60 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



everywhere. Otherwise we shall bring to noble effort in the 

 mountains a certain disabling attitude that is fatal to success. 



And so over against the types we find in the pages of Crad- 

 dock, Fox, Kephart, and the rest, let us set the mountain people 

 as they are related to the civilization of which they are a part. 

 I therefore urge upon your attention the fact that they are not 

 more poverty-stricken, nor more lawless and violent, nor more 

 unorganizable than the democratic mass in rural North Carolina. 



1. In the first place and quite contrary to popular notions, 

 our mountains are not a region of wide-spread poverty. In per 

 capita rural wealth Alleghany is the richest county in North 

 Carolina. Among our 100 counties, five highland counties rank 

 1st, 5th, 6th, 13th, and 14th in the order named, in the per 

 capita farm wealth of country populations; and two more are 

 just below the state average in this particular. The people of 

 these counties are not poor, as country wealth is reckoned in 

 North Carolina. They dwell in a land of vegetables and fruits, 

 grain crops, hay and forage, flocks and herds. It is a land of 

 overflowing abundance. It is not easy for such people to feel 

 that they are fit subjects for missionary school enterprises. As 

 a matter of fact, they need our money far less than they need 

 appreciative understanding and homebred leadership. Their 

 wealth is greater than their willingness to convert it into social 

 advantages. They need to be shown how to realize the possi- 

 bilities of their own soils and souls. Mountain civilization, like 

 every other, will rise to higher levels when the people them- 

 selves tug at their own boot-straps ; and there is no other way. 



Approaching the poverty of our mountain people from an- 

 other angle, let us consider indoor pauperism in 11 mountain 

 counties that maintain county homes or poor houses. The 1910 

 Census discloses an average rate for the United States of 190 

 almshouse paupers per 100,000 inhabitants. In North Carolina 

 the rate was 96 ; in these 11 highland counties it was only 79. 

 Six of the mountain counties make a far better showing than 

 the State at large. 



But we may make still another and better approach to the 

 subject of poverty in our mountains by examining the outside 

 pauper rates; better, because outside help is less repugnant to 

 the feelings than residence in the poor house. In 1914 the state 



