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 12, 1922
CHAPEL HILL, N. 0.
VOL. Vm, NO. 34
Editorial Board t E- 0- Branson, 8. H. Hobba, Jr.. L. R. WiLon, E.W. Knight, D. D. Carroll, J, B. Bullitt, H. W. Odum. Entered as aecond-clasB matter November 14.1914, at the Postoffioo at Chapel Hill, N. C,. under the act of August 24, 1
STATE COLLEGE SUPPORT
Thirty-two cents per white inhabi
tant is what North Carolina gave out
of the state treasury in 1920-21 to sup
port college culture in the State Col
lege for Women, the State College of
Agriculture and Engineering, and the
State University, “her three state insti
tutions of college grade.
And thirty-twOj cents is just about
the cost of a single gallon of gasoline
these days.
Thirty-five states made a better show
ing. See the table elsewhere. In the
South eleven states spend more per
white inhabitant for college culture, as
follows:
1. Arizona, $1.66
2. South Carolina 1.25
3. Oklahoma 82
3. New Mexico 82
5. Mississippi 76
6. Texas 66
7. Virginia 52
8. Louisiana 47
9. Florida 41
10. Alabama 38
11. Georgia 35
12. North Carolina 32
13. Arkansas 29
14. Kentucky 20
15. Tennessee 16
working income large enough to make
it fully worthy of the great common
wealth it serves; and not infrequently
some one or another of these institu
tions is hopelessly crippled and hobbled.
The policy of the Western states is
concentration not diffusion in state col
lege support. California, for instance,
has four times the white population of
South Carolina but it gives only three
times as much for college support and
this fund reaches more than three times
as many students of college grade.
Fortunate States
Five of the states that rank below
North Carolina in state college support
per white inhabitant—Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsyl
vania, and New Jersey—are fortunate
in having immensely wealthy private
foundations like Harvard, Yale, Brown
University, the University of Pennsyl
vania, and Princeton, and thus are
freed from the necessity of devoting
state treasury funds to the support of
state universities.
The North Carolina Way
And North Carolina is unique in the
South. Nobody in this state pays a
cent of tax on general property to sup
port the state government, its depart-
, , I ments, institutions, and enterprises.
Twelfth in the South and thirty-sixth shoulders of well-
in the United States is North Carolina s i
rank in the oelumn of state support of $2,000, upon the rich who
college culture. The averages are reck- ^
oned on the basis of white population a-
' chises, capital stock and incomes of
lone; so (1) because negro property
relatively small and negro students of
college grade are relatively few in all
the states, and (2) because there seems
to be no other basis for a fair compari
son of the states.
The State is Moving Up
There is great comfort in the fact
that the legislature of North Carolina
in 1921 moved its support of college cul
ture from 32 cents to 66 cents per white
inhabitant. The chances are that we
have suddenly moved above five of the
southern states that made a better
showing in state-supported college cul
ture in 1920-21.
When other southern states were
crying bankruptcy. North Carolina had
the wisdom and the courage to double
the support of her common schools and
of all her institutions of benevolence,
liberal learning,/and technical training.
At the same time the legislature voted
a loan fund of five millions to establish
country high schools, another four mil
lions for expansion in buildings and
equipments for teacher training schools,
colleges, and the university, and anoth
er fifty millions for improved public
highways.
These are great investments, but they
are not greater than the ready interest
of the people of the state in these in
dispensable foundations of common
wealth progress. In proof of this fact
witness the additional twenty millions
voted by 110 local communities for bet
ter school facilities in 1921.
The will, of an awakened people out
strips the daring of timid statesmen
here and there. The folks in North
Carolina have come to believe that
taxes for schools, roads, and health are
not burdens but investments that light
en the burdens of life; that wealth and
health, not bankruptcy, are at the turn
of the road ahead, that' no community
can be wrecked by better highways, bet
ter schools and better health, that such
a catastrophe has never yet happened
to any community on earth since the
world began to be. They ask the pro
phets of disaster to point out such a
community or county or city or country
anywhere on the map, and they ask in
vain.
The South Carolina Way
South Carolina gave more mainte
nance money in 1920-21 to state insti
tutions of college grade than any other
state in the South except Texas and
Oklahoma. Her college support fund
was $1,022,000 against $672,600 in North
Carolina. But this total was divided
among five institutions, in amounts
ranging from $70,000 to $353,000. The
cost per white inhabitant was $1.26, the
highest in the South except Arizona. The
policy of diffusion rules in Virginia and
is steadily developing in Georgia.
The result is that no college of liberal
learning or technical training has a
and the like.
College culture costs 32 cents per
white inhabitant in North Carolina.
That's the average, but there are more
than two million people in this
state who do not pay a cent of
taxes to support the state colleges, the
the state university, or the state insti
tutions of benevolence. Our taxes on
property go entirely to the support of
local governments.
It is a fact about taxation that every
body knows, but like Lovey Mary he
forgets it all the time, or at least every
time he starts to raise Cain about state
taxes.
A SOUTH CAROLINA VERDICT
North Carolina is qne of the greatest
states in the Union and the richest
state in the South. She has a diversi
ty of manufacture and agriculture not
matched by any other southern com
monwealth. She pays double the a-
mount of any other state in Dixie in
federal income taxes. She has a pro
gressive government, a statewide sys
tern of good roads and a superb outlay
of public schools. No feature of pro
gressive improvement has been omit
ted in her rise to the fore. It is due
much to the general state movement
that her cities have grown so rapidly,
for the advancement of a state is bound
to be most evident in her cities.
It is well, therefore, that much of
the time of our excursionists should be
spent in the Tarheel state. She is only
next door to us but North Carolina has
many secrets of success that we have
not yet mastered. It has been well said
that North Carolina is rich in many
things—but richest in modesty. The
Greenville men will doubtless find that
to be true. They may inspire the Tar-
heelians to greater appreciation of their
bounties.
The people of Greenville—those who
are not going on this trip—are inter
ested in it and hope for its success be
cause they are confident it will bring
generous dividends to the city. One
can not visit any other city of like size
without being inspired to adopt some of
its good features. Out of the tour
should grow a recognition of the fact
that Greenville has merely laid the
foundation for a great city and that
there is much more work to be done in
the future than has been done in the
past.
The News is confident that the men
who go on the tour will not only have
a good time but a profitable time-pro
fitable for the Greenville of tomorrow.
—Greenville (S.C.) News.
STILL IN THE LEAD
The State of North Carolina will,
in all probability, show a smaller re
duction in the amount of taxes collected
Released week beginning July 10.
KNOW NORTH CAROLINA
Carolina’s Foreign Trade
It may sound mechanical to re
peat that North Carolina business
men should take more interest in
the development of foreign trade.
But our principal money-crops, cot
ton and tobacco, are exported in
large quantities; while there are a
number of concerns in allied indus
tries that enjoy a large foreign pat
ronage. Of our raw cotton over
sixty percent is shipped abroad.
North Carolina tobacco is used in
many foreign blends of the finished
product, and the quality is so much
appreciated that the fact that Caro
lina tobacco is used is almost invari
able advertised on the outer wrap
per. .Yet this demand has grown
naturally without very much con
certed effort on the part of our busi
ness interests. Our place in foreign
markets has now become so secure,
however, that we can look beyond
New York and the larger financial
centers and begin vigorously to es
tablish direct marketing arrange
ments between grower and foreign
merchant.
To this end. North Carolina banks
in time should be able to take care
of the local grower or dealer who
wants to export his product at a
cost commensurate with sound busi
ness practices. In the same way too,
local growers should organize for the
protection and furtherance of their
interests. Foreign trade—its pos
sibilities, dangers and eccentricities
— should be studied as thoroughly as
our home markets. Expert advice,
rigid organization, and^development
of a growing sentiment conducive
to export activities, are all factors
that contribute to foreign exploita
tion. And in doing all this we should
try to look not always to Federal
aid, but to local individual initiative
for our needs. In this way, we are
not only promoting a sturdier for
eign business but we are also con
tributing to our own domestic well
being. More than that we are help
ing to restore what is now so great
ly needed—economic equilibrium
throughout the world.—A. W. Mc
Lean.
during the fiscal year ending June 30,
1922, over the preceding year than any
district in the United States, declared
Gilliam Grissom, United States Collec-'
tor of Internal Revenue, yesterday.
With a full week for the receipt of
belated returns, which always pile up
during the last days of the year, the
state is now only $5,800,000 or four
and one-half percent behind the total
of $124,000,000 collected during the past
fiscal year.
Owing to the increase in exemptions
under the present law, which raised the
exemption for a married man from $2,-
000 to $2,500 and for each child from
$200 to $400, the income taxes have
fallen off sharply, there having been
collected to date only $23,124,120.72
from this source as against $38,533,871.-
14 for the previous year, or a decrease
of practically 10 per cent. However,
other Southern States have been re
ported as having decreases as high as
60 per cent, according to information
reaching Collector Grissom.
What North Carolina has lost in in
come taxes has been almost entirely
made up in increases from taxes on
tobacco and on estates, of which scores
have shown a marked increase during
the past year. By the time the final
collections are made for the fiscal year
Collector Grissom estimates that the
amount collected will not be more than
$3,000,000 less than the phenomenal
total of $124,000,000 collected last year,
when North Carolina led the South and
ranked close to the top among all the
states in the amount contributed to the
support of the federal government.—
News and Observer.
WALLACE’SJPLAN
The War Finance Corporation in a
report to President Harding has recom
mended six remedies for existing
conditions, as follows:
Legislative enactment specifically
authorizing the organization of institu
tions to rediscount the paper of live
stock loan companies, and the establish
ment of a system for the more ade
quate supervision and inspection of the
live stock which furnishes security for
the paper.
Frank recognition of the need for the
orderly marketing of our agricultural
products in a more gradual way and
over a longer period, and the adjust
ment of existing banking laws and
regulations, with this end in view.
Establishment of a rediscount facility
to make it possible at all times for co
operative marketing organizations to
obtain adequate funds for their opera
tions.
Extension of the powers of the Fed
eral reserve banks to include the pur
chase in the open market of eligible
paper secured by non-perishable agri
cultural commodities, properly ware
housed.
Encouragement of state non-member
banks to enter the Federal reserve sys
tem and reduction of the minimum cap
ital required for admission to the sys
tem-admission in such cases to be con
ditioned upon an undertaking toincrease
the capital to the present minimum of
$25,000 within a definite time.
Amendment of the national banking
act to permit a limited amount of branch
banking within a limited radius of the
parent institution. /
Pending the provision of these im
provements to the national credit
machinery. Director Meyer suggested
extension until January 1, 1923, of the
period during which the War Finance
Corporation may make loans.—U. S.
Press Digest.
WHAT’S DOING IN BUNCOMBE
The full and detailed story of what’s
doing in Buncombe County will be pub
lished this summer. It will be done by
the Rural Social Science Department of
the University of North Carolina and
will take the form of a paper-bound
volume of 150 pages. The business men
of the county will be asked to give it
their support by buying advertising
space in its page^. That they will meet
the request generously is certain, for
two reasons: the information that will
thus be published about Buncombe will
be invaluable, and as the book will be
sent to between three and four thou
sand Buncombe farmers, it will be an
unusually effective and lasting advertis
ing medium.
The chief consideration, however, is
that this publication will be the best
piece of press-agenting that Buncombe
and the people of Buncombe have ever
had. There is no better boosting pos
sible for the county than the straight
forward dramatic story of what’s doing
within its borders. To tell the news of
Buncombe’s activities today is to bring
new people and new money here and to
put under the eye of every young man
in the county a chart of the greater op
portunities that await the grasp of his
enterprise and industry.
The following list of chapter headings
for the bulletin shows how thoroughly
today’s news of our people will be given:
Historical Backgrounds; Natural Re
sources; Industries and Opportunities;
Facts About the Folks; Wealth and
Taxation; Rural Schools in Buncombe
since 1910; Farm Conditions and Practi
ces; Home Raised Food ai^d Local Mar
ket Problem; Co-operative Marketing;
Farm Industries and Livestock; Things
to be Proud of in Buncombe; Our Prob
lems and their Solutions.
Reading those twelve chapters, the
citizen of Buncombe and the outsider
looking for a new home will learn the
whole story of the county, its traditions
and achievements, its resources and ac
tivities, its possibilities and opportuni
ties. Advertise in the Buncombe
County Bulletin. Read it when it is
published in July. Then pass it on to
another reader. The facts set forth in
it will enrich you, and, through your
better informed enthusiasm, benefit the
county. Ten other counties in the
State have had such histories and pro
fited largely by them. Buncombe will
do likewise.—Asheville Citizen.
HOME OWNERSHIP
A man who has spent most of his life
in social service work recently said that
he had practically reached the conclu
sion that the most effective way of at
tacking modern problems would be to
inaugurate a permanent, nation-wide
campaign for home ownership.
His idea is that the source of most of
our present-day trouble is the lack of
family stability.
The home owner does not desert his
wife and children.
He does not suffer from wanderlust.
He takes a strong interest in his com
munity.
The purchase of his own home arouses
his ambition, his thrift, and his industry.
Being permanently located, he is a
better husband, a better father, a bet
ter citizen, and a better worker.
The more you think about this mat
ter, the more you will be convinced
that it is fundamental.
The strength of the small towns of
this country is rooted in home owner
ship, and, without stretching the truth,
it may be said that the unrest in the
large cities is due to lack of home own
ership.—Oxford Ledger.
STATE SUPPORT OF COLLEGE CULTURE
Per Whi^e Inhabitant in 1920-1921
Based (1) on Statistics of State Universities and State Colleges, Bulletin 1921,
No. 53, of the Federal Education Bureau, and (2) on the 1920 Census of Popula
tion.
The figures for each state cover (1) the total of state funds used for current
expenses by the state university, the land grant college, and other state sup
ported schools of college grade, and (2) the white population alone—this in order
to put the states on a fair basis of comparison.
In North Carolina the figures refer to the State College for Women, the State
College of Agriculture and Engineering, and the State University; and in other
states to similar state institutions of liberal learning and technical training of
college grade.
North Carolina spent 32 cents for college culture per white inhabitant in 1920-
21, against $1.25 in South Carolina and $4.10 in Cregon. In 1921-23 in North
Carolina the average rose to 66 cents.
Department Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina
Rank States
Totals
Per White
Inhab.
Rank States
Totals
Per White
Inhab.
1
Cregon
.$3,156,566...
. .$4.10
23
Indiana
$1,614,064...
.. $.67
2
Nevada
, 166,037...
... 2.35
24
Virginia
848,376
... .52
3
Arizona
. 484,073...
... 1.66
25
New Hampshire 207,008...
.. .47
4
Wyoming ...
. 277,702...
... 1.46
25
Louisiana ....
516,698...
.. .47
6
Idaho
. 610,903...
... 1.44
27
Chio
2,402,503...
.. .43
6
Washington .
.. 1,805,958...
... 1.37
27
Vermont
149,775...
.. .43
7
S. Dakota ...
. 823,789...
... 1.33
29
Delaware ...
79,511
... .41
8
S. Carolina...
. 1,021,890...
... 1.25
29
Florida
264,016...
-. .41
9
Minnesota ..
. 2,936,703...
... 1.24
31
Illinois
2,526,753...
.. .40
10
Colorado
. 1,110,842...
.. 1.20
32
Maine
294,809...
.. .39
11
Montana
. 632,872...
... 1.18
33
Alabama
556,348...
.. .38
12
Nebraska....
. 1,456,926...
.. 1.14
34
Georgia
582,478...
.. .36
13
Iowa
. 2,701,032...
.. 1.13
35
Maryland
395,343...
.. .33
14
N. Dakota...
. 698,819...
.. 1.09
36
N. Carolina...
572,500...
.. .32
15
Kansas
. 1,724,703...
.. 1.01
37
Arkansas ....
376,723...
.. .29
16
Michigan ...
. 3,369,689...
.. .94
38
MflSRaphnciPtffl
17
California ..
. 3,049,264...
.. .93
39
Connecticut ..
346,641...
.. .25
18
Wisconsin ...
. 2,214,171...
.. .86
40
Kentucky ....
445,987...
.. .20
19
Cklahoma ..
. 1,489,759...
... .82
41
Rhode Island .
116,294...
.. .19
19
New Mexico.
. 274,018
... .82
42
Tennessee ....
292,742
16
21
Mississippi...
. 650,120...
... .76
43
Pennsylvania .
790,044...
.. .09
22
Texas
. 2,587,937...
.. .66
44
New Jersey ..
171,567...
.. .06
Note: The states omitted for lack of detailed data are: Missouri, New York,
Utah, and West Virginia.