Benefits and disadvantages of globalism in North Carolina
Pearsall again notes the distinction between his and his father's view of the agricultural business. Pearsall predicts that North Carolina will become blacker and poorer with the economic downturn in the farming industry, but he remains hopeful that improvements to higher education will yield increased upward mobility and better opportunities for the state's residents.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mack Pearsall, May 25, 1988. Interview C-0057. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- WALTER E. CAMPBELL:
-
How do you think your father would have felt about the changes? Would he
be glad to see that it's become more industrial and less
agricultural, or would he have liked to have had that balance throughout
with more of a concentration on, probably, agriculture, do you
think?
- MACK PEARSALL:
-
Well, I think he was more interested in the improvement of the lot of
mankind than he was in any one specific industry prevailing. He had the
philosophy that eastern North Carolina had been very good to the
Braswell and the Pearsall families, and that there was a responsibility
on the part of the families to return some of that reward that we had
reaped from it. And I think you find that manifested in the fact that he
convinced my two aunts and my mother to give the two hundred acres for
Wesleyan College as a part of that being a new dimension for this area
in terms of livability and opportunities for higher education. We can
talk about Wesleyan College cycling through now and what it's
going to do for this area, and I think that if he were here today, he
would be very pleased with what he would see in terms of
industrialization, and he probably would like to see more of it so more
people could have an opportunity. He would be very excited about the
arrival of Dr. Les Garner here at Wesleyan College and Les'
new mission to be a catalytic force in helping eastern North Carolina
move from where we are, which is in some form of a transition into a
global economy where our dependence on agriculture
is getting even more threatened with the potential demise of tobacco.
The worldwide competition for agricultural products would have run
contrary to his theory. He was a great believer in Malthus'
theory that the population grew geometrically and the capacity to
produce grew arithmetically. I think that is a philosophy that he and I
differed on because I observed the technological revolution that was
taking place both within this country in terms of productivity and what
was taking place elsewhere in the world. He kept believing that there
would ultimately be world wide famine, and that, for that reason, the
farm community would be able to coalesce in a manner that would allow it
to gain a better return to its investment. That has never taken place in
my lifetime. I don't believe it will. I think
we're even going contrary to that now because there are
antagonistic elements even within agriculture, you know. The cow people
want low corn prices, and the corn people want high prices. But that was
a philosophy that he had. He tried to imbue that into me, you know,
Malthus, Malthus, Malthus. There would be this great famine and
worldwide, and the prices would go up, and we'd get an
opportunity. But that hasn't worked, and I'm
convinced it's not going to work. And for that reason,
I'm moving out of agriculture because I don't have
that psychic commitment that he did. I don't derive that
psychic enthusiasm out of it that he did. It's nice to go out
and walk around on the farms but it doesn't help to put
anything on the table unless you're interested in lifestyle
only.
I think it is noteworthy and interesting that a recent Wall
Street Journal an article came out that talked about the
split-level economy in the southern part of United States. And it talked
about two recent publications, "Shadows over the
Sunbelt" and "Half Way Home and a Long Way to
Go." In that article it made the very clear point, and I
don't have to go far to the east of where I'm
sitting to prove that point, that for years we had a group of
short-sighted leaders who wanted to keep low taxes and limited
government. They were people who owned land who basically were in those
elected positions or they controlled or influenced the people who were
there. And they didn't really step out front to try and
create a new economic dynamic for the next generation. And there are
areas of eastern North Carolina that are now suffering badly because of
that lack of farsightedness. The Branch Bank just did a study that shows
that out of the forty counties in eastern North Carolina, twenty-five of
them are going to get blacker and poorer in the next twenty years unless
somebody turns it around. This is a mission that Les Garner has chosen
for his college, to do something about the plight that faces eastern
North Carolina...