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and college age it has become an increasingly necessary adjunct to the classroom. To the young adult starting a career or raising a family it provides a ready and reliable source of answers to his everyday problems. To all, it is a lifelong source of recreation, information, and inspiration.

In our ever-increasingly complex society, we must have well-educated citizens with a real understanding of the issues facing their country and the world if our democracy is to survive. Our free public libraries provide a ready medium for continuing our citizens' education beyond their formal school years. At the same time, they provide a ready forum for the development of an intelligent understanding of our local, State, national and international issues.

The average person in America spends less than 9 years in school. We must make some concerted effort to help him continue his learning during the remainder of his life. This inadequate education, the increase in leisure time, the steadily increasing number of old people in our population, the spread of adult education, and the growth of technology which has made books an additional necessary tool for artisans as well as for the professionals, and the necessity to be well informed in these times of international tension underscore the great need today for adequate free public library services for all the people in our country.

Notwithstanding the generally recognized importance of our free public libraries in our educational system, approximately one-fifth of our people are still without access to a local free library, most of them in the rural areas of our country. Long distances, sparsity of population, low local and State library tax rates, and the lack of full realization of the potentialities of the public library have contributed to this lack of rural library service.

Despite the wide recognition of the free public library as the institution best equipped to supplement the work of our educational system and to supplant its work after graduation, it is not now available to all our people and in many instances where it is available it is too inadequately supported to perform its job properly.

In my State, New Jersey, a joint legislative commission has been studying the libraries of the State with the purpose of recommending ways and means by which they may best serve the people. This commission has found that (1) many of the people in the State-more than a quarter million-lack library service of any kind, most of these live in the rural areas of the State; (2) more than one-half of the people receive library service at a low level of support-56 percent at less than $1.50 per capita per year and 41 percent at less than $1 (the American Library Association in 1944 recommended an annual expenditure of $1.50 per capita for minimum acceptable library service, $2.25 for good service, and $3 or more for superior service); (3) there are not enough books, periodicals and other library materials available to serve the people of New Jersey-only 112 volumes per person are available for the State as a whole; and (4) many of the libraries in the State are staffed by persons with inadequate professional training and experi

ence.

In my district, the Fourth Congressional District of New Jersey, there are 53 incorporated municipalities, only 6 of which have populations exceeding 10,000. In the district there are 2 county libraries and

13 municipal libraries. One of these local libraries, the library of the city of Trenton, operates on an annual budget of a quarter million dollars and has over the years offered the people of Trenton excellent service. The other 12 local libraries, however, are supported by a median annual appropriation of $2,800. Forty municipalities are without any local library facilities whatsoever and must depend on their county libraries, which are inadequately supported. One of these two county libraries is supported at $0.18 per capita per year.

These conditions call for additional financial support and encouragement on the part of the municipalities, the counties, the State, and the Nation.

The purpose of the Library Services Act is to stimulate State, county, and local interest and support in a vigorous program to lift our public libraries to the role they should play in our community life and in our educational system. This bill has been drawn so that the Federal Government, through a small grants-in-aid program for a limited period of only 5 years, may provide the necessary spur to encourage those areas in our country now without library services to acquire them and those areas with inadequate library services to improve them.

An appropriation of $72 million annually would be authorized for allocation to those States submitting satisfactory plans for the extension of library services to their areas deficient in library services. No funds would be allocated to any State unwilling to match the funds available according to the formula contained in the bill for the distribution of the Federal grants. This formula recognizes both the size of the rural populations and the per capita income of the citizens of each State. This will assure that those States with large rural populations and with low per capita wealth will be helped to provide citizens with opportunities for continuous education and self-improvement through adequate library facilities. At the same time, the bill recognizes the need in every State for encouragement and financial support of public libraries by providing $40,000 to each qualifying State. The rest of the funds would be divided among the States on the basis of their rural population and per capita wealth.

The Library Services Act will encourage State and local initiative and responsibility. The State library agencies will formulate and present their plans for the use of Federal funds. Once the prerequisites of the bill are satisfied, the State agency will have sole control of its program. The administration and operation of the library improvement program, the selection of books and other materials, and the selection of personnel will remain in the hands of the State or local areas affected by the plan.

However desirable it might be, the purpose of this bill is not to provide funds to establish adequate library service for all the people now lacking it. Rather, it intends to encourage the States and their political subdivisions to greater library activity by demonstrating what additional funds can do. It will aid the States to show to their political subdivisions what good library service is and how it can be achieved at a reasonable cost. For the above reasons, I recommend the Library Services Act for your favorable consideration.

Mr. METCALF. We are glad to welcome our colleague, Congressman Brownson of Indiana; we are glad to have you before the committee.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES B. BROWNSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF INDIANA

Mr. BROWNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an unusual pleasure for me to have an opportunity to introduce to you your next witness, Harry W. Schacter, of Indianapolis, a comparatively recently acquired constituent of mine, a very prominent businessman in our community, and I might say a very practical and hardheaded businessman whose concepts in his line of business are quite revolutionary and a great credit to the community.

He came to us from Kentucky where he was well known as an educator and as a very successful businessman in that area and where, I understand, he pioneered the bookmobile movement in Kentucky, including the raising of what amounts to a million dollars in funds for the conduct of this program which placed Kenutcky on top as far as securing books and other reading material for the people in the scattered areas were concerned.

It is a real pleasure for me to have this opportunity to introduce to the committee Harry Schacter.

Mr. METCALF. Thank you, Congressman, and we are also pleased to have Mr. Schacter here with us.

Mr. BROWNSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. METCALF. Will you give your name and identify yourself to the reporter and proceed with your testimony?

STATEMENT OF HARRY W. SCHACTER, PRESIDENT, BANNERWHITEHILL CORPORATION OF INDIANAPOLIS

Mr. SCHACTER. Thank you, Mr. Metcalf.

I am not accustomed to sitting before the seats of the mighty, so I do not quite know what the protocol is.

My name is Harry W. Schacter. I am a businessman. For 22 years I was president of the second largest department store in Louisville, Ky. On October 1, 1953, I bought my own business in Indianapolis the Banner-Whitehill Corp.-the largest retail furniture business in Indiana. I have come to speak to you in behalf of the library services bill. I speak of the great need for this bill, not as a dreamer, but as a businessman who has met that proverbial payroll.

I deeply believe that insofar as it is possible for them to do so, the citizens of America's 12,000 local communities should try to solve their own problems. They should rely on their own strength and initiative. They should come to the Federal Government for help only when they have exhausted every effort to help themselves.

About 3 years ago, a group of us in Kentucky, in surveying the problem of making books available for our people-particularly for our children-found conditions so appalling that we determined-on our own-to do something about them. That effort, known as the Kentucky bookmobile project, is one of the great adventures in social progress of our time.

I should like to tell you about it in some detail so that you may know that we have not come just to ask the Federal Government for a handout. We have truly tried to help ourselves first. As the lawyers might say, we come into a court of equity with clean hands.

However, despite this tremendous effort, what we have done is not enough. We must ask you for a helping hand to finish the job. For this reason, we have come such a long distance to urge you to enact the library services bill into law.

In 1 year and 10 months, entirely by our own efforts, we have raised Kentucky from 47th to 1st place in the Nation in the number of bookmobiles we put on the road, particularly in the rural areas, to bring the wonderful world of books to the children and grownups of Kentucky. If, despite this prodigious effort and successful result, the hunger for books in Kentucky is still far from satisfied-in fact, I may say it is greater than ever-can you imagine the plight of the people in other States who have not been able to do what we did?

We, in America, pride ourselves on having the highest standard of living in the world. In the realm of material things, automobiles, telephones, bathtubs, refrigerators-no nation can hold a candle to us in what we have been able to achieve as a people.

But when it comes to a number of things of the mind and of spirit, I regret that we have to take second place to other nations who are not nearly as fortunate in material things as we are. Dr. George Gallup recently pointed out that we, in America, had some 7,500 public libraries. Had the number been in proportion to population as in Sweden, we would have had 77,000 libraries instead of 7,500. Is not it about time that we started out to correct such an imbalance? To paraphrase a quotation from the Bible, "What doth it profit a child to have a bathtub and be deprived of the wonderful world of books?"

Let me now tell you the story of the Kentucky bookmobile project. Less than 3 years ago, a group of us in Kentucky, realizing the great need, decided to come to grips with the problem of bringing books to the children of Kentucky. We began a searching inquiry and found that 60 percent of the people of Kentucky-80 percent in the rural areas—had no free public library services of any kind.

Books are the guardians of the precious heritage of 5,000 years of our civilization. They are the magic carpet, unlimited. Yet the only two books available to a vast number of the children in Kentucky, outside their meager school books, were the Bible and the Sears, Roebuck catalog.

Now, I have great reverence for the Bible, and, as a retailer, I do not look down my nose at the Sears, Roebuck catalog. But it seemed to me that Kentucky children were entitled to a greater opportunity for intellectual, cultural, and spiritual fare, and we determined to give it to them.

Our awareness of this problem posed a tremendous challenge. We realized that the solution, particularly in the rural areas where the need was greatest, was the library on wheels-the bookmobile. people cannot come to books, books must go to the people.

If

And so a group of us got together and resolved that we Kentuckians would reach down to the 47th place of the 48 States and, by our own strength and determination lift our State to first place in the Nation in 1 year. It was quite a large undertaking. I will say to you we did not make our timetable in a year, but we did do the job in a year and 10 months.

The first thing we did was to define the problem, to find out really what the problem was. We learned, for example, in addition to the

dismal statistics quoted above, that one-third of Kentucky's young men who were drafted into the Armed Forces had been rejected because of illiteracy. Obviously there is a very, very powerful connection between illiteracy and books.

We learned that despite the devoted efforts of the Friends of Kentucky Libraries, led by a dedicated woman 73 years of age, Mrs. Mary Belknap Gray, of Louisville, it took 6 years to put 6 bookmobiles in operation. We learned that where these bookmobiles were functioning, the reading ability of the children had improved by as much as 60 percent.

We learned, too, that to bring books to all of the people of Kentucky would require an additional 100 bookmobiles. At the rate we were going, one a year, the job would be comfortably finished by the early spring of 2053. The question was: Did we have that kind of time? And so, we decided to hurry history a little. That was the beginning of the Kentucky bookmobile project.

We deeply believed in the objective of providing books for all Kentuckians. The age-old question arose: How do you translate democratic faith into democratic action?

The first temptation was to ask the State to undertake the task, as North Carolina had done with its 90 bookmobiles, the best job in the country up to that time. But that was out of the question. Kentucky's finances had suddenly taken an acute turn for the worse. By dint of the hardest, a bill had been passed by the 1952 legislature providing $60,000 a year for aid to libraries. To ask that this be raised to $1 million or more under these circumstances was unthinkable.

After much deliberation, we came up with a bold plan, something that had never been tried before in the history of Kentucky and perhaps in any other State in the Nation. For the first time in the history of Kentucky, a program for social and cultural progress would be launched through a three-way partnership, a partnership comprising citizens and corporations, local communities, and the State govern

ment.

Citizens and corporations would be asked to raise $300,000 to buy the 100 bookmobiles needed, $3,000 apiece. That would include not only the truck but its initial complement of some 900 books.

Each local community as its share would be asked to provide for the continuous maintenance and operation of its bookmobile. That would call for furnishing the librarian-driver; the gasoline and oil; and the garaging and servicing of the bookmobile truck. Since the estimated average cost of local operation was $3,000 a year, that would mean another $300,000 for the 100 bookmobiles.

The State government would be asked to provide $200,000 mostly for additional books. On this basis, citizens would put up $3 for every dollar advanced by the State. It would be Kentucky's biggest bargain of the century.

I may interpolate and say that I think you gentlemen must have noticed very often that when three different groups of men in our society get together to do something, there is often the temptation to want to say, "I, A, will do so and so if B will do his part," and B says, "I will do so and so if C will do his share," and so nobody does anything.

We decided to take three basic acts of faith. We said, "We have complete faith that once the citizens and the corporations of this State

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