By Bion H. Butler
What brought you South?” people continue to ask me and I answer the same old story until I could say it in my sleep. Climate. That’s the explanation. Climate in winter was the impelling force. Then I found that climate in summer is another inducement, and by the time I had that thoroughly fixed in my mind I discovered that North Carolina has the makings of one of the most appealing states of the Union, and that means of the world.
Climate is the beginning, and as near as I can cipher out from my experience in other states that tell of their good climate, North Carolina has the best. I have tried all the others I know. Having settled that phase another thing that satisfies me is the people. In the North and every other place I have been, the immigration movement has displaced to many of the native-born inhabitants and brought too many strangers who speak a strange language and have strange customs and habits. I like the more undiluted American strain that I find in North Carolina. They can all talk the tongue that is familiar to me, and they are all familiar with the doctrine and practices I grew up with.
Then I realized that in North Carolina I had escaped from the narrowness of the big cities and the crowded condition of the more populous states of the North, and that is a big advantage. North Carolina is pushing ahead industrially at a marvelous rate, but in doing so it is starting up little centers of activity all over the state, avoiding that difficult problem that centralization in big communities invites. an example is the new cotton mill starting up at Hemp a few miles above Pinehurst. Instead of heading for Charlotte or Greensbroo where other mills are located, the builders pick an ideal spot in the country and put up their mill,. They will have a model rural community, with all the outdoor advantages, and all the charm of country life along with the facilities for carrying on the business of manufacturing cotton products. North Carolina is the most rural of all the states that have reached any considerable development and population, and it gives promise of continuing along that line. Charlotte and Winston-Salem have exceeded the 50,000 mark in population, but that is a long way from the crowded big cities of the other industrial states. To my mind this indicates a better balanced society and better compensated industrial relations than is possible where country and town life are separated by those sharply defined lines drawn where the towns are big. In ever state that has big cities those big cities constitute a permanent and decisive line of friction with the rest of the state, North Carolina interests me because I can still go into the towns and know folks there instead of being a lost dog in a strange garret. People know each other better in North Carolina than where the cities have led them to cut out neighborly acquaintance.
Then another thing that I like about North Carolina is that it is emphatically a young man’s state, and while I am not always going to be a young man, I am as young now in my relations with the life I mix with as I was when I came here., But the boys find the world is open for them int his state, and that here a population of two and a half million is starting on a broad scale the utilization of natural resources so vast that no man guesses at the limit of the work of construction and production that is ahead. North Carolina has so much within itself that any young chap has his chance at his door, and industry is calling to him from all sides to get into the game.
Gradually the proposition shaped itself up. At the start it seemed to say that here was an excellent climate after a man had reached a point where he felt like giving up his work and retiring to some corner where he could live on climate alone. Then it was evident that climate and industry both could be found in North Carolina and that folks could live in the climate and carry on their work and business as well and as profitably as in those colder regions that are supposed to be the area of successful business pressure. Steadily, and with much rapidity the people of the North are learning of the fields that are available in North Carolina and the stream this way is getting bigger all the time and vastly more forceful. The people coming are of a good class, and that is another reason why I lek the South. Few foreigners come with the migration from the North, and that few is as a rule of good quality. And so in many ways the South is broadening, and with the use of its resources is following along the satisfying lines of the North but avoiding the objectionable. And when I get the case summed up, the whole situation resolves itself down to “Why shouldn’t a man live in the South if he has nothing to tie him to the more disagreeable climate of the North?”
From page 4 of the Pinehurst Outlook, May 3, 1924
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