North Carolina Newspapers

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. FEBRUARY 9, 1927 CHAPEL HILL, N. C. THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS VOL. XIII, No. 13 Editorial Board* 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 Poatofflee at Chapel Hill, N. C.. under the act of August 24, 1912. CITIZENSHIP ESSENTIALS A man or a woman can hardly be a good citizen, said Professor Branson to the North Carolina Club last night, without having or developing four es sentials, namely, (1) generous interest in community affairs, (2) competent ac quaintance with public problems, and (3) civic courage in behalf of peace, security and progress. And he added (4) that an almost indispensable condi tion of good citizenship lies in home and farm ownership. Generosity 1. A man must have a generous, active interest in community concerns, in order to be a good citizen. A good citizen cannot be an ego-centric person ality, busy With his own affairs and in different to the problems of community and commonwealth weii-being and wel fare. The w’orld is too full, said he, of tick-and-fiea citizens. That is to say, people who have the lame interest in the community in which they live that ticks and fleas have in the animals on which they live. The worthwhile citizen is almost certain to be generously inter ested in better public schools, better public highways, better public health, better conditions of law and order, and better opportunities for the disadvan taged classes. And he is sure to be lieve, ss in active principle of life, that wha'.ever is best for the community or the county or the commonwealth is also best for him. • Competency 2. A goed citizen is competently ac quainted with.-the public concerns of his city or county or state. He firmly believes that, ii is his duty to be intelli gently schooled in the issues and meas ures and means that make his home town or his home state a better place to live im If he isn’t on the right side of ihete quesiioiis in his home community, said the speaker, he can hardly be trusted to be on thevight side when he gets into the legislature or comes to be the Governor of his state. Competent schooling in the affairs of his heme community is a neces sary beginning for competent citizen ship in the large affairs of the state. Professor Branson insisted that ac quaintance with the tax puzzles and problems of North Carolina was a basic concern of good citizenship. He insisted that public-school teachers and professors in state-aided colleges and universitiee were pensioners upon the public purse and that they were in duty bound to be competently schooled in the practical' problems of taxation. Active interest in this fundamental question, said be, is particularly neces sary in the field of municipal and county adnYinislration. Some of these local governments are rapidly approach ing the point of bankruptcy. Twenty- six coanlies of tl.e state have already exceeoed their legal limits of indebted ness and are almost hopelessly involved in bankruptcy within a very snort period of lime. He spoke of Clay, where the bonded indebtedness is already more chan 18 percent of the total taxables of the county. Courage 3. But civic courage is also necessary for good citizenship—the courage to give one’s time and money and effort to the community and the commonwealth without stint and without reward. The good citizen needs the courage that Benjamin H. Hill displayed in his Bush Arbor speech in Atlanta in 1870 during the Reconstruction days, and that Melvin Carter of Buncombe illustrated in the House of Representatives in Raleigh with the bayonets of Kirk’s militia at his throat, in the carpet-bag, scalawag,negro-legislature of those dark days. The lack of courageous citizen ship, said the speaker, not only in North Carolina, but in the Nation, has created an era of intimidation and law less rule by secret bands. Legal machin ery fails in the main because private fitizens are unwilling to swear out war rants, and testify the truth in grand jury sessions and in court trials, and to stand firm in petit jury rooms. We blame the officers of the law. The blame rests for the most par4; in timid over-awed citizenship. Home Ownership 4. The ownership of homes and farms is the fourth condition of good citi zenship; mainly because the ownership of land means stable, responsible citizen ship. The prideful owner of a home has a chance to be identified with his community and to feel a sense of re sponsibility for community affairs. The homeowner is apt to be a self-respect ing citizen, a better father, husbano, neighbor and friend. He has a better chance to develop courage in attacking the moral contaminations that threaten the integrity of his home and the good name of his community. Even the home-owning negro is apt to be a decent, law abiding citizen. Democracy is in pecil, said he, when its foundations are laid down in the landlessness and home lessness of 1,650,000 people in North Carolina. A serious menace lies in restless, roving, irresponsible citizen ship, in the nation as well as in the state. 1 THEFOKGOTTSN COMMUNITY ; It was only yesterday that we rode in I wagons, plowed with oxen, harvested • with cradles, threshed with flails, and i read our Bible by candlolight. It was ‘ only yesterday that the best communi- • ties went to poor school.s, with short ; terras, poor buildings, poor equipment, and poorly trained teachers. There are whole communities and , whole counties in North Carolina living ' in their yesterdays educationally, and ; unless there is some concerted educa- I tional impact that will put all of the ' wealth of the State behind the education I of all of the children of the Slate, these ! communities and counties will remain in ! their yesterdays for generations to come. We have spent"'millions of dollars building hard-surfaced roads into the “lost provinces’’ in order to connect them up with the rest of the state and give them on outlet to civilization. Yet we have thousands of children marooned in a Sahara of ignorance. The politi cian, the demagogue, and the money- grabber say we are too poor to carry them succor. There is a military highway leading from Paris to Verdun. During the terrible siege in the winter of 1916 it became noised abroad through France that this highway was in danger. Women, children, and men too old to fight, stole out with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows, under shot and shell, and built into that road the last tot tering ounce of their energy in order that the battle might be won. These forgotten communities in North Carolina are fighting a battle with ignor ance and poverty just as real as the battle of Verdun. The Constitution says that we shall build a highway of intelligence to their door by providing a “uniform sys tem of public schools’’ throughout the state. We are sacrificing the possibili ties of childhood upon an altar of imag inary poverty. Remove from the task all sentiment, blot out the question of justice, forget the example of the Good Samaritan, and the law of self-preser vation as a state and the principle of enlightened self-interest will still com pel us to build an educational highway to the door. The backbone of the state has been its country folk. Wealth accumulates and men decay in the cities and we are dependent upon our peasantry to fur nish the stamina and produce the cour age and genius necessary to fill the gaps in our civilization. If we would continue to grow in wealth we must continue to grow in intelligence. North Carolina’s greatest undeveloped re source is not her water power, it is not her timber, it is not her manufacturing possibilities. Her greatest source of undeveloped wealth is the mind and soul of the fellow who hasn’t bad a chance. Our highway system, our manufac turing plants, our power lines, and our fertile fields serve only as a thermometer to register the intensity of our intelli- >gence. No people of intelligence and vision ever remained poor. Education is the ability to take the raw products of nature and market them in a form that will make the world happier and better. It is the ability to see orchards of luscious peaches in a barren sandhin, to see a fortune in a water-fall, to see ^n angel in a block of stone, or a PLANNING THE STATE We cannot ever again permit the future growth of the State to be accidental. It must be planned to serve the interests of every man, woman and child and to give op portunity for a fuller and finer life, and not for the benefit of privileged groups. The planning of communi ties and the planning of the State is probably the greatest undertaking we have before us.—Governor Alfred E. Smith. marching army in the rock-ribbed cliffs on the mountainside. “Where there is no vision the people perish.’’—M. L. Wright, in the North Carolina Teacher. THE HADiO As an entertainment and educational device, the radio is far surpassing mo tion picture theatres, ' dance halls or i any other form of public amusement. A new horizon has been opened up by radio to'millions of families living in the country, the town or the big city, a new means of culture. The world, in its larger centers is offering programs of good entertain ment and instruction to people in their homes both day and night, the new marvel drawing families together. Young and old, instead of wandering idly in search of diversion, can hear an orchestra, a band, a pipe organ, a reli gious service or a good play in their own home, be it in a city, on a farm, or miles away in mountains or desert. There are lectures for the serious- minded all the way from literature to electricity and specialists give the latest ideas in dress, dancing, gardening'or various fields of scientific progress. As broadcasting stations are enlarged to give better^service over wider areas, radio will give still greater service to the nation. —Hickory Record. j charged, but it would be easy to I prove that she stands better in wealth j than she does in culture. Much is heard of our farms and factories, our high ways and school buildings. Far less (of a favorable sort) is heard of social con ditions on farms and in factories; of the quality of our school teachers, the length of term and other conditions that really determine the value of the school. A publication issued recently by the American Library Association shows that in public libraries North Carolina ranks perilously near the bottom in all respects. In per inhabitant annual ex-' penditure on public libraries we rank | forty-seventh, the amount being only j four cents or less' than the cost of the 1 familiar dope. Only Mississippi saves US from last position. In the percent the library expenditure is of the total public school expenditure we rank last among the states. We spend nearly three hundred times as much on schoids as we spend on public libraries. The average state spends about lii'iy times as much on schools as on public libraries. This does not mean that we spend too much on schools, but that we spend far Loo little on libra ries. We need books for the people beyond school age, as well as books for the children. In books circulated by public libraries I North Carolina ranlCs fortieth on a per i inhabitant basis. Which shows that we ’ make good use of our meagre facilities. ; The study further shows that approxi-! maiely seven out of every ten people in the state are without the services of public libraries—mainly because North Carolina is excessively rural, and so far only town and city folk have been pro vided with,or have provided themselves with, public libraiies. of rural mail service. The radio is for one-way traffic only and fails to bring that warm, personal touch that the rural mail carrier conveys. The radio entertains and instructs the farmer, while the mail carrier does that in addi tion to more useful services. In the far-reaching, yet little world of rural folk there is no stronger bond of common knowledge than the kindly, accommodating mail carrier, who, day after day in all sorts of weather, plays his own vita! part in^rural life. —Coving ton Virginian. OILAPODRIDA In front of one of the grocery stores which supply Charlotte householders with the choicest of green goods that the domestic market can supply or that can be imported from the fields and gardens of Europe, The Observer last week saw a Mecklenburg farmer bend ing back and giving voice to a laugh which came all the way from his boots. The thing that aroused his merriment was a box of ordinary Irish potatoes, each potato wrapped in tissue paper— and each potato selling fur 10 cents. The invoice came from a farm in Idaho, the enterprising farmers out that way having come across the notion that po tatoes might be made go the same way as apples and oranges and other products of farm and orchard which are selected and attractively prepared for the market. Potatoes of uniform size are picked out for the wrappers, and last week hundreds of Irish pota toes “grown in -Tdaho,’’ were sold to the people in.this state famed for the high quality of potatoes its farmers grow. That is a vast improvement on the slip-shod system prevailing of send ing the finest' potatoes in the world to the markets, unwashed and loosely jumbled. • The farmer who learns that there is an art in marketing, is the farmer who is headed to make money on even the commonest of the products of his land. The grocer and the paper man got into an argument with the farmer, whose funny bone had been touched by the paper-wrapped white potato. He was shown several articles imported for this country, including Brussels sprouts apd celery and lettuce, all of which could be grown in the mountain sections in profitable com petition with anything that can be brought in from the foreign markets, and before the farmer started off for home he had come to the conclusion that the individual 10-cents Irish potato was not such a funny thing, after all. He had some of last season’s digging left over at home, and h§ was going to pick out some of the best, wash and clean them, wrap them in paper and bring them on. The farmers are finding out that after all there is nothing like an exchange of ideas.-Charlotte Observer. THE MUUAL HAIL CARRIER The following is taken from the Uni versity of Virginia*News Letter. In an address before the convention of the National Letter Carriers’ Atso- ciation, Postmaster-General New truih- fully described the rural free delivery postal service as “one of the indispens able features of American social and economic life.” That is a fact worth repeating many times over. This generation and pos terity should know that the rural mail service is a vital social factor which has virtually revolutionized rural life. For decades the “rural frqe delivery” was the one line of communication with the outside world available to rural sections. I Postal service is more essential to the isolated rural dweller than to the urbanite. The farmer cannot depend upon the news reaching him by word of ! mouth accurately and expeditiously. ' The rural mail carrier is the farmer’s messenger who brings to him his maga zines and ne^papers, keeps him in touch with distant friends and relatives and does his shopping and runs his , errands in town or the far city. Not even the radio has taken the place BANKS HIGH IN FUHNITUHE For a good many years North Caroli na has been recognized as one of the important furniture states. According to data recently released by the federal Department of Commerce, North Caro lina is surpassed in factory value of furniture output annually by only six states. The output of our onc^hundred and twenty-seven furniture establish ments for the year 1925 was more than fifty-one million dollars, which is not far behind what the state’s cotton crop of last year will sell for. Furni ture is the state’s third most important industry, the other two btfing textiles and tobacco- The Southern l^’urniture Manufac turers’ Association, with headquarters at High Point, N. C., reports that ac cording^ to the federal census data, North Carolina leads the United States in the production of wooden bedroom furniture, making 17 3-4 percent of the total of the country. The total value of bedroom furniture produced in this state during 1925 was 34 percent larger than that of Michigan which was second in value to this state. The amount of wooden bedroom furni- niture produced in North Carolina in 1926 was $26,677,975 a.s compared with $19,896,672 for Michigan in second place. A grand total of vUuations of this class of furniture for the whole country for the year 1926 was $149,979,152. In value of wood dining-room furni ture, North Carolina came fourth among the states with a production of $12,221,- 601, led only by Pennsylvania, Michi gan, and New York. Pennsylvania, whch is credited with leading this class of furniture production, turned out an output aggregating $13,682,156. North Carolina holds third place, ac cording to the census, in the production, of kitchen furniture, in which Indiana holds the lead by a large margin. Indications of the growth of the fur niture industry in this state are demon strated by an increase of 24 percent of the 1926 production over that of the previous census in 1923, while the proportionate increase in the country at large for the same period was only 9.9 percent. Valuation of the entire furniture out put in the United States in 1925 was $868,146,913 as compared with $776,- 494,839 for the previous census year. Of this, the South’s contribution for last year was about $186,000,000, of which • North Carolina was the chief producer. ^ i THE FUBNITURE INDUSTRY I Establishments and Value of Porducts 1925 i The table below ranks the states according to the value of furniture manu- ■ factured in 1926, as reported by the federal Department of Commerce. North Carolina ranks seventh in factory value of output, $61,208,238; ninth in number. ! of establishments, 127; fifth in number of wage earners, 13,667; eighth in total ' wages paid, $10,762,977; and fifth in cost of materials, $24,944,903. ^ ' Department of Rural Social-Economics, University of North Carolina PUBLIC LIBRARIES North.Carolina may not be a material- state, ^as many have recently Rank State Number of Value of establish- product ments 1 New York 696 .. $156,826,177 2 Illinois 356.... 109,230,867 3 Michigan 181.... 99,180,108 4 Indiana 216.... 80,687,630 6 Wisconsin 106.... 63,916,692 6 Pennsylvania.... 273 ... 62,607,048 7 North Carolina 127.... 51,208.238 -SOhip.. 186... 47,686,668 9 Cafifornia 269.. 36,726,511 10 Massachusetts... 191 ... 33,638.636 11 Virginia 38.... 18,792,297 12 Missouri 88.... 16,921,437 13 New Jersey 63.... 12,871,448 14 Tennessee 43..., 9,632,620 15 Kentucky 36 ... 9,040,976 16 Maryland 55.... 8,778,463 17 Minnesota 63.... 8,486,100 18 Georgia 36.... 7,969,164 Rank State Number of establish ments 19 Iowa 37 20 Oregon. 42 21 Arkansas 12 22 Washington .... 48 23 West Virginia.. 10 .. . 24 Texas 24 26 Connecticut 29 26 Vermont 11 . - 27 Louisiana 18 28 New Hampshire. 16 29 Kansas 15 30 Nebraska 8 31 Maine 10 32 Alabama 10 33 Colorado 8 34 Florida 13 36 Rhode Island.... 7 36 Oklahoma 6 37 All other* 8 Value of product $7,673,600 6,618,614 5,664,236 6,117,032 4,177,114 3,848,036 3,668,720 3,627,340 3,276,918 2,664,206 1,606,743 1,190,048 1,111,748 1,073,724 827,183 763,058 510,649 274,987 1,349,942 ♦Idaho, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah. Separate figures for Jheae states cannot be given without disclosing the operations of individual establishments. Seven states report no furniture industry.