Hon. GORDON ALLOTT, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DENVER, COLO., February 1, 1956. DEAR SENATOR ALLOTT: As foreman of the paint department at Quick-Way Truck Shovel here in Denver, I have recently become very concious of the remarkably low level of educational standing of the young men coming into Denver from our Colorado farm areas. I have several on my crew and they are bright enough, even pretty good painters, but our new production control system which requires the filling out of cards on every job just plain throws them. I have other painters from rural areas in Nebraska and Iowa and they absorbed it quickly. Naturally, this puts the Coloradans at a tremendous disadvantage when future advancement comes up. Nor is this an isolated instance; industry everywhere is requiring brains where once we just asked for brawn. In the discussion of this problem with friends I learned that there is a bill now in committee that is designed to improve the library facilities in our rural counties. Better libra ries may not be an education in themselves, but from my own experience I would say that they are an essential part. The bill is the library services bill, S. 205. In the House it is H. R. 2840. If these bills will in any way help the young Coloradans be better fitted to hold their own in modern industry, please do what you can to see that they are are favorably reported out as soon as possible. With my best wishes, JIM W. JUDD. MEMORANDUM RE MONTANA'S LIBRARIES AND THE LIBRARY SERVICES BILL (S. 205), SUBMITTED BY VIRGINIA WALTON, PRESIDENT, MONTANA STATE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION Montana's public libraries represent a tradition of book service from the earliest days of the Territory; but their support has been all too often a "making do" on the part of librarians and a general feeling that a library should be considered an object of charity, that is, one supported by a minimum of tax funds and/or local contributions from clubs and individuals. Midway in this decade we find that of Montana's estimated 650,000 population 466,569 people are being served by a public library, that is 72 percent of the total population, with a total expenditure of some $513,000, or $1.09 per capita served. Actually this should be broken down to tell the full story, for mill levies vary from 3.50 for Great Falls, serving a population of 50,000, to 0.25 for Powder River Public and Broadus, serving 517 people. Of all the State's 56 counties, each having the possibility of a permissive maximum of 2 mills' expenditure for county library service, only one for the fiscal year ending June 1955 had availed itself of that opportunity to provide really effective service by levying the full 2 mills. That was Lincoln County in the northwest part of the State. The American Library Association in 1948 set up standards for public-library support (these standards are now considered outmoded and inadequate): $1.50 per capita as minimum, $2.25-$2.50 as basic, and $3 as superior. Actually in Montana only 3 libraries have, against this measuring stick, basic support, the $2.25 $2.50 per capita recommended; nine libraries only have minimum support, that is, $1.50 as recommended by these same standards; and four-fifths or 48 of the libraries of the State have below-minimum per capita appropriations. Sparsely settled areas and small population actually make well organized and effective library service of paramount importance. But thus far the State has lagged dismally in bringing library standards up to be comparable with those that make Montana a leader in the educational field. No doubt much of this lag is due to the fact that librarians' salaries have been so pitifully low that only untrained people could be secured to man these posts, with a subsequent lack of program and vision that should come with trained librarians, well versed in the techniques and philosophies of their profession. Montana is a great distance from any prospect of State aid, and a program of library demonstrations as provided by the Federal library services bill (S. 205) would give the impetus to taxpayers and legislators to see the essential role of a really effective library. Where population is so sparse and scattered, the larger unit of library service, the multicounty unit, is an economic necessity. (Of the 24 counties reporting library services as of 1955, tax support ranged from 0.25 to 2 mills, but many of these counties have such low taxable valuations that they alone cannot support good library service.) It is the hope that the Federal library services bill will bring to Montana demonstration of the practicality of the larger units of library services, with several counties pooling resources and developing a reasonable and workable plan for cooperation for the greatest good, which after all is everyone's individual good. The impetus thus gained from seeing real library service in action through such demonstrations would then spark the State into assuming its own tax responsibility, so that instead of having vast rural areas with either poor library service or no service at all, we would see the way to really effective and economical library service through multicounty units and practice what we had been shown through this demonstration program. The 183,000 people in Montana without any kind of library service have a right to books; and the better than half of the other 72 percent who today have services far less than adequate deserve book service that is signficant. The Federal library services bill will show us the way. STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY SENATOR BIBLE TO THE EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SENATE LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE COMMITTEE IN CONNECTION WITH THE HEARINGS ON THE LIBRARY SERVICES LEGISLATION Mr. Chairman and members of the Education Subcommittee, I wish to thank you for this opportunity to submit a statement in support of the library services legislation now pending before you. I cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of this legislation to Nevada. Many small communities of my State are hundreds of miles apart. Only a few of these communities have libraries, and these are handicapped by lack of funds to buy books or to employ trained librarians. With few exceptions, Nevada towns and counties have populations and assessed valuations too small to support modern libraries. Even if this were not the case, it would not be feasible for our small communities to build up and maintain libraries sufficiently diversified in their offerings to meet the standards a modern library should have. It would seem that the bookmobile is the answer to many problems and especially those which may be peculiar to Nevada. The Nevada Library Association has advised me that a comprehensive plan has been developed for library extension in the State. This plan consists of the accumulation of a large central collection of books and materials which will be available to all the citizens, the direct service by bookmobiles to the small communities, and the services to the small communities of library specialists to work with and advise the local librarians. So far, I have emphasized my State's interest in and need for this legislation. I realize that the whole picture is much broader than that. There are hundreds of communities all over this Nation without adequate library service, which is such a vital part of our educational processes, and an important function in our political and social development. Hampered by limited local appropriations and absence of trained librarians, the library services offered by small communities are restricted to a minimum-if, indeed, they exst at all. The 5-year Federal assistance to the States, as contemplated in the pending legislation, will, I am certain, provide the stimulus needed to obtain active State and local support for free library services. I know that the people of Nevada, once the benefits and practicability of such services are demonstrated by 5 years of Federal assistance, will not willingly see the program abandoned but, on the contrary, will work toward continuing it through State and local appropriations. Mr. Chairman, it is my hope that your subcommittee can see its way clear to approving this legislation. STATEMENT OF GILBERT W. CHAPMAN, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL BOOK COMMITTEE, INC., RELATING TO S. 205, THE LIBRARY SERVICES BILL Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Gilbert W. Chapman. I am a resident of New York City and am president of the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Co. I am also serving as chairman of the National Book Committee. On behalf of that committee I am very happy to accept your invitation to present a statement with respect to the library services bill (S. 205) now being considered by your committee. First I should like to say a word about the National Book Committee itself. It is an organization of less than 100 members, drawn from many professions and industries, who are united in their concern for the wider and freer availability of books and for their more effective use. Only a few of the members, as authors, librarians, or publishers, have any professional responsibility for books; our concern is rather that of citizens deeply convinced that one of the major needs of our country is the opportunity for every American to dig out the answers to questions that bother him, to continue his education after he leaves school by reading on his own, and to find in his reading not only the factual information he needs but the broadening of horizons and the inspiration that are so needed today. To illustrate the range of interests represented by the committee, I should like to give the names of just a few of those from various segments of business or the professions who have been willing to come together and devote their efforts to finding ways to enlarge the usefulness of books to the American people: Thomas K. Finletter, New York attorney and former Secretary of the Air Force; Frank Altschul, chairman of the board of the General American Investors Co., Inc.; Detlev W. Bronk, president of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; Ward Cheney, president of Cheney Bros.; Marchette Chute, author; Gardner Cowles, publisher of Look Magazine; Judge Learned Hand; Paul G. Hoffman, chairman of the board of the Studebaker Corp.; James R. Killian, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Meyer Kestnbaum, Hart, Schaffner & Marx; David E. Lilienthal, former Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission; Stanley Marcus, president of Neiman-Marcus in Dallas; Whitelaw Reid, New York Herald Tribune; Walter Reuther, president of the CIO; and Lessing J. Rosenwald, former chairman of the board, Sears, Roebuck & Co. It is easy for many Americans to take the ready availability of books for granted. Members of your committee, for example, have at their fingertips the resources of the world's greatest library. The day has now come when the majority of Americans live in cities or large towns, most of which are reasonably well provided with both libraries and bookstores. It comes as something of a shock to realize how completely inaccessible books are for tens of millions of persons in our country. Nearly 30 million people have no libraries and no bookstores. For many, many millions of others, in rural areas and small towns and villages, the library service available is entirely inadequate to even minimal needs. It is hard to realize what figures so vast mean in concrete terms. One way to visualize their meaning is to think of any recent book on public affairs or other important matters which has influenced your own thinking and which you believe everyone should have a chance to read if he is interested. Perhaps it is a book by President Eisenhower or Governor Stevenson or Secretary Dulles or Ambassador Bowles. Perhaps it is a book on the Communist question or on foreign policy or taxes or labor relations. But whatever book you think of, the odds are that in well over half the counties of this country there will be not one single copy available in any library or any bookstore or any school or any home. Nearly half of all the people in the country will have no real chance either to borrow it or buy it or even see a copy. It is also hard to believe that millions of children are still growing up in this country who rarely have a chance to see a book except the ones they use in school, but it is true. The people who suffer this sort of privation are, of course, those who live in rural and small-town areas that have been unable to support their own separate libraries. We have a very simple belief about this. We believe that people who live on farms or in villages or small towns have the same right of free access to the knowledge, inspiration, and ideas in books as people who live in cities. We believe that a child who grows up in the remotest hamlet in our country has a right to share the heritage of our past and the wonders of stories and poems and science equally with a child in New York or Washington or Chicago. The techniques exist today to give that equal access to all. Through bookmobiles and library extension services we know how to bring books to every corner of the country. If the means can be found to let people who have never had this opportunity experience it just once and see what it can mean to them and especially to their children, I believe we need have no worry about local funds being found to carry on. It seems to us that the bill now before you is admirably designed to produce just that stimulus. Aid is given only to the rural areas that need it. Every State must contribute its fair share to the cost of the projects it proposes. Planning and supervision of the program in each State is left entirely to the officials and people of the State without Federal interest. The term of aid is specifically limited to a 5-year period, so that what we get is a stimulus to local action, not a permanent Federal program. And, finally, the cost for each American is less than a pack of gum a year. We believe that this is basically important legislation not only to the rural areas it will benefit directly but to the whole country. It is an essential investment in our future, which will be shaped for good or ill by the intelligence and information of all our citizens. I believe this not only as chairman of the National Book Committee, but also as president of a major industrial corporation which employs people from all over the country, which sells to people in every county, and which is fundamentally affected by acts of governments-Federal, State, and local-chosen by all our people and reflecting their views and wishes. No group in the country has a profounder stake in the broadest availability of library services as a means of public information and enlightenment than have the major business and industrial interests. The release of atomic energy has suddenly offered us the choice between destruction and salvation for many, if not all, of the world's people. The atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the cobalt bomb, each increasing the fear of total destruction, are constantly in the news. Yet we all know this new power points to the potential liberation of mankind-if only the atom can be reserved for peaceful use. The engineers and technicians have brought automation into being, with the possibility of man's freedom from back-breaking labor. Even the human brain is aided by the new science of electronic calculation. Out of all this, humanity may anticipate a vast increase in leisure, with ample goods and services to make that leisure worthwhile. In the last 2 decades, man's knowledge of the forces of nature has increased faster than during the previous 500,000 years of his existence. Our task, as always, is to know how to use what is known. In the maze of atoms, isotopes, and electrons in which we find ourselves, the problem cannot be the concern of a limited group of people. It must be the concern of every one of our leaders, our citizenry, our specialists alike. We are in that position of which Thomas Huxley, speaking to the American people in 1876, said: "The condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth and intellectual clearness of the individual citizen." Huxley, speaking more than 75 years ago, could not have foreseen the shape of things today, but his warning was prophetic. The American people must develop the enlightenment and moral strength to be able to bridge the gap between the vast field of knowledge and our own limited comprehension of it. Leadership in the United States comes from the people. Thus the great public must contain a sufficient number of individuals, well-educated and of such strong moral and intellectual clarity as not only to be able to discern these qualities in the leaders it elects but to support and guide their politcal and economic thinking. It is now an important requirement of our Nation that its citizens have a broad knowledge of the world, its people, their habits, their cultures, and their way of life. It is just as important for the man in the street to absorb his share of this knoweldge as it is for his political, religious, and industrial leaders. No one can minimize the almost overwhelming crisis in which mankind finds itself. On every side we are faced with difficult decisions. We must all be aware, without panic, what our problems are. We must have knoweldge and we must have faith that a better way of life is attainable. In books we can find that knowledge and that faith. An informed people is a free people. By depriving any of the people of access to information, we endanger by that much the freedom of all of us. The adoption of the library services bill by this session of the Congress will help guard our strength and our freedom. Hon. LISTER HILL, THE CATHOLIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR SENATOR: Although the Catholic Library Association has no immediate contacts as an association with the public library system of the United States, the Catholic Library Association has long realized the importance to a strong democracy of a system of public libraries adequate to the needs of all the people, even in the rural areas. Consequently, inasmuch as the library services bill (S. 205) is scheduled for consideration by the Senate, after having passed by the House, the Catholic Library Association would like to inform you of a resolution adopted unanimously April 6, 1956, by the delegates to its silver jubilee conference held in Boston: "Whereas approximately 27 million Americans are without local public library service; and "Whereas the library services bill before Congress seeks to promote the further extension and development of public library service to the rural areas of our country which presently are without such services or have only inadequate services; and "Whereas the library services bill requests aid limited to rural areas amounting to $7,500,000 in Federal funds annually for a period of only 5 years, giving the States complete jurisdiction over developing their own State plans for the use of the funds in this cause: Be it "Resolved, That the Catholic Library Association heartily endorse the passage of the same library services bill, and recommend that a copy of this same resolution be forwarded immediately to the sponsors of this bill." The Catholic Library Association respectfully requests that you vote in favor of library services bill (S. 205). Yours very truly, (Signed) Vincent T. Mallon, M. M. MARYLAND LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, May 25, 1956. Senator JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman, Education Subcommittee, Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: The Maryland Library Association desires to go on record as unanimously in favor of library services bill (S. 205). A motion to this effect was passed at the annual meeting of the 400 members of the association on April 27, 1956. With 9 of the 24 counties of Maryland without public library service and with some of the other counties inadequately served, the effect of the passage and implementation of this bill on the development of public library service in the free State of Maryland is incalculable. It is doubtful if the Senate has had presented to it a bill which will do so much for so many for so little. Respectfully yours, GEORGE B. MORELAND, President, Maryland Library Association. STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY THE WASHINGTON LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, KENNEWICK, WASH. The Washington Library Association is interested in the library services bill because it would be such an impetus toward the accomplishment of the primary goal of the association, which is to make good library service available to all citizens of the State of Washington. Since 1940 we have been working on a plan for library development within the State, popularly known as the Bauerman plan, which divides the State into large areas of service, each of which has at least a $100,000 probable income at 2 mills of the assessed evaluation. In 12 regions there had been established at that time rural library services. There are still many areas without rural service, areas which have services in only part of the counties encompassed by the region, and quite a few small-town libraries which have not yet joined the larger service areas. The State of Washington has established a library-development fund as a part of the State library budget, which can be used for the establishment of new regional libraries, and integration grants to districts with which small towns |