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.
DECEMBER 5,1923
J
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. X, NO. 5
B titorial Soar ils C. Braaaon. S. 9. Hobba. Jr., L. R, Wilaon. E, W. Knight, D. O. Carroll, J, B. Ballltt, H. W. Odom.
Entered aa second'claHa matter November 14. 1914, atthePoatofSceat Chapel Hill, N. C.. under the act of Augruat 24, 1911
XXI—A FIELD LABORATORY FOR STUDENTS
Denmark is over-run by students
from other countries. Over-run is the
word and it does not over-state the
fact. They are here from every land
under the heavens, studying Denmark.
They are farmers and farm organiza
tion officials, college professors and
teachers of every grade and rank,
graduate students digging^^doctorate
dissertations out of life itself and not
out of dust bins, legislative committees
and commissions, congressmen and field
investigators from the agricultural de
partment at Washington, members of
the English parliament and details from
the Home Office, settlement workers,
social secretaries, public welfare offi
cers, research students representing
the social-work foundations of America,
authors assembling material for books
on Denmark, Scandinavian-American
scholarship students, and so on and on.
I name them as I find them listed in my
travel memorandum book.
They are not tourists of the ordinary
tpye but students of Danish institutions
and agencies of progress, welfare and
well being. Denmark is being examined
by students of this sort more thorough
ly at this moment than any other coun
try of the world. Falling in with these
people has been a daily experience in ev
ery nook and corner of this little country.
We are all using Denmark as a field
laboratory in political science and so
cial economics, swapping addresses, ex
changing letters of introduction, and
working together here and there with
constantly renewed inspiration. Col
onies of artists are common in Bavaria,
the vale of Conway, the Grand Canyon
and other picturesque regions, but in
Denmark, the colonies and groups are
social science students and active social
servants working at the Danish ways
of commonwealth building.
Some of the Students
To specify somewhat in detail. The
other day I dined with the students and
faculty of the folk high school near
Roskilde. On my left were two social
workers from Vienna and on my right
a Lutheran priest from Berlin bent on
establishing a high school of the Danish
type for the working people of his
parish. Across the table was a Cana
dian anti by his side a Japanese who has
been a student in the school for five
months, by way of learning how to have
such a school in his mission field at
home. He knew our Dr. J. F. Steiner,
by the way, and was overjoyed to find
that his friend in Japan was my fellow-
worker in the University of North Ca
rolina.
I was directed to the Roskilde school
by Mrs. John C. Campbell of Asheville
who has been givintr a whole year to
the folk high schools of Denmark and
the cooperative farm organizations of
all the Scandinavian countries. With her
in Copenhagen were two graduates of
Bryn Mawr and Wellesley who are de
voting their lives to school settlement
work in the Appalachian mountains.
My trip to Roskilde; was made with
sixty English farmers and government
officials attending the cattle show there.
Their ten-day mission in Denmark was
a study of the cooperative creameries,
bacon factories, and egg-export socie
ties.
Two members of the English Teach
er Training School at Derby are here
studying the domestic science schools.
Two members of the Hampton Institute
faculty are here studying thp folk
high schools, the agricultural schools,
and Danish education in general. A
blue-eyed, black-haired Irish girl is
here attending the high-school confer
ences at Elsinore. Students of this
sort have been appearing at my table
at the Helmerhus pensionat every day
or so during the last two months.
Mutual International Study
The morning I spent in the State
Land Economics Bureau, the chief said
to me, You have just missed a field
agent from the department of agricul
ture in Washington. The great central
office of the Danish Marketing Coopera
tives is just one block away from my
pensionat in Copenhagen. It has been
my working headquarters during my
stay in Denmark. Students of farm
cooperation swarm into it from every
country on the globe, among them two
congressmen the othe^ day, neither of
whom belongs to the farm bloc. Like
the rest of us in Denmark, they are
having a chance to learn a lot of things
they did not know before. Herre Holm
the director of this Cooperative Cen
tral, I may say in passing, spent two
years in America working his way a-
cross the continent as a farmhand in
order to learn English while studying
American agriculture and American
markets for Danish farm products. It
is a way these Danes have of master
ing real problems. His cargoes now
go regularly into San Francisco as well
as New York.
A Great Experience
But the most impressive experience
I have had in Denmark was at the In
ternational Folk High School near El
sinore in early August. There I ran
into a conference of one hundred and
twenty social workers and students
from twelve countries of the world—
England, Ireland, Canada, the United
States, Germany, Austria, Norway,
Sweden, Finland, Russia, China, and
Japan. It was one of a series of con
ferences on the pressing great prob
lems of humanity in the world today,
each subject bringing in a new group
of earnest students every eight or ten
days for a month or more. The folk
schools have always been close to life
itself in Denmark, but Peter Manni-
che’s school was establisheikthree years
ago to bring Denmark just as close to
life and its common problems in the
world at large. Or such is the ideal
that inspires him as the principal of a
new kind of folk high school. He is a
graduate of the university in Copenha
gen, but of far greater significance is
the fact that he has what Wordsworth
called the vital soul. He is young but
already he is launched upon a great
career. His school is heavily handi
capped by debt, nevertheless the joy
of a great purpose fills his face with
joy, and what else but a|great purpose
fills any face with joy? ^
Some Commonwealth Builders
These two months in Denmark are
bringing me to understand why it is
that little Denmark gives birth to such
men as Bishop Grundtvig, Steen Blich-
er, Christian Kold, Dalgas, Jacob Riis,
Holger Begtrup, Jacob Lange, Peter
Manniche, Hegerman-Lindencrone, Arne
Holm, and the rest. The list is
long, and they are commonwealth
builders all.
The commonwealth they have built
is a cooperative democracy. It is a
new kind of democracy, and that is
why so many students are here from
so many different countries. They
have been attracted to Denmark by the
addresses and magazine articles of
Francis Maurice Egan who for ten
years or more was our distinguished
ambassador at Copenhagen, by Rider
Haggard’s Rural Denmark, Shaw Des
mond’s The Soul of Denmark, Harald
Faber’s Cooperation in Denmark, Fred
eric C. Howe’s Denmark, A Coopera
tive Commonwealth; and by other books
on Denmark in English, the mere titles
of which fill 110 pages in the bibliog
raphy of the Royal Danish Library.
The four books named treat in full
chapters many .phases of Danish life
and enterprise that I can only glance
at in these brief letters. They can all
be borrowed from the seminar library
of rural social-economics at the Uni
versity of North Carolina. They will be
mailed for a ten-day study in answer
to post card requests. All of them,
however, ought to be in the private
library of every thoughtful student
whose mind is busy with state prob
lems in North Carolina and elsewhere.
Three Phases of Cooperation
Denmark is an experiment station in
Cooperation, first as a form of business
organization, second as a method of
social enterprise, and third as a way of
effective civic service. Since 1861 the
Danes have moved steadily upward
thru these three stages of essential de
mocracy—not, to be sure, without
stumbling now and then in applying a
principle of business, life, and state
hood. But the successes have been so
A GREAT PEOPLE
In a free republic a great govern
ment is the product of a great peo
ple. They will look to themselves
rather than government for success.
The destiny, the greatness, of Amer
ica lies around the hearthstone. If
thrift and industry are taught there,
and the example of self sacrifice oft
appears, if honor abides there, and
high ideals, if there the building of
fortune be subordinate to the build
ing of character, America will live
in security, rejoicing in an abundant
prosperity and good government at
home, and in peace, confidence, and
respect abroad. If these virtues be
absent there is no power that can
supply these blessings. Look well
then to the hearthstone, therein all
hope for America lies.—Calvin
Coolidge.
many and so wonderful that they have
attracted the attention of readers,
thinkers, and leaders in every land.
Fundamental Contrasts
Now a corporation is one thing and a j
cooperation is another. A corporation j
is an old and seasoned form of business
organization created, defined, and reg
ulated by laws without number these
many centuries. It assembles large
volumes of capital by handing out
shares of stock to a large number o,f
little investors, who have the right to
elect directors and to receive dividends
when there are any. When there are
none they have the right to whistle to
keep their courage up, and to pay as
sessments to settle the debts of the
concern when it fails. Meantime every
body has the right to gamble on the
earning power of the enterprise. Vot
ing is based on the shares of stock !
owned or controlled, and a fifty-one,
percent control is as good as a one-;
hundred percent ownership. At any
rate it is cheaper. It is not too much
to say that the share of stock has more i
profoundly affected the essential char
acter of our civilization than any other ,
single invention of modern times. i
In contrast, a cooperation is a form ;
of business organization based, first on :
the one-man-one-vote principle of vot-1
ing, and second on the patronage divi-1
dend as principle of profit sharing. i
That is to say, no matter how many ;
shares of stock a member may own he :
has only one vote; and his dividends are '
rated on the amount of business he does
with the concern as well as on the a- i
mount of stock he owns. It seems fan- [
tastic and futile to hard-headed busi- j
ness men in America. |
A New Business Instrument j
Cooperation as a form of business or-1
ganization is so new in Western civili-.
zation that twenty-five years ago it had
no legal existence whatsoever in the
United States, and the word itself
could not be found in any legal diction-:
ary in America. But in the new century
the principle was sanctioned by law
in some twenty-five states, and finally
it found its way^ into federal enact
ment.
Cooperation in business is seventy-
four years old in Denmark, but in A-
merica it is so new both in fact and in
law that it has not yet reached any
final form as a business instrument.
Our cooperators are still working out
their salvation with fear and trembling,
in North Carolina and every other state
of the Union. Even in California where
the movement is best developed, the
raisin and walnut growers had to get
together in a hurry at Fresno in 1921
and re-organize their business almost
overnight in order to escape indictment
in the federal courts for conspiracy in
restraint of trade,
V '
What Counts Most i
A corporation is a massing of money
and it is money that counts in a pinch
in corporation business. A cooperation
is a massing of men and it is character
that counts in a pinch in a cooperative
enterprise. Without the cooperative
virtues of sagacity, faith in one’s fel
lows, willing subordinatioz^tojself-chos-,
en authority, vigilance, loyalty and
courage, a man would better stay ou^
of a cooperative society, for it tests .
character more severely than any other
mode of business, way of life, or form
of civic enterprise yet devised by civi
lized man.
The cooperative virtues—read the
list over again in the preceding para
graph-are superfine qualities of hu
man nature. The Danes have these vir
tues, not as a gift of nature but as a
result of their struggle to survive both
as farmers and as a state.
Cooperation a National Need
Cooperation on a self-help basis suc
ceeds in Denmark and the principle
passed entirely beyond debate a quarter
century ago in this little country.
And it must made to succeed or
allowed to succeed in America. We
need the cooperative virtues in every
phase of our national life. Civilization
cannot forever exist as a tooth-and
claw, beak-and talon contest for sur
vival and supremacy among men and
nations. Europe is today an arresting
illustration of this fundamental fact.
Collusion is better than collision, co
operation is better than competition,
and the sooner the human race learns
this fundamental lesson the better.
Somehow or other the world must find
a place for The Sermon on the Mount
and the Golden Rule in business, in
social fellowships, and in civic institu
tions. The race has tried the Rule of
Gold long enough to have learned that
it is not a final way of life.—E.C.Bran
son, Strassburg, Sept. 18, 1923.
THE CAROLINA SPIRIT
One of the most interesting features
of the program of public education on
which North Carolina has embarked is
the determination to make adequate
provision for the thorough training of
the colored teachers of the state. With
this end in view three institutions have
been designated as colored state teach
er-training schools—one at Elizabeth
City, one at Winston-Salem, and a
third at Fayetteville. All three of
these institutions are now provided
with some excellent modern buildings,
but the appropriations already made
insure enough excellent dorn^itories,
laboratories, classrooms, to make these
schools comparable with the leading
state institutions maintained for the
white people.
The officials of North Carolina have
not been hampered by the all too prev
alent fear of doing something which
might not be universally popular..
Guided by an admirable spirit of jus
tice and fair play, supported by the
best element of the people in the state,
they have looked into the future and
laid their plans for a system of public
education which will offer the same
opportunities to all the children of the
state, whether in the country or the
city, and whether black or white. This
spirit of courageous confidence in doing
the thing that i^ obviously right and
fair without trying to measure the re
sults in votes has been a conspicuous
characteristic of the North Carolina
public officials, and they are setting a
splendid standard of statesmanship for
the Nation. —Southern Workman.
TRAINING FOR THE FARM
Vocational training in agriculture is
keeping the boys on the farm and hold
ing them in school, according to figures
obtained by the federal board'of voca
tional education. The facts are interest
ing because they suggest many more
changes that will reflect on the future.
The data collected indicate that 74 per
cent of the boys trained for agriculture
are employing that knowledge in their
vocations. On the other hand, only 3.6
percent of the graduates from 271 rural
high schools in New York state, where
agriculture is not taught, remain on the
farms. It is clearly shown that the study
of agriculture keeps the boy from the
farm in school for a longer time than in
cases where agriculture is not taught.
—Indiana Farmers’ Guide.
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE RATES
In North Carolina in 1922
Based on the Bureau of the Census report on marriages and divorces, show
ing the number of marriages for each divorce granted in each county.
North Carolina average one divorce for every 16.8 marriages, against one
for every thirty-two in 1916. Five-year increase in the number of divorces 100
percent, against only 3.5 percent increase in marriages.
One-half of all divorces were granted in the ten counties with the largest
towns and cities. The divorce problem is an urban one. Our divorce rate will
steadily rise as we change from a rural to an urban state. Ninety-three di
vorces in Buncombe against a total of 91 in the first twenty-five counties, all
rural, listed below. Farmers are seldom divorced.
S. H. Hobbs, Jr.
Department ofRural Social Economics, University of North Carolina
Rank
County
No. Marriages
per divorce
Rank
County
No. Marriages
per divorce
1
Yadkin
138.0
46
Lenoir
22.1
2
Bladen
127.0
47
Surry
21.5
3
Currituck
104.0
48
Edgecombe
20.6
4
Lee
69.6
49
Wilson
19.9
6
Sampson
68.0
60
Richmond
19.6
6
Jones
66.0
61
Cleveland
19.3
7
Moore
64.3
62
Rutherford
19.0
8
Camden
63.0
62
Perquimans....
19.0
9
Franklin
62.6
64
Randolph
18.7
10
Lincoln
62.0
66
Swain
18.4
11
Harnett
60.6
55
Warren
18.4
12
Johnston
49.1
57
Burke.. ....
18.2
13
Mitchell
49.0
68
Halifax
18.1
14
Cumberland ...
45.1
69
Henderson
18.0
16
Alexander
46.0
60
Person
17.6
16
Stokes
41.0
61
Chowan
17.6
17
Anson
40.0
62
Bertie
17.2
18
Iredell
39.5
63
Cabarrus
16.6
18
Watauga
39.5
64
Greene
16.4
20
Wilkes
38.7
66
Caswell
16.2
21
Jackson .......
36.6
66
Robeson
16.0
22
Montgomery ..
36.3
67
Wake
16.1
23
Columbus
36.0
68
Pasquotank....
14.7
24
Duplin
33.8
69
Wayne
14.4
26
Chatham
32.6
70
Madison
14.0
26
Catawba
32.0
71
Brunswick
13.7
27
Crnnvillf*
31.9
72
New Hanover .
13.0
28
Martin
29.2
73
Alamance
12.9
29
Davidson
28.6
74
Craven
12.7
30
Scotland
28.0
74
Pitt
12,7
31
Carteret
26.6
76
Rowan
12.5
31
Orange
26.5
77
Vance
11.5
33
Rockingham...
26.4
78
Ashe
11.8
34
Pamlico
26.0
78
Stanly
11.8
34
Washington ...
26.0
80
Guilford
11.0
36
Beaufort
26.0
81
Hertford
10.2
36
Graham
26.0
82
Forsyth
9.2
38
Caldwell
24.7
83
McDowell
.. 9,1
39
Alleghany
24.2
84
Durham
8.7
40
Union
24.0
86
Mecklenburg..
8.8
41
Gates
23.0
86
Buncombe
8.0
41
Transylvania..
28.0
86
Gaston
8.0
43
Haywood
22.8
88
Avery
7.4
43
Nash
22.8
89
Northampton..
6.4
46
Yancey
22.2
90
Macon
4.2
The following counties are omitted because of lack of authoritative figures:
Cherokee, Clay, Dare, Davie, Hoke, Hyde, Onslow, Pender, Polk, and Tyrrell.
These are rural counties with few divorces.