The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1903-09-22

classics The smallest libraries have sew
enty-five or eighty neat and substantial
~ bound volumes.
BY the earnest efforts OF the North
Carolina Literary and Historical As-o-
cation. an appropriation or five thousand
dollars was obtained for the payment OF
the States part on the experimental plan
just outlined, and in September, 1901. the
appropriation became available. and the
first North Carolina rural school library
was established. The entire sum would
have been speedily exhausted by the
more progressive sections had not the
Legislature provided that state aid should
be available for not more than SIX school
districts in any one OF the ninety-seven
counties. Within five months. a third OF
the counties reached this limit. and APP
pHcltions from other communities within
their borders had TO be rejected. Before
the General Assembly OF 1903 met, in
January, four hundred and thirty-one OF
a possible five hundred libraries had
been helped. In the face Of such success
there was nothing for the Legislature
to do but make an appropriation Of five
thousand dollars more for the ensuing
two years, while twenty-five hundred dol
lars was added to maintain and enlarge
the libraries already established. the same
C~arnegie-like principle Of cooperation to
be observed: each gift from the State to
be duplicated 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 before the next Legislature
$1,000 w.. l..
sand State-aided rural school Libraries.
Then there are others, established entire
~ by private gifts. In one county Our
ham), adjoining that in which the writer
lives, a wealthy citizen continued the
good work begun by the State. He offer
ed to duplicate amounts raised after the
State-aid limit had been reached, and now
every one Of the forty white schools in
the COUNT has a library.
One other fact deserves mention. Not
only does the rural school library devel-
op the reading habit,-it develops it
along right. lines. Since, as Emerson
says, "the ancestor of every action is a
thought how important it is that the
literature that is to provoke thought be
wholesome and well balanced, In our city
libraries, fiction has much too large a
place, many women and young people read
nothing else. But while these rural Ii
braries contain a few great novels, the
chief effort IS to develop a proper APP
probation of choice works of science, traV-
Ell, nature-study, poetry, history, bio
gIaphy, and mythology. Even if the
child formed the reading habit outside
the school, it would still be worth while
Tor the State to have these libraries for
the sole purpose of turning his now
found love of literature into right channels
of truth and beauty.
Nor nave the Boys and girls been the
only beneiciaries of the new movement.
1t has opened up a new world for many
of the parents, and has done incalculable
good IN continuing the education of per-
sons too old or too poor to longer at
tend school. The superintendent Of
schools for Durham County says that the
books are used almost as much by the
parents as by the children themselves, and
the Pitt County superintendent says that
the libraries have caused hitherto indif-
ferent parents to become deeply interest
ed in reading and in the education OF
! their children. The peculiar value of the
school library as the New York Even
ing Post rightly observes, "lies in the
fact that it educates the younger genera
ton as we'll as the Older
! All in all, the North Carolina plan has
proved a strikingly successful innovation,
and we are moved to wonder that our
educational leaders did not long ago per-
ceive the value of rural library work,
or, realizing it, did not think of the ease
with which it may be conducted in con
n~ection with the public school. We are
now not far from the time when no
house where children meet for study,
whether in town or country, will be re
garded as even tolerably equipped with
out a small collection of the best books.
Clarence H. Poe.