THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 61 



rate for outside pauperism was 234 per 100,000 inhabitants. In 

 12 highland counties the average rate was 205. Seven of the 

 counties have rates far smaller than the state average, ranging 

 from 35 in Mitchell to 184 in Cherokee; three are just below the 

 state average ; and only two are near the bottom. 



It ought to be clear that poverty in the mountains of North 

 Carolina is actually and relatively less than elsewhere in the 

 State. Here both indoor and outside paupers in 12 counties in 

 1914 numbered only 559 in a population of 209,000 souls. 



2. In the second place, illiteracy among native whites in our 

 mountains is not more distressing than white illiteracy else- 

 where in the State. The average rate for the mountain region 

 is 15.1 per cent., due to excessive white illiteracy rates in eight 

 counties. More than one-seventh or 15.1 per cent, of all the 

 white people ten years old and older in 17 mountain counties 

 are illiterate. It is appalling; but the fact that nearly one- 

 eighth of all the white people of these ages the whole State over 

 are illiterate is also appalling. But nearly one-fifth or 18.5 per 

 cent, of all our people, both races counted, are illiterate; and 

 this fact is still more appalling. There is comfort, however, in 

 the further fact that with a single exception North Carolina led 

 the Union in inroads upon illiteracy during the last census pe- 

 riod, and we are running Kentucky a close second in Moon- 

 light Schools. 



Our mountain people are not peculiar, even in their illiteracy. 

 Sparsely settled rural people are everywhere apt to be fiercely in- 

 dividualistic, incapable of concerted effort, and unduly illiterate ; 

 both behind and beyond mountain walls, in New York State, 

 Maine, Connecticut, and North Carolina alike. The problems of 

 developing democracy in our highlands, I repeat, are state-wide, 

 not merely regional. They concern a sparsely settled rural pop- 

 ulation, socially insulated, fiercely individualistic, unduly illit- 

 erate, unorganized, and non-social, both in the mountains and 

 in the State at large. 



3. For instance, the bad eminence held by North Carolina in 

 homicide rates among the 24 states of the registration area is due 

 to the slow socialization of a population that is still nearly four- 

 fifths rural. In 1913, we led the registration states with an 

 url>;m rate of 274 homicides per million inhabitants, and a rural 



