The Bulletin. 7 



MARKETS. 



The greatest asset of any agricultural community is a good local mar- 

 ket. There was a time when the Worth Carolina farmer looked in vain 

 for a home market, but that time has passed. There was a time when 

 no one seemed to want anything we had to sell, but economic conditions 

 have so changed that nothing short of a national calamity is likely to 

 reduce the present demand for the products of the JSTorth Carolina 

 farm. 



In respect to local markets, North Carolina is unexcelled and rarely 

 equaled, by any state in the Union. We have no great metropolis like 

 Baltimore or Washington to handle the bulk of our farm products, but 

 we do have a large number of thriving cities. — Asheville, Gastonia, Char- 

 lotte, Winston, Salisbury, Greensboro, Monroe, Durham, Raleigh, Wil- 

 mington, Goldsboro, JSTew Bern, Wilson, Rocky Mount, Tarboro, Kin- 

 ston, Greenville Washington, Henderson, High Point, Elizabeth City, 

 Fayetteville, and a number of others, — ranging in population from 3,000 

 to over 30,000 and scattered broadcast over the entire State. It would 

 be practically impossible for a farmer to locate in North Carolina and 

 not be within easy reach of some good home market. The day is fast 

 approaching when it will be unnecessary for the North Carolina farmer 

 to look outside the State for a market for his staple products. This 

 statement can hardly be called visionary when we note the increase in 

 number and kinds of manufactories within our borders and the large 

 towns and consequent good markets which necessarily attend these 

 manufacturing enterprises. New England is coming south with her 

 mills and markets. These industries are constantly calling for more 

 labor, and, since only white labor is wanted, a large percentage of the 

 white farmers that were on farms twenty years ago are now working 

 in the mills. The former producers of farm products have been trans- 

 formed into consumers of farm products and producers of finished mill 

 products. In other words, the mills have collected men, women, and 

 children from large extents of territory and thus made good local mar- 

 kets for those of the rural population who preferred to stay on the farm. 



North Carolina has a population of hundreds of thousands more 

 than Kansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, or Mis- 

 sissippi, and more than the states of Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, 

 Wyoming, Vermont, and Delaware all combined, with a very large per- 

 centage of it in the different liianufacturing towns. This should give 

 great emphasis to the importance of our local markets for farm products. 

 This fact is brought out clearly in the following table : 



_ Table No 1 — Showing Population of North Carolina as Com- 



pared loith Other States — 1910. 



North Carolina 2,206,287 



Tennessee 2,184,789 



Alabama 2,138,093 



Minnesota 2,075,708 



Virginia 2,061,612 



Mississippi 1,797,114 



Kansas 1,690,949 



Oklahoma 1,657,155 



Louisiana 1,656,388 



