Mr. Hostetter: We have sent out a few books to the country domestic science clubs through the mails, and we have a greater demand for them than we could ever supply. Now I find this experience: the express companies, in the matter of books, would carry a book more cheaply than the United States mail. I am quite confident that the express companies would return the books free, or at a very low rate, if the charges were prepaid. I move that this meeting recommend that the American Library Association take up the question of procuring reduced transportation rates for all free circulating library books.
Mr. Dewey: If this large meeting is practically agreed on the importance of that, we could send the recommendation into the Council meeting to-night. It seems to me simply inconceivable that we are willing to allow periodicals, bad and indifferent, and the yellow journals, to receive the pound postal rate, while our libraries, suffering from lack of income and working for the public benefit, cannot use the public facilities as cheaply as the people who are using them for public harm instead of public good. I had supposed there would be unanimous approval of an act to register public libraries, owned and maintained for the public benefit, so that they could receive the pound postal rate on books.
Mr. Hostetter's motion was seconded.
Mr. Dewey: Let us see if there is anything more on this question before the motion is put. There is a bill closely allied to this going into the next Congress. Mr. Hutchins, will you state it briefly?
Mr. Hutchins: We have twice tried to secure better transportation in the state of Wisconsin. We have found rural mail carriers who said that they would carry books to the farmers for a travelling library without cost, but the United States law said that we could not do this; that we cannot carry in this way anything under four pounds in weight except it is stamped. Congressman Jenkins, therefore, has drawn a bill which gives libraries authority to send their books free along rural mail routes. At present the farmer must either carry the book himself and return it to the public library, or he must pay postage.
Mr. Dewey: You say that the carriers cannot take packages under four pounds without stamps?
Mr. Hutchins: Yes; the government rules that packages under four pounds are to be sent by mail. Larger packages we could send by the carriers, and we have sometimes thought of sending 15 or 20 books to a neighborhood for distribution. I think that could be done, under the government rule, if the mail carrier was willing to carry them.
Mr. Dewey: The idea is, that the carrier must not carry anything to compete with the postal service.
Mr. Hutchins: Mr. Jenkins, who has drawn this bill for us, has submitted it to all the Senators and Representatives in the United States, and nearly all favor it. Now, I am in favor of Mr. Scott's bill, which gives libraries reduced rates through the whole United States. As things are to-day, if you want to send a travelling library book 100 miles out into the country it costs as much as to send it to San Francisco or New York. If we can get the government to allow transportation by rural free mail delivery it will be an entering wedge for this other bill.
Mr. Bowerman: Why cannot the legislation adopting the rural mail delivery also include this matter of the pound rates? Why not have both provisions in one bill? My library is practically free to the whole of Newcastle county, not confined simply to Wilmington, but it is a farming community. We would like to send books to every part of the county, practically to every part of the state. The library is practically free to the state of Delaware, so far as people can come to us, but they cannot come to us; we would like to go to them, but we cannot do it, because of the expense. We could do it if we could afford sufficient postage to send books.