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In 1913, Hill traveled to Europe in an effort to study rural credit systems that had sprung up there in response to widespread poverty. He returned to the United States intent on implementing a similar system at home. North Carolina of that time was more than 80% rural, and the economy farm-based, with a majority of residents living in poverty. He addressed farmers' organizations and Congressional committees on the subject. Hill remarked that, "Credit union membership is a certificate of character and a badge of honor. Let a person stay in the credit union for ten years and it changes his whole philosophy of life—it is a modern miracle." Soon after passage of the North Carolina Credit Union Act on March 6, 1915, North Carolina's first credit union opened in 1916, in the southern Durham County community of Lowe's Grove. Twenty farmers in the Durham County community pooled $101.75, and the credit union movement was born. E. C. Branson, in a sketch published in 1918, called Hill the "Father of Rural Credit in North Carolina."