Dr. E.C. Branson of the Extension Department of the University of North Carolina has made an extensive study of farm conditions in North Carolina, other States in the Union and in foreign countries. He knows these conditions as well as any man in the South, perhaps, and it is startling to read some figures he has made public.
Dr. Branson says there are 1,241,000 citizens in the State “who do not own a single foot of ground they cultivate, nor a single shingle of the roof over their heads.” Dr. Branson rightly contends that the matter is a very serious one, and it is little less than shocking to see comparisons made between farmers in this and other countries in the matter of land owning.
Dr. Branson’s interpretation of this condition interesting. Touching upon the reason that so many of the people of this State are under the yoke of tenancy, he says:
“The feeling for the essential power of thrift is largely lacking among the American people today. They seen their immediate needs and forget that they should be willing to forego them in view of more permanent things. The average American sees what he wants and gets it, whether it be bread, bonnets or paregoric. It is from this widespread lack of thrift that our own problem of farm and home ownership arises.”
The Charlotte News says Dr. Branson is right in his deductions, and the Charlotte contemporary sums the whole thing up with he statement that our people do not own their farms because they do not care whether they won them or not. Indifference and satisfaction with tenancy are causes, but pleasures come first.
The News says: “A vast number of these more than 1,200,000 of our people who are shiftless and homeless and landless are in that condition because they don’t care, because they are not ambitious to get out of it, and because they are entering their interests, labors, affections and determinations upon other things far less important and far less contributory to their worthiness as citizens.”
Too many people are letting pleasure interfere with other activities. They do not buy farms because they take all of their money for amusements. They want automobiles and luxuries and so long as they are in that frame of mind they do not care whether they ever had any land of their own.
From the editorial page of the Concord Daily Tribune, Wednesday, July 29, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-07-29/ed-1/seq-4/
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