Dealing in round numbers, North Carolina is about one-fifth the size of Texas and has about half the population. It is a very old state, having been the seat of an established civilization 200 years ago. Texas is a new state. North Carolina was ravaged and desolated by the war of 1861-65, from her Atlantic shore to her mountain peaks, from her northernmost to her southernmost lines, and she suffered from the processes of reconstruction to a far greater extent than did Texas.
The people of Texas have never felt or seen such desolation as swept North Carolina, nor have her people ever suffered from such hardships and suffering as was the fate of the people of the Old North State, yet the taxable values of North Carolina two years ago were practically the same as were those of Texas, and now are not materially less.
There is more rich land in the Valley of the Brazos between Waco and the Gulf of Mexico than there is in the whole state of North Carolina, yet the prosperity is evident everywhere in North Carolina. The state levies no tax at all on general property, but her 4 ½ per cent bonds find eager takers in the New York market.
A few extracts from recent appropriation bills of the legislature of North Carolina will show that her legislators and legislate on liberal lines.
On March 8, 1921, they authorized a bond issue of $6,745,000 for the enlargement and improvement of state’s educational and charitable institutions, of which $1,490,000 was applied to the enlargement and improvement of the State University. On the same day an act was passed making appropriations for State institutions, and under that bill further provision was made for the University. It was given $445,000 for 1921 and $480,000 for 1922, thus the total appropriations for that institution for two years were $2,415,000, and appropriations for a score or more of other educational institutions were made on an equally as liberal basis.
The sum of $225,000 each year was appropriated for maintenance of the State Board of Health, and separate appropriations were made for the State Sanitorium and the State Laboratory of Hygiene.
North Carolina is spending $50,000,000 in the construction of durable permanent highways, and the counties of the State an equal amount. One highway has been carried to a height of 6,711 feet.
It may be asked, how is it possible to meet such expenditures?
The answer is, the people of North Carolina live at home. The traveler is rarely out of sight of a cotton factory or some other kind of factory—one county has nearly, if not quite, a hundred cotton factories.
The State spins more cotton than she grows.
Nearly every running stream in the state his harnessed to produce electric power, which is carried to factories, in some instances 200 miles.
Texas can do what North Carolina does when she re-assesses all the property in the state as North Carolina did and spins her cotton as North Carolina does, and esteems the value of State institutions as North Carolina people do.
Think of it, with one-fifth the area of Texas and one-half her population, North Carolina is leading Texas in the march of progress, and in the sphere of enlightened legislation.
--Huston Chronicle
From the editorial page of the Washington Progress, Thursday, Oct. 12, 1922
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