neither can be cured without
presenting the consequences that are | curing the other, and as long as we
as inevitable as death itself. Every ^ have the one we will have the other,
single county in the eastern half of Our steady increase in illitera,cy among
CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS
Concerning California schools,
Branson writes;
I indiscreetly ventured into blowing
a big horn for the Old North State, at
the luncheon hour in the summer school
cafeteria yesterday—our ten millions
voted locally by eighty-odd towns for
public school buildings, the $1,600,000
in Guilford, the $900,000 for a high
school building in Winston-Salem, and
so on.
Fine, said my neighbor, a country
high school principal in Santa Barbara
North Carolina except Nash, and seven
Tidewater counties which produce prac
tically no cotton or tobacco, has a high
er farm tenant ratio today than in 1910.
And the ratio was higher in 1910 than
in 1900. It will, be higher in 1930 than
today, and so on and on as long as these
two crops are produced on the present
Only five counties in the western half
of the state have a higher farm tenant
ratio than ten years ago. Two of these,
Rockingham and Forsyth, are tobacco
counties, and one, Iredell, is a cotton
county. The only two exceptions to
the cotton and tobacco law are Clay
and Graham counties in the southwest
ern part of the state, and both counties
together have only 539 tenants. The
western half of North Carolina is mov
ing out of farm tenancy into farm own
ership. The eastern half is moving
deeper and deeper into farm tenancy.
The western half is building its pros
perity in food and feed farming, grains
hay and forage, livestock and livestock
industries. The eastern half is staking
its all in cash-crop farming and it is
plainly a fatal practice. The per capita
production of food and feed crops was
lower there in 1920 than m 1910 and has
been dSereasing ever since the Civil
War. The livestock business is on a
perilously low level, with Uttle sign of
a revival of this important industry.
Social Consequences
No farm tenant population has ever
accumulated a large per capita wealth.
Especially is this true of cotton and to
bacco tenant farmers. They P’^o^uce
wealth in enormous quantities but the
great bulk of it slips through’their hn-
gers from a score of causes, the mam
one being their - inability to see the ad
vantage of live-at-home farming, or in
ability to practice it because of- our
farm system. Aside from the economic
consequences, what are the social con
sequences?
More than 300,000 of our farm ten
ants move every year. They have no
abiding interest in any community be
cause they have no stake in the land.
They are strangers, sojourners, pil
grims, forever on the move, and always
discontented. Nor- can they be blamed
for their discontent. They are forevei
white men and women is due to our in
crease in farm tenancy in fifty counties
of the state.
A Church Problem
The churches may not consider it so,
but farm tenancy is a church problem,
A very small percent of farm tenants
ever join any church and a very small
percent are to be found attending
churches. "They are in no community
long enough to form church connections.
Non-church membership and tenancy
go hand in hand. For instance Edge
combe county ranks 100th in church
membership and 99th in farm tenancy.
In 8 of the high tenancy counties more
than half of all people above 10 years
of age belong to no church whatsoever.
The church must destroy tenancy and
WV.>llUCJ.O Vli a. V./J- v/i
the hundred of taxable property. Here’c
a tax rate that looks pretty high to our
folks back East, but apparently nobody
thinks much about it oul^_ this way;
at least I’ve been able to'pick up no
complaints. The citrus fruit growers
have been hard hit by the transconti
nental freight rates, but they are game
and there is no balking on schools and
roads.
Sight-Seeing
high school principal m oaiita Datuara It’s hot in the direct sun, but cool in
county' sounds like California; fifteen ■ the shade, while at night we crawl un
millions voted for high school buildings | der double blankets. A good sea breeze
alone in this state since January 1. We | after eleven o’clock every day. -
believe in high schools in California. 11 We spend tomorrow in Los Angeles
have only 34 pupils in my high school, [ 31 miles away, at the University of
but my country district gives me two Southern California, where I am marked
buildings worth $60,000 and five teach-1 up to speak on The Social Problems of
ers with $14,000 a year for salaries »nd ; the South Atlantic States. We go on
running expenses. i an electric tram and get back at 11 P.
Here are high school boys and girls [ M. We shall have adundant time to
housed in the “country at -about $1,600
each, and taught at a cost of around
$400 a year per pupil. And they are
see the city in a rubber-neck bus mean
time. We shall be spending week-ends
at the beach resonts and on Catalina.
%
FARM TENANCY IN NORTH CAROLINA IN 1920
Percents Increase or Decrease, 1910-1920
Counties ranked from low to high according to the percent of farms operated
by tenants. The ten-year gain or loss is shown opposite this percent. Based
on Press Summaries of the 1920 Census. ir
State rate of tenantry 43.5 percent. Total increase m farms 16,038.
increase in farm tenants 11,1^2. , tt • •* .c r
Rural Social Science Department,. University of North Carolina
Total
illiteracy or tenancy and illiteracy will 21
destroy the
gions
church in our country re-
Remedies
North Carolina and the South are |
drifting into farm tenancy. Every dec-1 “
ade marks a decrease in the ratio of
farmers who own the land they till.
This is especially true in those 800 coun
ties of the 'South that produce the bulk
of our cotton. Are there any remedies
for this fatal tendeilcy? W6 believe
there are many agencies that can be
used to aid farmers to move from ten
ancy over into home and farm owner
ship. It is-perilous to our democracy
to continue our present drift. It is im
portant that all people who have the
interests of our democracy at heart
should aid in making it possible for a
larger percent of our farmers to be tied
to the land they cultivate.
There are three things that if put in
to practice would render immediate.aid.
First, a progressive land tax- suited to
our needs would make it possible for
tenants to get a chance to buy farms.
Nearly all the leading agricultural areas
outside the United States have such a
A second remedy lies in the farmers
providing their own credit machinery
through cooperative credit unions. This
state has the best credit-unioii law in
the nation, but farmers are making very
little use of it. If farmed could pro
vide their own credit at six percent or
Rank County
Dare
Avery
Alleghany..
Mitchell....
Watauga....
Ashe^
Henderson.
Brunswick..
New Hanove
Randolph ...
Jacksdn
Wilkes ......
Transylvania
Alexander..
Columbus..
Yadkin ....
Carteret...
Caldwell....
Davidson ..
Cherokee ..
Macon
Swain
Buncombe ..
Pender ....
Guilford....
Catawba...
Alamance..
28 Bladen ....
28 Burke
30 Y ancey ...■
31 Tyrrell ....
32 Surry
33 Moore
34 McDowell..
35 Madison....
36 Stanly
37 Beaufort ..
37 Lincoln ....
37 Rowan ....
40 Graham...
41 Haywood ..
42 Orange
43 Clay
44 Currituck.,
45 Cnatham .
46 Gates
47 Lee
48* Davie... .T
49- Pamlico...
60 Harnett’..
Percent Percent
tenants ten-year
gain or loss
... 2.6 .. .. 1.9
.. 10.3 —
...12.3 -2.8
-7.11-61
-7-01 62
-4.9 I 63
-2.8 I 64
2.6'65
-7.0 i 65
-1.6'67
— 168
-0.9 * 69
-13.9'70
-4.3171
Rank County
Sampson.
Polk
Iredell ...
Montgomery
Forsyth
Onslow
Gaston ....,
Washington
Rutherford
Stokes
Chowan...
Hyde
Cumberland
Duplin
Cleveland ..
Person....
Martin ....
Craven ....
Johnston ..
Union
Pasquotank
Perquimans
Cabarrus
■Vance ...
Bertie.,..
W arren ..
Rockingham
Caswell....
Granville .
Durham...
Nash
Camden..
Wake
Northampton
Robeson..
Hertford
Mecklenbur
Richmond.
Franklin..
Jones
Hoke
Wayne ...
Halifax...
Anson
Lenoir
• Pitt
Wilson :..
Greene ...
Edgecortibe
Percent Percent
tenants ten-year
gain or loss.
100 Scotland..
Note- (11 Avery was formed in 1911 out of Watauga, Caldwell, and Mitch
ell and does not appear in the 1910 Census. In the area occupied by these four
counts tenaS?ry decreased 5.7 percent between 1910 and 1920.
counues formed in 1911 out of Cumberland and Robeson. In the area
occunied bv these three counties tenantry increased 7 8 percent during the same
Tn 1920 56 a percent of all farmers in these three counties were tenants.
P (31 Cleveland Currituck, Dare, Durham, Gaston, Harnett, and Wake had
their boundaries slightly changed during the last census period, but the terntory
gatned or lost was to small in each instance, that the figures for them in the
tor tneir Qisuuiitciiti. in
seeking to better their condition by try- less
nwn credit at six percent ui gainea or lu&t wao *** w—
some European countries and ' Ibove table are approximately correct.