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 for the University Ex
tension Division.
MAY 13, 1925
CHAPEL HILL, N C.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
VOL. XI, NO. 26
Kdilorral Board: E. C. Branson, S. H. Hobbs, Jr„ L, E, Wilson, E, W. Kniuht, D, D, Carroll. J. B. Bullitt, H. W. Odum.
Entered as second-class matter November 14, 1914, at theiPostolTice at Chapel Hill, N. C., under tho act ot August 24, 1912
FARM LIFE ABROAD
And Its Lessons to America
The following review of Dr. E. C.
Branson’s book “Farm Life Abroad”
published by the University of North Ca
rolina Press appeared in the Manufac
turers Record, April 2, 1925, and was
written by Richard Woods Edmonds,
editor in charge. The first edition of the
book has been exhausted. Orders al
ready received will practically exhaust
the second edition now being printed.
The book appeals strongly to the genera!
reader who is interested in improving
the rural end of our civilization. Yet,
to the surprise of its author, large
orders for “Farm Life Abroad” have
been received from colleges and uni
versities where the book has been
adopted as collateral reading in courses
dealing with rural life. The book’s
strongest appeal should be to the gener
al reader in North Carolina who is in
terested in the farmer. It was for our
home folks primarily that it was writ
ten and published. A copy of the
book, price $2.00, may be had by writ
ing the University Press, Chapel Hill.
N. C.-S. H. H,, Jr., Editor.
Many an American reading “Farm
Life Abroad, ” whether he be farmer,
merchant, manufacturer, banker or
broker, will envy the happy lot of the
Danish farmers. There are a few
things our farmers might learn to their
advantage from the German farmers,
and a few they might learn from the
French farmers. Most of them own
their farms. None of them live in re
mote, solitary isolation. They live in
compact little farm villages, go out
daily to their work, and enjoy a degree
of social life with life-long friends and
neighbors that is impossible for the
great majority of our farmers. Pro-
fessor Branson says:
“In south and central Germany there
are 2,000,000 ot these small, home
owning farmers, dwelling in compact
social groups, not in solitary farm
steads a few to the square mile in vast
open spaces as in the United States.
It is lonesomeness alone that accounts
for much of the cityward drift of
country people in America. It is the
social life of home-owning farmers in
farm villages that will save the country
life of Europe from falling into the de
cay that threatens America.”
On the other hand, these French and
German farmers can teach our farmers
much of what to avoid. The back
breaking drudgery of women and chil
dren, who are the beasts of burden
on German and French farms, and scav
engers pushing carts along the roads to
gather up the manure dropped by pass
ing animals—such work for women and
children is intolerable alike to Danish
and American farmers. It is therefore
with a feeling of disquiet that one
reads, ‘ ‘Our own small-scale farmers are
moving little by little toward the low
estate of the knee-farming peasants of
the Old World countries, where the
farm burdens rest in the main upon
the backs of women and children.
But when we come to Denmark!
There, it seems is the paradise of
farmers. There the chief business of
the nation is farming, and the State is
organized and run by tb© fanners or
the benefit of the farmers.
farmers of Denmark ever work any '
Professor Branson asked a Dane. ‘‘If
they do, I have never been able to
catch them at it. In a single afternoon
in a single landscape anywhere in cen
tral and south ..Germany you can see
more people at work in the fields than
I have seen in the fields of Denmark
in six weeks of travel from one end of
the state to the other. What’s the
answer?”
The Dane this question was fired at
spoke English, and was the universi
ty-bred son of a farmer who ..wasj.a
seasoned member^of Parliament.
“My answer would be,” said he,
“that the Dane^islazy by nature. He
never sweats his back if he can get
there by sweating his brain.’
And this, to judge by the chapters
that follow, is a modest manner of say
ing that the Dane is a thinker. He has
his farm work so perfectly organized
that animals, machinesj.or cooperative
farm societies do most of the work for
him. Professor Branson finds: “He
pickets his farm animals in the fields
and they harvest his crops for him
during seven or eight months of the
year. He is a livestock farmer on a
machine basis, which means minimum
workers and minimum hours in the
field. As for marketing his crops and
getting the money into his pocket,
he hardly bothers with it at all; the
cooperative societies attend to that.”
But the cooperative societies are
the farmers’own organizations, to elim
inate the middleman and give the
farmer whatever profit is made on his
produce. The cooperative reduces his
pigs to bacon, ham and so forth and sells
the products to the ultimate consumers.
Some of them even maintain retail food
shops in London and Manchester, and the
profits from those stores go right back
to the farmers in Denmark. Professor
Branson has seen better farmers than
the Danes, but, he says, he has never
seen better business men anywhere
than the Danish farmers.
The proof of the pudding is in the eat
ing. “The Danish farmers are rich,”
asserts Professor Branson. “Man for
man, they are the richest farmers in the
world. And they have risen to this pre
eminence in this short sjiace of seventy-
five years. I say seventy-five years be
cause they began to combine their re
sources in credit unions as long ago as
1850.
COUNTY GOVERNMENT
Bulletins May Be Had
Improved county government is
one of the outstanding needs in
North Carolina, along with every
other state in the Union. We seem
to be headed towards a real busi
ness-like administration of state
government. An even more urgent
need is improved county govern
ment. Three fine pamphlets on
county government have recently
appeared, as follows: County Gov
ernment in North Carolina, by A.
C. McIntosh of the University Law
School; A New Kind of County
Government, by Herbert Quick;
and The County Manager Plan, by
Richard S. Childs. The library of
the Department of Rural Social-
Economics has secured five hun
dred copies of each of the above
pamphlets and a set may be had
free as long as the limited supply
lasts by writing to the Department
of Rural Social-Economics, Chapel
Hill, N. C.
migrated with the old lumber mills.
Some kinds of agriculture can well be
carried on in association with perma
nent forest industries, but not without
them. After a hundred years of set
tlement some of the forested states
have much less than half their area in
farm land. As a rule the rest ought
to be growing trees.—American For
est Week Committee.
this country, and they do not expect
State aid. They are as independent of
it as the Danish cooperatives. But we
also have strong appeals for salvation
During the sixty years imme-; legislation, for State aid of one sort
diately preceding this date they were; another to farmers, and many peo-
struggling with landlessness, illiteracy believe prosperity by legislation is
and poverty.” One hundred and thirty- ^ possibility. It would be interesting
five years ago, or about the time the
thirteen American states were adopt
ing their Constitution, the Danish
farmers were freed from serfdom by
their king.
It appears that while Americans of
pronounced business ability have gone
into industrial life, the Danes, having
no such natural resources on which to
base industries and knowing only agri
culture, were staying right on the
farm and developing farming along
scientific business principles. Thus
the best brains of the nation have gone
into farming, with the unique result
Branson so vividly describes.
While the cause of their success is
therefore that peculiar form of lazi
ness, the instrument by which they
have achieved success is the coopera
tive enterprise, “They keep tljeir
hands on their own farm wealth every
inch of the way from the farmers’
fields to the consumers’ tables,” re
ports Professor Branson. “I asked,
in the innocency of a greenhorn from
the States, whether or not it was
against the law in Denmark for a
farmer to act alone and to do things
for himself by himself. The answer
was. ‘Not at all, but the Danish farm
er who hasn’t sense enough to see the
direct advantage of cooperative busi
ness is so rare that he is almost un
known.’ ”
In 1923 Denmark exported $233,000,-
000 worth of farm products, after feed
ing herself. North Carolina, the lead
ing agricultural state of the South
next to Texas, with a population about
equal to Denmark’s and three times
the area, annually imports about $200,-
000,000 of food and feed stuffs, al
though in justice it should be said that
she exports large values in cotton and
tobacco. The difference is that all of
the Danish farmers feed themselves as
far as their farms can be made to do it,
and their exports are surplus, while a
large proportion of the Danish business
men maintain small farms or gardens
that suffice for their families, while
many of our farmers have not yet
learned the value of feeding themselves
from their own kitchen gardens..
One of the outstanding features of
the Danish farm philosophy that ail
Americans of whatever walk in life
should study most carefully is their at
titude toward State aid. The state
ment is made, “the Danish farmers do
not believe in salvation by legislation,
economic or social. What they do be
lieve in is salvation by organization,
and their organizations are self-help
enterprises. In which respect they dif
fer radically from the state-supported
cooperatives of the Mediterranean peo
ples—France and Italy for instance.”
We have a few farm cooperatives in
and highly enlightening if we could
analyze this sentiment and find how
much of it comes from those European
races that seem to turn naturally to
their Governments for aid, and how
much of it—if any—comes from our
native Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian
peoples. The workings of these State-
supported cooperatives are instructive
and throw light on the results to be
expected from Government support in
any line.
The question is, therefore, worth
further examination, and it is shown
that, “among the Mediterranean peoples
the cooperatives are financed by large
grants from the State, and the credit
organizations are largely managed by
state officials. The same thing is
largely true of producing, buying and
TIMBER AS A CROP
Strange as it may seem, the Ameri
can people, bred for many generations
to forest life, drawing no small meas
ure of their wealth from the forests,
have not yet acquired the sense of
timber as a crop. Immense stretches
of cut-over land, mostly too rough or
too sterile for tilling, have not awak
ened us to their vast potential worth
as growers of wood. Fully one-fourth
of our land area ought to be kept in
forest—not poor, dwindling thickets
of scrub, but forests of trees fit for
bridges and houses and ships. —Presi
dent Coolidge.
low percentage of illiteracy, compared | ests will revive many dead towns and
with which Professor Branson finds ; bring back industrial populations that
conditions in America “humiliating”;
and second, the folk high schools that
dot the country—an institution pecu
liarly Danish. One such school that he
visited • “aimed at waking up the
souls of these young Danes to the op
portunities of noble living and noble
citizenship as farmers in a cooperative
Commonwealth. This is an adult
school; these students are between 18
and 26 years of age; they come almost
entirely out of farm homes; they are
in a folk high school for five or six
months once or maybe twice in a
lifetime, and we do not have a chance to
teach them much, but we do have a
chance to stir the impulse to self
tuition in a thousand directions during
all'the rest of their lives.” It would be
impossible to say how large a part these
folk high schools, with their impulse
to self-tuition, or to the continuation of
study throughout life, have contributed
to the intellectual life Professor Bran
son found on farms throughout the coun
try—the keen interest in art, in litera
ture and world affairs, and in music,
such as may be found in this country
only in rare spots.
It would be difficult to find a single
book more stimulating to the imagina
tion of anyone interested in the happi
ness and welfare of our farm people
than this book of Branson’s. But it
has a far wider appeal. It possesses
considerable value to the student of
government or of economics, for it deals
freely and broadly with the economic
and political philosophy of a highly-suc-
cessful farm civilization.
. “For Denmark is what no other coun
try ill Europe is; indeed, what no other
state in the world is—namely, a coop
erative Commonwealth in every phase
of statehood—economic, social, and
civic,” declares the writer.
“The Danes believe that home and
farm ownership tethers a man to law
and order better than all the laws on
the statute books, that it promotes in
dustry, thrift, sobriety, and integrity,
that it makes a man a stable, respon
sible citizen, that it breeds in him a
sense of proprietary interest in
churches, schools and roads, that it
moves him to safeguard his home and
home community against social
contaminations, that it makes him a
better husband, a better father, a bet
ter neighbor, and a better citizen.
And they are everlastingly right about
it. Any community, state or country,
; is in peril so long as its mud-sills are
laid down in landlessness, .homelessness, j
A PRIZE WINNING LETTER
With body, heart and soul, I like
North Carolina better than I do any
other place in America—and I know
why.
I have traveled in thirty-seven states
— from New York to Texas, from Illi
nois to Georgia, and from North Caro
lina to California. After seeing' much,
I came back to stay, because:
I like North Carolina scenery, which
equals Mount Vernon, Sleepy Hollow,
Great Lakes region, Pike’s Peak, the
Royal Gorge, and the Golden Gate.
North Carolina has well-nigh ideal
climate. Extremes of heat and cold
are unknown here. Enough snow in
winter for sleighing and enough heat
in summer for an abundance of fruits
and vegetables; in short, a climate one
loves to touch.
North Carolina has superior govern
ment; equal educational opportunity
for all is in the making, from kinder
garten to university; concrete and
sand-clay roads that make travel a joy
unbounded; and a system of law en
forcement that makes life safe and
justice obtainable.
I love the people here—kind, friend
ly, neighborly—because I feel at home
among them. In the words of a North
Carolina toast:
I’m a Tar Heel born and Tar Heel bred;
at the start. The cooperators are
large voting bloc, and ihey make in
creasing demands year by year—a vot
ing bloc so large in Italy that they
threatened bankruptcy to the State un
til Mussolini called a halt. France at
this very minute is facing the same
serious problem. Soft-soaping the
farmers is the prime business of a
Minister of Agriculture in one of the
countries I visited last year. I dis
covered in my interview
that everything done in his department
was done with the purpose of control
selling cooperatives. The result
what might easily have been foreseen j j a Tar Heel dead.
! The Danes are so strongly estabjished ' . . n rews, in o lers.
i in this belief that they have literally
moved Heaven and earth in the last
quarter-cer.tary to reduce town and
country tenancy to zero, or as nearly so
as humanly possible.
“America has moved steadily in the
opposite direction. More than one-
with him one-half of
' Southern farmers are renters and crop
pers, a third of all our white farmers
wao u^i.c wiLii cii.. I negro farmers
hng the farm vote m the approaching ^ u-i •
. ^ ; in North Carolina are tenants, while m
e ec ions. . larger cities from two-thirds to
What use do the world’s richest ti.j,ee.fourths of the people spend their
farmers make of the abundant spate :
ing up and down somebody else’s
; stairs.”
i No American business man can read
the book without wishing fervently
, that our farmers would become an-
chored to their farms by ownership
I EXTENSION STUDENTS
j In a survey of the last five hundred
I students to register for correspondence
! courses with the University of North
I Carolina Extension Division, interest-
■ ing information concerning ages, geo
half of all the people in the United gj-^phical distribution, and occupations
States live in dwellings that they do not revealed.
■ all the
time their skilful organization of
their business has left them? To judge
from Professor Branson’s account,
they appear to make excellent use of
it. His chapters, besides those devot
ed to the educational system in Den
mark, are liberally sprinkled with re-1 . , . , , .
£ * *u • • ’ties, while our working classes and, in
ferenees to their intellectual life. ' ’ , u u ^
even ’ classes—became anchored to
, and I conservative policies of poli-
; tics through ownership of their homes.
No one with a drop of crusader blood
in his veins can read the book without
' I resolving to do all his station in life
“The Danes are farmers, but
more they are business men, * * ♦
am assured that they are easily equal
to the bankers and brokers in discuss
ing foreign situations and domestic
consequences, trade policies and ^im to do to bring to pass
nomic ^ genera . pea mg o highly desirable consummation,
two neighboring farms. Professor b j
“They are operated :
Branson writes,
by a father and son, the one said to
have the ripest university culture
and the other the best business brain
among the farmers of Denmark. Cul
ture and agriculture are one in Den
mark, because farming in this demo
cratic Commonwealth is a satisfying
way of life as well as a profitable form
of business.”
There are several interesting chap
ters on education in^Denmark, but the
outstanding features of Danish educa
tion seem to be, first, the exceedingly
NEED FOR REFORESTATION
In the rush to occupy and use the
American continent our citizens have
assumed that all land topographically
suitable could and would be used for
agriculture. Experience has now de
monstrated that hundreds of millions
of acres of cut-over forest land are not
usable except for tree crops. Scores
of thousands of forest-land farms have
been abandoned. Such regions have
reverted to virtual deserts or scrubby
wildernesses. Restoration of their for-
As would be expected, correspon-
aence students are older, on an aver
age, than University resident students.
The average age of students in resi
dence is probably about twenty years,
while that of the correspondence stu
dents is twenty-nine.
Among the last five hundred stu
dents to register there are forty-four
women over forty years of age, seven
above fifty, and one sixty-six. Of the
men, seven are above forty, three
above fifty.
Eight states besides North Carolina
are represented. They are: Georgia,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia,
West Virginia, Florida, Washington,
D. C., Illinois, and California. Of the
five hundred students selected for this
study, four hundred and seventy-three
are North Carolinians.
The leading occupations are as fol
lows: lumbermen, farmers, house
keepers, office managers, barbers,
students, school superintendents and
principals, teachers, ministers, college
professors, clerks, secretaries, tobac
co foremen, and normal school profes
sors.
The most popular subjects studied
by these students are Education, Col
lege English, Modern History, His
tory of Music, French and Spanish
Composition, Economics and Rural
Economics, Introductory Sociology,
Investments, Advertising, Salesman
ship, and Business Law.