6 The Bulletin. 



fancied scarcity of the necessaries of life. The mightiest factors in 

 the world's civilization to-day, then, are the smokehouse and the granary. 

 Good farming, therefore, is the foundation on which all real progress 

 must he made. 



AGRICULTURAL ADVANTAGES IN NORTH CAROLINA. 



LOCATION. 



The fondest hopes of the farmer may be realized right here in Xorth 

 Carolina. Forty years ago many farmers very wisely left the Old 

 Xorth State for Missouri, Kansas, ISTebraska, Iowa, etc., and there 

 homesteaded 160 acres of land that are now worth, in many cases, more, 

 than $32,000. A number of these men have sons who want to farm 

 and can give them $4,000 to $6,000 with which to purchase land and 

 equipment. But how much land can be purchased with $4,000 at $200 

 an acre? Few of them Avould be content with less than 80 acres, and 

 to purchase this, without any improvements, would require an outlay 

 of $16,000. Add $4,000 for necessary improvements, and he will have 

 spent $20,000 for his 80-acre farm, perhaps, before he has reaped a 

 single harvest or realized a penny on his investment. It is plain, there- 

 fore, that a young man of average means in the central west must be 

 a renter if he farms at all. 



New England has nothing to offer the jJ^orth Carolina farmer, while 

 farther west and northwest the climate is too cold for any but the 

 hardiest Scandinavians or north European immigrants. In the far 

 west prices are, again, too high and competition too acute for an eastern 

 man of average means. Farther south the climate is too hot and ma- 

 laria is so prevalent that the health of a man from this latitude would 

 likely be threatened. Coming back to ISTorth Carolina, we find here all 

 the advantages the farmer has anywhere else in the country, and the 

 additional advantage of living in a state destined to become one of the 

 leading manufacturing states of the Union. 



Capital has not been slow to accept the invitation tacitly held out 

 by our location with reference to other states and our strategic position 

 with reference to the future manufacturing development of the country. 

 The 3,500,000 horse-power that but a few years ago Avere going to waste 

 along the streams of the piedmont and mountain sections of the State 

 are now being harnessed and utilized in the various manufacturing and 

 other industrial enterprises. This immense power is just on the border 

 of the cotton fields, and among the forests and the mines. Our climates 

 and soils are capable of producing more than enough to support the 

 largest possible mill population that will ever be needed to manipulate 

 the electric power generated by our streams. We have ample facilities 

 for transporting raw materials and for handling an unlimited amount 

 of finished products. INTo one is blind to our easy access to deep water 

 on the coast, the Panama Canal, and thence to the Orient. Capital 

 has seen its opportunity among us and has laid the foundation for its 

 own protection and our success. 



