not benefit directly from H. R. 5195, a bill to promote the further development of public library service in rural areas.

I am interested in the passage of this bill because it is my firm belief that the security of the democratic form and function of our Government rests upon an educated and enlightened citizenry. A man who has read widely is a thoughtful man. A man who reads many opinions on any subject-be it government, business, science, or religion—is a man who is better equipped to make sane and independent judgments. This man is better able to evaluate the printed word, to distinguish the true from the false, and, in this day of powerful propaganda devices, to examine critically the threats to our democracy. Our whole corcept of democracy is based upon the assumption that a man has the right and is able to make independent and sensible decisions regarding his way of life.

Our American ideal of the educated man cannot be achieved, however, unless the opportunity for lifelong education is available to every man, woman, and child in this country. We are becoming more aware of the fact that education cannot stop at the schoolhouse door on graduation day. From the schools we receive the tools or the ways and methods for educating ourselves. From the day we leave school, and that is early in life, we receive most of our further information from the printed page.

The American public library is not only a great storehouse of the world's accumulated knowledge but a working laboratory that provides the greatest single means of educating the alert and hungry minds of the American people. It is my belief that people of the rural areas of this Nation are just as avid for free and unbiased information, and have just as much right to this information, as those of us who live in cities where good public library service is available.

In Detroit we are continually receiving requests from people in rural communities for books to help them in their school work, in the preparation of sermons, in the conduct of their small businesses, in the rearing of their children, and in the many things which affect their daily lives. Some of these requests are filled by our library, others by the Michigan State Library, and still others remain unfilled because our resources are not large enough to supply both Detroiters and those who live elsewhere, much as we would like to help them.

The many appreciative letters we received from those who borrow books would indicate that there is a real need for library service in the rural areas of the State. I have been informed that there are about 850,000 people in Michigan without access to any public library and about 280,000 more who have unsatisfactory service. This bill and the matching funds to be supplied by the State and local communities will not be sufficient to provide library service to this large group in Michigan but it will provide the stimulation to start a State-wide demonstration program. A citizen's group in the Traverse City area is already working on plans in the hope that they will be the pioneer library-demonstration center in Michigan.

Rural communities in Michigan are now providing better educational facilities to train their children to read, think, and organize information, and yet many of them do not protect this investment by providing public libraries for continuing education. I believe the

passage of this bill would provide the stimulation for this important step and encourage the rural areas to establish library service.

The appropriation of $7,500,000 each year for 5 years is not sufficiently large to service effectively all those who are now without library service in the United States but it should provide the impetus to demonstrate the value of public library service in many parts of the country. For an annual appropriation of little more than the cost of two bombers, this Nation would be doing an effective educational job and encouraging its citizens to provide adequate library service for themselves.

Mr. TACKETT. I am especially interested and wholeheartedly in accord with your statement and belief that the security of the democratic form and function of our Government rests upon an educated and enlightened citizenry.

You know, this Congress has spent a lot of time and a lot of public officials throughout the country have spent a lot of time in an effort to be sure that the people know nothing about communism. I have always believed that if the people of this country knew enough about democracy and were allowed to study communism we would never have anything to fear.

Mr. MOHRHARDT. I agree with you.

Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Howell?

Mr. HOWELL. I have no questions, but I am a firm believer in brief statements. I want to compliment all the witnesses so far on their concise and informative statements. I think they get their point across much more effectively without working up a lot of voluminous briefs that we would probably never have a chance to read. Mr. MOHRHARDT. Thank you, sir.

Mr. HOWELL. I want to say I think you brought out the point there are a large number of urban classes in the urban areas which gives a great opportunity to those who live in the urban areas, but that is denied to those in the rural sections, is it not?

Mr. MоHRHARDT. That is true. My mother lives in the rural area of Michigan and I have quite a knowledge of what goes on in that area. There is a small ladies' aid group that for years has been trying to establish a library, but it is a community of 300 people, a farming community, and they really need some stimulation. The State library has been very helpful, but they need something else to back them and get them started. I am sure in my mind if they were given that stimulation they would be inspired to carry on on their own.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Again, the establishment of a central school would give the rural child a chance to get a beginning, but there is no follow-up in the way of a library to stimulate his reading later on.

Mr. MOHRHARDT. That is true. I think it was Newton D. Baker who once said and I don't know that I can quote him exactly-that "Of all the major problems before us today, not one was even known when I was in college." I think we can agree with that statement. There are atomic energy, the Russian situation, and many other examples we could give.

Mr. TACKETT. Thank you, Mr. Mohrhardt.

Mr. MOHRHARDT. Thank you, sir.

Mr. DERRICKSON. Dr. Howard Dawson?

STATEMENT OF DR. HOWARD A. DAWSON, DIRECTOR OF RURAL SERVICE, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Dr. DAWSON. Mr. Tackett, Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Howell, I am Howard A. Dawson, director of rural service for the National Education Association. I am also the executive director of the department or rural education of the NEA and the executive director of the National Conference of County and other rural areas, superintendents of schools.

I would like to say before going into my direct remarks that I am especially pleased to appear before this committee because I began my professional career as superintendent of schools in Mr. Tackett's district, in fact in his own county, and I know before I go into my remarks, he knows about as much about this rural situation as I do because he grew up in it and I think his constituency is still about 75 percent rural, at least two-thirds farm.

This particular bill of course is to provide for library services, not directly for school libraries but in a way that I think will be just as effective as if it were money for school libraries.

The library of course is a very important adjunct to the education of boys and girls in rural and other small communities. I say other small communities because most of you will understand that in this day and time, with the reorganization of school districts and the consolidation of schools, a very large percentage of the boys and girls from the farms and the rural villages attend school in places that are not technically classified as rural, but they are small communities. You have many such in New York, with the rural central school districts, and of course Mr. Howell knows what has happened in Illinois in the last 5 years. Even before that reorganization it was true that in places of less than 7,500 population throughout the Middle West about 50 percent of all the high-school pupils came from the surrounding form territory or farm neighborhoods.

These small communities in general have the lowest resources within their own right to support schools from taxation. To a large extent they depend upon State allocation of funds. That is true to a larger degree in New York State than in any other State in the Union, with three or four other exceptions among the smaller States. The reason for that, of course, is that the taxpaying ability is not always in the same place that the largest number of the children live. That is the policy of equalization of educational opportunities. Where local resources are lowest, the resources are not only the least for the payment of teachers and the construction of buildings and paying for pupil transportation, it is also the lowest for providing books, audiovisual materials, various kinds of instructional equipment and supplies which today are considered to be indispensable to an adequate program of instruction. It is not a very easy matter in this day and time to give instruction that is commensurate with the information and skills, knowledge and the attitudes needed by young people to face the problems that we face in this country and in this world situation.

It is not an easy matter at all to carry on that kind of instruction without books. It is needless to say that where the books are fewest in number the other educational opportunities are also the least. In these schools in the smaller communities and rural areas it is not a practical matter from the standpoint of the use of public funds to

build up extensive libraries just for the benefit of that particular school. All the books that are around are not used all the time, but if certain books are needed only one, two, or three times a year, they ought to be there, they ought to be available. We know from the standpoint of administration and economy of the time of the people concerned we should have a centralized service on which the local people can call when the service is needed. This idea of developing a centralized library service available to schools is a very practical one. In fact, I don't see any other means in the near future to see to it that the schools in rural areas and other small communities, schools serving large numbers of rural children, will have an adequate number of books available.

Then, too, we find the people who in the past have had the fewest educational opportunities or the least number of years of schooling, for example, and those years for the most part most inadequate, are among the rural population. They for the most part live in the areas of lowest economic resources. That is true whether you look at the Nation as a whole or whether you look within a State or even within a county. If we wanted just to splash a broad picture of the places that have the lowest financial resources and, almost without exception, the least amount and the lowest quality of educational opportunities and the other types that go with it, it would be a fairly easy matter to do. We would take the Southern Appalachian region where the farmers have usually 14 percent of the kids and 2 percent of the National income. We would go across the Ozarks in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri and across in the Ouachita Boston mountain areas of Oklahoma. We would go into certain areas largely populated by the Spanish-Americans in the Southwest, especially New Mexico. We would go to the cut-over regions of northern Minnesota and northern Michigan. We would go to some of the regions of exhausted mining resources found in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and the like. That is where the people are concentrated. For the most part they are rural. These people I am talking about will run 75 to 85 percent rural. The only exceptions are where they are engaged in mining and lumbering, and in many cases it is areas where the mineral resources and timber have been virtually exhausted.

We know about some of that in Pike and Howard Counties, and that can be seen in many other States.

The lower the income of the people usually the higher the percentage of children. That is still true in spite of the increased birth rate during the war.

All of that has meaning for the problem before us because if we admit that books are necessary in acquiring the skill necessary to be successful economic producers and to fill a useful economic function in our set today, if we admit that books are essential to equipping children and youth to develop their qualities of good citizenship, not only that they may be good citizens in the future but that they may be participating citizens in the school life and other life of the community today, if we admit that the reading of books is a necessary and helpful adjunct to acquiring the moral and spiritual values and an understanding of the world in which we live today-if we admit all that, then we have to admit that we should take whatever economic steps are necessary to make books available.

I think this bill is an attempt in that direction. In the first place, I rather like the formula by which the money would be apportioned.

To a considerable extent it would give larger resources to the people with the greater needs. It is equalizing in its effect to that extent. It is perhaps as broadly equalizing as it ought to be, because we find needs in every State, whether it is New York or California, which usually rank at the top in State support of education and economic ability to provide the funds.

I think the bill is wise in that it leaves the setting up of a specific plan to the States. The States in the first place do not have the same problem, just from the very nature of organization and community structure and financial resources, but they have different histories and they are in different stages and types of development, and it would not be a very good thing if we tried to set up some centralized idea made according to national rules and then have every State fit into it or not get any money. It is part of the wisdom of our system of government that the State does have control over education, libraries, and other matters of service. It seems to me that it is entirely safe, feasible and certainly compatible with the American theory of government that State plans should be left to the States to make, with the Federal Government offering facilities for advice and for counsel and for review of plans that are submitted as a means of finding out what advice and counsel can be given.

There isn't anything that will prevent any States providing that special attention shall be given by the libraries, that receive help, to the schools. An important function of any public-library service would be to provide books of the kind and character and in sufficient number to serve rural people. In most instances if the adult people of the community, these rural communities, get the services they need, the books are going to have to be distributed through a school library. The books have to come from somewhere, and the need of adults for books in this day is greater perhaps than it ever has been before. It is greater in the first place because they have so many economic adjusments to make. We are talking mostly about people who are engaged in agriculture or in activities that are very closely related to agriculture. Without the use of scientific information, involving the use of better fertilizers, better plants as a result of plant breeding, better animals as a better animal breeding, and better methods of cultivation and better methods of soil conservation, it is inconceivable that one engaged in agriculture today could be successful unless he knew about these newer developments and put them into practice. The adult population have a few sources of help. The agricultural extension service, the Smith-Hughes vocational agriculture but they, too, have to have the use of books and literature, and it is a public function that books and literature should be made available. So many people are having to make various types of vocational adjustments, they need instruction on the vocational educational level, but you can't do it without books.

There is hardly anything you can think of that would help any more than an adequate library service that would fit into the vocational needs of the adult population.

Adults today, whether they had a chance to go to school very much when they were growing up or not, have had this forced upon them in the interest of this international situation, because most of their homes have had a very personal experience with it during the last war, and they are now, and they know that no man can escape the necessity of knowing about the forces in the world that are operating