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.
NOVEMBER 23, 1921
CHAPFX HILL, N. G.
VOL, vni, NO. 3
Bdilarial Board t E. C. Eraiison, S. H. Hobba, .Tr.. L. R. Wilson, B. W. KniBht, D. D. Carroll.'J. B. Bullitt, H. W. Odum. Entered as seoond-olass matter November 14,1914, at the Postofllee at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24, 1912.
DEBT-FREE HOMES
More than four-fifths or 82.9 percent
■of the town and country home owners
of North Carolina occupied dwellings
free of encumbrance in January 1920.
We lead the South in debt-free homes,
and we barely miss leading the United
States in this essential particular. In
deed, the only state that made a better
showing was Nevada, and Nevada hardly
counts as a state. There are more peo
ple and more dwellings in Mecklenburg
and Gaston counties plone than in the
whole state of Nevada.
The common notion is that we threw
money away like drunken sailors, in the
flush times of the war period. And we
did waste money in multiplied millions
in oil stocks, fertilizer stocks, and other
blue-sky stocks, in wanton indulgences
and extravagances of every sort. Never
theless, we paid more old debts at the
stores and lifted more mortgages on
homes than ever before in the history
of the state. A thrifty remnant enabled
North Carolina to make a better record
in these particulars than any other state
in America, Vermont and Mississippi
alone excepted. 1, ...9
To be sure, we have not had much
ready cash in North Carolina the last
year or so, but manifestly we are not
yet bankrupt—not when four-|ifths of
our home-owners live in debt-free dwell
ings.
The Home-Owning Virtues
All of US had a fair chance to lift the
mortgages on our homes during the war
period and directly thereafter, but only
one-tenth of us took the chance. The
.other nine-tenths of us- threw it away
in reckless improvidence. And mind
you, these fractions are not guesses;
they are figured out. of the 1920^ Cen
sus.
Curowned-homes increased from 204,-
000 to 236,000, in round numbers. Our
debt-free homes increased 23,566, and
this number is almost exactly a tenth
of all the owned-homes of the state.
Note the ratio of thrifty home-owners.
It is the old, old story—this apparent
ly fatal ratio of nine-tenths to one-tenth
in property ownership. On an average
^nine people of every ten live from hand
to mouth, spend all they make, consume
ail they produce, and lay up nothing
■against a rainy day. They must go in
to debt for coffins and funerals, if a
wife or child dies. If they themselves
die they leave no estates for record with
the probate judge. As a result nine-
tenths of ail the property is owned by
one-tenth of all the people. It is so in
the Uniteli Slates, so in North-Carolina,
so in Chapel Hill township, as our;iUni-
versity research studies show.
The landless, homeless estate of men
begins in a lack of the home-owning
virtues—industry, thrift, sagacity, so
briety, and integrity. The man that
rises out of tenancy into home-owner
ship must have not one but all these
virtues. The lack of any one of them
is fatal. Even with them all, he must
struggle with untoward economic, so-
cial, and civic obstacles__in_tl^_world
about him, and every day this struggle
grows fiercer, even in North Carolina.
In the natural course of events, his last
remaining chance will disappear with
the present generation, or so it appears
today.
Ten-Year Increases
Here is a table of dwellings in North
Carolina worked out of the 1910 and
1920 Censuses, and it provokes endless
thought.
Dwellings
Total no.
•Occupied
owners
Owned free
Occupied by
renters
Population
of state 2
Our dwellings increased in number a
little faster than our population in gen
eral, which means that in the main
housing is a city problem in North Ca
rolina. The increase of home-owners
lagged a little behind ou^ population
Increase, and the increase of unincum
bered homes lagged still further be
hind.
It is comforting to find that town and
renters steadily increase in number, but
the general ratio decreases a little-
just two-fifths of one percent in ten
years. /
Mainly the increase of our renters is
in our town and city centers. Barely a
third of it belongs to the farm regions.
The table on Debt-Free Homes in the
United States in 1920 appears elsewhere
in this issue. The table on Town and
Country Tenancy in the United States
in 1920 appeared in last week’s issue.
1910
1920 Pet. Inc.
440,334
513,377
16.6
203,562
235,842
16.8
162,914
186,480
14.4
227,239
261,303
15.0
206,287
2,559,123
16.0
HATS OFF TO CAROLINA
The Columbia State grows eloquent
over the progress and improvements in
North Carolina in recent years. Ad
mitting that once we Tar Heels were
more noted for our moonshine whiskey
and illiteracy than any other mark of
distinction, the State says:
But North Carolina is living it down.
Those who take the pains to look her
over—giving her even “the once over”
—can not fail to find her comely and
ripe with promise.
The-mountain region of North Caro
lina is absolutely assured of being one
of the greatest health and pleasure re
sorts of the world. It is also rich in
almost untouched wealth. It will some
day be a vast sanatorium, a stupendous
playground of the nation—at least of
the nation east of the Mississippi—and
the orchard of the east.
And the observer of the moving scene,
of the ‘ ‘fierce rattle of the foreground, ’ ’
can not but be impressed by the univer
sal signs of growth and progress. Mag
nificent highways are being built into
and through the heart of these moun
tain stretches, opening them to the
thousands that are gradually beginning
to learn of The Greatness of North Ca
rolina.
Other superb roadways are being
laid between city and city, and from
the cities to the sea. The Old North
State is at last thoroughly awake to her
own potential greatness, and is deter
mined to exploit herself to the utter-
most._
And the first step toward such devel
opment is—good roads.
In the matter of roads, North Caro
lina can teach a vast number of ^solid
and hard lessons to South Carolina,
which, by the way, seems peculiarly
dumb to this argument.
Also North Carolina is developing
manufacturing opportunities far more
rapidly and earnestly than we of this
state are doing, and yet our opportu
nities for such development are fully as
good, if not better, with somewhat bet
ter port and water-power facilities. We
mean, of course, water power in better
situations for development and profit
able exploitation.
One observes, also, a somewhat great
er alertness and display of energy among
all classes of people than one finds in
South Carolina. There is, unquestion
ably, a more modern and up-to-date
spirit awake and abroad throughout the
state than one sees, unfortunately, in
South Carolina. We could account for
this, we think; but that is not the pres^
ent purpose. We merely recognize this
portion of “The Greatness of North Ca
rolina,” and pass on.
The greater alertness is sure to carry
North Carolina ahead and very far ahead
if it fails to arouse a competitive spirit
in us—or unless we are aroused by some
other inspiration.
We congratulate ourself that here
was at least one chance reader of The
Citizen that promptly recognized The
Greatness of North Carolina. But then
we have long recognized it. We have
for years watched and partly understood
the sureness and the swiftness with
which the Old North State is realizing
her great destiny.
Our lid is off, and we stand almost
abashed and abased in the vibrant pres
ence of—
The Greatness of North Carolina.-
Gastonia Gazette.
SMELLS OF POVERTY
Walter H. Page
The man who says we are too poor
to increase our taxes for education
is the perpetuator of poverty. It
is a doctrine that has kept us poor.
It smells of the alms-house and the
hovel. It has driven more men and
more wealth from the state and kept
away more men and more wealth
than any other political doctrine ever
cost us—more even than the doctrine
of Secession. Such a man is the vic
tim of an ancient and harmful false
hood.
Even if you could respect the re
ligion of the man who objects to the
elevation of the forgotten masses by
public education, it iS, hard to re
spect his common sense; for does
his church not profit by the great
enlightenment and prosperity that
every educated community enjoys?
This doctrine smells of poverty-
poverty in living, poverty in think
ing, and poverty in the spiritual
life.
Greed and hatred in the daily affairs
of man, in his industrial order, and in
his international relations have brought
about a collapsing civilization which tes
tifies to man’s inability to check
material maladies with material reme
dies.
We must have faith!
Shall we travel eternally the vicious
circle that, beginning in preparation
ends in war, to begin again in new pre
paration? ,
We must have faith!
Civilization, warned by experience,
must not again challenge hate with only
the puny powers of the hand and brain.
It must not rely solely upon contracts
whose intent is of the mind and whose
fulfillment rests upon discredited force.
It must turn to the human heart!
For deep in the human heart is faith!
The churches, preaching their noble
message, have not existed in vain. The
truth which they have instilled in the
heart of man is none the less truth be
cause the difficulties of daily living have
seemed insurmountable, nor because
the clashing ambitions of nations have
erected walls of hatred between man
and man.
We must have faith!
But shall we keep faith locked in the
heart, as though we were ashamed of
it? Shall we not rather, in this frightful
crisis of the world’s history, release it,
and let the heart attempt what the
brain and hand have failed to achieve—
the rule of peace?
The time has come!—Thomas C. Mc
Rae, Governor of Arkansas.
well as economic.
But he is a blessing in disguise, and
they erect grateful monuments to him
in Mississippi.
Tar Heels Look at Georgia
Pitiful tales of hunger and suffering,
says the Shelby Star, are brought back
by Cleveland county farmers who have
been making pilgrimages to the boll wee
vil sections of Georgia to import white
and colored farm help to this county. Mr.
Peter Grigg who has just returned from
Bishop, Ga., near Athens, says he
found hundreds anxious to come to
Cleveland farms or go anywhere just to
get work enough for food and clothes.
He wandered into a grocery store and
found a landlord with 30 tenants on his
farm who expressed a willingness out
of sympathy for them to pay their way
to Cleveland in order to help them out.
Mr. Grigg selected a white tenant who
will come with his family. On the
streets of the town, the laboring class
stop men and beg for work of any kind
at any price they wish to offer. Never
has Mr. Grigg in all his life seen people
in such destitute circumstances. Many
are without shoes and clad in rags.
Landlords who bought high-priced land
are in destitute financial circumstances.
Time merchants and banks have failed
and the condition of. the country is im
possible to describe. Landlords are un
able to feed their tenants during the
winter months and are anxious to see
them get out on somebody else’s hands
who can carry them through the win
ter.
Mr. Grigg states that trains were
crowded with whites and colored going
somewhere looking for work. They
would have their worldly belongings
crammed in a tow sack or tied in a
sheet, some of the men leaving their
wives and children in quest of work.
Messrs. Whisnant, Falls, Palmer, El
liot, DePriest, Crowder, and many
others have been to Georgia and brought
colored help from the boll weevil sec
tion, finding them anxious to come and
the landlord willing to give them up.
One of these men is reported to have
seen poor people wearing their old au
tomobile casii^s cut up and sewed to
gether for shoes.
The cause of it all
to be devoted to food and feed crops
and to pasturage for live stock.
(2) One-fourth of the cultivated land
to be planted in cotton, well fertilized
and worked, so as to produce the best
yield under the most economic condi
tions of labor and other expenses.
(3) Encourage the rapid^ organization
of state-wide cooperative marketing as
sociations for handling cotton and other
farm products.
(4) Adopt economic reforms and effi
ciency in the future baling, warehous
ing, financing and marketing of the
cotton crop, upon the most approved
and advantageous modern methods of
orderly marketing.
(5) Induce every cotton farm in the
South to become, first of all, self-sus
taining, and so control the production
and sale of cotton as to force the con
suming world to pay the growers a
profit on the production of each and
every bale of the staple.
The first plank alone in this platform
is wide enough and strong enough for
the farmers to stand on. If all of them
shall devote three-fourths of their land
to raising something to eat and> on
which to feed stock, the cotton and to
bacco propositions will take care of
themselves. Then indeed will the farm
er be placed on Easy street, especially
if he makes sure of the rapid organiza-
of state-wide cooperative marketing
associationsN for handling cotton and
other farm products.—Fayetteville Ob-
FARM VALUE OF EDUCATION
That a college education is the best
investment a young farmer can make is
shown by investigations in various agri
cultural regions of the country, reported
by the tfniversity of Missouri Bulletin.
Not only do the results show that a col
lege graduate makes more money than
a common-school graduate, but that a
high-school graduate also has a mone
tary advantage in proportion.
Of tenant farmers in Indiana, Illinois,
and Iowa, it is shown that the labor in
come of the man with a high-school ed
ucation averages $526 more than that
of the man with only a common-school
education. A further increase of $453
is earned by the man with a college ed
ucation, making the difference in labor
a.* was low cotton ; income of the common-school graduate
last war and a noor crOD this vear Tt! graduate $979.
last year ana a poor crop tnis year. ^ it Approximately the same result appears
is learned that in the boll weevil section I from a survey of the incomes of 635
a bale to the mule is about all the yield
will be, against ten to fifteen bales to
the mule in the better days. There *is
no mistake about the boll weevil rav
aging the fields for Mr. Grigg says one
can walk through the fields and they
will cover one's clothing.- Shelby
Star.
THE DAY OF FAITH
The'President has invited the great
powers to a disarmament conference,
and once more the peoples of the world
thrill to an ancient hope. Idealism re
news its battle against so-called practi-
country tenancy in North Carolina is
r.ut, on the whole, increasing faster I cality. _
than home^-ownership. The tenants and This time idealism must not fail.
BOLL-WEEVIL MOVIES
What the boll-weevil does when he
has had four or five years to capture a
country is given with graphic, photo
graphic accuracy in the item we repro
duce below, from the Shelby Star. The
advance guards of this pest have al
ready covered about three-fourths of
our cotton area. A few years hence,
farm tenants and renters, white and
black, will be fleeing out of our cotton
regions like refugees before an invad
ing army, as in the cotton states south
of us. Rough labor will be abundant
in our towns and cities at minimum
wages. The righteous as well as the
wicked flee when the boll weevil pur-
sueth.
Prudent farmers foresee the evil and
hide themselves in a hurry inbread-and-
meat farming; the foolish pass on and
are punished.
Fortunately less than half our coun
ties are dependent on cotton as a cash
crop. Most of our forty-eight cotton
counties have tobacco to fall back on^
and our danger is much less than in the
all-cotton counties of the Gulf coast
states. Besides, North Carolina is al
ready more given to diversified farming
and livestock than any other of the
cotton-belt states.
Nevertheless, we are headed into the
greatest upheaval in our country areas
that this state has ever experienced,
not even excepting the War Between
the States, and the changes forced by
the boll weevil are profoundly social as
Kansas farmers.
Of 409 farmers in Nebraska, those
who had attended high school made 32.1
percent more than those who had had
only a common-school course. Men who
attended college make 19.7 percent more
than the high-school men, giving the col
lege man an advantage over the com
mon school man of 51.8 percent.
In an inquiry as to those who earned
more than $1,000 a year, a Cornell Uni
versity report shows that while 5 per
cent of the farmers with a district-
school education were in the class that
,,had labor incomes of more than $1,000,
j 30 percent of those with more than a
A COMMON-SENSE PROGRAM
The American Cotton Association has
presented a common sense .program for
cotton planters, and, to the best of our [ hi^h-school education were in that class,
understanding and knowledge of agri-
This report estimates a high-school edu-
j •. j 1 ! cation to be worth as much to a farmer
culture, we do not see how it could be j g percent bonds, and
improved on. It is as follows: college education nearly twice as
(1) Thr^e-fourths of all open lands much.—School Life.
DEBT-FREE HOMES IN THE U. S. IN 1920
Based on a Census Bureau Bulletin, Oct., 1921
Dwellings in North Carolina, 513,377; occupied by renters, 261,303, or 52.6
percent; occupied by owners, 235,842, oc 4f.4 percent; owned-homes free of in
cumbrance, 186,460, or 82.9 percent of all owned-homes. Only three states in
creased in the ratio of debt-free homes in 1910-20—North Carolina, Vermont,
and Mississippi.
Department of Rural Social Science, University of North Carolina
Rank
State
Pet. Debt-free
Rank
State
Pet. Debt-free
Homes
Homes
1
Nevada
83.6
26
Ohio
61.4
2
North Carolina
82.9
27
Vermont
61.0
3
New Mexico
82.5
28
Nebraska
60.9
4
West Virginia...
80.6
28
Maryland
60.9
5
Virginia
79.4
30
Washington
59.5
5
Louisiana
79.4
31
Minnesota
59.4
7
^Tennessee
78.8
31
Oklahoma
59.4
8'
South Carolina ..
78.6
33
Pennsylvania
58.7
9
Georgia
78.2
34
California
58.5
10
Kentucky
77.8
35
Missouri
58.8
11
Florida
77.1
86
Illinois
58.0
12
Mississippi
76.3
37
South Dakota ....
57.3
13
Arizona
75.9
38
Delaware
56.1
14
Maine
75.6
39
Montana
55.2
15
Alabama
75.0
40
Michigan
54.9
16
Arkansas
71.9
41
Wisconsin
53.5
17
Texas
71.4 1 41
Idaho
58.5
18
New Hampshire
70.4
43
Rhode Island ....
48.2
19
Utah
68.8
44
New York
47.3
20
Kansas
'65.0145
North Dakota...
46.2
21
Indiana
63.6:46
Dist. of Columbia
44.6
22
Iowa
63.2 J 47
Massachusetts ..
42.4
23
Oregon
62.4
,48
Connecticut
38.7
24
Wyoming
62.3
' 49
New Jersey
38.0
25
Colorado\
62.2
1