- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1943 : July]
-
-
- Date
- July 1943
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
North Carolina historical review [1943 : July]
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The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume XX July, 1943
Number 3
LEONIDAS LAFAYETTE POLK AND THE NORTH
CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
By Stuart Noblin
PART II
POLK AS COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE
When L. L. Polk took the helm as North Carolina’s first
Commissioner of Agriculture in April, 1877, he was embarking
upon an uncharted sea. His new office, in the Briggs Building
on Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, was empty ; and he had no model
to guide him in his work, for the North Carolina Department
was, in many respects, unlike any other in the United States.
But he did have some strong convictions regarding the basic
needs of the state — and the sanguine belief that somehow those
needs could be met. He wrote:
We want capital — we want a more reliable labor — we want skill and
energy and enterprise — we want manufactures [sic] — wc want our un¬
occupied lands improved — we want our mines of wealth developed — we
want our vast water-power utilized — we want our educational system put
on a firm and prosperous basis — we want the credit of the State restored
— we want our people to be independent. . . .’
We want more State pride — we want a true North Carolina policy — we
want this grand old Commonwealth to rise and shake off the accumulated
dust of an age of apathy and inaction. We have everything beckoning us
on to enjoy the rich reward of active, energetic co-operation.5
North Carolina must arouse from her lethargy and keep step with the
progress of the age. An aristocratic nobleman, broken in fortune and
wrapped in the folds of a tattered old velvet gown, and relying on the
prestige of departed wealth to secure a perpetuation of his former high
position, might excite our sympathy, but certainly would not inspire us
with that hopeful energy and buoyant spirit so essential to success in life.
With our new surroundings, we have not only much to learn, but much
to unlearn. . . ,s
1 Po'kion Ansonlan. Nov. 15, 1876.
2 Polkton Ansonion, Jan. 1 7, 1 877.
’North Carolina Department of Agriculture, Report on the Work of the Dept, of Agr. (Jan., 1880).
p. 25.
[197]
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