DISTRICTS.

By B. L. DYER.

Some few weeks ago it was suggested to me by the President of this section that it would be of interest to this meeting if I would say something about the desirability and the practicability of keeping the teachers on farm schools in touch with the libraries of this country.

Life in the larger centres of population has certain advantages, and your educationist has found it within the region of practical politics to make education compulsory in such centres. But when he comes to deal with the people dwelling in the scantily populated districts he finds much more difficulty in making education compulsory-and he has to adopt the expedients of farm schools. In these schools he wishes to have an educated man or woman in charge-and he sees the difficulty of expecting men and women to keep in touch with education, or to keep up to the desired level of culture if they are out of touch with books and libraries.

But this is a part of a larger question-for how can one expect to settle an educated population in the areas which will only support a limited population if they are out of touch with books?

Educationists recognise the right of the children on widely separated farms to a participation in the state provision of education, and I would advance a plea that the people resident on these farms are as actually entitled to a share in the library provision of this country as are their children to a share in its educational provision. The model community is one that has community of ideal, of interest and purpose" likeminded persons who know and enjoy their likemindedness and are therefore able to work together for common ends."

We have a partially state-aided voluntary system of libraries in this country, and I would enter a plea that the farmer who desires books to read is as much entitled to the use of the public library as the town dweller, and that the library system of this country will not be satisfactory so long as the residents in the scantily peopled districts, whether farmers, teachers, or miners, are entirely out of touch with it.

If the communal or public library is necessary in the town, how much the more necessary is it to the scantily peopled district where people have less opportunity for exchange of thought. The state aids the library by grants on the pound for pound principle, and wherever it has been found possible to establish libraries the groups of people who are in touch with them have been so assisted. But if an educated man is dropped down into a district without a library, the whole system of state aid breaks down, and he can only borrow books from the nearest library at a cost of 8d. per pound on the journey to and from the library-unless he lives near a railway line, when the railway authorities very kindly carry his books to and from the library at single rates for the double journey!

The extension of this concession to the methods of communication to the outlying districts away from the railways were most desirable and the great need of the moment is some method by which town and country may be linked together for library purposes.

The library system of this country has on the whole worked fairly well-and I would suggest that with a very little more state help it might be possible to so develop it as to cover all the needs of the present and future.

In another direction we have recently seen how a voluntary but state-aided system of primary schools is being developed into a state-aided compulsory system of education. The old school committees of this country had done excellent and pioneer work, but Parliament in its wisdom has welded these local and volunteer school committees into school boards that cover much wider areas, and link up town and country. Similarly the library committees should be welded together, and the larger libraries of the towns should be welded with the little libraries of the country villages-and something should be done so that no man who desires books should be out of touch with a library any more than a child should be out of touch with a school. If not of what use educating the children in the scantily populated districts of what use trying to settle educated men on the land?

Do educationists wish the knowledge of and the custom and use of books which is inoculated in the schools to be cast aside with the school satchel when a boy or girl leaves the primary school, or do they desire that the custom and the use and the influence of the best books of the world should remain with the children who have passed through the schools?

If we turn for a moment to other countries we see that the provision of books for the people in scantily populated districts has engaged the serious attention of the authorities. In the United States of America, and in Germany, countries to which our educationists so often turn their eyes to see what pioneer work has been done, the various states have grappled with this problem of books for the dweller in the scantily peopled places, and have granted specially cheap rates of carriage on all parcels of library books going out to, or coming back from country residents. In America an effort is being made to make a general law of only one cent per pound postage applicable to library books-while Canada has similar proposals now before it.

What individual states are doing to extend the usefulness of their libraries to country residents were a tale too long to tell here to-dav. Library boards controlling whole states or districts are frequently found and these work in the closest harmony with the school boards.

What one little state has done may be told in a few words. Washington County, Maryland, has an area of only 500 square miles, and has a population mainly agricultural. It has only one town of any size- Hagerstown, and when the country decided to

establish libraries it determined that town and county alike should benefit. In each of the county's twenty-six polling districts it was decided to establish some sort of book depôt, so that every man who wished it could borrow books. The library board caused travelling book boxes to be made, and little travelling libraries were sent out to wherever they were asked for-and in the post office, the school, or the store wherever people needed them was set up a library of frequently changed books. The cost of transport of these boxes was made a general charge against library income, and the people in the most remote polling district had their books at the same cost as the people in the county town. Twenty-three districts were supplied the first year-and in the fourth year no less than 66 depôts for books had been set up whilst Boonsboro' and Williamsport, places of 800 and 1,000 inhabitants, had so grown to use their little libraries that news-rooms have been fitted up, and libraries of two and three hundred volumes, of which some 40 are changed monthly from the central depôt, are in good use here.

Thirty-three of these book depôts are along the lines of railway communication and are easily served, but no less than 30 are away from it, and for these a travelling book wagon has been established, which "drives up to the farm-house doors, through the county lanes," gathering up the books that have been read, and replacing them with those that have been asked for. With a total population of 45,000 souls, it is interesting to note that in 1905 the library issued some 50,000 books to the town readers, and nearly half as many to the residents in scantily populated districts.

This is not a solitary instance of the good work that America is doing, but it must be remembered that the system of libraries is not a voluntary state-aided one, but a compulsory rate or tax supported one-as in Australia where the system of travelling book boxes has been brought to a most perfect one, and here the state in addition to making a fixed grant for library work carries all library books to and from the libraries entirely without charge. In at least one West Indian Island a similar system and concession has worked well.

In South Africa little has yet been done in the way of travelling boxes, because the costs of transit have hitherto been heavy. A few subscribers resident along the railway lines have had out parcels of books but nothing systematic has been done, except perhaps at Maritzbuhg, and at the Victoria Memorial Library, Salisbury, Rhodesia. At the latter place a special feature is made of the lending of agricultural books to farmers.

By private effort a system of travelling libraries was instituted, for an account of which I am indebted to Miss Neuman-Thomas. And this was the Markham Libraries presented by Miss Violet Markham and the Victoria League. These consist of eleven boxes of books, each containing a well selected library on such topics as "India," Canada," "Italy and Greece," etc., and they were intended to travel more especially among the women of this country.

Much hampered by the heavy costs of carriage, it was found that the towns did not avail themselves of the travelling boxes "owing to the fact that there were good libraries in many places,' and it is quite understandable that the progress would be "slow and difficult" where there were efficient libraries. At places where "books are scarce" the boxes were welcomed with delight-but in going through the published accounts I have only found one place with a library of any size that welcomed the boxes with "much appreciation " and where "fifty" people came to see them in spite of the fact that the town library had 2,000 volumes on its shelves, and had spent no less than £40 in new books that year!

Had these book boxes been handed over for the use of thinly populated centres alone, they would possibly have had an unqualified success, and they have at any rate proved that there is a need in this country for book boxes among the scantily peopled places.

What suggestions are to be made for the future?

I have already pleaded that the libraries of this country should be placed on a wider basis-and that the towns should help the less populated places and I would go further and suggest that the Government of this country should exercise some sort of control over the money which it provides for library purposes. Money on the pound for pound principle should not be spent in accumulating waste heaps of books soon to be forgotten in every little village or town-but it should be wisely expended upon the building up in a district of one good library from which all the smaller centres can draw. American and English experience has proved this, and if for one moment one proposed to extend to the primary educational system of this country the lax methods of our present library system how great were the outcry. The people who pay the piper are notoriously supposed to call the tune-except in matters educational, and if the Government is to pay library grants on the pound for pound principle, it should see to it that all the money is not spent upon the lightest of literature.

Fiction is the thing that most of the people who subscribe to a library read most largely, but should a preponderating amount of library revenues be spent in this? J. K. Jerome recently said that much so-called reading is no more an intellectual process than is smoking a cigar, and while I would not condemn a certain amount of recreative reading, I would plead that if the public library is to be what Carlyle called it, a people's university," we must relegate recreative reading to much the same place as is given to recreation at a university. Recreation is not lost sight of in any well conducted university, and while I would not lose sight of the ephemeral books of the hour in a library, they should not be made our main work-lest we bring upon the libraries of this colony the fate of the libraries of New Zealand, who largely lost their grants in aid because the Government refused to find money to circulate fiction!

The salvation of the public library is to my mind to be found in the National Home Reading Union-and it is encouraging to

find the close relationship which is growing up at Home between the Public Libraries and this Union. Almost invariably where the suggested courses and readings have been adopted, there has been an increased interest in the non-fictional contents of libraries, and "a general levelling-up and encouraging advance would almost certainly follow if the members of the Union in a district would take an earnest and practical interest in the management and improvement of libraries."

In South Africa the work of this Union has been much helped by the Guild of Loyal Women, and I know of no nobler work for a band of ladies than the taking under their charge of the improvement of our libraries, and the extension of their work In small villages and in places where people otherwise would not have the energy to establish reading circles or clubs, through the efforts of the Guild branches of the Union have been formed and good work is being done-in Namaqualand there is a circle, while in Griqualand East a band of young farmers meet regularly under the leadership of a farm teacher to read. In the Orange River Colony, with the kind assistance of the S.A. Constabulary, it has been found possible to stimplate interest in books and reading in remote districts" at Libode and at Umtata good work is being done-and the people in the scantily populated districts are being awakened to the use of books and the value of the Union.

And now in conclusion of what is a discursive paper-may I once more point to the case of the schools, and ask if the example of their passing from the voluntary to the compulsory may not afford us a solution of the library problem. In the schools of the future we are told that the state will provide compulsory elementary education for every child free of charge-out that ail higher education shall be still voluntary. Can we not mould our libraries in the same plan, use our state aid for the establishment and upkeep of libraries easily accessible to all, whether in town or country, consisting of the great works of the world, and can we no leave to a super-added voluntary system the provision of that lighter and more recreative reading that is after all more of a luxury than a necessity?

I have tried to plead the case of the educated man in the hinterland to a share in the benefits of a possibly improved library system, and I would ask you to remember that if he does not get this share you will only reproduce in this country the problems of the older lands--where the first result of a compulsory education that came into being without the provision of any attractions for the educated man in the country was to attract the people from the country to congest in the cities, and where every effort is now concentrated in the cry "Back to the Land."

Even in this comparatively new country the travellers have over and over again observed how through the lack of educational facilities the children of educated parents have fallen into the blackest and worst of ignorance and I would suggest that having caught your child and accustomed him to the use of books during