Chapter III: Part 3

The audience was scarcely dismissed when a large crowd gathered at the corner of the church to ask more about certain topics which I had only the time to touch. They were seeking to discover and to interpret the meaning of life. I was invited to go home with many friends, but I could not go with all, so a compromise was effected, and several families joined, and I was the guest for the afternoon of these families. One of these families had been missionaries in China. Others had worked among the Japanese. There we were exchanging our experiences each for the edification of the other. We were all happy that our lot had been cast in these divergent directions.

I cannot continue this without becoming monotonous. I was most happily received in a great many other churches, colored as well as white. My message was generally, “The Amistad,” “The American Missionary Association,” “General O. O. Howard and Reconstruction,” “The Schools of the American Missionary Association,” “The Progress of the Colored People,” “Inter-Racial Relations,” etc. One can see a wide latitude in these subjects.

At the theaters we saw several colored stars. In Buffalo Charles Gilpin in “Emperor Jones.” Gilpin is an artist of the first magnitude, but I did not like his selection. I am not a critic of such matters, but it did seem to me that his piece was coarse. It was very popular. One could hardly find seating room in the large house where the play was given.

In New York “Shuffle ’Long” was exciting great interest. There must have been twenty or more taking part in the play, and every character was an artist. I never saw anything finer. These people played in New York in one house for nearly a year, and while the entrance fees were high the house was packed every night.

In Chicago Bert Williams was the whole attraction. I saw him at the Studebaker in “The Loop” just before his breakdown. I was told that after his death the company broke up. They could not find another “Bert Williams.” In his death the race has lost one of the greatest stars in the theatrical world, irrespective of color. It is an awful tragedy of our times that racial prejudice is blind to art when the artist happens to be colored. It is no fault of the artist that he was born colored. The theatrical field has been rather restricted so far as our colored artists are concerned, but wherever they have had the opportunity they have not been found wanting.

“Broadway Rastus and Sambo” are in a class by themselves. The play is clean and fine, every whit of it. It will cure the blues. The singers are the best on the American stage. The vaudeville is equal to any I have seen in the best white theaters.

Every place visited we met very prominent colored men and women who were formerly from North Carolina. We are compiling some interesting data on them which we hope to give to the public later.

In Cleveland we met our old friend Lawyer J. P. Green. He has been a lawyer there for forty years. He has written a splendid book of his life. He has been Recorder of Deeds in Washington, and for several terms member of the Ohio Legislature.

Mr. Charles Smith, whose parents were North Carolina people, has served on the Cleveland police force twenty-five years, and is now retired. His parents lived at Chapel Hill this state, and migrated to Oberlin where he, with several other brothers and sisters, were educated.

Mrs. Mary Talbert, of Buffalo, is President of the Negro Women’s League, which is a national organization of women. She was educated in Oberlin. Her parents migrated there before the Civil War from this state. It would take a chapter to tell what great things she has done for the colored women and what she is now doing. She is a traveler, lecturer and scholar. She has recently raised the money to have the Fred Douglass Home in Washington City as a Memorial to the greatest Negro who ever lived. It will be dedicated the 12th of August, 1922. Her husband, Mr. William Talbert, is a city official in the treasurer’s office, of Buffalo, New York.

Mrs. Clara Hardy, of St. Paul, Minnesota, a sister of Mrs. Talbert, is also a graduate of Oberlin College. She has held many places of honor in her adopted city. She is now Court Bailiff. She is a writer and speaker of no mean ability. Her home was a perfect model.

In California it was my pleasure to stop with Dr. R. R. Robinson. He is a Halifax County man. He was a student here for a number of years working his way with his hands. He laid out our walks, planted many of our older trees and helped to “Start Bricks.” He took an agricultural course at the A. and T. College in this state and went to Tuskegee, where he taught several years. He married a North Carolina girl from Bethel, who was a trained nurse. Later he went to Nashville, Tennessee, and took a course in medicine. After graduating he practiced medicine in Brunswick, Ga., through the flue, and was very successful. After the world war he went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was there when the riot broke out. He saved his life by hiding in the woods three days, he and his wife. He lost all his office fixtures and medical instruments, and every remnant of personal apparel. He is now a very successful physician in Los Angeles, California.

I have given only an outline of some impressions of my trip to California with the hope that it may inspire some reader to know, to go, and to acquire a larger vision of the world and of life.

FARM LIFE

For many years the farmer has been the laughing stock of the country. The conduct of his farm and his business methods have brought him more gibes and thrusts than are brought to any other professional class. The late Booker T. Washington described the characteristics of his class many years ago. The poor old mule or horse and often the ox, hitched to a single plow, scratching the earth with as much effectiveness as an old Plymouth Rock rooster would scratch for newly planted oats. The farmer follows behind this slow plodding plow in tatters and rags, illy fed, too often diseased with hook worm or some other infectious malady.

His road sides and ditch banks for ten or twenty feet back are filled with weeds and shrubby growth to sap the vitality from the growing crops in their proximity. He has stagnant pools all over his patch in wet weather to further deplete the growth of his crops that may be left from the weeds by the roadside and ditch banks.

His home, the home of the old farmer, is the last thing to which any attention need be given. He has followed his methods for “Fifty years or more.” He has cotton right up to the door, potatoes, peanuts or corn filling the yard. No place is left for flowers or ornamentation of any sort. The old log house, just a place in which to sleep and in which to hide when it storms outside. It has only two rooms for a large family. The old man is in tatters, the wife is in tatters and the children are in tatters, I have seen many, the least of the little ones, as naked as they came into the world.

The implements of such a farmer never saw shelter or protection from the weather from the time they were bought from the store until they had been disintegrated by rust and rot and had gone back into the original mother earth to rest forevermore.

The farmer himself had a personality that was uninviting and dirty. He thought the good Lord had created him for just the sort of life he was eking out, and he eschewed all progress. Good roads and decent schools were things he never needed and he would not consent for such improvements if they cost him anything. The old mongrel hen was good enough because she could roost in the trees and lay at the same time. The pinewood rooters were all right because they could make their living by eating pine roots and other people’s crops. A half dozen dogs were useful to feed. The old cow was still kept in the family because of the ancestral history and not because of her utility.

Slipshod methods in business have been the handicap of more farmers than all the evils attending them. We very often receive congratulatory letters from business men on our farmers’ programme and at the same time these business men lament the fact that our farmers’ business methods are so poorly managed.

Not long ago we received notice that two of the wealthiest farmers, Negro farmers, in Georgia had died. They were reputed to be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash besides the great land holdings and other property they owned. Later when their estates were settled up their business was in such a tangled condition, all interwoven with that of their neighbors’, that there was nothing left for the wife and children. I hope that we do not have in North Carolina such tangles as the above. Whatever else the farmer does he ought to keep his business straight. We have found out through our Federal Farm Loan Organization that many farmers have bought and paid for farms and have paid taxes on these farms for twenty years, but it would take a “Philadelphia Lawyer” to find out whether the legal owner was the farmer, the banker, or the land company, or the merchant. That is bad business. Any man who mortgages his farm after he has paid for it seriously jeopardizes his future as far as his farm is concerned. If you have debts that must be met you had better sell a portion of your farm outright and keep the other clean and clear. The mortgage business is a bad business for the average farmer to take into his partnership. The merchants, the business men, the state government and national government, are all emphasizing every movement tending to the exit of this mortgage system. The farmer, first of all, should give it a hard kick.

It is a matter of education first. These farmers’ meetings give us an opportunity to inform ourselves. Our schools and our colleges are helping us to get informed. The local conferences have no other purpose than to help you to be informed on farm and business matters relative to your farm. Bulletins sent out by the State and National governments are among the greatest educational agencies. They are all practically free. The farmer _who does not and will not_ take advantage of such agencies of information is certainly destined to be at the foot of the ladder; and there is where he belongs. The farmer who is given all the agencies and says he will not pull himself up ought to go down. The sooner he goes with that spirit the better, so that some other man can take his place and make good. I still see some of these old timers carrying water across the field a half mile away, still taking care of the family wash down by the river side, still holding on to the old ash pile. These relics have been heirlooms in the family and we are reluctant to let them go. It takes some spirit, some purpose and a great will to tear away from these old traditions. It must be done if we are going to advance. We must learn the lessons of experience. They have been sad lessons to many farmers. These farmers’ conferences are bringing to you lessons of scientific farming. Let the traditions go to the wind and take hold of the new problems in your farming and farming business that will bring success, happiness and a life.

Today as never before the farmer is coming into his own. Watch the agricultural papers and magazines. Visit our county and state fairs. See the interest and note the comparisons in our community fairs. Progress is in the air. If there are those who do not believe it, they will believe it, and feel the impress of the upward move, or they must get out of the business. Any farmer, white or colored, who does not line up with the best farming methods of the community is bound to lose out on his farm. The lessons may be hard, but as a class of farmers you must get these lessons.

The first lesson that must come to every farmer is that he must line up or unite with other farmers in the prosecution of his work. Every industry is organized except that of farming. The farmer produces his crops, and, unorganized, sells them to any bidder who comes along and takes his price or nothing. Organization will help the farmer to get the best price for his products. No man works very long by himself at anything. You cannot make it alone. Coöperation is the word. You get coöperation by organization. Every industry that is worth the name is organized.

Organization helps you to buy as well as it helps you to sell. It will get you the lowest prices for what you have to buy, and the highest prices for what you have to sell. Single handed you pay what is charged and sell it for what you can get, much or little. The government is fostering the Federal Farm Loan Organization in order to put the farmer on his feet. Are you using that organization? The state is encouraging farm unions. They can be formed in every community where you can find ten men, _ten real men_. Are you using this organization? Some communities are using them very effectively. Our own Federal Farm Loan Organization, the Tri-County Federal Farm Loan Organization, of Bricks, N. C., has put into Negro farms and farm improvements about seventy-five thousand dollars and has applications for nearly as much more. Do we have your application?

Let us illustrate what we want to impress relative to coöperation and organization. A few years ago two renters came to the Brick School farm. Each had one horse. The wives had a lot of small children and could not be expected to do very much on the farm. One day I saw a team of two horses plowing. The two men had united their horses and were plowing their ground with a double team. One was plowing and the other man was clearing up the ditch banks. They worked tandem all summer and seemed to get fine results. They were happy in their work and each was company for the other.

A few years ago we needed here on the Brick School farm a peanut thresher. No one could get the thresher alone, so an organization was perfected and a peanut thresher was bought for two hundred dollars. This thresher did fine work for many years, and brought the stockholders a nice little revenue as long as it was in service. I cannot see why a few men in every community cannot unite their efforts and get everything they need on their farms.

Every time I go to Rocky Mount I see scores and scores of wagons on the road hauling tobacco to market. These wagons go in groups for company and mutual help. I have counted as many as twenty in one group, and I am sure the different groups represent a certain community. These communities of small farmers ought to unite and buy jointly a truck. Some of these grouped teams travel, to my personal knowledge, thirty miles with their tobacco. This trip takes two days and one night to land the sale. The teams and the men alike are unfit for work for several days thereafter. Count the cost of man, wagon and animals. The automobile will do the same work in a few hours and be ready instantly for other work. If the farmer drives his wagon half of his time on the road is lost driving this way and that getting out of the road for trucks and automobiles. If you cannot put your products on the market as fast as your neighbor you cannot compete with him. That is all. If you cannot do it single handed unite your forces. That is the commonest of common sense.

Farmers cannot hire ditching done any more. Ditching with pick and shovel is a past art. You cannot pay the price, and you cannot find the ditcher. Ditching is now a profession. The last time we had our work done by hand the gentleman came in a large Buick, worked a few hours for a few days and the job was done. The element of drudgery is too great. We are living in an age of steam and gas and power. Why strain the muscles when you can turn the throttle with the weight of one finger and the work is done? You can buy a machine ditcher, drawn by horse power, for as little as forty dollars. If done with hired help it does not take but a few yards to cost forty dollars. Two mules and a machine ditcher will make more ditches in a day than ten men can make in a week. Here the drudgery is eliminated. Any boy can drive the team. Why not join your forces and buy a ditcher or buy it by yourself? A dozen peanut growers will pay more to thresh their peanuts in one year than a whole peanut outfit will cost. At the same time it is yours and you can thresh your peanuts when you please to do it. You will have the outfit for many years, depending upon the care you give it. We are paying now around ten dollars a cord for cutting wood. The best woodcutters cannot cut more than two cords of wood in the woods a day. Do you know that you can buy a wood saw that will fell the tree and cut up the wood, and that one man can cut as much as fifteen cords in one day? Muscular strength and drudgery are again eliminated. Why not a few of you unite your forces and buy a machine, and in a few days lay in all the wood you need for the winter and summer use? Do you like to trudge along the old way because it is traditional? I do not know of anything more annoying than to have to run to the woods or wood pile morning, noon and night, to cut wood for the preparation of the meal. To me it would be enough to spoil the temper of a saint.

Here is a fine proposition suggested to me by a former Brickite. I am not sure that it is original with him, but it is a fine proposition and I am passing it along:

The average farmer who is working on his own farm or farming on his own account must grow not less than four or five hundred bushels of peanuts yearly or more. Some, to my knowledge, grow eight hundred and a thousand bushels. It usually costs twenty-five cents a sack to thresh this amount. One sack holds about four bushels. It will cost twenty-five dollars to thresh one hundred sacks or four hundred bushels. Form a company of sufficient numbers and let them pay for their stock exactly what they would pay to an outsider for threshing their peanuts. If properly handled it would pay for itself in one year and after that it ought to clear a dividend.

There is one outstanding difficulty in this as in nearly everything in which we engage in coöperative manner. That one man who will take the leadership. Where is he? He must be unselfish, honest and level-headed.

I am speaking especially with reference to farmers who have limited means and not much help. Coöperation and organization ought to mean more than a little partnership. To organize and coöperate for community uplift and progress takes a lot of intelligence and honesty. I would not impugn your citizenship and standing in the community to say that you lacked either as farmers. It is a fact that most of us as farmers are hard to understand some of the simplest business relations. When the business demands that we shall pay our bills by a bank check and require a receipt, and that all these operations should be booked, and when an auditor is called in to balance our accounts and check up our mistakes we are too quick to think that our honesty is questioned. There is no other way to do business when others are involved in that business. _The honest man wants to be checked up._ It gives him a standing that nothing else will. Treasurers and secretaries of any organization, whether churches, Sunday Schools, secret orders, debating societies, or what not, have no business keeping other people’s money in their personal possession. The banks are the national depositories for all such organizations and other people’s money ought to be kept there.

It should not only be put in the bank, but it ought to be put there to the credit of the institution to which it belongs. This may not be good farming, but it is good business. I know of at least one man who went to the penitentiary for using other people’s money for only a few days and could not replace it. Organizations and companies should demand cancelled checks and receipts for all expenses every so often in a joint meeting. If officers count this an infringement upon their personal integrity dismiss them and get officers who do not so regard it. It is the only way to do business.

We do not organize more and do not succeed better because we lack faith in each other. This is perfectly natural. The Negroes have been schooled in credulousness for a great many years. The encumbrance of so long an inheritance cannot be so easily thrown off. Expect the best that is in your neighbor and your neighbor will prove up to your highest expectation. You not only make your neighbor better by your good thoughts of him, but you add to your own spiritual and mental growth incalculably. You grow yourself.

Farmers must buy modern machinery for their farm. It is the best investment you can make. Corn planters, cotton planters, gang plows, and machinery of every sort that will save you worry and steps should be bought. You cannot afford to farm without these implements. If you do you must be left behind in the occupation of farming. You can not make it. I think a farmer who can buy an automobile ought to be able to buy a tractor engine. With a tractor engine you can plow, harrow, and plant your ground while your neighbor is breaking his ground, and you have beaten him a hundred miles in the manner in which you have prepared the soil. At the close of the day you are not too tired to go with your family to the moving picture show or to some community entertainment where you may get an inspirational uplift for the next day’s work. Look at your neighbors. That is what they do and keep ahead of you.

I think the farmer who is making good ought to buy a Ford car. I saw a big farmer the other day who lived out about eight miles from Rocky Mount. He was driving a horse and buggy. I asked him how much money he had cleared the year before on his farm and he said that he had cleared over and above all expenses about three thousand dollars. It took him a good half day to drive to Rocky Mount for his plow point. He might have saved the trip or run over there in twenty minutes and made his purchase and had the rest of the day for work on his farm if he had owned a Ford car. I am not arguing that one should purchase modern machinery with which to facilitate his work in order to give him more time to be idle. It will give him more time to do the things that machinery cannot do. The good farmer never has idle time. Time spent at a farmers’ conference is not idle time. The matter of getting the latest and best information on farming methods is the most important thing that a farmer can do. One cannot put into practice on his farm or anywhere else what he does not know.

Improved machinery means more intelligence on the farm. Farming is the most complicated and diversified occupation there is in the world. It takes a horticulturist to grow apples to perfection. It takes a dairyman of the best type to put milk and butter on the market to meet state and county inspection and public approval. It takes a mechanic of the highest quality to keep up repair on the farm of fences, houses and machinery. It takes a bookkeeper to keep farm accounts and records. He must be something of a Wall Street broker to keep up with market prices so that he will know how and when to sell his farm products. He must be an electrician and an engineer as well if he is going to compete with his neighbor who lights his house with a Delco light and runs all of his machinery with power.

When you come to live stock you have a world without end of necessary information for your success. Cattle, cows, sheep, hogs, horses, poultry, bees, and scores of special strains of each, every one of them requiring special treatment and expert knowledge. If the farmer has the inclination and the will he can become specialist in any one of these lines. There are men who do nothing but breed the special brands of high bred stock. There are those who breed bees and who supply the world’s demands of purebred queen bees. The higher you go in this specialization the more you become the world’s greatest benefactor.

I have been studying about the value of limes upon the soils. To be a first-class farmer you must be a chemist of the first magnitude. You as farmers, have no idea of the part that chemicals must play in the production of your crops. The fertilizer that will bring to perfection one crop will kill another. You must know the fertilizer and know the nature of the soil on which this fertilizer is to be used and you must know how well a certain grade of fertilizer is adapted to the seed you want to produce. Every first-class farm is a chemical laboratory and the farmer is a chemist. Every first-class farmer must be something of a physicist as well. Every first-class farmer must be something of a doctor as well for all animals are subject to bodily disorders that must be corrected by medical advice. He must also be a weather prophet. You cut your hay and let the storm come on it and see where your profits go. You must be able to read the signs in the heavens and the published directions. Your job is a big one requiring as you go up the most complicated knowledge about every thing under the sun. I have said nothing about plant diseases and insect life affecting the success of the farmer nor that world or destruction hid in the unseen bacteria. As farmers you may be sluggards moving along on the lowest possible level of life or you may be a prince living in a palace. There are a lot of us on the lower levels who ought to move up to the higher gradations. You can get more out of your farm life but you must _know how_.

If you expect to work simply as a hireling you will not need this information to any great extent. You only have to do as you are told to do as a hireling. You may never as a hireling be asked to use even your own initiative in an emergency. If you expect to manage a farm you must have initiative and some executive ability. Twenty acres or more constitute a farm. If you have that much land you are a farmer and you must move on your own initiative.

The days of ignorant farming are passing. The government cannot and does not encourage ignorant farming. The times are demanding better schools and better roads. These two improvements are here and the farmers must pay the bills. Your farm must make you a living and enough more to meet these public expenses. If your intelligence will not make the ends meet, then before a great while the taxes will eat you up and your land will go into the ownership of men who have the intelligence to make the land meet the bills for public improvements. As farmers you must subscribe to every public improvement that comes into your community. You must buy stocks, bonds and meet public taxes. These improvements all increase the value of your farm. Selfishness and personal ends must not hold back community progress in any line. You are a part of the community and when you hold back its progress you defeat yourself. Not to know is no longer an excuse. _You must know._ You cannot stay at home and pride yourself that you never go to a farmers’ meeting and expect to know. Wherever people are gathered together to discuss public problems there you may go to learn. There is where you get in the spirit of things. There is where you get knowledge. There is where you get the inspiration. The spirit of rivalry and competition will go a long way to help us in our farm operations. There is a farmer in Nash County who thinks he can beat every one else in the county growing watermelons. There is a score of farmers in his community quietly trying to beat _him_. The result is that there are better watermelons grown in that community than in any other community in the county.

RURAL LIFE
(continued)

FARMERS’ CONGRESS, AUGUST 16, 17, 1921

It is worth very much to any man who is interested in agricultural operations to take a leisurely trip four hundred miles through North Carolina in an automobile. A party of us left Bricks July 11th and joined Rev. P. R. DeBerry in Raleigh. Taking his big Studebaker car, we were off the 12th for a two days trip among the colored farmers of the central and western part of the state.

We were not touring, nor sightseeing, nor joy riding. Our one purpose was to study the land, the people and the conditions under which our colored farmers were living. We wanted to see what conditions were compatible and what were not compatible. The trip took us through about eighteen counties.

We started our study in Edgecombe County. This is the county in which Brick School is located. This county should be the first in all of its operations because of its educational advantages and the inspiration it ought to receive from this institution.

There are in the county now about 25,000 Negroes. These Negroes own 4,000 farms and homes, numbering about 17,000 acres of land. Some individuals own as much as 500 acres. We are sorry to say that most of this land is not under the most improved condition. We have not been able to have in this county a full time farm demonstration agent. The Brick School and our farm meetings have given very much impulse to farm operations, but even this has not reached all the farmers in ways to stimulate them to their greatest efforts. We lack time, money and authority that ought to come directly from the state. It has been demonstrated in other counties that nothing is so valuable in stimulating the farmers as a real, live, wide-a-wake farm demonstration agent who lives and works among the farmers every day. A farm not half developed and not improved is not an asset to the state nor to the owner. It ought to come into the highest state of production, then only does it become wealth.

The school population of this county is about 7,000 children with an enrollment of about 5,000 children, whose average attendance is about 3,000 under the compulsory law. The county has a colored school supervisor who gives the work all of her time. Mrs. Carrie Battle has revolutionized the school work under her charge. She is insistent and tireless. Every one knows her and respects her. Her office is in the courthouse at Tarboro. The white county officials hold her in the highest esteem. The teachers and schoolhouses rank among the best in the state for colored people.

I do not know anything that affects public improvements and progress more than good roads. The farmers are generally slow to vote for good roads, but no class of people appreciate them more than the farmer when they are built. The area of the county is 515 square miles, and yet I have traveled over every part of the county and over some of the best roads in the state. The local papers tell us that a cement road leading across the county is now in process of construction. This road will eventually lead into Raleigh, some fifty miles away.

Halifax County has an area of 681 square miles, with a colored population of nearly 30,000 souls. They own 70,000 acres of land. Their school population is around 10,000, with an enrollment of about 7,000, and an average attendance of about 3,000 children. This county has a colored school supervisor who has done a very fine work among the colored people. The colored people meet every condition set by the state and county for the erection of colored schoolhouses. A few months ago they had raised their part for twelve Rosenwald schoolhouses, and had to wait on the county and state to recoupe their part. They will meet any condition set for them. The colored population is not congested in any one part of the county. They are located in every section of the county and about evenly distributed. Their homes, for the most part, are clean, and their houses are well constructed and show signs of thrift and happiness. Very few colored farmers have migrated from this section of the state. Those who have gone from Halifax County can hardly be missed. This in itself shows that the racial equilibrium is not much disturbed.

Nash County, which joins us on the west, is one of our best farming communities. The fifteen thousand Negroes in the county own more than 25,000 acres of land and more than 2,000 farms. They are a progressive lot of colored people. They have a number of independent schools aside from the public schools. They have excellent churches, and their homes are being built on modern lines. This county has twelve miles of cement road running from Rocky Mount to Nashville, the county seat. The contour of the county is rolling and red clay. The important towns are Nashville, Spring Hope, Middlesex, and let us say a part of Rocky Mount. There is a great deal of the land in this county uncultivated and developed. It waits only for the man who has the brain and the energy. The county has no county farm demonstration agent nor colored school supervisor. I do not know what can be more advantageous to the success of the colored farmer than the addition of a colored farm demonstration agent and a colored school supervisor. While the preachers are ministering to the spiritual needs of our folks and the teachers are directing their intellectual life, and the state and county health offices are looking after the health of the masses, the farm demonstration agents and the colored school supervisors are daily giving inspiration and purpose to rural life everywhere. The state and county are the direct beneficiaries of the work of these two agents. Having five children go to school every day from one family where formerly only three went means very much for the literacy of the state.

Teaching boys how to grow forty bushels of corn on the same acreage where their fathers could grow only ten is adding very much to the wealth of the state. The community which does not appreciate and recognize this truth is impervious to eternal values. Every farmers’ conference tells how much increase there has been in corn, peas, cotton, peanuts, oats, rye, tobacco, and other things under the direction of our farm demonstration agents.

We pass through Franklin County into Wake. Every one knows that Raleigh is in Wake County. As soon as you arrive in Wakefield or Zebulon, both small country hamlets, you know that you must be about fifteen miles from the capital city. Hard-surfaced roads present such a temptation to touch the accelerator just a little, and little, and again a little more, and again, if you do not happen to see any motorcycles lurking about. The colored population of this county is less than 30,000, and they own less than 6,000 farms. They own about 60,000 acres of land. Their school population is about 10,000, with an enrollment of about 7,000, and an average daily attendance of about 4,000 children. We ought to expect the school average to be higher, of course, being adjacent to the seat of state authority. Wake County has had for a number of years two colored agents, in the person of Miss Delany for the schools, and Professor Roberts for the farmers. They have gone in and out of the farm homes daily carrying inspiration and encouragement and inspiring hope. The daily contact with these personalities has been the leavening power in the county. We have seen for a number of years the finest products that could be produced on exhibition in our colored State Fair. In the city market in Raleigh every day in the year one will see these same fine farm products. They will do justice to any racial group. Here one will see what the agents are doing to help the farmers to conserve and preserve their products. The homes of the farmers show neatness and cleanliness. We have been greatly surprised to see how far some of our farmers have gone in beautifying their homes and premises. _This is as it should be._

The excellent public schools of Raleigh, the fine institutions represented by St. Augustine School and Shaw University have given the colored rural population a great inspiration. The well ordered homes of some of their city cousins have also been an inspiration to the colored rural population.

There are so many opportunities, educational and inspirational, about the state capitol, that it is almost like living under the shadows of a great university. Then the main thoroughfares are so fine that those living in the most remote parts of the county ought to have no difficulty or count it no hardship to go to the city for lectures, recitals, conventions, conferences, and for general consultation with those under state authority. These opportunities are the best sort of unearned increment.

We pass from Wake County to Chatham County. There are no less than 8,000 colored people in Chatham County. They own about 2,000 farms and homes, and about 30,000 acres of land. The two small towns, Moncure and Haywood, have quite a settlement of colored people. At Haywood they seem rather isolated and some of the homes had a progressive appearance. The disadvantages under which we started, the social, industrial, business and educational status, in which we find ourselves should not be allowed to differentiate from other people who live in the same community and in the same environment.

If other racial groups living in the same community have their homes painted, flowers in their gardens and other ornaments that add to home life and beauty, it is perfectly right that we should catch the inspiration. If we cannot be leaders in these matters, we ought to be good followers. We have the labor, and a gallon of paint and a paint brush will work wonders in a few hours. If we cannot keep the yard fence looking decent and in repair let us move it. We must take personal pride in the community in which we live. It is the best sort of civic pride. In this community we ought to prove our best selves. Chatham County has disgraced itself recently with a lynching bee.

Crossing the river into Lee County we were very much impressed with the sign, “You are welcome to Lee County.” This large sign was in a most conspicuous place and we interpreted it to mean what it said, and that we were included in the invitation. We stopped to ponder and to contrast the difference. We have been in parts of our country where the overhead signs read, “Nigers and dogs not wanted.” We have seen in other parts where land was advertised for sale and the biggest asset in the advertisement was the absence of Negroes from the community.

There are less than 4,000 colored people in Lee County. They own about 700 farms and about 8,000 acres of land. The area of the county is very small, and the entire population less than 15,000.

I have been for several years on a local inter-racial committee. Since the world war it has been necessary to have such a committee in the South on inter-racial relations. I am also on the state inter-racial committee. That means that I am always looking out for the small things and the larger things, too, as we make our daily rounds, that count for good will and peace between the two racial groups. At Sanford we saw a large number of colored men at work as carpenters and bricklayers on some of the finest buildings going up in the city. I was shown others and advised that they were the work of colored carpenters, under colored contractors. A former Brick School boy was foreman on one of the jobs. These contractors and workmen were personal friends of mine, and later I had the pleasure of seeing some of their own homes and business. They were among the best in the community. Broadway, Cumnock, and Jonesboro are progressive communities in which the colored people are doing well. I was advised that only a few of the colored people had migrated from this part of the state. It means that they are happy and that they can buy homes in communities that are compatible. After all, we must have compatibility in our homes and in our neighborhood, in our community, in our relations with the outside world. I would not live a week in a community that was not compatible. To receive a gibe and a thrust every time one steps on the street, or into a corner grocery, or on the public highway, by other racial groups is contemptible, and especially so when one knows that there is absolutely no redress for that sort of contempt. One wonders what the preachers are preaching or what the schools are teaching. Patriotism, love of community, social and personal progress are of slow growth in such communities where there is so much incompatibility.

All the world has heard of Moore County. It is an area of 798 square miles. The main line of the Seaboard railroad crosses it from north to south. It is crossed and recrossed by Page’s railroad. Here is Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Jackson Springs, Carthage, and scores of other smaller towns. The names are common to the resorter and tourist. It has a population of less than 6,000 Negroes, who own about 16,000 acres of land. Excluding the villages and towns, twenty-five years ago I would not have paid the taxes for all the rest of the land. Twenty-five years ago I went all over the county, and one could scarcely get anywhere for the sand and roads were practically unknown. Sand, sand, sand—everywhere sand.

Moore County is now the veritable garden spot of the state. The local intersecting railroads have changed hands. Fine public highways have been built in every direction. The tourist and capitalist, making their annual visits to this section, have discovered in that vast land undiscovered possibilities of wealth. Thousands and thousands of acres of this waste have been converted into peach orchards. Peach packing stations have been built all along the track for the convenience of the peach shippers. I was told that several trains of peaches were shipped daily to the Northern market. Where the land was not already planted I saw the Fordson tractors getting it ready for fall planting. Most of this undeveloped land was what is called cut-over land. It is absolutely barren except for a lot of shrubby pines, shrubby oaks and some native tough grasses and wild composite flowers. Tupelle and poplar may be found in the swamps and lowlands.

I wondered as I passed along to get a bit of information here and there, if our colored people were learning to do by doing. I wondered if they were getting the inspiration. Sixteen thousand acres of land ought to be the nucleus of an industry. A hundred acres ought to make a good peach farm. What an opportunity for the colored man who has brain and industry and some little money and a great ambition. We have not the faintest idea of the wonderful opportunities in the millions of acres of the waste lands of our southern country. These lands are just begging the capitalist to come and invest in the undeveloped resources of its bosom. It is there, but it just needs the brain and some little money. The brawn is there, too; it just needs the intelligent direction. Compatible conditions will keep it there.

The land in Moore County will never again sell for one dollar an acre while peaches are selling for three dollars a bushel at the tree. Most of the trees bear from two to five bushels of peaches. They are planted about fifteen feet apart. It takes about 150 trees to the acre. Any one can figure the income at that rate. These peaches ought to begin bearing in three years. There is nothing so fabulous as the income per acre from such an investment. There is nothing so sure. Some of the rows as we viewed them seemed endless. Greensboro, sixty miles away, was sending trucks to the peach area daily for loads of peaches for the local market, in Greensboro. A little while back one of these peach orchards sold for $85,000.

The business of supervision has become so important that many of the growers combine and employ an expert from the State Department of Agriculture. They can pay more than the state can pay for such expert supervision. The work is as yet in its infancy. We are advising our Negro boys to go to our best agricultural schools and specialize in this department of fruit cultivation so that they can manage such enterprises as these large fruit farms. They do not seem to get the vision. As long as our folks are buying farms, and they are increasing their holdings every year, there are vast opportunities for their services as horticulturists. Ten Negro farmers in Moore County, North Carolina, ought to be able to get together and make peach-growing worth while to the group. Their traditions and the local environment have taken away their inspiration. They also lack knowledge. They have not been schooled in initiative of this sort. Coöperation with most of us has been a doubtful experiment. We must learn and grow more before we can take hold of the larger industries that require large coöperation. Experience and knowledge are vital to the success of any enterprise. The great enterprises of the North have been growing coöperatively since the country was discovered. The South has been giving its time to matters of social adjustments. The adjustment of its racial groups has been its nightmare by day as well as by night. Hatreds, jealousies, prejudices, have entered too much into our daily contact and relations to allow us to grow nationally. The conditions of all progress are in education, industry, compatibility.

I read somewhere that the conscious mind may not get a true perspective and may error. Still it is conscious. When I read in the papers every day and note all the deviltries perpetrated here and there all over the South, I wonder that we have all gotten along as well as we have, and especially do I wonder how the Negro has made such progress. Then I hear that the subconscious mind never errors. The conscious mind would have me riled and leaving the country, boot and baggage, when I read what is happening somewhere else outside of North Carolina. The subconscious mind comes in and says to me, when I am quiet and alone and perhaps when I am half asleep, “No, do not get discouraged.” The South is the garden spot of the world. It has the prettiest moons, the brightest days, its florescence on a thousand hills and in as many vales scatters its fragrance and beauty three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Its cataracts, rills, and springs sparkle with diamonds of beauty and health. The woods and swamps are filled with every sort of game, her rivers and lakes abound with every known fish for the sportsmen, her climate is the most equitable in the world, the rainfall the most evenly distributed, the storms not so awfully destructive, the exotic population the least of that of any other similar area, with an adapted vegetation from the highest altitudes to the equator. The contour of the surface is high or low as one likes it. Smooth or rough. The Blue Ridge Mountains afford a retreat from the Northern winters as well as a retreat from the Southern sun. Her altitude, pine forest and splendid waters are an asset that no other country in the world can equal. In the next few years more than fifty millions of dollars will be spent in North Carolina alone for public roads. Steam roads and electric cars will soon intersect every nook and corner of the state. The most inaccessible parts of the state and the South will become the public highways. Automobiles and trucks will bring the most remote farms to the city markets daily. The telephone and radio are already available in our country homes.

In the next two years North Carolina will spend four millions of dollars for Negro health and education. This has already been passed by state Legislature. This amount of money put into health and education in any community will make a change. It shows an enlightenment of public sentiment and a change of attitude on the part of the citizens of the state. Progress cannot and will not be thwarted. Education, enlightenment, Christianity—this trio is the saving grace of any community. I do not know of any place better than North Carolina. _This is my subconscious mind._ It never errors.

We leave Moore County and cross into Montgomery County. This is what we call a hickory country. The land is rocky and red with hills almost precipitous. We could not visit many of the colored people because of the inaccessibility of most of the rural homes. The colored population is about 4,000, and they pay taxes on about 8,000 acres of land. They are engaged in general agriculture, corn, tobacco and cotton being their prevailing crops. They have a few cotton factories in the town of Troy and more in the county, and many lumber mills. The Pedee River and its tributaries furnish a large part of the power for the factory work. The county has a real gold mine which was profitably worked a few years ago. It was my pleasure to visit it some years ago when it was in operation. It has been abandoned, and the machinery and buildings show signs of a past prosperity.

The town of Troy has one of the two wooden courthouses left in the state. It was being replaced by a modern stone structure. It will cost when finished about $200,000. I am told that the stone in the construction of this building was taken from the site on which the building stands. It rather reminds one of our Northern centers in that it stands at the juncture of a number of the public roads leading into the town.

The Peabody School, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association of New York, is the only institution in all of that part of the country giving anything like a high school education to the colored people in all of that section of the country. The school is beautiful for its location just out of the city. It fronts a public road and is on high ground with splendid drainage. Several of their buildings are new and up-to-date for school purposes.