The Bulletin. 123 



around to relieve that condition, and you will find in the last analysis that the 

 men who oppose it are the men who want to charge you 20 or 25 or 30 per 

 cent interest. 



Q. What effect will it have on the building and loan associations? 



Mr. Bailey: None at all. They simply take a mortgage and you pay 

 your dues, and fees if you are delinquent. The building and loan association 

 will not be able to make you pay a fee to their lawyer for looking up the title 

 to the land. 



I was going to say that I do not think we shall ever be able to get rid of 

 the shiftless fellow who gets his year's supply from the money lender to run a 

 year on. I want to see the intelligent farmers lead their brethren out of that 

 wilderness as soon as possible. If you can do it by the European scheme or 

 any other scheme, if you can slowly lead your shiftless brother out of the 

 wilderness of dependence on money lenders and put him on the respectable 

 basis of making him go into the market and get his money at 6 per cent — 

 if you can do this, you have done more to uplift the lowly than any one 

 has done. 



Mr. Shuford asks if it is compulsory. No, this law is not compulsory, and 

 should not be made compulsory. If a man wants to go on in the pi-eseut 

 system, let him go. I would suggest, however, that when they pass the law 

 they make it compulsory to this extent : When a father or mother dies and 

 leaves an estate, but no will, and the State has to take hold of that property 

 and distribute it. the State should put it through the process of the court and 

 have the title secured. In that way, in a hundred years practically all titles 

 would be assured. 



Now, I forgot to mention that you would have to pay a very small per cent 

 of the value of the land, in order to build up a fund to back up the State's 

 title. 



Q. Would it require a new survey? 



Mr. Bailey : You would have to have a new survey made in case of any 

 disputes about the boundaries. I would advise every man to have his land 

 surveyed when buying laud. There is nothing that assures a man so much 

 in investigating a title as to see a map of the land itself. 



The matter is not an experiment. It is a success in Illinois, it is a success 

 in Colorado, it is a success in California, it is a success in the old and con- 

 servative State of Massachusetts. It is an experiment only in tlie minds of 

 the people who are not informed on the subject. It has worked for years in 

 Australia. We are not entering upon an experiment, and so far as I can 

 see. after a thorough investigation, there are no objections that can be 

 offered that will stand the light of investigation. 



Now, let me say a word finally. We have in North Carolina a peculiar 

 State, and it is going to be a peculiar State in the respect in which I speak 

 as long as I live, and probably as long as any of us can foresee. We are so 

 fixed that we are not likely to have any great cities in North Carolina. We 

 have a rural Commonwealth. I don't know what it means to you men, but it 

 means an infinite amount to me. The destinies of the State of North Carolina 

 are always ultimately to be in the hands of a rural population. I believe 

 that the country people of North Carolina have more moral stamina than any 

 people in our cities, more than any people anywhere else in the country. I 

 would like to see the farmers of North Carolina go on, now that they are get- 

 ting themselves together not only in the magnificent power of a great organi- 

 zation, but in the more magnificent power of the unity and community of 

 intelligence. Good roads, telephones, automobiles, rural free delivery have 

 placed the scepter of power in the hands of the rural population of North 

 Carolina. Now, with that power I would like to see the agricultural -classes 

 of North Carolina demand, in the name of themselves as landowners and in 

 the name of themselves as keepers of the economic and the social life of the 

 Commonwealth, the passage of this law, and match themselves against its 

 opponents. Come down to the Legislature and carry it through. In the day 

 when you do it you will have demonstrated, once and forever, not only to your 

 own satisfaction, but to the satisfaction of those against you, that the scepter 

 of the Commonwealth of North Carolina has at last passed into the hands in 

 which it belongs, and into the only hands in which it is safe. 



