Will State Fund Six-Months of Public Education Voters Want? Jan. 29, 1919

From the University of North Carolina News Letter, Jan. 29, 1919. the question had been put to the public and the majority (of white men, basically the only ones allowed to vote in North Carolina in 1919), agreed that the school year should be six months long.

A Look Ahead

North Carolina has just voted a six-months public school term. It means $10 million instead of $7 million a year for public school support.

There is no longer any doubt about our ability to spend $10 million a year on popular education. The people that surrenders $251 million in 18 months for war support—that’s the amazing total war figure for North Carolina—can easily spend $10 million a year for common-school education, if only the problems of peace are as large in our minds as the purposes of war.

We are able; the question is are we willing? We are, if we are worthy of our Scotch ancestry.

And furthermore a million dollar endowment fund for Wake Forest, more money by many thousands for our state institutions of benevolence, technical training, and liberal arts ought all to be within the range of possibility in North Carolina in this first year of the new peace era.

The days of pint-cup thinking about the big-scale concerns of the commonwealth is at an end.