county might develop such interest in this that they would continue it on their own if the Federal Government decided at that time to abandon it?

Mrs. TURNER. I think the State of Kentucky would. As far as my county is concerned, I think we would have to trade boys and girls with some rich county because we are rich in boys and girls but very poor financially.

Mr. LANDRUM. What is the chief industry in your county?

Mrs. TURNER. A little hillside farming. We have 1 coal mine in 1 part of the county, but very few of our people go to that coal mine. Mr. LANDRUM. So that, from the standpoint of your own immediate environment, the matter of providing good reading material to the people is a continuing proposition for the taxpayers. Do you think you would soon be able to undertake that in your local communities by levying a local tax?

Mrs. TURNER. We are already taxed to the limit in Breathitt County, and have been for some time. With an income of around $600 per family it is pretty hard to tax the people more unless the Good Lord provides us with something other than the ground that we don't know about right now.

Mr. LANDRUM. Mr. Coon, do you have any questions?

Mr. PERKINS. I have another question.

Mr. LANDRUM. Excuse me.

Mr. PERKINS. I believe you have approximately 1,000 small tobacco bases in Breathitt County averaging about one-half acre. Is that not the principal type of farming?

Mrs. TURNER. That is the principal source right now. That is mostly hillside farming at that.

Mr. PERKINS. Tell the committee if you have observed progress since the bookmobile has been visiting the various schools in the county, Mrs. Turner.

Mrs. TURNER. We have observed considerable progress in the enlightening of our citizens because when we first started a bookmobile we were calling for books, the parents were calling for books that were suitable for elementary children. Now we have raised not only the reading level for the elementary children but for the adults because they are beginning to ask for Gone With the Wind and things like that now.

So we feel that there has been considerable progress in the reading. Mr. PERKINS. Do you come up against the proposition that you have a need for more books?

Mrs. TURNER. Yes, we are very much in need of more books. Mr. PERKINS. Let us pursue this tax problem a little further. I believe, as Mrs. Bingham mentioned, you have a 50-cent general levy which must take care of all governmental activities other than schools on every $100 assessed valuation of real property in the county. That is correct, I think. At what rate do you pay for schools? That is, per $100 valuation of real property, what is the assessment rate?

Mrs. TURNER. $1.50.

Mr. PERKINS. If I am correct, every county in Kentucky, with the exception of a very few, levies the maximum rate for school purposes, $1.50 on each $100 assessed valuation. Do you know about

that?

Mrs. TURNER. There are several counties, I think. The majority of them do. I think there are very few of us who do not levy $1.50.

Mr. PERKINS. Mrs. Bingham, of course, can furnish the committee with the information, but I am sure she was correct in the statement as to all counties having a maximum general levy with the exception of Clark and Woodford, of 50 cents. It is permissible to expend that money for services such as these services, but we do not have any library levy, special levy for library services in Kentucky.

We need more incentive, and there is no doubt in my mind that if the Congress enacts this legislation that the general assembly will follow it up and that the demand will be so great from the local level, not only in Kentucky but throughout the country, when we establish and provide the incentive, that this program will go forward even though we never make another appropriation after 5 years, Mr. Chair

man.

Mr. LANDRUM. Mrs. Turner, your public schools are dependent upon the public libraries for library services that the schools have?

Mrs. TURNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANDRUM. You don't have any libraries in your schools?

Mrs. TURNER. We have very few libraries, or did have. But right now we threw what few books we had into the bookmobile, and they all have been through the bookmobile library.

Mr. LANDRUM. And the library services which your schools have come from the bookmobile?

Mrs. TURNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANDRUM. Mr. Coon?

Mr. Coon. Could I ask the gentleman from Kentucky a question? Mr. LANDRUM. Yes, sir.

Mr. CooN. Did I understand you to say that you have $1.50 on each $100 of assessed valuation for schools?

Mr. PERKINS. On all real property. That is not considering the additional levies that they have in all the towns and cities of the State. That is the general county rate. And most all the counties are levying the maximum rate.

Mr. COON. What is the percent of the assessed valuation in proportion to the true valuation?

Mr. PERKINS. I would say that varies anywhere from, as it does in your State, 20 to 60 percent. When the counties do a poor job it would perhaps get down as low as 20; when they do a good job it would perhaps be 50 to 60.

But, for instance, in her particular county the assessed valuation of the whole county is only about $5 million, and there is very little demand for the mineral in the county, although there is a lot of coal. But the mineral is owned by outside interests, and those are the individuals that are operating the mines she spoke about. The $5 million figure for Breathitt County of course does not include franchise

assessments.

And the income from those little farms, I would say, would not average more than $600 in the county.

Is that about correct, Mrs. Turner?

Mrs. TURNER. That is right.

Mr. PERKINS. So we have situations of that kind. That is why she made the statement that the people were already overtaxed with the burden of taxes.

Mr. Coon. I have one more question.

You made one very amazing but gratifying statement, to me, that you have fifth- and sixth-grade students who have read 117 books a

year.

Mrs. TURNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. CooN. Do you have very many of that kind of fifth- and sixthgrade students that read that many?

Mrs. TURNER. Not too many of them.

Mr. COON. That is a remarkable amount of reading.

Mrs. TURNER. But we have several that have read above 50 books. Mr. COON. What kind of books would you say that they read mostly? Mrs. TURNER. Well, Little Women and Little Men and books about Indians.

Mr. CooN. Davy Crockett?

Mrs. TURNER. Davy Crockett very much. And Buffalo Bill.

Mr. COON. That is all.

Mr. LANDRUM. Thank you, Mrs. Turner.

We have one other witness this afternoon. We will try to hurry along and conclude.

Mr. HUSSEY. Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Bingham has an exhibit that she would like the subcommittee to look at at this time.

Mr. LANDRUM. We will be glad to have that.

She is going to submit this for the committee?

Mr. HUSSEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANDRUM. Do I understand that the committee is to have the benefit of this?

Mrs. BINGHAM. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LANDRUM. It will be submitted to the full committee.

(The supplemental information furnished by the witness was accepted by the committee, and is available for reference.)

Mr. LANDRUM. Next we will hear from Dr. Howard Dawson, executive secretary of the rural education department of the National Education Association, Washington, D. C.

STATEMENT OF HOWARD A. DAWSON, DIRECTOR OF RURAL SERVICE, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION; EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF RURAL EDUCATION, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, AND EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF COUNTY AND RURAL AREA SUPERINTENDENTS OF SCHOOLS

Dr. DAWSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, as you have just said, sir, I am the director of rural service for the National Education Association, and I am also the executive secretary of its department of rural education, and the executive secretary of the National Organization of County and Rural Area Superintendents of Schools. I am also the chairman of the National Council on Agricultural Life and Labor, a council composed of 32 organizations that are interested in problems similar to the one you have before you for consideration. I am also the chairman of the National Research Project Board for the Study of the Education of Children of Migratory Agricultural Laborers.

I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that if you had only one witness before you for this bill, you certainly should have chosen the lady

who just preceded me, Mrs. Marie Turner. It is my business to know all the county superintendents in the United States, and I can assure you that if you are going to pick out the six topnotch ones in the United States she would be one of them.

The library, of course, is a most important facility for the education of boys and girls. I speak to you, of course, as a schoolman. But I, as much as anyone who could address you, recognize that the facilities offered to schools through the public library service is the most important service outside of the public health that could be made available to our boys and girls.

It is appalling to some of us who visit schools in every section of the United States, as it is my privilege, to see the meager resources with which the teachers of many of these rural boys and girls, especially in the areas of low economic resources, have to work.

If teachers could have but one thing as a tool for working with children it certainly ought to be books. And yet I know from firsthand observation that there are thousands of children in this country that are working with a few wornout, dirty textbooks.

I have seen classrooms with 60 children in them when there weren't 6 readers available for the whole group, to say nothing of supplementary materials necessary for modern education.

I would also like to say that the relationship between the librarians and the administrators of library service and the public school officials and teachers is of the very highest and most satisfactory order. And the school people are very glad indeed to count upon the extension and expansion of public library service as a means of aiding the teaching process.

Of course, it is a well-established fact, as no doubt the evidence already in your record will show, that about 27 million people of this Nation are without any kind of public library service, and another 53 million have access to very inadequate service. There are at least 400 counties in the United States, even in 1955, that have no public library service of any kind or character.

Now, the people in the greatest need are people in rural areas, especially those having the lowest economic resources and, consequently, the lowest taxpaying ability. In this connection I would like to point out that it is a matter of national interest that the Federal and State Governments should do something about this problem.

The United States at this time does not have any manpower to waste; we don't live in that kind of world. And I think it has been proved by the record in other types of public services that when the National and State governments do something to enable people really to exercise self-help the results justify the efforts.

Recently there has been an accelerated movement in the United States to reorganize school districts and to consolidate schools.

Mr. Perkins, you would not be able to appreciate this fact from Kentucky because Kentucky is one of the States that has an excellent local school organization through your county unit system. But there are 36 States that don't operate that way. They have school districts that are very small enterprises. Up until 6 years ago, for example, the State of Illinois had 12,000 of them. But Illinois is quite typical of what has happened in a large part of the Nation. We have seen a great reduction in the number of school districts. In 1932 we had 127,500 school districts in the United States. In 1948 we still had 98,000.

But last year we had only 66,000, and 11,000 of those no longer operate a school. And at least 3 States have enacted legislation that will require the closing of all such districts within the next 12 months.

Most of the districts, even after consolidation, reflect a majority of the rural schools are still small. They will be for a long time because rural America is still made up in neighborhoods and small communities. And many of us would regret to see them become too big because we think they have many virtues that are of value to our type of citizenship.

One of the principal needs for the schools, the consolidated schools, that the people, by their efforts, have established is for facilities to realize the kind of program they envisage for their children. You have heard a great deal said about the school-building shortage. I can say to you with considerable assurance that at least half of the need comes from these rural village and small-city systems that have consolidated their schools and now find it impossible to realize the worthy ambitions ahead for their children.

But the same thing is equally applicable with respect to books and other instructional materials.

For that reason those of us engaged in education can assure you that you have our almost unanimous support of such legislation, and, furthermore, we express to you our ardent desire that this committee will do the very best you know and can in behalf of all these boys and girls who have no spokesmen, except you or people like myself who make it their business to represent all the little people of the country. And those of us engaged in the field of rural education speak for the little people, for the most part, who can't speak for themselves. For that reason I consider it an honor and a privilege to appear before a committee such as you who are giving your earnest attention to this very needful problem.

It is frequently said by people who look askance at such proposals as those before you that the granting of Federal aid would reduce local effort.

Gentlemen, I am student of the history of education in the United States. I think I can answer most questions that amount to anything about Federal relations and Federal support and State support.

I want to tell you that the opponents of such legislation cannot produce one iota of evidence over the last 165 years that substantiates their contention that Federal aid reduces local effort.

If you don't believe what I say, look at what the States have done about the land-grant colleges. Look at what they have done about Vocational education. Or take a last look at what the States have done under the Hill-Burton Hospitalization Act.

In South Carolina and in Mississippi and in my own State of Arkansas, where those States were required to put up only 50 cents for every dollar they received in Federal aid, they have spent $16 for every $1 they got.

That is a fine bit of evidence that the people are not discouraged in their own effort because they get a little help to take a decent start. That is exactly what will happen in this library service.

Essentially what you would be doing is giving an incentive for a

start.