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 Press for the Univer
sity Extension Division.
NOVEMBER 28,1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. X, NO. 4
E'iitorial Boar.-lj B, G. Branson. S. H. Hobba. Jr., L. B. Wilaon, E. W. KniKht, D. D. Carrol}, J. B.Ballitt. H. W. Odum.
Entered aa second-class matter November 14.1914, at the Postoffice at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24, 18U
NURSERY POSSIBILITIES IN N. C.
^I
XX-THE PEASANT WOMEN OF DENMARK AND GERMANY
mixing, and distributing of feed for the
farm animals. I find the men, and not
often the women and children, washing
the big milk cans. There is no more
any such thing as churning for anybody
to do in any farmstead in Denmark.
And no cream separators. The milk
goes whole to the cr^hieries and the
skim-milk comes bac"n the creamery
wagons without bother to anybody in
the little farm house. The pigs fatten
on this blue-john as our western farm
ers call it, and the farm family buys
butter in the store or at the creamery
like all the rest of the world. That is
to say, if the family can afford to eat
butter. Which is not often in the
small-farm households. The farmers
generally sell their butter at fifty cents
a pound or something like that figure
in the English markets and live on veg
etable margarine at twenty cents a
pound. This artificial butter is made
in fifty-odd factories scattered all over
Denmark, some of them cooperative
farm enterprises. It is appetizing and
wholesome and tastes so like real but
ter as to fool the very elect.
The Contrast
The women in the little farm homes
do the family washing, and the ironing
is-frequently done with electric irons.
The housekeeping tasks are theirs and
the Danish hopsewives are famous. As
for immaculate cleanliness, they beat
the world Holland included. The point
I am making is that the farm woman’s
work in Denmark is feminine. In Ger
many the peasant woman’s work is
masculine, feminine, neuter and com
mon, all in one. She is child-bearer,
housekeeper, farm hand, work animal,
drudge, scavenger, whatnot, all with
out any apparent evidence of being a-
ware of her bard lot in life. And no
body else seems to be aware of it,
j least of. all the men in the peasant
farm homes. It has always been so in
Germany. The war does not explain
the sad estate of the German farm
women, or not entirely. To be sure
they work harder now than ever be
fore, but the character of their work is
essentially what it has been for cen
turies. They are doomed to their lot
by the type of farming that prevails a-
mong the peasant farmers of Germany.
Some Causes
The German peasant is a small-scale,
hand-labor, crop-farmer. He has farm
animals, but they are work animals not
milk and meat animals, or only inci
dentally so. His ready money comes
mainly from the sale of vegetables,
fruits, cider and wine produced on small
patches in densely crowded rows and
hills. He is a farmer of the gardener
type and his implements are hand tools
and bare fingers. His vineyard on a
sunny hillside is too steep for plowing
with horses, cows, or oxen. The vines
are set so thick in the small lots that
they must be kept clear of weeds and
grass by hand. They must be trained
by hand, the grapes must be gathered
by hand, and carried by hand to the
wine presses. The vines must be cut
back and tied up by hand when the
harvest season is over. His fruit trees
are also set thick on a hillside and his
orchard i& invariably a grass or grain
field that must be cut by hand to pro
tect the trees. His meadow lands
might be cut with machines, and fre
quently they are so cut in the areas of
marginal land where the scale of farm
ing is larger, as in the plains of Bava
ria and north Germany. But as a rule
the peasant is so used to hand tools
that he still cuts his grass and grains
with simple blades that look like the
scythes and sickles of Old Testament
times. I have seen very few grain
cradles, mowers and reapers in the
fields of the peasant in Germany,
To say it in a word, the German
peasant is a hand-power crop-farmer
working at tasks so small that the
wife and children can share in them.
Besides, for many hundred years he
has owned the land he tilled and it is
human nature to work for oneself
harder than for anybody else. He and
his household have therefore been bred
to terrible toil for countless genera
tions, and bred to hand-labor and knee-
farming long before modern farm ma
chinery came into use. He is the crea-
What one sees in the fields of Den
mark is farm animals in millions—dairy
cows, beef cattle, horses and sheep.
Women and children are what one sees
in millions in the fields of Germany. In
ten weeks of travel in Denmark I have
seen just nine girls and women doing
field work. I kept tab on every one I
saw and the count is accurate. I saw
more than that in ten minutes in one
field in North Germany the other day-
women bent double following the har
vesters and gleaning the wheat fields
like Ruth and Naomi of old. The con
trast between the lot of the Danish
and the German farm women is ex
treme and startling.
German Women’s Work
I have never seen farm women work
less than the peasant women of Den
mark and I have never seen women
work harder or work at harder tasks
or during longer hours than the peas
ant women of Germany. They do the
work of women in the house and they
do a man's work in the farm patches.
They are pack horses and draft ani
mals out to the fields or into the mark
et town and back home again. With
ail the rest of the household they swing
the flails that beat out the seeds of the
harvest on the barn floors. The rat-
tat-tat, rat-tat-tat of these family
flails can be heard all day long and far
into the dark in every farm house.
Every farm village in Germany is noisy
at this very hour with exactly the same
noises that filled the household of Ab
raham in the harvest season, in the
land of Uz, in the twilight times of
Bible history.
They w«rk on their knees in the
fields within twenty yards of the rail
road track in the earliest.morning light
without once looking up as the Miteu-
ropa Express goes thundering by. They
even work, these German peasant
women, in track gangs, building and
repairing the railway beds and station
yards, and they work at these back
breaking jobs without pause in the
down-pouring rain. I saw them doing
it in Bayaria more than once along the
. way from Ulm to Munich,
When one sees an old soul staggering
down a row of beets or turnips with a
heavy liquid-manure tank strapped to
her back and stooping low at every
step of the way to pour a cupful with
a twist of her shoulders into every hill,
one wonders if anything like it can be
seen ansrwhere else in Christendom.
And where else outside of China or
Japan can one see agpay-haired woman
of seventy or so dragging a manure
wagon along the highway and stopping
every little while to sweep into a shovel
the animal waste dropped by the pass
ing oxen, cows, and horses? It is the
peasant women’s work in Germany and
commonly it is the work of old women
aided sometimes by the old husband or
the grand-children. It is a moving
spectacle that I have seen too often to
count.
No such thing can be seen in Den
mark, nor anything that even remotely
approaches it or faintly suggests it. I
shall later on be considering the causes
but just now I am bent upon photo
graphing the facts of difference.
Danish Women's WorK
The Danish women work and work
hard, but they do not work in the fields
nor at men’s jobs On the farm, unless
it be wives of the little farmers, and
not even these farm women except in
a pinch in the harvest season to get
the grain and the root crops housed.
As a rule the wives of the small farm
ers do the milking but it is the men
who lug the heavy milk cans to the
roadside for the wagons of the cooper-
Gtive creameries. The poultry-end of
the small-farm business is commonly
the job of the wife and children, but I
I must get inside the farm squares to
catch them at it. They water the two
or three cows picketed in the nearby
pastures and lead them afield and back
again tpr milking, but I see the boys
and men oftener than the girls and
women performing this farm task.
The women keep the farm courts swept
and redded but the heavier work of
cleaning and whitewashing the piggeries
and cow stalls falls on the men folk of
the family. And so also the cutting,
DEMOCRACY’S CREED
I believe in the free public train
ing of both the hands and the mind
of every child born of woman.
t believe that by the right train
ing of men we add to the wealth of
the world. All wealth is the crea
tion of man, and he creates it only
in proportion to the trained uses of
the community; and the more men
we train the more wealth everyone
may create.
I believe in the perpetual regen
eration of society, and in the immor
tality of democracy and in growth
everlasting. —Walter Hines Page.
ture and the victim of inveterate habit.
He shirks no task however hard or
long, and his wife and children are an
essential part of his farm system.
Whatever was drudging, menial, and
revolting was always their end of the
farm burden, and since the war they
carry the whole load or the heft of it,
for their husbands and older children
are at work in the numberless new
factories of the war and after-war
period. And so they bend under the
weight of their heavy loads, uncom
plaining and unconscious of their cruel
lot in life, the children, the mothers,
andthe'old grandmothers all together.
The pity of it is beyond words.
Quite Another Story
The lot of the Danish housewives is
in startling contrast with that of their
peasant sisters in Germany. The wife
of the middle-class farmer in Denmark
never works in the fields. She rarely
ever charges herself with responsibility
for the farm animals in the barns.
She’s a housewife and her place is in
the home. If she appeared in the field,
the neighbors would say, Her husband
must be drinking lately and is getting
to be trifling, it looks like he’s down
and out. Field work for her means a
loss of social rank in the farm aristoc
racy. The little farmer’s wife is ex
pected to share in the field work in
seasons of emergency and to be mol’e
or less active in and around the farm
buildings; but her tasks are light as a
feather compared with those of the
German peasant woman.
And as before, her happier lot lies in
the farm system. The Danish peasant
is a small-scale livestock-farmer. He
is not interested in crops primarily ex
cept as food for his family and the
farm animals. His money income is
derived from the sale of livestock-
pigs, calves and beef cattle mainly,
and even more from the sale of milk
and eggs. His fruits and vegetables
are a small detail of his farm business
—a garden proposition of small propor
tions. Grains, grasses and roots are
his field crops and they are all sown,
cultivated and harvested by machinery,
or all but the root crops that call for
hand work in the harvest season. He
is a machine-farmer who reduces hand
labor to a minimum for himself and all
his household. He’s even a machine-
farmer in financing his farm opera
tions, selling his products, mining marl,
and buying fertilizer ingredients, seed
cakes and oils from abroad. His co
operative societies are his business
machines.
The Danish peasants were serfs for
five hundred years, not stupidly but
placidly, for the Danes have never been
a revolutionary race. And five hun
dred years is a long time for a quick
witted people to think upon the things
they could not have and might not do.
Their suddenly announced freedom in
1788 exploded a bomb in their brains,
and during the following seventy years
they broke completely away from their
old-time habits of work, methods of
farming, and views of life. They add
ed economic freedom to the political
freedom that Frederick Seventh gave
them, and they did il not by sweating
their backs like the German peasants
but by sweating their brains.
The German peasant works so hard
that he does not think and the Danish
peasant thinks so hard that he does not
work. It is perhaps an extreme way
of stating the contrast, but it is not
far away from the truth, for the Danish
peasant and his household are less
bowed down by the weight of work
than any farm people 1 know in any
land or country.
Victims ef a Farm System
^ The German peasant is a small-scale,
man-power, crop-farmer and his wife
and children are the victims of his wit
less farm system. The heathen god
Moloch was never more cruel.
And a like fate awaits the small-
scale, hand-labor, crop-farmers and
their households in the South. The in
tensive cultivation of cotton and tobac
co on a farm tenancy basis may mean
more per acre, but it also means less
per worker and a lower level of life
for our seven hundred thousand farm
tenants and their families.—E. C.
Branson, Berlin, Sept. 10, 1923.
OURNURSEKY POSSIBILITIES
In analyzing the possibilities of the
upper South from a horticultural stand
point, one is almost overwhelmed with
the obvious potential wealth and possi
bilities of this section of the country.
By the Upper South is meant that re
gion south of the Mason and Dixon line
and north of the latitude of Atlanta,
Ga. Of the extreme Southern States
with the citrus belt we need say noth
ing at this time, as it is somewhat dis
tinct from the region under considera
tion in a horticultural way of speak
ing.
Changing Flora
To get a vision of the possibilities of
this region it is necessary to analyze
the flora in this section of the country.
Starting on the coast of North Caro
lina, say at Pamlico Sound and going
west to Asheville, one goes through a
flora ranging from the subtropical to
almost the northern limits of the tem
perate zone. Or in other words, it is
somewhat equivalent to travelling from
North Carolina to Canada, as far as
plant life is concerned, yet it is all in
the one state of North Carolina. At
the coast one finds Mangrove Swamps,
Bald Cypress, the Live Oak, trees cov
ered with Tillansia or Spanish Moss,
and growing out in the yards and gar
dens are such things as Camellia Japon-
ica, Rhynscopernum, Bouganvillea,
Azalea Indica, Marechal Niel Roses,
Pittosporum, Aucubas, Figs and otlier
plants that the plantsman only sees
gro^^ing under glass in the North. The
long-leaf pine is ever present, but as
he travels west this gives place to the
shortleaf pine, which seems to cover
the coastal plains, where the peanut
and cotton seem to be prevalent crops.
As you travel inward, and reach the
Piedmont district, the ground, of
course, gradually rises and the flora
changes, giving place to deciduous trees
and shrubs that are more commonly
met with in the north, until one reaches
the mountains, where Asheville is lo
cated, and he finds the flora, due to the
altitude, of a type similar to that of a
much more northern latitude. ^
If such a region were cultivated to
tHe same intensity as that of Holland,
•and Belgium, it would seem as if the
one state of North Carolina alone could
supply the needs in a horticultural way,
at least, of the entire Atlantic sea
board.
A Home for Every Plant
Although wonderful strides have
been made in the last few years, it is
still doubtful if the nurserymen of this
section of the country are yet alive to
its possibilities. In fact, it is very
difficult even to grasp what they are
until they have been actually tried
out, but in any view one may take
they seem to be almost unmeas
urable. It would seem that every plant
that is grown by the ornamental horti
culturists would find a home where it
could be grown to perfection in this re
gion, without the heavy overhead costs
that are required to cultivate such
plants under glass in the North.
The mountains of North Carolina are
already well and favorably known in
the trade as the home of rhododendrons
and azaleas and it is more than likely
the future will see. this group of plants
grown in very extensive manner in this
section of the country that seems to be
so favorable for their development.
The fruit-growing^industry, in apples
and peaches at least, is already well
proven. In fact there does not seem to
be a line which the nurseryman is inter
ested in that cannot be brought to per
fection in some part of this favored re
gion.—Ernest Hemming, in National
Nurseryman.
SELLING FRUIT
Cooperation in the marketing of
fruits is the custom these days. During
1922 a total of 100,519 cars of fruit
marketed by 667 farmers’ business or
ganizations brought more than 183 mil
lion dollars. There were 323 citrus fruit
organizations which marketed nearly
72 million dollars’ worth of fruit. The
one raisin organization sold more than
35 million dollars’ worth of raisins.
More than 11 million dollars’ worth of
apples were sold by cooperatives.
Nearly every fruit, both large and
small, is sold to some extent through
cooperative channels. Nearly 40 mil
lion dollars’ worth of miscellaneous
fruits were marketed by farmers’ busi
ness organizations.
The value of cooperative organiza
tion is brought out in the wonderfully
improved freight service the citrus
fruit growers have received. A new
reduction in transcontinental freight
rates has been granted which will net
the growers three and a half million
dollars. When would such a reduction
have been granted had the California
growers not been organized? The ben
efits of cooperative marketing are m-
numerable.
FOOD ANIMALS AND POPULATION IN N. C.
Census Years 1870-1920.
From Agricultural Graphics, by Miss Henrietta R. Smedes, Depart
ment Rural Social Economics, University of North Carolina.
MILCH COWS
OTHER CATTLE
SWINE
Year
Population
Total
Number
Per.
Inhab
itant
Total
Number
Per
Inhab
itant
Total
Number
'
Per
Inhab
itant
1870
1,071,361
197,000
0.18
324,000
0.30
1,075,000
1.00
1880.'.
1,399,760
232,000
.17
425,000
.30
1,454,000
1.04
1890
1,617.949
223,000
.14
407,000
.25
1,251.000
.77
1900
1,893,810
233,000
.12
391,000
.21
1,300,000
.69
1910
2.206,287
309.000
.14
392,000
.18
1.228,000
..56
1920 -
2,559.123
364.000
.14
291,000
.11
1.271.000
.56
Number per inhabitant of important food animals in North Carolina for
census years 1870-1920.