The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1903-10-15
seventy-five or eighty neat and sub
stantially bound volumes.

Carolina Literary and Historical As
soication, an appropriation of five
thousand dollars was obtained for
the payment of the States part on
the experimental plan just outlined,
and in September, 1901, the appro-
priation became available, and the
first North Carolina rural school Ii
brary was established. The entire
sum would have been speedily ex-
hausted by the more progressive Sec
tions had not the Legislature pro-
vided that State aid should be avail
able for not more than six school dis
tricts in any one Of the ninety seven
counties. Within five months q
thiftis OF The eoupfjss reached this
limit, and applications from other
communities within their borders had
to be rejected. Before the General
Assembly of 1908 met, in January,
four hundred and thirty-o one of a pos
sible five hundred libraries had been
helped. In the face OF such success
there was nothingfor the Legislature
to do but make an appropriation OF
five thousand more for the ensuing
two years, while twenty-five hundred
dollars was added to maintain and
enlarge the libraries already estab-
lished, the same Carnegie-like princi-
pie of cooperation to be observed:
each gift from the State to be dupli-
Gated by an appropriation from the
school fund, and again duplicated by
private subscription.
Already many applications for aid
from the new appropriation have
been received, and Superintendent
Joyner confidently predicts that be-
fore the Legislature meets North Car
Olina will have one thousand State
aided rural school libraries. Then
there are others, established entirely
by private gifts. In one county Dur
ham), adjoining that in which the
writer lives, a wealthy citizen contin-
ued the good work begun by the
State. He offered to duplicate
amounts raised after the State-aid
limit had been reached, and now
every one of the forty-white schools
in the county has a library.
One other fact deserves mention.
Not only does the rural school libra
ry develop the reading habit-it de-
velops it along right lines. Since, as
Emerson says, "the ancestor OF
every action is a thought" how i'm
portant it is that the literature that
is to provoke thought be wholesome
and well balanced! In our city libra
ries fiction has much too large a
place, many women and young peo-
pie read nothing else. But while
these rural libraries contain a few
great novels, the chief effect is to de.
velop a proper appreciation of choice
works of science, travel, nature-study
poetry, history, biography and my.
thylogy. Even if the child formed
the "reading habit" outside the
school, it would still be worth the
while for the State to have these Ii
braries for the sole purpose of turn.
ing his new-found love OF literature
into right channels of truth and
beauty.
Nor have the boys and girls been
the only beneficiaries of the new
movement. 1t has opened up q new
world for many of the parents, and
has done incalculable good in con.
tinuing the education of persons too
old or too poor to longer attend
school. The superintendent ol
schools for Durham county says
that the books are used almost az
much by the parents as by the chill
dren themselves, and the Pittcounty
superintendent says that the libra.
ries have caused hitherto Indifferent
parents to become deeply interested
in reading and in the education oI
their children. "The peculiar value
of the school library" as the New
York Evening Post rightly observes
"lies in the fact that it educates the
younger generation as well as the
older"
All in all, the North Carolina plan
bas proved strikingly successful in
nOvatiOn, and we are moved to won
der that our educational leaders did
not long ago perceive the value o.
rural library work, or, realizing it.
did not think of the ease with which
it may be conducted in connection
with the public school. We are nov
not far from the time when no houst
where children meet for study, wheth
er in town or country, will be regard
ed as even tolerably equipped with
out small collection of the bes'
books.