Page:The North Carolina Historical Review - Volume 1, Number 1.pdf/10

8 States that is so essential to the welfare of each constituent member. The individual citizen discovers that he serves the Nation by serving well the State to which he belongs; and that he serves his State by working with his neighbors for the welfare of his county or his town. There is no essential rivalry, although often there are practical questions as to the adjustment of public functions.

There are various factors that must be considered in the historical study of one of our States, and that must also be grasped intelligently in the outlining of constructive policies for the future. The most obvious factors are (1) the people, and (2) the land and other material resources. But in the earlier stages of our life in North Carolina we had also to consider certain external relations that counted most significantly. The Indians were an ever-present factor of considerable importance for nearly two hundred years. Many conditions exist today in localities that can only be explained by a knowledge of the friendliness or unfriendliness of certain Indian land titles. English policy as related to colonial administration was a factor of far reaching influence in many ways. Foreign and domestic trade policies, as they affected commerce not only with European countries but with the other American colonies and with the West Indies, produced results of so marked a kind that existing conditions could not possibly be understood without much knowledge of those policies.

When one returns to the two main factors—the people themselves and the phyicalphysical [sic] resources of a State like North Carolina—the theme becomes so ramified as one studies it that it furnishes ample food for a life-time of study and reflection. Suppose one were considering physical resources, and were beginning with an agricultural survey by localities. Perchance we find fields that are depleted and eroded. What was their original state, and how has this wastage of once fertile lands come about? The history of agriculture, brought down to the detailed study of communities, is rather at the beginning than at the end, for purposes of inquiry.

You cannot tell the story of any old tobacco farm in North Carolina in its completeness, or with a real understanding of