Perhaps the most characteristic educational movement of the past fifty years is that which has created the modern public library and developed it into broad and active service. There are now over five thousand public libraries in the United States, the product of this period. In addition to accumulating material, they are also striving by organization, by improvement in method, and by co-operation, to give greater efficiency to the material they hold, to make it more widely useful, and by avoidance of unnecessary duplication in process to reduce the cost of its administration.
In these efforts they naturally look for assistance to the Federal library, which, though still the Library of Congress, and so entitled, is the one national library of the United States. Already the largest single collection of books on the Western Hemisphere, and certain to increase more rapidly than any other through purchase, exchange, and the operation of the copyright law, this library has a unique opportunity to render to the libraries of this country—to American scholarship—service of the highest importance. It is housed in a building which is the largest and most magnificent yet erected for library uses. Resources are now being provided which will develop the collection properly, equip it with the apparatus and service necessary to its effective use, render its bibliographic work widely available, and enable it to become, not merely a centre of research, but the chief factor in great co-operative efforts for the diffusion of knowledge and the advancement of learning.
For the sake of good administration, sound economy, and the advancement of science, the Census Office as now constituted should be made a permanent government bureau. This would insure better, cheaper, and more satisfactory work, in the interest not only of our business but of statistic, economic, and social science.
The remarkable growth of the postal service is shown in the fact that its revenues have doubled and its expenditures have nearly doubled within twelve years. Its progressive development compels constantly increasing outlay, but in this period of business energy and prosperity its receipts grow so much faster than its expenses that the annual deficit has been steadily reduced from $11,411,779 in 1897 to $3,923,727 in 1901. Among recent postal advances the success of rural free-delivery wherever established has been so marked, and actual experience has made its benefits so plain, that the demand for its extension is general and urgent.
It is just that the great agricultural population should share in the improvement of the service. The number of rural routes now in operation is 6,009, practically all established within three years, and there are 6,000 applications awaiting action. It is expected that the number in operation at the close of the current fiscal year will reach 8,600. The mail will then be daily carried to the doors of 5,700,000 of our people who have heretofore been dependent upon distant offices, and one-third of all that portion of the country which is adapted to it will be covered by this kind of service.
The full measure of postal progress which might be realized has long been hampered and obstructed by the heavy burden imposed on the Government through the intrenched and well-understood abuses which have grown up in connection with second-class mail matter. The extent of this burden appears when it is stated that while the second-class matter makes nearly three-fifths of the weight of all the mail, it paid for the last fiscal year only $4,294,445 of the aggregate postal revenue of $111,631,193. If the pound rate of postage, which produces the large loss thus entailed, and which was fixed by the Congress with the purpose of encouraging the dissemination of public information, were limited to the legitimate newspapers and periodicals actually contemplated by the law, no just exception could be taken. That expense would be the recognized and accepted cost of a liberal public policy deliberately adopted for a justifiable end. But much of the matter which enjoys the privileged rate is wholly outside of the intent of the law, and has secured admission only through an evasion of its requirements or through lax construction. The proportion of such wrongly included matter is estimated by postal experts to be one-half of the whole volume of second-class mail. If it be only one-third or one-quarter, the magnitude of the burden is apparent. The Post-Office Department has now undertaken to remove the abuses so far as is possible by a stricter application of the law; and it should be sustained in its effort.
Owing to the rapid growth of our power and our interests on the Pacific, whatever happens in China must be of the keenest national concern to us.