The news in this publi
cation is released for the
press on receipt.
— of north CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
SEPTEMBER 6, 1922
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina for its University Ex
tension Division.
CHAPEL HH.T , N. c.
B„.rd , B. C. Sranson, 8. H. Hohb., Jr., L. B. WUson, E. W. Kmrtt, D. D. C«rroU, J. B. BuUl,t7H. W. Odum
VOL. Vlil, NO. 42
Entered asaecond-daM matter Noyember 14,1914, at the PoatolHce at Chapel Hill, N. O.,
under the act of Au^st 24, 101S
NEW CLUB PROGRAMS
If a book club is a success it must
have good programs to keep up the in
terest of its members. These pro
grams should be simple, direct, inter
esting, and authoritative, and this is
the aim of the builders of the Univer
sity Extension programs for women’s
clubs. For the fall there are three
new outlines ready: Contemporary
Literature, Southern Literature, and
Current Literature.
Present Day Literature
Dr. James Finch Royster, Kenan
Professor of English Literature, is the
author of the program on Contempor
ary Literature, in which he has arranged
a series of programs well abreast of
contemporary writing in drama, short-
story, novel, and poetry. The pro
grams are based upon the following
collections: The Best Plays of 1920-
21, edited by Burns Mantle; the Best
Short Stories of 1921, edited by E. J.
O’Brien; 0. Henry Prize Stories of
1921, edited by Blanche Colton Wil
liams; and The New Poetry, revised
edition, edited by Harriet Monroe and
Alice Corbin Henderson.
Some of the programs are planned
upon the following topics: Represen
tation of American Life in Recent
Plays, Some Contemporary Dramatists,
Foreign Drama on the American Stage,
Dramatic Centers of Production, Mak
ers of Our Recent Short Stories, How
Our Short Stories are Published, The
Form of the Contemporary Short Story,
The Scope and Range of the Present
Day Short Story, Contemporary Amer
ican Poetry, the Recent American Nov
el, Two Popular Novels, The Younger
Generation of English Novelists.
The registeration fee for this course
is $5.00, for which ten copies of the
program are supplied and the four
books are loaned to each club while the
members are engaged in preparing their
papers. These books may be kept
throughout the four meetings for which
they are necessary. All other refer
ence material such as magazine clip
pings will be sent upon request and may
be kept for two weeks or longer if nec-
^ essary. Copies of the four books, as
well as the other books listed, may be
bought at the publisher’s prices, which
will be quoted upon request. One free
sample copy will be sent to every club
in North Carolina and if any club has
not received its free copy, the secre
tary is expected to write for it. All
additional copies are fifty cents each.
Southern Literature
The North Carolina Federation of
Women’s Clubs has adopted the Pro
gram on Southern Literature by Pro
fessor C. A. Hibbard, as the official
program for 1922-23. The one purpose
constantly in Professor Hibbard’s mind
has been that of drawing up a program
that would lend itself to club discussion
and serve in some way to interest stu
dents in the writings of the South. The
programs are based on Trent's South
ern Writers. The following sixteen
topics are studied: North Carolina
Poets, North Carolina Prose Writers,
Early Southern Literature, Edgar Allan
Poe, Three Orators of the South, Poets
of the Civil War, Novelists of the
South, Short Story Writers of the
South, 0. Henry, Three Women Writ
ers of the South, Southern Lyricists,
idney Lanier, Southern Literature—an
Estimate. Other meetings are sug
gested.
The registration fee for this course
IS $5.00, for which ten copies of the
program and one copy of Trent’s South
ern Writers are supplied to each club.
Other books referred to throughout the
course will be loaned by the University
Eibrary to registered clubs. One free
sample copy will be sent to every club
m North Carolina and if any clubs have
riot received their free copies, the sec
retaries are expected to write for them,
11 additional copies are fifty cents
«ach. ^
Current Literature
This course is based on sixteen of the
iQoo during the year
and the early part of 1923. The
Pj^^Erams will be issued in monthly in-
s aliments, the first five or six cover-
iiig books that were published during
; the late spring and early summer, oth
; ers to cover ten or twelve of the out-
' standing books of the succeed ingmonths.
Some of^the books that have been
selected for study are: Watchers of
the Sky by Alfred Noyes, Children of
the Market Place by Edgar Lee Mas
ters, Red Dusk and the Morrow by Sir
Paul Dukes, Memoirs of a Midget by
Walter de la Mare, The Autobiography
of Henry Ford. Canaan by Graca Aran-
ha. The Cowboy by Philip Ashton Rol
lins, and Working with the Working
Woman by Cornelia Stratton Porter.
The purpose of this course is to enable
the club to review and discuss the new
books as they come from the press.
The registration fee is $5.00 for which
the sixteen books and ten copies of the
program will be supplied to each club.
Individuals may register on the same
terms.
Lecture Service to Clubs
A field agent will be available for the
Bureau of Public Discussion to visit
any club wishing her services as a lec-
turer on the topics of the programs or
to assist in any-other way. Her trav
elling expenses will be borne by the
community or club she visits.
For further information regarding
the programs or the lectures, please
write to the Women’s Club Section,
Bureau of Public Discussion, Univer
sity Extension Division, Chapel Hill,
North.Carolina.—N. R,
MY HOME CITY
My city is the place where my
home is founded, where my busi
ness is located, where my vote is
cast, where my children are educa
ted, where my neighbors dwell, and
where my life is chiefly lived.
I have chosen it after due con
sideration among all the cities of
the earth. It is the home spot for
me.
My city has a right to my 'civic
loyalty. It supports me and I must
support it.
My city wants my citizenship, not
partizanship: friendliness, not offish
ness; cooperation, not dissension;
sympathy, not criticism; my intelli
gent support, not indifference.
My city supplies me with law and
order, trade, friends, education,
morals, recreation, and the rights of
a free-born American. I should be
lieve in my city and work for it. and
I will.—The Morganton News-Her
ald.
is published by Ginn & Co., New York,
should be of great interest not only to
present and prospective educational
; workers, but to the general public as
well. It is really a valuable contribu
tion to Southern history and deserves
wide reading. — S. B. Underwood, in
News and Observer.
SCHOOLS AND DEMOCRACY
What should be said of a world-lead
ing democracy wherein 10 per cent of
the adult population can not read the
laws which they are presumed to know?
What should be said of a democracy
which sends an army to preach democ
racy wherein there was drafted out of
the first 2,000,000 men a total of 200,-
000 who could not read their orders or
understand them when delivered, or
read the letters sent them from home?
What should be said of a democracy
which calls upon its citizens to consider
the wisdom of forming a. league of na
tions, of passing judgment upon a code
which will insure the freedom of the
With the addition of the retail price
expenses and the extras, our total food
and feed bill goes well over $14,000,000.
These facts have just been established
by the Department at Chapel Hill, of
which Dr. E. C. Branson is the head.
All this money can be kept in our banks
and pockets if we will go in for scien
tific diversified farming, accessible town
markets for farmers, swift hauling,
cooperative marketing, truck farms,
canneries and abattoirs.
That is the plan for making Bun
combe county $14,000,000 richer every
year, certainly as good a plan as any
outside capitalist could propose. There
is not a flaw in it. Why doesn’t it
command our enthusiastic support at
once? It is inconceivable that we will
neglect it. It is inconceivable that any
county in Western North Carolina will
neglectit.—Asheville Citizen.
PUBLISH THE TAX LIST
..444W4i Win luouiti me ireeaom of the Minnesota, we learn from the
seas, or of sacrificing the daily stint of Monthly Bulletin of the National Edi
nrifl 4-u... 1 .4 tnri'nl 4-u^
wheat and meat for the benefit of the
Rumanians or the Jugo-SIavs, when 18
percent of the coming citizens of that
democracy do not go to school?
torial association, the entire personal
property tax list is published so that
each taxpayer who cares for it may
have a copy and may make comparison
SCHOOL PROGRESS SOUTH
In Public Education in the South, Dr.
Edgar W. Knight, professor of educa
tion in the University of North Caro
lina, has set forth in a thorough and
painstaking but withal interesting
manner a very complete story of edu
cational development in the eleven
(states which comprised the Confeder
acy. He is eminently qualified for his
task for he has been a close student of
of the history of the section and periods
under discussion. As a high school
teacher of history and a college teacher
of education, as well as a progressive
county superintendent of schools, he
has made himself an authority on his
subject.
As stated in the preface, which, by
the way, is an unusually readable piece
of work, the book attempts to give the
first general survey yet published in a
single volume of the growth of public
education organization and practice in
those eleven states which formed the
Confederacy. .
The Hedge School
The author traces in the first chapter
the effect on early education in the
South of the conditions which existed
in European countries from which our
ancestors came. In fact, this chapter
is within itself a remarkably clear set
ting forth of the social, political and
economic conditions in the 16th and 17th
centuries in Europe. Doctor Knight
has the true historian’s viewpoint—
that we have made our advances on the
background of the past and that we can
understand our present conditions and
problems only through a knowledge of
these past experiences. *
In his discussion of Colonial Theory
and Practice he brings out the fact
that opportunities for educational train
ing were larger than is commonly
thought, there were the beginnings
of libraries, churches and individuals
sought to provide training for the poor,
and there were early tendencies to
wards endowed schools. One can un
derstand sometl^ing of the idea of edu
cation as charity that existed in the
minds of a great many people until a
very few years ago. The principle of
universal education as the duty of the
State itself has had a long, slow devel-,
opment. Doctor Knight traces this de
velopment interestingly from the days
of the beginning of the education of
dependents and the system of appren
ticeship.
The Private Academy
The chapter on the Academy Move
ment is in many respects one of the
most fascinating in the book. The au
thor has drawn largely on original
sources and has collected some exceed
ingly valuable information about these
academies, which were the beginnings i
of our secondary institutions and even
of the elementary schools. They sur
vived in full strength and were our
chief educational institutions until the
Civil War period, and some of them are
with us yet. He has given us interest
ing and accurate accounts of some of
the most typical of these institutions.
North Carolinians will be particularly
interested in his references to Cokes-
bury School, Dr. David Caldwell’s Insti
tution, Moses Waddell, Dv. JamesHall,
Zion Parnassus, Tate’s Academy, Lib
erty Hall or Queen’s Museum, and the |
work of John Chavis, a negro teacher, |
in Chatham, Granville and Wake
counties. Thirty academies were char-'
tered in this state before 1800 and from
then until the movement declined from .
two to twelve were incorporated at
nearly every meeting of the Legisla-.
ture. ^ I
But we must resist the temptation
to summarize the book. Suffice it
to say that Doctor Knight unfolds a
romantic tale and has made a rather
dry subject live with interest. Not
only has he set forth periods and move
ments, but he writes charmingly of in
dividuals and school practices. He has
collected a wealUh of valuable informa
tion and made it readily accessible in
an intensely readable form. His discus
sion of early school curricula and
methods of teaching is particularly in
teresting.
Doctor Knight has done a great deal
of study on the Reconstruction Period
in Southern educational history and is
really an authority on that period. In
the present work he has drawn liberally
on some of bis previous magazine ar
ticles and a monograph published by
him several years ago, but has added a
great deal to what he published then.
He gives a complete and authentic
study of that period of our develop
ment. And, best of all, he has discov
ered the secret of writing history that
reads well.
The Rural School
In the latter part of the book he has
put down in permanent form the pro
gress made since the Great Awakening.
He has brought his historical training
to bear on the period and has shown a
fine sense of value and perspective. He
makes a keen analysis of our present
systems, the task confronting us, and
the tendencies which are manifest in
in our educational development. He
has not covered up our defects but he
has seen the marked improvement made
under tremendous handicaps and has
written our progress into the record, ■
together with a wise and sympathetic
appreciation of our present needs.
He comes back to the thesis set forth
in his preface—that rural education has
not kept pace with urban education,
and sets forth our manifest duty to our
rural people. Some of the fruits of his
own experience are evidently written
into his argument. He sees our condi
tion and points the sane and sensible
way out.
Public Education in the South, which
viw iiwi. ^4^ Lu acuuoii comparison
What should be said of a democracy I by himself and his
in which one of its sovereign states "^ighbors. The result has been that
expends a grand total of $6 per year ' have been equalized and the pub-
per child for sustaining its public school bas been of untold value to the
system? i State.
What should be said of a democracy | Commenting upon the Minnesota law
which is challenged by the world to i the editor of the Long Prairie Leader
to prove the superiority of its system ‘ says the cost of publishing in his coun-
of government over those discarded, ' ty is about one-tenth of a cent per tax-
and yet is compelled to reach many i payer and the item is published in
millions of its people through papers every paper in the county. It is the
printed in some foreign language?
What should be said of a democracy
which expends in a year twice as much
for chewing gum as for schoolbooks,
more for automobiles than for all pri
mary and secondary education, and in
which the average teacher’s salary is
less than that of the average day lab
orer?
What should be said of a democracy
which permits tens of thousands of its
native-born children to be taught Amer
ican history in a foreign language—the
Declaration of Independence and Lin
coln’s Gettysburg speech in German
and other tongues?
What should be said of a democracy
which permits men and women to work
in masses where they seldom or never
hear a word of English spoken?
Yet, this is all true of the United
States of America. —Franklin K. Lane,
Secretary of the Interior.
best system possessed by any state in
the Union and has done much to secure
better assessments, find tax property
and check up tax dodgers.
During the month of May when the
assessors were at work, The Leader
received many calls for copies of its
issue containing the personal property
tax list from citizens who wanted to
check neighborhood assessments and
tell the assessor what they knew.
Doubtless many others laid away their
copy of the list when it came and in
May and June used it for the same
purpose. There is little question but
that the publication of the i^ersonal
property tax list, thereby giving publi
city to the work of the assessors, is
having a helpful effect in securing bet
ter assessments.—The Robesonian.
$14,000,000 FOR BUNCOMBE
'I he Citizen takes pride in announcing
this morning the working out by well
known experts of a plan that will give
the people of Buncombe county $14,000,-
000 every twelve months. The proposi
tion, if adopted and heartily supported
by the authorities and business organi
zations, can not fail. There is no spec
ulative elemen^n it.
But permit us a brief digression, by
way of introduction:
If a business man were to drift into
town tomorrow, take rooms at the Bat
tery Park Hotel, invite the leading cit
izens of Asheville to a conference, iden
tify himself as the representative of
John D. Rockefeller, and say, “Gen
tlemen, I have a project which, with
your cooperation, will give this city and
county fourteen million dollars a year, ”
he would undoubtedly be given close
and respectful attention. Upon his
CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
The average Mohammedan, says
Fred B. Smith, looks upofi" Christianity
as a religion of war and bloodshed. The
Moslems, who themselves freely advo
cate the sword as a means of conver
sion, accuse Christians of insincerity in
professing a love of peace while waging
the bloodiest war in all history. In
India a distinguished native Christian
advised Mr. Smith not to use the word
Christianity in his addresses in that
country. Said the Oriental: You can
preach Christ, but you cannot preach
Christianity. It is here regarded as
the name of a Western ireligion which
has failed.
Mr. Smith goes on to say:
I could multiply similar illustrations
from China and Japan. Hindus, Mo
hammedans and Buddhists are filling the
Par East with discriptions of wesnern
Christianity as a war-loving and war-
proYnoting organization.
The East says, Christianity, a cannon
ball, a submarine, and a gas bomb go
4. —mo I udn, a auumacine, ana a gas Domo go
proving the feasibility of his scheme,!together. The West says, Christ is the
the Chamber of Commerce would eet” Prince of Peace and the
the Chamber of Commerce would get
behind him, city and county authorities
would pledge him aid, business men as
individuals would subscribe for stock
in his enterprise. He would bulk big
in the role of public benefactor.
But the plan to which we refer is en
tirely a local matter. It needs no cap
ital from Mr. Rockefeller or any other
outsider. It depends altogether on the
enterprise and industry of Asheville
Prince of Peace and the Christian
Church is the instrument to make the
doctrine effective throughout the world!
The cold fact is that thus far Christian
teaching has not produced that result
even in nations where it has held a pre
ponderance of the people. Passing peace
resolutions does not remove this im
pression. I believe that the Great War
has set back by many years what might
have been the progress of Christianity
and Buncombe county men and women. ■ in China and India.
It has been outlined by the department] The Church is the only organization
of Rural Social Economics at the Uni-1 with the world contacts which make pos-
versity. It is, in brief, that Buncombe ' sible a common binder for preserving
stop sending out of the county $14,000,-1 peace. If the Church fails in its new
000 a year for food and feed supplies ' opportunity, more and worse wars are
which it can grow within its own bor- j coming. The stage setting is perfect
I for more outbreaks. Only the Chris-
The wholesale value of the foods and tian gospel of brotherhood can furnish
feeds that this city and county import the moral and spiritual foundation that
per year is $6,688,680, not counting ex- will make peace really possible-The
tras, luxuries, and dainties of diet. Herald of Gospel Liberty, Dayton, 0.