“North Carolina Sloppy With Opportunities: What Can the Press Do in
Developing Them?” by Byon H. Butler, from the Thursday, July 23, 1914, issue of
the High Point Review. Butler’s
presentation from the N.C. Press Association was printed as an editorial in
this issue.
Recently I said one day in the News and Observer that North
Carolina is sloppy with opportunity. That expression has been brought back to
me to set the pleasant task of pointing out some of those opportunities and
telling how the newspaper men may help in the development of them.
Thirty-two years ago this summer I caught my first glimpse
of North Carolina. At that time I had seen enough of the industrial development
and progress of the United States from Texas, Kansas and Minnesota east to New
England to appreciate what development means and to recognize the opportunity for
development where it appeared. Fifteen years of my newspaper work was passed as
a writer of progress of the big industrial expansion in Pittsburg territory
where big things are done. That gave me a further insight into what opportunity
is and what it is worth. It is more than 20 yeas ago that I commenced to write
in the Pittsburg Times stories of
opportunities in North Carolina. In that 20 years I have been showing people
what I see here, and in going out to show them I continually fall over more
things to show. I did not discover North Carolina all of a sudden. It has been
a gradual finding of new possibilities until it is easy to see that no State in
the Union today can present so much of opportunity as North Carolina. This is
said in all deliberation for unsupported claims are of no use to anybody. It
is folly to deceive ourselves. I make this claim after an acquaintance with
almost every community of any consequence in the United States.
The chief factors that are putting North Carolina in the
front are climate, rainfall, waterpower, transportation, convenience to the
markets of the United States and of the world, the permanent supply of raw
material for factory use, and a population of intelligence and upright
character. I do not include those temporary resources like timber, mineral
deposits, etc., which are valuable in themselves, and of great importance, are
still temporary and not in the class with those permanent things that are of
everlasting worth.
In hunting a place for a permanent home for myself and
family I picked North Carolina deliberately from all the rest of the country
because it offered a bigger inducement in natural advantages. It has the best
climate and the best rainfall. Climate makes a State fit to live in. Rainfall
and mild climate makes it an agricultural possibility. Soil is a factor, but
fertility can be made. Kansas and California and other States of the West are
not so fertile now as when I first knew them. North Carolina is more fertile.
Fertility is under the control of man, climate and rainfall are not.
Therefore we must regard North Carolina as one of the
foremost agricultural possibilities on earth. The story of the last 15 years
bears this out. In the last census period the State more than doubled its farm
products. In the last five years, it has almost doubled again. This surprising
record if kept another 10 years will put North Carolina among the first three
or four States of the Union.
Mill development is fully as rapid. Fourteen years ago the
State factories produced about $86 million worth of goods. Now they make three
times that value. Factories are springing up to build the widest variety of
products. The factories are diversified to scores of different lines. They will
diversify more because they have the power. In a dozen years the development of
waterpower in North Carolina has been one of the marvels of the industrial
world. What is ahead nobody can guess, but also most any guess seems safe
enough. The State is gridironed with power wires now and in that respect has no
peer on the globe.
Ours is one State that is self-contained and self-providing.
It has the farms on which to feed the people, the factories in which to employ
them, the power to run the mills, the yearly crop of raw material for the
factory, the river and sea to carry the freight to market, the railroads in all
directions, besides the surplus of product eagerly sought by other States.
Rising in the highest mountains east of the Rockies, North
Carolina rivers have more fall to the sea, a greater distance to the sea, a
greater annual rainfall to carry down, and a greater area to drain water from
than any other State of the East. How much power that means is pure guess. It
is a limit we cannot overtake for years. We have no idea of our ability to
produce cotton for the ever growing North, or anything. We have no idea where
we are going, but we are headed somewhere, and are running away on half a dozen
roads at one time.
It is no use to me to point out to you the opportunities of
North Carolina. Five thousand people could find opportunity in Jones county to
go raising cotton. As many more could go to the mountains and raise cattle. As
many more could go to Guilford to raise corn, to Moore, to raise scuppernongs
for the grape juice plant starting there, to Henderson to raise apples, to
Robeson to raise cantaloupes, to Cumberland to raise tobacco, peanuts for oil,
sweet potatoes to make starch for the cotton mills and alcohol for the arts and
for the automobiles when gasoline is scarcer.
Every county in the State could place 10,000 people as fast
as they could come and opportunity would await them. One of the greatest of
advantages is that our resources are so distributed that in every township in
the State it is possible to establish a varied industry. Here is one State that
has power available in every locality, raw material in every locality,
transportation in every locality. We do not have to bunch our industries in
cities where coal and iron and shop room can be had, as is the case in other
States where the utilities must be assembled. We are not compelled to crowd
into centers of population. Look at the cotton mill development that lines the
Southern Railway from Virginia boundary to the South Carolina frontier. It is a
continuation of mill communities with their farm settlements about them. At the
last census North Carolina ranked eight among the States in its rural
population. Only seven other States are developed all through the rural regions
more than ours. In city population this State ranks 31st, but we are
practically alone in having farm and factory property development scattered
over the entire State.
The farm where it can feed the factory and supply such raw
material as cotton and tobacco, and the factory where it can benefit by the
farm, and find labor and subsistence and afford a market. North Carolina is
sloppy with opportunity. I can no more tell you the limit of the water of the
ocean out there in front of us. The one single thing of electrical development
that has commenced in the State means a revolution in industrial things, with
North Carolina as a cradle of expansion and training ground. Ten years from now
the electrical atmosphere of industrial North Carolina will be a marvel.
You realize the opportunities. How can the press help to
develop them? By becoming thoroughly familiar with what is here. We know of
many opportunities, but there are many opportunities we have overlooked. We
must become familiar with as many as possible, and get our people to know and
appreciate them. My people laughed at me for an enthusiast when I told them
North Carolina has the best climate in the United States. I showed them the
weather statistics which tell that in every State along the Canadian frontier
except New York and New England the thermometer goes higher in summer than in
North Carolina. They are surprised when I tell them the Catawba has power
enough to turn all the wheels in Connecticut, a prominent factory State, or
that one big dam building on the Yadkin would run two-thirds of all wheels in
Vermont. The newspapers put these things before the people vigorously. In the
North and East North Carolina is an unknown region, almost as far out of public
knowledge as Roosevelt’s river of doubt in the Amazon country.* Every North
Carolina newspaper should have several exchanges in the North and in New
England that what is printed might be passed along to people elsewhere.
The newspaper must be a clearing house for information
concerning the State, county and the town. Every new farm, every new factory,
every new thing that tells of development and expansion should get a place on
the first page with a two stack head. I figure that in our paper that building
a dozen new tobacco barns on Pinebluff farm is of more consequence than the
vote of the candidate for Congress or Governor.
An example of this helpful enthusiasm is the Southern Pine
Tourist, one of the most aggressive development factors in the State, as well
as a model village newspaper.
I don’t mind tell you a trade secret if you will go home and
profit by it. Every time we start something new over in Hoke county we try to
tell it to the Observer, the News and Observer, the Star and all the other
newspapers that want to know what is going on in the State. They can’t keep a
secret and they tell it to their readers and every few days you notice
something new is breaking loose in the sandhills. I don’t know whether our
section is any better than yours, but we go on the theory that our section is
the best on earth, and our bird is not the American eagle but the wise old hen
who makes a note of the occurrence very time she lays an egg, and alludes to it
several times during the day, before and after laying it. We believe in
advertising.
It is useless to enumerate the opportunities in North
Carolina. We could accommodate in this State many millions of people. People is
what we lack. We lack people because the rest of the country, which is
supplying settlers for all the United States and Canada, does not know North
Carolina. Within the next year, and nearly every year, a million or more
Americans will hunt new homes. They will not find anything better than North
Carolina, but they will go elsewhere for what of knowledge of North Carolina.
You who print papers in the tobacco belt should get some of your papers into
the hands of people in the tobacco section of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and
elsewhere.
You in the corn counties should be in touch with people in
the corn country of the North and West. The climate of the North and West is
fierce and people are running away from it constantly. Our climate is one of
our greatest assets and when it is known what a climate we have and what other
advantages we will get the people.
We should have an aggressive publicity bureau in the
association. The Western States spend hundreds of dollars to settle their
country which is not half so attractive as ours, but they settle it, and get
their money back in their increased business. They get marvelous and rapid
results. If California, with the hustle those folks have should unite the rainfall
of North Carolina and the climate to their hustle they would make 5 million
bales of cotton a year and spin it. On the sandy lands of this State could be
made cotton to clothe millions of people of Europe if farmers were here to use
the available cheap land. The United States makes 15 million bales of cotton a
year. The cotton States of the South constitute the only part of the globe that
makes enough cotton to satisfy its needs. In the United States we, each one of
us, use an average of about 30 pounds of cotton a year. In most of the world
the average amount of each individual is not above 3 pounds. To provide the
world liberally with cotton would take a crop of a 150 million bales a year.
North Carolina is the safest cotton State on earth, and raises more to the acre
than any other State. Half the world has never yet had half the clothes to be
comfortable because there was never enough. North Carolina is making more
cotton goods every day, and every day the commerce of the world is expanding
into the figures of gigantic importance. The work is to be done. We need more
people to do it. As far as we can see we will never reach our limit in this
State. We have land enough to stagger our conception. What we lack is people.
We need to show people that anything that can be done in any section of the
United States can be done to a little better advantage here with few
exceptions. We can make as good cantaloupes as Colorado, and a thousand miles
nearer market. Yet Rocky Ford melons are known everywhere and Scotland county
melons sell for Rocky Ford.
Thinks what rainless Montana or Idaho would do with our
rainfall and convenience to market. Yet those people are no more intelligent or
industrious than our people. They simply have to pump or drown out there, and
they pump and show other people they can pump. The Lord has been too good to
this State. Here it is not so necessary to pump, and we overlook the amazing
advantages. We do not appreciate them sufficiently to talk of them to others.
I think you understand as well as I can tell you that here
is a land of boundless possibilities. How many people could North Carolina
sustain in comfort? I would say that Belgium sustains 13 times as many people
to the square mile as we do, and they seem to live in comfort, and not so much
of natural advantage to depend on. Using Belgium as an illustration I would say
that 13 times as many people as we have now, or about 25 million, would be
about the figure I would recommend to start with. When we get that many we
could figure on how many more to think about. Belgium has about as much
territory as the coastal plain of North Carolina, and as many people as both
the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland, which is all that needs to be said about
the room for people in this State.
To promote development we must get people. I don’t count
myself an old man, yet I remember when we spoke of Ohio as out West. From the
day when this government was established it has been an average of only a
little more than three years between new States. The people make new States are
increasing faster now than ever. The new States are all made. The people will
go on making farms and factories and towns and communities, and they will
follow the lines of least resistance in finding the place if they know where
the places are. To show them is our task. To get those people is our need.
There are plenty of them to be had.
The first part of the work is to become thoroughly familiar
with the work ourselves, then to show our home people that we have here
something that should be made known to those of the big worked who are looking
for a chance to do something for themselves. We must arouse our own State that
it will help us to attract attention. Then we must go after settlers. The
papers must furnish information. The papers must arouse the enthusiasm of the
people. Then the papers must lead the campaign of publicity.
You must, each one, constitute yourselves the aggressive
agent of development of your county and your community, make your paper its
enthusiastic organ, and then as one of my darkies said one day while wrestling
with a piece of obstreperous beef, you must chaw for godsake.
When you get your job started, stay with it. Of all the
remarks that have been made about me as along as I can remember, the one that
pleased me most was that of a man who said to me, “That man never knows when to
quit.”
Friends, let us go home determined to cut out the muffler,
open the throttle wide, advising the rest of the world to excuse the dust as
North Carolina whips by.
Former President Theodore Roosevelt
