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 26, 1926
CHAPEL HILL, N C.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
VOL. XII, NO. 28
Erlitorial Boardj E. C. Branson. S. H. Hobbs. Jr., L. R. Wilson, E. W. Knight, D. D. Carroll. J. B. Bullitt, H. W. Odum,
Entered as second-class matter November 14. 1914, at the Postoffice at Chapel Hill. N. C.. under the act of August 24. 1912
TRANSPORTING CHILDREN
The table which appears elsewhere
shows how the slates rank in the num
ber of pupils enrolled in school per auto
school bus. The table is based on the
1920 census of children 7 to 20 years of
age enrolled in rural schools (the latest
data available) and the number of
school buses in operation on January 1,
1926, as reported in Bus Transportation.
There are 26,685 rural school buses in
the United States. These buses cover
a daily route of 323,637 miles, or an aver
age of 13.13 miles per bus.
New Hampshire leads the states with
46 children enrolled in rural schools per
rural school bus. New Jersey comes
last with 6.067 rural children enrolled
per rural school bus.
North Carolina stands third in num
ber of children 7 to 20 years of age
enrolled in rural schools, being surpassed
by only Texas and Pennsylvania.
North Carolina leads all the states in
the number of miles covered daily by
rural school buses, and we rank third in
total number of school buses. Our 1,909
rural buses cover a daily route of 40,088
miles, or approximately 21 miles per
bus. In only one state does the average
school bus have a longer route than in
North Carolina. This means that in
the consolidation process North Carolina
probably unites more weak schools into
one plant than do other states.
Ninety-seven counties in North Caro
lina have bus service for rural school
children. Thirty of these counties in
1923-24 operated buses without state
aid. Wilson county heads the list with
68 rural school buses, and Granville
comes second with 66 buses.
who work on the mighty stream admire
the new system of inland freighters,
but they look with regret on the passing
of the old river steamer. Some of them
cling with the greatest tenacity to travel
by boat, and there are hundreds of per
sons living along the shores of the Mis
sissippi who always ride on the America
and the few other remaining steamers,
in preference to the “steam cyars.”
One of the relics of the old days is the
Mississippi pilot, and he is in no danger
of passing away.—Dearborn Indepen
dent.
COMING BACH STRONG
The packets have come back to the
Mississippi. New Orleans and Natchez
and Memphis and Cairo and other river
side towns are once more ports of call
for a system of water-borne traffic com
parable in size, and infinitely more valu
able as to cargoes, with that of the
romantic days of the Robert E. Lee, the
Natchez, the Eclipse, the Sbotwell, and
a score of other palatial stern-wheelers
that made river history. Uncle Sam
has put these new packets on the trade
routes of the old, carrying 10,000 tons
of freight, where the stern-wheeler of
the periods before and after the Civil
War carried 200 to 600 tons. Instead
of three and one-half to four days be
tween New Orleans and St. Louis—the
time of the fastest of the old packets—
they require a week or so for the down
stream voyage and twelve days or more
for the upstream journey.
Where the steamboats used to make
stops at every landing on the Mississippi,
and on some of the streams feeding into
that river, until they were driven out
by the railroads, now the new steel,
steam inland freighters are calling regu
larly at all ports on the Father of
Waters, and smaller steamers and motor
craft are carrying their cargoes up and
down the side streams. The new pack-ets
are the largest, most powerful and most
modern, as well as the costliest carriers
of cargo ever installed on inland water
ways. They consist of three types of
towboats and two types of barges.
Two of the towboats are for towing
exclusively; they are used on the Mis
sissippi, while the third, used on the
Warrior, combines a huge barge and a
tug in one, with the further ability to
tow five or six loaded steel barges be
hind it. . This is used on the Warrior
River and between New Orleans and
Mobile. Upward of forty steel barges
for use on the Mississippi River have
been delivered and are in service. They
are 230 feet long, 46 feet molded beam,
and 11 feet deep, with a cargo box 184
feet long, 37 feet wide, and rising nine
feet above tbe deck. The hull is divided
into eight compartments in the hold,
and the total cargo capacity is approxi
mately 1,800 tons on an eight- foot draft.
To tow these barges, a number of the
most powerful towboats ever used on
inland waterways have been provided.
They are, propelled by steam engines, of
the same type and size as those used in
deep-sea going vessels built during the
war at the Hog Island yard. They are
all steel, 200 feet long, 40 feet beam,
and 10 feet deep, drawing six and one-
half feet of water.
The dwellers along the river and those
ENNOBLING THE PROFESSION
In a recent issue the News Letter
carried an article showing the dearth of
doctors in the rural regions of the state.
The purpose of this article is to point
out one community which is particularly
favored.
Down ih the southwest corner of Ran
dolph county is a country doctor who is
a real “medical missionary.” For
twenty years Dr. C. C. Hubbard, who
was trained in one of the best medical
schools in the country, has been giving
this community—and his circuit is a long
one—the benefit of his skill and train
ing. In daylight or in darkness, over
good roads and bad, his Ford may be
heard chugging along, carrying to rich
and poor alike the ministrations of medi
cal service. But he carries to his patients
more than medical skill; the back of bis
car is filled with magazines, religious
tracts, apples and oranges, and even
toys. He ministers to both body and
soul. He sometimes goes into homes
which do not have a scrap of reading
matter. One little girl, sick with typhoid
fever, had never had a doll until he
brought her one. Through his influence
he secures for his patients the services
of highly trained specialists at a trifling
cost, or at no cost at all. One poor
woman was terribly scalded; nothing
but skin grafting and the service of
experts could save her from being badly
disfigured. Through his influence he
got her into Johns Hopkins hospital in
Baltimore where she was completely
healed.
No family is too poor to claim his
most careful services, but he gauges
his fees to their pocketbooks, charging
just enough to make them think they
have paid. Even a good portion of his
collections goes back into some form of
charity. Dr. Hubbard is a Quaker and
embodies the Quaker ideals of service.
But this article would not be complete
without n>entioning his wife and his
daughter. Mrs. Hubbard is almost a
doctor herself. When people come to
the house and find the doctor away, slid
can prescribe for them, and minister a
vaccine, or dress a wound almost as
well as he. ■ She goes with him and
assists in surgical cases. The daughter
is almost as versatile, as her parents.
li'ortunate indeed is a community with
such people in its midst. Young doctors
should find inspiration in the life of this
splendid doctor. He is ennobling an al
ready noble profession. —Paul W. Wager.
NORTH CAROLINA EXPORTS
The Federal Department of Com
merce announces that for the year
1926 exports from tbe United States
originating in North Carolina were
valued at $62,529,940. North Caro
lina ranks nineteenth in the value of
exports. Southern states ranking
ahead of North Carolina were Vir
ginia, Georgia, and Mississippi.
Unmanufactured cotton constituted
the principal item of export during
the year, foreign shipments of this
commodity amounting to $29,772,384.
Leaf tobacco foreign shipments
finished secpnd in the list, and totalled
$17,827,609, and manufactured cotton
third with a value of $10,460,293.
Crude cotton seed oil made* up tbe
only other commodity recorded dur
ing the year. It is generally thought
that much of our manufactured to
bacco is shipped abroad, but no rec
ords of such exports are given.
This is tbe second time in the his
tory of government foreign trade
statistics that an attempt has been
made to show the relative yearly
standing of the different states in
the competition for foreign trade.
The statistics are based on through
bills of lading, and, therefore, in the
case of some states they reflect but
a part of their total foreign trade
and for others include goods produced
elsewhere.
Very likely North Carolina does
not get full credit for her foreign
exports. When leaf tobacco, for in
stance, is shipped direct from Wilson
to England on a through bill of lading
the state gets credit for the value of
the tobacco exported. But when
North Carolina products are assem
bled in points outside the state and
then shipped abroad, probably the
identity of the state of origin is lost.
Thus Virginia, which ranks far be
low North Carolina in both farm and
factory output, is credited with ex
ports valued at more than twice the
value credited to North Carolina.
Exports from the United States
originating in North Carolina are
sufficient to maintain a first-class
deep-sea port. They are much larger
than the Department of Commerce
announces, whose totals are based
on through bills of lading.
creasing population- when the citizens
added are a liability instead of an asset.
They may offer an opportunity for mis
sionary work and for Americanization
classes, and they may furnish the occa
sion for careful planning by religious
and educational leaders, but often they
are hardly a basis for flamboyant boast
ing. The size of a city, but not the real
worth of the city, may be increased by
a slum population.
Towns ought to grow no faster than
the new population can be assimilated.
Of course, it is not impossible for the
new population to be an improvement
over the old—but this is not usual.
Economic motives are always at work
so that material growth goes on with
out much encouragement. But the life
of the soul needs to be fostered and
developed. The struggle for food and
for the material basis of life is a neces
sity, but that does not mean that tbe
things that differentiate men from ani
mals are a luxury.
Hence if population is doubled by the
addition of persons having a mere ani
mal standard of life, the standards
already attained by the previous worthy
citizenship may be lost and the town go
backward instead of forward.
Too often we think we are better off
merely because men come to our town
to buy groceries and dry goods and real
estate. Why not give them something
more than these very necessary things
when they join us? Man has something
more than a stomach.
Our town might be better off if it
were large, provided the increased size
made possible the enrichment of life—if
more people thus found the more abun
dant life we would declare that we had
moved forward.
We therefore will not cast envious
eyes upon towns that are merely larger
than our town, since a town, like a per
son, needs something besides size to
make its worth. Whether our town
increases in population or not, it may
surely be made to' increase in real
values, and it will, if a few citizens
care and plan sacrifice. Are you one of
them?—Reidsville Review.
division of that organization, on the
subject of “Rural Electrification.”
Dr. White declared that the electric
“virus” was catching and every line
extended into rural districts gave the
movement added momentum. Illustrat
ing the growth that has marked the
past year he cited the state of Alabama
where he said the use of electricity has
virtually doubled in twelve months.
Figures he quoted showed that in 1924
Alabama had 678 rural electric light
users, and that in 1926 that number was
increased to 1,126. Stress was placed
on the fact that the actual consumption
of electricity per customer had increased
from 34 kilowatt hours in 1924 to 67
kilowatt hours in 1926.
According to Dr. White, who did not
attempt to discuss the engineering prob
lems to be encountered in transmitting
electricity throughout the sparsely set
tled sections of rural America, the
leaders in the electric light and power
industry are to be trusted with the task
of supplying power without which agri
culture “cannot keep pace with the
other industries of the nation.”
‘ ‘Already, ’' he said, ‘ ‘the united effort
designed to determine how rural service
may be developed on a sound basis is
being pictured as one of the most con
structive movements in the entire agri
cultural situation.
“You take infinite pains to insure a
true perspective of a problem. Having
acquired this, action follows quickly,
logically, based on exhaustive engineer
ing technique and sound economics.
Among agricultural leaders you are
acquiring a reputation for vision, fair
ness, and energetic action.
‘ ‘Rural electrification is a major under
taking. It is different from any other
class of business encountered in the
utility field.”—Durham Herald.
PRAISE FROM THE SUN
Any comment on the educational sys
tem of North Carolina suggests at once
that the state possesses the oldest state
university and the richest university in
the country—the one, the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the
other, Duke University (formerly Trin
ity College) at Durham. But the most
important thing with regard to educa
tion in the state began 26 years ago
when Charles B. Aycock became Gover
nor of North Carolina. He had made
his campaign on two issues: good roads
and good schools. He had been elected,
and had, unlike most politicians, pro
ceeded to show that he was wholly in
earnest about what he said on the stump.
Upon his inauguration he said in his in
augural address what might have been
taken as idle rhetoric coming from an
other man.
Spending Then and Now
At that time the state was spending
a little more than $1,000,000 annually on
its schools. The value of all school prop
erty was a little more than $1,000,000.
There were nearly 1,200 log cabins
among the schoolhouses of the state.
The teachers received an average salary
of $23.46 a month. There were 400,000
children attending the public schools of
that day. There were no more tlian 30
public high schools.
Educational statistics of the present
day show hov; far Governor Aycock’s
cause has gone toward complete victory.
The annual school expenditures of the
state are about $30,000,000. Only 63 of
the 1,200 log cabins are left. In 1889
30 percent of the population of the state
was illiterate; in 1920 it had been re
duced to 13 percent, and since then the
figures have been brought even lower.
The State University
The University of North Carolina at
Ch^el Hill was chartered 137 years
ago. It had attained great prominence
before the Civil War, but up to that
time it had been an institution primarily
for the well-to-do and leisured classes.
It was the only southern institution of
learning to hold commencement exercises
the dark year of 1866 even though there
was only one man to graduate that year.
But it could not survive the period of
reconstruction and was forced to close
its doors for five years.
When the University reopened in 1876
it was to enter upon a distinctly new
period, in which it grew from a faculty
of eight members and a student body of
69 to a faculty of 175 and a student body
of 2,660, and in which it ceased to be a
university for the privileged few and
became a university as much committed
to universal education as were the pub
lic schools of the state. The identifica
tion of the University with tbe cause
first championed by Governor Aycock
has won for it increasing public confi
dence and steady mounting appropria
tions on the part of the Legislature.—
New York Sun.
RURAL ELECTRIFICATION
Prophecy of an undreamed of develop
ment in rural electrification within the
next five years, with the prediction that
the electric light and power leaders of
the nation would cope successfully with
the problems attendant upon that de
velopment was made here today by Dr.
E. A. White of Chicago. Dr. White is
chairman of the national committee on
the relation of electricity to agriculture
of the national electric light associa
tion. He was speaking before the an
nual convention of the southeastern i higher institutions.
STATE SCHOOL SUPPORT
In 44 years state appropriations for
education in North Carolina increased
from $8,000 for the biennium 1877-79,
to $14,167,200, for the biennium 1923-26
according to a recent issue of State
School facts.
This issue of the department of public
instruction’s publication is devoted to
“Educational Appropriations,” and re
views the history of state support and
maintenance of the public schools,
teachers’ colleges, and institutions of
higher learning. The two-year period
of 1923-26 was the b5^nner biennium in
educational appropriations, it is shown,
the total appropriated for 1926-27 drop
ping to $10,666,000. This drop was due
to a cut in the appropriations for im
provements.
The first money set aside by the state
for mai^enance of its schools and insti-
tutions^as the $8,000 appropriated for
the two-year period 1877-79. This money
was to be used for tbe support of normal
schools and teachers’ colleges. The
maintenance appropriations for the pres
ent biennium, 45 years later, totals nearly
eight millions of dollars—$7,896,000, in
exact figures. Of this amount, $3,767,-
500 is appropriated for the public schools;
$856,000 for the normal schools and
teachers’ colleges; and $3,282,500 for
SCHOOL AUTO-BUS TRANSPORTATION
In the United States January 1, 1926
In the following table, based on the 1920 census of children 7 to 20 years of
age enrolled in public schools, and Bus Transportation January 1. 1926, the
states are ranked according to the number of children 7 to 20 years of age en
rolled in rural schools per school bus for the year 1926. The second column gives
the number of school buses in each state.
New Hampshire leads with one School bus per 46 pupils enrolled in rural
schools. North Carolina ranks 16th with one bus for every 254 pupils enrolled
in rural schools. However, Noyth Carolina ranks third in number of school
buses, and first in total miles o^route covered daily by school buses.
J. A. Hunnicutt
Department of Rural Social-Economics, University of North Carolina
WHAT MAKES A TOWN
Can we estimate the worth of a man
by his size? Do tbe scales determine a
man’s value to society?
If a man developed a fifty pound
tumor, would he boast of it? Some
towns are foolish enough to boast of in-
Number Number
of rural of school
Rank States pupils buses
enrolled
per bus
1 New Hampshire... 45 494
2 Massachusetts 49 272
3 Arizona 102 343
4 California 123 1,496
6 North Dakota.128 1,008
6 Wyopaing.... 131 196
7 New Mexico 133 192
8 Washington 135 896
9 Ohio 171 2,396
10 Mississippi 177 1,959
11 Indiana 180 1,134
12 Idaho 186 381
12 Connecticut 186 400
14 Illinois 240 1,727
15 North Carolina 254 1,909
16 Iowa 271 1,334
17 Florida 365 328
18 New York 370 816
19 Oklahoma 371 923
20 N^ada 379 24
21 West Virginia 394 888
22 Maryland 408. 260
23 Virginia 438 798
24 Montana 468 166
Number
of rural
Rank States pupils
enrolled
per bus
25 Missouri 568
26 Maine 649
27 Kentucky 686
28 Kar;saa ^91
29 Alabama 692
30 Oregon 789
31 Wisconsin 793
32 Minnesota 816
33 Utah 848
34 Michigan 968
35 South Dakota 983 ....
36 Georgia 1,016
37 Louisiana 1,092....
Number
of school
buses
..677
..130
..663
..357
..590^
..100
..338
..342
.. 71
..296
..116
...437
...102
38 South Carolina. ..1,097 308
39 Nebraska 1,206 156
40 Tennessee 1,288 268
41 Vermont 1,605 26
42 Texas 1,628 425
43 Pennsylvania 1,762 348
44 Colorado 2,004 600
46 Delaware 2,083 70
46 Rhode Island 6,636 6'
47 Arkansas 6,926 64
48 New Jersey 6,067 180