[2] He was prominent in pushing for reforms in Southern agriculture to make it more scientific and to improve rural conditions in the South.

He served on the State of North Carolina Board of Agriculture, the advisory council of the United States Department of Agriculture, and on the National Commission on Farm Tenancy, as well as chairing the North Carolina Hospital and Medical Care Commission appointed by Governor Broughton in 1944.

However, he is also well known for promoting a program of rural racial segregation in North Carolina, due to the rapid increase of African American farm ownership in the early twentieth century.

He was motivated both by modern, social Darwinist assumptions and by his concern that the rise of black farm owners was undermining poor white farmers' ability to compete.

In the end, white planters, fearing the loss of their labor, successfully opposed his rural segregation plan.