The Bulletin. 63 



empowered to operate a system of free traveling libraries. The Commission is 

 composed of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the State Librarian, 

 the Librarian of the State University, a member of the Women's Clubs of the 

 State, and an appointee of the Governor, who happens in this case to be a 

 citizen of Raleigh, a former teacher and educator. In order to operate a 

 system of traveling libraries, the Commission needs a definite annual appro- 

 priation with which to buy three or four thousand books. The books are listed 

 and carefully made up into sets of forty or fifty books, ordinarily in four sec- 

 tions. There are books on agriculture, horse breeding, farming implements, 

 travel and description, literature, history, fiction, children's books, etc. Then 

 out in your community, if you happen to be away from a railroad center, if 

 five of you will get together and say that you will be responsible for the col- 

 lection while with you, write to the State Library Commission and ask for 

 the loan of a collection for a period of five or six months. It is sent to you and 

 placed in a rather central place in your community, and every one has a right 

 to make use of it. After three or four months, when you have finished with 

 the collection, write the Commission and ask for another collection. In this 

 way a collection like this, before being worn out, will reach some twenty 

 communities in North Carolina. The only expense is the expense of trans- 

 portation, which will be comparatively light. That is, you stand good for the 

 safe-keeping of the books and you stand good for the transportation of the 

 books. 



Now, my sole object is to say that so far as the law is concerned, it has been 

 passed, providing for the operation of such a system. "We would like to see 

 the books reach every nook and corner of North Carolina ; but the one thing 

 lacking is getting the representatives who go to the Legislature to give the 

 necessary $3,500 or $5,000 a year to buy these books and send them out. Vir- 

 ginia began this' work in 1905, and there are now some 300 of these collections, 

 and pi'actically 1.200 communities in the State of Virginia can be reached 

 each twelve months. There are thirty of the States now doing this kind of 

 work, New York having begun in 1893. 



Some people may say that it is not the right thing for the State to give free 

 books, as it were, to the citizens of North Carolina. Some may say that it is 

 not the right thing for citizens of Charlotte to give themselves, through their 

 public libraries, free books. The State Library is equipped out of the general 

 revenues for the Governor, the various State officers, and the members of the 

 Legislature. We want to take, out of the public revenues of the State, $3,500 

 or $5,000 a year in order that you may have a book on spraying trees or a book 

 on travel or a copy of poems. If we are out in Caldwell County or Gates 

 County or in any other part of the State, we can sit down on the long winter 

 evenings and read the books, which will widen our horizon and give us defi- 

 nite information regarding the work which we have in hand. I do not think 

 it is an unnatural claim for the taxpayers of North Carolina to make upon 

 themselves. My interest in this matter is to see North Carolina fall in line 

 with the other States, and to bring a box of books or a collection of stereopticon 

 pictures to every community in North Carolina. It makes the winter evenings 

 shorter, it makes the boy keen to branch out and interest himself in various 

 lines of farming; and these are my reasons for coming before you. I should 

 like for each one of you, as you go back to your homes, to tell your members 

 of the Legislature to favor a system of traveling libraries and an appropriation 

 of $3,000 to $5,000 to bring the books to your homes with no other cost than 

 to keep them safely and to pay the transportation. 



Adjournment for dinner. 



Tuesday, 2 :30 P. M. 



Me. Shuford: The Convention will come to order. We would like 

 to have every one be as quiet as possible, as it is difficult to hear in 

 this large room. Those coming in will be as quiet as possible. We 

 want to hear everything that Dr. Hopkins has to say. He has come 

 all the. way from Illinois to talk to us about phosphate rock and about 

 its use as a source of phosphoric acid. I am glad to introduce to you 

 Dr. C. G. Hopkins, of the Illinois Experiment Station. 



