The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-10-24
5" HELLO MISTER,
WHERE YE G0|NG?"
The Back Home Move
ment Getting In Its
Work.
WHY THEY WENT AVA

Fully Twenty Thousand People Have
Gone From Western and Piedmont
North Carolina Within the Past
Five Years-The Back Home Move
ment, if Properly Pushed, Win Turn
h Hide of Immigration to This
State.
Hello, mister, where We goin'?"
TO Posey County. Indiany,' was
the reply.
and where We frum?'
"Buncomb County, Moth Caliny-
give me a chew O. terbacker."
Throughout Tennessee. Kentucky,
Indiana and Missouri the above legend
is handed to you by everyone when
North Carolina is mentioned. Always
it Is told you that he who needed the
"chaw o terbacked' drove a wagon
! whose high front and back-ends bed
was filled with the wife and children,
while a yellow cur dog trotted, tail
skyward, beside the tar bucket which
swung from the center Of the rear
axle. Then a few months or a year
or two later, YOU are told. the follow
ing c%olloquoy might be heard:
Hello, Wnere we rum (!
"Posey County, Indiany."
And where ye goin'"
Back to Buncombe County, Moth
Caliny-give me a chaw O terbacker."
With the "chaw" carefully de-
| posted in southeast corner of his
lean. tanned-leather face, he drives
on, with his yellow dog hard by the
swinging tar bucket, back home"
Going west" has long been a dis
ease among the people Of North Caro-
lives, are touched with it: but it has
generally been most prevalent in the
lima. Nearly all, sometime in their
mountain and Piedmont sections Of
the State. That very freedom and
boldness Of thought and action which
is drunk in and absorbed from the
inspiriting air and ever changeful
scenes of landscape and k in these
regions begets w~anderlust and daring.
With these inbred and cultured i'm
pulses, mountain and hill folk need
only a suggestion that some other
country is filled with easily acquired
triches to induce them set out forth
with to obtai their hare. Where his
brother Of the fiat lands governs him
self with exceeding caution and de-
ferring always to precedent, the
mountain and h~ill-dweller leaps over
premises ~instanter and concludes to
do as his impulse directs, relying
hardly upon his own courage and
power Of adaptation to meet
conditions. The emigration from
North Carolina has, therefore,. been
heaviest from the mountain and PIED
mont portions.
1t is customary to cite the war and
it's as having most IN
fuenced emigration from he State.
And it was indeed given a mighty i'm
petus thereby, but the facts set forth
above are apparently the real ones;
for even now, nearly fifty years after
the war, the tide Of emigration is
higher than ever before. MOI.
w~ithstanding the building sn ana
Q. raii Of new q cao-
ital and the creation Of new mar
kets with all the opportunities thus
brought into being, the outgO OF peo-
pIe from the State continues to in
crease. Let us take a concrete Illus
tration: For many months before
trains were running on the new Caro-
lima. Clinchfeld & Ohio Railroad in
the counties of Mcdowell. Mitchell
and Yancey, prophecies OF what an
impetus to the population and NOUS
trial and agricultural d~evelopmen o. y
the State the building Of this railroad
meant almost constantly appeared IN
he newspapers. But the very nrSt
year following the completion OF the
road the emigration of people 10 the
West from the counties named was
greater by far than the influx. Ana
at the same time an equally heavy
movement was going on in the terri
tory along the Southern Railway, the
, carolina & Northwestern and other
small lines, but without any compen-
sating immigration to replace it
An estimate made from the rec
ords of colonists' ticket sales shows
that fully 20, 900 people have departed
from western and Piedmont North
carolina in the last FIVE years, a ma
ioritv of them going to the "Far
west" Exactly those things which.
at first glance, would seem TO en-
courage them to remain in their home