Mr. Huse: It seems to me we are trying to get a good many things. If we get the cheap postal rates, that will include rural delivery, and then the express companies will come down in their rates to compete with the government.
Mr. Dewey: The rural delivery is limited to a single section, and is analogous to newspaper rates.
Mr. Huse: But if this pound rate is extended to library books the express companies will come down in their rates, and the rural delivery will be almost free.
Mr. Dewey: But in any case if we want all these things, it won't do any harm to ask for them.
Mr. Eastman: I would like to raise one point, and that is, what would be the effect of the extremely cheap rates of postage upon small libraries or upon libraries which we want to establish? In the remote parts of the state, where the population is small, won't the tendency be to have one great library dominate the whole state? Then when you go to a community to awaken library interest the people will probably say, "We don't care about a library; we can get our books from New York, or Albany, or Cincinnati, or Chicago." Won't this measure tend to hamper the work of establishing libraries in the small places?
Mr. Anderson: That is a difficulty easily remedied. I do not think that any library should act as a forwarding agent to a person in any place where another public library is or can be established. Our library takes that position very firmly. We refuse to be a forwarding agent to any person; if a library, however small, asks us to send books, we are glad to do it. I know we have helped small libraries by making people feel that the small library was very important, as it could get concessions that they reasonably could not obtain.
Mr. Dewey: Mr. Eastman's point, if this were a commercial question, might have something in it, but as long as books are circulated free, we should make the road free to the reader, for a short distance or a long distance.
The motion was adopted.
Mr. Dewey: We will now take up the topic of county libraries as units in a state library system. Mr. Hodges, of Cincinnati, has something to say on this.