Work Done by Chambers of Commerce and Civic Clubs Generally Benefits Farmers, 1949

Editorial from the Oxford Public Ledger published Sept. 23, 1949. Frank Jeter was an editor at North Carolina State University who covered state agriculture and the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service.

Dr. Frank Jeter keeps his finger on the pulse that beats in rural North Carolina better than any man we know. As Agricultural Editor at State College, it is his business to know what’s going on in rural North Carolina, what farm folks are doing and what they are thinking.

Dr. Jeter did not go off half-cocked when he addressed executives of North Carolina Chambers of Commerce at Wilson this week, but he did tell these executives something Tar Heels had been saying about their organizations. They perked up their ears and listened, too, as Dr. Jeter spoke.

In recent weeks, the Agricultural Editor said, he had sent a large number of persons in North Carolina letters inquiring what civic clubs and chambers of commerce where doing and had done to assist farmers in the solution of their problems. The information that came back was almost surprising in its conclusiveness that chambers of commerce and civic clubs are working cooperatively and constructively in the interest of the farmers.

Roads, rural telephones, rural power lines, soil conservation, rural school improvements, diversified farming, better markets for farm commodities—these and many other programs affecting rural families of North Carolina have been and are now the objective of chambers of commerce and of civic clubs, Dr. Jeter’s survey revealed.

Granville County farmers well remember the effort that the local Chamber of Commerce put forth and the high degree of success that market its effort to locate tobacco plants for distressed growers last spring. It would be hard to convince any beneficiary of that effort that the Granville chamber is of the worthless variety.

When one looks for the truth and counts up the facts, there is little foundation for any claim that civic clubs and chambers of commerce aren’t helping rural neighbors with their major problems.