The news in this publi
cation is released tor the
press on receipt.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina for the University Ex
tension Division.
JANUARY 9,1924
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. X, NO. 8
dlditorlai E. C. Branson. S. S. Hobba, Jr., L. R. Wilaon, E. W. Enierbt, D. D. Carroll. J. B. Ballitt, H. W. Odura.
Entered aa flecend«elaaa matter November 14.1914. at the PostofBceat Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of Augruat 24, 1911
FINANCING THE FARMER
XXIV-THE DANISH FOLK HIGH SCHOOL
The estate of a prosperous farm Pro
prietor, 1 said as I turned out of the
dusty highway into an avenue of elms
leading into a circle of brilliant flower
beds; not the folk high school pointed
out to me back yonder in the edge of
the town, but a beauty spot that I’ll
explore if nobody arrests my steps. I
had been a guest in various Little
Lander and Middle Class farmer homes
and here, I thought, was a chance to
study the more elaborate establishment
of a Proprietor. I did not hesitate, be
cause the homes of the Danish farmers
have welcoming, wide-open doors.
As I move up the avenue I glimpse
plum, apple and cherry trees, flower-
lined walks, rustic seats and a summer
pavilion oh one side, and on the other
thickset currant bushes richly red and
purple with ripening fruit, and a little
further along clumps of heavily loaded
gooseberry bushes. Th8"dwelling that
faces the flower beds is a vine-covered
tbree-story structure of stuccoed brick.
Wing buildings give it the form of the
letter E, and the high-pitched roof is
broken by dormer windows all the way
around. Instead of ringing the door
bell and handing in my card, I move a-
round the house and stray into a tennis
court area alongside what appears to
be a recreation hall; then into the
square of barn buildings in the rear,
and on into the poultry house and runs,
the vegetable gardens, orchards, grain,
forage and root-crop fields. I circle
back among the flower beds and hedg
es, and near the house I chance upon
a long shed filled with bicycles, a hun
dred or more in racks lining each wall.
As 1 stand in doubt, a young girl
comes hurrying in. What is the other
building yonder across the flowerbeds? I
ask. It is the community building, she
said, where the farmers and their wives
will be meeting for ten days of lectures
and enjoyable living together when the
harvest season is over.
And then it dawned on me that what
I had been exploring was not the hand
some estate of a farm Proprietor but a
school, a Danish Folk High School,
farm-life school on a well-developed
farm, housed in a farm building, ex
panded and arranged for school uses, to
be sure, but nevertheless a farmstead
in every detail of appearance—a school
that looked less like a school than any
thing I ever saw in America.
An Illuminating Experience
The young lady ushered me into the
office of the headmaster who led me
through the lecture rooms, the gym
nasium, the library, the living quarters
of a hundred students, the family resi
dence in one wing of the building, and
finally seated me with the faculty and
the student body for a simple mid-day
meal. He is the house-father and sits
at the head of one of the long tables.
His wife is the house-mother and sits
by his side at the head of another long
table. I am graciously welcomed into
a big school-family circle; into the inti
mate family life of a school home, a
home-school in fact as well as in seem
ing. The meal hour is a conversation
period, an announcement period, a mail
distributing occasion, enlivened by the
gentle raiilery-'of the principal. It is
an illuminating experience for the half-
dozen visitors spending the day in the
school.
Wahing up Souls
“I thought I was straying into the
farm estate of a Proprietor,” I said.
“It is a farm,” he responded, “and I
am the proprietor, the sole owner of it.
I am a teacher of course, but also I
am a farmer, a farmer-teacher or a
teacher-farmer whichever way one
chooses to say it. This farm—the whole
farm—is a school and this home is a
farm-school that does not teach farm
ing at all, or not directly and formally.
Our purpose is better than that, it is
aimed at waking up the souls of these
young Danes to the opportunities and
possibilities of noble living and noble
citizenship as farmers in a cooperative
commonwealth. This is an adult school,
these students are between eighteen
and twenty-six years of age, they come
almost entirely out of farm homes,
they are in a folk high school for four
or five months once^’maybe twice in
a life time, and we do not have a
chance to teach them muc^ but we do
have a chance to stir the impulse to
seif-tuition in a thousand directions
during all the rest of their lives. What
they can be aroused to teach them
selves, out of school is ten thousand
times more than we could ever hope to
teach them in a folk school in a few
months, and worth ten thousand times
more, if only we can get them under a
great headway of steam and set them
going in the right direction. And the
right direction is the best good of the
largest number in community and com
monwealth life, the high calling of the
farmer, and the great estate of Den
mark. The final values of life and
death and destiny for individuals and
nations is what we are busy with here
day by day or try to be as an ideal
school aim.”
How They Do It
I found' the twelve-hour school day
devoted to lectures on the history, bi
ography, legends, literature and art of
Denmark, on the history makers and
the epoch-making events of other lands,
on the heroes of science, discovery and
invention, on national ideals and group
struggles upward, every lecture be
ginning with a song out of a high-
school volume of Danish poetry.. The
long school day is relieved by conver
sation, question, and free discussion
periods, by gymnasium exercises and
out-door folkplays, games and songs,
by meals, rest intervals, reading-room
and library hours.
On my round of high-school visits I
heard lectures on Plymouth Rock and
the Pilgrim Fathers, Lincoln and E-
mancipation in America, Frederick
Sixth and Danish Emancipation, Shafts-
bury and Child Labor in England, Pla
ton's Republic and Rule by the Wisest,
Alexander the Great and his Weakness,
Denmark’s Leadership in Cooperative
Business and Life, the Land Tax in
Denmark and New Zealand, the Sieg
fried Stories, Longfellow’s Hiawatha
and Evangeline. These lectures by
various -teachers in various schools
were very quiet in manner and voice,
but very competent, very direct, and
very effective. In all my high-school
visits I found only one lifeless lecturer
punishing a class with a dull hour. He
is a young teacher with a university
diploma and he knows Danish litera
ture thoroughly, but he is lifeless and
tedious, does not know young people
and cannot probe to the quick of youth.
Manifestly he has never been young
himself—was born grown with his
clothes on and his hands in his trous
ers' pockets, like Little Pip’s ancestors
in Great Expectations. He will disap
pear out of the folk-school faculties in
a hurry, for dull teachers mean dead
schools in Denmark. Which is a mat
ter of critical importance, for these
folk high schools are not public schools
but private enterprises and their ex
istence depends on their drawing pow
er. Seventy of the schools established
since 1844 have died. The eighty that
remain have survived because they
were fitly officered, fitly located, and
fitly supported by community pride.
Only the fit can survive. The number
of folk high schools in Denmark will
probably remain around eighty or one
for every fifteen thousand farm inhabi
tants.
A Unique Growth
I have described one folk high school
in detail, but what one of them is ail of
them are, in beauty of surroundings
and interior life, academic ideals, at
mosphere, aims and methods. They
vary in minor matters and each has its
own characteristic personality and fla
vor, but they are all small groups of
young people living with the headmas
ter and his family on a country estate
that is busy with life, country life, and
commonwealth life, with life in the
large and its spiritual significance.
They are unique schools. They are
original and racial. They sprang out
of Danish life and conditions as natur
ally as daisies spring up in our mead
ows at home. Their purpose is effec
tively accomplished in a single summer
term of five months for the young
women and in four winter months for
CREDIT UNIOM IDEALS
1. To stimulate thrift.
, 2. To save landless men from usury
and time prices.
3. To help tenant farmers become
land owners.
4. To develop business ability and
a cooperative spirit among the peo
ple.—Clarence Poe.
the young men. They have no stereo
typed course of study and they use very
few text books, they assign no lessons
and they forbid lecture note books,
they have no roll calls and no absence
committees, no examinations, no re
ports, no promotions, no graduation,
and no commencement exercises.
What is it you are saying? is the ques
tion suddenly fired at me by two Amer
ican school girls at the table in my Co
penhagen boarding house. A school?
Where is it? In Denmark, you say?
well we thought it was in Heaven, it
sounds like Heaven to us, is the irrev
erent comment.
Quality Vs. Quantity
The simple fact is that the Danish
Folk High Schools long ago abandoned
education as a quantitative somethihg
measured by so many pages in so many
books for so many years. They have
preserved, and very well preserved,
the notion of education as a qualitative
something—a contact of spirit with
quickening spirit, a flame kindled at a
lamp of life, to paraphrase Carlyle’s
famous paragraph in Sartor Resartus.
They have perpetuated the Mark Hop
kins college on the end of a log, in the
woods. Their purpose is not informa
tion but the inward formation of char
acter. Not what folks know but how
they behave is the main matter, is the
way one headmaster puts it.
What It Leads To
If these young Danes want technical
instruction in farming, they go later
on to the twenty-odd agricultural high
schools of the state located here and
there in Denmark, and to the State
Agricultural College in Copenhagen.
If they want liberal culture courses
they join the six thousand students in
the great University. Nearly exactly
half of the ten thousand folk high
school students from year to year go
on into other institutions for scientific
training, technical instruction and lib
eral learning. But whether they go or
not, they seem never to get away from
the high school that waked them up.
From time to time they go back with
their wives to the annual ten-day con
ferences in-the fall and live over again
their happy high-school life. They ar
range the speaking dates of the high-
school lecturers who reach every com
munity of Denmark every year. They
are the soul of the local organizations
that offer the annual programs that
we call chautauquas in America. And
so on and on.
On a journey to one of these folk
high schools, X. fell in with a gray-
haired Dane from Copenhagen, going
to an earijf September conference at
his beloyed school. ‘T am a maltster
by profession,” said he, ‘‘and I was
ten years in America. Mr Volstead
sent me back home.” Later on I found
him singing the high-school songs lusti
ly and playing the old high-school games
on the school lawn with all the joy of
indestructible youth. He has had no
education beyond the self-tuition in
spired by the folk high school, but he
is a director of the Scandinavian-Amer-
ican Scholarship Foundation that every
year gives a thousand ^dollars to each
of a half-dozen picked young Ameri
cans who want to study the life and in
stitutions of Denmark, Norway and
Sweden.
Worth While Study
I have in mind a young Tarheel
teacher who ought to be here next year
on one of these scholarships^studying
the folk high schools, their origin, their
essential clftracter, and the part they
have played in the building of modern
Denmark. His account^of.their educa
tional values would make,better letters
than mine on this subject to the folks
back home. He is a school technician,
I am not. Nevertheless I shall be send
ing in several sketchy letters; such as
they are, on the rare schools I have
been seeing in Denmark.
Meantime interested students in
North Carolina ought to be thumbing
Foght’s The Danish Folk High Schools,
a bulletin of the Federal Education Bu
reau, and Alfred Poulsen'a pamphlet
on the Folk High School of Denmark,
which is the best account we have of
them in English.—E. C. Branson,
Paris, Oct. 17, 1923.
FINANCING THE FARMER
During the last seven years remark
able progress has been made in provid
ing farmers with the types of credit
institutions needed in carrying on the
business of agriculture. For many dec
ades the farmer was forced to get his
inadequate credit from banks which
were designed to serve commercial
needs. The farmer was forced to pay
high interest rates when he borrowed
from commercial banks which were not
designed to accommodate his credit
needs. Farmers and their organizations
were constantly criticising our banking
system because they could not borrow
sufficient funds at legal interest rates.
Finally it becameevident that new types
of banks had to be created in^ order to
give the farmer the longer term credit
his business demanded. Adequate ma
chinery for practically every credit
need of the farmer has been devised.
The machinery is new and will need ad
justing, but the main problem is ac
quainting the farmer with the banking
facilities that have been designed for
his use, and getting him to use them.
Three Kinds of Credit
The farmers’ need is for credit of
three kinds: long term, intermediate,
and short term. For the purchase of
land and equipment the farmer needs
long term credit. For growing live
stock and carrying his crops from plant
ing time to harvest he needs interme
diate credit,, and for moving his pro
ducts to market he needs short term
credit. The Federal Farm Loan Act of
1916 provides for the major long term
credit needs. Its use in practice is
limited largely to land owners. The
Intermediate Credit Act of 1923 pro
vides the machinery that will supply
farmers with intermediate and, to
some extent, short term credit. The
machinery is new and the act is very
complicated in comparison with the
Federal Farm Loan Act, but the ma
chinery, once it is set up, will be in
constant use by a large majority of our
farmers, and by all cooperative mark
eting and purchasing associations. It
is the commercial bank of the farmer
and his organizations.
Credit Unions
In addition to the machinery provided
by the Federal government, the state
of North Carolina in 1916 made provi
sion for the establishment of Credit
Union Banks. Very few states have a
Credit Union Act, and our act is the
best that has been passed by any state.
It provides that any group of seven or
more persons can organize a credit
union. A credit union is a community
savings bank and a society of borrow
ers, and its use is not limited to farm
ers. Such banks are universally used
in Europe, and they could perform un
told service in this state. The act has
been sadly neglected, but renewed ef
forts are now being made to acquaint
the people with the great possibilities
of credit unions.
Ample M&chinery
It is perfectly clear, then, that so
far as agricultural predit machinery is
concerned the farmer has been well
provided. The North Carolina farmer
has the use of the banks created by
the federal government, and in addi
tion he can enjoy the benefits of mem
bership in a credit union provided he
has the initiative to help start one, and
sufficient interest to help keep it go
ing in his community.
The point I wish to make is that ma
chinery has been created which, if put
to work, will adequately supply the
farmer with every credit need. Local
bankers shonld make a study of recent
agricultural credits legislation and in
struct the farmers in the use of these
new banks. But finally it is up to the
farmers themselves to do their part in
seating these agricultural banks to
work. They must study the banking
game. Farmers can now be their own
bankers, but until they become so, un
til they use the banks that the federal
and state governments have provided
for them, they will continue to pay
high interest rates for the use of credit
supplied by commercial Xanks which
are not designed primarily to serve
their needs.—S. H. H., .fr.
FEDERAL FARM LOANS
North Carolina farmers have bor
rowed $25,107,650 from the banks of
the federal farm loan system, accord
ing to a tabulation of these loans up to
June 30, 1923, compiled from reports
made to the federal farm loan board.
This is North Carolina’s participation
in a grand total of $1,160,695,616 ad
vanced to farmers throughout the
United States by the joint stock land
banks and federal land banks.
During the year ending June 80,
1923, North Carolina farmers bor
rowed $12,657,150 from the banks of
the farm loan system. Of this amount
$9,526,460 was borrowed through the
joint stock land banks, and $3,130,700
through the federal land bank at Co
lumbia. The statistics just issued
show that, of the $25,107,650 advanced
to North Carolina farmers by the farm
loan system since its organization,
$10,076,600 was supplied by joint stock
land banks and $16,031,060 by the fed
eral land bank at Columbia.
During the year closed on June 30,
1923, the total of loans made through
all the banks of the farm loan system
throughout the forty-eight states was
$446,389,813. Of this amoynt, joint
stock land banks supplied $233,920,698
and the federals $212,469,215.
The biHion-dollar mark for the fed
eral farm loan system, which includes
both joint stock land banks and federal
land banks, was passed on June 30,
1923, when the statement of business
done from organization to that date
gave the total of loans made by all the
banks of the system as $1,160,696,616.
Of this amount, the federal land banks
have made $787,460,304, and the joint
stock land banks have made $373,199,-
212. However, for the fiscal year end
ing June 30, 1923, joint stock land
banks did a larger busines than federal
land banks.
THE FARMER S CHOICE
It is interesting to note that 75 per
cent of all federal farm loan business
done in North Carolina during the last
fiscal year was done by the three
joint stock land banks of the state.
These banks are just beginning to
operate in this state as 96 percent of
their total business belongs to the fis
cal year ending June 30, 1923. An at
tachment to the Federal Farm Loah
Act provides for the operation of Joint
Stock Land Banks. The parent act
provides for association banks with co
operative features. It was the hope
that these banks, together with the en
tire Federal Farm Loan System, would
ultimately be owned and operated by
the borrowing farmer. The hope was
not materialized.
The joint stock land banks are now
doing a larger business in the United
States than all of the association, or
farmer-owned and farmer-operated,
banks. Ourjfarmers do not like to be
troubled with business details. They are
not thrifty. They are not acquainted
with banking principles. It involves
just a little more trouble, a little more
work, a little more cooperation, a little
more time, to get an association bank
organized and loans granted through
these banks, than to secure an individ
ual loan direct from a joint stock bank
where th^officials look after all the de^^^
tails, and charge for the privilege. Our
farmers here in North Carolina prefer
quick action with the details omitted.
'The method that involves the least a-
mount of study, thought, and care suits
them best. Otherwise they would
market their products through strong
cooperative associations, and. finance
themselves through banks owned and
operated by themselves.
Federal and state laws have created
ample machinery for marketing crops
and for financing the farm through
farmer-owned banks. It is the farm
er’s choice to determine whether he
shall use the machinery that provides
for hiin greater economic freedom or
continue to enrich the coffers of those
who do for him what he could and
should do for himself.—S. H. H., Jr.