If you had lived a cosmopolitan and metropolitan life as I have, and then married and been buried in a land of stumps, you would understand what these books mean. Messages like this-Carol Kennicott's experience pales beside it-made vital the beginnings of the movement. Wisconsin, following the example of Iowa and Minnesota, appointed a library commission in 1895, with Frank Hutchins and Miss Lutie Stearns chairman and secretary, but with scarcely the funds for running expenses. The chairman of the present commission is Miss Zona Gale of wider fame. The first box libraries were provided by philanthropists (Senator Stout, J. D. Witter, and Joseph Dessert were among the number) who responded to Mr. Hutchins's enthusiasm. The system they founded in the 'nineties has been but slightly changed, and boxes containing fifty books adapted as closely as possible to the needs of the community they are to serve are still sent to any organized group of five families who will assume responsibility for them and bear the expenses of the return trip. Their routes are carefully scheduled so that every six months a new box may be substituted for the old "It is the equivalent of a standing library" to call again upon the wisdom of old Samuel Brown-"with the added advantage of sustained novelty and motion." one. R WHAT THE FARMER READS EAD the letters from the mail bags of to-day and you will marvel at the demand of the rural districts for information. Here are a few of the actual petitions sent in for parcel-post libraries. The head of the house requires solid material: "Something about concrete on the farm," "Practical Silo Construction," "How to Fit Club Pigs for Show"; his wife, with her instinct for embroidering the plain facts of life, desires "A book to raise canary birds," "1,001 Salads," "How to Plan a Wedding." Ambitions of the younger members take varied forms, though there must exist in the heart of every other country boy a uniform yearning to build his own radio set. One young man from the brush country needs a book to prepare him for the diplomatic service; another, one on the management of moving-picture theaters. And was it a true humanitarian spiritor the desperate need of keeping help on the farm-which prompted this? I need books for our hired man, he reads fast so would like at least six. These small parcel-post libraries which were begun in Wisconsin are now the most important feature of the system. In ten years the requests for books have increased 61 per cent. In January of last year the headquarters received nearly three thousand requests and responded with twice as many volumes. "We don't dare advertise more," states Miss Harriet Long, who is in immediate charge of the work; "we have so many more requests now than we can fill." Few people in the state can be aware of their library privileges. Books asked for by individuals are mailed the day the request is received, and are in their hands the following day. If the copy is not possessed, the immense resources of the university and historical libraries are drawn upon. Should they fail, the libraries of larger cities are appealed to, even the Congressional Library at Washington. "Anything in print that is available we will get for the people of the state," promises Mr. C. B. Lester, the present secretary of the commission, and he expects to be taken at his word. LITTLE CENSORSHIP ENSORSHIP is seldom exercised. It might possibly bar the sentimental request for "Heart Throbs" and "A Bridge of Kisses" or the intolerant one for "From the Ballroom to Hell." Rules and regulations are almost lacking. For the personal request there is only the expense of the return postage, only the trouble of the postcard. If the individual is in touch with a city library, the application must be made through the librarian 552 Libraries in Eleven Languages in charge. There are follow-up letters, but no fines. When the boy applicant wrote: "Have a heart, tell me I can keep it a month," the "Psychology" of Herbert Spencer remained in his hands as long as he needed it. Inspiration is in these letters-inspiration, and food for thought. One woman writes from a large dairy farm that during the winter she read eighty books to her husband while he milked the cows. From a community of three hundred and fifty arrives this awesome request: Pepys' Diary Pater's "Marius the Epicurean" It is one The next letter reveals itself. of those which from the beginning have made enthusiastic and tireless workers out of all members of the Traveling Library Commission. I am the mother of eleven children, all under the age of twenty-one years, and we all enjoy reading. If you haven't the books I've listed, please pick out some others. I would like some that would help me in keeping up with the questions of the day. The experience of Mr. Hutchins with boys in a small town led him to feel that theirs was the greatest need. "Life moved that they became a lineal ancestor of the famous A. L. A. Booklist of to-day. The personal touch has always characterized the work of the Commission. Miss Lutie Stearns, who helped to introduce the first box libraries into the rural communities and to encourage their use, is the one to tell of this period. Often she found herself in a district so completely foreign that her English books were of no service. One old German woman she met had not read a book in twenty years and wept when those in her own tongue were brought to her. The first German traveling library of thirty-five volumes led to the establishment of small collections in other tongues. Mr. Hutchins felt himself no less loyal an American because he wished to provide for the older foreign students of the state the only kind of reading matter they could ever enjoy. With the younger members of the family in mind, he saw that the boxes included the classics of each literature. Thus Wisconsin led the way also in foreign traveling libraries, and to-day sends out ten different kinds: German, Bohemian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Yiddish, Finnish, Italian, and French. FROM THE CITY TO THE COUNTRY phrase in S COMPREHENSIVE Program places. To-day a railroad official and university professor are among those who tell how he redirected their lives through books. To Frank Hutchins, indeed, every appeal was personal and concrete. He saw books in terms of people, and people as tired farm-women, adolescent boys and girls, indigent preachers, small-town lawyers, and tradesmen. He could always make his own the viewpoint of those whom he wished to serve. "Buy books for your public, not yourselves," he enjoined the librarian. Hence his booklists were always successful, from the first straitened ones for country schools down to those adapted to libraries of every size the latter so widely borrowed as "Books for Everybody" is responsible for the present development of the county system. In this matter Ohio led the way and California shows the most extensive development. The first book wagon was driven twenty-five years ago in Maryland; perhaps the most successful one to-day covers Hennepin County, Minnesota. All who have read "Parnassus on Wheels" appreciate the color in this phase of the work. The book-van driven along deserted roads and stopping at the farmyard gate for a personal visit might well be the symbol of library spirit. "Pegasus" turned into a Ford truck may seem less romantic at first sight, but he is no less magical. The Next Step in Washington IV. CABINET MEMBERS IN CONGRESS W BY CHESTER H. ROWELL HEN President Wilson decided to deliver his message to Congress in person, he merely sent notice of his intention. No action by Congress was necessary. Strictly speaking, there is nothing but custom to prevent a Cabinet officer from doing the same thing, even without notice. The rules of both houses already give him the right to be on the floor during the sessions, and there is nothing in those rules to say he may not speak. It may be tacitly assumed, but it is nowhere expressly declared, that the right to speak is confined to members. If the Cabi ments, but he should also have the right to speak at other times, especially when matters germane to his department were under consideration. A general field day on the budget, early in the session, with the whole Cabinet present, would also be desirable. Otherwise the rule should be as simple as possible, leaving the development of the system, whether into a minor Perhaps the most striking aspect of the plan to have Cabinet officers speak on the floor of Congress is the simplicity with which it could be adopted and the equal ease with which it could be dropped if on trial it proved unsatisfactory. Technically, no constitutional or legal change is necessary to make possible its introduction, as is explained by Mr. Rowell in this, the final article of his series. Previously the useful leadership of the executive has been described, and the good results anticipated from making this leadership responsible are here reviewed. net officer, therefore, were simply to rise and address the Chair, like a member, he would be violating no written rule. Of course it will never be done this way. The change is too far-reaching to be made without full agreement and an established procedure. But no new law, and especially no constitutional amendment, would be needed. A simple resolution, or, still better, a rule of each house, would suffice. The right to speak should imply ultimately, and might as well include from the beginning, the right to make motions and introduce bills, but of course it would not carry any right to vote. It would be convenient to set aside a routine hour for each department head, perhaps once in two weeks in each house, when he would regularly attend, in order to answer questions and to make state incident or into the central feature of Congress, for practical experience to determine. Dropping or minimizing the system would be equally easy. No permanent commitment is involved. If Cabinet officers did not find their attendance in Congress useful, they would avoid coming, or come only perfunctorily. Congress would make much or little use of the privilege of conferring with them, or could drop the rule entirely, according to its own experience. The plan is automatically self-expanding, self-limiting, or self-terminating. It could therefore be tried frankly as an experiment. But since no government and no private organization that has ever used it would now give it up, it is at least worth the experiment here. Obviously, the actual conduct of the executive business in Congress should be the function of the Cabinet, and the President's personal participation need not go much farther than it does now. It is enough if by set messages and addresses he announces and takes responsibility for administration policies. He should be 554 Making Laws Behind Closed Doors has its officers and rules, its committees, and its influential members; otherwise it could not operate at all. But it is not too much to say that, among nations of comparable rank and advancement, there is no other national assembly in the world with so inadequate and irresponsible an organization of its leadership. In one respect, indeed, Congress suffers rather from too much organization. It has more committees, and delegates more of its functions to them, than any other legislative body. Practically all its work, including much routine which no other legislature undertakes, is done behind their closed doors. Their chairmen constitute such official leadership as Congress has. But these chairmen have no unity or organization among themselves. Each one attained his chairmanship separately, by seniority of service on that particular committee. A whole policy of leadership may be reversed, not by any change in the opinion of Congress, or of the nation, but by the accident of election in a single district. To take an extreme instance-suppose the and might therefore be risked even by those who doubt its success, its possible advantages, to legislation and to administration, are beyond reckoning. To the legislative process, the most immediate benefits would be to exhume leadership and to vitalize debate. It would enable Congress to become what the legislative assembly of every other free people already is-the center of gravity of government and the focus of popular attention. It would not create any new executive leadership. That exists already. It would merely remove its only menace, by making it visible and responsible. Much more important would be the new legislative leadership which it would activate out of the ranks of Congress itself. In the first article of this series was an outline of the process by which Congress, fleeing from bossism, also escaped leadership. This is not to say that Congress is merely an unorganized, unled mob. It Affairs to a roaring jingo, while the member next in rank is a flat pacifist. The chairman is defeated in his district on a local quarrel over a post office appointment. So the pacifist succeeds him, and the official leadership of the military policies of the nation is reversed by the Bingville Post Office. At the same session a transformation in the opposite direction on naval affairs may be precipitated by the failure of the Mud Creek dredger appropriation. Or, changed conditions may have altered the general opinion of the majority party on a vital issue, and the newer members, as well as the President, mostly represent the revised view. All the chairmanships will nevertheless remain with the older members, who cling to the discarded policy. Nobody follows them, of course, but they are still the "leaders." This is always a possibility, and it did happen, wholesale, as to every chairman of every war committee, during the Wilson Administration, and it is happening to some extent all the time. Different Speeches are news, not because they are good or bad literature, but because they are made by somebody of significance or on a significant occasion, or because they affect somebody or something. Speeches in Parliament affect not only measures, but also the defeat or victory of the party in power. There is a sporting interest in them. Every vote in Parliament is a potential national election, and every speech is a campaign document. Speeches Congress Is Overworked "The whole conflict of localism against nationalism, which is the bane of our legislative bodies, tends to repress debate, to decrease its quality, and to press consider: ation from the floor back to the committee. The very press of business makes much of this inevitable. Usless things are done in committee, most of them could not be done at all. But not all of this press is necessary. Congress does too much. It has invaded functions which in all other governments are executive, and which could be better done by the highly staffed executive departments. Congress has not dared delegate the necessary powers to the executive departments, because they were irresponsible for the exercise of that power when granted. With the heads of those departments regularly present and subject to question on the floor, there would be no reason for this hesitation." As a by-product of the same process, debate has decayed, and the newspaper reporting of it grows yearly less. The debates of Parliament are the most important thing in England, and the reports of them are the most conspicuous feature of all serious British newspapers. In Congress, the real consideration and most of the major decisions take place in committee. Speeches on the floor tend to shrink to perfunctory explanations of conclusions already reached, or else to degenerate into buncombe for home consumptionand they are no longer worth much, even for that. Blasé, over-sophisticated Washington correspondents scarcely regard a speech as news unless it assaults somebody, and editors are of the opinion that the people would not read the debates, even if published. Yet these same editors regularly print reports of speeches by the President, a Cabinet officer, or a candidate for high office, wherever delivered and regardless of quality, and their judgment is that the people do read these speeches. in Congress will become news whenever they are real elements of a real transaction. And that will be whenever the real decisions of the nation are made in the open, on the floor of Congress. A people that gets excited over whether it was a left swing or a right hook that knocked out the champion can at least be interested to know whose skill or what faux pas discomfited the party leader. The inevitable result of the present system is to con demn Congressmen to errand-boy localism and personal obscurity. They are denied the chief reward of public life, which is reputation and leadership. The partial survival of debate in the Senate, together with its fewer members and their longer terms, accounts for the relatively greater personal distinction of some Senators. But no such avenue to fame is open to members of either House of Congress as stretches before the abler members of European parliaments. An important speech by Asquith, Curzon, Lloyd George, Baldwin, Macdonald, Clemenceau, Poincaré, Herriot, Marx, or Stresemann is cabled all over the world. Their names are better known even in |