7. Social Occasions and Contacts. The three hundred and twenty-nine families of Baldwin and Williams townships-the owners and tenants of both races are scattered throughout 104 square miles of territory. Whites and blacks are nearly equal in number, and their farms are small, averaging less than thirty cultivated acres each. They dwell in solitary farmsteads with wide spaces between, and farming is by nature a solitary business. The unit of economic production is the family, and the father is the over-lord of the group, in the ancient patriarchal fashion of family life. He may not have his legs under his own table, as the Danes say, but where he sits is the head of it, and nobody in the family is in doubt about it. Such is the type of rural family life in Chatham county, the State, and the South as a whole.

Within family groups in the country regions autocracy is the rule; between family groups democracy is the unquestioned order. The farmer is the best in his own group and accounts himself equal to the best in any other farm group. So it is in the rural civilization of almost all the countries of the new world. In almost all old-world countries the farmers dwell together in farm villages, and the extremes of individualism are softened by the intimate social contacts and the common concerns of hamlet households.

As a result American farmers are bred to think privately and locally in terms of the family and the neighborhood. They do not easily think in terms of the community and the commonwealth. The private-local mind of the farmer in the South is the ultimate obstacle to country community life and coöperative farm enterprise; also it is the ultimate problem in county government and in commonwealth development.

What, then, are the influences that tend to mitigate the overweening, unadjusted individualism of farm life in the field of this survey? What are the occasions that bring families together-in particular the families of tenant households? And what contacts do they have with the outside world?

Our study discloses the social aloofness of the farm tenant-the great distances to town centers, until recently in Chatham the absence of improved public highways, the rarity of telephones and motor cars-there are only two of each in fifty-one tenant homes, the fourth and fifth grade levels and limits of school culture in, a majority of the families, the small average number of household newspapers, magazines, and books. The epoch-making events of the big wide world break in tiny ripples on the far distant shores of farm tenant lives only after many days-here and everywhere else in the South.

Social contacts and social occasions in the tenant households of this territory consist mainly of the inter-family affairs and events of the local church and school neighborhoods. In the order of frequency they are (1) preaching days in the country churches and commencement occasions in the country schools, (2) mutual visits between the homes of owners and tenants of each race on the basis of democratic equality-assumptions of family superiority are almost unknown, (3) the neighborly exchange of

labor in pinches produced by seasonal stresses-plowing, harvesting, threshing, corn shucking seasons and the like, (4) dogs, guns, and hunting parties in these fifty-one tenant households there are fifty guns and forty-six dogs, (5) picnics which are usually school events, (6) holiday occasions and neighborhood gatherings, mainly during the Christmas season-parties or sociables as they are called, (7) occasional neighborhood fairs, usually at the school buildings, (8) other events-barbecues, opossum suppers and so on. The most common entry in the schedule blanks is "visiting, talking, telling jokes, hunting, fishing, eating, watermelons.''

Practically everybody goes to church, every household hunts and fishes, and every family but one exchanges visits. The tenant families that have no part in the inter-family life of this territory are as follows: sixteen exchanged no labor during the year, eighteen attended no picnics, six took no part in holiday events, twenty-nine attended no sociables, and forty-two stayed away from the infrequent neighborhood fairs. No family attended a circus, and only one looked in at a film picture in the run of the year. Nowhere did we find a trace of dancing as a neighborhood event.

Children's plays around the home are primitive and in twenty-one homes they are altogether absent. Base, tag, dog-on-wood, hide-and-seek, cat, ball-over, stick-it-to-him, pitching horse-shoes, marbles, dolls, mud pies, riding sticks, red bugs, gully bugs, jack-in-the-bush, checkers, and rook are the home games of country children in this territory-dolls in only one tenant family, checkers in one, and rook in two. No cards were in evidence anywhere; but also Mother Goose is everywhere unknown. The home groups are too small for lively fun among the young people, and the oneteacher schools are too small to develop the values of team-play. Besides, the unconscious assumption is that children are born to work not to play. In listing for us the children's games in the various homes, one tenant housewife said with spirit, "I wants you to understand that we works hereabouts; we ain't no sportin neighborhood." There is abundant seasonal leisure in farm tenant homes, but no leisure-time philosophy of life. Salvation for young people lies in work, and getting together for a good time is an evidence of mortal sin of some sort.

And such is the unconscious assumption of the country churches. In no instance did we find any evidence that they were concerned about wholesome recreation in the countryside. Not social affairs in this world but salvation in the next world is the core of religious consciousness in our country regions. Rural religion is not annointed with "the oil of gladness " that David prayed for. Fun and frolic are tolerated with qualms of conscience or viewed with vague suspicion as essentially evil. And so the country church resigns country recreation to the Devil and all his works.

Life in solitary farmsteads, a few to the square mile, in the vast open spaces of America, is in itself a denial of a primary social instinct-the craving for companionship, and the farm family group fails to satisfy this craving. As a result, lonesomeness alone plays a large part in the cityward drift of country populations; it plays the largest part in the

exodus of farm boys and girls in their teens. There has been a steady movement of country people out of Baldwin and Williams townships for thirty years; since 1890 the population of Baldwin had dwindled from 2068 to 1439, and Williams has dropped from 2760 inhabitants to 1517. More than a third of all the people of these two townships have moved out in a single generation. Soon or late, a steady decrease in population produces static or stagnant social areas. Such is the net result of economic and social disadvantages, of life and livelihood under uninspiring or dispiriting influences; and in the last analysis it is social disabilities that destroy values of every sort, economic, civic and religious alike— farm values and incomes, store business and profits, neighborhood life and enterprise, community morals, law and order, county government efficiency and church development. Such are the pressing issues of existence for farmers and storekeepers, teachers and preachers to consider in Baldwin and Williams townships. More and better roads, better market facilities, larger cash incomes, more efficient schools and churches, more books, newspapers and magazines, greater attention to sanitation and hygiene, a braver attitude toward community morals, law and order, and a more intimate acquaintance with county office affairs-such are the foundations of a fuller life in the territory surveyed in Chatham county.

8. Civic Consciousness. But there are comforting signs of intelligent appreciation of the way-out in Baldwin and Williams townships. The straw ballot taken in the fifty-one tenant households shows that only seven of the ninety-nine voters were opposed to consolidated schools, only three were opposed to coöperative marketing, road bonds, or 'book farming,' only two thought college education a waste of time, and only two considered themselves free, white, and twenty-one and privileged to do as they pleased without regard to morals, law and order. And mark this-of these ninety-nine voters, seventy-two are in the habit of voting regularly.

Nineteen voters expressed positive, definite opinions about community needs, and in the main they were intelligent opinions. The other eighty voters had no opinions-had never thought about such matters, they said. The unthinking and the unconcerned were the vast majority-but of such is the Kingdom of Democracy in free America.

III

Helping Tenants into Farm Ownership

The fifty-one white tenants are nearly a third of all the white farmers in this territory, and the 102 negro tenants are nearly three-fourths of all the negro farmers. Ideally it is desirable for these landless farmers to own the land they cultivate. Civilization is rooted and grounded in the home-owning, home-loving, home-defending instincts. Nobody doubts this fundamental fact. But what is ideally desirable is not always actually possible, human nature considered. All these landless men need help, but not all of them can be helped. Many of them with judicious assistance could rise into farm ownership and effective citizenship; others in large

numbers could not be settled down in stable property ownership of any sort by the angel Gabriel himself; as they now are, an outright gift of forty acres and a mule would avail them little more than the manna sent down from Heaven availed the Children of Israel.

Who Can Be Helped: (1) With rare exceptions, not many of the white croppers can be helped into farm ownership. They are a fourth of all the white tenants in Chatham, in the State, and in the South. In North Carolina they number 16,575 families, and in the main they are satisfied with their landless estate. The upward look into farm ownership is absent. As a rule they are handicapped by a lack of the homeowning virtues, namely (1) steady-gaited industry, (2) thrift which is the combined result of prudential foresight and hardy self-denial, (3) sagacity or the ability to think things through to wise conclusions, (4) sobriety or freedom from the use of intoxicating liquors, and (5) integrity-reliability, a sense of moral obligations, trustworthiness, and the like essential qualities of character. Lacking these home-owning virtues or the will to develop them, no man on any level of life is likely to acquire property in land or to hold it inviolate. The hopeful white croppers are few but these few ought to be helped. We estimate their number to be two in Baldwin and Williams townships and 800 in the state-at-large. The ratio of hopefulness is right around one-twentieth of all the white croppers of the state. But while little can be done for the adults in cropper households, surely much can be done for the swarms of bright-faced children, before they are hardened by the conditions in hopeless homes. What can be done for them is a problem for day teachers, Sunday-school teachers and preachers, home and farm demonstration agents, university and state college extension services. Here is the most insistent home mission problem in North Carolina and the South.

(2) The tenant group that offers the largest chance for effective outside aid is the group of self-help renters-so called because they have struggled into the ownership of workstock, farm tools and implements, household goods and utensils, by self-effort alone, without the advantage of kith and kin relationships to their landlords, and without the hope of acquiring farms by inheritance, gift or marriage. This group is one-fourth of all the white tenants in Baldwin and Williams townships, and the chances are that this ratio is approximately true in the state-at-large. Which means some 16,600 farm families. Many of these could safely be lifted into the ownership of farms by judicious outside aid; but not all, indeed not many more than one-ninth of them all, say 2,000 all told. I say one-ninth because numerous field studies at the State University, and in various centers of research the world over of late years, show that something like nine of every ten people live from hand to mouth, consume all they produce, spend all they make, and drop inevitably into debt in sudden emergencies.

(3) The kinsman tenants, the tenants whose landlords are fathers, uncles, fathers-in-law, and others closely related by blood or marriage ties, are one-half of all the white tenants in Baldwin and Williams townships,

and probably in the state-at-large. For them the way ahead into ownership is usually open, by inheritance, gift or marriage or by purchase on favorable terms. As a class they need not be considered in any policy of state-aid to farm ownership. What they need is mainly (1) the will to be home-owning farmers on the twenty-two million idle acres held by their kinspeople in North Carolina, and (2) farm prosperity sufficient to allow the accumulation of capital enough to equip their farms with more and better livestock, tools and machinery.

State-Aid to Land Ownership

To recapitulate: the white tenants in North Carolina who possibly might be helped into farm ownership are 800 croppers and 2,000 self-help renters, or 2,800 of the 32,000 white tenants of these two classes in the state. State-aid policies would be directly aimed at some 2,800 white tenant families and figured accordingly, to say nothing of some 1,400 worthy negro tenants. At the present average of current market prices for farm land in North Carolina, these 2,800 white tenants could be settled down on forty-acre farms of their own for $1000 apiece, or $2,800,000 all told.

Where are these millions to come from? From the state treasury as an outright gift? Not possibly so. There is no surplus there-nor ever likely to be for landless farmers however worthy. And not desirably so, even if there were such treasury surpluses. State-aid to landless farmers, if considered at all, must be considered as a straight-out business proposition, and conducted from first to last as a solvent business enterprise not as a charity. It must not be a burden on the taxpayers of the state. It must not raise anybody's taxes by so much as a single cent, to pay either principal or interest. But while the state has no money to lend, it has credit in abundance, and this is what could be loaned to the worthy landless farmers of North Carolina as a state investment in character; and loaned not on the basis of state bonds of the kind we have heretofore issued but on the basis of debenture bonds issued by the state and protected by titles to the land bought for land settlement purposes and sold to the settlers. Not state bonds but debenture bonds issued by an authorized state agency and underwritten by the state is the business form of the proposition. What we are indicating is the California way, and there is no other way worth considering in North Carolina, in our opinion. The details in California appear in full in Helping Men to Own Farms, a small volume written by Dr. Elwood Mead of the University of California, executive secretary of the State Land Settlement Board, and the social engineer of the successful farm colonies established at Durham and Delhi. Our legislators and thoughtful students of essential commonwealth concerns in general in North Carolina are referred to this book. Twenty copies of it are on the shelves of the seminar library of the department of rural socialeconomics at Chapel Hill and will be loaned without charge upon request. We therefore limit our treatment of a state-aid policy to the few words of these brief paragraphs.