Operation Bookdrop: The Marshall Plan and the Reading Rainbow Regime.

In my essays on William T. Couch, I mentioned a curious piece of World War II ephemera: the “Marshall Plan for Books.” I’ve since acquired it and included an excerpt and the full piece below. The mission: reconstruction through subsidized enlightenment. Haven’t you heard the good news of the gospel of Democracy?

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An excerpt from Books in World Rehabilitation:

The Purpose of This Memorandum

The American Textbook Publishers Institute, representing 46 publishers primarily in the educational field; the American Book Publishers Council, representing 80 educational and general publishers; and the Association of American University Presses, representing the publishing units of 28 institutions of higher learning, have prepared this memorandum to supply a statement of facts regarding the place of American books in world rehabilitation.

The Need for American Books

The United States is embarked on a policy of helping the nations of the world to help themselves. Food, seed, machinery, and industrial raw materials are essential for survival, and are so recognized under the terms of emergency aid already granted and in prospect At the same time there is an insistent demand throughout the world for books, which are tools of reconstruction in as real a sense as material equipment. United States educational, technical, agricultural, and scientific books are desperately needed, and can carry to other countries the practical knowledge essential to their rehabilitation.

Books also reflect the culture and ideals of a people, and we believe it is essential. to make an adequate picture of American democracy available to all countries with which we will have close association in the future. We submit that the picture is not adequate unless the lasting record provided by books for general reading is available to them.

It is often forgotten that, without books, civilization as the world knows it must cease to exist. Only books can record in imperishable form the knowledge future generations must utilize, not only to progress, but even to maintain their technological and cultural inheritance. The intellectual and material products of the classroom and the factory spring with equal dependency from the same source—the book.

For both practical and informational reasons, therefore, we believe that books play a major part in world reconstruction and in American foreign relations, though as commodities their bulk and dollar value are negligible compared with other materials in foreign trade.

The World Situation

At the conclusion of active hostilities, when nations had an opportunity to take a long view of their requirements, provision was made for the acquisition of books. As post-war problems have deepened, the day-to-day requirements of food and raw materials have forced many countries to ignore long-range plans in their desperate concern with problems of the moment. The acquisition of books, even those of the most positive practical value, has been hindered more and more by restrictions.

The countries most needing our assistance, not only in short-term items such as flour and clothing but in long-term items such as books and lathes, are almost completely unable to obtain our books because of their need for the immediate necessities of existence. These are the so-called “soft currency” countries, where there are often no dollars for book purchases, and where the American idea is usually available only through radio programs heard by the limited few with adequate receiving sets. In such countries, both within and without the “Iron Curtain,” Russian books in many languages, including English, are found in great quantities.

The distribution of books, not only in Europe but also in Asia and Latin America, is obviously part of Russian policy. The result is that the Russian story is available to the reading public, with all the implications which that story may have for us, and that our story, for the most part, is not available to those people who most want to know it and who can most profit by it.

Before the war, Germany was acutely aware of the fact that a language to some degree carries its own ideology, and even more acutely aware. that books are the ideal instruments of ideological and commercial penetration. The Nazi regime saw to it that scientific and technical books in German were distributed everywhere. For great sections of the world, German represented a second language of education and technology.

At the close of the war, many nations were prepared to substitute English for German as their second language. In Holland, for instance, there was a strong movement to displace German as a language of instruction in the sciences and in schools of higher education, thus giving the opportunity to replace German with English. Great Britain has understood this. The phrase “trade follows the book” originated in England, and, within the limits of great shortages of materials and lack of plant capacity, Great Britain has done her best to see that the English language has had a fair competitive chance in the post-war world.

Germany, Austria, Japan and Korea

In Germany and Japan, the importation of books through normal channels is contrary to military regulations, a situation receiving insufficient attention. The peoples in these countries are eager to know about the United States and to discover how our American civilization functions. They wish to utilize our educational, medical, professional, technical, and cultural books for the re-education of their peoples. In line with this desire, our Army maintains Information Centers containing a limited selection of books in many of the principal cities of the occupied areas; to be truly effective, all such projects must be tremendously increased in scope.

Recommendations

In 1946 the book publishing industry produced an estimated total sales volume of $350,000,000, of which only $19,000,000, or 6%, represented export sales. The percentage, while of some value as a. contribution to the stability of employment in the industry, is not so large as to represent a major factor in book publishing. Many publishers are, therefore, frankly uninterested in the purely business aspects of foreign trade, and have engaged in it from a sense of obligation in view of the worldwide need for American books. Such efforts on the part of the industry cannot meet with a real measure of success until publishers are placed in a far better position to fulfill the demand.

In the belief that due recognition should be given to the contribution books can make to the building of new generations throughout the world, the book industry of the United States, represented by the undersigned major associations, respectfully submits the following recommendations to the government as a means of strengthening permanently the long-range policy of world rehabilitation and national self-defense:

1. Foreign nations, insofar as possible, should be enabled to secure those United States informational, educational, scientific and technical books which are of value to the education, culture, and economy of the individual country by means of a program providing adequate dollar payments to the American publishers involved, such transactions to take place to the greatest possible extent through normal channels of commercial intercourse.

2. The word “informational” should be broadly interpreted to include books which provide an adequate picture of life, achievement, and habits of thought and action in the United States, each country being free, however, to stipulate those books which it wants for purposes of rehabilitation

3. Most careful consideration should be given to the lasting value of the United States Information Service Libraries; a long-term program should be worked out in consultation with the publishing industry and library services, with a view to determining the sum of money properly expendable for the future effectiveness of those libraries in giving access to American thought.

4. Steps should be taken to broaden the re-education program in Germany, Japan, and Korea by permitting the interchange of library materials with these areas in such a way that books become more readily available to the civilian populations; in addition, every effort should be made to expedite the publication of translations of works of United States origin in all occupied areas.

5. As a part of any program involving books, adequate information should be supplied to consular officers, commercial attaches, and other interested personnel concerning the desirability of commerce in books, the complexities of book distribution outside the United States, and the great value of assisting educators and others abroad in acquiring informational books and materials of American origin.

6. The United States, in cooperation with other countries through the trade agreements program and the proposed International Trade Organization, should press for the reduction of governmental trade barriers hampering the free flow of books.

7. A commission, including adequate representation of the book industry, should be formed to study the means of implementing any legislation touching on the communications problem, and the Government should avail itself of the facilities of the American Book Publishers Council, the American Textbook Publishers Institute, and the Association of American University Presses in drafting programs involving the use abroad of books of United States origin.

Books In World Rehabilitation

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