396 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



two of the latter being Bohemian papers with strong Socialistic 

 tendencies. 



Another investigation made in a seaboard state, not more than 

 three hundred miles from New York City, reveals conditions even 

 more startling, the data being collected with the assistance of the 

 school teachers throughout the community. Great care was 

 taken and the conditions found should be fairly representative, 

 as the rural population of the state is almost exclusively native 

 born ; there is scarcely a district in the state more than ten miles 

 from a railroad ; the rural free delivery brings mail to every 

 door; there is a compulsory school law; and the state maintains 

 a system of traveling libraries, whereby any school, church, or 

 club might have one free of charge upon application. 



The conditions show even greater lack of reading matter than 

 in the West, More than 50 per cent, of the families reported 

 owned no books whatever. More than 25 per cent, of the homes 

 reported that they took no periodicals of any kind, not even a 

 local newspaper. About 94 per cent, took no periodical of a gen- 

 eral or. literary character. Of every thousand children in one 

 county, 44 per cent, reported that they read nothing. More 

 than 50 per cent, of the households in this same county reported 

 that they owned no books. 



In a district from which thirty-one replies were received, rep- 

 resenting nineteen families, not a single pupil reports having 

 read a book. Only two of these families own a book, ' ' The Life 

 of McKinley" in both cases. In eleven of the nineteen homes 

 there was not a newspaper, a magazine or a book. Only two of 

 seventeen families in*another district own books; one has lt Rob- 

 inson Crusoe" and the other has "The War with Spain." 



These investigations show the value of traveling libraries. In 

 one school from which seventeen replies came (representing nine 

 households) three homes were utterly without books, yet sixteen 

 of the seventeen children had read books from the traveling 

 library; four of the sixteen had never read a book from any 

 other source, and the sixteen pupils had read sixty-one books 

 from this library. While these data indicating a dire need for 

 books are the result of recent investigations, librarians have for 

 a long time appreciated the rural need for good literature, and 

 have done much to relieve this book hunger. Before the phrase 



