kind of library or school facilities. Let's suppose the State of Texas can have gold schoolhouses if they want to, that they have plenty of money to do it with. I have never been able to understand why a child who happened to live just a block over in Arkansas should not be entitled to the same educational opportunities to prepare himself for this great battle of life as the child who happens to live over in Texas. Folks holler long and loud that this is a local obligation. I believe in local control just as strong as any person in the world, I believe in States' rights, but I don't believe in this silly system of trying to keep the Federal Government from assuming its responsibility or the State of Arkansas or any other State from assuming its responsibilities to provide equal educational opportunities, upon the theory that if you furnish the money you are going to have control. I think you have brought forth the fact today that it hasn't been that way. Since 1917 the Federal Government has been of assistance to the school children of this country and yet they haven't gained Federal control and are not attempting to gain Federal control.

Dr. FULLER. You express the viewpoint of most educators very well, Mr. Chairman. I would like with your permission to say just a word or two about the State equalization systems.

In more than 40 of the States there are equalization systems of the kind you have described in your own State of Arkansas. The State governments through their State education agencies-and our members are the chief administrators of those agencies-now distribute about 2 billions of dollars each year to local school districts from State funds. That means that the State governments are paying about 45 percent of the total costs of the elementary and secondary schools throughout the country. There is a great range. Some of them have larger amounts and percentages of State aids than others, but all have State aids to education. In these equalization systems the attitude is well established along the lines you have suggested, and that is that the point of residence of a child does not determine, should not determine, that he shall receive a very inferior opportunity in education. We do have equalization among the States. It is better in some States than in other States, it is true, but we have some equalization in all of the States from State funds. In New Hampshire, for instance, where I had experience as a chief State school officer, we distributed State funds to all the local school districts in the State, and we did it without State control or local autonomy. That is the point. There is no necessary connection between financial support and the control of the program. That is our absolute policy. It is based on our experience. We know from the State systems of financial support to schools, 24 billions of dollars a year, that we can distribute funds from a central agency without controlling the program. We know how to do it. We know the pitfalls that are possible in those systems, and we have taken steps to eliminate those pitfalls. Anyone who says that you cannot distribute funds from a central agency without controlling the program that benefits from the funds simply doesn't know what he is talking about.

Mr. GREENWOOD. In other words, you can set standards without control.

Dr. FULLER. You don't set the standards as much as you delegate the responsibility for the standards to the local people who are nearer the scene of expenditure, and those local standards and State-developed

standards are adopted in effect as the standards of the Federal Government. I wrote a letter just yesterday to a Federal agency in which I told them that it was none of their business about the standards in regard to a certain part of the educational system in local school districts in a particular State. Some regional officer had written a request for information which implied a right to receive it, which went into things that were just none of his business. My job here in Washington when those cases arise is to tell those agencies it is none of their business and to make it stick. I think the record will show that it usually sticks, too. They don't exert Federal control over our State programs because we don't let them do it.

Mr. TACKETT. As long as you believe and as long as this Congress restricts legislation so as to keep Federal operations at a minimum and the basic responsibility with local people, we have nothing to fear so far as Federal aid is concerned.

Dr. FULLER. The key is having Federal aid without Federal control in the library field or in education is in the administrative set-up which is provided, in the attitudes expressed by the Congress in making the appropriations, in the State laws, and in the very spirit of the administration at the State level. Those things are so clear now that a law like this library-service bill, set up with the express intention that State and local initiative shall be observed, and then administered through the Office of Education to the State agency in that field, is the framework within which Federal control can be prevented. There is no Federal control if Congress does not want it, if the Office of Education does not want it and they don't-if the State agencies don't want it—and they don't-and if the local communities don't want it-and they don't. There is no Federal control if no one who is handling the funds wants it.

Mr. TACKETT. Dr. Fuller, as usual you have made a good witness, and the Education and Labor Committee relies very heavily upon the testimony that you give us from time to time. We are glad to have you with us.

Dr. FULLER. I appreciate very much the opportunity to be here, sir. Thank you.

Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Wallace Campbell, I believe, has to leave early. I want to tell you folks now, if I may, that the House is going to meet today at 11 o'clock and we have about 11 witnesses here. Do not think that we do not appreciate your testimony if we fail to comment upon it a lot because we want to cover as many of the witnesses as we possibly can. Go right ahead, Mr. Campbell.

STATEMENT OF WALLACE J. CAMPBELL, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON OFFICE, COOPERATIVE LEAGUE OF THE U. S. A.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I think it would be quicker if I just read my testimony rather than ad lib on it.

My name is Wallace J. Campbell. I am director of the Washington office of the Cooperative League of the U. S. A., a national federation of consumer purchasing and service cooperatives. The league's membership is made up of local and regional cooperative organizations whose total membership is nearly 2 million families.

In considering the library-service bill, H. R. 5195, which is before you, it is important perhaps for me to point out that about 75 percent

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of our members are farmers or live in very small rural communities. We have been keenly interested in rural electrification, for example, not only because it brings power to the farm to help agricultural production, but also because it brings electric lights for better reading and power to relieve enough of the load of hand labor so that the farm wife and the farm boy and girl have leisure time for education and culture.

Our cooperative associations have taken the leadership in the development of various techniques of adult education. Perhaps the most effective are the advisory-council work in the State of Ohio and the study-group movement in Nova Scotia, Canada, which together combine the best elements on an all-round program of adult education. Thousands of farmers in Ohio meet in their neighbors' homes each month throughout the year in groups of a dozen families to discuss the practical problems that face them. These advisory councils are interested not only in the problems of the operation of their cooperatives, but in general education, economic and civic problems on a community, State, and national basis. To make rural adult education feasible there must be access to adequate sources of books and other library materials.

The Cooperative League gives this bill, the library service bill, H. R. 5195, its wholehearted endorsement. The free public library is an unique American institution with roots going back to colonial times. In no other country has this part of the educational system been developed as it has in the United States. It would be hard to estimate the contribution this institution has made to keeping our people informed, and in preserving our traditions of independent thinking by the citizen on the basis of access to the facts.

Yet despite the fact that the public library is firmly rooted in our history and in our national life it is unfortunately the case that the rural areas which need these services most are very poorly provided with them. In the approximately 3,000 counties in this country about 1 out of 6 has no public library of any kind. Another half of the counties are served only by libraries in cities and towns. Some 30 million of our rural and small-town citizens-a fifth of our population has no access to a local public library.

This bill is an unique proposal for temporary Federal aid to meet the means of meeting an important educational need. It utilizes the tested principle of Federal grants-in-aid matched by State funds, but it proposes a program of only 5 years duration. Thus it is a demonstration project, a means of providing public library service to areas not now served in the expectation that after the 5-year period the States and local governments will make provisions for carrying on. Its cost, considering the millions of people which it will serve, is extremely modest-about 5 cents per capita each year, or 25 cents per capita over the 5-year period. This is about the price of a gallon of gasoline and not much more than the cost of a pack of cigarettes.

There is a very great interest among rural people in obtaining better access to the world of books and literature. One example is provided by the national conference on rural reading which was held in Washington last September with the support of the three large national farm organizations and the participation of numerous other organizations concerned with rural life, including of course our own organization.

A similar State-wide conference was held last week in Ohio, the first of several State conferences of this type being planned in various areas of the country. These conferences are not concerned solely with the problems of inadequate rural library services, although this is a major topic for discussion. They are concerned with the wider problem of access to good reading in rural areas by all the means available, including the usual commercial channels of distribution. But if the public libraries are few in rural areas, bookstores are almost nonexistent. The bookstore has become almost purely a city facility; there does not seem to be a sufficiently concentrated market outside of fairly good-sized cities and college towns to support bookstores. This tends to emphasize the need for rural library service even more since our rural citizens now operate under a double handicap with respect to access to the means of continuing self-education and selfimprovement.

We are living in a period of strain and crisis which may last for many years. We are investing large sums of public money to build up our productive resources and physical plant so as to be able to carry the load of increased armaments for defense and yet maintain an adequate living standard. It is equally important to develop and to maintain our human resources, and particularly in our rural areas from which a more than proportionate share of our future citizens will come. The bill before you is a real contribution to this objective at a cost which is measured in a few cents per capita. Who can measure now the returns we have secured as a nation from the wise investment of a portion of our public lands to the endowment of education at earlier periods in our history? This committee has a similar opportunity to make a long-run contribution to the national welfare in acting favorably on the library-service bill.

We are wholeheartedly in support of this measure.

Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Campbell, what makes up the membership of your league? I see what is here on the paper, but I don't understand.

Mr. CAMPBELL. This includes the cooperatives in the field of farm supplies, feed, seed, fertilizer, fencing, all of those materials; petroleum products, our mutual insurance companies; in the cities our food stores, our cooperative housing associations; and quite a number of rural health associations. There are eight cooperative hospitals, for example, in rural areas which serve communities on a prepaid medical care plan much like the Blue Cross plan but extending all the way to complete medical service.

In addition to this direct dues-paying membership, we have as associate members in the Cooperative League, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which has about 3 million members in electric cooperatives around the country. We also have as associate members the Credit Union National Association, with 3 million members, who are almost entirely in the cities. Then we have also the Student Cooperative Federation, the Cooperative Health Federation of America ard the National Federation of Housing Cooperatives as associate members. Those are not counted in the 2 million direct members in the cooperative league. This is a completely noncontroversial matter as far as we are concerned. This is one item which nobody in our organization disagreed with at all.

Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Howell?

Mr. HOWELL. No questions.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Has the Cooperative League ever done anything toward developing libraries in the rural areas? Have you ever supported anything before this Federal bill came up? Have you taken any action to encourage libraries in rural areas?

Mr. CAMPBELL. We have done very little in that field, primarily because we have been so busy meeting the first and primary needs of our membership, which was to get some feed and seed and fertilizer out to the farmer, to get some gasoline to run his tractors, to get these other things. But we are keenly interested in this, and our local people who like to help on it. We have done a few things. In Ohio, for example, there are about 1,500 advisory councils that meet month in and month out throughout the year, and our central organization, the Farm Bureau Cooperative Association, supplies them with reading material on information that they want to study. So we have done a little but not very much, and this is something we want to develop a greater interest in as time goes on.

Mr. TACKETT. Thank you, Mr. Campbell.
Mr. DERRICKSON. Miss Sallie Farrell.

STATEMENT OF SALLIE FARRELL, FIELD REPRESENTATIVE,

LOUISIANA STATE LIBRARY, BATON ROUGE, LA.

Miss FARRELL. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, while I am pleased to be here and to have the opportunity of talking with you briefly about the importance of the library service bill, I wish that here in my place were some of the people in rural Louisiana who have been, as one farmer put it, on the "receiving end" of library service.

I recall the sincere and simple testimony to libraries this same farmer gave at a meeting of librarians and library-minded laymen 2 years ago. This man, who landed in our country in the late eighties with little formal education and no knowledge of the language, said in part, and I quote:

I plead guilty of having very little common school education. Every scrap of printed material became my prized possession-to be read and reread-studied and pondered over. Through that experience, I may place a higher evaluation on our present library services than would someone else. I can in all sincerity say that the establishment of the bookmobile library in the rural sections is really "the ultimate" of all the benefits the farmers of our State now enjoy.

He said further, and I quote again:

Life's first danger is an empty mind, not so much an empty stomach, as we are nowadays led to believe.

I wish some of the men and women and boys and girls from Louisiana whose lives have been enriched by public libraries could testify to you. The cattleman, the lawyer, the teacher, the businessman who has gained practical help and information from Louisiana's libraries could be far more convincing than I.

This legislation which you are considering and which is of much concern to all of us will do the kind of things for the whole United States that our State plan of library development is doing for Louisiana. Let me tell you briefly of Louisiana's library program. Twenty-seven years ago in our State there was no library service to rural areas. Today, 36 out of the 64 parishes-we call them parishes instead of counties in Louisiana-have parish-wide library