the druggists for prescriptions was $1068 which was an average of $48.64 per family. Thirty-five of the homes spent $219 for patent medicines and nostrums of one sort or another, which is an average of $6 per family. Nearly one-ninth of the total cash incomes of this group of tenants went for illnesses, to say nothing of funeral expenses when the illness ended in death. Seven homes had doctors' bills ranging from $50 to $400 each. In one home the worldly possessions amounted to $218 and the doctors' bill to $75; in another the doctors' bill was $160 or a full third of all the tenant owned on earth; in another the doctors' bill amounted to $400 and the tenant's worldly goods to only $289. No wonder the doctor is called in as seldom as possible and always at the last moment-not because his charges are so large, but because the tenant's ability to pay is so little. And no wonder that all but three of the households rely for the most part on quack remedies and patent medicines. Small cash incomes in farmowner homes and poverty in tenant homes is the reason why doctors cannot live in the country regions, and why they are fleeing out of the rural counties. If a single doctor had all the tenant practice of these two townships he would have had only $1068 to live on in 1921, supposing he were able to collect every cent of it. Ill health and the cost of it in cash keeps many or most of these tenants poor-hopelessly poor. Solomon was right: verily the destruction of the poor is their poverty. Death is more endurable than sickness in many tenant homes. Said one sad-faced mother who had lost two children in infancy. "I reckon it was a-God's mercy. I didn't have nothing fit ter feed 'em on and no chance ter take care u▾ 'em." The children borne by the mothers in these households in the course of a life-time number 148. Forty-seven of these children are dead. Eighteen were born dead, eleven died during the first year, and six during the first five years. Twenty-seven of the mothers were delivered by doctors, five by white midwives, one by a negro midwife, and five were unattended in childbirth save by the panic-stricken members of the households. Only oneeighth of all the children were delivered by midwives-a most surprising discovery. Most people have an idea that midwives play a larger part in the country regions. Only four of the thirty-eight tenant mothers have ever received the literature of the State Department of Public Health, and these four are the daughters-in-law of home-owning farmers. Six households have had no medical examination of their children at school and no reports of their physical defects. Not one of all the 178 members of these tenant households has ever been vaccinated against smallpox or typhoid fever. Disease prevention and health promotion are little considered in farm tenant homes. Two things stand out in this field study. First, the virility of the men, the fecundity of the women, and the amazing grip on life of our tenant populations. The signs of physical degeneracy are rare in the area surveyed. Our renters are a coming not a disappearing element of population in the South. All they need is a decent chance; and when we say this, we have in mind the renters, not the croppers, who represent the bottom-most levels of life in our farm regions. And second, the prevalence of sickness of one sort or another-the result not of insufficient food, quantities considered, but of unvaried, ill-balanced diets, and untutored ways of cooking and serving meals. Disordered digestion and defective teeth are the common causes of chronic morbidity; soil pollution and flyborne diseases are the major causes of mortality. Or so we came to conclude. 4. Schools and School Influences. For the white children of these two townships there are seven public schools. Six are one-teacher schools of elementary grade, open for only six months of the year, usually in the fall and winter months when the demand for work in the fields is least. One is a five-teacher school at Bynum, a little cotton mill village of some fortyodd dwellings. Here the children have a chance at two years of highschool subjects-their only chance at such schooling in these two townships. For more they must go into other townships or counties. All the elementary schools in the open country are housed in buildings that are old and weather-stained. None of them have been built within the last twenty years. They are taught for the most part by young girls in their teens or by young women born in Chatham or in the neighboring counties. All the teachers have had schooling in high school subjects, four have had some schooling in college subjects, but none are college graduates. The rule is a new teacher in each school every year, because the teacher is dissatisfied with the school conditions of the district or because the people of the district are dissatisfied with the teacher. Exceptions to this rule are few from year to year. The schools and country roads are so inadequate that the people are strongly minded to petition the legislature to annex their territory to Durham county where school and road funds are more abundant. As a result the Chatham school board offers to replace the six small country schools next year with three consolidated schools, two in Williams and one in Baldwin. The country people are strongly in favor of larger, better schools, but they are finding it difficult to agree upon the locations of the consolidated schools proposed. The inadequate school advantages of this area have left their marks upon the fifty-one tenant households. One hundred and seventy-three of the occupants are more than ten years of age, and sixteen of them are unable to read or write, which is an illiteracy ratio of 9.2 percent, against a state average of 8.2 percent. One or more illiterates were found in six families. Thirteen of the sixteen were found in three families. These are the families in which illiteracy reigns. In two families are seventeen people ten years of age and over, and ten of them are illiterate. The extreme case is one cropper family with six in the household; five are ten years old or over and three are illiterate. Nobody in this household belongs to the church, and nobody goes to Sunday school. It is the excessive number of illiterates in these three families that smudges the score of the two townships. But for these and one illiterate each in three other families it could be said that there is no white illiteracy in Baldwin and Williams townships. There is none whatsoever in forty-five of the fifty-one tenant familes. The school levels of the thirty-eight renter families are significant of the culture of this tenancy area. There are 103 people in these households seven years old and over. Thirty-seven have reached only one or another of the first four grades; ten got only as far as the fifth grade; nine got only into the sixth grade; and twenty-eight reached the seventh grade. Only nineteen or around a fifth of them all have ever had any acquaintance with high school subjects. For nearly exactly half of the renter households, school culture may be said to stop on a fifth reader level. Eight people in these households have had only one year of high school instruction, four reached the second high school grade, five dropped out in the third year, and only two were graduated. There is no member of any tenant household in all this area who ever went to college or ever received a college diploma. The record of the thirteen white cropper households is even more significant. There are forty people in these families seven years old and over, but only five have ever gone beyond the first four grades of school. One got as far as the sixth grade, one as far as the seventh grade, and three got into the first year of high school subjects. For nine-tenths of the cropper families life stops on a fourth reader level. The contrast between the school culture of renters and croppers appears at a glance in the charts that follow. 35 People 87% School Levels Reached. 1921. 3 People Person Person People First 4 5th Grades 2% 2 6% People 6th 7th 1st Yr. 2nd Yr. 3rd Yr. 4th Yr Grades I High School Grades.] 37 School Levels Reached In 38 Renter Households 1921. 10% 9% 8% 4 5 [ 4th 5th 6th Grades People People 7th 1st Yr. 2nd Yr. 3rd Yr. 4th Yr. The country regions furnish three-fourths of the college professors and five-sixths of all the preachers of America, says Ashenhurst; but in North Carolina they are born and bred in the homes of farm owners, not in the homes of farm tenants. There may be exceptions, but they could not be brought to light by the research questionnaires of Rev. J. M. Arnette, a Baptist minister applying for a doctorate degree from the University of North Carolina. His conclusion is that the farm tenant homes of this state give no preachers to the churches of his faith, or so few as to be negligible in the total count of Baptist clergymen. We definitely know |