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.
DECEMBER 14, 1921
CHAPEI. HILL, N. C.
VOL. VIII, NO. 6
Editorial Board i M 0. Sraiison, 8. H. Hobbs, Jr., L. R. Wilson. E. W. Knicht, D. D. Carroll, J. B. Bullitt, H. W. Odum. Entered a.s second-class matter November 14.1914, at the Postofflce at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of Au5nist24. 1913,
OUR RAPIDLY GROWING CITIES
URBAN CAROLINA IN 1920
The bare’Tacts about Carolina Indus
trial in 1920, as reported to the North
Carolina Club in course of its studies
during the last college year, were passed
dti to the reading public in the Univer
sity News Letter Volume VII, No. 50.
We are here summarizing the bare
facts about Carolina Urban in 1920 ac
cording to the latest census reports on
population.
Urban Carolina concerns 731,123 peo
ple living (1) in 413 incorporated small-
towns with fewer than twenty-five hun
dred inhabitants each and (2) in fifty-
five cities with more than twenty-five
hundred inhabitants each. The line
between towns and cities is drawn by
the census authorities at 2,500 inhabi
tants and, if unincorporated, small
town populations are counted as rural.
More than a fourth or 28.6 percent of
the people of North Carolina now live
under town and city conditions, as (1)
consumers not producers of the 'raw
materials necessary to existence and
to manufacture, (2) with overhead lo
cal machinery for self-rule and self-ex
pression in behalf of economic, social,
and civic advantages.
Countryside Carolina
The dwellers in the open country of
the state, outside incorporated places
of any sort or size whatsoever, number
1,828,000 or 71.4 percent of our total
population. But not all these country
dwellers are farmers. Almost .exactly
a fourth of them are foresters, miners,
quarrymen, fishermen, and wage-earn
ers in numerous unincorporated mill and
factory villages in country or suburban
areas. The farmers with their families
number 1,376,000 souls, while all other
people in the country areas of North
Carolina number 452,000. In the main
the daily work of country dwellers is
the production of the raw materials
necessary to existence and to manufac
ture. The essential economic difference
between rural and urban populations is
this; country dwellers are producers of
raw materials, while town people are
consumers or transformers of raw ma
terials, and distributers of finished eco
nomic products as brokers and mer
chants.
The farmers of the state produce
crude wealth as individuals or as family
groups settled in solitary dwellings
scattered throughout forty-nine thous
and square miles—seven dwellings to
the square mile on an average the state
over, and fewer than four to the square
mile in eight counties, both races count-;
ed. They lack community life and
overhead local machinery for self-rule
and self-expression in behalf of eco
nomic and social advantages. They
produce, sell, and buy as individuals
without adequate organization. They
dump their wares on the market at the
end of the harvest seasons instead of
merchandizing their products through
out the year as the mills and factories
are able to do; and only recently have
they begun to organize on any large
scale in North Carolina for business
advantages. They dwell in isolation
and insulation more or less complete;
which explains the static or stagnant
social areas in the remote country coun
ties of North Carolina. '
In brief, seven of every ten people,
on an average, still dwell in the open
country of North Carolina. Which
means that seven of every ten voters
belong to country precincts, that seven-
tenths of the people of the state are
served, if served at all, by country
churches, that seven-tenths of our school
population must take their chances in
the country schools such as they are.
It also explains why more than nine-
tenths of all the white illiteracy of the
state is country illiteracy.
More Country Dwellers
And the country population of North
Carolina did not decrease as in twenty-
four other states of the Union during
the last ten years; on the contrary it
steadily increases from decade to dec
ade, and the increases are due almost
entirely to the virility and fecundity of
our country people, white and black—
to the excess of births over deaths, and
not to immigration as in the western
states. ' Manifestly our native white
country people are a hardy, not a de
cadent stock, as in the North and East.
On the contrary we lead the United
States in cradles and baby carriages.
But while the country population of i
the state as a whole was increasing 9.5 j
percent during the last ten years, nine-;
teen country counties and 308 country
townships suffered population decreases
ranging from one to thirty-one percent.
Nearly a fifth of all our counties and
nearly a third of all our townships lost
population in 1910-20. Almost without
exception they are remote and lonely
country counties, or remote and lonely
country townships in wide-awake coun
ties. In the main their population losses
are due (1) to sparsity of population,
poor roads, and poor schools, (2) to in
ability to organize for business and so
cial advantages, and (3) to the attrac
tions of industrial and ui^an centers
with their offers of livelier existence,
and larger amounts of wage money for
weekly fingering.
The nineteen dwindling country coun
ties of the state and their ten-year
losses of population are Alleghany 4.4
percent, Camden 4.8 percent, Carteret
31.3 percent, Chowan 5.8 percent, Cur
rituck 5.5 percent, Haywood 0.5 per
cent, Hyde 5.1 percent, Iredell 2.2
percent, Lee 8.4 percent, Lincoln 16.5
percent, Madison 0.7 percent, Mont
gomery 2.4 percent, Pamlico 9.1 per
cent, Pender 4.4 percent, Randolph 4.0
percent, Richmond 2.2 percent, Rowan
8.9 percent, Scotland 15.7 percent, and
Tyrrell 7.1 percent.
The 308 dwindling townships lie in
ninety of our one hundred counties.
The state over, there were only ten
counties that did not have one or more
townships decreasing in population dar
ing the last ten years. Forty-one coun
ties lost population in a third or more
of all their townships.
Fewer Farmers
The loss of population in a farm area
means diminishing incomes from rented
f^ms, diminishing land values, dimin
ishing chances to secure renters or to
sell land at any price, a larger number
of wilderness acres, and a dwindling
agriculture. It also means poorly sup
ported country schools and churches,
less ability to build public highways
and to finance public health service,
and a smaller opportunity to organize
for self-defensive marketing purposes.
And further, it means decaying towns
with less business and smaller profits
for merchants and bankers, smaller
chances to sell town lots and to rent
stores and dwelling houses. In short,
it means static or stagnant social areas,
lacking highway and railroad facilities,
lacking nearby market towns and ready
money, lacking bank facilities and news
paper service, school advantages, and
stimulating outlook in general. This is
the state of affairs in nineteen country
counties and 308 country townships in
ninety counties of North Carolina to
day. The white people in these areas
are an unmixed native stock, and all in
all there are no better country people
in the world, but they are fleeing out
of drowsy conditions, and it is the young,
alert, and ambitious who go, leaving
behind the old folks, the unalert, and
the unaspiring. But even more to be
considered is the fact that they are
leaving the negroes behind in our most
fertile farm regions, for in 1920 as in
1910 the negroes are sticking to the
farm better than the whites.
And while the open-country areas of
the state were increasing 159,000' in
general population and our farms were
gaining 16,000 in number, we were los
ing 134,000 farm workers, and 615,000
acres were passing out of cultivation.
And moreover, the cultivated farmland
of the state was dropping from 4 to 3.2
acres per inhabitant. Over against a
decrease of 22 percent in the number
of farm workers must be placed other
population increases as follows: city in
crease 54 percent, factory workers and
mechanics 64 percent, traders and bank
ers 44 percent, transporters 45 percent,
professional people 73 percent, clerical
workers 100 percent, and office holders,
local, state and federal 247 percent.
Push-and-PulI Forces
Farm populations are driven out of
our country regions as though fired out
of a catapult—driven by humdrum lone
liness and unrelieved monotony, by the
hardships of small profits or no profits
at all in farming as a business in aver
age years, by poor roads, poor schools,
and poorly supported churches, by in
adequate medical service at well-nigh
prohibitive prices, and so on. At the
same time they are attracted into our
industrial-urban centers by the lure of
the crowds, by the glittering show
windows and entrancing film pictures,
by the weekly wage envelope, by the
chance to finger larger sums of money
than they ever before dreamed of, and
even more by the chance to spend
THE TRUE TEST
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The true test of civilization is not
in the census, nor the size of cities,
nor the crops~No—but the kind of
men the country turns out.
money for things they never before
dreamed of possessing in all their lives.
So much for the combined effect of
the push-and-pull forces that play upon
deep-seated human instincts. It is the
inevitable result of developing indus
trialism in every country of Christen
dom. Factory industries produce cities
—more cities and larger citjies than ever
before in the history of the world. A
modern city is essentially a manufac
turing center—this, first of all; and the
more extensive and varied the indus
tries, the larger the opportunities for
trade, transportation, banking business,
commercialized amusements, profes
sional, clerical, domestic, and personal
workers, caterers, and the like. A
community without manufacturing in
dustries may be a country market town
of small proportions, a local trade ship
ping, and banking center, and all in all
an attractive residence place, as Wil
mington for instance; but without fac
tory enterprises steadily multiplying in
number and size it cannot hope to lead
in population increases. For instance,
forty years ago Wilmington was the
largest city in North Carolina—with
nearly twice the population of Raleigh,
nearly three times that of Charlotte,
and more than four times that of Win
ston and Salem combined. Today it
stands not first but third in population,
in North Carolina. Like New Bern it
has just about doubled its number of
inhabitants during the last four dec
ades, while six lively manufacturing
centers have increased in population in
ratios that range from ten to fifty-four
fold.
Leading Carolina Cities
The following table -tells the story of
increasing populations since 1880 in our
fourteen cities with 10,000 inhabitants
or more in 1920.
Cities 40 yr. inc. Pop. Pop.
percents 1920 1880-
1 Gastonia 5,354 12,871 236
2 Rocky Mount 2,208 12}-742 552
3 High Point 1,343 14,302 991
4 Winston-Salem 1,054 48,395 4,194
5 Asheville 990 28,504 2,616
6 Durham 964 21,719 2,041
7 Greensboro 844 19,861 2,105
8 Wilson 619 10,612 1,475
9 Charlotte ' 553 46,338 7,094
10 Salisbury 410 13,884 2,723
11 Goldsboro 244 11,296 3,286
12 Raleigh 164 24,418 9,265
13 Wilmington 92 33,372 17,350
14 New Bern 89 12,198 6,443
These fourteen larger cities absorbed
nearly half the total population increase
of the entire state during the last ten
years, and their ratios of growth are
almost exactly in keeping with their
ratios of industrial expansion. Since
1900 we have doubled the number of
our factory establishments and wage
earning employees, and we have multi
plied by ten or more both the capital
employed and the volume of goods
turned out. The effect upon city in
creases of population is direct and pro
digious.
During these twenty years the ratio
of country dwellers dropped from 82.3
to 71.4 percent of the total population.
Ten years ago North Carolina was being
urbanized more rapidly than thirty-six
other states of the Union. Our city
population increase during 1900-1910
was more than four times the rate of
country increase, and in only twelve
states were the ratios greater. But
in 1910-20 our city population increase
was nearly six times the yate of our
country population increase, and the
chances are that in still fewer states
were the ratios of city increase greater.
{The 1920 census figures, we may say,
are not yet available for all the states.)
It thus becomes clear that while
North Carolina is still rural in popula
tion, we are rapidly ceasing to be a ru
ral people, that we are moving with
rapid strides out of ruralism into indus
trial urbanism—in population, in liveli
hood, in wealth production, concentra
tion, and domination.
Our Little Country Towns
A city, or a small town with pros-
j pects of growing into city proportions,
; sits up on a four-legged stool, so to
* speak, and the legs of this stool are
, (1) farming and other country occupa-
; tions that produce raw materials, (2)
manufacture, (3) trade and transporta
tion, and (4) banking. And it sits in
securely if any one of these supports
(be infirm.
A country market town sits up on a
three-legged stool and the legs of it are
(1) the surrounding countryside, (2)
trade and (3) banking. And it sits in
securely if its back-country is an agri
culture area diminishing in population
ojr in prosperity—if its attitude toward
the trade territory be indifferent or
supercilious, or exacting and grasping
if it is content to take interest from
farmers rather than interest in farm
ers—if it is unconcerned about progress
and prosperity in the nearby country
regions, in better country roads, better
country schools, and better supported
country churches—if its tax moneys go
to support its own schools, libraries,
and public health activities, with little
or no thought of sharing these freely
with the country homes round-about—if
its banks be of the spider-web instead
of the honey-bee variety. Large or
small, no town or city can grow fat in
a lean countryside. Neither individuals
nor communities can safely live upto
themselves alone.
Here and there, in this and every
other state, are small towns that are
trying to balance on two-legged stools
of this sort—a feat that only acrobats
are equal to. With the farm leg gone,
they are teetering on trade and bank
ing as town supports. They are towns
without an economic basis in agricul
ture or manufacture—in which, as the
wits say, everybody tries to make a
living by taking in everybody else’s
washing. We found towns of this sort
in the Berkshire hills last fall, and we
have such towns in increasing number
in North Carolina and the South.
Census Danger Signals
Of course they fail, and the 1920 cen
sus tells the story of failure in detail.
They fail to grow in population. When
country people desert the farm, they do
not often move into drab and dreary
little towns, half-awake, half-asleep,
half-alive, half-dead. They go over
these unattractive little places into
brisk and lively mill or city centers—in
North Carolina and in every other state.
The cities grew during the last ten
years, but not the little towns, as a
rule. Four of our industrial centers al
most exactly doubled in population dur
ing this period, and fifteen little places
developed factory enterprises and moved
up into the rank of census-size cities.
Meantime our 413 small towns increased
in population only22,271 all told—which
means an average increase of five in
habitants apiece per year. Ninety-five
or nearly a fourth of the total did not
increase at all—they “swunk like Sam
bo’s catfish”. And nearly a third of
the dwindling little towns had fewer
inhabitants in 1920 than they had in
1850.
They fail to grow in business. With
the housing problem acute in wide-a
wake centers everywhere, witness the
empty stores and dwellings in thirty-
odd little towns in North Carolina—
towns that are manifestly down-at-the-
heels and out-at-the-elbows.
They fail to grow in civic pride and
enterprise. Witness the thirty-nine
little places in North Carolina that sur
rendered their town charters and faded
from the mj(|) during the last ten years,
and among them were some of the old
est settlements in the state.
Some years ago Charles Edgeworth
Jones wrote a sketch entitled, The Dead
Towns of Georgia. The dead towns of
North Carolina are now inviting the at
tention of historians. The new century
already records an alarming list of dead,
wounded, and missing municipalities in
thi^ and other states.
Small-Town Functions
Our little towns are set between the
two horns of a dilemma: they must def
initely determine to be choice residence
centers on the one hand or to develop
factory enterprises on the other. Most
of them never can be and never ought
to be industrial centers; but all of them
can be the happiest places on earth to
live in and to rear children in safely.
They must begin to function properly
in sheer self-defence. That is to say,
they must be pridefully related to them
selves and helpfully related to the sur
rounding trade areas, or they must
dwindle and disappear as the state
moves faster and faster into an indus
trial, urban civilization.
The University is therefore offering
to the 240,000 people in the 413 little
country market towns of the state two
courses, one on Small-Town Planning,
and the other on Srnall-Town Relations
to Trade Territories. And it will offer
these courses in vain unless the atten
tion of the state j:an be fastened upon
them.
The proper functioning of our small
towns is equally important to the coun
try people of North Carolina, (1) be
cause they need convenient market cen
ters where they can turn into instant
ready cash farm products of every
sort—not cotton and tobacco alone, (2)
because they need to move into these
little centers out of the loneliness of
sparsely settled areas, and to live there
not as store-keepers, bankers, and rent
collectors, but as farmers busy with
farming on nearby farms, as in the old
world countries, (3) because our coun
try civilization must develop community
life and organization or it must inevita
bly fall into decay.
These little places must be captured
by our farmers and turned into farm
centers—not into trade and banking
centers merely but into farm communi
ties busy primarily with farming as a
business. It is the easiest way out. And
a way out must be found, for eighteen
hundred thousand people will not for
ever dwell in solitary sort, a few fami
lies to the square mile, in a vast expanse
of fifty thousand square miles. The
pr.esent state of affairs in the country
regions of the state cannot last forever.
It is a denial of a fundamental human
instinct—the craving for companion
ship. Our country people were lonely
before but they were not acutely aware
of it until rural free deliveries, auto
mobiles, and country telephones aroused
them out of social apathy. The city
ward drift is already strong in nineteen
country counties and 308 country town
ships, and the numbers will greatly in
crease as the state moves on into a be
lated but vigorous industrial-urban era.
Townspeople and country dwellers in
the cotton counties of the state are un-
believal^ly stupid, if they cannot or
will not give themselves to economic
and social stock-taking long before the
approaching boll-weevil depopulates
farm areas and destroys the business
of farmers, traders, and bankers, alike;
or so at least for awhile—a while that
seems like an eternity to the sufferers.
It is the boll-weevil way everywhere.
The Look Ahead
Does the drift of country populations
into the industrial-urban centers of
North Carolina promise good or ill for
the state? Is our civilization moving
ahead in the right direction? Is ours at
present a well balanced civilization?
Has it long been too rural and too little
urban? Does the state need more and
larger cities and a smaller farm popula
tion?
These are important inquiries, but
they cannot be fully considered within
the limits of this brief study. In
stead, the following propositions are
submitted—not as conclusions but as
subjects for debate.
First. Well or ill, the cityward drift
will continue. It is not a local but a
world-wide movement. The problem is
not to turn people back to the farm or
to keep people from leaving the farm,
but to make farm life efficient, pros
perous, satisfying and wholesome for
country-minded people who choose to
live in the country. There are now and
will always be many country-minded
people in every state and nation, but
at present they are being driven out
of the eountfy by unendurable condi
tions, economic and social.
Second. If these conditions cannot be
cured, and in the main they must be
cured by the country people themselves,
then country life in North Carolina will
fall into decay as in the New England
and the North Atlantic states. The in
dustrial supremacy of this area is now
imperiled by the decline of agriculture.
As a result eastern factories are being
moved into regions of larger food pro
duction and lower food costs. Mean
time New England manufacturers are
spending millions of corporation money
for agricultural rehabilitation in the
Eastern states.
Third. So far in our history, we have
had too many producers of farm pro
ducts, and too few local consumers.
Our towns and cities have been too few
and too small to furnish ready, profit
able markets for any farm products but
cotton and tobacco, and in average years
the demand for these in the ma^ets of
the world reduces th^ net income of
our farmers to the lowest possible
terms. The way out lies (1) in bread-and-
meat farming and (2) a larger consuming
public at home, (3) with cotton and to
bacco as surplus money crops for local
and for world-wide consumption.
In a word, North Carolina, is now and
has always been too rural and too little
urban. Two-thirds of our wealth pro
ducers are farmers. In the United
States as a whole the ratio is one-third,
and it is not an unsafe ratio, the balan
cing of forces considered. A smaller
ratio than this is perilous for manufac
ture as well as agriculture,, as both Old
and New England are now discovering—
and discovering too late.
Keeping civilization . on even
keel is the most important question
this state can cunsidur. Which moans
that rural social science and political
economy are one in North Carolina,
and that an ounce of either is
worth a whole ton of politics.--E. 0.
Branson, a North Carolina Club Study.