©Jjf ICtbrarg Hnteratty nf Nnrtlj (Harolttta (Enlkrtton nf North. Qkrnltmatta lEnontoeo by itoljn ^jtrunt ijtll nf % Qllasa of 1BB9 CG30.1 W78 1.. FOR USE ONLY IN THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://www.archive.org/details/leadershipinwarpOOwins LEADERSHIP IN WAR AND PEACE By SANFORD WINSTON The Agricultural Experiment Station of the North Carolina State College op Agriculture and Engineering L. D. Baver, Director STATE COLLEGE STATION Raleigh, N. C. SEPTEMBER. 1946 SPECIAL PUBLICATION 1 LEADERSHIP IN WAR AND PEACE By SANFORD WINSTON SEPTEMBER, 1946 SPECIAL PUBLICATION 1 CONTENTS Page Preface 5 Part I. Organization and Programs 7 Chapter 1. Introduction 9 Chapter 2. Neighborhoods and Their Leaders 11 Chapter 3. The Setting 21 Chapter 4. The Leadership Group 27 Chapter 5. Programs Presented by Leaders 33 Part II. Characteristics of Leaders 41 Chapter 6. The Factor of Residence 43 Chapter 7. Occupations 47 Chapter 8. Agricultural Operations 57 Chapter 9. Cultural Status of Leaders 69 Part III. Comparison of Leaders and Their Groups 89 Chapter 10. The Leaders and Their Groups 91 Chapter 11. Comparative Characteristics of Leaders and Groups 95 Chapter 12. Comparison of Farms and Homes of Leaders and Their Groups 107 Chapter 13. A Note on Level of Living of Families 113 Part IV. The Leaders on the Job 115 Chapter 14. The Operation of the Program 117 Chapter 15. Relationships between Leaders and Agents 125 Chapter 16. An Evaluation 133 Schedule 141 LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1. Number of Neighborhood Leaders Reported and Included in Survey, by Counties 27 Table 2. Age of Neighborhood Leaders, by Race and Sex, 1943 28 Table 3. Race of Neighborhood Leaders, by Counties, 1943 30 Table 4. Programs Presented Between January 1, 1942, and May 31, 1943, to the Neighborhood Leaders for Presentation to Families . . 34 Table 5. Primary Occupation of Male Leaders and of Husbands of Female Leaders, by Race 48 Table 6. Tenure Status of Male Leaders Engaged in Agriculture as the Primary Occupation, by Race 49 Table 7. Tenure Status of Husbands of Female Leaders Engaged in Agriculture as the Primary Occupation, by Race 49 Table 8. Agriculture as the Primary and Secondary Occupations of Male Leaders and of Husbands of Female Leaders 52 Table 9. Number of Changes in Occupation by Male Leaders, by Race 55 Table 10. Most Important Enterprise of Leaders or of Husbands of Female Leaders Engaged in Farming, by Race 60 Table 11. Type of Labor on Farms When Farming is Primary or Secondary Occupation of Leader or of Husband of Female Leader, by use of Tractors 64 Table 12. Changes in Tenure Status of Farm Owners, by Acres Operated .... 67 Table 13. Last Grade Completed by Leaders, by Race and Sex 70 Table 14. Percent of Leaders Reporting Specified Facilities and Conveniences, by Race and Sex 73 Table 15. Level of Living Index of Leaders, by Race and Sex 80 Table 16. Organizational Affiliations of Leaders, by Race and Sex 82 Table 17. Age of Male Leaders and of Male Heads of Families, by Race .... 96 Table 18. Education of White Male Leaders as Compared with Education of White Male Heads of Families 100 Table 19. Primary Occupation of White and Negro Male Heads of Families 102 Table 20. Total Acres Operated by White Male Leaders as Compared with Acreages Operated by White Male Heads of Families 109 Table 21. Total Acres Operated by Negro Male Leaders as Compared with Acreages Operated by Negro Male Heads of Famiiles 109 Table 22. Level of Living Index of Leaders and Families, by Race 113 Table 23. Number of Programs Presented by Leaders to Families by Number of Months Served as Leader 118 Table 24. Defense Campaigns or Programs in Which Leaders Participated, by Race and Sex 120 Table 25. Methods Used by White and Negro Leaders in Contacting Families, by Number of Contacts 122 Table 26. Type of Contact from Farm and Home Agents Preferred by Leaders, by Race 130 Preface This publication is based upon a survey made possible through a grant by the General Education Board as a result of its recognition of the fact that the neighborhood leadership system has a special contribution to make to our rural and national life. Many persons have given generously of their time and thought in the prosecution of the study. Appreciation is particularly due to the following persons, all of whom were connected with North Carolina State College : I. O. Schaub, Director, Agricultural Extension Service ; Ruth Current, State Home Demonstration Agent; F. S. Sloan, State Program Leader, Program Planning Department; J. P. Leagans, Program Planning Specialist, Program Planning Department; J. W. Crawford, Program Planning Specialist, Program Planning Depart- ment; C. Horace Hamilton, Head, Rural Sociology Department; and to Mary Elizabeth Holloway, who headed up the field work. Grateful thanks is hereby expressed to the district agents and to the many farm and home agents who took time to participate in discussions of the program and to cooperate in the field work. The enumerators for the survey not only filled the schedules but also proved to be keen analysts of the program. The leaders themselves, who cooperated so wholeheartedly in the development of the program and were so ready to participate in the survey, should be given especial recognition. It is hoped that the findings of this study of rural neighborhood organization in North Carolina will stimulate the development of this type of utilization of the leadership resources of rural America. SANFORD WINSTON, Head, Department of Sociology. September, 1946 [5] PART I Organization and Programs [7] CHAPTER 1 Introduction This is a study of the present operation and future possibilities of what is believed to be one of the most important movements that has taken place in rural life in recent times, namely, the neighbor- hood leadership organization among the farm population. The pro- portion of persons in this country that lives in cities has steadily increased, and the proportion of persons who make their living directly from the soil has steadily decreeased. Notwithstanding the increased urbanization and industrialization of the country, farmers today constitute the largest single occupational group. A fundamental basis of security and well-being today, as always in the past, is a sound and adequate rural life and livelihood. Both the executive and the legislative branches of the government are cognizant of the need of an adequate program for the mainte- nance and improvement of rural life. Most states — particularly the heavily farm states — have important agricultural budgets, with the leadership in the agricultural field in the hands of a devoted body of men and women who are keenly interested in, and who have a broad knowledge of, rural life. Farm life is a type of existence that is hard and demanding and yet possesses peculiar satisfactions which make it a mode of living as well as a mode of obtaining a living. Here indeed man does not live by bread alone. The satisfactions of rural life are often beyond the ken of the city dweller who has lived all his life largely insulated against the crudities, and hence the beauties, of nature. Agricultural life is all-absorbing and those who follow its call spend relatively little time in association with large groups of their fellows. Furthermore, American farmers in general are highly individualistic. Along with this, the patterns of social and economic activity in rural areas are relatively fixed. Life is relatively peaceful, slow-moving, and static in comparison with urban conditions. Paradoxically agricultural leadership is largely non-agricultural. Nor is this as strange as it may seem at first. The full-time occupation of a farmer cannot be combined with time-consuming interests and activities in other fields. The farmer goes his way and except for occasional special efforts is prone to leave the leadership in rural and larger affairs in the hands of others. One resultant of this is that the true needs of the dirt farmer are not always known. In many cases, these needs differ from state to state, from community to community. In one sense, no one can ever [9] understand the problems of a group of farmers as well as the farmers themselves. As it is, farmers are today often inarticulate in important matters. Another resultant is that until recently there has been no satisfac- tory way of reaching all farmers in the interest of special programs. Those better educated or nearest the hard-surfaced highways are most easily reached. As levels of living decline, the problems of reach- ing farmers increase in difficulty and render adequate contact well- nigh impossible without a considerable expenditure of time, effort, and money. As a consequence, the best situated farmers and rural dwellers have been rather completely reached by governmental pro- grams, but the others, needing help more, have necessarily been less affected by them. The nature of the agricultural situation is such that the poorer and submarginal farmers reduce the well-being of the whole group. What hurts the poorer farmers tends to hurt all. Were an adequate socialized leadership present and functioning throughout the local community, these farm families could be reached to the benefit of all. This does not imply that there is lack of leadership in rural life. A recently completed study of a sample area in rural North Caro- lina shows no dearth of rural leadership as such. 1 In the four rural counties studied, however, the leadership is largely a town leader- ship. By occupation most of the men are professional or semi-pro- fessional. Less than one-fifth of them are farmers. 2 Knowledge of rural life in many parts of the country leads to the belief that this is typical and, under the circumstances, quite normal. What then of the rank and file of farm families? A fair statement of their position in regard to current social and economic changes would amount to this. The farmer is sometimes adequately repre- sented; he often has his leaders either in direct touch with the soil or not far removed from it. In spite of this, he has not been ade- quately reached by existing agencies. Furthermore, those leaders and those agencies that are most anxious to aid him, while doing a good job, are handicapped by the enormity of reaching adequately below the top and middle strata of farm families. The question then logically poses itself. Does there exist among the millions of farmers a potentiality of leadership which might be made available to all farmers at the local level? If so there is a resource of tremendous worth to the entire nation on the one hand 1 Unpublished study. 2 It must be pointed out that the bulk of these non-farmers came from an agri- cultural background. Moreover, a large proportion of them owned farms, and their interests were bound up with those whose primary occupation was farming. [10] and to the smallest neighborhood on the other. If such a resource can be developed, it will be possible to reach the last man on the last row, and ultimately to develop from thousands of small areas an important aid to that more abundant life for rural dwellers which is theoretically possible but which has been realized by such a rela- tively small proportion of them. CHAPTER 2 Neighborhoods and Their Leaders The Neighborhood Basis of Rural Life In a large part of the United States, an important basis for ana- lyzing rural life and thought lies in the neighborhood. The spreading acres of the farmer have a spatial significance. Non-farmers who have rural occupations also have a sense of geographic location in their work. Along with this, there is usually a grouping of rural families who are in more or less casual contact with one another on a primary, face-to-face basis at relatively frequent intervals. Their children go to the same schools. The families attend one or more churches within a specified radius. There are one or more general stores where in- numerable purchases are made. In normal times, a filling station or two is a testimonial to the demands of the automobiles and trucks which perform tasks of carrying people, materials, and the fruits of the soil from and to the farm homes. Some areas are almost entirely farm areas. There is a feeling of neighborliness and a common inter- est in many activities. There are varied types of mutual aid as fami- lies stand ready to lend assistance or to exchange services. In these neighborhoods there are practically always one or more focal points where people meet. Here they may pass the time of day, gossip, argue, in short, be generally communal. In some public building or private edifice, meetings of importance to the neighborhood take place. In a very real sense, the neighborhood — often unnoted — plays an impor- tant part in the limited social life of the average rural dweller. Everyone who has lived in such a rural area can recollect some name given to that area. It is a neighborhood name, obtaining its derivation from some natural phenomenon in the area, or from some [11] early family, or from some Indian tribe, or from other homely sources. Where the contacts of the people are fairly common, sufficiently intimate, and have a central core of interests and a rather definite idea of spatial entity, these local groupings are known as neighbor- hoods. 1 Such neighborhoods are of course not as intimate groupings as are the families that compose them, but there is a sense of "be- longing" that is present in all neighborhoods, provided only that they have become established and are not in the process of disintegrating. Strange as it may appear to the non-rural dweller, neighborhoods are capable of quite definite delineation, a factor of great importance in the study of rural leadership. A still larger entity in rural social organization is the community. Generally speaking, several neighborhoods tend to constitute one com- munity. Practically always that community is recognized by a definite name, by a definite spatial content, and by the inclusion of the fami- lies in the area within which the community lies. "A rural community is that form of association maintained between the people, and be- tween their institutions, in a local area in which they live on dispersed farmsteads and in a village which is the center of their common activities." 2 The contacts among families are less frequent on a community than on a neighborhood basis, unless of course the families live in the same neighborhood. The number of institutions is greater; the number of meeting places increased. Such a grouping is more self- sufficing than the neighborhood area, meeting most or all of the common needs of the population. Furthermore, it is usually suffi- ciently larger so that it has more diversified agricultural as well as non-agricultural interests than the more intimate unit of the neigh- borhood. Lacking that intimacy, that higher degree of socialization, however, makes it less important than the neighborhood as a sphere for the influencing of the behavior of its component families. It is of concern here primarily because it is a coordinator of neighbor- 1 This may be compared with the definition of a neighborhood in Rural Com- munity Organization by Dwight Sanderson and Robert A. Poison (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1939) which emphasizes "the restricted geographical area and the closeness of association among its families" (p. 53). According to Kolb and Brunner, "a neighborhood is that first group outside the family which has social significance, and which has some sense of local unity. It is conditioned both geographically and psychologically. It is an area of local association and it is a group of primary, personal, or face-to-face contacts." See A Study of Rural Society: Its Organization and Changes, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940, p. 44. 2 Sanderson and Poison, op. cit., p. 50. See also Kolb and Brunner, op. cit., ch. 6, "The Rural Community." [12] hoods as well as an important link in connecting the neighborhoods with the larger socio-political spheres of the county and state. In a real sense, the neighborhood is the smallest social link in rural organization. (We are here disregarding the family which is a still smaller group but which lacks the social extensiveness of the neigh- borhood.) It is also remarkably persistent in spite of the widening of rural horizons through modern types of communication and trans- portation. 3 While social changes may cause the disintegration of some neighborhoods, they also operate to strengthen others or to create new groupings of this type. In spite of rapid change the neighborhood remains an important element in the social structure of the South with its dominant rural population. 4 Because of the nature of its relationships, the neighborhood is an important element in the entire complex of rural society. 5 The most grandiose proposals emanating from the nation's capital may fail in the individual neighborhoods which they at last reach. On the other hand, acceptance and support in the individual neighborhoods give a firm groundwork for national programs. The neighborhood is a primary medium for the dissemination of ideas and programs. This can only take place on the sound basis of understanding and cooperation, which involves a thorough knowledge of the people in the individual neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has, to some ex- tent, its own practices, its own folkways. Conditions vary from one neighborhood group to another. Neighborhood opinion is solidified on some subjects, is open to modification on others. New ideas find more ready acceptance when they are introduced with a proper con- sideration of the peculiar neighborhood situations that exist than when they are handed down from above without modification for special areas. The problem goes deeper than this, however. How important the family is in affecting its members and ultimately the whole of society is well known. In the sense of its being a small, rather intimate social unit, the neighborhood plays a paramount part also in the molding of its members. Hence the significance of the social and economic levels of neighborhoods can hardly be overstressed. In rural areas, the neighborhood in a very real sense is the place where new techniques may meet a peaceful but definite defeat or where innova- 3 See Kolb and Brunner, op. cit., p. 48ff. 4 See, for example, the evaluation of the rural neighborhood in the South by T. Lynn Smith in The Sociology of Rural Life, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940, pp. 320-322. 5 Also see Dodson, Linden S.; Ensminger, Douglas; and Woodworth, Robert N., Rural Community Organization in Washington and Frederick Counties, Maryland, Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 437, October, 1940, p. 159ff. [13] tions may become successfully embodied in the social fabric. The point concerning the rural neighborhood is sharpened when it is noted that, due to the long acquaintances existing, plus the repetition of contacts, changes are likely to spread once there is found a basis for general acceptance. This basis for acceptance lies in the proper preparation of the neighborhood for the new plans. The preparation in turn is in part a long-time matter to the extent that it is dependent upon situations having existed in a neighborhood for many years. The preparation is also in part a current affair to the extent that men and women may be contacted in such ways as to smooth the path of acceptance of the proposals newly brought to the area. Here again a thorough understanding of neighborhoods and com- munities is necessary. The needs of the social area must be taken into consideration, if new developments are to be fundamental rather than superficial and to be presented in terms of the existing cultural level. The tie-up between leadership and rural neighborhood thus is brought into focus. In a democratic society, the rural neighborhood forms a basic resource. The status of any particular rural region is largely dependent upon the plane of agricultural and social practices in the neighborhoods which play their unspectacular but all-impor- tant parts in that region. The neighborhood is an important labora- tory for the study of the functioning of leadership. This functioning is an actual rather than a theoretical one. The acknowledged impor- tance of the neighborhood can be augmented by an adequately func- tioning group of men and women who may act as leaders within the neighborhoods and local communities of rural America. The Delineation of Neighborhoods and Communities The neighborhood is an ideal unit for the study of many types of social phenomena. The small size of the unit, both geographically and demographically, gives clarity to the picture. The comparative simplicity of the structure is a decided asset in social analysis. This is particularly true so far as leadership is concerned. Not only do rural areas exist in terms of neighborhoods, but the neighborhood which does not possess one or more leaders, however much their abili- ties may vary, is non-existent. Where functioning in specific neigh- borhood units, the mechanism of leadership can be laid bare and studied in terms of its actual operation. Its strengths, its weaknesses, its place in the social milieu, may be analyzed. On this basis plans may be developed to utilize the various agencies and techniques which [14] will further the work of leaders in accomplishing socially desirable tasks in rural areas. One point should be made in regard to leaders in general. The average man or woman thinks of leaders in terms of "great" men or women. He thinks in that manner because the school teacher of his early days has been followed by the newspapers, books, other agencies, and people in general all of whom speak in terms of great men or at least in terms of the better known men and women in the country and state. Leadership, however, is not confined to leaders on a national or regional basis. Every town, every village, every rural neighborhood has its leaders, men and women who have developed the ability to affect the behavior of their fellow citizens in more or less definite ways. Fortunately for the purpose of the study of rural leadership, there has developed a movement which has as its crux the determination, analysis, and utilization of both the neighborhood organization and the social leadership which are operating in these neighborhoods. Since this study is concerned primarily with the operation of neigh- borhood leadership in a single state, the experiences of that state in this regard may be noted. In North Carolina as in all other rural states, there have been numerous efforts to deal with the manifold problems facing agricul- tural areas. The political divisions of the state are the counties and the townships. Townships are small enough for purposes of intensive work, but township lines are largely artificial. In actuality, people in one part of a township often do not know people in another part of the same township. People in adjoining townships, if in the same neighborhood, are more closely bound by ties of life-long friendship than are people in distant parts of the same township. In the process of agricultural planning, it has been found, furthermore, that there are localities in a large proportion of townships where some of the people to be reached are unacquainted with members of the town- ship committee. Thus sociological theory and social actuality are joined in arriving at the need for a more natural basis for localized planning and action. The neighborhood is obviously the unit to work with and through. The problem that it sets up is the mapping of neighborhoods and the seeking of the leadership that exists in these neighborhoods. In proceeding toward this objective, it has been found feasible to proceed on the basis of the individual county. A general method of procedure has been developed along the following lines. In each [15] county a meeting of the county agricultural workers council 6 was held, at which the purposes and the methods of delimiting neighbor- hoods were analyzed in detail under the leadership of a member of the Extension Service planning staff of the North Carolina State College. The council members then chose three or four members to act as leaders in the work of mapping the neighborhoods in that particular county. Since counties are divisible socially into commu- nities as well as neighborhoods, the communities 7 and their centers were utilized as a preliminary basis of procedure. Each community and its center were considered separately and after careful considera- tion a group of farm men and women representing all localities around each center was selected by the mapping leader and other council members best acquainted with that community. These people were invited by the county agents to a meeting at their particular community center for the purpose of delineating neighborhood and community lines. Special effort was made to insure as complete a turnout as possible of farm men and women from each locality. At each meeting skeleton base maps were used. Upon these maps were located landmarks, such as churches, schools, stores and other familiar places. For purposes of orientation, the residences of all persons present at the meeting were also located. The group then turned to one particular neighborhood and started mapping from the neighborhood center, a place almost always agreed upon unani- mously by the persons representing that neighborhood. A road lead- ing from that center was selected. Those familiar with the area were asked to locate on the road the last person who considered himself or herself a part of this neighborhood rather than the next one down the road. Upon the point representing the end of his or her farm a line was drawn across the road. In an important proportion of cases, a natural boundary, such as a stream or ravine, was noted and so marked as the boundary between one neighborhood and another. The various lines, when connected, formed the boundaries of the neighborhoods in the opinion of the neighborhood men and women and other persons with a knowledge of the area. In like manner, 6 The county agricultural workers council is an organization of the professional agricultural workers in the county plus representatives of other agencies and organizations interested in and working with rural people. 7 Communities are simple combinations of several neighborhoods which have common interests extending beyond the confines of their particular neighborhoods. These groupings practically always satisfy the analysis of the community briefly presented in the preceding section. Communities made up of only two neighbor- hoods are fairly numerous and occasionally a neighborhood is found that is suffi- ciently large and populous and has sufficient diversity of interests to be denomi- nated both a neighborhood and a community. An average community in this area consists of about five neighborhoods. [16] neighborhood boundaries were drawn for the remaining areas. In cases where the meetings were insufficiently attended, agents and other members of the agricultural council visited neighborhoods to complete their information. At that time, various interested members of the council, together with the county agents met and from their own knowledge plus the information supplied them grouped the neighborhoods into the communities of which they were a part. At the same time, the names of the neighborhoods and communities, ordinarily quite well known, were posted on the maps. Over a period of some two years, the entire state of North Carolina with its 100 counties was divided into 6,013 rural neighborhoods and 1,272 com- munities on the basis of the white population. 8 No attempt was made to delineate urban neighborhoods and communities, and the boun- daries of the rural communities nearest urban areas were assumed as ending where the urban political divisions began. The soundness of this assumption was borne out by the facts in the neighborhood delineations. The work of mapping neighborhood and community divisions was a huge task. In the nature of the case the boundaries are not perfect ; the work of rechecking remains to be completed. For the purposes of studying leadership in the neighborhood setting, however, there exists now a sufficiently adequate basis of delineated and mapped neighbor- hood groupings. Here we have those rural groupings in which the people know one another well and their apparent agricultural and socio-economic problems. They recognize their common interests, even to the general acceptance and agreement on a neighborhood name, by which they are located as residents not only to themselves but to others who have any semblance of regular contacts with the neighborhood. In so mapping the neighborhood areas, an important preliminary step towards the study of these areas was taken. More important was the laying of the basis for adequate utilization of these neighbor- hoods in any developments which might aid the population of the neighborhoods in any movement which might contribute to the larger social good. A pragmatic next step then remained — to seek out in each neigh- borhood those men and women who have demonstrated their leader- ship qualities in a way to satisfy their neighbors as to their fitness to undertake other important tasks of neighborhood or community interest. These leaders are known in their local areas both as per- Later 1,265 Negro neighborhoods were delineated. [17] sonages and as leaders, even though the acceptance of their leadership may often be an unconscious process. The Seeking op Neighborhood Leaders The delineation of neighborhoods was used as a preliminary step to the seeking of leaders. At the time of mapping the neighborhoods, those present from a specific neighborhood were asked to give the names of leaders, both men and women, in their neighborhood. There was general agreement as to outstanding leaders. At a later date meetings were held at a convenient place under the guidance of one of the representatives of the planning group. To these meetings were invited the men and women of the neighborhood. At that time, the problem of selecting the leaders was discussed. Where the meetings were well planned and well organized, interest was aroused so that attendance was good and elections of leaders were carried out on the most democratic of bases. In some cases, it was explained that leaders from both sexes were desired, since many of the programs to be developed would affect both sexes. The men and women attending these meetings were earnest and desirous of choosing their most effective leaders. It was carefully explained to them that leaders were needed for the purpose of aiding in the development and carry- ing out of projects and plans for the good of the neighborhood as a whole. As might be expected the type and capacity of the leadership elected differed from locality to locality. There is no doubt, however, that the men and women elected were on the whole recognized leaders in their own neighborhoods. The number elected depended in part upon the number of families in a neighborhood. While in theory one leader was elected for each 10 or 12 families in each locality, some- times the proportion of leaders was larger and more often the pro- portion of leaders was less than one in 10. Thus it was not a case of obtaining one neighborhood leader. The democratic as well as the pragmatic seeking of sufficient leadership led to at least several leaders in each locality with a substantial proportion of women in- cluded in the various groups. Another method of securing leaders was by selection of leaders as a result of consultations between the county agents and the people in any particular neighborhood. The role of the agents here depended upon their personalities and philosophies regarding the choice of leaders by the group. The suggestions by the county agents generally hinged upon the type of leaders wanted, so that the selections would tend to be the more capable leaders rather than "good fellows," that is, a type of popularity leadership that is legitimate leadership but not as desirable in terms of getting things accomplished as the action [18] type of leadership. In some cases, the professional workers were careful to have no voice in the actual selection of leaders. In other cases, the professional workers were definitely consulted as to their opinions regarding the merits of various candidates. In a small proportion of cases a third method of selection was utilized, in which the agents directly appointed men and women as leaders. The objections to this less democratic process are partially counteracted by the care taken to appoint not only capable persons but also true leaders of a neighborhood, since otherwise the whole purpose of leadership recognition and stimulation followed by action would be defeated. Reports from the 100 counties have showed a preponderance of leaders chosen by the selection method. In 1943, 28,910 leaders were reported. Of these, 52 per cent were selected by the county agents and the people in the neighborhood, 45 per cent were elected by the neighborhood group, with the remainder appointed by the county agents. The lines of demarcation among the three methods of obtain- ing leaders are not always clear. Careful investigation, however, does lead to the conclusion that the percentages cited are approxi- mately correct, with the majority of the leaders selected through consultation, with the method of election heavily followed, and with the appointment technique relatively little used. In approximately one-third of the counties at least two of the methods were resorted to. It would be easy to criticize the results of what amounted to a tremendous task. Later analysis will show that not all of the apparent leaders have functioned as such. Some have been or need to be re- placed by leaders who are more capable and who have the interest as well as the time necessary to devote to the important task of func- tioning actively in any plans or movements designed in any way to aid the life and living of their neighborhoods and communities. Yet the end results will be shown to have been generally satisfactory. Because this is a study of leadership functioning in a segment of society rather than in a scholastic laboratory, however, a critique of the three methods may be suggested at this point. Faced with the apparent necessity of obtaining leadership as rapidly as possible, there was danger of too much intervention on the part of the pro- fessional workers, who were chiefly the farm and home demonstra- tion agents of the counties involved. Yet it was necessary and de- sirable that the existing organization of the extension service be used. That utilization has more than justified itself. No one knows more concerning the rural people and their interests than these members of the state extension service whose roots are in the coun- [19] ties which they serve. Because the agents knew the men and women and were anxious that the best leadership be obtained, the danger was constant that the democratic philosophy of elections might be superseded by the apparently more practical one of getting things accomplished with expedition and efficiency. Under the circumstances, the number of outright appointments was satisfactorily low and in many instances it was partially accounted for by the exigencies of the particular situation. Where agents were apparently unable to grasp the importance of the rural leadership development or were insufficiently flexible to adjust to a new factor in an already over- crowded schedule, the underlying causes were more serious. Many of the appointments, on the other hand, were not as arbitrary as they may seem to be. They were ordinarily made by the professional worker only after consultation with other workers and with inter- ested farmers who would advise on the suitability of the particular person under consideration. There have been situations under which appointments of leaders have been made on a temporary basis under the stress of emergency war programs. One cannot be too dogmatic about these matters, except to point out that the concept of leader- ship is tied up with our philosophy concerning the democratic process. It is quite conceivable that this may be open to question under certain situations. An untrained group does not always select offhand its best leaders. A trained man or woman who knows the group well and has its interests at heart may be wiser in selection than the group who may be electing leaders but not the most adequate leaders from the stand- point of the greatest advantage to the group. On the other hand, rural people, knowing one another over a period of years, can usually be counted upon to do an adequate job in this respect. From a purely democratic standpoint, the election of men and women by their fellows in open meeting is the most desirable. The dangers here have been already pointed out. After careful considera- tion of the actualities as they exist in the field, one may conclude that satisfaction with the method used must in the last analysis rest upon the attitudes and capabilities of the leaders obtained. Since the focus is upon leadership as it functions in a specific type and division of society, the three methods provide a large group of men and women leaders as the basis for studying leadership as it functions in the process of everyday living. Here we have leadership actually operating, in contrast to the laboratory experiment or class- room analysis, both of which are important but which are devoid of certain social aspects of leadership to be discussed in succeeding chapters. [20] CHAPTER 3 The Setting Leadership does not operate in a vacuum. It implies a series of relationships between leaders and "followers." Further, leaders op- erate within a social and cultural setting. This background forms a pattern within which they function and has much to do with the type of leadership. It has a definite part to play in the shaping of leadership, in the successes and failures of the leadership process. For these reasons, something of the background of the functioning leadership which is to be analyzed may be presented. This is a study of leadership as it exists and functions in rural regions. The lesser complexity of rural than urban life makes the study of rural leader- ship more feasible than a comparable study of urban leadership. The State North Carolina is well adapted for a study of rural leadership. It has a relatively stable population. The stability of its neighborhood life is a desirable attribute in the study of leadership as it operates in these neighborhoods. Of North Carolina's population of over three and a half million, almost 73 per cent lived in rural areas in 1940. Of the two and a half million rural people, over 1,600,000 were farm folk, scattered throughout the length and breadth of the state. The rural areas range from the sandy flats touching the ocean on the east through beautifully rolling country to the Appalachian High- lands in the west. The climate varies from sub-tropical in summer along the southeastern coastal areas to the cool mountain areas. 1 North Carolina is a state of small farms. The agriculture is varied with tobacco and cotton the chief cash crops. Other important sources of agricultural income are livestock and livestock products, fruit and vegetables. Agricultural products are becoming increasingly diversified. The state is rapidly becoming industrialized, particularly in the piedmont region. Urbanization is proceeding steadily, the percentage of the population which is urban rising from 19 in 1920 to 26 in 1930 and to 27 in 1940. Yet the state is predominantly rural, not only nu- merically but also in terms of its patterns of living. Only one city, Charlotte, has a population of over 100,000. There is a large Negro population, concentrated chiefly in the eastern half of the state. It is particularly heavy in rural areas. The 1 The mean temperature of Western North Carolina is 54.0 degrees. Source : Weather Bureau, Raleigh, N. C. [21] white population is almost entirely native-born. It is highly individ- ualistic and rather conservative in its patterns of thought and living. As in rural areas throughout the country, life is relatively peaceful, alternating between periods of intense activity and long hours and seasons when the less efficient farmers have a great deal of free time. The peacefulness of the life has been punctured somewhat by the war, but the conflict has had remarkably little effect on the patterns of living in agricultural areas, although the problems of labor, cost of necessary materials, and the upward and downward swings of prices have their direct effects. There is a large percentage of farm tenancy with 44 per cent of all farm operators falling into this classification. It is more prevalent among Negroes than whites. This is not a tenant group on the way up the agricultural ladder, although the state and the national gov- ernments are concerning themselves more and more with the tenant class. Along with tenancy generally go low standards and planes of living, a high rate of farm mobility, and from the standpoint of leaders relatively poor groups to work with. Counterbalancing his high degree of individualism and his devotion to traditional techniques and attitudes, the rural North Carolinian is neighborly. Small farms make for a higher degree of sociability than exists in areas of larger farms. The lack of foreign-born and the relatively small proportion of residents coming from other states make for relatively homogeneous groupings, in spite of the presence of large bi-racial groups in the eastern and many of the central counties. This relative homogeneity and this sociability make the problem of neighborhoods a more satisfactory one to study than it would be if there were greater diversity in the population and more emphasis upon social distance. Extension Service So much for the general background. A still closer framework is provided by the Extension Service of the state, which institutionally and otherwise plays an important part in the picture of a function- ing rural leadership. The Extension Service reaches into all of the 100 counties through its system of county farm and home agents together with their assistants. Every county has its farm agent and home demonstration agent while 83 counties have assistant farm agents 2 and 65 counties have assistant home agents. Also, 43 counties have Negro farm agents, with two counties having Negro assistant 3 In September, 1946, there were 127 assistant farm agents. Thirty-six counties had two or more assistant farm agents. Nine counties have two assistant home agents. [22] farm agents. Forty-two counties have Negro home agents, with two of these having assistant home agents. The counties with Negro agents are normally those which have relatively large numbers of colored farm families. Under the Extension Service the state is divided into five divisions for the white workers, for administrative purposes, and three divi- sions for the Negro workers. These two set-ups are superimposed upon each other under the Director of Agricultural Extension. The work is coordinated by the staff at the headquarters at the State College in Raleigh, with separate heads for the farm and home agents, and a central planning office that works through the Extension Serv- ice. An efficient group of men and women are specialists in the numer- ous agricultural pursuits and farm family affairs. These men and women are equipped to render service to the great group of farm men and women throughout the state. The farm and home agents, together with their assistants, are inseparably connected with the rural life of their counties. By and large they are a conscientious and hard-working group of men and women whose activities have been and are of immense value to their individual counties. After a preliminary period of getting acquainted in a new county, the average agent rapidly becomes integrated into the rural life of the county and into the activities in the smaller towns that are largely service centers for the surrounding country- side. It is necessary to visualize this in order to understand the place of the Extension Service in the functioning of the neighborhood leaders. With the delineation of neighborhoods completed and the neighbor- hood leaders chosen, the Extension Service through its agents has largely maintained the necessary contacts between the leaders and the various agents and specialists. The organization has functioned sufficiently well by expanding its activities, so that a second or- ganization devoted to the "organization" of the leaders would be superfluous. As a matter of fact, the word "organization" is out of place in discussions of the neighborhood leaders. These men and women are not part of a neighborhood organization as such. Purposely, there exists simply the neighborhoods with their several leaders, although in an important proportion of the counties several neighborhoods are grouped into a loose community set-up with a community chairman elected from the ranks of the neighborhood leaders. The county agents act as friends, advisors, channels of information, and liaison agents between the leaders and the state and Federal officials. [23] As has been emphasized before, leadership does not operate in a vacuum. It operates within a series of situations which help to ex- plain its operation. Hence, the next consideration is the counties included in the survey. The Counties Studied In the interests of economy of time and expense it was considered advisable to contact all the leaders in selected counties rather than to sample neighborhoods in a large number of counties. The state of North Carolina can be divided into three basic geographic divi- sions, the coastal plain in the east, the piedmont in the central por- tion of the state, and the mountain area in the west. These in turn are capable of further division, the east into the tide-water and the coastal plain. The great central area reaches into the coastal plain on the east and into the foothills of the mountain ranges on the west. This central area, known as the piedmont, has three distinct sections : the northern piedmont, near the Virginia line, is the old tobacco sec- tion; the southern piedmont, bordering South Carolina, is the old intensive cotton area ; while the central piedmont is rapidly becoming the major area of industrial development (Fig. 1). The western por- tion of the state is largely mountainous with a high proportion of the farms classified as subsistence farms but with increasing attention being paid to animal husbandry. Fig. 1. Type of Farming Area Map of North Carolina and Counties Surveyed North Carolina i. n. in. IV. v. VA. VB. VI. VII. VIII. VIIIA. Northern Tidewater Southern Tidewater Northern Coastal Plain Central Coastal Plain Eastern Piedmont and Southwest Coastal Plain Sandhills Southern Piedmont Northern Piedmont Central Piedmont Northern Mountain Southern Mountain In sampling the state, factors concerning the types of agricultural activity in each county were considered. Population factors, such as [24] the degree of urbanization and the size of the Negro population, were also taken into account. Along with these items, the development of the neighborhood leadership program in the various counties was investigated. 3 In counties with a heavy Negro population the presence of at least one Negro agent was considered a prerequisite for in- clusion of a county in the study. Counties in which an agent was not vitally interested in new developments were elimi- nated. On the other hand, those counties most completely organized under the neighborhood leadership system were not considered unless they met all the other criteria for selection. Because of the cost of the field work, coupled with the importance of sampling what were considered to be the six social and agricultural divisions of the state, counties having too large a rural population had to be discarded, since fortunately smaller counties in the same areas could meet the re- quirements for inclusion. When all the factors were taken into consideration, six counties were chosen for study. These represent the six areas of the state pointed out above. All except the mountain and the central piedmont counties represent in their confines at least two rural sub-areas. In the northeast, Chowan was selected to represent the Northern Tide- water and the Northern Coastal Plain. Bladen, a large county in the southeast, is located in the Southern Tidewater area and the South- west Coastal Plain. Granville County is in the Northern Piedmont, the old tobacco area. Davidson County lies in the heart of the Central Piedmont, a rolling area of diversified farming, with an important amount of industrialization. Anson, in the south central part of the state, is in the cotton belt and both represents the Piedmont and reaches into the Sandhills area towards the east. The mountain area is represented by Macon county, in the heart of the Smokies, with subsistence agriculture the dominant type of farming. In planning the study, other factors were taken into consideration. A county such as Chowan is small and compact. One such as Bladen is large and sprawling. A county such as Davidson has a relatively dense rural population and a great deal of part-time farming. The problem of transportation is more easily solved in some counties and 3 The memorandum citing criteria for county selection included the following items : 1. Should be a county in which no change is expected in the position of farm agent or home agent in the next six months. 2. Should be a county in which both agents are "sold" on the general idea of neighborhood leadership and planning. 3. Should be a county where the neighborhood leadership plan is reason- ably successful. 4. In the two eastern districts, Negro home and county agents as well as Negro neighborhood leaders should be present. [25] is more of a problem in the counties of which Macon is representative. It was desired to obtain a percentage of Negro leaders in the sample selected comparable with the 27.5 per cent of Negroes in the state. In the counties surveyed 26 per cent of the leaders reported were Negroes. 4 Thus, the nature of the study required that not only objective criteria with respect to geographic location, type of farming, popu- lation characteristics, and extension services be utilized in selection of the counties but also that the functioning of the neighborhood leadership program definitely be taken into consideration. The selec- tion of counties, therefore, was checked with state and district exten- sion service personnel. As a result of the methods it is believed that the counties, taken as a whole, form an adequate basis for a repre- sentative analysis of the operation of neighborhood leadership in North Carolina. * Negroes also constituted 26 per cent of the leaders actually studied. [26] All - counties Anson Bladen Chowan Davidson Granville Macon 1,301 311 221 157 200 137 275 1,272 245 189 142 198 232 266 80 11 11 — 14 21 23 1,192 234 178 142 184 211 243 966 220 90 133 104 203 216 226 14 88 9 80 8 27 CHAPTER 4 The Leadership Group From the records as to the number of leaders reported, the names of 1,272 men and women leaders in the six survey counties were obtained (Table 1). The field investigators, all of whom were trained TABLE 1. Number of Neighborhood Leaders Reported and Included in Survey, by Counties County Item Total leaders reported in annual reports, 1943 Total leaders reported at time of survey Leader not contacted (a> Leaders contacted Usable schedules Incomplete schedules (b) * co 00 -# <6 -rf rH CM T-5 oi rH r-5 CM ■>* 00 CM CO t- t- CO rH CM iH CM iH rH CM ■* t> CO o ** o 00 OS CM tO rH t Tf (c ® a (» CO O r-l rH CO CO * © t> M t> lO H CO OS © OS 00 i-J 6 rl N 1(5 CO* OS 00 Tf CO N t- H CO rH CM OS CM rH CO CM CO Tj* CO CM rH ■>* co cm co in © rH rH CO rH © d OS I> rH f O t> » ^ H t- c~ m co Tf CO in co cm tj| CM rH rH 00 CO CM CM rH CO CM & O O Q «J a] [48] TABLE 6. Tenure Status of Male Leaders Engaged in Agriculture as the Primary Occupation, by Race Total White Negro Number Per cent Number Per cent Number Per cent Total 473 100.0 323 100.0 150 100.0 Farm owners 377 79.7 292 90.4 85 56.6 Farm managers 8 1.7 7 2.2 1 .7 Farm tenants 54 11.4 21 6.5 33 22.0 Sharecroppers 31 6.6 3 .9 28 18.7 Farm laborers 3 .6 3 2.0 the agriculturally occupied husbands of the women leaders, almost the same proportion were farm owners (Table 7). Thus, the purely TABLE 7. Tenure Status of Husbands of Female Leaders Engaged in Agriculture as the Primary Occupation, by Race Tenure status Total White Negro Number Per cent Number ■ Per cent Number Per cent Total 308 100.0 234 100.0 74 100.0 Farm owners 243 78.8 206 88.0 37 50.0 Farm managers 6 1.9 6 2.6 Farm tenants 33 10.7 19 8.1 14 18.9 Sharecroppers 24 8.0 3 1.3 21 28.4 Farm laborers 2 .6 2 2.7 the farming population in general in this area of the United States. 2 The racial difference in ownership is so pronounced in the South that a separate analysis was made of the proportions of farmers and of farm-ownership. Among the male leaders, 95 per cent of the Negroes were engaged in farming as the primary occupation as com- pared with 91 per cent of the whites. Thus the Negro leadership is even more purely agricultural than is that of the whites. On the other hand, the greater diversity of occupations among the rural white men is a reflection of the higher economic and social status of the white group and of their greater opportunity. This higher economic and social status is also shown by the analysis of farm ownership of those who were engaged primarily in agriculture. Nine out of ten of 2 Among all white farmers in the six counties in 1940, 67.7 per cent were full or part owners or managers and 42.3 per cent were tenants, including share- croppers. Among Negro farmers, the comparable percentages were 38.6 and 61.4, respectively, Source: Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Agriculture. [49] the white male farmer leaders owned the land they tilled as com- pared with less than six out of ten of the Negro group (Table 6). In comparison only one out of 14 white males was a tenant or share- cropper but two out of five Negroes reported such tenure status. Pure- ly farm laborers as leaders were almost non-existent for both groups, there being only three Negroes and no whites in this category. The data do not suggest that the status of tenant or sharecropper is less of a handicap in attaining leadership among Negroes than among whites. The tenure status of the husbands of the married women leaders was comparable. Among those engaged primarily in agriculture, 88 per cent of the whites owned their farms as compared with 50 per cent of the Negroes. That white agricultural leaders are more fortunate economically is a factor in what should be more adequate leadership material among the whites. On the other hand, among both whites and Ne- groes, the non-landowning group contains leadership that possesses other qualities which have enabled them to attain positions of leader- ship in their various neighborhoods and communities. Land owner- ship is important, but it is by no means the only factor in leadership. Its importance increases as it is found to be bound up in a matrix of other factors. Although the agricultural occupations overshadow all other oc- cupational groupings, there are other occupations which contain suf- ficient numbers to warrant further analysis. For men leaders, the nonfarm occupational groups including more than 1 per cent of the total are country store-keepers, professional men (ministers and school men), craftsmen (chiefly carpenters) and clerks in village and country stores. The place of the country store in the rural leader- ship pattern is worthy of more than passing notice. Three per cent of the male leaders and 4 per cent of the husbands of female leaders are proprietors of or clerks in general stores (Table 5). The country store has lost much of its trade to the mail order houses and to the town and city stores. In many a rural neighborhood, however, it still functions both as a place to satisfy immediate personal, household, and farm needs and as a place where friends and neighbors meet. The storekeeper and his helper are in a position where sooner or later most of the neighborhood men and a large proportion of the neigh- borhood women come into contact with each other as well as the "man behind the counter." Consequently, if capable and liked by his neigh- bors, the country storekeeper can perform the duties of a neighbor- hood leader with directness and a minimum of effort and energy. In- [50] deed in quite a few of the counties visited, which were not included in the schedule survey for the present study, the county agents have been quite impressed with the suitability and the functioning of these general store people as leaders in their particular neighbor- hoods. The few professional men, chiefly preachers and teachers, com- bine a professional attitude towards their work with a fundamental interest in farm affairs in their particular neighborhoods and com- munities. The men of other non-agricultural occupations are pri- marily men who, while not farmers, are considered as leaders because of their activities and accomplishments in their rural neighborhoods. The women leaders of course must be considered from a somewhat different angle. Ninety-eight per cent of the married white women and eighty-nine per cent of the married Negro women are classified occupationally as housewives. Their husbands' occupations, like those of the male leaders, were primarily agricultural in nature. However, there was a wider diversification of occupational interests. Profes- sional men (chiefly ministers and teachers), proprietors of stores, and craftsmen (chiefly carpenters and men-of -all-work) each were represented by more than 4 per cent of the total. Another non-farm- ing group worthy of mention were the clerks in general stores and the group of nonfarm laborers (Table 5). Their wives for the most part were leaders in terms of their women neighbors and only inci- dentally were bound up with their husbands' occupations, except in- sofar as their occupations were an aid in the women's work of leader- ship. The country store has been mentioned. The professional men's status was a direct benefit to the wives, but the overwhelming pro- portion of female leaders were such because of their direct attain- ment of leadership status among their friends and neighbors, chiefly housewives like themselves and fundamentlly interested in the farm and home cycle of living in agricultural areas. Among the white women as a whole, only 48 were neither house- wives nor housekeepers for their families or relatives. Of the 48, 29 were engaged in farming, three-fourths as farm owners. School teach- ers, postmistresses, and clerks, in the order named, were of some im- portance. Among the Negro women, the profession of school teacher claimed two-thirds of the women who were not housewives or house- keepers. Only four were engaged primarily in farming. Postmis- tresses and clerks were found only among the whites, whereas the school teachers had a relatively more important neighborhood leader- ship position among the rural Negroes than among rural white people. Thus farmers are in the great majority as neighborhood leaders and their occupation as well as numbers accounts for this. The use [51] of the occasional man or woman in other occupational fields is a tribute in part to their personality and social leadership and in part to the fact that their occupation combined with these other factors gives them a leadership status that might well be availed of to a greater extent than at present. Secondary Occupations Agriculture is an absorbing occupation for those who pursue it. The work often is hard. The farmer's day is long. Yet there are periods during the year when necessary activities slacken up. The enter- prising farmer can often find supplementary work not too far re- moved from his inclination and home area. Of the male leaders en- gaged in farming, almost one out of five had secondary occupations TABLE 8. Agriculture as the Primary and Secondary Occupations of Male Leaders and of Husbands of Female Leader: Total Secondary occupation Primary occupation Number Per cent None Farm Nonfarm Male leaders Total 514 100.0 394 33 87 Farm Nonfarm 473 41 92.0 8.0 388 6 33 85 2 Husbands of female leaders Total 383 100.0 256 51 76 None Farm Nonfarm 1 308 74 .3 80.4 19.3 1 235 20 51 73 3 of a nonfarm nature (Table 8) . If analysed in terms of farm owner- ship, one-fifth of the owners of farms had a secondary occupation as compared with only one-tenth of the farmers who were not owners. Theoretically tenants and sharecropers would respond more quickly to the need for added revenue. Actually the owners have a larger proportion and wider variety of secondary occupations. Of the 75 farm owners with secondary occupations, three groups stand out. There were 20 who were owners of stores, 17 who were nonfarm laborers, and 16 who were some type of craftsman. The ownership of the general store is quite common among farmers. The farm own- ers here portrayed have a definite amount of "get-up," as is wit- nessed not only in this secondary occupation but also in the non-agri- cultural occupations. The craftsmen were largely farmers who uti- [52] lized their spare time and their skill in hiring out as carpenters, builders, and in other semi-skilled work. The farmers who worked as laborers did the same thing in jobs requiring less skill and providing less remuneration but which also added to their cash income. The secondary occupations of the husbands of female leaders fol- low similar patterns. The proportion of farm owners who have secondary occupations again is decidely higher than the percentage of tenants and sharecroppers who have secondary occupations. In this group, the same types of- secondary occupations are followed, with the proprietors, craftsmen, and nonfarm laborers again out- standing in terms of secondary occupations. Turning to the group whose primary occupation was in the non- farm category, it is interesting to note to what degree these non- farmers engage in farming as an occupation only secondary to their chief method of obtaining a living. The great majority of the male nonfarm leadership group have a secondary occupation which is usually farming. Actually for most of them the farm operation is really on a par with their primary occupation except for the fact that the larger part of their income is derived from the occupation listed as primary. The ownership and operation of farms as either a primary or secondary occupation by 506 of the 514 male leaders is overwhelming evidence of the agricultural basis of rural neighbor- hood leadership in the area studied. In the nature of the case the number of women who have secon- dary occupations is negligible. The married women . have literally double work acting as housekeeper and giving occasional or regular aid in the farming processes. The single women who largely live on farms have much of their spare time taken up in the same way. The group of husbands of the married women leaders are not strict- ly comparable with the male leaders themselves in regard to secon- dary occupations. Yet even here the same general conclusions are in evidence. One out of four of the farm owners was engaged in a secondary and nonfarm occupation, while among the tenants and sharecroppers one out of six had a nonfarm secondary occupation. Of the 383 husbands of female neighborhood leaders, four out of every five are engaged in farming as a primary occupation. More than two out of three of the nonfarm group are engaged in farming as a secondary occupation. In total, 359 out of 383 husbands of the women leaders operate farms as either a primary or a secondary oc- cupation. These data reinforce the picture of a group fundamentally agricultural as well as rural in outlook. [53] Age at Beginning First Full-Time Job Country people start working early in life. Farm children are uti- lized on farms at an early age. In contrast to city children, their play and the farm work soon merge into one another. By the time they have entered school, children have learned work suitable physically to their years. During their school days, much of their spare time is taken up with helping in the home and on the farm. As they grow older, the tasks grow heavier. By the time they have finished their formal schooling, most rural children have become familiar with the routine work of the farm and graduate into family farm workers, paid or unpaid. For purposes of the study all those who were farm- ing, full-time, for their family on their sixteenth birthday were con- sidered as having been working before then. On this basis, of the male leaders who are in agriculture today, 78 per cent began full-time work before they were 16. Ninety-one per cent were working on a full-time basis by the time they had reached their seventeenth birth- day. In contrast, about three-fifths of the nonfarm leaders had start- ed full-time work before they were 16. By the time the seventeenth birthday had rolled around, three-fourths of the nonfarm leaders had full-time jobs. Thus whether rural-nonfarm or rural-farm male leaders were considered, they had begun work in great part before they were 17 years of age. The future agricultural leaders were out of school and fully employed at an earlier average age and to a greater extent than the boys who later became rural, as distinct from purely agricultural, leaders. This is in accord with the earlier utilization of youth on the farm. Under the differing economic conditions, Negro boys would be ex- pected to begin their full-time work at an earlier average age. For the total group of male leaders almost 94 per cent of the Negroes began work before they were 17, as compared with 89 per cent of the whites. For the purely agricultural leaders, these figures while still higher hold their relative position, over 85 per cent of the Negroes as contrasted with 91 per cent of the whites having begun full-time work by the time they were 17 years of age. These men for the most part reached the earlier years of ma- turity in an era when education was not considered a prime neces- sity for rural youth beyond the middle teens. The folkways then — and now — still regarded work as the channel young men should pursue, both as a duty to their families and as the best course for them as individuals. These folkways, while still existing, have be- come less rigorous. To test the probable result of this, the percentage [54] of men who were working full-time by the time they were 17 years old was analysed according to age groupings. For all male leaders now 60 years of age and over, over 96 per cent had commenced their full-time working career before they were 17. As the age group de- creases, the percentage regularly declined, 3 until when the youngest age group was reached, the proportion dropped precipitously to somewhat less than 59 per cent. Thus one may safely conclude that the practice of dropping out of school and commencing full-time work at an early age is declining, although it is still relatively strong in rural areas. These men probably are in a somewhat higher grouping in this regard, but the progressive decline would appear to be symp- tomatic of what is happening in all rural groups. Occupation Mobility The stability of rural leaders can be in part tested by the number of changes in occupation made since the beginning of their working days. The actual number of occupational changes made by the men ranged from none to seven changes. As a matter of fact, no change has been made by the majority as 69 per cent have remained in the same occupation since the beginning of their work career (Table 9). TABLE 9. Number of Changes in Occupation" by Male Leaders, by Race Primary occupation by race Total Number of changes in occupation None 1 2 3 or more Total 514 355 49 82 28 White males Farm 323 214 32 56 21 Nonfarm 33 6 10 10 7 Negro males Farm 151 7 132 3 5 2 14 2 a Based on primary occupation. Somewhat less than one out of every ten had made one change. Six- teen per cent had mode two changes. Somewhat over 5 per cent had made three or more changes. Thus the occupational mobility was low for this rural leadership group. An insight into the greater occupational stability of agricultural 3 For the 50-59 year group, the percentage was 92; for the 40-49 year group, the percentage was less than 90; for the 40-39 year group, less than 87 per cent were working at 17 years of age. [55] as compared with non-agricultural leaders is obtained by comparison of the number of occupational changes made by each of these two groups. Seventy-three per cent of the agricultural leaders as com- pared with less than 23 per cent of the nonfarm group had never changed occupations. The proportions making one, two, or three or more changes were decidedly higher among the non-agricultural than the agricultural group. Within each race, the same picture holds with a much greater degree of occupational stability among the agricultural leaders than the non-agricultural leaders in each case. As has been suggested, the stability of occupations is tied up with rural life, differential economic opportunities, and the attainment of leadership status. One result of staying in a particular occupational calling is probably greater possibility of attaining leadership status, insofar as rural neighborhood opinion is concerned. Since the number of occupational changes in any sufficiently large group would be associated with age, occupational changes were further analysed where the factor of age differences was controlled. Prior to that the need for such control was evidenced by the fact that the younger groups of men had fewer occupational changes than did the older groups. This of course is merely a function of added years and a greater mathematical probability. With the age factor controlled the same results as found prev- iously were obtained. Age for age, whites were more mobile than Negroes; nonagricultural leaders had made more changes than agri- cultural leaders. Among the whites in particular the control of the age factor brings these points into sharper focus. The contrast with the occupational changes of more urban leaders brings out the steadier, more peaceful, less changing picture of rural life not only for leaders but, by inference, for the rural groups which they represent. Leadership is achieved as a result of a combination of factors. Apparently one of the less realized factors is that of stabilization of occupation, so that a person develops in and achieves leadership status among his neighbors as the years pass. Women leaders were not analysed according to number of oc- cupational changes because of the fact that so few single leaders were found. Most of the married women leaders entered the occu- pation of "housewife" either straight from school or after a period of remaining at home and helping out with home or farm work or both. A few worked at a non-family occupation, but the actual num- ber of these was too few for more detailed analysis. In comparing the two races, whites are decidedly more mobile oc- [56] cupationally than are Negroes. The percentage of no occupational changes was far higher among the latter group, whereas the whites had a decidedly larger proportion of one or more occupational changes. This is logical in terms of the greater variety of occupational op- portunity open to the white group. On the other hand it may be pointed out that the Negro men have achieved the status of neigh- borhood leaders in part through their occupational stability as con- trasted with members of their own race who have been more mobile in this regard. CHAPTER 8 Agricultural Operations Types of Farms Farming in the areas investigated has characteristics which are different in certain respects from other parts of the country. The farms are smaller on the average. The "one-crop system" is tradi- tional, particularly in the eastern part of the State. From the social standpoint, the farmers, living closer together, are more closely bound in neighborhood units. Most farmers can look from their houses and see several other farm houses. The large isolated farm- stead so prevalent in the Middle and Far West is not found to any great extent in North Carolina, which, in turn, is typical in this re- gard of the southeastern region as whole. The small farms are associated with the nature of farming. On the other hand, the leaders operate a larger number of acres than the general farm population. The average (mean) number of acres, in- cluding pasture and woodland, operated by the male leaders and husbands of female leaders in 1943, for whom agriculture was the primary occupation, was 192. This figure gives an inadequate picture because of the ownership of large plantations on the part of some of the leaders. Two per cent owned 1,000 acres or more land; 5 per cent owned 600 acres or more; 9 per cent owned 400 acres or more. The size of these holdings was often attained by the operation of more tha one farm through employing the system of tenancy and share- cropping widely prevalent in much of the area. The differential in economic resources of the two races was brought [57] sharply into focus when size of operations was analysed by race. Seven per cent of the farms of the white leaders were 600 or more acres in size. None of the Negro leaders operated forms totaling as much as 600 acres. Because of the distortion of the average by the larger farm oper- ations, a more adequate measure of typical farm operations is ob- tained by the use of the median size of farm. The median figure was 132 acres with half the acreage operated greater and half less than this figure. Even here the acreage operated is high as compared with the average size of farm in the area involved. 1 Nevertheless the relatively small farm was still so prevalent among these leaders that an analysis of their holdings is pertinent. Some- what over one-fourth (27 per cent) operated farms under 50 acres; a like proportion operated farms totaling from 50 to 100 acres, and 46 per cent operated farms of over 100 acres. The racial comparison is again illuminating. Whereas only 16 per cent of the white male leaders operated farms of less than 50 acres, 43 per cent of the Negro male leaders operated farms totaling less than 50 acres. Contrari- wise, the proportion of whites who operated farms totaling 100 acres or more was almost twice that of the Negro group (57 per cent as compared with 32 per cent). For that important group which prac- ticed farming as a secondary occupation, a much larger proportion had small farms than was found among those who were primarily farmers. This of course is to be expected. The racial comparison, how- ever, again brings out the fact that Negro leaders had a decidedly larger percentage of small farm operations than whites. Under a strict interpretation of the word, most of the farmers were general farmers, in that a "general farm" was considered to be a farm with one or more money crops plus livestock, feed crops, and gardens for home use. As a matter of fact, a large proportion of the farmers (except in the mountain area) depended to an overwhelming extent on tobacco or cotton or both as the money crops. Some went in for peanuts, some for livestock, others for grains, and a few for dairying as the principal enterprise. Truck farms were interspersed throughout, attaining more importance in the mountain and eastern areas than in the other areas studied. As has been suggested, the type of farming had much to do with the neighborliness of the farmers. Since the farms were small, physi- cal accessibility became a distinct aid in constant contacts and con- sequently greater ease in neighborhood relationships with greater 1 The median size of farm in the six counties for all farmers in 1939 was 50.3 acres. Source: Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Agriculture. [58] social control through the neighborhood folkways. The interrelation- ships are thus close and the problem of functioning leadership aided. The stage is set for an adequately working rural leadership. Most Important Enterprises In terms of financial return, tobacco is the most important enter- prise among the male leaders and husbands of leaders surveyed (Table 10). It looms higher among the Negro farm leaders than among the whites. Cotton takes second rank. The other major enter- prises in order of importance financially are peanuts, corn, truck, grains, and livestock. When analysed according to race, the general picture remains the same for the white leaders, except that corn re- places peanuts in order of importance. For the Negro leaders, there is a decidedly heavy concentration in tobacco and cotton, these two accounting for 84 per cent of the chief enterprises among the Negro farms. Peanuts are the most important enterprise for a fair number. For the overwhelming proportion of Negro leaders, there is heavy concentration upon one crop to the exclusion of other enterprises which white leaders have found de- sirable. This variation is also due to the heavy concentration of Negroes in those sections of the state in which the one-crop system still prevails. A more rounded picture is obtained by the analysis of the second most important enterprise where such existed. Corn, which occupied fourth place in the list of most important enterprises, assumed first place in the list of second most important enterprises. This was true for both races. Corn is a general purpose crop in the South, which is fed to farm animals and consumed as a staple in the average family diets with any surplus sold to others. Moreover, it is used for a crop to follow tobacco and cotton for purposes of rotation. Cotton follows as a second important enterprise. It is peculiarly a crop which re- quires relatively little attention at certain periods of the year. Small grains, truck crops, and peanuts, in order of financial importance, are secondary enterprises for the individual leaders. While the study is not one of counties as such, the location of a county has much to do with the type of farm enterprises and par- ticularly the important enterprises. A simple tabulation of those "most important" enterprises that appear in at least 10 per cent of the cases in any one county reveals the following: tobacco appears in three of the six counties represented, while cotton, small grains, peanuts, milk production, corn, truck forming, and livestock appear once each. [59] P4 M Z i cs w •J 9 < s H fa o w D Z i w p w fa o w c 3 fe"B i n, c4 co t-5 00 ,HCO©-<#C0CD00COCO©- ■<* co eo ■<* 7—i o$ "*& d b "* lO H N iO ■<# ■<* j CO | 00 rH t-I Oi!OMOMOONM^NI> N CD iH t> CO r- ±i £ O H Oh O W hJ O Pi H c O S3 * Sh aj s Sh O u >> 72 OS "tf o T-l r-l i a o ft h o a) v H H o U S3 * O C c p [64] leaders owned at least one tractor (Table 11). The proportion while relatively small is over four times that for all farms in the counties surveyed. 2 The general dearth of tractors is associated with the nature of the farming enterprises, the relatively small size of the farms, the topography of the land, and the low level of economic prosperity of an important proportion of the leaders, particularly of the Negro leaders. Where farming is conducted as a secondary oc- cupation, about one out of every seven leaders owns a tractor. Ownership of tractors normally would be associated with tenure status. Thus the percentage owning tractors would increase if farm owners only were taken into consideration. The proportion then rises to one out of every four. If white farm owners alone are considered, over 30 per cent own tractors. As a matter of fact only 3 per cent of all the Negro farm leaders had tractors, and these leaders were all farm owners. That tenants would possess more tractors than crop- pers would be expected. In fact only one sharecropper owned a trac- tor. None of the farm leaders who were farm laborers possessed a tractor, a fact which is not particularly surprising in view of the circumstances. When considering human aid, the relationship between the types of labor and the use of tractors brings out some rather interesting facts. Where farm owners utilize tenants only, the percentage of tractors owned is small. The tenant has his own means of cultivation which is more likely to be his own family labor and a mule. The owner has rented a particular piece of land to the tenant and it is up to the tenant to find his own means of production. Where croppers only or wage hands only are employed, the farm owner has the direct re- sponsibility for crop production and other farm enterprises, and the ownership of tractors correspondingly increases. Obviously he will have better equipment for himself than for his tenants. Carrying the analysis still further, one measure of farming status is employment of just one type of aid (tenant, or cropper, or wage hands only), or of two types (a combination of any two of these), or of all three types. When such a comparison was made, it was found that the percentage owning tractors increased regularly as the em- ployment of one, two, or three types of aid was utilized. This is true both for white leaders and for Negro leaders, although none of the Negro farm owners employed all three types. The picture is further illuminated when it is noted that over two-fifths of those who em- ployed two types of labor owned tractors; one-half of all those who ■ As of January 1, 1940, only 5 per cent of the farmers in the six counties sur- veyed had tractors. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Agriculture, [65] employed all three types of labor owned tractors. In a state where the use of tractors is still in the early stage, the relationship between increased ownership of tractors and the broader utilization of various types of aid is considered significant both as a picture of the type of farmer and of the type of rural leadership available in the coming days of social and agricultural development. Changes in Tenure Status Most of the neighborhood leaders have achieved a rather high de- gree of stability, both as to where they work and live and as to their occupation. Their attitudes are such, and their interest in their work so deep-seated, that the proportion of these mature men and women who will leave the agricultural sphere permanently is probably quite small. The great proportion of the farmers have become farm own- ers. Yet it has not always been so with them. Most of them began their occupational career on a lower rung of the ladder (almost al- ways agricultural in nature) and by various steps or jumps finally achieved the status of owners of the land which they cultivated. For purposes of the investigation, those men who at the age of 16 were already working for their parents on the farm were classi- fied as family laborers at the outset of their working careers. The analysis of agricultural tenure status is confined to the men leaders, since the occupational setting of women leaders is of such a dif- ferent type. Over three-fourths (77 per cent) of the men engaged primarily in farming started their economic careers as family laborers. This is in keeping with the folkways of farm families. The help of the growing boy is utilizable on the farm at an early age and by the time he has arrived at his sixteenth birthday he ordinarily has become a valuable aid in the running of the family farm. It is fundamentally in this normal manner that the farm boy develops a series of habit patterns which fit in so well with his future activities, if they at all have to do with agriculture. If the family environment is sufficiently adequate, if the father is a good farmer, if the boy has inculcated in him a liking for farming, the boy's ambition normally would be the ultimate attainment of a farm of his own. The economic status of his family acts as an aid or as a deterrent, as the case may be. Of the white farm owners, 77 per cent were family laborers at the age of sixteen ; of the Negroes 74 per cent were so engaged. Those who were farm owners at the time of the study had arrived at that status by various steps (Table 12). Six per cent had always been owners. Since economic backgrounds might well play a part in this fortunate group, they were analysed in terms of number of acres [66] TABLE 12. Changes in Tenure Status of Owners," by Acres Operated Total Number Per cent Acres operated Changes in tenure status Under 100 acres Number Per cent 100 acres or more Number Per cent Total 373 100.0 169 100.0 204 100.0 Farm owner — no change 21 5.6 4 2.4 17 8.3 Family laborer to owner 129 34.7 54 31.9 75 36.7 Family laborer — share- cropper — owner 25 6.7 14 8.3 11 5.4 Family laborer — tenant — owner 61 16.4 26 15.4 35 17.2 Family laborer — share- cropper — tenant — owner 12 3.2 5 3.0 7 3.4 Family laborer — nonfarm — owner 58 15.5 30 17.7 28 13.7 Tenant — owner 27 7.2 13 7.7 14 6.9 Sharecropper— owner 13 3.5 6 3.5 7 3.4 Sharecropper — tenant or nonfarm — owner 6 1.6 Laborer — owner 3 .8 Laborer — tenant or non- farm — owner 7 1.9 Nonfarm — sharecropper or tenant — owner 11 2.9 1.8 1.2 3.0 4.1 1.5 .5 1.0 2.0 a Male leaders only. operated. If those who operate farms of less than 100 acres are con- sidered, only somewhat over 2 per cent have always been owners ("always" in the sense of mature working years). This rises to over 8 per cent when those who operate over 100 acres were analysed. The bi-racial analysis goes still further. The economically more for- tunate white group have 9 per cent in this category when the larger farm operators alone are considered. The percentage of all Negro land owners who have been in this category from the beginning is 6 per cent if the larger land operators are considered. One-sixth of the entire group achieved the status of ownership through passing from family labor through the status of farm tenant and then becoming owners of farms. This is the traditional way that economists hope that farm boys will work their way to the higher status of owners of land. With a lower economic status to begin with, the Negro leaders have to a much larger extent (34 per cent as compared with 11 per cent for white leaders) climbed to the own- ership position through the intermediary phase of tenant. [67] Among the Negro leaders, there is another type of change that is a logical and progressively forward increase in status. Twelve per cent have gone through the stages of family labor, sharecropper, tenant, and then owner. The same method is negligible among the white leaders (less than 1 per cent). Both groups have an interesting variation in climbing the agri- cultural ladder. That way lies through pasing from family labor into the nonfarm field and through this channel arriving at the stage of farm ownership. Among the whites, 18 per cent of the farm owners had utilized this method ; among the Negroes, 7 per cent had pursued the same course. The off-the-farm period was an interval during which cash was earned for later application to purchases ranging from materials and stock utilized on the farm to payments on the land itself. For many it was an interval in which they could con- sciously or unconsciously compare the pull of the farm with the eco- nomic and social attractiveness of rural-nonfarm or urban activity. One more method was sufficiently widespread to elicit comment. Seven per cent of the farm owners of each race went through the simpler process of starting out in their mature economic life as farm tenants and then using this as a preliminary step to becoming farm owners. There were other variations, which can be noted in consulting Table 12. A general comparison is worth while as to the relative num- ber of changes made in finally achieving the approved status of farm owners. Slightly over one-half of the entire group made either no or one change. The remainder (48 per cent) went through two or three changes of status before arriving at land ownership. The larger land- owners moved more directly to the status of farm owner than did the smaller landowners. White leaders on the average made decided- ly fewer changes than did Negro leaders, reflecting the greater eco- nomic struggle which the Negro leaders had to undergo to achieve the higher status. 3 3 Note that the discussion refers to changes in status. As long as a man re- mained a tenant, for example, he was classified as a tenant no matter if he was a tenant on several farms. [68] CHAPTER 9 Cultural Status of Leaders Many factors contribute to the cultural status of any given group. Various indices have been utilized in recent years in attempts to de- termine as specifically as possible the comparative socio-economic standing of families, counties, and other units. No measures have been proved more effective for general evaluation, however, than the educational level of a people and the extent to which they possess the conveniences and facilities associated with what is now regarded as the American standard of living. Education In a society such as ours, education is one of the most important factors in the development of young men and women. The early years of the twentieth century constituted the period during which most of the leaders began their education. The schools then were at the beginning of that necessary and long development which has brought them to the developed structure of today. Education has come to be considered far more important than it was forty, thirty, or even twenty years ago. The rural schools particularly have had a rather spectacular development. The advance in schools for Negroes, since the state has a bi-racial educational system, has in recent years also taken great strides. Almost three-fourths (74 per cent) of the entire group of leaders had finished the seventh grade which in the past has been recognized as a goal to be attained (Table 13) . Three out of 10 had finished high school. One out of 23 had finished college, and three of the leaders had pursued some graduate work. As might be expected in terms of the social and economic factors, the discrepancy between white and Negro leaders was great. Eighty- four per cent of the white leaders had finished grade school as com- pared with less than 45 per cent of the Negro leaders. The rate of high school graduation was three times as great among the whites as among the Negroes (36 per cent as compared with 12 per cent). It was twice as great for the college graduate (5 per cent as com- pared with 2.4 per cent). No Negro leader had taken post-graduate work. There is, furthermore, a marked discrepancy between the educa- tion of the men and women. Almost seven-eights of the women had completed the seven years of grade school as compared with some- [69] TABLE 13. Last Grade Completed by Leaders, by Race and Sex All White Negro Last grade completed leaders Male Female Male Female Total: Number Per cent 960 100.0 None 1.2 One 1.4 Two 1.6 Three 3.3 Four 5.9 Five 5.5 Six 7.1 Seven 18.7 Eight 11.8 Nine 7.5 Ten 6.5 Eleven 13.3 Twelve .7 College: One year Two_ years Three years Four years Five years or more Median grade 7.4 354 100.0 .8 .3 2.0 2.0 5.6 5.6 8.5 21.4 16.7 6.8 6.8 11.3 .6 4.8 4.5 4.2 3.1 2.2 1.7 4.0 2.0 .3 .3 354 100.0 7.2 1.7 1.7 2.3 16.6 8.8 11.0 9.0 20.8 1.4 7.1 7.1 4.0 7.1 .6 9.8 157 100.0 5.7 5.7 4.5 10.2 16.6 9.6 14.0 18.5 6.4 1.3 .6 2.5 .6 1.3 .6 1.9 4.8 95 100.0 3.2 1.1 6.3 5.3 12.6 8.4 16.7 13.7 7.4 5.3 10.5 4.2 2.1 3.2 6.8 what over three-fifths of the men. The decline in schooling during the high school years was more precipitous among the men than among the women, less than one out of five men having completed high school as compared with over two-fifths of the women. The per- centage of women completing college (7 per cent) was over three times that of the men (2 per cent) . The education of the men according to whether they were agri- cultural or non-agricultural leaders was investigated in order to throw further light on the problem. The small group of nonfarm leaders were decidedly better educated from a formal educational standpoint. Four out of five had finished seven grades of school as compared with three out of five of the agricultural leaders. The pro- portion who had finished high school was more than twice as great (37 per cent as compared with 17 per cent). The discrepancy con- tinued to widen until the proportions finishing college were some- what more than 13 per cent for the non-agricultural leaders as com- pared with slightly over one per cent for the agricultural leaders. The educational attainments for both white leaders and Negro lead- [70] ers were decidedly higher among the non-agricultural than the agri- cultural leaders. The question is, to what does this sum up? As compared with the general population in the same area, the neighborhood leaders are re- latively well educated. 1 Partly because they had to go to work, partly because they wished to go to work, the boys and young men left school at an earlier age than did the girls and young women. The girls were aided by the fact that under modern conditions the attitude towards education for women has decidedly changed with the consequent feel- ing that, since their work was not as necessary throughout the day as that of their brothers, additional free "schooling" had much to re- commend it. The marked difference between whites and Negroes is a reflection of the superior educational advantages of the whites in the past and of the higher economic and social background of whites which acts to encourage them and discourage the Negroes. The encouraging as- pect here is the recent sharp rise in educational facilities and achieve- ment in regard to the Negro group. Finally, the better educated non- agricultural group is a symptom of several things. The farm group entered an occupation in which formal education was not deemed as necessary as for the group that did not rely primarily on agriculture as a means of obtaining a livelihood. Viewing this from another angle, the non-agricultural pursuits in many cases brought into their fold a group better prepared — educationally speaking — for cash money- making enterprises. In terms of neighborhood leadership the non- agricultural group would seem to be a group better prepared educa- tionally to meet the problems of rural leadership, whereas the agricul- tural group in part is remedying this deficiency through closer touch with problems of production as they occur. The latter point loses much of its force, however, when it is remembered that almost three- fourths of the non-agricultural male leaders follow farming as a sec- ondary occuption. In a somewhat similar way, women in part make up for their lack of as great familiarity with everyday economic activities (outside the home) by the fact that they are a better educated group and thus presumably better equipped than men to deal with many problems. On the other hand, the men gain through a greater breadth of ex- perience a degree of continuing education that is denied to those women whose experiences are more closely tied to fireside affairs. 1 The median grades complated by the total rural-farm population of North Carolina, 20 years old and older, in 1940 were as follows: white males, 6.1; white females, 6.5; Negro males, 3.4; Negro females, 4.5. Sixteenth Census of the Unit- ed States: 1940, Population, Fourth Series. [71] In the great discrepancy between white and Negro leaders, a serious point arises. The decidedly lesser educational achievement of the Negro leaders is a handicap in terms of leadership functioning that is only partly mitigated by the fact that the Negro groups whom the leaders serve are in turn of a lower educational status than the corresponding white groups. In rounding out the picture of education and leadership, the degree of education of the various leadership groups was analysed in terms of age. The men and women, white and Negro, were divided into those under 30, 30 through 39, 40 through 49, and 50 years and over. Taking the entire group as a point of departure, the case becomes quite clear for the definite improvement in educational attainment as one passes from the older leaders to the younger ones. Whereas only one-fifth of the oldest group had completed high school, the pro- portion steadily increases until in the youngest group, almost three- fifths had completed the same degree of training. As compared with 1 out of 50 of the oldest group finishing college, the proportion in- creases in the next oldest group and then rises sharply until in the youngest group almost 10 per cent had completed college work. The same results are found by sex and race. Apropos of the prev- ious discussion of educational attainment of the Negro leaders, the rise in the educational status of the younger men and women is quite marked. At any level of educational status — grade school, high school, or college — there is a definite rise in the formalized training as the age group becomes younger. This is both a testimony to the in- creased educational status of Negro leadership and at the same time a promise of what the future holds in store in terms of a much higher degree of educational preparation for the job of leadership among Negroes or for that matter for either race and for both sexes of each race. Attention has been directed to the educational preparation of these men and women because it is immediately obvious that one of the important factors in an adequately functioning rural leadership is this particular factor. This is truer today than ever before when the rural world finds itself affected and beset by problems that arise not only in particular neighborhoods but also have so developed and spread that some of them are world-wide in scope. Facilities and Conveniences In rural areas of North Carolina, conveniences of everyday living are by no means widely prevalent. Sometimes, as in the case of elec- tricity, the convenience is beyond the scope of the individual family because it has not been made available in some areas. Quite often [72] it is a matter of transportation. More often it is a matter of not ef- fectively desiring conveniences which have become necessities to the urban mind. Sometimes there is less apparent need. Sometimes it is a matter of just plain ignorance. Too often it is a matter of lacking the necessary money to buy an article the need for which may be evident. Philosophically, the real need for some conveniences may be open to question. In the present study, experience and trial studies dictated a list of conveniences, practically all of which would be deemed necessities in urban areas, either as household conveniences or as necessary modes of transportation and supply. Communication conveniences take on a particular importance in terms of relations with the outside world and specifically in the func- tioning of the leaders in the particular activities of their neighbor- hood groups. An 84 per cent ownership of radios is quite satisfactory TABLE 14. Percent of Leaders Reporting Specified Facilities and Conveniences, by Race and Sex Facilities and conveniences Per cent reporting specified item All leaders White Negro Male Female Automobile 65.3 68.4 56.7 64.0 66.8 Truck 21.4 26.5 7.1 22.4 20.4 Telephone 14.9 20.1 .4 13.0 17.0 Radio 84.4 89.2 70.9 81.7 87.4 Phonograph 22.3 19.5 29.9 21.2 23.5 Piano 34.5 41.6 14.6 29.4 40.3 Electricity 46.7 56.3 19.7 43.0 50.9 Mechanical refrigerator 39.5 51.1 7.1 34.2 45.6 Ice box 24.8 18.3 43.3 23.5 26.3 Pressure cooker 24.4 27.1 16.9 22.8 26.3 Water supply: Hand pump Piped 28.5 26.4 27.7 35.1 30.7 2.0 28.0 23.3 29.0 29.9 Bathroom fixtures: Tub Lavatory Toilet 14.7 15.2 16.0 19.7 20.4 21.2 .8 .8 1.6 12.6 12.6 14.2 17.0 18.1 18.1 Screens 82.2 91.0 57.5 80.7 83.8 Daily paper 52.1 63.5 20.1 50.0 54.4 Weekly paper 73.9 79.5 58.3 74.5 73.3 Farm paper One Two Three or more 80.6 26.6 28.6 25.4 85.3 21.8 31.2 32.3 67.7 40.1 21.7 5.9 78.6 28.2 28.4 22.0 83.0 24.8 29.1 29.1 in comparison with the general population in rural areas (Table 14) 2 2 In 1940, 42.4 per cent of all rural-farm dwelling units in North Carolina had radios. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing. [73] The radio had already demonstrated its usefulness not only in the usual channels of entertainment and instruction but also in provid- ing specific stimuli in connection with many of the activities with which the neighborhood leaders have already concerned themselves. A goal of 100 per cent ownership of radios in rural areas is not too high. The white leaders in fact have already reached 89 per cent ownership of radios. The figures for telephones are indicative of an important lack of communication. Only 20 per cent of the white leaders have tele- phones. Only one among all the Negro leaders possesses a telephone. In certain rural portions of the state telephone service is as yet virtually unobtainable. It is also true that the need for regular com- munication is less present in rural than in urban areas. The rural dweller, particularly the rural farm-dweller, is accustomed to less immediate relationships with other people than is the urban dweller. Yet telephone communication is increasing elsewhere in rural America. The picture brightens again in the case of newspapers. Over half (52 per cent) of the total leaders take a daily newspaper. The dis- crepancy between white leaders and Negro leaders in this regard is marked. Whereas 64 per cent of the whites subscribe to a paper, only 20 per cent of the Negroes do so. This is a testimony of the lesser edu- cation and the greater poverty of the latter group. Rural people furthermore read weekly newspapers, some of which are local and some of which are much wider in scope. Almost three-fourths (74 per cent) of the entire group subscribe to at least one of these weekly papers. Four-fifths of the white leaders purchase a weekly paper. The Negro leaders make up in part for their lack of daily printed news by subscribing to a weekly newspaper in 58 per cent of the cases. The daily or weekly paper acts as a one-way communicating device (except for letters to the editor!) so far as most families are con- cerned. Yet the newspaper coupled nowadays with the radio is an important conveyor of news of general import as well as a specific source of information on a hundred and one items of interest to the farmer and his family. As a factor in external stimuli which could be ascertained, the read- ing of farm papers is worth additional attention. Rural-nonfarm families in 67 per cent of the cases took farm papers. Farm families subscribed to these papers in 81 per cent of the cases. The farm paper is an important source of reading matter of many kinds to various members of farm families. Furthermore if the subscriptions to farm papers are considered in [74] terms of the amount of land operated by the farmer leaders, there is a definite relationship between the percentage who take farm papers and size of farm. It goes further than this. There is a direct ratio be- tween the number of acres operated and subscriptions to two or more farm papers. There is a relationship here between socio-economic status (signified by the number of acres operated) and interest as well as ability, both financially and literally, to obtain and read articles of direct interest to farmers and to the families of agricultural leaders. There was the expected difference between white leaders and Negro leaders. White leaders subscribed to farm papers on an aver- age of almost two per family. Negro leaders subscribed to an aver- age of one per family. More than double the proportion of Negro leaders took no farm paper as compared with the white leaders. At the other end of the scale, the proportion of white leaders who sub- scribed to two or more farm papers more than doubled that of Negro leaders. The difference was expected because of the already observed advantages of the former group in economic, educational, and social status, all factors making for a differential in this regard. Farm papers do not cost much, reduced to cost per single copy, but the eco- nomic differential alone would help to explain much of the divergence. The greater educational equipment of the one group combined with more adequate social stimuli provides a further explanation. In a different area there is the ownership of automobiles. Although the buying of automobiles has been encouraged in recent times, most farm leaders already owned their cars and they continue to function almost as well for shorter distances as they used to function for longer stretches. Sixty-five per cent of the leadership group owned automobiles. The figure also rises somewhat when white leaders alone are considered, 68 per cent of the whites as compared with 57 per cent of the Negro leaders owning their cars. The percentage is not as high as it should be from the standpoint of plane of living. Here the query might be raised as to the absolute necessity of an auto- mobile in the fundamentals of rural living. So far as leaders are con- cerned, however, the automobile has already proved itself a useful adjunct to getting about and quite often as an aid in performing tasks associated with the actual functioning of leadership in opera- tion. Furthermore, the automobile has established itself as a link with the world beyond the neighborhood. Trucks which sometimes take the place of automobiles and some- times function along with them are distinct aids to farming on any adequate scale as well as conveyors of people and hence as communi- cating devices. Only 21 per cent of the entire group, 27 per cent of the [75] whites and 7 per cent of the Negroes, owned trucks. Electricity is a giant source of aid in modern living. Its benefits can be utilized both on the farm and in the farm home. So far its use has been largely limited to the latter. Until relatively recent years, electricity has been dominantly a city and town affair. Its rural use has greatly expanded, thanks largely to the development of rural elec- trification projects. Although less than half (47 per cent) of the en- tire group possess electricity, 3 56 per cent of the white leaders have electricity. Only one out of five of the Negroes has electricity in his home. Electricity today is more than a possible philosophical assump- tion of a plane of living. It is a distinct asset. Its lack among Negro leaders in particular is an indication of the uphill battle that they must still face in attaining a plane of living commensurate with the place to which a normal standard of living entitles them. Turning to some of the more important physical conveniences in modern rural living, there is a series of devices used more or less in the homes of the neighborhood leaders. One-fourth of the leaders still have ice-boxes. Among the Negroes 43 per cent still rely upon them for the hit or miss refrigeration which they afford. At the time of the study, 40 per cent of the leaders had mechanical refrigeration in their homes. (The proportion will rapidly become higher with the electrification of rural areas.) The situation differs markedly be- tween the leaders in the two races. Over half (51 per cent of the white leaders) have mechanical refrigeration. Only 7 per cent of the Negroes possess this valuable adjunct to modern living. One of the more serious aspects of the refrigeration problem lies in the fact that so many of the leaders have no refrigeration of any sort, unless it be the haphazard utilization of a small stream or of a well! Thirty-one per cent of the white leaders and one-half of the Negro leaders lack either mechanical or non-mechanical refriger- ation. 4 For these people, nothing can be kept in warm weather that will spoil in a short time. The contribution to adequate living and particularly to adequate health that has been made by modern refrigeration is such that there is the hope that this lack can rapidly be overcome. It is one more reason why rural electrification on a com- plete scale is badly needed. Because of its advantages in food preparation, the possession of 3 In 1940, 22.9 per cent of all rural-farm dwelling units in North Carolina had electric lighting equipment. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing. * In 1940, 10.6 per cent of all rural-farm dwelling units in North Carolina had mechanical refrigeration; 19.8 per cent had some other refrigeration. Six- teenth Census of the United States: 19 %0, Housing. [76] a pressure cooker makes a unique contribution to rural living. Al- most one-fourth of the families of the leaders (24 per cent) own pres- sure cookers. Twenty-seven per cent of the white leaders and seven- teen per cent of the Negro leaders own these cookers. The pressure cooker device is one that normally would be of more appeal to women than to men, since it is more within the domain of the woman's sphere of activity. There is a slightly greater degree of possession in the families of women leaders than in the families of the men leaders, whose wives would not form as select a group on the whole as would those who in addition to being the female head of a family would have had the energy and the sociability, as well as the capac- ity, to become leaders among their neighbors. The water supply for rural homes is not the simple matter that it is in urban sections. The obtaining of water may range in terms of effort from crude forms of carrying it to the turning of a spigot to obtain a fresh supply. Twenty-six per cent of the leaders had piped water supplies; 29 per cent utilized the hand pump method. Almost half of the leaders still utilize a well or a spring (chiefly the former) as a means of supplying water. The figures for Negro leaders reveal the lack of adequate means of water supply under modern stand- ards. Only 2 per cent had piped water. Thirty-one per cent used the hand pump, which left almost two-thirds of the group without any water supply except that obtainable from the well or sometimes the spring. The conditions are "old-time" rural and decidedly wanting in adequacy in terms of today. The presence of sanitary fixtures in the modern urban home has rapidly assumed the status of a necessity. Yet these rural leaders are far down the scale in this regard. Only 21 per cent of the white leaders have an indoor toilet. Less than two per cent of the Negro leaders are so fortunate. For the whites, only one out of five have a lavatory; the same proportion have a bath tub. For the Negro leaders, only one out of a hundred have a lavatory and the same is true for the tub. Again there are certain assumptions connected with our culture that make modern washing facilities highly prized. The most serious item is the lack of the indoor toilet. On the other hand screens have become regarded as a necessity, at first chiefly in the kitchen, and then spreading over the entire house. (A large proportion of rural houses are one-storied in these areas). Over nine-tenths (91 per cent) of the white leaders and al- most three-fifths (58 per cent) of the Negro leaders have some screens on their homes. Two types of conveniences were noted which depart from the main [77] thread of the discussion but may be included here. Thirty-five per cent of the leaders had pianos; twenty-two per cent owned phono- graphs. Phonographs were found more frequently in the homes of Negro leaders. Neither of these instruments may be considered on the same basis as the items previously discussed. Pianos conceivably might constitute an important single index of a higher standard of living. These pianos, however, are, unlike the previous items, largely "non-functioning." They are largely old and out of tune remnants of a previous generation or two that have been passed down. They seldom are used. Phonographs simply pre-date radios. They are not the modern phonograph-radio devices. (These were counted as radios.) They are the old and squeaky predecessors of the radio, main- tained largely as a "parlor" ornament, because one hesitates, as in the case of the pianos, to dispose of them. Their prevalence is interest- ing but can not be considered in the same light, under the circum- stances, as the other items listed in the discussion. What of the overall picture of conveniences? In comparison with the general population, the picture is better than the average. In comparison with any proposed adequate plane of living, the picture is poor for the white leaders, taken as a whole, and deplorable for the great mass of Negro leaders. The point has already been made that the lack of some of these items is not quite the major tragedy that may be assumed by one used to the amenities of urbanized exis- tence. Furthermore in urban areas, the lack of some of these items would be far more serious. Nevertheless, the advantages to comfort and health, on the one hand, and the stimuli to living and thinking, on the other, are such that it is hoped as well as expected that in the postwar days the development of living in rural regions in this part of the United States will carry with it most of these items, the pos- session of which would mean so much to the men, women, and chil- dren in these rural areas. Where the figures are low, it must be re- membered, they are still lower for the rest of the populace, since the families studied are the leader families in these various neighbor- hoods. This fact makes the problem all the more serious. This study is concerned primarily with the leaders, and here the problem is connected with the effect a lower plane of living will have on a system of rural neighborhood leadership. These conditions do not prevent men and women from being leaders and for that matter excellent leaders. Most of these conveniences were non-existent not too many years ago, and leadership has always been present where there was a sufficient number of like-minded people. Nevertheless, the original point still remains. The leaders in their functioning as [78] people and as leaders could function more favorably with more ade- quate home environments and the material conveniences here analysed are part and parcel of home environments. There is furthermore another important consideration. It was be- yond the scope of the present study to investigate quantitatively the movement of boys and girls from rural to urban areas. Yet, one of the factors in this migration is the less satisfying living condi- tions in rural homes, which is part of the picture making for dis- satisfaction of farm boys and girls. Numerous studies have testified to the actuality of the social loss to rural life of young men and wo- men leaving for urban areas. The lack of many of these conveniences in contrast to the possible presence of them in urban areas is a mat- ter of concern to those who would retain more of the rural youth in their early environment. There is no doubt as to the seriousness of the children of leaders leaving. Potentially they are leaders. Any factor which helps produce the loss of such young people should be dealt with not only theoretically but also actually. Level of Living There are many ways of arriving at approximations of levels of living of leaders. Recently, rigorous measurements of levels of living have been made. The present study concerned itself only incidentally with this phase of social life since educational, economic, and other social factors were deemed more important for the purposes at hand. From the various items owned by the leaders, however, it was pos- sible to construct a simplified scale of level of living. A simple addi- tion of six items of importance to rural dwellers in North Carolina was made. These items were ownership of an automobile, possession of a truck, telephone, radio, electricity in the home, and piped water supply in the house. These six items, with the exception of a truck, are considered virtually as necessities in urbanized areas. In rural areas, taken as a group, they serve as one index of the level of living of rural families. Knowledge of the areas studied would lead to the expectation of a higher level of living among white than Negro leaders. The average (mean) index for whites is 2.9 (Table 15). Forty-two per cent of the white leaders score two or less. On the other hand 37 per cent score four or more. There is a fairly symmetrical distribution of items, ranging from 21 per cent having two items, exactly the same pro- portion having three items and then the proportion declining as one goes up or down the index scale. One out of 20 of the white leaders possesses none of these items (an index of zero), counter- balanced [79] TABLE 15. Level of Living Index 8 of Leaders, by Race and Sex iving index All leaders Race Sex Level of 1 White Negro Male Female Total: Number 966 712 254 514 452 Per cent 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 None 7.2 5.2 13.0 8.6 5.8 One 21.2 15.6 36.9 22.0 20.4 Two 24.7 21.2 34.3 26.2 22.7 Three 19.0 21.2 13.0 17.5 20.8 Four 13.4 17.1 2.8 13.4 13.3 Five 10.5 14.2 8.6 12.6 Six 4.0 5.5 3.7 4.4 Mean 2.6 2.9 1.6 2.5 2.7 a Includes ownership of an automobile, possession of a truck, telephone, radio, electricity in the home, and piped water supply in the house. by an almost equal proportion having all six of these items (those having an index of six). The level of living indices of Negro leaders bring into sharp focus the contrast between the two groups so far as these items are il- lustrative of levels of living. In contrast to a mean average index of 2.9 for the white leaders, the average for the Negro leaders was 1.6. The proportion of Negro leaders scoring zero was two and one-half times that of the white leaders. One-half of the Negro leaders had only one or none of these items. Less than 3 per cent had as many as four items and not a single Negro leader had more than four items. The items constituting the index are not for the rank and file of Negro families. They are not even for the leaders! Two extenuating circumstances may be pointed out. The men and women whose level of living is under analysis live in rural areas. For some, the items are unavailable in their area. For example, rural electrification, rapidly expanding, has yet to reach into many sections of the areas studied. The second involves a philosophy of living which does not necessarily regard the possession of all of these items as a sine qua non of living. Any rurally minded man will agree that there are advantages in rural (as contrasted with urban) living which more than outweigh the so-called conveniences of urban living. All this is probably true. Yet in this day and age of interdependence and intercommunication, families which lack any one of these items are handicapped. The leaders are particularly handicapped in that their level of living helps or hinders their leadership behavior. Par- ticularly in the communication items, such as the automobile, is this so. [80] A rural, stabilized state, such as the one under consideration, has definite advantages from the standpoint of a regularly functioning leadership. One of the disadvantages, however, is revealed in rela- tively low planes of living, of which the results of this simple index are indicative. If regarded as symptomatic of levels of living in gen- eral, and with the reservation that the simpler modes of living are atuned to a less complex type of life, these levels need to be raised. A leadership emanating from a low plane of living is nothing new. But here it is found as a widespread phenomenon among people who are not the great leaders of history. They are leaders in the calmer, more humble, everyday world of the common man in his rural neighborhood. As such their outlook and their consequent leadership are affected by low or even medium planes of living. As has been seen, the situation is more widespread among the Negro than the white leaders. In their long march toward a higher economic and social plane, their levels of living and their general outlook concomitantly have risen and will continue to rise. In the meantime, for a large pro- portion of these Negro leaders (and not a few of the white leaders) their more effective functioning in a democracy will continue to be affected until such time as the great majority attain a plane of living more commensurate with their leadership status. Organizational Affiliations Since leaders participate in the life of the neighborhood and com- munity, it is to be expected that they will belong to the organizations found in the community or neighborhood to the extent that their education and general level of living are condusive to such member- ship. For rural folk, the church is by far the most important adult organization in which people participate to any great degree. Ninety- six per cent of all the leaders are affiliated with some church organi- zation (Table 16) . Sixty-four per cent are members or teachers of a Sunday School class. In this regard, their older ages make this per- centage the more impressive. Eighteen per cent belong to missionary societies within the church. Two per cent still are affiliated with the young people's organizations in the church. There are variations as usual between the sexes and races. Ninety-eight per cent of all the women (as compared with 94 per cent of the men) belong to a defi- nite church organization. Somewhat more women than men belong to a Sunday School, but the difference is not significant. Thirty-eight per cent of the women belong to missionary societies. As leaders in one field, to what degree are the leaders in the re- ligious field? Almost one out of three (31 per cent) of the church [81] TABLE 16. Organizational Affiliations of Leaders, by Race and Sex Per cent reporting specified orgar lizational affiliations Organization All Race Sex leaders White Negro Male Female Religious organizations Church 95.8 94.5 99.2 93.6 98.2 Sunday School 63.9 59.7 75.6 62.8 65.0 Missionary society 17.9 17.4 19.3 38.3 Young people's organization 2.4 2.1 3.1 1.4 3.5 Political party 64.7 82.4 15.0 64.8 64.6 Cooperatives : FCX 9.5 12.8 .4 12.3 6.4 N. C. Cotton Grow _ ers Cooperative Association 5.0 4.6 5.9 6.8 2.9 Farmers Federation 4.8 6.5 8.4 .7 Farm organizations and committees: Grange 5.0 6.6 .4 6.2 3.5 Farm Bureau 5.3 7.0 .4 8.7 1.5 AAA Committee 10.7 14.0 1.2 19.3 .9 FSA Committee 1.2 1.7 1.9 .4 Home Demonstra- tion Club 24.3 28.0 13.8 50.2 4-H Club 1.0 .3 3.1 .2 2.0 Farmers' service club 2.4 .4 7.9 1.6 3.3 PTA 24.7 16.0 49.2 23.0 26.8 Fraternal organizations 7.2 7.3 7.1 12.0 1.8 American Legion 1.4 1.5 1.2 2.5 .2 members held some office in their church organization at the time of the survey. Over two-fifths (42 per cent) held some office in the Sunday School. A somewhat higher proportion (45 per cent of the women) held offices in missionary societies, and three-fifths (61 per cent) of those affiliated with young people's organizations held some office in their group. When it comes to religious affiliations, there might well be dif- ferences between the races. To what degree does this extend to people who are leaders in rural neighborhoods? Negroes belong to a greater degree than whites to all four of the religious organizations studied. While the differences are not statistically significant (using the Chi- square test) for any individual organization, the preponderance in [82] favor of the Negro group in each case leads to the assumption that were larger numbers used the difference would be as statistically significant as it is logically so. The proportion of members of each race who are also leaders in church organizations is illuminating. Almost one-fourth (24 per cent) of the whites who belong to a church organization are officers in that organization. Almost one-half (49 per cent) of the Negroes are in that category. The greater proportion of Negro neighborhood leaders in the church who are also leaders in their church groups holds also for Sunday School, missionary societies, and young people's organi- zations. This fundamental difference in a social aspect of life is in contrast to the economic aspects previously discussed. Why does this differen- tial in favor of the Negro leaders exist? For the rural Negro, the church life plays a fundamental part. It is not merely a matter of re- ligion, although that is vitally important. It is not only a matter of the social life connected with the religious group with which he or she is affiliated, important as that is. For the rural Negro the cultural pattern of church affiliation and attendance has become a fundamental habit in the personality of the individual. It is a part of his or her normal activity and thinking. In maintaining normal social relation- ships the church, along with the family and (for the younger people) the school, plays an all important role in the neighborhoods and com- munities of which it is a part, or from which it draws its support. Since the church is an institution which has so large a member- ship, it follows that in the functioning of leadership it may play an integral part. Neighborhood leadership in large measure functions through specific contacts and relationships between and among people. The rural church is, in addition to being a place of worship, a place where people who are likeminded in at least that one aspect meet. The likemindedness flows into other channels in addition to the ra- ligious one. Agricultural problems, home problems, neighborhood or county elections are a few of the types of social areas where minds meet. In addition, the church is an important source of social contacts between people who may not see each other all week, but who maintain regular contacts at the Sunday meetings, and, to the extent that it is prevalent, at the midweek prayer service. In the light of this, the church should become an integral part in the thinking of those who have to do with leadership in the rural field on the neighborhood plane. In the life of rural people other organizations also play important parts. Education has been analysed, but at this point it is well to dis- [83] cuss the school as a point of contact, much as the church has been so noted. School buildings are being used more and more as places of neighborhood meetings, where some issue of importance to the neigh- borhood families may be discussed. In the interrelationships among leader as well as other families there is often the common background of earlier attendance at the same school on the part of persons in a particular neighborhood. This broadens into common interests as parents of children who are now attending the same schools. The in- terest of leaders, men and women, is focussed in the school with its numerous major and minor problems, successes and failures. It is a tie that binds people together and acts as an aid to neighborhood leadership which is so much a matter of human interrelationships between leaders and followers. So far as school attendance by the children of leaders is concerned, the affiliation is almost 100 per cent while the children are young. As they grow older and finally cease formal education, the interest still remains in terms of group loyalty to the scenes of an important aspect of childhood and adolescence. This carries over into marriage and parenthood, when a new cycle begins. Rural parents tend to be associated with the rural school through parent-teacher associations. Among the neighborhood leaders studied, one-fourth belonged to this organization at the time the study was made. Women belonged to a greater extent than men (27 per cent and 23 per cent respectively). There is a significant difference be- tween Negro and white leaders in this respect. Almost one-half of the Negro leaders (49 per cent) as compared with somewhat less than one-sixth of the white leaders (16 per cent) are members of the parent-teacher associations connected with their schools. There is no significant difference between the sexes in the Negro group, although women leaders are slightly in the lead in this respect. Among the white leaders, however, the women are represented almost twice as frequently as the men in this organization. Such are the facts. More importantly, what lies behind these facts ? Much of the explanation is associated with the point that this is a study of leaders. The Negro leaders are not only a select group. They belong to a group with relatively fewer opportunities for belonging to outside organizations than do white leaders. Furthermore, the op- portunity to obtain an adequate education is still so new and looms so importantly in their eyes that the Negro leaders take seriously the opportunity of participation in this link between the school and family. The white leaders have more diversified interests and take less seriously the opportunity of belonging to this organization. This [84] is evidenced in part by the greater interest shown by women than by men, who among whites tend to leave such matters as parent-teacher relationships to the maternal side of the family. The greater interest of Negro leaders in the parent-teacher organi- zation is further seen in the fact that one-fourth of the leaders hold an office in the organization, compared with one-tenth of the white leaders holding similar positions in the corresponding white organi- zation. Another type of organizational affiliation is found in the Grange and the Farm Bureau which play active parts in the area studied. The proportion of leaders who belong to these organization's is not large; 7 per cent of the whites belong to the Farm Bureau with the same proportion found in the Grange. Less than 1 per cent of the Negro leaders belong to either organization. If white men only are considered, the proportion rises to one out of eight and one out of every 12 for the respective organizations. These organizations are devoted to the interests of farmers. The proportion of white leaders who belong to them being only fair, there remains a fertile field for these units in extending their membership so as to include a large proportion of the neighborhood leaders. One important functional sign of leadership ability was found among those neighborhood leaders who were also members of the AAA committees. In each county of the state, AAA committees have been elected. The work of these committees has proved to be of tre- mendous value to rural life, and their personnel therefore is of great importance. On the whole it consists of outstanding rural people or of town people who participate in rural and agricultural life. By the functional criterion of leadership used in this study, these men and occasional women are definitely leaders on the county level. One out of every 11 neighborhood leaders was also an AAA com- mittee member. Three of the Negro men were AAA committee mem- bers. No Negro woman and only four white women were members of this group. On the other hand 27 per cent of the white male leaders were also members of the AAA committees. These neighborhood lead- ers are from a select group. They have a unique opportunity in func- tioning on the neighborhood, the community, and the county level, and through their connections in the larger field, they come in contact with leaders and movements on a still broader scale. They form a link in the chain of leaders who are to be found on the various levels of rural (or non-rural) activity. 5 It was found that over three-fifths (62 5 The use of the word levels is not to imply that one level is necessarily higher or lower than another level. The fields of operation differ in breadth and chan- neling. [85] per cent) of the members of the AAA committees are officers in these committees, a further evidence of social activity. The most important organization for women only in the rural areas is the Home Demonstration Club. It has so successfully functioned throughout the state that it has constantly increased its number of local clubs and of individual members. The Home Demonstration Club meetings in actual practice present opportunities of "socializing" and of specific contacts which tie in well with the operation of neighbor- hood leadership. Existing organizations which can be utilized as a means of social interaction are important in the functioning of rural leadership. Fifty-five per cent of the white women leaders and 33 per cent of the Negro women leaders were members of Home Demon- stration Clubs when their counties were surveyed. It is no accident that so high a percentage of women are both leaders and members of Home Demonstration Clubs. Furthermore, 29 per cent of the white members and 47 per cent of the Negro members are officers in their clubs, an additional fact pointing to the leadership functioning of the women leaders. The group meetings and the group relationships, and above all the position of the leaders in their groups, give to these women of either race an unique opportunity to the extent that their neighbors are mem- bers and participants in the Home Demonstration Clubs of their neigh- borhoods. Even at the present time, partly as one result of conferences arising from the study, and due even more to the vision of those who are in positions of leadership in the Home Demonstration Club organ- ization itself, the scope of these clubs is being widened in the effort to embrace as large a proportion of the white and colored women of the state as possible. Turning to the cooperative organizations, a fair proportion of the white male leaders are found to have memberships. Eighteen per cent of the white male leaders belong to the Farmers Cooperative Ex- change ; 12 per cent belong to the Farmers Federation ; and 6 per cent are members of the N. C. Cotton Growers Cooperative Association. However, these figures hide the true story, since cotton is relatively scarce in the western region. Moreover, the Farmers Cooperative Ex- change does not operate in the mountain area, while the Farmers Federation operates primarily in that area. When the county in which the Cotton Growers Cooperative Association does not operate is ex- cluded, the percentage of white male leaders who are members rises to 9 per cent. The percentage of FCX members, with this county ex- cluded, rises to 26 per cent. On the other hand, 35 per cent of all the leaders in the mountain county belong to the Farmers Federation. The only cooperative organization in which Negro leaders are found [86] to any great degree is the Cotton Growers Cooperative. Over 8 per cent of the colored male leaders belong to this Cooperative (again the mountain area was excluded), a figure comparable with the 9 per cent for the white leaders. In all, over one-third (35 per cent) of the white male leaders be- long to at least one cooperative, as compared with one out of 12 of the Negro leaders. The difference is significant statistically and soci- ologically. It reflects in another way the economic and social advan- tages of the one group, an advantage which can be translated into a more adequate type of leadership activity. The proportion belonging to fraternal organizations among the leaders is not large. Fifteen per cent of the white men, as compared with 8 per cent of the Negro men, belonged to at least one fraternal organization. Few white women (1 per cent) and a larger proportion of Negro women (4 per cent) belonged to fraternal organizations. The more important distinction lies in the patterns of behavior of the two races. Among the whites, fraternal organizations are more a matter for men. Among the Negroes, there is less sex differentiation in "joining lodges". Among rural leaders of both races, there is re- lative lack of membership in organizations of a fraternal-social nature. There is not much interest on the part of these leaders in them, the general consensus being that they may be all right for urban people but that rural folk have little need or use for such organi- zations, or at least no needs that other existing organizations cannot meet. Even in these organizations, however, the degree of leadership is evidenced in the fact that 17 per cent of the white men and 36 per cent of the Negro men hold offices in their particular fraternal organizations. There is a scattering participation in other organizations, but the numbers involved are too few to be of importance. In general there is a picture of fairly adequate organizational affiliation among the white leaders and less adequate affiliation among the Negro leaders, except in religious organizations. Women leaders of both races are affiliated primarily with the church and the Home Demonstration Clubs. In the light of their family duties and the pattern of behavior for women, this is quite explainable. Organizational affiliation and activity assume importance in the analysis of leadership behavior be- cause leaders operate in a matrix of social relationships, and organi- zational affiliations give these leaders opportunity for social contact, social broadening, and the furthering, consciously or unconsciously, of their leadership activities through influencing the behavior of others. [87] PART III Comparison of Leaders and Their Groups [89] CHAPTER 10 The Leaders and Their Groups No discussion of leadership is complete without an analysis of those who form the group from which the leadership is derived. The earlier studies of leadership were prone to neglect the fact that leader- ship does not exist in a vacuum. It is part and parcel of a group of interacting personalities. A is not simply a leader, with B, C and D automatons who react to specific signals. A is a personality, and so are B and C and D. A's leadership status in the group containing B, C, and D is a matter of interaction among all four. A does happen to be the leader because of good and sufficient reasons if he is a true leader. His leadership always implies followship, much as in psychological phraseology, a stimulus implies a response; otherwise no stimulus has existed functionally. Because of this some of the relationships between the leader and his group have been noted in addition to the characteristics surrounding the phenomenon of leader- ship itself. Another step remains to be taken. Just as leadership is funda- mentally tied up with "followship," and in fact because of this, the type of "followship" in its way is as important as the leadership. Not only does neighborhood leadership largely develop from the neighbor- hood group. Also, success of the leader in getting things done is dependent to an important degree upon that leader. This has been implied in the analysis of the results thus far obtained in the study. The further important point here is that results depend not only upon the leader but also upon the members of his group. The leader, man or woman, white or colored, can only work with and through the human material, so to speak, that is at hand. Consequently, the status of his group, the social and economic levels of the people who compose it, their attitudes and ways of behavior are all important from the standpoint of the things to be achieved. The significance of the personal qualities and background of the leader cannot be overestimated. Just so, the importance of the personal attitudes and backgrounds of the members of his group must be taken into full consideration in any analysis of the practical operations of leadership. Composition of Leader's Group Of the 966 persons who operated as leaders, 918 or 95 per cent were found to have had sufficient interest and opportunity to function actively as neighborhood leaders. Some of the remaining 5 per cent [91] could function quite well with more adequate training and explana- tion of the purposes and functioning of the neighborhood leadership system of interrelationships. For the purposes of this section of the study, however, they had to be eliminated from consideration. Of the total leaders 74 per cent were whites. This corresponds fairly closely with the percentages of whites in the rural population, which in 1940 reached 68.9 per cent in the rural areas studied. The white leaders averaged 11.3 families in their groups. About two-thirds (66 per cent) of the groups consisted of white families only; another one per cent consisted of Negro families only; while the remaining third consisted of mixed groups of white and Negro families. White women leaders were somewhat more likely to have racially mixed groups than the men, but the difference was found to be of no statistical significance. Among the Negro leaders the men clearly predominated. Out of a total of 254 leaders, 158 or 62 per cent were men. This was due to the fact that there were four counties which had colored farm agents while there were only two counties which possessed colored home agents. In the early days of the neighborhood leadership system, the leaders were largely obtained on a voting or selection basis with the sex of the leader to be chosen usually agreed upon beforehand in a conference between the particular county agent involved and the in- terested neighborhood group. In the beginning, since more of the county agent's work has to do with men, there was a definite tendency to obtain a preponderance of men leaders. To the extent that selection of leaders continues, it calls for the more equal distribution of leader- ship among women and men, since it was quickly found in virtually all the neighborhoods visited that there was definite need for leader- ship not only as such but also on the basis of a sex division. While there are spheres in our society in which men operate more efficiently than women, the opposite is just as true. It is equally true that there are many fields in which an outstanding person of either sex might well operate in a leadership capacity. The practice was to seek Negro leaders in those neighborhoods which are entirely Negro or almost entirely Negro in their composi- tion. Where the neighborhoods are composed of white and colored families white leaders are chosen, in line with the prevailing patterns of white-Negro relationships in the South. The Negro leaders averaged 7.5 families per group with the women having slightly larger groups than the men. This happened to be true of the white leaders, also, but in both cases the average differ- ences in number were too small to be considered of significance. [92] Th smaller number of families per Negro leader is due primarily to the fact that the neighborhood groupings of Negroes are smaller on the average than those of white families. As will be noted below, the smaller number is of decided advantage to a leader and to his qualitative work in accomplishing desired results. The average (median) number of families per leader, including both white and Negro leaders, was 10.3. This figure coincides with what is probably a fair number of families which an average leader may be expected to contact under normal circumstances. A range of from six to 15 may be suggested as the limits within which most "loads" should fall. Only 15 per cent of the leaders had over 15 fami- lies in their group; 10 per cent had more than 20 families. These figures must be viewed with some caution, as in some cases all the families may not have been noted in the leaders' lists. On the other hand, the families listed probably represented the maximum serviced. In the technique of leader-group relationships involving specific projects, the number of families in the group assumes an important place. If there are too few families in the group, insufficient use of the leader's ability has been made. Furthermore, the fewer the num- ber in a group, the less select the leadership becomes. On the other hand, there are still more objections to too large a group. Neighbor- hood leaders give of their time and energy. They are volunteers, so to speak, and receive no financial remuneration. At times, the leaders, particularly the men, give their working time to further a particular plan or project or to disseminate information. They should not be expected to contact too many families. Nor can they do a good job if their efforts are expended among too many families. Sometimes this has taken the form of inadequately reaching all the families in a group; sometimes it has been at the expense of not reaching all the families in connection with some specific project. One cannot be so dogmatic as to say, "the number should be ten." Circumstances alter cases, particularly cases like these, where there is no paid organization of leaders, and where the organization itself is carefully guarded so that it never shall become an institutionalized organization with definitely worked out systems and channels of reaching out to the last man from the top of the organization. There are certain factors which in actuality have been found to affect the number of families a leader may contact with sufficient regularity and with adequate time to do a good job. Where the neighborhood is a compact one, often rural-nonfarm in part, the number of families in the group may well be larger than the average. Contrariwise, where the distances are fairly great and the roads [93] poor, the number may well be lessened. The time available to the leader and the extent of the leader's fundamental interest in the general philosophy and practice of either leadership or projects undertaken, or better still both, are important factors. Above all, there is the ability of the leader. This implies not only mentality but also knowledge and the capacity to influence people to do things. Education counts for much in actual practice. Finally, the type of group that one works with is of importance. In some counties, both within and outside of the areas investigated, large numbers have been allotted to a particular person, such as a storekeeper, who sees many people. Here again, the matter of complete contact with all the families, not just those one happens to meet, is the important point. It is quite possible that, where group meetings have proved satisfactory and largely attended, the number of families serviced may be above what would be a desirable average number. On the whole, a number not too much below or above 10 seems most satisfactory, and only in extreme cases would more than 15 be considered as not "thinning out" too much the work which even a good leader might accomplish in the development of projects and programs which can utilize the leader-group relationships in specific enterprises. These figures can be used as norms and can be applied to various parts of the country in terms of their particular conditions. For example, the wide areas of the western states involve a different set of problems from the more closely settled "rurban" areas that in many ways are as much urban as rural, and where 10 neighbors may be little more than a stone's throw away, if heaved, it may be admitted, by a sufficiently strong arm. Length of Acquaintance One of the factors which provides the basis for a well-knit system of group relationships is the length of acquaintanceship of the vari- ous members of that group. It is one index of the strength of neigh- borhood ties. In fact, if duration of acquaintance were the sole cri- terion of the adequacy of a good neighborhood leadership system, there would be little cause for proceeding further in the analysis. There were only three out of more than 9,000 families with whom the respective leaders were unacquainted. All three were newcomers. In considering each racial group separately, 99 per cent of the family heads had been known by the white leaders for a year or more ; over nine-tenths (91 per cent) had been known for five or more years. No fewer than 83 per cent had been known by the neighborhood leaders for 10 years or more. In fact the great majority of the heads of families had been known by the leaders since childhood. [94] The same general picture was true of the Negro leaders and their groups. Among them, 99 per cent had been known by the leader for a year or more. Eighty-seven per cent had been known for five or more years. Seventy-seven per cent had been known by the neigh- borhood leader for 10 or more years, with most of them having been friends and acquaintances since childhood. The somewhat lesser aver- age length of acquaintanceship among the Negroes is due to the fact that the Negroes are more mobile than the white families. These long years of acquaintance in peaceful, rural environments is an indication of the stability of rural life in good times as well as in times of stress and strain. The basis had been laid for a func- tional system of neighborhood relationships on a leader-group basis long before its possible use to society in war and in peace was envi- sioned. Such long-time acquaintance has proved to be a real asset. CHAPTER 11 Comparative Characteristics of Leaders and Groups In any detailed analysis of leaders and their groups the question of their likenesses and differences in personal characteristics inevitably arises. In the present study some knowledge of comparative character- istics is basic to a full understanding of the way in which the neigh- borhood leadership program is operating. Age Relationship Between Leaders and Their Groups Previous analysis has shown that an important proportion of the leaders are neither particularly young nor particularly old, that they are men and women who have achieved maturity and sufficient years of experience to have proved their leadership capacities. On the aver- age they are quite active and have in few cases reached the status of inactivity in social relationships that often accompanies the later years of life. Now the question arises, are there any relationships between the ages of the leaders and those of their neighbors? For this purpose, the ages of the male leaders of each race were compared with the ages of the male heads of families of the same racial group. The average (median) age of all white male leaders was 51 years; [95] the average (median) age of all white male heads of families in their groups was 48 years. The figures thus show a slight but statistically unimportant difference in favor of older ages for the leaders. The relative distribution of the ages of the leaders in comparison with that of the non-leaders should be more illuminating. Naturally where leaders are younger, the average age of the corresponding non- leaders would tend to be older. Where leaders are old, the average age of their group would tend to be younger. The neglect of this type of relative distribution often leads to an artificial mathematical picture when averages only are given. For purposes of analysis the leaders have been classified into nine age groups, the "young" group being under 30 years of age, the oldest group being those 65 years of age and older (Table 17). TABLE 17. Age op Male Leaders and op Male Heads of Families, by Race White Negro Age in years Leaders Heads of families Leaders Heads of families Total: Number Per cent 356 100.0 2,895 100.0 158 100.0 979 100.0 Under 30 4.3 9.3 1.3 15.7 30-34 5.1 9.9 5.1 11.2 35-39 7.0 11.2 10.1 10.3 40-44 14.3 12.1 10.8 10.4 45-49 14.0 12.2 17.6 11.2 50-54 17.7 12.7 16.5 12.5 55-59 14.6 9.3 19.5 10.1 60-64 10.1 9.4 7.6 7.5 65 and over 12.9 13.9 11.5 11.1 Median age 51.5 48.1 51.5 46.0 Comprising the youngest group, there are 15 white male leaders from 20 through 29 years of age. They had 131 white families in their group who possessed a male "head". 1 The comparative youthfulness of the leaders becomes evident when it is noted that none of the heads of families of the non-leader group were under 20 years of age and that 90 per cent of the non-leader group were 30 years of age and over. For the entire group of white male leaders and non-leaders, a 1 Omitted from the calculation were fatherless families with a grown older son recognized as the head and those few households of elderly women who lived by themselves. [96] larger percentage of leaders fall within the older ages than the mem- bers of their groups. This corroborates the conclusion that age brings experience and with it acceptance and functioning leadership. Yet since these leaders are a select group by virtue of the comparative positions they have attained, it is not surprising that an important percentage are relatively younger than the men whom they represent. This is another way of saying that while evidently age is a factor in attaining the position of neighborhood leadership, it is not the only factor and that, furthermore, these presumably personal factors may often supersede older age in determining choice as leaders of their neighbors. The comparative situation in regard to the Negro families may be analyzed. Again, for logical reasons, the ages of Negro male leaders were compared with those of the Negro male heads of families. While the average (median) age of all Negro male leaders was 52 years, the average (median) age of the corresponding male non-leader group was 46 years. In analyzing the relative age distributions of leaders and their non-leader groups the same phenomenon for the younger Negro leaders appears at the outset, but the shift to the older leaders is earlier than in the case of the white leaders. The con- clusion after a careful analysis of the data is that the picture for the Negro leadership is much the same as for the white leadership, ex- cept for this one important particular. Both groups lean to leaders on the average somewhat older than the average member of the non- leader groups. Both leadership groups have a wide age variation and consequently an important percentage of leaders younger than the average of their corresponding neighborhood groups. The Negro lead- ers are older than the white leaders in the same relative age relation- ship with their families. In the light of circumstances, this is explainable. The great pro- portion of adult rural Negroes are but two generations removed from slavery. Slowly but surely they are developing to where the great mass has become economically self-sufficient. Leadership emerges in any group but in a group rural, poor, little educated, little ad- vanced agriculturally, feeling its way through the folkways of the dominant white group, leadership takes more years of development before its acceptance by the Negro group or, for that matter, by the white group. These Negro leaders have developed largely within and have been selected from primarily Negro neighborhoods and their path to accepted leadership has generally been a sterner one than that of the white leaders. Under these circumstances, it is to be ex- pected that a little more "aging" is required — unconsciously per- haps — of the Negro leaders. [97] Education of Leaders and Their Groups The development of the economic and social life of the South re- flects the emphasis upon formal education. Poverty-stricken as a re- sult of the war of 1861-1865, the southern states in recent years have spent a larger proportion of their income for purposes of formal edu- cation than the average for the United States as a whole. The result is now beginning to become apparent in rural as well as urban dis- tricts. In North Carolina, a system of state support of local schools is functioning excellently. It is of most benefit to those rural localities which lack the financial ability and sometimes the will to develop their school systems to a level deemed adequate in terms of today. This system and the general advancement of education are now be- ginning to pay dividends in the present generation. Previous studies of leaders in wider spheres than that of the neigh- borhood have attested to the fact that leading men and women are decidedly above the average in educational equipment and attain- ment. It remains to be seen to what degree a relatively greater amount of education is found among the leaders than the groups of which they are a part. The comparative education of leaders and non-leaders was analyzed in terms of race and sex. The average (mean) education achieved by the white male leaders was 8.2 grades, while the white male heads of families in their groups averaged 6.4 grades. 2 Offhand, the education of the male white leaders would seem to be superior to that of the cor- responding group of non-leaders. Where valid, a further analysis was made of the various degrees of education achieved by the leaders and by the men in their groups. While two per cent of the white leaders had finished college (Table 13, p. 70) , less than one per cent of the men in their groups had had this much education. Almost a fourth (24 per cent) of the white male leaders had finished high school as compared with 10 per cent of the non-leaders. Three-fourths (75 per cent) of the leaders had completed grade school as compared with only 45 per cent of the non-leaders. The comparative picture for the white women leaders and non- leaders is foundamentally the same. Eight per cent of the women leaders were college graduates, as compared with two per cent of the non-leader group. Almost half of the leaders (48 per cent) had corn- Average (mean) grades completed were as follows: Leaders Heads of Families White male 8.2 6.4 White female 10.2 7.5 Negro male 5.4 4.1 Negro female 7.6 4.9 [98] pleted high school in contrast to 22 per cent of the non-leader group. Ninety-four per cent of the white women leaders as compared with 56 per cent of the non-leaders had finished grade school. Thus, the comparative picture for the men and for the women is essentially similar. The relative education of leaders and non-leaders in the Negro group shows the same comparative picture. Two per cent of the Negro male leaders had completed college ; an additional three per cent had had some college training. None of the Negro male non-leaders in their groups had completed college. Only four non-leaders had had any college work. One-third (34 per cent) of the Negro male leaders had completed grade school, as compared with 11 per cent of the com- parable non-leader group. Among the corresponding groups of wo- men, the story is the same. Three per cent of the Negro women lead- ers were college graduates; an additional six per cent had received some college training. Only four of the non-leaders had attended col- lege, one of them being graduated. At the other end of the scale, 63 per cent of the women leaders had completed grade school, as com- pared with 19 per cent of the non-leaders. Thus the discrepancy between the educational attainments of the leaders and the members of their groups becomes obvious. This, of course, does not mean that the leader in each group is superior in educational attainment to all the members of his group. In a large proportion of cases, however, the corresponding groups of non-lead- ers have less education than the leaders of their groups. In testing this for the white male groups, it was found that, except for those few leaders who had virtually no education, the great majority of leaders had more education than the non-leaders in their specific groups (Table 18). The same relationship exists for the groups of white women and for both men and women of the Negro groups. It is no surprise perhaps to find these educational differences be- tween leaders and others. It does bring to the fore further aspects of the development of leadership and the relationships existing between these men and women and the corresponding groups of non-leaders. The higher educational attainment of the leaders in itself is another sign of leadership status in the several neighborhoods and com- munities. It means that their participation in specific programs and projects should be on a more understanding level than their neigh- bors in regard to the objects and reasons for these projects. On the other hand, the amount of variation among both leaders and non-leaders poses other problems. Matters of information and procedure ideally would be presented on various educational levels. [99] TABLE 18. Education of White Male Leaders as Compared With Education of White Male Heads of Families Last grade completed by white male leaders White male leaders Education of white male heads of families Number Per cent Less Same More Total education education education than as than Number Per cent leader leader leader Total 354 100.0 2,808 100.0 60.8 24.6 14.6 None 3 .8 32 100.0 18.8 81.2 Some grade school 85 24.0 583 100.0 5.3 66.1 28.6 Completed grade school 76 21.5 634 100.0 58.8 24.6 16.6 Some high school 107 30.2 881 100.0 77.3 12.0 10.7 Completed high school 42 11.9 391 100.0 88.0 8.4 3.6 Some college 9.3 242 100.0 96.7 2.1 1.2 Completed college" 8 2.3 45 100.0 100.0 a One reported graduate work. In practice, this is impossible, except in the individual conferences and talks, which is one point in favor of such procedures. As a re- sult methods of presentation are more effective with some families than others, depending upon the educational level attained. The Changing Situation with Regard to Education. One of the im- portant factors in the successful operation of a continuing series of adequate leader-group relationships is the status of the group with which the leader deals. The degree of education of the leaders is higher than that of the heads of families and that, furthermore, the latter group has a considerable way to go even to attain average completion of grade school. A measure of the progress along this line can be obtained by comparing the degree of education attained by the various age groups. As usual, because of the factors which dif- ferentially influence their educational attainment, each race was considered separately, and men and women were analyzed separately within each racial group. The advance in educational achievement of heads of families in the leaders' groups as one goes from the older to the younger groups is striking. For example, in examining the data for the whites, the proportion completing high school is found steadily to increase as the family heads become younger. This is true of both men and women. In the Negro group the same gradations are found. Other measures of the change in the educational situation are found [100] in the relative percentages who are presumed to be illiterate — those who are reported as having had no education. The difference between the percentage of those in the youngest and the oldest groups who have had no education is taken as this measure. Among the white men, the range is 5 per cent; among the white women, it is 3 per cent. For the Negro men, the range is 23 per cent; for the Negro women, it is 32 per cent. These figures testify to the gradual change in the education of Negro men and women. This refers to the lowest common denominator, so to speak. Yet illiteracy is not only an im- portant educational index but is also correlated with various other social factors. 3 At the higher end of the educational ladder, it is important to note that the proportion of Negro heads of families who were college grad- uates was almost zero, only one man and four women having com- pleted college, with none having done post-graduate work. The whites, particularly the women, have done somewhat better with 46 of the men, or one per cent, and 121 of the women, or 2 per cent having completed college. On the whole, the picture is somber but encouraging in the sense that the admittedly low educational status of both groups is balanced by the status of the younger groups, and by the progressive change in the amount of formal education attained with succeeding decades. The outlook for the future is even better. To the extent that edu- cation is an index to other factors of import in the leader-group re- lationship, neighborhood leadership relationships will continue to be improved as time goes on. Occupations of Leaders and Their Groups Of the families who composed the neighborhood groups examined in this study, all were rural dwellers ; moreover, they were over- whelmingly agriculturalists in occupation. The specific occupations of the heads of the families were analyzed in detail. There were 5,973 white male heads of families, concerning whom information was obtained in regard to occupation. These families were scattered throughout the length and breadth of the six counties which were taken as a cross-section of the state. The areas ranged all the way from the low-lying lands of the east to the mountainous region in the west, and from the old tobacco belt in the north to the "heavy" cotton area on the southern border of the state. Less than one per cent of these rural dwellers were without an oc- See Sanford Winston, Illiteracy in the United States, passim. [101] 5,973 100.0 2,548 100.0 .9 1.2 59.3 21.4 17.5 18.3 5.7 38.5 1.1 11.9 .5 .2 .6 .5 .5 m 1.9 .2 1.1 4.0 .7 1.5 .6 .3 e .4 5.5 5.7 TABLE 19. Primary Occupation of White and Negro Male Heads of Families Primary occupation White Negro Total: Number Per cent None Farm owners Farm tenants Sharecroppers Farm laborers Part-time farm operators Part-time farm laborers Professional and semi-professional workers Proprietors, managers, and officials, excluding farm Clerical, sales, and kindred workers Craftsmen, foremen and kindred workers Operatives and kindred workers Domestic service workers Protective service workers Service workers, excluding domestic and protective Laborers, excluding farm cupation at the time of the study (Table 19). Most of the 55 unem- ployed men were "retired" either because of age or infirmities or both. A few could be expected to resume an occupation in the future. None were of the class of wealthy retired that is found in more urbanized areas. Of those who were actively earning a livelihood, 85 per cent were engaged in agriculture; 14 per cent were nonfarmers, albeit rural dwellers. Of the 5,032 white heads of families who were farmers by primary occupation, seven out of ten (70 per cent) were owners of their farms, and worked them on a full-time basis. Somewhat over one-fifth (21 per cent) were full-time tenant farm laborers. Another one per cent were part-time farmers, with their farming considered as their pri- mary occupation. There were 2,548 Negro male heads of families, concerning whose occupation information was obtained. Incidentally the Negro families formed 30 per cent of the non-leaders families studied, as compared with the 26 per cent that Negroes constitute of the rural population of North Carolina as a whole- Of these men, one per cent had no occupation, chiefly because of [102] disabilities occasioned by old age or chronic illness. Of the remain- der, 8 per cent were non-farmers. Thus over nine out of every ten Negro male heads of families were engaged in agriculture as a pri- mary occupation. There were 2,305 of these men. Their economic status is in direct contrast with that of the white male heads of families. Somewhat less than a fourth (24 per cent) were full-time farm owners. Another 20 per cent were full-time tenants. Over 42 per cent were full-time share- croppers, with another 13 per cent being classified as full-time farm laborers. Somewhat less than one per cent would be considered as part-time farmers, with farming considered as their primary oc- cupation. Thus there is a mixed difference in the status of the two groups of men primarily engaged in agriculture. (The percentage of white farm owners is raised by the inclusion of a mountain county in the study. The farmers there were typically owners of small farms, and the proportion of Negro farm families relatively few) . The figures for the status of white farmers are comparable to those for the state as a whole. In comparison with the Negro heads of families, their superior farming status becomes self-evident. Landowners, whether of large or small farms, form a more stable group of men than do tenants, sharecroppers, or laborers. They have a more fundamental interest in the land, its productivity and the things which affect that land and what is derived therefrom. Com- bined with their ownership of the land, there is more conservatism among them than in the landless group. On the other hand, there is more susceptability to fundamental changes, where they are con- vinced that there is advantage to them in these changes. The non-landowners have on the surface a lesser stake in the land and in the community. The effect of this latter is softened, however, to the extent that these families have remained in a given location for sufficient years to become socially integrated in their communi- ties. In the interplay between the leaders and their groups, these factors contribute to the results to an important extent. The individual fami- lies comprising a group make a great deal of difference to the develop- ment of a particular project. Here is one place where the old theories of leaders as "great men", or even as purely superior men, lack vi- tality. The real leader is found to be the most important member of the group in a specific program or project underway, and his or her relationships with the various members of the group are reflected immediately in the functioning of the particular project on hand. [103] The leader who deals with essentially a land-owning group does not have quite the same problem as the one who deals more largely with tenant farmers or sharecroppers. Some of these landless groups are on the way to owning land, but the majority of them are not in this category, so that this psychological phase of the question would not particularly affect the general point. Occupations of Women In most families, there were considered to be two heads, the woman as well as the traditional male head. The occupations of these women were tabulated separately in order to round out the picture of occu- pational backgrounds. As would be expected, the vast majority of the women were classified as housewives. Of the white families, 91 per cent of the women were in this category. Five per cent of the women were agriculturalists by primary occupation. Most of these women were widows or single women in the middle or later years of life. Only 13 per cent were housewives in addition to running farms. A third group, some 3 per cent, had nonfarm occupations, chiefly in clerical and kindred occupations. One out of five among them were also housewives. The Negro women presented essentially the same picture. Of these, 88 per cent were primarily housewives, 10 per cent (largely widows or unmarried) were primarily small farmers. Less than 3 per cent were classified in nonfarm occupations, largely in the field of domes- tic service. Testifying to the greater need of Negro women to work outside the home and yet to maintain a home, over one-fourth of the nonfarm group were housewives by, economically speaking, secon- dary occupation. It is obvious that for women of both races the home and the farm constitute their major and almost their sole occupational fields, with comparatively few having nonfarm occupations. This is normal in the areas involved and needs no particular explanation other than that it is the pattern of life in rural areas, largely untouched directly by industrial-urban life. Comparison of Occupations The great majority of inhabitants in these rural areas are of course primarily engaged in some phase of agriculture. In fact over nine- tenths of the leaders and 85 per cent of the non-leaders among the whites were engaged in farming. (The comparison here is for the male leaders only) . The percentages of both are so high that the dif- ference is not of great importance. The Negro group is even more preponderantly agricultural, all of the leaders being farmers pri- [104] marily except a few retired from active occupational pursuits chief- ly because of age and attendant infirmities. The actual percentage was 95, as compared with 91 per cent for the non-leaders. The great majority of the male white leaders were farm owners, 82 per cent coming under that category. This compares with a total of 59 per cent for the male heads of white families (Tablel9). In comparison, there were only 6 per cent of the white leaders who were tenants as compared with a total of 18 per cent in the comparable group of families. Less than one per cent of the leaders were share- croppers, as compared with 6 per cent of the non-leaders. These dif- ferences are all significant. What now are the facts for the Negro leaders and non-leaders? Fifty-four per cent of the Negro male leaders were farm owners, as compared with only 21 per cent of the non-leader Negro family heads. This statistically, and socially, is highly significant. On the other hand, there was no important difference in the proportion of tenants in the groups. While the proportion of Negro leaders who were croppers was only 18 per cent, 39 per cent of the Negro male heads of families were sharecroppers. Less than 2 per cent of the leaders were farm laborers, whereas 12 per cent of the non-leaders were in this economic group. These relationships between leaders and non-leaders are important in both races. The leaders and the non-leaders have been seen to be farmers. Not only is the farm-owning group found in importantly larger degree among the white leaders than among the non-leaders, but this fact is still more significant in the relationships between the Negro leaders and non-leaders. There is the usual gap between white and Negro leaders and between white non-leaders and Negro non- leaders. Within the Negro group, however, the difference in propor- tions between the leaders and non-leaders is of such degree, and the span of time during which this difference has had to arise is such, that the leadership is evident. Leadership and farm ownership are related to one another in these areas. This poses several problems. Both leader groups must think or be encouraged to think sympathetically and deeply regarding not only their own problems but also the problems of their non-land-own- ing farm neighbors. These figures show the need of careful building of neighborhood plans for the development of the less fortunate and often less capable farmers. That the great majority of both races are agriculturists should help in this problem. But those who have to do with the developing of projects should consider this particular [105] phase of the situation carefully in dealing with agricultural problems in those areas where like conditions exist. The figures offer another comparison of the two races. For the Negro leaders, the percentage of agriculturalists who were farm own- ers was 54 per cent. For the white non-leaders, the proportion of agriculturalists who were farm owners was 59 per cent. It is an im- portant side-light on the handicaps of the Negro leaders when it is seen that they are proportionately less farm owning than are the rank and file of the white farmers in the areas studied. [106] CHAPTER 12 Comparison of Farms and Homes of Leaders and Their Groups Neighborhoods in rural areas are subject to variation just as are neighborhoods in urban areas. In terms of a functioning leadership system, this means among other things that overall plans cannot be fitted to each area but must be considered in the light of each par- ticular community and neighborhood. One of the significant bases for variation is the prevalence of farm and home ownership. Size of Farms Since agriculture is the main economic and vocational interest of the rural families in this area, it is fitting that an analysis be made of the size of the farms of the members of the groups. If a farm of 200 or more acres be considered arbitrarily as a large farm, less than eight per cent of the white men farmed areas of this size. In fact, three-fourths (75 per cent) of the families tilled farms of less than 100 acres; 51 per cent had farms of less than 50 acres. Among the Negro families in the leaders' groups, the farms were correspondingly smaller. In fact only one per cent tilled 200 or more acres. Ninety-five per cent owned or worked farms of less than 100 acres; 82 per cent tilled farms of less than 50 acres. The small size of the farms is associated with the types of farm- ing, since the cotton, tobacco, truck and subsistence farms found in the mountains are all types of agriculture that require a great deal of hand labor. So far, machinery is relatively scarce except among the larger and the more prosperous farmers. The small farm itself makes the ownership of machinery on a large scale economically unfeasible. This suggests that cooperation among small farmers in the use of machinery be carried further. It also suggests more atten- tion on the part of the farm machinery companies toward the devel- opment of smaller types of machinery suitable for intensive cultiva- tion of small acreages. The small farmer is at a disadvantage in many ways, chiefly economic in nature. On the other hand, there are definite advantages from the standpoint of socialization. Owners and tillers of small areas are closer to one another in a physical sense. In this part of the country, most farmers can see the homes of one or more of their neighbors from the vantage point of their own doorways. This is in contrast to the large isolated farms so typical of the middle and far west. [107] The closer spatial association naturally and actually makes for closer human association. Families know each other as neighbors and as friends of years' standing. The important exceptions are those who as poor tenants and sharecroppers tend to move about in the hope of at last attaining a more adequate patch of ground to culti- vate. The great bulk of people in these neighborhoods are acquainted with each others faults and virtues, whether as farmers or in terms of personalities. There is a greater degree of interrelationship within each race, with the race lines potential barriers to the recognition of the abilities and the interests of one's neighbors. Thus in many ways, the stable neighborhoods of rural North Carolina are strengthened by the close proximity physically, and ordinarily socially, of people largely engaged in agriculture. All this has its repercussions on the problem of neigh- borhood leadership and the development of ways and means in the making of that leadership a practical adjunct in the progress of pro- grams with which the people in particular neighborhoods may con- cern themselves or may be led to concern themselves. To the extent that too small farms are an economic handicap, of course, no neighborhood is helped. And this is often too true. Yet the general point remains and has been found to be a factor of no small importance in the integration of neighborhoods and the development of a smoothly functioning system of leader-group relationships in specific neighborhoods and communities. Relationship between Leaders and Non-Leaders in Extent of Acres Operated The relative number of acres operated throws light on another phase of the relationship existing between leaders and non-leaders. The average (mean) number of acres operated by the white male leaders was 226. The average number of acres operated by the non- leaders was 97. These averages indicate that leaders tend to be de- cidedly larger operators of farm land than do non-leaders. A further analysis was made by dividing the leaders into groups according to the number of acres that they operated and then com- paring their average with the number of acres operated by the non- leader families in the neighborhood groups (Tables 20 and 21). The larger the farms operated by the leaders, the greater the proportion of their families who operate smaller farms than the neighborhood leaders. This, of course, is what might be expected. The picture be- comes clearer "vhen the proportion of white leaders who operate a larger number of acres than the white families in their groups is calculated. Eighty-four per cent of the white male leaders operate [108] TABLE 20. Total Acres Operated by White Male Leaders as Compared with Acreages Operated by White Male Heads of Families Total acres operated by leaders White male leaders White male heads of families Total Smaller number of acres than leader Same number of acres as leader Larger number of acres than leader Total: Number 348 2,406 1,537 472 397 Per cent 100.0 100.0 63.9 19.6 16.5 Less than 10 2.0 100.0 19.7 11.5 68.8 10- 19 1.4 100.0 32.5 25.0 42.5 20- 49 12.6 100.0 25.8 31.8 42.4 50- 99 27.3 100.0 54.0 25.0 21.0 100-199 23.6 100.0 72.8 19.0 8.2 200-499 23.6 100.0 85.2 13.3 1.5 500 or more 9.5 100.0 99.5 .5 TABLE 21. Total Acres Operated by Negro Male Leaders as Compared with Acreages Operated by Negro Male Heads of Families Total acres operated by leaders Negro male leaders Negro male heads of families Total Smaller number Si of acres than leader ime number of acres as leader Larger number of acres than leader Total: Number 152 801 533 167 101 Per cent 100.0 100.0 66.5 20.9 12.6 Less than 10 10- 19 2.0 9.2 100.0 100.0 70.8 25.3 29.2 36.8 37.9 20- 49 32.2 100.0 46.6 36.5 16.9 50- 99 25.0 100.0 79.1 11.6 9.3 100-199 26.3 100.0 93.3 5.7 1.0 200-499 500 or more 5.3 100.0 98.0 2.0 farms of larger acreage than do the farmers which comprise their groups. In the case of Negro families who are in the groups headed by white leaders, the figures are even more sharply defined. Of those leaders who operated the smaller farms (under 50 acres), only one had a Negro family in his group which operated a farm of over 50 acres. The Negro leaders and the non-leaders who comprise their specific groups were then compared in the same manner. The relationship here is even more regular. The proportion of farms smaller than those [109] of the leaders rapidly increases as size of leaders' farms increases. In fact, the preponderance of larger acreages among leaders as com- pared with their groups is greater among the Negroes than among the whites. The conclusion drawn from these data is evident. Leaders are drawn from operators of the larger farms. Off hand, this would seem to be largely an economic matter, that is, operators of large farms are the leaders, with operators of smaller farms the non- leaders. To the extent that this is true, there is danger of under- representation of the smaller farmers. But there is more to it than this. Leadership attainment represents achievement; so do large land holdings. The operators of the larger farms have attained both leadership socially and large farm operations agriculturally and economically. The Negro leaders illustrate this sociological point even more force- fully than do the white leaders. The entire Negro group is only 80 years away from a non-ownership status, so far as the area under discussion is concerned. In that time the usual social process of dis- tribution on the social and economic ladder has taken place. Like the white leaders, the Negro leaders have achieved both social leadership and relative economic and agricultural success to the extent that they are measured in terms of operation of larger acreages. Although the land holdings and farm operations of the Negro leaders are much less extensive than those of the white leaders, the Negro leaders are the larger operators in terms of comparison with the non-leader Negro groups. Along with larger operations there generally come increased pres- tige and acknowledged leadership. The qualities which make for leadership may not be the same as the qualities which make for the development of large operations, but there exists a relationship which is one of the many phenomena associated with leadership achieve- ment. In the meantime there exists the query as to what degree non-leaders would achieve (a) larger farm operations and (b) leader- ship among their fellows under more favorable circumstances. Home Ownership Home ownership is more significant in its meaning in rural than urban areas. There may be good and sufficient economic reasons why urban families may prefer to rent rather than to own homes, but in rural areas and even more so for the great agricultural groups, home ownership is generally associated with a more stable life and an economically as well as socially higher status than non-ownership. Consequently, it is of interest to compare the relative degree of home [110] ownership of leaders and non-leaders. Of the white leaders, 89 per cent were home owners. The percent- age of those who were thus situated was the same for both farmers and non-farmers in rural areas. In contrast, 72 per cent of the heads of white families in the leaders' groups owned their homes, and only 28 per cent of the heads of the Negro families included in the neigh- borhood groups of white leaders owned their homes. Of the Negro leaders, 55 per cent owned their homes. Included in their neighborhoods were eight white families, none of them being home owners. The Negro families in these largely Negro neighbor- hoods were 29 per cent home owning. Thus, in the case of white and Negro leaders, the percentage of home owners was greater than the percentage of the families in their neighborhoods of either race who were home owners. Since a small proportion of white leaders and a large proportion of Negro leaders were renters, it is interesting to compare the families from the neighborhoods of the owning and renting leaders in respect to home ownership. When the white leaders owned their homes, 73 per cent of the white families in their groups owned their homes, whereas when white leaders rented only 62 per cent of their group owned their homes. For the groups of the owning and renting Negro leaders, a definite relationship is also found. Forty per cent of the family groups of the home-owning Negro leaders in turn owned their homes, whereas only 15 per cent of the family groups of the renting Negro leaders owned their homes. Several conclusions are to be drawn from these data. The leader- ship group, either white or Negro, is a more stable group and eco- nomically and socially is above the average of the families in the neighborhood. Furthermore, the home-owning leaders of each race have groups of a higher status in their own race to deal with than do the renting leaders. The significance of these facts is that the leaders have more at stake in developments in their communities than many families which means that they are probably more inter- ested in such developments. Moreover, the relationships existing be- tween leaders of higher socio-economic status (as measured by home ownership in rural areas) means that the problems involved in ade- quate fulfillment of these programs are eased in some areas and are more difficult in others. All this is predicated on the fact that home ownership in rural regions is more desirable than renting, and that the social class of mature home owners is higher than that of renters, a statement [HI] which is borne out by a knowledge of the patterns of living of the two groups in question. Homes of Non-Leaders Considering all families in groups together it was found that of the rural white families over seven out of every ten (72 per cent) owned their homes. In contrast only 27 per cent of the Negro families had the status of home owners. For the white families, the great proportion of farm operators as well as of the nonfarm group owned their homes; for the Negroes the reverse was true. A further corroboration of this plane of living index was found in ascertaining whether the homes were painted or unpainted. Some- what over half (51 per cent) of the homes of the white rural dwellers were painted. A somewhat larger proportion of owned homes than of rented houses were painted, as might be expected (53 per cent as compared with 45 per cent) . Only one out of ten of the Negro dwell- ings was painted, although this percentage was almost doubled for the home owners (19 per cent as compared with seven per cent for the renters). Houses of brick were few and far between in these rural areas; only 1 per cent of the white dwellings and only a total of 2 houses of the Negro families were of brick. Thus the same type of discrepancy between races is seen once more. None of the neighborhood leaders of each race are considered, simply the families who compose their groups. To those accustomed to the neat, carefully painted houses found in many parts of the United States, the evidence of lack of pride in the appearance of houses may seem strange. The pattern has existed for many decades but has begun to change rapidly. This change is not accidental but is taking place concomitantly with other developments which are indicative of a higher plane of living for the great numbers of rural families, white or colored. And as this plane of living advances the background for a successful leader- group relationship in specific projects is also advanced. To the extent that home ownership is found — and it is high among white families — there is presumably more interest in improving methods in many aspects of rural life. This may be counted upon as an important factor in producing desired changes through a func- tioning leadership system. In this respect, owning a home is much like owning a farm. The two usually go hand in hand. Together they contribute to the stability of a particular neighborhood or community. While on the one hand, there may be the danger of too great con- servatism towards change; on the other hand, there is the more fundamental interest in regard to proposed changes that would affect the lives of the people for the better. [112] CHAPTER 13 A Note on Level of Living of Families The same level of living index which had been applied to the leaders' homes (Chapter 9) was utilized in analyzing the homes of the families in the neighborhood groups. The six items used were the possession of an automobile, a truck, a radio, use of electricity, a telephone, and piped water in the home. Of the 6,475 white families, only one per cent had all six items or, if this is too much to expect of rural folk, less than six per cent had as many as five items (Table 22). One out of six of all the white TABLE 22. Level of Living Index" of Leaders and Families, by Race Level of I iving index White Leaders Families Negro Leaders Families Tot al: Number Per cent 712 100.0 6,475 100.0 254 100.0 2,828 100.0 None 5.2 16.4 13.0 42.3 One 15.6 24.1 36.9 33.9 Two 21.2 24.9 34.3 19.8 Three 21.2 19.3 13.0 3.7 Four 17.1 9.5 2.8 .3 Five Six 14.2 5.5 4.8 1.0 a Includes ownership of an automobile, possession of a truck, telephone, radio, electricity in the home, and piped water supply in the house. families had none of these items; four out of ten had either one or none of these items. The Negro families scored still lower. Only a fraction of one per cent had as many as four of the items. None of the Negro families had as many as five of these items. More than four out of every ten rural Negro families possessed none of these items. The contrast with the leaders is obvious. Leadership is correlated with possession to a much greater extent of one to six of these items. This simple index reveals the decided lack of instrumentalities that are regarded as important in adequate rural life and living. A low index is indicative not only of a lack of these means but also of a lack of other factors which make for a more adequate social body. Thus, leaders are handicapped to the extent that they must work with groups which have been unable to attain many of these re- [113] sources. Their programs must be pitched closely to the indicated level of living and must contain less of the theoretical and more of the practical than is perhaps always desirable. The components of this simple index stand for different things, with communication of a physical and verbal sort weighted heavily. The possession of five of these items in homes in rural communities is rated as very good, four items as good, three items as "only fair," two or less items as inadequate in terms of present day standards of living. On such a basis not only rural families but also rural leaders in North Carolina are definitely handicapped. [114] PART IV The Leaders on the Job [115] CHAPTER 14 The Operation of the Program The development of the neighborhood leader idea reached one stage with the defining of neighborhoods and the selection and election of leaders. This happened about a year and a half prior to the present study. The neighborhoods were first delineated and then the leader or leaders were chosen. Because of the exigencies of time and space, all leaders were not obtained at one time. Four-fifths of the leaders had served for a year or longer at the time of the field survey with half of this group having been leaders in the set-up for 16 months or more. The degree of service varies of course with the time of selection. White leaders as a group had served longer than Negro leaders. Eighty-five per cent of all the white leaders had served for more than a year; almost half (46 per cent) had been neighborhood leaders for over 16 months. Sixty-nine per cent of all the Negro leaders had been such for more than a year ; one-fourth for more than 16 months. Men leaders on the average were selected somewhat earlier and consequently had served for a longer period than women leaders. Among the whites, almost nine-tenths (89 per cent) of the men had served for more than a year as compared with four-fifths (81 per cent) of the women. The data for Negro men and women are not comparable due to the fact that Negro men leaders were chosen in the beginning of the leadership program, followed after a time by the choosing of women leaders. A significant difference in length of service exists between white and Negro men. The 89 per cent of white men who had served more than a year at the time of the study is to be compared with 53 per cent of Negro men. The difference in length of service between the women leaders, however, was not important, although probably more so than the data suggest because of the facts cited above. There is a trend toward greater length of service on the part of the leaders who have been chosen to be members of some committee or chairmen of the various groups. At the other end of the service scale are new leaders who have been constantly added in the development of the program. Ten per cent of the neighborhood leaders are to be considered as "new," the criterion here being service as neighborhood leader for less than four months. Since the neighborhood set-up is older in the white than the Negro neighborhoods, a difference would be expected. Actually, 29 per cent of the Negro leaders are new under this definition as com- [117] pared with four per cent of the whites. The differentiation is found for both men and women. Number op Programs Presented and Length of Time Served as Leader In the short time the leadership system has been in operation, there has been an average of over five programs presented by the leaders. The number of programs has varied naturally with the length of leadership status, ranging all the way from less than two programs for the newer leaders (those having served less than four months) to an average of seven programs on the part of the older leaders (those who have served from 16 through 21 months) . White leaders have presented more programs than Negro leaders. This is due in part to the fact that white leaders have served for a longer average period than Negro leaders. The average (mean) number of programs presented prior to the study has been 5.6 for the white leaders; 5.0 for the Negro leaders (Table 23). In terms of the dif- TABLE 23. Number of Programs Presented by Leaders to Families by Number op Months Served as Leader Months served as leader - Mean number of programs presented Total Whites Negroes Males Females T< )tal 5.3 5.6 5.0 5.0 5.6 1- 3 1.8 3.0 1.5 1.8 1.8 4- 6 3.4 3.5 3.4 3.5 3.3 7- 9 4.1 3.7 4.7 3.9 4.2 10-12 5.7 6.1 4.0 5.9 5.6 13-15 4.9 5.0 4.6 4.5 5.2 16-18 6.9 6.6 7.9 6.7 7.0 19-21 6.8 6.8 3.7 8.3 ference in length of service, there is no significant difference, how- ever, and there is no reason why even apparent differences should not be wiped out with more complete development, training, and en- couragement of the Negro leaders. Women present a somewhat larger number of programs than men. While the men have presented an average of 5.0 programs, the wo- men presented an average of 5.6 programs. Women either had time or took time to present their programs. What is more important is the fact that whereas both men and women were interested in some programs, other programs appealed to one sex more than the other, with consequently greater enthusiasm for those particular programs. A leader is far more likely to present programs which appeal to him, [118] since the whole leadership system is on a voluntary basis. This of course involves "selling" a program to the leaders in a fundamental way. The question as to the number of programs a leader may be ex- pected to present is an important one. At the one extreme, there is the possibility of asking for too much time and effort. These leaders are busy men and women for the most part. The time consumed in presenting a program to all the members of a neighborhood group is considerable. To ask too much is both unfair and unwise. At the other extreme, non-utilization of the leaders tends to weaken the bonds of leadership interrelationships so far as the definite present- ing of programs is concerned. Obviously, the answer lies somewhere between these not altogether theoretical extremes. One question in mind when interviewing the leaders was the pos- sibility that they might think that they had been asked to do too much. As a matter of fact, only a small minority has this reaction. They can be divided into two groups. One group consisted of those who were actually too busy or who felt that they were too busy to take the extra time and energy needed for the presentation of the programs. The other group consisted of those who were not adequate leaders and hence had unusual difficulty in getting things accom- plished. Since this involved an important point in neighborhood leadership technique, the problem was pursued further. The few who fell into the latter category were found to have been chosen as neigh- borhood leaders without careful evaluation of their abilities. They had been chosen either because they were popular or because they had accomplished things for themselves. In a few cases they were selected by the farm agents without adequate knowledge. This poses the question as to what should be done about such men and women. The answer of course is that they should be converted into actual leaders or replaced by more adequate leaders. Since most of them do not desire to continue even as nominal leaders, the problem is re- latively simple. Where they do wish to continue, the procedure is either a matter of adequate counseling or traniing or of tactfully substituting other possible leaders. A certain length of time is necessary for a person who is a neigh- borhood leader to develop techniques of applying that leadership adequately. In most cases, the prerequisites are essentially there in that the person in question is regarded as a leader for good reasons in his particular neighborhood. The element of time, however, is as necessary in this field as any other. [119] Program Participation The degree of participation in the various programs by the leaders varied naturally according to their interests and enthusiasms and the time demand of their own work, as well as their general fitness for leadership. Outstanding examples of high participation were in the drives intimately connected with the war (Table 24). Ninety TABLE 24. Defense Campaigns or Programs in Which Leaders Participated, by Race and Sex Per cent participation Campaign or program Male Female Negro Male Female Scrap iron collection 93.3 Rubber collection 89.3 Machinery repair 47.2 Victory garden, 1942 94.7 Victory garden, 1943 93.5 Cost of living 17.1 Soybean and peanut production 32.0 4-H mobilization 2.8 Civilian defense 13.8 War bonds and stamps 57.9 Relocation 2.5 Red Cross 65.7 Auto transportation pools 46.7 Sugar rationing 7.3 Milk cow survey 25.8 Grease and fat collection 13.8 Truck registration 11.5 Share the meat 44.4 Farm inventory 5.9 War production goals 3.1 Food preservation .6 Farm labor .3 Orchards 2.8 Point rationing .8 Gas rationing .8 Turkey cooperative 1.7 Home beautification TVA water shed 94.4 81.0 81.3 94.1 75.3 81.3 28.7 16.5 8.3 95.5 82.3 84.4 94.7 93.7 91.7 27.5 20.3 25.0 28.9 25.3 12.5 5.9 3.8 9.4 28.1 9.5 6.3 66.6 38.0 40.6 1.4 1.0 74.4 68.4 65.6 50.0 36.1 21.9 12.1 5.1 6.3 21.6 11.4 7.3 27.7 12.7 7.3 8.7 1.9 46.9 28.5 27.1 3.9 26.6 26.0 7.0 20.3 8.3 2.8 2.1 1.4 1.1 10.8 1.0 2.5 1.9 1.0 2.1 1.0 per cent of all the leaders participated in the collection of scrap iron, the need for which at one time was so ably and dramatically dem- onstrated. Ninety-three per cent of the white leaders participated in this drive ; over 80 per cent of the Negro leaders participated. Wo- men were just as active, except for the actual physical phase, as were the men. Six per cent of the leaders acted as chairmen or members of [120] committees directing this particular drive, thus contributing their services on a still higher plane of leadership. The greatest degree of individual participation took place in the developmment of Victory gardens for the second year of the war. The patriotic impulse was joined by stimuli for larger and more varied gardens. Four per cent of the leaders acted as chairmen or committee mem- bers for Victory gardens. The proportion who acted in these capac- ities was small primarily because the committees themselves were naturally limited to a few people. In the Red Cross activities, how- ever, over six per cent acted as chairmen or committee members, al- though the proportion participating in Red Cross drives was reduced to 69 per cent. Many of the drives were limited in scope to particular localities, so that comparisons of the proportions engaged in the various cam- paigns or projects cannot strictly be made. Methods Used by Leaders in Contacting Families In comparison with the opinions of the leaders regarding the methods of obtained cooperation, the actual methods used in contact- ing families were studied. The pictures are by no means the same. For the white leaders, over three-fifths (61 per cent) utilized casual personal contacts as a method of presenting and furthering programs. Almost half (47 per cent) of these leaders paid personal visits to the homes. Leaflets and bulletins were sent by one-fifth of the white leaders. Seven per cent of the leaders were visited by one or more members of families in their groups. Group meetings among whites were little in evidence, only two per cent of the leaders having used this method (Table 25). For the Negroes, personal home visits were followed as a method by 65 per cent of the leaders. Casual personal contacts were utilized as an occasion for discussing programs by 48 per cent. Leaflets and bulletins were sent by 24 per cent. Eight per cent of the leaders were visited by one or more members of family groups in their neighbor- hood. In contradistinction to the white leaders, 13 per cent of the Negro leaders had group meetings at which they presented and ex- plained neighborhood programs. There were some sex differences among the white leaders. Women paid more personal visits to homes and had more casual personal contacts at which neighborhood programs were discussed in spite of the greater opportunity of men to do this. The differences, how- ever, are not great enough to be emphasized and otherwise there were no significant differences between the two sexes in their methods [121] H O < o o es w oa S !25 ft o H O © © © © © © © © © © O O © © O T-j "* OS Ph 03 &0 C # s a> o +* M +» -u h 0> 0) 00 eq CJ to OS CO OS os OS 00* t- OS 00 OS co os © © 3 J Pm h > o T3 0> a> 1—1 C o o -4J A Ph [122] of contacting families. Nor did the Negro leaders differ fundamental- ly along sex lines in their methods of presentation of programs. In comparison with the casual contacts and home visits, the group meetings technique suffered. Apparently this method so far is more ideal than real. Careful questioning brought out the fact that neigh- borhood leaders need more training and more confidence in their ability to conduct neighborhood meetings designed to explain pur- poses and methods of new programs. Here is a point worthy of fur- ther pursuit as the general program develops. Many of the leaders used two or more methods of securing con- tacts with the members of their groups. No hard and fast rule can be laid down as conditions differ. Programs have varied degrees of com- plexity and need varied amounts of explanation. Some are conducted at busier seasons of the year than are others. An interesting sidelight on the lack of utilization of a modern de- vice is seen in the non-use of telephones. Only ten of the white lead- ers and none of the Negro leaders reported the use of telephones in the furtherance of neighborhood leadership projects. Rural Negro leaders, let alone the rank and file of rural Negro families, have few telephones. Only one rural leader among the Negroes had this con- venience. Among the white leaders, the presence of telephones was also low, but the real explanation for non-utilization lies in the even greater lack of telephones in the homes of the families. Less than one per cent of the Negro families had telephones; only one-fifth of the white families had telephones. Some day this will be remedied for a large proportion of farm families. In the meantime, it is a peculiar indication of lack of means of communication in one small phase of developing neighborhood systems of interrelationships. Length of Acquaintance and Number of Personal Visits by Leader In the functioning of the neighborhood system in the various pro- grams, as indicated above, personal visits by the leaders were re- sorted to as one of the chief means of discussion, passing out infor- mation, and often material. Thirty-eight per cent of the white fami- lies and 47 per cent of the Negro families were visited at least once. Offhand, it might be expected that the duration of the leader's ac- quaintance with his various friends and neighbors would affect the number of visits that would be made. Actually no particular relation- ship existed between the number of visits made by the leaders to the homes of their groups and the duration of acquaintance with the members of those groups. The reason for this is simply that so far, under the stress and strain [123] of the various campaigns, largely tied up with the war effort, leaders who have paid personal visits have done so on a unit basis. They have visited a number of families on their list in consecutive order, so that long standing friendship played no particular part in these visits. Perhaps the reader should be reminded once more that only personal visits which had to do with specific projects were listed under the category of personal visits. Casual social calls were eliminated from consideration at the outset. Methods of Obtaining Cooperation from Rural Families In many respects the most difficult of the problems of neighbor- hood leadership is that of the successful interelationships between the chosen leaders and the rural families which make up their groups. In discussing the whole matter with the leaders, they were asked their opinion as to the best method of obtaining the cooperation of the members of their groups in any of the programs which the lead- ers were asked to undertake. Over three-fifths (62 per cent) of the white leaders were of the opinion that personal visits to the homes of rural families constituted the best method of obtaining cooperation in the development of proj- ects. Men and women in identical measure agreed on this procedure. Casual personal contacts were chosen by almost a fifth (19 per cent) of the white leaders as the best method of contact for purposes of developing programs. Men preferred it somewhat more than women, due in part to the fact that men have more opportunity for and are more accustomed to the give and take involved in the casual contact which can often be turned into a definite discussion of the particular problem or problems being developed at the time. Group meetings were chosen by 10 per cent of the white leaders. The women leaders preferred this method to a somewhat greater extent than the men leaders. The former are accustomed to the group meetings of the home demonstration clubs and this mode of procedure affects their attitudes. When asked to name a second best method, the group meeting was preferred by the greatest number of white leaders. Since the "second preferences" were chosen by the same leaders who gave "first prefer- ences", it must be remembered that the "second preference" per- centages are affected by the "first preference" percentages. Next in order of second preference choices were casual personal contacts and personal visits to homes. Totalling first and second choices, personal visits to homes, casual personal contacts, and group meetings were chosen, in that order, [124] as the preferred methods. No other single method was chosen by any considerable number except that bulletins and leaflets were liked as a second best method by one out of six of the white leaders. Except for one particular, the reactions of Negro leaders were the same as those of the white leaders. The most popular method was still personal visits to homes, but group meetings were chosen by the next largest number, with casual personal contacts assuming third place. The previously mentioned pattern of group meetings existing among Negroes is evident once more. As among the white leaders, bulletins and leaflets were liked as a second best method by Negro leaders. The picture of the preferences of both racial groups is more com- plete by reporting the results of innumerable conversations with leaders to the effect that the personal visits to homes are often tied up with the distribution of information to the specific families and discussions concerning the physical and family resources of the particular family in reference to the particular program under dis- cussion. Furthermore, the consesus was that with further training of the leaders more group meetings would be feasible. As in other things, combinations of methods were considered more satisfactory than any single type of contact. CHAPTER 15 Relationships Between Leaders and Agents The chief sources of information in regard to the programs pre- sented through the neighborhood leadership system are the members of the county agents' office staffs. Additional information comes from the specialized workers in the state and district agents' offices and from other agricultural workers, such as vocational teachers, Farm Security Administration workers, AAA committeemen and women, and the numerous lay leaders found in all rural counties. Other sources of information are the radio, newspapers and maga- zines (chiefly farm journals), and bulletins and leaflets. The owner- ship of a radio by the individual leader (as well as by the families in his group) is a decided asset in the spreading of information and the [125] successful fruition of programs. Newspapers and farm magazines contribute of course to the same end. Bulletins and leaflets ordinarily distributed from the county agents' offices have proved, at their best, a further source of necessary technical information, worded and illustrated in such a way as to be of greatest readability and hence service to the wide variety of rural families for whom they are primarily designed. They have specific and proper place in the rounding out of a "complete" neighborhood leadership program. These sources form the basis for adequately supplying farm fami- lies with the information they need. Thus far, the sources have not lived up to their potentialities. A great deal of concentrated work re- mains to be done in the more adequate synchronizing and focusing of these channels of information. More important in many ways than supplying information is the stimulation to be given to the neighborhood leaders. Because of the close tie-up with the county agents, this demands a degree of training and enthusiasm on the part of the agents which is of tremendous significance. Information imparted without stimulation is usually inadequate, whether it be in this or any other field of human inter- action. The Role of the County Agents At the present time, neighborhood leaders are volunteers. These leaders have the necessity of making a living. They have little in- clination toward, and have given little thought to, the overall leader- ship that might exist among them in any system of neighborhood leadership. On the other hand, the farm and home agents are the focal points of the neighborhood leadership development throughout the state. There is a direct tie-up between them and the neighborhood leaders in their counties. Rural men and women look to the agents for guidance in matters agricultural and familial. In terms of the development of a leadership system, the county agent organization has been available as an aid and deserves much of the credit for the present stage of usefulness of the neighborhood system. The agents and their organization form a solid link to which the neighborhood leadership system can attach itself. At the present stage, the system definitely needs that attachment. Various forms of relationships existing between agents and leaders have been examined. It remains to examine some of the ways the county agents may effect the further development of the program. The number of agents in the counties studied would be too few to warrant generalizations, so that the following conclusions are based [126] on an acquaintance with an important proportion of the county and home agents, together with their assistants, scattered throughout the length and breadth of the state. Taken as a group, these men and women are a hard-working and devoted band of people. The nature of their work is varied and of impelling interest. Any agent at all interested in his or her vocation has more than enough to do. From the standpoint of leadership development this has a serious aspect. Absorbed necessarily in the manifold aspects of their work, most agents have not been able to de- vote the necessary time to the constant building up and unremitting attention that the neighborhood leadership system demands. It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to achieve this in any spe- cific county. The question thus presents itself as the possibilities for the neces- sary time and energy. Where funds become available, the addition of an assistant agent is an obvious step to be taken. Such a person could well spend all of his or her time in the constant contacts and programs involving the utilization of neighborhood leaders. Where such a possibility is not present in any particular county — due to the need for the assistant in other phases of county agent work — an ar- rangement could be made for utilization of part of an assistant agent's time in this regard. Where this is done, the amount of time allotted should have some semblance of regularity in terms of the importance of neighborhood leadership and for the sake of securing that con- tinuity which is in danger of being lost when such an arragement is a haphazard one. A variation of this arrangement, and one that is being or will be tried out in many counties, is that of utilizing the new assistant agent's time so that the work of either farm or home agent, or of both, can be sufficiently lightened so that the neighborhood leader- ship contacts may be divided among the two main agents and their assistants. More prosaically, county agents are now doing this in many cases where the needed assistant is not at hand. Other possibilities suggest themselves after field observation and innumerable conversations with county and state officials and leaders. One of the most difficult problems an agent has to face is the amount of time and energy which he or she can devote to minor matters. A particular farmer may require specific attention in regard to his own perplexing or insistent problem. The multiplication of such problems may and often does consume so much time that the agent has little apparent time for other matters of more importance to the general group. In these cases, a re-orientation of approach is necessary. Ad- [127] mittedly the aid of assistant agents is of tremendous importance in this regard. Furthermore, at the time of the survey a large proportion of the counties did not yet have assistant agents. 1 This was particularly true for the women. In such cases, the question of time and energy neces- sary to devote to an adequate development of the leadership system becomes still more of a problem and the need for "re-budgeting" time is more than evident. For the home agents and their assistants, the problem of time is within sight of possible solution. Home agents and their assistants have their time more specifically allocated than do farm agents be- cause of the necessity of regular meeting times with home demon- stration clubs. In the past, and this is still largely the case, the clubs have felt that a meeting without a home agent present would not be adequate. It is true that the trained leader's presence should make such a meeing a more efficient one. However, the home demonstration clubs in large measure have existed a long while and have developed a routine of procedure which is making possible an arrangement whereby meetings can be held under the leadership of one of the mem- bers of a club. To the extent that home agents can be freed of at- tendance at some of the meetings, to that extent will time be secured which can be utilized in the development of leaders and the leader- ship system in general. Since the agents are such important factors in the leadership pro- gram, the caliber of these men and women is of great import. Thus, from the standpoint of the leaders, and the potential contribution of the agents, these men and women more than ever must be capable of handling not only the technical aspects of their occupation but also must have or should develop the ability to handle the growing leader- ship system and the men and women leaders. Furthermore, many of the agents must be educated as to poten- tialities of the leadership development. The techniques, practices, and successes of other agents need to be passed on to those who have not developed such procedures. The whole philosophy of leadership needs explanation. Fortunately, this is not a theoretical pattern developed in text-books or in philosophical dissertations. Visits to Agents by Leaders Since the men and women studied are leaders in their communities and neighborhoods and since the farm and home demonstration agents are county leaders in rural work, a certain amount of visit- 1 As of April 1, 1945, there were 54 assistant home agents. [128] ing the county agents' offices would normally be expected. As a mat- ter of fact, one-fourth (26 per cent) of the leaders surveyed had made such visits within the last months. There were no significant differences by race, but a distinct sex difference did exist. Men lead- ers were more accustomed to visit their agents than were the women leaders. This was found to be true of both races. Men find more oc- casion to visit offices than do women. For both men and women, Saturday is traditionally the day when visits to the agents' offices can be sandwiched between other duties and pleasures tied up with going to the county seat. Men also pay more repeated visits to an agent's office than do women, which is in line with expectations in this re- gard. In part this significant sex difference is made up by the fact that the women meet in the home demonstration clubs through the county. Yet the fact remains that in these visits the men leaders have a closer tie-up with the agricultural leader than do women with their corresponding leader. In the utilization of leadership, these visits take on a new aspect, affording the county agents opportunities for contacts with those men and women who have been chosen as leaders in their home neigh- borhoods and communities. The two — county agent and neighborhood leader — form important links in the chain of operations of what may well become an important social institution. Struck by the fact that those who attended meetings in connection with the leadership program might also pay visits to the offices of the county agents, an analysis was made of the correlation that might exist between the two. It was found that of those who had attended no meetings within the last months, less than a fourth (23 per cent) had visited the agents' offices. At the other end of the scale, of those who had attended two or more meetings in this short space of time, three-fifths had visited the agents' offices. Furthermore, the number of visits per person increased as attendance at meetings increased. These relationships hold for both races. They also hold for men and women considered separately. Thus there is a relationship between the making of social contacts in the field of leadership relations. That those who are more active in one case should be more active in the other throws an important side-light on one of the phenomena of leadership. Agents throughout the state have been quick to point out that attendance at meetings is one sign of a more desirable type of leader from the standpoint of interest and positive behavior in the developing and carrying for- ward of programs. The fact that these men and women, white or [129] colored, make more social contacts of these types than their neighbors is no accident. Type of Contact from Agents Preferred by Leaders The matter of contacts between agents and leaders is of such im- portance that the leaders were asked to give their preference among the three types of contacts emanating from the agents. These were, first, visits from the agents to the leaders; second, meetings of neighborhood leaders and the agents; third, material in the form of letters, leaflets, and bulletins (Table 26) . TABLE 26. Type of Contact from Farm and Home Agents Preferred by Leaders, by Race" First Choice Second Choice Third Choice Type of contact Total White Negro Total White Negro Total White Negro Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Visits Meetings Material 33.7 49.2 17.1 33.4 45.7 20.9 34.4 58.4 7.2 52.3 32.7 15.0 49.9 33.3 16.7 58.4 31.2 10.4 13.9 17.7 68.4 16.5 20.5 63.1 7.2 10.4 82.4 a Of the total of 966 leaders 55, or 5.7 per cent, reported "no choice." Of the white leaders interviewed, seven per cent were undecided (and in some cases of inadequate leaders probably insufficiently interested) as to which type of contact they preferred. Of the re- maining 93 per cent, almost half expressed themselves as preferring meetings. One-third preferred visits, and only one-fifth preferred materials. Both male and female leaders were of the same opinion, men caring less than women for visits and materials and corre- spondingly more for meetings. Particularly in the busy season, the men prefer not to be interrupted in their work, whereas women are much less likely to be averse to visits and as a matter of fact often desire them to break the routine of household work. Negro leaders are essentially of the same opinion as white leaders in their relative preference for meetings first of all, visits second, and materials last. They were even more decided than whites in their preferences. In the first place, less than two per cent expressed no choice in the matter. The percentage who expressed a desire for meetings was much higher than that for white leaders; the propor- tion who preferred visits was approximately the same in both races. The preference for materials was exceedingly low among Negroes. The explanations are rather clear cut. Negroes in the South are more socially disposed in their behavior within their own group than [130] are whites in theirs. Meetings, whether secular or religious, and social occasions are more an integral part of the folk behavior. The Negro leaders follow the same pattern and have transferred it in the af- firmative attitude towards group meetings. It became quite evident in the course of the study that Negroes were less sure of themselves than were their white neighbors. Group meetings fell into the pat- tern of thinking that a called meeting was a place where they could not only obtain information from the agent but also could reinforce their own ideas and obtain answers to their questions from their neighbors. There does not seem to be any racial distinction in regard to visits. When it comes to materials, the better education of the white lead- ers, already commented upon, becomes a factor in the decidedly les- ser preference of Negroes than whites for these materials. The ma- terials thus far have been largely in the form of printed or mimeo- graphed letters, leaflets, and bulletins. The various agencies which deal with farmers are making a vigorous effort at the present time to present their materials in a more palatable form. In time, the attitude towards the printed word will change with more adequate education and the more intriguing approach presented in the newer materials. But the psycho-social contact of printed materials is a one-way con- tact in contrast with the two-way contacts of the personal visit or the manifold social relationships involved in group meetings. The preference of the leaders of both races for meetings comes as a surprise to many who have come in regular contact with individual leaders. However, this method has definite advantages from the standpoint of the functioning of the neighborhood leadership system. It is a timesaver for the heavily burdened farm and home agents. They can meet with all the leaders of one or more neighborhoods in a fraction of the total time that it would take to visit each of them separately. Several meetings of a give and take nature can accomplish more in the same length of time than could be obtained by personal calls on each and every leader. The meetings may by no means be considered as a complete substitution for individual contact which will continue to have an important place in the scheme of things, quite apart from the fact that in these personal visits are often com- bined other items of individual importance which could not be dis- cussed at a general meeting. As time goes on, each of the three methods will assume its proper place in terms of county-neighbor- hood leadership contacts, and they will supplement one another. None of them of course is new, but the neighborhood meetings and the materials sent out need a great deal of time, thought, and revision [131] of procedure. They are already getting that and their development is proceeding along with neighborhood leadership organization in other lines. The discussion of the neighborhood leadership system must not blind us to the fact that the development of neighborhood leadership proceeds along with other movements. Furthermore, it is not an end in itself. It fundamentally is a means to other ends of importance to rural people and consequently to the society of which they form a part. Visits to Leaders' Homes or Farms Another source of contact between the agents and the leaders is the visits to the homes or farms of these men and women. The figures for the entire area are comparable for the white leaders only since Negro agents were not located in those counties where the propor- tion of Negroes is relatively small. Eighteen per cent of the leaders had been visited by the farm agents relative to the programs; a like proportion were visited by the home agents. These visits were not casual visits ; they were made in connection with proposed programs. Of the white leaders visited by the county agents 39 per cent were contacted two or more times. The data were compiled for those counties which had Negro agents. 2 Forty-four per cent of the Negro leaders were visited by Negro farm agents. Thirty-two per cent were visited by home agents. Thus the proportion of home visits on the part of the Negro agents was greater than that of the white agents. There are definite reasons why this would be so. The white agents have more numerous and more varied tasks alloted to them than do the Negro agents. In addition, the num- ber of families that a white county agent has in a particular county is ordinarily much greater than that of the Negro agent, even though an assistant agent can take part of this load. Sparsely settled Negro families often need more individual attention than would be the case where there are larger groups. Finally, Negro farmers are less able to travel to the county agent's office, and hence the agent must make a special effort to go to their homes. The visits by the various agricultural and home agents must be taken into consideration along with the visits of the leaders to the agents' offices and the group meetings to obtain a clear picture of specific contacts between the leaders and agents in each county. Add- ed to this are the casual contacts which take place on the county 2 Three of the six counties had a full-time Negro farm agent. An additional county divided the services of an agent with an adjacent county. Two of the counties had full-time Negro home agents. The two counties not having Negro farm agents were the most western counties, both having a small Negro population. [132] roads or in the towns or in meetings and gatherings not dealing specifically with programs with which the neighborhood leadership set-up happens to be functioning at a particular time. Obviously, these contacts are all-important in further developing a network of interrelationships between the county leaders and the neighborhood leaders. Considering the time limit, the number of contacts reported represents a good beginning. However, there is still a large proportion of leaders who are relatively little contacted as yet. This is due to numerous factors. All are quite understandable but they are factors which must be dealt with in a vigorous fashion if the neighborhood leadership system is to attain the complete devel- opment to which its proved and potential importance entitles it. Agents are overwhelmed by details and cannot give time to contacts commensurate with the need for these contacts. There is the normal tendency to deal with the more prominent leaders and to visit the more accessible places. Neighborhood and community meetings are a partial answer to the former of these points. More personnel is an obvious and important answer. To the immediate problem, there is added the consideration of budgeting the agent's work so that a definite amount of time may be allocated to the development of the system from its promising beginning to its more adequate develop- ment. Already among the women a particular beginning has been made in making it possible for the assistant home demonstration agents to spend less time on certain specific tasks. Their places are taken on these occasions by volunteer leaders who have been chosen for their capacity in these specific tasks. The time and effort thus saved can be turned into good account in the strengthening of the neighborhood leadership system of activities. CHAPTER 16 An Evaluation The neighborhood leadership development began prior to the second World War but received its impetus in the needs arising from the war. It has proved its worth to the nation and more specifically to [133] the local communities, 1 so that its retention and further utilization are definitely warranted. A system of voluntary leadership, such as the present one, depends for its success upon a great number of factors. The leaders must not be expected to fulfill too many tasks, since they are unpaid and their daily pursuits must necessarily take most of their effort. At the same time as the leadership program becomes more integrated into the rural way of life, the neighborhood leaders should participate more and more in the counselling concerning the programs and the planning of projects pertaining to their communities. No one knows more about his own community than do these leaders. Consequently programs designed to benefit rural people can be made more down- to-earth by means of careful counsel with the leaders in the communi- ties involved. On the whole, these leaders are representative of the best thinkers in rural life. In the setup thus far, the country farm and home agents have formed a major connecting link between lead- ers and program makers outside the county. This has worked well largely because of the high caliber and devotion to their work of these agents, coupled with their strategic positions as full-time, pro- fessional leaders to whom rural folk look for a multitude of things rural in which the agents are involved in their work as heads of farm and home services in their particular segments of the state. A system of voluntary leadership, designed to further the interest of rural neighborhoods and communities, needs a focal point. This can continue to be supplied by the farm and home agents. At present, these men and women have entirely too much to do and need addi- tional assistants for the current work. The continued development of the volunteer leadership system will enhance the usefulness of pro- fessional leadership and call for its expansion. At the same time such development will result in the further growth and use of the neigh- borhood leaders and consequently of their ability to contribute to the welfare of their own neighbors and to help work out problems of neighborhood and community. In analysing the situation and in planning a more complete de- velopment of leadership, one approach to the problem is from the standpoint of the farm and home agents who "center up" the leader- ship in a specific county. The more experienced of these agents have been accustomed to dealing primarily with the leading men and women in their counties. Now a somewhat different situation is de- veloping and the farm and home agents have been going through a 1 For achievements in another section of the United States, see Anderson, A. H., The Rural Neighborhood Has Gone To War, U. S. Department of Agri- culture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, n.d. [134] process of reorientating their thinking in the sense that their re- lationships with the chosen leaders involve the further relation- ships of these leaders with the families in their specific neighbor- hoods. In this respect leaders should be convinced in their own minds that any program to be utilized will be one worth while in their neigh* borhoods and, consequently, of interest to them. County agents thus have an opportunity and a responsibility for relatively complete ex- planations of the overall needs and specific purposes of proposed programs. The leaders need a definite amount of stimulation. The whole plan of working with and through these leaders needs careful attention to the details of operations, and yet over-organization of volunteer leadership from outside or superimposed sources in a peace-time existence needs to be avoided. It is not enough for the agents and the leaders to agree as to what is to be done. One of the outstanding problems that still needs to be overcome is the inadequate techniques of the leaders in conveying information and stimulation to the families in their groups. The will to do needs to be accompanied by the knowledge of how to accomplish what shall be done. This takes time and effort and skillful stimulation and teaching on the part of the agents. This in turn involves further development of agents with a greater orientation in terms of people rather than of projects. Specific Considerations In looking toward the further development of the leadership sys- tem, various specific methods for strengthening the program should have consideration. In the first place there is obvious need for more publicity concerning the neighborhood leadership system. Not only does the general public need to be better informed as to what it is, what is being done, and what can be done but also many of the county extension agents, the leaders themselves, and the members of their groups have a limited comprehension of the potentialities and full- scale operation of the system. Only when there is full understanding can there be adequate neighborhood and community cooperation. The leadership system has been in operation for what may be con- sidered a trial period. 2 As it matures, it has become evident that counties should be restudied in terms of the location of neighbor- hoods and communities with especial attention to increasing the num- ber of leaders where necessary and to seeing that they are as con- 2 For a detailed evaluation see, "Neighborhood Leader Organization, Suggested Use and Operations in North Carolina," County Agricultural Extension Work- ers District Conferences, August 25 to September 18, 1942, North Carolina Agri- cultural Extension Service. [135] veniently located as possible in relation to the families in their groups. All of this should be pointed toward a smaller average number of families for which each leader would be responsible and in general to having those families so located that they are within a short distance so far as possible because of the time element and the question of transportation. This is particularly significant in the maintenance of regular contacts throughout the lifetime of any given project as a real leader must remain in more or less constant touch with his group. The matter of the selection of leaders also requires more intensive study. To put the program into operation with as little delay as pos- sible required relatively rapid selection of the first group of leaders, some of whom were appointed rather than elected according to demo- cratic processes. In the interests of efficiency, it must be admitted that this has worked rather well ; yet to have any sizable number of the leaders appointed is contrary to the philosophy of a leadership emanating from the people themselves. As new leaders are elected to replace those who drop out or are found to be unable to meet the needs of their groups, and as the num- ber is expanded, great care should be taken to elect the leaders and to select persons with the characteristics which have been found to be most effective in the development of the program. Especial at- tention should be given to demonstrated ability on the part of the leaders to cooperate fully and wholeheartedly in the objectives and functioning of the system. There also must be both the willingness and the energy to put more into the program than some leaders have been able to contribute. Since the strength and accomplishments of the organization are so dependent upon the caliber of the leader- ship, this point can hardly be over-stressed. There has been recognition from the very beginning of the ad- visability of using Negro leaders for Negro families wherever pos- sible. There has been less widespread recognition of the direct value in having a man and woman serve the same group. Some projects, such as the collection of scrap iron, were definitely in the man's sphere of farm activities but others, such as the enrichment of flour, were more closely associated with women's work while still others, such as the sale of war bonds, had no special sex connotation. Through using a man and a woman as leaders for the same group of families, more effective results for a wide range of activities can be obtained. The leaders are directly dependent in a very real sense upon the help given them by the farm and home agents who in turn must have not only a realization of the problems of specific neighborhoods and [136] communities but also of the county as a whole. There is need for bet- ter organization so that plans, programs, materials, and techniques will be made fully available to these agents who in turn are general- ly responsible for their dissemination to the leaders. Various devices will facilitate this. Most leaders would welcome more visits by the farm and home agents at which time the programs being planned or already under way could be discussed in detail. Most leaders feel the need for more explanation of the programs and for definite help as to techniques of presentation and devices for obtaining the most effective participation from their families and finally of interpreting the results to them. There has been considerable demand for regular meetings at a fixed time and place where programs can be fully dis- cussed with the leaders and any needed information given. Such meetings must be geared to the cycle of farm work, however, with concentration during the less busy times of the year. While such meetings are primarily planned for the leaders, it has been found helpful on occasion to have agents, leaders, and families in the lead- ers' groups meet together to develop specific projects in their com- munities and also for leaders to meet alone with their families. 3 Above all, the leaders have emphasized the necessity of definite and specific information for developing plans, recognizing the fact that they must have more information than is necessary for the families in their groups. It is not enough, moreover, to prepare plans for the initiation of a program. There must be constant and constructive follow-up to help the leader until he and his group attain their goals. Thus implicit in the active plan of the neighborhood leadership system is a constant yet not too great flow to the leaders and their families of pertinent informational and other materials. These ma- terials must be simple and easy to follow. At the proceding analysis has shown the average amount of formal education on the part of the heads of households is at present relatively limited. Unless materials are simply and attractively presented, they will not be utilized by the majority of the families. In the past, there has not always been an adequate supply of suitable materials nor have they always been promptly available. Both leaders and families must receive needed information on time if it is to be used effectively. These latter sug- gestions appear self-evident and yet they are made as a result of inadequacies in the program reported from some of the counties. Again, the persons responsible for new projects, ordinarily the farm and home agents, must have a well-developed appreciation of 8 Also see Poundstone, Bruce and Beers, Howard W., Neighborhood and Com- munity Basis of Rural Organization, Kentucky Agricultural Extension Service, March 1942. [137] what can be successfully undertaken at any given time. Practically any project is affected by its timing. A victory garden project must be started earlier in some counties than in others. In all counties it must be developed far enough in advance of actual planting to insure careful planning and preparation. While the leaders can give the general information on all of this, the county agents must always be available for technical information. Again, it is more effective to have fewer projects well-executed rather than more projects of lesser accomplishment. Both leaders and the families in their groups become confused if too many ideas and demands are presented at approximately the same time. They get more satisfaction and better total results from a few projects well done than from a number of projects poorly done. Some groups can handle more projects during the year than others which is an indication of the need for flexibility in the whole program and for gearing it to the development of each neighborhood. This in turn calls for more skilled leadership than would be required for a stereo- typed plan without regard to variations in neighborhoods 4 The Future The neighborhood leadership system has been in operation long enough and widely enough to demonstrate clearly its value. Through it farm families are being reached who never before had felt the effects of the agricultural extension program. Quite literally it pro- vides for the first time a means of reaching the last family in the most inaccessible section of any county. Families which do not re- spond to the usual type of educational program can be reached swift- ly and effectively through the neighborhood leadership system be- cause it is directly related to the everyday interests and activities of the people involved. Programs are couched in language they can understand and are presented by their neighbors in whom they have confidence. They can see the utility of the activities suggested. The war effort gave impetus to the programs and conditioned fam- ilies to accept their responsibilities for participation. If successful programs could be developed, the same techniques can be used for programs that will enhance and enrich rural life in the postwar world. These conclusions, while based primarily upon experiences in North Carolina, are applicable in essence to other parts of the country. Un- der the impetus primarily of national needs, the germ of a lasting * For illustrative material, see Orange and Lee Counties, North Carolina, Dem- onstrate How Neighborhood Leaders Can Help in Securing Participation of Rural Families in Agriculture's Wartime Programs, United States Department of Agriculture, Extension Service Circular 387, June 1942. [138] neighborhood leadership system is to be found throughout the na- tion. That it need not be a temporary device is borne out by the achievements in North Carolina and elsewhere. A leadership system adapted to conditions in each particular state, and varied even within states according to local conditions, can do much toward the further development of an integrated rural life. Not only can the efforts of those who see the need in rural areas be furthered. There is more to it than this. In well integrated, socially conscious, community organized areas, with competent functioning leadership emanating from every neighborhood, ideas and projects can find root and take shape. It has been stated before that no one knows better the needs of a neighborhood or community than do the people living there ; or if we take cognizance of the fact of differen- tials in the population, there are the leaders in these communities who can be encouraged and trained to ascertain their own needs and to aid in the developing of ways and means of meeting those needs. As a practical matter, needs probably can be best made known from specific communities outward to the county and state levels. The tendency towards centralization of government is based upon the in- crease of functions delegated to government. Where centralization is in danger of being carried too far, however, the counter emphasis is a strong neighborhood, community, and state feeling for those socially necessary procedures with which local areas need to be con- cerned. Even those projects which are national in scope are local in their specific application and must be attuned to local folkways and organization for adequate functioning and consequent success. Neigh- borhood organization, local consciousness and laedership, will go far in that direction. Thus the neighborhood leadership system, with all that it implies, is actually a return to the principles of self-govern- ment and local administration while at the same time recognizing the necessity of centralized procedures in many of the Nation's af- fairs. In an era of tremendous complexity, such a return is welcomed and is consistent with a planned economy which at its best takes into adequate consideration the needs, the wants, and the fundamental differentiating patterns of the hundreds of thousands of localities which form the warp and woof of rural America. [139] Schedule [141] N. C. State College, Raleigh, N. C. Form III— 1 Study of Neighborhood Leadership In North Carolina A. Characteristics of the Leader Schedule No. Date Enumerator County Community Neighborhood 1, Name 2. Address 3. Place of residence : Town Village Open country nonf arm .... Farm 4. Place of birth : (a) Country or state County (b) City Town Village Open country nonf arm. . . . Farm. . . . 5. Race 6. Sex 7. Age 8. Martial status 9. No. of living children 10. Last grade completed (circle) : 0. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, lc, 2c, 3c, 4c, more than 4c 11. Occupation of leader or of husband of leader: Primary Secondary 12. (a) Is husband (or wife) a neighborhood leader? (b) Name 13. Farm operations: Total acres operated Acres owned Total acres of cropland. . . . Type of farm Tenants Croppers Wage hands Most important enterprise. Second most important enterprise Livestock owned: Horses Mules Milk cows Hogs Chickens Tractors 14. Present home Owned ( ) Painted ( ) Automobile Truck Telephone Radio Phonograph Piano Electricity Mechanical refrigerator Ice box Pressure cooker Water supply in home : Hand pump Piped Bathroom fixtures : Tub Lavatory Toilet Screens Daily newspaper Weekly newspaper . . . Farm papers (specify) Rented ( ) Brick ( ) Road (H) .... (G) .... (D) .. . 15. Occupational history since 16 years of age: Schedule No Form III— 2 Year Occupation Business or Industry Age work began Reason for changing 1943 | 1 16. Defense campaigns or programs in which participated (check) : Item As chairman of a committee As member of a committee As an individual County | Local j County | Local a. Scrap iron collection b. Rubber collection c. Machinery repair d. Victory garden, 1942 e. Victory garden, 1943 f . Cost of living g. Soybeans and peanuts h. 4-H mobilization i. Civilian defense j. War bonds and stamps k. Relocation | 1. Red Cross m. Auto transportation pool n. Sugar rationing o. Milk cow survey p. Grease and fat collection q. Truck registration r. Share the meat s. Other (specify) 17. Affiliations: Schedule No form HI— 3 Member (Check) Present offices, date attained Av. no. meetings per month Av. no. meetings attended per mo. Approx. no. Organizations Now In past 10 years devoted to organization Church (specify) Other religious organizations (specify) Political party (specify) Cooperatives : FCX N. C. Coop. Cotton Growers Assn. Farmers Federation Other (specify) Farm organizations and committees : Grange Farm Bureau AAA Committee FSA Committee Home Demonstration Club Other (specify) PTA Civic club (specify) Patriotic organization (specify) Fraternal organization (specify) Business and financial organi- zations (specify) Schedule No Form III— 4 B. The Functions of the Leader 18. Selection of leader: Date assumed position of neighborhood leader Appointed By whom Selected By whom Elected By whom 19. Relationship of leader to planning organization: Neighborhood chairman? No. of meetings of neighborhood leaders attended during the past three months No. of county-wide meetings for neighborhood leaders attended during the past three months Member of community committee? Office held No. of meetings attended during the past three months Member of county planning committee? Office held No. of meetings attended during the past three months No. of visits to office of county or home agent during the past three months in connection with programs No. of visits to leader's home or farm during the past three months regarding programs by: a. County agent f. Home economics teacher .... b. Assistant county agent g. Soil conservationist c. Home agent h. FSA farm supervisor d. Assistant home agent i. FSA home supervisor e. Vocational teacher j. Other (specify) No. of letters to leaders regarding programs received during the past three months : a. Circular addressed to leaders only b. General circular c. Personal Specify programs No. of leaflets or bulletins received during the past three months on programs partici- pated in by leaders Specify programs No. of exhibits or posters received during the past three months on programs partici- pated in by leaders Specify programs No. of radio talks on these programs heard during the past three months Specify programs Other sources of information (specify) Schedule No Form HI— 6 20. Programs presented by leaders to families with whom he or she has worked since Jan. 1, 1942. Month and year Response (good, fair, poor) a. Scrap iron collection j b. Rubber collection c. Machinery repair d. Victory garden, 1942 e. Victory garden, 1943 f. Cost of living g. Soybeans and peanuts h. 4-H mobilization i. Civilian defense j. War bonds and stamps k. Relocation 1. Red Cross m. Auto transportation pools n. Sugar rationing o. Milk cow survey p. Grease and fat collection q. Truck registration r. Share the meat s. Other (specify) 21. Methods used by leader in contacting families : Personal visits to homes Casual personal contacts Group meetings Circular letters Leaflets or bulletins distributed Posters distributed Telephone calls Visits by members of group to leader regarding program Other (specify) Best method of obtaining cooperation Second best method of obtaining cooperation . . No. during the past 3 months Schedule No Form III— 6 C. Families 22a. Data for men : Name of male head of family Age Race (W.N.I.) Marital status (S. M. Wid. Sep. D.) Educa- tion* Occupa- tion** Secon- dary occupa- tion Size of farm (acres) Farm Bureau Grange 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. | 1 1 12. 13. | 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. * Education: a. None b. Some grade school c. Completed grade school d. Some high school e. Completed high school f . Some college g. Completed college h. Post-graduate work ** Occupation: Full-time: Owner (FO), tenant (FT), sharecropper (FS) farm laborer (FL) Part-time: Owner (PO), tenant (PT), sharecropper (PS) farm laborer (PL) Nonfarm Schedule No Form III — 7 22b. Data for women : Name of female head of family Age Race (W.N.I.) Marital status (S. M. Wid. Sep. D.) Educa- tion* Occupa- tion Secon- dary occupa- tion Size of farm (acres) Mem- ber H. D. Club 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 1 | 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. * Education: a. None b. Some grade school c. Completed grade school d. Some high school e. Completed high school f . Some college g. Completed college h. Post-graduate work Schedule No Form III— 8 23. Level of living of families: Home .2 1 I < 2 CI a o ja 5? "3 i 9 .2 •3 « o> ft e ft ft g £S.§ Name of family o 1 a 1 '3 ■g « • § 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. | | 14. 15. 16. | 17. | 18. 1 1 j 19. 20. | 1 ! | * Hard-surfaced (H) ; graveled (G) ; or dirt (D) Schedule No Form III — 9 24. Relationship of families to leader: S 4> P .2 rt 41 o c Is Contacts with leader during the past 3 months* Programs presented by leader** Name of family "3 a o m u a ft - 1*1 ■S|2 OB* 185 3 O 0-3 c Programs participated in** 1. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 2. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 3. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 4. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 5. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 6. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 7. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 8. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst I I i abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 10. 1 1 i abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 11. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 12. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 13. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 14. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 15. 1 J abcdefghij 1 klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 16. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 17. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 18. J abcdefghij 1 klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 19. abcdefghij klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst 20. 1 1 1 1 J abcdefghij 1 klmnopqrst abcdefghij klmnopqrst *Contacts related to programs only. **Code: a. Scrap iron collection b. Rubber collection c. Machinery repair d. Victory garden, 1942 e. Victory garden, 1943 f. Cost of living g. Soybeans and peanuts h. 4-H mobilization i Civilian defense j. War bonds and stamps k. Relocation 1. Red Cross m. Auto transportation pool n. Sugar rationing o. Milk cow survey p. Grease and fat collection q. Truck registration r. Share the meat s. t. Schedule No Form III— 10 D. Observations of Leader 25. What agent or agency do you look to most often for advice and assistance concern- ing these programs? 26. Have you any criticisms regarding the activities of neighborhood leaders? If so, what? 27. What criticisms do you have regarding the way in which past programs have been presented to you? 28. What would you say are the good points in the leadership system ? 29. What are your suggestions for the improvement of anything connected with the leadership system? 30. Indicate in the order of your preference (1, 2, 3) the kind of assistance from the county farm and home agents that is most helpful to you as a neighborhood leader in developing and conducting programs in your neighborhood: ( ) Visits ( ) Meetings ( ) Materials for leaders Comments : Edited by Date iiil mm ■'■ ■ ;i: ' 1 ' •- ■