I am Dr. R. B. McKnight from Charlotte, and, for nearly 30 years, a practicing surgeon there in town. For 20 years I was in charge of our regular library and medical library where we have built up one of the best medical libraries in America not connected with a school of medicine.

For about 8 years I have been on the board of trustees of the public library in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, and am currently chairman of the building committee where we are spending about $2 million on new equipment, new facilities.

For the past 3 years I have been a member of the State library commission.

With that introduction, I want to talk to you very briefly, first, about our setup in North Carolina, and, second, briefly, about my conception of the public library and what three big things it can and should do.

We have in North Carolina 100 counties, 73 of which have 1 or more public libraries; 92 of those counties receive State aid, and I will go into that a little later. We have 266 public libraries, 73 in counties, 7 in regional districts, which make up 19 counties, 165 branches, and 21 independents.

We have 98 bookmobiles serving 92 counties, which is, or, rather, was, until this morning, the largest number in the United States-the good lady from Kentucky tells me they have 101.

Give us 2 more months and we will be ahead of them.

We have a population 3,880,000 who have access to public-library service, and 182,000 with no access.

In reading this over to a friend of mine the other day he said, “Good heavens, Mac, don't go up there and tell them that. They won't give you a nickel."

I said, "Wait a minute. These figures are something which are compiled, which are true, but are compiled to look good on paper."

I am going to explain that in a minute.

Of these 165 branches libraries that we have, approximately 150 of them are located in the back end of a country store or in the living room of some residence, or in a room in some public building.

Of the 98 bookmobiles serving the people, particularly in the western part of the State, in the mountainous regions and down on the coastal plain, some of those bookmobiles make rounds only weekly, and have inside of them only about 200 volumes for lending.

So you see that these figures don't mean a great deal when it comes to actual need here.

We have in the State a book circulation of approximately 12 million, of which 4 million comes from these bookmobiles.

Our current income for the public libraries in the State of North Carolina is $2,090,000, and I would like to give you the source from which that comes: $681,000 comes from cities and towns; $733,000 from counties; $390,000 plus from State aid; and, from other sources, $241,300.

Most of that comes from profit on the ABC stores. As you probably know, North Carolina handles its liquor problem by the State going into business themselves, and we get in Mecklenburg County, for example, 5 percent of the total profits from our ABC stores, which amounts to about $50,000 to $60,000 a year.

So we drink a good bit of liquor down there in North Carolina.

As to the expenditure of this total amount, $2,090,000, 57 percent is for salaries, 24 percent for books, and 19 percent for other expenses. The American Library Association has long since showed that it takes around $1.50 per capita to run anywhere near an efficient, adequate library service. Our per capita in North Carolina is 51 cents. This runs anywhere from $1.48 per capita, in one county, to as low as 15 cents per capita, in another.

Now the State library commission has the expenditure of about $400,000 a year at their disposal. We give each county to qualify $3,600. There are only eight nonqualifying counties.

With that $1.48 per head in Dare County, for example and most of you know where that is; down at Nagshead-plus State aid of $3,600, they only raised last year $7,900.

So you see that, without State-aid funds, most of our counties would be in critical condition.

Low assessed valuations, small populations, and varying sizes in governmental units make it difficult, indeed impossible, to secure ade quate library financial support. The smaller the government unit the greater is the hardship in securing library finances. Over half of the counties in North Carolina have a per capita library support below, well below the State average of 51 cents; some far below.

Remove from these calculations those wealthier counties, Mecklenburg, for example, where we have an income of $217,000 a year to spend for library purposes; Guilford, Greensboro, Durham and some of the larger ones, and then it becomes apparent that our crying need is for help in our rural areas.

North Carolina is 1 of only 9 States where access to public library service is available to over 95 percent of the people.

This fellow said the other day, "For heaven's sake, don't tell them that."

I said, "All right; let's consider just a minute " Over 50 percent of our counties have no town in them over 10,000 population. The average income for library service in those counties amounts to about 30 cents per head. The bookmobile service, as I said just now, particularly in the eastern coastal plains and in the mountainous regions, covers those people probably only once a week. And, even then, not that often in bad weather.

So the crying need which we have in North Carolina is not in our big counties where there is a large urban population, but in our small counties where there is a chiefly rural population.

Someone said: "Why don't you put more taxes on it?"

I want to show you gentlemen that tax is not the answer to this thing, contrary to what might superficially be believed.

Let me read this to you: 10 counties only have libraries with county tax vote; 9 with city tax vote. The laws of North Carolina allow a levy up to 10 cents on $100 valuation for library purposes. Eighteen of these existing levies were voted when the limit was 5 cents. If the maximum of 10 cents were voted on all taxes collected, only 48 counties could possibly have a total library income of $30,000 a year, and that includes $3,600 from State aid. And anyone that knows anything at all about libraries knows that you cannot run a county unit for under $25,000 or $30,000 a year.

Today only 16 counties out of 100 in the State have a total library income of $30,000 or more. This includes State aid of $3,600 per county. And these 16 counties are all large urban counties, not rural.

So, then, the library problem in North Carolina is essentially a rural issue. The question is how to improve library service to meet the current needs of North Carolina's citizens, especially in these rural areas.

We need desperately more personnel, more books, and more materials.

The State of North Carolina is appropriating for this biennium, the 1955-to-1957 biennium, $265 million for public school maintenance. That is woefully inadequate. That includes no capital outlay whatever; that is only for maintenance, and assumes an 8-month school term.

This is supplemented by the various counties in salaries and in capital outlay.

We are appropriating $28,402,000 for our institutions of higher education, which makes us rank 32d in the Nation in funds provided for higher education.

These appropriations are insufficient and are being supplemented from other sources, and, with these and other essential expenditures, State aid to libraries for the next biennium is left with a little under $800,000.

There are a lot of things about North Carolina of which we are proud, and there are a lot of things that we are not proud of. One of them is the wealth of North Carolina. Listen to this:

The average wealth of the North Carolina citizen in 1952—and I don't have any later figures-was $1,049 as compared with $1,639 for the Nation. In 1953 the average income of the North Carolina citizen was $1,066, with only 4 States in the Union under that figure.

In the library field we are doing much with very little. We need Federal aid to balance the inadequacy in library service which prevails due to our predominantly rural population.

Just a word or two, if I may, gentlemen, about this library business as a whole.

I look upon the public library system as what might be called the university of the people. I did not coin that term; maybe I dreamed it or I heard it somewhere.

It is and should be an integral part of our public education system. I have known many people at home with less than a high school education who have received a liberal education-and a good one-from the use of the public library system.

Another thing: the public library system is, without a doubt, the least supported of all of our educational institutions. Take, for example, in North Carolina we are appropriating $265 million for the next biennium for our schools, and twenty-some-odd-million dollars for our institutions of higher education, but less than $800,000 for our library system.

One other thing about the public library in which I have been interested: I read the other day in our local paper that $100 million a year is spent on comic books-I mean the better type of comic booksand approximately $25 million a year is spent in the United States on books for our public libraries.

I read the other day that the Kefauver committee has determined that approximately $312 million is spent on pornographic literature, rot gut, filthy sex stuff, and things of that sort that some concerns in the United States are getting rich off of, catering largely to our adolescents and our juveniles.

Now I don't mean to compare our children to a bunch of hogs, but I believe I have got just as much faith in the youngsters of today as anybody has. If you will take a pig and give him the choice of a clean pen or a dirty pen, it has been proved over and over again he will take the clean one.

I believe, if our public library system can get sufficient books, sufficient good material, and, above all things, sufficient personnel to appeal to these youngsters, that that will go a long way in doing something at least to counteract this wave of juvenile delinquency which is going over the country and which is influenced, to a large extent, by this rotten literature that is being put out by some of these cheap publishing houses.

I want to conclude these remarks with a little quotation from John Milton. I think one of the greatest speeches he ever made was his Areopagitica in defense of books and binding. In that speech he made this statement:

For books are not absolutely dead things but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

I think it is up to the people of this country, to the Federal Government, to our county units, to give the people the advantage of this statement that was made by John Milton before the British Parliament many years ago.

Thank you.

Mr. LANDRUM. Doctor, one of the gentlemen of the committee would like to direct some questions to you.

Mr. Metcalf.

Mr. METCALF. I have no questions of Dr. McKnight, but I am glad that he is up here from North Carolina, and I am certain that this splendid testimony you have given will bear great weight with the committee, and especially with the chairman.

Dr. MCKNIGHT. I might mention, gentlemen, I am down here on my own. Nobody is paying my expenses but me.

I do hope that my C. P. A. and the gentleman at Greensboro who collects taxes for the Internal Revenue will let me deduct this for incometax purposes. But I am on my own.

Mr. LANDRUM. Mr. Coon?

Mr. COON. No questions.

Mr. LANDRUM. Dr. McKnight, we thank you for your delightful

statement.

Dr. MCKNIGHT. Thank you.

Mr. LANDRUM. I see Congressman Robsion of Kentucky in the audience.

Did you want to testify?

Mr. ROBSION. We have some people here from Kentucky, and, with your permission, I would like to wait until they testify before I say anything.

Mr. LANDRUM. Very well.

With that, the committee will adjourn until 2 o'clock, and we will try to get permission to sit this afternoon.

(Whereupon, at 11:50 a. m., the subcommittee was recessed, to be reconvened at 2 p. m., this same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

(Whereupon, at 2 p. m., the subcommittee reconvened.)
Mr. METCALF (presiding.) The committee will be in order.

We are privileged to have Hon. Frank Thompson with us. Mr. Thompson, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK THOMPSON, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Frank Thompson, Jr., of New Jersey.

Free public education is the keystone of democracy. This has long been accepted by Americans who believe that the main function of public education, in effecting the promises of American democracy, is to protect, promote and make available to all the people the knowledge, wisdom, and aspirations of mankind. We have accepted as valid the objectives of universal education: the development of each individual to the maximum of his capacity, the betterment of human relationship and community life, the advancement of economic efficiency and the development of civic responsibility. We believe that free public education for all our people is an inherent and essential part of our democracy and we have long accepted the responsibility of government for the education of our people.

The free public library movement in the United States and in the various States has been intimately associated with the establishment of free public education. In my State, New Jersey, the first free public school was established in 1871. In 1875, the people proclaimed, by constitutional amendment, the State's responsibility for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools. Four years later the legislature authorized the municipalities to establish local free public libraries and soon after established a mandatory level of municipal library support. Numerous statutes since then have reaffirmed the State's concern for effective library service at the municipal level and have attempted to encourage, coordinate and supplement municipal efforts in making effective library services available to all the people of the State. Similar parallel growths of the free public schools and the free public libraries can be illustrated in the other States, for the people of the United States are generally agreed that the free public library is an integral and vital part of our whole plan for public education.

The role of the public library in our educational system is unique. For an overwhelming majority of our people formal schooling ends at the age of 18 years and less. Beyond that age, the free public library assumes an increasingly large role in the individual's life. For most of our citizens, it is the only source of reliable information readily available throughout their lives. The free public library complements and supplements, and to a large extent supplants, the formal education of our people after they leave school. To the youth of school