to influence our own lives. They want to know about it, and they want to read about it. If the United States Government really wants to do the thing that will help the adult people in rural communities to an understanding of what we are up against and to provide a means for combating some of the subversive influences that we talk about, and as a means of developing a constructive citizenship, which is always the best safeguard against any kind of subversiveness, it would at least see that money was made available for people to have reading material adequate in amount and sufficient in kind and character. So, in behalf of the interest of the National Education Association in rural education, in behalf of the county superintendents of schools and some 3,000 supervisors of instruction in rural schools, and the staffs of the various State departments of education interested in rural schools, I can assure you gentlemen that all of us will be exceedingly well pleased if you would report this bill favorably, and I think I can assure you that it will have our support as it goes on its way through congress. I thank you very much. Mr. TACKETT. Thank you, sir. I want to advise this committee that I happen personally to know that the National Education Association has selected as its director for rural service a man who not only has been trained in that field but who has grown up in rural education and has more experience than any person I know of in Washington. I think that your organization is fortunate to have you, Dr. Dawson, a man that I have known all my life, who can speak the language of and knows the wishes and desires and feelings of the rural people. Thank you very much. Dr. DAWSON. Thank you, Mr. Tackett. Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Howell? Mr. HOWELL. Dr. Dawson, do these traveling librarians usually or very often provide any educational films? Dr. DAWSON. Yes, sir; they do. That is an important part of library service in this day and time. In fact, various kinds of audiovisual materials. Sometimes it is maps and globes, sometimes it is various types of models, phonograph records, and motion pictures. Mr. HOWELL. Do you think the extension and development of the educational phases of television will contribute much along this same line? Dr. DAWSON. It has very great possibilities. Of course there will have to be means of providing it, because the typical school in the United States is going to be a relatively small affair. After all, a school with pupils in 12 grades, if it has a thousand pupils, is not such a big school. When you think of what it would cost per capita to provide many of these adjuncts to the instructional program, we have to invent some centralized means of seeing that everybody has available these newer devices of learning. That is going to apply to television. It is being developed in some places now. The very large school systems of course can afford to set up television facilities, but for the most part it needs to be done on a regional basis. It may involve a good many community schools. I really believe that television has some of the most wonderful possibilities for new methods of teaching that have as yet come forward. Without going into detail, if you want to be impressed with that idea, I would advise you to look at the television programs broadcast from Johns Hopkins University each week on science. I don't know of anything any more instructive or a more practical way of instructing people. I have learned a great deal from it, things that I think every citizen ought to know. Anybody with the ability to read and listen at the fourth-grade level can understand it. There are so many things in vocational education and in giving the population information about science, about international affairs, about other parts of the world, about better methods of producing in agriculture, and in the teaching of history and civics it has unlimited possibilities. We are now faced with the very urgent need of expanding the facilities, but we had better make dead sure that the city youngsters are not the only ones that get it. The people in the more isolated areas have that need just as great and as citizens they are as much entitled to it and it is as much in the interest of the public safety that we see that they get it as it is that we should merely have it available to the city youth. Mr. HOWELL. You do not, of course, think that that would obviate the need for something like this that we are talking about. Dr. DAWSON. It accentuates it. You see, if you had all these things over television and created an interest and you didn't have library facilities to follow up the interest, after all you cannot present a whole topic in 30 minutes over television and give one complete and adequate information about it. It stimulates one's desire for reading. If we haven't made reading material available, we have just disappointed him. Mr. HOWELL. Your statement certainly shows an understanding of what we are talking about,, and I think it has been very impressive to the committee. Dr. DAWSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Howell. Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Greenwood. Mr. GREENWOOD. I wish there were more time to go into the equalization of opportunity to receive an education. I am interested in that very much because I have worked near New York City for 25 years and have seen people come into the East Side especially from the South with an eighth-grade diploma and the principal of the school or the guidance officer was unable to place them at the high-school level because of their inferior education, which brings the whole standard down. They were coming in at the rate of anywhere from 8 and 10 a day for several weeks. It is a very important matter, it seems to me. Dr. DAWSON. During the last war the incidence of that problem in New York City and other large cities was appalling. Hardly anyone knew what to do with it. So many people were coming in from other parts of the country. Mr. GREENWOOD. In one year there were no less than 400,000 children changing from one school in one locality or another into the New York City system, which shows you that unless you have an equalization of opportunity you have a very serious problem. Dr. DAWSON. You can't localize the problem of education because we are a highly mobile population. We always have been, and the prospects now are that we will be that way for some time to come. California took in 21⁄2 million people during the war. A lot of them came from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and so on. Whole communities now are referred to as Arkie and Okie communities. Mr. TACKETT. Thank you a lot. Dr. DAWSON. Thank you, sir. STATEMENT OF DALE HESS, FALLSTON, HARFORD COUNTY, MD. Mr. HESS. I am Dale Hess, a farmer of Fallston, Harford County, Md. I speak to you this morning as a farmer, although I had the opportunity in 1948 of being the national vice president of the Future Farmers of America, the largest farm-boy organization in the world, and I also had the opportunity of being a 4-H Club member, a Farm Bureau member, and a Grange member. This past fall I received my seventh degree in the National Grange. I am a 21-year-old farmer in Harford County, Md. I own one farm of my own, and with my brother operate two more, making a total of a little more than a thousand acres altogether. I have 180 head of cattle, and 50 hogs, but mostly I do truck farming, raising large acreages. of beans, tomatoes, and corn. I attended Bel Air High School in Harford County and wanted very much to specialize in vocational agriculture because I knew I would be unable to go on to college since I had to take over the farm immediately upon graduation from high school. However, at the time I was in high school during the war, our county school superintendent was unable to get a vocational agriculture teacher for Bel Air School at the salary offered. The result was that for 11⁄2 years we had no agriculture teacher in high school, so those of us who wanted agriculture were shoved around from class to class, wherever a class was not too overcrowded. We were not wanted in those classes, and we were not particularly interested in what was being taught in them. Therefore, we boys who really wanted and needed instruction along the lines of agriculture were unable to get what we wanted. Now. our only hope is to get it ourselves by reading. We are very fortunate in Harford County in having a county library, and doubly fortunate because in the last few years we have had a bookmobile, which brings books right to our lanes, or to a book station at our closest country store. There is one near my home farm. We are just now beginning to appreciate what this fine service means to us rural fellows. We need certain information on certain things. We request the books, the magazines, and the pamphlets we want, and they are brought right to us. It is wonderful. Often we don't know what is available. We just know what we need. We tell the librarian and she gets everything she can find for us. We could never take the time to go to a big city library to look it up ourselves. We really do not often have the time to go into the county library. We work long hours, as you know. On several occasions in high school I had the privilege of representing the thousands of 4-H Club members of Maryland at their national meetings, and I often represneted the thousands of boys who belong to Future Farmers of America. We all realized that those of us who did not go on to college-the majority of us who were going right into farming would necessarily have to continue formal education by ourselves mostly by reading and studying at home. That is why our rural youth groups in the Farm Bureau, Grange, Senior 4-H Council-I belong to all of them-have been so keenly interested in extending and improving Maryland's library service in every county. That is why we support the proposed legislation in Maryland for the 40 cents per capita additional State aid for such library service. That is why we are interested in this proposed Federal bill. 97852-52-5 It means far more than you can imagine to busy young farmers like myself. It also means a lot to our farm families. Our wives and mothers can get books that will help them do many of their daily tasks around the home more easily and more effectively. They can get authentic information on child care and child guidance as well as the latest books on national and world affairs and the books they want for pleasure reading. Library service has helped enrich the lives of rural children, too. In my county the bookmobile goes to all the rural schools, and gives the children the chance to choose the books they want to read. In the summer it comes to their communities, near their homes, so that they will not be deprived of books while school is closed. When we realize that this library service can bring us and our families the many kinds of books that we want in our work and that we enjoy in our spare time, we know that we want everyone to have the kind of library that will help to make us better farmers and better citizens. As a taxpayer, I, like everyone else, am interested in less taxes but not at the expense of education-education in public schools for our children or adult education through extended library services and adult education classes in public schools. I know I speak for hundreds of thousands of other rural youth and young taxpayers when I urge you to vote in favor of this bill. Mr. TACKETT. You were selected as a Future Farmer of America in 1948? Mr. HESS. Yes, sir. Mr. TACKETT. That is quite an honor. You are to be highly congratulated. Mr. HESS. Thank you. Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Howell? Mr. HOWELL. I just might say that I follow the work of the Future Farmers and 4-H Clubs up in my area considerably, and I think they do a wonderful job. We have a young man here visiting Washington today who is president of the class at Princeton High School, who has been very active in the Future Farmers and 4-H and a year ago his father died and he has taken over the management of a large farm there. He is really handling it and doing a beautiful job. So I am very happy to have testimony from you as a Future Farmer or a past Future Farmer of America. Mr. HESS. Thank you. Mr. TACKETT. Mr. Greenwood? Mr. GREENWOOD. I have no questions, except I would like to say it is very fine to see a young man come here not only in the interest of the movement for himself but for many others. Mr. HESS. Thank you, Mr. Greenwood. Mr. TACKETT. Thank you very much. Mr. HESS. Thank you, Mr. Tackett. (No response.) Mr. Chairman, I believe that Mrs. Gray, representing the ParentTeachers Association, wishes to file a statement. Mr. TACKETT. Mrs. Gray, you say, is filing a statement for the PTA? Mrs. EDWARD GRAY (Washington representative, National Congress of Parents and Teachers). Our national legislative chairman, Mrs. Brown, is in Los Angeles. I talked with her on the telephone and she said she was sending the statement. I was late getting in this morning because I waited to see if it wouldn't come, but it hasn't come. I hope it will be here in time for you to insert it in the record. Mr. TACKETT. That will be fine. You can get it in today or tomorrow? Mrs. GRAY. I certainly hope we can. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (COMMITTEE NOTE.-The statement referred to was not available at press time for inclusion in the printed record.) Mr. TACKETT. We are waiting on Dr. Wilson? Mr. DERRICKSON. Yes, that is all. (Off the record.) Mr. TACKETT. All right, Dr. Wilson, you may proceed. STATEMENT OF DR. M. L. WILSON, DIRECTOR, EXTENSION Dr. WILSON. My name is M. L. Wilson. I am Director of the Extension Service in the Department of Agriculture and speaking on behalf of the Department of Agriculture in favor of this bill to increase the facilities for library service in the United States. I am particularly interested in the matter of rural people having reasonably good library services and services that would be somewhat comparable to the library services that are available to people living in cities. The farm population of the United States is changing as a result of better educational opportunities for younger people in the past years. Large numbers of farmers and farm women today have had the advantages of high-school education. The cooperative extension service which functions in all counties through the county agricultural agency and the home demonstration agent and in many cases the 4-H Club agent are working largely in the field of education with rural people. While their educational activities have primarily to do with farming and taking to farm people the results of research and improved methods of farming, and likewise the management of the household, nevertheless this educational program is broadening as it relates to a higher standard of living for country people. Consequently, as a part of this program there is promotion and assistance given in the field of developing reading both from the cultural standpoint and from the technical standpoint. Since there are increasing numbers of farmers who are graduates of high school and who have studied agriculture in high school, many of these people read books about soil, books about dairying, books about fruit and vegetable production, all of these kinds of things which are the products of scientific research and greatly increased technology in the operation and management of farms. We find the county agents report to us increasing demands on the part of the farm people for such books. They do not quite feel that they can invest $4 or $5 in a book just for one reading and that where there are not the proper library services available, that kind of people don't get these books. I should like also to mention that there are about 1,200,000 members of home demonstration clubs throughout the country who have been assisted in their organization by the home-demonstration agent. These clubs came into existence first to deal with matters having to do with home-making, but their programs have broadened out and 1 |