Leagh and Philan- Co rm S ied) ms = <8) ~_ lalect ¢ Soe! ‘opl mx be S = poi “ed = — Zz, dae ° ra es Library of the Si ndowed by the D thi al ud H . 11.57 oe Farm Prosperity in _ . Forsyth a The City and the Country > End of the Problem 3 oe ADDRESS BY _ Dr. E. C: BRANSON + Rural Economics and Sociology SS University of North Carolina COMPLIMENTS “ BOARD OF TRADE | __ Winston-Salem, N. C. Ms” dk Reb'y 24th, 1917 = ee Cape, * + ; : Farm Prosperity in Forsyth The City and the Country End of the Problem ADDRESS BY Dr. E. C. BRANSON Rural Economics and Sociology University of North Carolina \ COMPLIMENTS BOARD OF TRADE Winston-Salem, N. C., Feb’y 24th, 1917 oF ' The City End of the Proplem CHAPTER I. Twin City Leadership In my-bread-and-butter days Winston was a commonplace village of fewer than 500 people. Salem was then and is now a little community of unforgettable loveliness. Together you are to-day a beautiful city of some 30,000 souls or more. In the last thirty years your manufact- uring capital has increased thirty-five fold and your manufactured output fifty fold. These increases have been seven fold within the last fifteen years. In thirteen years your taxable property has been quadrupled. During the last six years your public school property has more than doubled in value and your annual expend- iture for public school maintenance has more than quadrupled. Winston-Salem leads the cities of the State in manufacture. You distance your nearest competitor by eight million dollars in capitai and by ten million dollars in annual products. A full tenth of the manufacturing capital of the entire state is centered here. First In the United States This year you pass St. Louis as a tobacco manufacturing center, and now you hold the first place in the United States in this industry.” The Federal tax you pay on tobacco products has multiplied ten times over since 1890. In a single week it amounts to nearly enough to pay for your new $250,000 government building. In a quarter century the capital employed in your tobacco factories has increased twenty fold and the output nearly forty fold. A fourth 4 of all the smoking and chewing tobacco con- sumed in the United States is manufactured here, and a seventh of all the tobacco products of every sort made in the Union. The statisti- cal picture of the Twin City is amazing. And but for the backing of the Federal authorities, it staggers belief. — But best of all, as you have gained in wealth you have manifestly gained in willingness to convert your wealth into social advantages— into schools, churches, public health and san- itation, hospitals, reformatories, and charitable institutions. You have built a beautiful, pros- perous little city. It is good to go round about it and to mark the towers and bulwarks thereof. It is commonplace to say in North Carolina that Winston-Salem has a rare record of distinguish- ed achievements. The Next Great Thing To Do The next great thing for Winston-Salem and \ every other growing city to do is to build up a ~ prosperous back-country; not on the basis of sentiment alone, but as a policy of enlightened self-interest—to use a favorite phrase of John C. Calhoun. No city can salefly grow fat in a lean countryside. Secure foundations for abid- ing prosperity in The Twin City must be laid upon farm prosperity, good cheer, and high courage in your surrounding trade territory. Farm Situation in Forsyth While your city flourishes your farm regions languish. The per capita country wealth in farm prop- erties in Forsyth in 1910 was only $333 against $994 in the United States, $8380 in Oklahoma and $3,386 in Iowa. One hundred thirty-eight thousand acres of your land is uncultivated; 57 per cent of your county is an idle wilderness area. With 50,000 acres reserved for woodlot uses, there is elbow- 5 room in Forsyth for 1200 new farm families on 75 acres each. Your cattle number only 34 and your swine only 41 per thousand acres. In 1910 you had in the county only 637 cattle more than in 1860; while during this period your swine fell from 18,900 to 7,700, and your sheep from 6,300 to 55. ia the census year your farmers raised wheat, hay and forage enough for home consumption, but during the census period they fell back nearly 40 thousand bushels in corn production. In 1910 the county needed to import more than a ‘oiliion bushels of western corn and corn products, and 942 or 36 per cent of your farmers had to buy feed for their farm animals, the expenditures for this purpose averaging $60.20 per farm. Behind in Food Production 7 This same year, the food and feed products of Forsyth fell short of feeding the farm popu- lation and the farm animals of the county by 6979.000, while the standard, staple foodstuffs consumed by both the town and country popu- lations amounted to two and three-quarter mil- lioa dollars more than the farms of the con produced. Your farmers not only lost nearly a mation dollars by failing to raise their own supplies at home, but they missed supplying a market demand for staple foods by Winston-Salem con- sumers amounting to nearly two million dollars more, to say nothing of the still larger demand for such supplies in the wider trade territory of the city. The simple fact is that Winston-Salem is not _the center of a well-developed food-producing area. Your bill for foodstuffs imported for consumption in Forsyth county alone in the census year covered three and a half million pounds of meat, one and a quarter million pounds of butter, a million bushels of corn, 6 nearly four hundred thousand fowls, and a half million dozen eggs. In that year you sent out of the county $2,800,000 in ready cash for these and similar staple food supplies. It is a king’s ransom, and its loss left everybody in the county just so much the poorer—farmers, mer- chants, bankers, and city consumers ail. Forsyth County Studies This brief exhibit of your farm situation is based on intensive Forsyth studies made by your men at the University during the last two years—Messrs. John Tucker Day, R. G. Stock- ton, W. C. Wright, Jr., Wilson Dalton, and D. Hill Carlton. They have been diligently ex- — amining the foundations of life and business in their home county. They believe with Milton that— Prime wisdom is Not to know at large of things remote, But that which daily lies about us. Your Chamber of Commerce could do no bet- ter thing than to publish for general circula- tion their studies of Forsyth County: Hconomic and Social. Where Winston-Salem Lags The farms of Forsyth are easily able to pro- duce all the staple food supplies needed by the population and the domestic animals of the county. For instance, 31 of your Corn Club boys last year averaged 55 bushels to the acre. At this rate the entire corn acreage of Forsyth would have produced corn enough for the coun- ty and a surplus of 288,000 bushels to market abroad. Your farmers are amply able to pro- duce all the beef, pork, and mutton, butter, poultry and eggs, grain, hay, and forage, vege- tables, fruits and flowers demanded by local consumers. They do not now produce these supplies in adequate abundance for a single, simple reason 7 —they cannot be turned into ready cash in Winston-Salem at a fair price and profit. Which means that your city has not yet solved her ¥ lecal market problem—the problem of local markets for home-raised breadstuffs. You have solved your tobacco market problem but ' no other. Your market for meat, fish and oysters is perhaps the least satisfactory thing in your city. And your general produce mar- ket seems to be a necessity not yet fully real- ized. Self-Defensive Interest Local markets for home-raised food supplies offer the largest single business problem that modern city statesmanship faces today. The beak-and-talon law of trade has brought New York and Chicago to their knees at last, and both these cities now have expensive commis- sions at work upon the critical problem of mar- keting food supplies. The increase in the cost of living is unbearable. The price of every ex- istence necessity has skyrocketed into the upper ether. The wherewithal to feed and clothe, shelter and warm the multitudes is a fundamental concern that now menaces our great industrial centers. It is an inescapable problem for developing factory centers of every size everywhere. If Winston-Salem must haul in over long dis- tances nearly three million dollars worth of breadstuffs annually, a swarming multitude of middlemen must be rewarded. Imported food supplies mean inflated bills for city con- sumers. The rising cost of living compels an increase in the scale of wages—as Adam Smith saw a century and a half ago. When the labor - cost of production increases, the dividends of capital decrease or disappear. If the wage scale does not increase with the cost of living, then the wage earner’s standard of living must be lowered; and in free democracies, this means unrest, chronic discontent, labor unions, f A apaccen 8 and strike situations—inevitably so. For a quarter century this menace to manufacture has been rising toward a full flood tide in the great industrial areas north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi. The Evil Day Ahead The evil day of wage and labor troubles has not yet come upon the South—or so, only in an industrial center or two where city leadership has been stolidly unconcerned about local mar- ket problems and the cost of living. Winston- Salem has long been famed far and wide for excellent labor conditions. But North and South, the future of every manufacturing cen- ter is now critically related (1) to a prosperous food-preducing farm civilization in the nearby trade treritory, and (2) to effective local mar- kets for home-raised food supplies of every sort. The Local Market Problem Effective local markets lower the cost of living by bringing consumers and producers together with mutual advantage; and the prob- lem is solved when consumers get more for their money and producers get more for their products. These results are the acid test of success. If city consumers do not pay less for their supplies while the farmers get more for their food products, the problem is not solved no matter how elaborate the arrangements or how expensive the market house. In the light of this principle, it will be seen that city mar- kets can easily be costly, sorry jokes upon the community, as in Raleigh, Greensboro, and Durham. It is possible—not easy but possible—to lessen market costs by promoting direct dealings be- tween producers and consumers living side by side in same county orcommunity. First of all success in the undertaking calls for the market- ing habit on part of housewives; and then for well managed, centrally located public markets 9 with cold storage chambers for perishable pro- ducts; for credit accomodations on stored pro- Cian rege duce whenever necessary; for ample, open mar- | ket spaces devoted to free, open air trading; for convenient public hitching grounds, camping’ sheds, and feeding stalls; for indications of city hospitality—restrooms with lavatory and toilet conveniences, chairs, tables, books, magazines and newspapers; and for a free telephone mar- ket exchange in the city hall or chamber of commerce, operated by a competent clerk whose business it is to acquaint consumers with the sources of neighborhood supply, and to advise the farmers about the wants, standards and tastes of customers in the nearby town; for co-operative city delivery service, and so on and on. These are some of the plans and pro- jects that I find in various alert city centers. A Critical Urgency The local market problem is always intricate and difficult. Nowhere has it been perfectly solved, but everywhere the critical urgency of its sclution becomes apparent. The lack of ready cash markets for home-raised food supplies is at one and the same time the great- est hindrance to a prosperous agriculture in your trade territory and the greatest menace to developing manufacture in your city. And in sheer self-defense, Winston-Salem must join hands with the farmers of the county in solving this probiem. It cannot be solved by the city alone, nor by the countryside alone. Organiz- ed effort at solution calls for generous co-oper- ation on part of business men and farmers, con- sumers and producers. The solution lies in collusion not in collision, in co-operation not in contest. An active county-wide board of trade is a long step forward. Rockingham, Gaston, Guilford, Wilson, and Mecklenburg are now moving in this direction. Your problem of local markets for home- raised breadstuffs is a three million dollar pro- 10 position and it calls for business genius and skill. It is a difficult problem, and nothing less than a generous, full statured statesmanship will avail to spell it out in effective practical ways. It is a highly technical detail of com- petent city management. The safe solution of this problem is far more important to your city than the governorship of the State or the presidency of the United States. A prosperous agriculture in Forsyth waits |} / upon the iniative and leadership of the Twin, ' City, and the Twin City is big and generous enough to realize that the foundations of her future greatness. must rest upon prosperity, good cheer, and high courage in her couniry- side. The County End of the Problem CHAPTER II. A Rare Occasion 1. Last November the business people, the teachers and preachers of Winston-Salem came together in a large audience in the Twin-City Club to consider the subject of Farm Prosper- ity in Forsyth. Occasions like that have so far been extremely rare in the United States. As a rule cities have been concerned chiefly with their own prosperity—with attracting into city limits larger populations and more manu- facturing plants, with creating larger volumes of business and larger fortunes in real estate deals, and with the pressing problems of well- being in crowded human centers. They have commonly been callously unconcerned about the wealth and welfare problems of the sur- rounding country regions. County-wide school systems that put the entire wealth of a county behind the schools in poor country districts and in rich city wards alike have usually been bitterly opposed in city centers. More efficient country churches, more and better Sunday schools, more attractive country homes with more conveniences, comforts and _ luxuries, greater attention to public health and sanita- tion, and larger barns and bank balances for the farmers have long been matters of profound indifference to city dwellers everywhere. A Right Attitude But Winston-Salem has come to believe that -no city liveth to itself alone, and so is willing to take generous thought of the country reg- ions round about. The time has gone by when any city can safely grow fat in a lean country-side. Every 12 developing city must be the center of a well developed food-producing area. The best way to build up a town is to build up a prosperous back-country. The city depends upon the coun- try for food, clothing, and shelter. The coun- try depends upon the city for market advan- tages and credit facilities. They are mutually dependent, and the problems of neither can be solved without the help of the other. But even more. The cities are dependent upon the country for population and the re- newal of population. If city populations were not steadily recruited from the open fields they would rot out, explode and disappear in three generations, said Emerson. Three-fourths of the leaders in our city churches, three-fourths of the influential men of affairs, the business men, the bankers, the lawyers and judges in our cities, five-sixths of the college professors of America, and six-sevenths of the ministers were born, bred, and “buttered” in the country regions. These are some of the things my city aud- ience heard me say last November, and heard with generous interest and indulgent patience. And when I added that the next great thing for Winston-Salem to do, in my opinion, was to help the farmers of her trade territory solve their problems of life and business, and gener- ously to promote prosperity, good cheer, and high courage in the countryside, there was an instant, active response. And so on this occasion I come with the peo- ers the Farmers’ end of the Problem of Farm ers, the Farmers’ end of the Problem of Farm Prosperity in Forsyth. The Farmer’s End of the Problem 2. I want to look at the Farmers’ End of Farm Prosperity in Forsyth from three angles: (1) Where Forsyth Leads, (2) Where Forsyth Lags, and (3) The Way Out. In advance I remind you that the facts and 18 figures I shall use were worked out of the 1910 Census and other authoritative volumes by your own boys at the University; that the sur- pluses and deficits are based on the averages of annual consumption announced by the Federal Department of Agriculture from time to time; that Forsyth has doubtless moved up in food and feed production along with all the rest of the state since 1910; but also that only once every ten years can a county take stock of it- self in any thorough-going way. We have re- ports on crops and livestock by states year by year, but, cotton excepted, we have no reports on agriculture in detail by counties oftener than every tenth year. The 1320 Census, then, can alone tell whether or not Forsyth is moving forward, marking time, or dropping to the rear in the essential concerns of farm civiliza- tion during the present census period. I. Where Forsyth Leads. Forsyth is a farm area of richly varied soils in the healthy, hill country of Piedmont Caro- lina. It was considered an ideal region for human habitation, when explored by the Mora- vian prospectors midway the 18th century. They might well have rendered their report in the words of Deuteronomy: “The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; “A land of. wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil and honey; “A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it.” It is truly an ideal region for grain, hay and forage. It was meant by Nature to be a land of permanent pastures, silage crops, silos, dairy farms and creameries; for beef and pork pro- 14 duction, poultry and eggs; for nut crops, fruits and vegetables. And if it is not today a land of milk and honey, peace and plenty it is be- cause the farmers of Forsyth have worked not with but against Nature, and have resisted her kindliest efforts to dower them with her choic- est treasures. As a matter of fact, in a score or more sig- nificant particulars Forsyth in 1910 stood among the 25 counties of foremost agricultural importance in North Carolina. Ahead in Wheat, Hay and Forage. 1. It was one of the 15 counties that raised enough wheat for home consumption and a sur- plus for sale abroad. Only ten counties, large or small, produced larger totals of hay and for- age. She produced enough for her work-ani- mals and a little to spare. In the total produc- tion of oats, only 15 counties made a better showing; and only four counties had a larger investment in labor-saving farm machinery per cultivated acre. And in Farm and Home Demonstration Work In Canning Club Work among the girls For- syth ranks along with Sampson, Anson, Lin- coln, and Wake both in numbers enrolled, con- tainers filled, and net profits earned. In corn Club Work the county ranked 8th in the num- ber of boys reporting and 10th in low average cost per bushel. In average per acre yield of corn in the Cen- sus year Forsyth stood 3 bushels an acre beyond the figure for the state-at-large. In 1916, 15 of her Corn Club boys averaged 56 bushels to the acre, and if the county yearly imports more than a million bushels of western corn, as in 1910, it cannot be because of poor soils and seasons, but because the daddies have less corn-sense than the boys, or because a steadily increasing interest in tobacco breeds a curious unconcern about corn. cribs. Diminishing 15 food and feed production, as you doubtless know, is the usual result of cotton and tobacco mania in a farm area. And yet, good farmers will all agree, I think, that it is good sense and good business to raise corn at 32 cents a bush- el, the average of your Corn Club boys last year, instead of paying $1.50 for it as short- sighted farmers are doing to-day all over the state. A Region of White Farm Owners 2. Not only is Forsyth blessed in soils and seasons, she is even more blessed by the fact that it is a white man’s farm area. The whites out-number the negroes in your country regions more than six to one. It is also a land of farming by farm owners. Three-fourths of your white farmers are farm owners—not tenants. The men who own the acres they till out-number the tenants nearly three to one. For the most part the farmers of Forsyth have their legs under their own tables as the Danes say. They pitch their crops as they please, they call no man lord and pay no man rent. They dweil under their own vines and fig trees unmolested and unafraid. They are, or have a chance to bw, unpurchaseable, unterrified, free American citizens; and we have urgent need of such citizens now-a-days in every developing democracy. But further. Forsyth is a densely populat- ed farm area. In this particular it ranks sec- ond in North Carolina. Only Gaston county has more country people to the square mile. Hopeful Farm Conditions Farm development is well night hopeless in a Sparsely settled area with heavy negro popu- lations and excessive farm tenancy; but every good thing is possible in a densely populated region of white farm owners. Churches can be liberally supported. Sunday schools can flourish. Special tax school districts can be 16 multiplied, and strong two and three-teacher schools can supplant weak, little, one-teacher schools. Interest can be aroused in the build- ing and maintaining of good public highways. Farms can grow in size and increase in equip- ment. The farmers can cease to be crop- farmers merely or mainly, and can move up in- to livestock farming and agricultural indus- — tries, as in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Land mortgages banks and co-operative credit unions can be organized and investment capi- tal secured on easy terms at low rates of in- terest. } All of these are within the range of easy possibility in Forsyth; they are well nigh hope- lessly beyond the reach of some forty odd counties in North Carolina. Nothing but clum- sy thinking, clogging tradition and dull uncon- cern could set narrow metes and bounds to agricultural prosperity in Forsyth. In the value of farm properties in 1910 your ~ county with $8,203,000 stood ahead of 80 coun- ties in the state. In per capita county wealth, with $333, you out-ranked 79 counties. In 1913-14 you spent $11,477 upon new country school buildings, and in this respect only six counties made a better showing. At that time the value of your country school property was $72,000 ,and only 18 counties stood ahead of you. The average annual salary paid your rural white teachers was $285. It was not much, but it was more than they received in 80 other counties. IT am not suprised at your high rank in these © particulars, but I am surprised at your low rank in certain other matters of prime import- ance. Il. Where Forsyth Lags. 1. Your high rank in total and per capita farm wealth considered, I am surprised, for instance, to find that in 1913-14 only 7 of your — 83 white school districts were levying special 17 school taxes for school support. Nighty-four counties made a better showing in the number of special tax school districts. The total fund raised in this way that year in your country districts was only $1,806. Only twenty coun- _ties made a poorer showing—14 in the foothills and mountains, 5 in the Albemarle region, and 1 in the Pamlico country. On one side of you Yadkin raised $1,110 for better schools in 4 special tax districts; but on the other side Guiiford raised $19,700 in 59 country schoo! dis- tricts. And remember that Forsyth ranks 2ist in per capita country wealth,, Yadkin 27th and Guilford 35th. Manifestly the country people of Forsyth lead in wealth, but not in willing- ness to use it for community advantages. Twin-Born Social Ills. You are far too well-off in the farm regions of Forsyth to allow 1,240 or nearly a fifth of the white country children of school age to be out of school the whole year through, as was the case in 1913-14; entirely too rich in town and country to allow 2,072 illiterate white persons in Forsyth to stay illiterate; or to be unconcerned about the 1,008 white voters in the county that cannot read their ballots or write their names. in passing, I want to say that the saddest thing about white illiteracy in this and every other county is the fact that 85 per cent of it is among persons 20 years old and over, who have passed beyond the reach of daylight schools and who if ever they are reached must be reached by people that are ablaze with the fires of religious zeal. Adult illiteracy is a church problem far more than a civic or se- cular problem. It is the fundamental home mission problem in North Carolina. And moreover it is a problem for country pastors and country churches, because 94 per cent of 18 white illiteracy in North Carolina is in our country regions. Behind In Church Membership 2. And Forsyth lags in church mmbership. In 1906, the date of the last census of Relig- ious Bodies in the United States, only 42 per cent of the people of the county were on the rolls of any church whatsoever. Fifty-six counties made a better showing. Counting only the people of responsible ages, say 10 — years old and over, there were at that time 15,809 people outside the churches in Forsyth. This multitude was 51 per cent or more than half of all the people of responsible ages in the county. Your country churchs and coun- try pastors can well afford to take to heart the 2,800 souls in the families of the white farm tenants of Forsyth, and the 1,960 native white illiterates in your country regions.The twin- born evils of tenancy and illiteracy are the two fundamental social ills that menace the country church everywhere in the South. The town churches have similar acute social prob- lems to deal with—not only in Winston-Salem but in every other growing city. The things I am saying may be shocking, but the sincerest friendship often lies in rough electric shock, said Mr. Emerson, and no saying was ever truer. Unprofitable Small-Scale Farming 3. Coming now to consider the economic foundations of farming as a business in For- syth, the 1910 Census shows that your farms averaged only 39 cultivated acres in size, and the average number of acres cultivated per farm worker was only 12.4. The average farm was larger in 29 counties, and the acres per worker were more in 73 counties. These averages are entirely too small for profitable farming. As a result the production of crop values in the Census year was only 19 $175 per farm worker in Forsyth, and 66 coun- ties made a better showing. In 10 counties the crop values produced per farm worker were more than twice as large and in one county more than three time as large. One hundred seventy-five dollars per farm worker is a small figure to set over against $449 in the United States, $884 in Iowa, $783 in Kansas, and $968 in Nebraska, where the average number of acres cultivated by a farm worker ranged from 83 in Iowa to 120 in Ne- braska. Your farms, for the most part, are too small to employ labor-saving farm machin- ery profitably, to stock with farm animals suf- ficiently, to rotate and diversify crops properly, to keep at a minimum the cost of producing your various crops, tobacco in particular, and to turn into your lock-boxes the largest possi- ble volume of profits year by year. We know at last in the United States that small-scale farming is usually unprofitable, and that well- balanced farming on a medium scale upon areas averaging from 80 to 160 acres gives the farmer the surest chance of success. I dare to say that every intelligent, indus- trious farmer operating upon a medium scale with a well-balanced farm system in Forsyth is comfortably ahead of the world, with some- thing in the bank laid up against a rainy day. Well Balanced Farm Systems 4. A safely balanced farm system means _first of all food crops enough to feed the farm- er, the farmer’s family, and the farm animals, at least as far as staple farm supplies are con- cerned; second, it means farm animals enough to furnish all the horse-power and all the meat and milk, butter and eggs needed for home consumption; and third, it means in Forsyth to- bacco as the surest ready-cash crop. It would be folly for a farmer in our tobacco areas not to raise tobacco unless he can substitute for 20 it another cash crop of equal or greater value; and equally it is foolish for him to raise tobacco unless his barns and bins, cribs and smoke- houses are filled to bursting with home-raised food and feed stuffs. The only safe farming is a live-at-home farm- ing. Producing tobacco upon expensive time- credit at the supply-stores, and paying for farm supplies with cotton and tobacco money is near akin to economic insanity. Abiding Farm Prosperity 5. Abiding farm prosperity in Forsyth as in every other county in the cotton and tobacco belt rests upon bread and meat production as a foundation. It is utterly commonplace to lay down a pro- position of this sort, but our failure to act upon this a-b-c of agriculture costs the South nearly a billion dollars a year. Since the War we have sent out of the Southern States more than 50 billion dollars in ready-cash to pay for stand- ard, staple farm supplies that we neglected to raise at home. In the Census year our bill for imported bread and meat in North Carolina was nearly 120 million dollars. This year it will be around a hundred million dollars. Buy- ing farm supplies with cotton and tobacco money enriches the food-and-feed farmers of the Middle West but it has long impoverished the farmers of the South. As a result the per capita country wealth in farm properties in North Carolina is only $322; in the Middle West it ranges from $1,295 in Wisconsin to $3,386 in Iowa. In other words the bread-and-meat farm- ers of the West are from 4 to 10 times as wealthy as the cotton-and-tobacco farmers of North Carolina. The simple hard fact is that no farmer can afford to neglect food and feed production in order to raise cotton and tobacco, no matter what market prices they bring. For a half cen- 21 tury or so we have tried to get rich buying farm supplies with cotton and tobacco money, and surely we have tried long enough to know that it cannot be done. In per capita country wealth in farm proper- _ ties our older cotton and tobacco counties are among the poorest in the state. Anson, for in- stance, with $257 ranks 57th in per capita farm wealth; Caswell with $246 ranks 68rd; Person with $237 ranks 66th; Franklin with $227 ranks Vist; Halifax with $205 ranks 83rd; and Rock- ingham with $191 ranks 87th—not because they have raised cotton and tobacco these long years, but because they have neglected to pro- duce their own bread and meat while doing it. Are Forsyth Farmers Self-Feeding? 6. It is highly important to know whether or not farming in Forsyth is safely settled down upon a home-raised bread-and-meat basis. The last Census shows that the food and feed con- sumed by man and beast in Forsyth county amounted to some 2 million 800 thousand dol- larss more than the farms of the county pro- duced. And this vast sum went out of the county in cold cash to pay the year’s bill for imported feed and food supplies—not for ‘ex- tras, dainties, and luxuries, but for standard bread-and-meat crops the farmers failed to raise at home. It was nearly $60 apaiece count- ing men, women and children. If it could be kept at home by live-at-home farming, or even a reasonable portion of it, the farm wealth of the county would be more than doubled in the next four years. But almost exactly half of your people are ’ city dwellers. They are consumers not produc- ers of bread-stuffs. An inquiry of first impor- tance to the farmers of Forsyth is this: Are the farms of the county producing food and feed enough for the country population alone? 22 Ue Nearly A Milliam Dollars Short I cannot say what they are doing in this way to-day, but I know what they were doing in the Census year. At that time the farms of the county failed to feed the farm folks and the. farm animals by nearly a million dollars— $980,000 to speak a little more exactly. This was the farmers’ bill in Forsyth for the farm supplies they needed for home-consumption and failed to raise. In the ten years it makes a total larger than the value of all the farm prop-: erties accumulated in Forsyth in 160 odd years of history. The food for the farm folks and the farm animals of Forsyth in 1910 amounted to $2,393,- 000. The food and feed produced on the farms of the county the preceding season amounted to $1,414,000. The deficit was $980,000. This was the year’s bill of the farmer for imported farm supplies. Some $335,000 of it went for corn and corn products. Nine hundred and forty-two farmers or more than a third of them all spent an average of $60 apiece for feed for farm animals alone. The hay and _ forage, wheat and meat produced by the forehanded farmers of the county was all the country pop- ulation needed and something to spare for their short-sighted neighbors, but the surplus of these farm products did not begin to supply in addition the needs of consumers in Winston- Salem. There was a shortage of fowls for home consumtion amounting to some 75,000, and a shortage of eggs amounting to 110,000 dozen. The country people either bought these articles of food or lived upon a scale of con- sumption far smaller than the averages for the United States. The simble fact is that the farmers of For- syth failed by $980.000 to feed themselves in the Census year, and in addition they missed a chance at $1,820,000—the sum that went to the 23 farmers of the West for staple food products to feed the city dwellers of the county. I may say in passing that Forsyth farmers are never likely to supply this demand of city consumers in Winston-Salem until the farmers - can turn their food products into cash at a fair price and proj{t as easily and as readily as they can market their tobacco. That is to say, Winston-Salem must provide market arrango- ments conveniences and facilities for home- raised food and feed supplies just as she has done for tobacco. The city must tempt the nearby farmers into bountiful bread-and-meat farming and reward them amply in the enter- prise. The Sensible Thing To Do But whatever Winston-Salem may do or not de toward turning over to the farmers at home nearly two million dollars a year instead of sending it to aliens and strangers in the West for staple food stuffs it is clearly sensible for the farmers of Forsyth to hold down on their farms the other million dollarss a year that they themselves sent out of the county the Census year for farm supplies they neglected _ to raise. 4 Until this farm shortage disappears there cannot be any great accumulation of wealth in your farm regions no matter how high the price of tobacco in occasional years. The only way to raise the level of a pond is to stop the leak in the dam. The first thing to do in Forsyth is for the farmers to stop a million dollar leak in the dams on the farms at home. As far as the farmers are concerned abiding farm prosperity in Forsyth depends first of all upon the farmers feeding themselves. They can add a million a year to the country wealth of the county by doing it. And when this has been done they can then go after the two mil- lion dollars that Winston-Salem is sending abroad for food supplies year by year. 24 The first concern of farmers in the South is not markets for food crops but pantries barns and bins, cribs and smoke-houses filled with home-raised supplies. The Penalty We Pay For Not Doing IT Farmers with enough of these for home con- sumption and surpluses to sell can be worrying about market facilities; but so far in the South, the main cause of farm poverty has been empty larders, troughs and racks that cost us nearly a million dollars a year in Forsyth to fill with imported stuffs; that cost around a hundred million dollars a year to fill in North Carolina, and around a billion dollars a year in the South. Cotton and tobacco, in per acre values, are the two most valuable farm crops raised any- where in the world, and if we were only a self- feeding farm civilization in the South we would be rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice in ten years. lil. The Way Out. With these things said about conditions and causes that affect farm prosperity in Forsyth, let us now turn our attention to principles, plans and policies, ways and means of better- ment. And I must here be brief in an address ~ already too long. 1. Larger Size Farms. First of all, the average size of your farms is too small for profitable farming, except in rare instances. For the most part you are farming on a scale too small for large profits. Nearly exactly seven-tenth or 1836 of your farms are less than a hundred acres in size, counting both improved and unimproved land. Your medium scale farms, from one to five hundred acres each, are only 30 per cent of the total number of farms. These are the farms that offer a chance under good management for reasonable returns upon capital invested 25 and labor expended. There are only 13 farms of more than 500 acres in the entire county, and none of more than a thousand acres. But farms can grow larger in a region of farm owners; they inevitably tend to be smaller and smaller in an area of excessive farm tenancy. 2. More and Better Livestock. With farms of larger average size, the farm area of the county can be sufficiently stocked with farm animals. The one-horse farm of 35 acres, as we clumsily say in the South, if even lightly stocked needs one horse or mule, 2 milk cows, 2 other cattle, 2 hogs, 6 pigs, 7 sheep, 6 lambs, and 50 laying hens, or livestock of this amount in some such combination, in order to furnish enough meat, milk and butter for an average farm family, and at the same time to consume surpluses and waste, restore soil fertility, and distribute labor profitably through out the year. In 1910, Forsyth was 40 per cent below the level of even a lightly stocked farm region, without considering your 138,000 idle, wilder- ness acres. Manifestly you need more and better livestock. I say this although in both particulars Forsyth already holds a prominent place among the 30 foremost counties of the state. Without sufficient livestock our gospel of ro- tation, diversification, permanent pastures, winter cover crops, silage and silos is pure sen- timent and not sound business. There is little or no profit in livestock fattened on bought feed. There is profit in livestock of good breeds, 0h medium size farms, fattened on home-raised feed; and the necessity for producing such feed on the farm forces the farmer to keep his land in crops of some kind the whole year through. lLivestoock require and reward diver- sified farming. No safely balanced farm sys- tem is possible without farm animals in suffi- 26 cient quantity. Of course it goes without say- ing that as rapidly as possible farmers will substitute for common scrub animals well bred stock that take on weight easily and cheaply. There might be a breeders’ association in each of your fourteen townships. High-bred sires in sufficient numbers ought to be co-oper- atively owned and used all over the county. Community livestock shows and blue ribbon prizes might easily stir the pride of the average farmer in Forsyth. I say this with your Morav- ian, German, Scotch-Irish, and English ances- try in mind. The love of farm animals was second nature in your forefathers. 3. More Abundant Operating Capital So far, the wealth of the farm population in Forsyth is mainly in farm lands, farm buildings, farm animals, farm tools and implements. There is too little ready cash circulating freely in the farm regions for 52 weeks of the year; too little cash operating capital; and too much expensive time-credit at the supply- stores. This hard situation is well night universal in the South. It is crippling, disabling, and dis- couraging; and it must disappear before we can have abiding prosperity in our farm areas. Our cotton and tobacco money descends upon us like an avalanche during the market months. It produces seasonal, not permanent prosperity. When our bills are all paid, and the year’s bal- ance sheet is struck, our left-over cash is hardly sufficient to grease the house-cat prop- erly. And then during the nine, long, lean months of the growing and harvesting season we operate on expensive credit. It is the high- way to improvidence and poverty, as we all ought to know after 50 years of pinching exper- iences. Now, no farm civilization ever accumulated great wealth unless it was self-financing; and 27 no farmers can be self-financing unless dai are . self-feeding. But in a densely populated area of whine farm owners the way out of difficulty is wide open. In the first place, such farmers are free agents and can lay down their farming on bread-and-. meat foundations. Farm tenants in America never can do it without more outside help than they are ever likely to receive, [ am _ sorry to say. In the second place, they can bunch up and organize land-banks and _ credit-unions, The old world farmers have learned to assem- ble resources, organize credit machinery, manu- facture credit, and finance themselves. Some 15 million co-operating farmers in 5,000 asso- ciations in Europe did a business among them- selves amounting to 7 billions dollars in 1914. Our Carolina farmers have sense enough to do the same thing; but they are everywhere con- servative and mighty slow to get busy with this fundamental problem of cash operating capital. 4. Decreasing Dead Capital The farmers of Forsyth have three and a half million dollars of dead capital in $139,000 idle, ' wilderness acres; and I am reckoning this total on the low average value of this land in the 1910 Census. It probably could not be bought for twice this amount. More than half _ the entire area of the county is unimproved. Here is elbow-room for 1200 new farm families on 75 acres each, with 50,000 still left over for woodlot uses. If you could attract into Forsyth 1200 farm families from south Wisconsin, say, where they have been bred to the business of tobacco grow- ing, dairy farming, cheese factories and cream- eries, they would add seven and a half million dollars to th farm wealth of the county; and they would increase the annual production of farm wealth by $1,800,000. In other words, 28 they would nearly double your present farm wealth, and the present annual product of your farms. The farmers of the Middle West are swarm- ing out of this area over into Canada and down into Pan Handle Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkan- sas. Why not into Forsyth county, North Car- olina? me Every man jack of them ail is acquainted with the Twin-City brands of tobacco, but what they don’t know is whether Winston-Salem is in Forsyth or Formosa. Forsyth is not on any - map they know. It is weli worth your while to put Forsyth on the map. In my opinion it is highly important to put very Carolina county on the map. We have too many idle, wilderness acres in this state— some 22,000,000, all told. There are some 200,- 000,000 such acres in the South. We have too much dead capital buried in unimproved farm lands—entirely too much; and we sorely need — the Americanized farmers of the Middle West, who are bred to the business of livestock and dairy farming. Beef production is moving east- ward out of range production into farm pro- duction; and with our immense area of unused land, we occupy a position of immense stra- tegic advantage. ; But we are about to miss the greatest opor- tunity in our history, because we are crop-farm- ers merely or mainly in the South. It takes a generation or two to breed ae farm population to livestock industries; and we are not so bred, while these western farmers are. 5. A County-Wide Chamber of Commerce I should say that Forsyth needs a county- wide chamber of commerce, composed of farm- ers, bankers, merchants, manufacturers, teach- ers and preachers, representing every commun- ity and every business and social interest of 29 this entire people. Such a body might be busy (1) investigating conditions and problems of every sort, (2) organizing, educating, and ener- gizing everybody in every field of vocational and social activity, (3) revealing home advant- ages and opportunities to the home folks of the county and spreading the name and fame of Forsyth to the ends of the earth (4) creating interest in better school and church support the whole county over and sponging sheer-illit- eracy and near-illiteracy off your map. (5) backing the farm demonstration work and the boys and girls club work, (6) promoting com- munity fairs, school fairs, and county com- mencements, (7) organizing land-banks and credit-unions, and so on and on—all_ these things and more, not in sporadic, fragmentary ways, but in an organized, consistent, persist- ent campaign year in and out. The work of such an organization quickly defines itself under good leadership, and scores | of ends and aims, ways and means will suggest themselves as the problems one by one are brought into the spot light by the activity of the various committees. You will not need to adopt a Trenton-Grundy County-Missouri plan of activities; you will soon enough evolve your own Winston-Salem-Forsyth County-North- Carolina plans, when you get under a good headway of steam. In conclusion let me remind you that every- thing is possible to a united people. And when - persona! greed yields to the common good, and private interests surrenders to the public wel- fare, the full possibilities of a community can be realized. In the language of The Book, Forsyth is in- deed “a good land,” and if her people can be united and generous in their devotion to her fortunes then surely they shall not lack any good thing in it.’ Microfilmed SOLINET/ASERL PROJECT ate - PRESS OF © ‘MARKLAND PRINTING co. WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. J 4 P A, is Aas \ 4 } dee ] ’ wa Ly es why w ) bt i ‘ 4) Has Naty : bed] hy y h ' i) i] he eit Mi Caen ayy WE are asking you to come and sell to us. We offer you for your products the best markets and fairest prices to be found in the State. We have no ordinances against peddling farm products. Our city lot and warehouses are > kept open for you to leave your horses and vehicles. They are yours without charge. | Our library advantages are freely yours. | The farm demonstrator’s room in the court house is for your use. In- formation regarding farm better- #4 ment can be secured there. : In a very short while we expect } to have a womens’ rest room—next | to the farm demonstrator’s room— | it will be comfortably furnished #% and have modern conveniences. A ™& matron will be in charge to care for Hume your packages—she will not be allowed to accept a “‘tip’’ under Bag any circumstances—as you will be # our guests. ee: TY OF N.C. AT CH NIL 00031715662 FOR USE ONLY IN THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION THIS TITLE HAS BEEN MICROFILMED