The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-11-20
Circulating Libraries.

Eultor The AdVertiSer:
 I wish to call the attention of The Advertiser and its readers to a move ment begun in this State by a highly intelligent and most estinable lady of Chambers County. who is engaged in establishing ssytem of circulating H. braries in the rural communities of that county, which might, no doubt, well be initiated in other sections of the State. bailiwick, when this step shall have been accomplished, 1t is her purpose to seek to extend the movement through and and perhsps State ad,niSisfration aio Of if tbe entire system. This pioneer worker for the cause of rural public libraries is Mrs. Wesley Wallace, wife of one of the County, and her efforts grew out of her study of the needs of her home com munfty at Hopewell, which resulted in of a neat public library adjoining the church and school house. Before re- moving from Lafayette to Montgomery I recently. visited Hopewell, and gave subject. which induced the conclusion that this work. so modestly begun, is fraught with great possibilities, and considered the chief adjunct of the pub- lie school in the enlightenment and de- velopment of the hardy boys and girls of our rural communities-to whom the State must largely look for the most stalwart and virile class of citizenship of the future. Mrs. wallace's plans have the hearty endorsement and CO., operation of our able and progressive State Superintendent of Education. Hon. l. w. Hill. so I am informed, and one only needs to talk with this good wo- man on this subject to become a con- vert.
 We can make no mistake in giving sople time and thought and, if found feasible. some cooperation, to move- ments tending in this direction.
 WhafaVaF mi lxa frs more attractive is of great import to the commonwealth. If the writer is not greatly mistaken. already the restless menced to ebb, and one of the most hopeful signs of the times is the grow ing momentum of those forces which thing akin to that splendid country life which was the glory of the old South. This tendency is widespread. The call, Back to the countryside in England, where the couptry gentleman had form erly been the backbone of the empire,' has recently been most insistent, both MT. Chamebrlain and his opponents, in of their chief objectives. The same tendency toward the country is exhib- ited in the northern portion of our own country by the constantly increasing investment of the more wealthy class in country estates. And the rich New Yorker no longer rocks his summers away upon hotel verandas, but goes to
 
 spends the hot months at a country home on the highlands of the interior These are but ostentatious symptoms among the wealthy classes of what is masses of our people. and 1t is with these that this article has to deal Look ing. then. to the rural districts of our movement" the good roads move ment," the growing interest in scientific and progressive farming. the organiza- prices, the rapid extension of the rural free delivery, the telephone and the trolley lines. These things are signifi- ( ant in more ways than one. The Ad- say editorially along this line, to which 1 shall not attempt to add. Suffice it to say that these are some of the things which are eliminating that feature of country life which more than anything else has made 1t so unattractive to the isolation-and these things are at the same time contributing more than anything else to a more progress i've and prosperous agriculture. The country community should have in as large a measure as possible all of those the making of a larger and broader life. that the city enjoys. It should not only have the church, the school, free deliv- cry of mail,-which means the daily paper,-the telephone and good roads, but it should also have the public H. brary.. if 1t be only 100 volumes of we'll selected books. By a simfle system of CXcbange these could be substituted with new volumes every six or twelve at very small expense. The State of New York has carried out such a scheme successfully. and several oth- CT States as well. These systems have always had their beginnings in some such experiment as that of Mrs. Wal 1 lace's.
 Space forbids more than d mere sug- gestion of this subject, and must con- 1 clude.
 The fact that a good book was at hand at d certain time and place has | marked an epoch in many a life. The | writer once heard the lamented Gov ernor Stanford say that the reading Of l Charles Reeade's little book. Put Your 1 self In His Place" changed the current l of his thought and greatly influenced | his whole life