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Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Why Are Wisconsin Farm Families So Far Ahead of North Carolina Farm Families? Is It Home Ownership? Aug. 6, 1919

From The University of North Carolina News-Letter, Chapel Hill, N.C., Aug. 6, 1919

A Country County Survey

Here’s a hint for wide-awake county school superintendents in North Carolina.

Out in Wisconsin the school children directed by a life school officer recently took stock of the 3,412 farm homes in one county. Here is what they found.

498 country homes supplied with running water

320 had bath rooms and inside toilets

407 had power washing machines

520 had electric and acetylene lights

129 had open-air sleeping porches

850 had screened porches

918 had pianos

1,651 had daily newspapers

1,516 had current magazines

2,126 had farm papers

1,878 had automobiles

97 had gasoline tractors

139 had fruit-spraying outfits

903 had incubators

127 had milking machines

1,234 had siloes

They found 19 creameries and 28 cheese factories in this one county.

It is significant that nearly 9 out of every 10 farm homes were occupied by owners. The farm tenant homes were only 398. Nearly anything worth while can happen in an area of home-owning farmers, and nearly everything falls to pieces under the curse of excessive farm tenancy—schools, churches, whatnot.

Is there any county in North Carolina that has the home and farm equipments of this Wisconsin county?

Which one comes nearest the record of this Wisconsin county in home comforts, conveniences, and luxuries?

What are the facts indicative in this wise of county wealth and culture in the various counties of North Carolina?

The county school superintendent, teachers, and children could assemble the facts in any county in a single week.

The bare facts, whatever they are, would be tremendously informing and stimulating.

In one country county in North Carolina in 1915 we fund running water in only 9 of 3,400 farm homes.

What corps of teachers in North Carolina will undertake to make a county survey of the sort these Wisconsin teacher and school children have just published?

A sample survey card for this kind of Country Home Stock Taking will be furnished upon application to the University News Letter.

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