The news in this publi
cation is released for the
n
press on receipt.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTEK
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina for its University Ex
tension Division.
august 16, 1922
CHAPEL Hn.T., N. C.
VOL, Vm, NO. 39
1 Board I B. C. Branson, 8. H. Hobbs, Jr., L. R. Wilson, B. 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, 0., under the act of August 24,1918
L
MILLIONS FOR SCHOOLS
In 1914 it was our job to field-survey
the extension activities and reach of
the agricultural college of the Univer
sity of Wisconsin for the State Board
of Public Control. The work took us
into almost every county and communi
ty of that great state. Every where^we
marveled at the schools-city schools,
country schools, farm life schools, high
schools, vocational schools, continuation
schools, the colleges, and the great
university—the millions expended for
public education of every type and
grade—thirteen millions for public ele
mentary schools alone!
At that time North Carolina was
spending only a little more than four
millions on her elementary public
schools.
It looked at that time as though we
were hopelessly out-classed and out
distanced.
But behold North Carolina in 1921-22,
just eight years later! Common school
support $16,000,000; support of institu
tions of liberal learning and technical
training $1,274,000'; new buildings,
equipments and repairs for state edu
cational institutions $4,000,000; local
funds voted and expended for school
building in nine months from Septem
ber, 1921, to June, 1922, close to $12,000,-
000; local school bonds sold, January to
June, 1922, close to $9,000,000.
Right around $42,000,000 voted and
expended on public education in a single
year in North Carolina, and a hard
year at that.
North Carolina has been slow to
make up her mind in whole-hearted
ways about common school and college
culture. We started late, but we have
started at last.
He knows little about this state who
does not know that the people of North
Carolina are bent on building a great
commonwealth on public education,
public highways, and public health.
Think of $26,000,000 spent on roads
in two years.
And close to $75,000,000 on public
education for building and maintenance
during the same period.
These are staggering totals. But
the plain people of this state are finally
and firmly convinced that the more
they spend on roads and schools the
richer everybody has a chance to be;
that roads, schools, and health are the
best investment any state can make in
itself.
North Carolina is not the richest
state in the Union. But she is the
richest state in the South, and among
the ten or twelve richest states in
America.
We' are neither poor in purse nor
poverty-stricken in spirit as once we
were.
The Ol^orth State has started at
last, and sne will be as hard to stop in
the nineteen twenties in commonwealth
building as she was in the eighteen
sixties on the battle fields of "Virginia.
000.
Raleigh: a High School $500,000; two
elementary public schools, $100,000 and
$135,000; a colored Junior Industrial
High School $400,000, repairs and addi
tions old buildings $110,000; School for
the Blind $350,000; State College of
Agriculture and Engineering, new
buildings, extensions and repairs $600,-
000.
The University at Chapel Hill: four
dormitories, and a Social Science build
ing costing $575,000, the entire building
expansion of $1,450,000 to be completed
January, 1923.
Washington: public school buildings
$300,000.
Wilson: a High School building $200,-
000.
Winston-Salem: a unit of the Rey
nolds High School $450,000—to cost
when completed $1,600,000; an audi
torium on a 30-acre site $260,000; a
Technical High School $700,000; five
white and three colored school buildings
$1,100,000. .
During this year and next approxi
mately $2,300,000 will be spent on
school improvement. Winston-Salem
leads the state in manufacture, also in
school building and support.—Briefed
from Manufacturers-Record, July 29,
1922.
SCHOOL BUILDING IN SOUTH
Nine months from Sept, 1921, to
* May, 1922, inclusive
Covering buddings completed or in
process of erection costing $10,000 or
more each. Based on the Manufac
turers Record, June 29, 1922.
Rank State Total Cost No. Bldgs.
1
N. Carolina
$11,998,453
107
2
Missouri
10,141,800
60
3
Texas
10,016,450
113
4
Georgia
9,968,716
41
6
Maryland
9,216,000
24
6
Oklahoma
5,362,480
40
7
Virginia
4,124,837
48
8
Louisiana
3,836,690
37
9
Tennessee
3,349,632
49,
10
Alabama
3,144,760
38
11
Florida
2,966,400
35
12
Kentucky
2,773,711
36
13
S. Carolina
2,138,730
47
14
Mississippi
1,726,300
29
15
Arkansas
307.500
9
SCHOOL HOUSES AND BONDS
The school buildings under contract,
•completed or in process of erection in
North Carolina from September, 1921,
to the end of May, 1922, number 107 cost
ing nearly exactly twelve million dollars,
no building counted that cost less than
ten thousand dollars. In addition the
school bond issues sold number 42 and
total nine million dollars.
Twenty-one millions in school build
ings and school bonds in less than one
year. In both particulars North Caro
lina far and away leads the South.
The school building details, in part,
are as follows:
Charolotte: a Central High School
building costing$424,000; a Vocational
Public School, $126,000.
Elizabeth City: a negro Normal and
Industrial School, $175,000; two city
public schools, each $350,000.
Fayetteville: a High School, $250,000;
a public school, $158,000.
Gastonia; a High School, $350,000.
Greensboro: State College for Women,
three dormitories $406,000, a wing to
the Science Building $75,000, an Eco
nomics Building $25,000; Bennett’s Col
lege, a negro school, a dormitory $100,-
000 and a dinning hall $100,000.
High Point: three public school build
ings $90,000.
Lenoir, a public school building $126, -
SOUTHERN SCHOOL BONDS
SOLD
First five Months of 1922
Based on the Manufacturers Record,
June 29, 1922
Rank State
Value
No. Bond
issues
1
N. Carolina
$9,043,000
42
2
Georgia
4,738,500
9
3
Texas
4,156,500
60
4
Oklahoma
1,668,000
9
5
Louisiana
' 1,615,000
11
6
Kentucky
1,382,000
8
7
Florida
1,284,000
11
8
S. Carolina
1,051,000
10
9
Tennessee
1,010,000
10
10
Alabama
865,000
6
11
Virginia
637,000
7
12
Missouri
636,600
6
13
Mississippi
439,000
10
U
Maryland
416,000
2
15
Arkansas
273,000
7
A GIFT TO THE UNIVERSITY
Dr. I. C. White, the West Virginia
state geologist and president of the
American Geologic Society, has just
announced a gift to the State Univer
sity and the city of Morgantown, of 1,-
900 acres of coal land in Marion county,
worth, when developed, between$3,000,~
000 and $4,000,000.-Associated Press
Dispatch.
The day of great gifts to colleges and
universities is just fbeginning in the
South. Witness the million or more
given last year to the University of
Virginia, the million given by loyal
alumni to the University of Georgia,
the one and .a half millions given by
Bostwick to Wake Forest the other
day, the one and a half millions given to
the University of North Carolina by
Mrs. Flagler, the twenty-five thousand
dollars given by Mrs. Kenan to found
a Scholarship in Philosophy at Chapel
Hill, the forty thousand dollars in cash
and property given by Mr. John Sprunt
KNOW NORTH CAROLINA
Country-Life Decay
In a general way the flow to the
cities is normal and inevitable. Cheap
transportation provides the denizens
of great cities with food at moderate
prices. Hundreds of articles that
two generations ago were home
made are now factory made and
Jhese factories are in cities. Power-
driven machinety on the larm re
leases a part of the rural population
for other pursuits. The state of af
fairs has stimulated the exodus of
the young people from the hard
work and penny-pinching of the
farms to the prospering, easy-going
cities.
The country has not been keeping a
fair share of its brighter boys and
girls. It has been the young people
with spirit and initiative who have
responded to the call of the distant
city. Had they stayed on the farm,
this spirit of initiative would have
shown itself along rural lines.
In certain older parts of the coun
try which have been losing their
young people to the West and to
the cities for two generations, there
is a visible moral decline. The roads
are neglected so there is less social
intercourse and a smaller turnout to
school, to church and public events.
School buildings and grounds have
deteriorated. The church is in a rut
or has even disappeared. Frivolity
engrosses the young because no one
organizes singing schools, literary
societies, or debating clubs. The
next generation, having missed the
benefits of these communal institu
tions, shows itself coarse, sensual,
and irresponsible. There is a marked
decline in the standards of indi
vidual and family morality. This is
an explanation of the degeneracy
that one finds in certain rural parts
of New England and the Middle
states.
The remedy is to make life on the
farms more attractive. There^ is
need of re-directing rural education,
re-inspiring the rural church, multi
plying societies of recreative oppor
tunities and dispelling the false glam
our of the distant city. The young
people need to be shown that farm
ing can be made to pay if one puts
brains and energy to it. —Dr. E. A.
Ross, University of Wisconsin.
stances by loyal alumni.
! In donating a million dollars to Cor
nell University to be utilized for a cen-
j ter of social and recreational life among
I the students, Mrs. Willard D. Straight,
says the New York Sun, is making an
interesting attempt to solve one of the
most perplexing problems in American
education.
The college fraternity or club, for
those fortunate enough to be members,
serves a useful and excellent purpose,
but the so-called barbarian, the non-
frat, has every right to regard it with
distrust and hostility. For him it dries
up the social and political life, and de
prives him of many pleasures which
should be the inherent right of every
undergraduate.
In the past attempts have been made
to remedy this situation by destroying
the clubs themselves, and certain col
leges still place such letter fraternities
under the ban. At Princton former
President Woodrow Wilson exerted
every effort to abolish the upper class
eating clubs, on the ground that their
privileges were not open to all under
graduates alike.
The problem is now being attacked in
another way, and university presidents
and far-seeing benefactors are attempt
ing to'bring the non-fraternity students
some of the privileges and advantages
of their more fortunate fellows. It is
with this purpose in view that the do
nation for Cornell social center was
made. The building will contain a large
I memorial hall, reading andbillard rooms,
' a large dining room or cafeteria, office
facilities for student organizations and
activities, and bed-rooms for alumni.
In other words, what the club-house is
to the fraternity men it is hoped the
Cornell union will be to the entire stU'
dent body.
The experiment will be watched with
the greatest interest by all interested
in American undergraduate life. If the
plan works well at Cornell, if it aids
materially in solving the social problem
' confronting the college, its adoption by
other universities will be but a matter
of time. —New York Sun.
them the financial plenty that means
ease and comfort. The merchants and
bankers of the towns, going half-way,
or more than half-way, to the assis
tance of such men as James G. K. Mc
Clure and such cooperative organiza
tions as he has formed among the far
mers, can hasten the day when North
Carolina, by intelligent selling and
buying within her own confines, will be
able to retain among her own people
most of the vast wealth that she pro
duces.—Asheville Citizen.
CURB MARKETS
Lumberton is~another North Carolina
town that has recently opened a curb
market similar to that operated in
Chapel Hill and Gastonia. It is open
only one day in the week, however. At
that it has filled a needed want with
Lumberton housewives, and the Robe-
sonian says;
“ This curb market will relieve farm
ers of the piddling business of ped
dling produce from house to house and
will be more satisfactory to housewives,
who under the former plan sometimes
got the offer of more than they could
buy and at other times failed to get
what they needed. It will tend too,
toward standardizing quality and prices,
and will encourage farmers to produce
a surplus for* the market. Farmers
cannot be expected to produce a sur
plus for market unless they are sure
of being able to market that surplus
profitably.
“ As the University News Letter re
marked some time ago in connection
with a discussion of curb marketing,
that town serves itself best that best
serves its farming community, and pro
viding a market for whatever farmers
in a town’s trading community produce
is certainly one way of serving those
farmers.”
Hill for the Carolina Inn at the Uni
versity, and other gifts by generous
alumni like General Julian Carr, Eugene
Holt, and others in a long list.
Men die but social institutions and
civic structures live on forever. These
rich men are not only investing in es
tablished agencies of usefulness, they
are investing in immortality as well.
The Kenan Fund at Chapel Hill, the
Harkness Dormitories at Yale, Pratt
Hall at Amherst, the Carr dormitory at
the University of North Carolina, will
perpetuate the nanres of these men for
a thousand years.
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell,
Hopkins, and Princeton are great monu
ments to generous lovers of their kind.
The fashion is old in the North and
East. It is already established in Cali
fornia. Stanford, Hearst, and Doe
will^liveon college campuses as long
as California ’is on the map. It is re
cent in the South, but as we grow in
wealth it will become more and more
the fashion of rich men to live forever
in gifts to the social order.
EDUCATION PAYS
Does it pay to go to school? We
mean from a monetary standpoint.
Most emphatically, it does. If you
ever hear of a boy or girl who wants
to quit school, when it is unnecessary;
if you ever hear of parents who are
thinking of putting their children to
work when it is unnecessary, just bring
these figures to their attention:
Every day spent in school pays the
child $9.
Here is the proof, based on the wage
scale of 1913.
Uneducated laborers earn on the
average of $600 per year for forty
years, a total of $20,000.
High school graduates earn on the
average $1,000 per year for forty years,
a total of $40,000.
This education requires 12 years of
school of 180 days each, a total of 2,-
160 days in the school.
If 2,160 days at school add $20,000 to
the income for life, then each day at
school adds $9.25.
The child that stays out of school to
earn less than $9 a day is losing money
not making money.
These figures are based on an inves--
tigation made by Dr. A. Caswell Ellis
of the University of Texas, Bulletin of
the U. S. Bureau of Education.
A STUDENT UNION CENTER
The Graham Memorial, a student-un-
ion building, will soon be under way on
the campus of the University of North
Carolina, for use by all students. A
similar building is now being erected at
the University of California. And now
Cornell follows suit. All these buildings
are private gifts, in the first two in-
OUR BEST MARKET
We agree with the Greensboro Daily
News that the world’s best market for
North Carolina products is North Caro
lina. We have, as that paper points out,
a population of 2,600,000 whose buying
power is practically unimpaired, largely
because of the state’s road-building
program having made unemployment
non-existent among us. But we are
not cashing in on this* remarkable
situation because the state is not eco
nomically organized to trade within its
own boundaries. For instance, our cot
ton mills and furniture factories are
selling to China and South Africa the
same kind of stuff our people import
from Massachusetts and Grand Rapids.
Our fundamental weakness, however,
lies in the fact that ourjfarmersarenot
properly organized. They are not suf
ficiently assured of home markets to be
encouraged to grow foodstuffs for
North Carolina consumption. It is folly
to lay all the blame for this on the far
mers. As soon as they see that the
towns and cities offer them reliable
marketing opportunities, they will grow
the things that can be sold in those
markets. Farmers are as anxious as
anybody else to make money. And like
everybody else, they hesitate to put
their money into a forlorn gamble.
All of which is another way of saying:
It’s up to the merchants and bankers.
It is impossible to estimate the dollars-
and-cents value of the work that can be
done for the Old NorthJState just now
by her merchants and particularly her
bankers.
North Carolina is an empire. She.
manufactures more than 3,000 different
kinds of articles. Her natural resources
outnumber those of any other state in
the Union. In her resources above and
under the ground, in the wealth-produc
ing variety of her climate, and in her
water power, she is a mighty kingdom.
She is a kingdom today in which
no man need go without money, an em
pire in which every man can earn a
day’s wages.
But North Carolina is the world’s
best market for North Carolina pro-' have better book-keeping in county of-
ducts only when her farmers, organized j >“8, this state will go into bankruptcy,
cooperatively, grow such diversified • The names of these two counties—
crops and iiave such home markets and , we are sorely tempted to publish
supply such home demands as insure them!
TIME TO LOOK FOR CROWS
Hon. Baxter Durham, the State Au
ditor, is nearly ready to give to the pub
lic the complete statement of local bond
indebtedness in North Carolina, as au
thorized by a recent legislature.
His report is delayed by two counties
where the officials do not know whafj
the total bonded debts are—the dates
and amounts of the various issues, the
dates of maturity, the interest rates
and dates, the bond holders, and so on
and on; do not know and cannot find
out, or are loafing on their jobs, or
have run into puzzles and have not yet
had time to spell them out in detail.
Whatever be the reason for the delay
in these two counties, it is a significant
comment on county government in
North Carolina.
Thirty million dollars is what county
government is costing us this year. It
is more than twice as much as our state
government ever cost. If we cannot