There is no institution so intimately, so universally, so constantly connected with the life of the whole people as the free public library—no instrumentality that can do so much to civilize society. The public schools alone cannot accomplish the task of elevating mankind to even the most modest ideal of a well ordered society.
Our public schools have been the chief source of the greater general intelligence and hence the industrial superiority of our citizens over those of other countries. But the public schools cannot accomplish impossibilities. They are not to blame for the fact that they can reach the great majority during only six or eight years, or that only one and one half per cent of the children in the United States go through the high school. But wherever there is a public library, the teachers are to blame if they do not graduate all their pupils, at whatever age they may leave school, into the People's University.
General intelligence is the necessary foundation of prosperity and social order.
The public library is one of the chief agencies, if not the most potent and far-reaching agency, for promoting general intelligence.
Therefore, money devoted to the maintenance of a public library is money well invested by a community.
F. M. CRUNDEN.
Any consideration of a public library project is complimentary to a community, showing, as it does, a sense of civic responsibility and a desire for future progress which are commendable. No town can hope to live up to its greatest possibilities without a public library, and none with a sincere desire need be denied the blessings which result from such an institution.
There are few communities which would not provide for a public library, if its advantages were appreciated, for it is a remedy for many ills and is all-embracing in its scope. It vitalizes school work, and receiving the pupil from the school, the library continues his education throughout life. It is a home missionary, sending its messengers, the books, into every shop and home. With true missionary zeal, it not only sends help, but opens its doors to every man, woman and child. In most towns, there are scores of young men and boys whose evenings are spent in loafing about the streets, and to these the library offers an attractive meeting place, where the time may be spent with jolly, wise friends in the books. The library substitutes better for poorer reading, and provides story hours for the children who are eager to hear before they are able to read. It also increases the earning capacity of people, by supplying information and advice on the work they are doing.
Increased taxation is one of the greatest hindrances to the opening of a public library, but any institution which enriches and uplifts the lives of the people, is the greatest economy. Any attempt to conduct civic affairs without a reasonable expenditure of money for such influences is the grossest extravagance. No economy results from ignorance and vice, and the public library has long since established its claim as one of the most potent remedies for such conditions.
It is no exaggeration to state that every dollar expended for library purposes is returned to the community tenfold, not necessarily in dollars and cents, but in the more permanent, more valuable assets of greater happiness, comfort and progress of the people. A city is the expression of every life within its borders, and every increase in progress and efficiency in the individual citizen, is progress for the whole.
The most valuable things usually are obtained at some sacrifice, and the many advantages from a public library are certainly worth paying for. Hundreds of small cities and towns tax themselves for electric plants and count themselves fortunate. No one seems to regret this taxation for electric lights which illuminate the citizen's way at night. Should there not be an equal or greater readiness on the part of a community to establish a library and so illuminate the mental horizon of every citizen?
A public library is a necessity, not a luxury. Every community which realizes this and establishes a library, proclaims itself an intelligent, progressive town and one worth living in.
CHALMERS HADLEY.
The opening of a free public library is a most important event in any town. There is no way in which a community can more benefit itself than in the establishment of a library which shall be free to all citizens.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
Modern industrialism exacts from the artisan and the worker in every branch, skill and knowledge not dreamed of years ago. He who would not be trampled under foot needs to keep pace with the onward sweep in his particular craft. The public library furnishes to the ambitious artisan the opportunity to rise. Upon its shelves he may find the latest and the best in invention and in method and in knowledge. Never in the history of the country has there been such a desire manifested among the adult population for continued education as may be noted to-day. Does it not speak eloquently of ambition to rise above circumstances—that same spirit that we have admired in our Franklins and our Lincolns and the long roll of self-made men whose lives we are proud to recall? And so library extension takes note of adult education, and combining its forces with university extension, realizes that broader movement variously termed home education, popular education and the people's college.
The library gives heed to the future, and thus does not neglect the child. The intelligent work of the children's librarian, supplementing the related work of the teacher, aims to develop the individual talent or dormant resource which finds no chance for expression where children are necessarily treated as masses. And we may never know what society has lost by failure to quicken into life this dormant talent for invention, for art, for literature, for philosophy. "The loss to society of the unearned increment is trivial compared to the loss of the undiscovered resource." Had retarding influences affected half a dozen men whom we could readily name—Morse, Fulton, Stephenson, Edison, Bell, Marconi—we might to-day be without the locomotive, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone—the myriad marvels of electricity that to-day seem commonplaces. What we have actually lost during this great century of scientific development we can never know. Nor must we forget that invention is the result of cumulated knowledge which the fertile brain of man utilizes in new directions, and that the preservation of the knowledge and experience of the centuries is the province of the public library, where all alike may have access to its riches. The ideal democracy is the democracy of knowledge and of learning.
The library endeavors, by applying the traveling library principle to collections of pictures, by means of the illustrated lecture and otherwise, to cultivate among the people an appreciation of the beautiful and artistic that shall ultimately find expression in the home and its surroundings.
The library believes, too, that recreative reading is a legitimate function. We hold, with William Morton Payne, that a sparkling and sprightly story, which may be read in an hour and which will leave the reader with a good conscience and a sense of cheerfulness, has its merits. In this work-a-day world of ours we need a bit of cheer for the hours which ought to be restful as well as resting hours. Library extension is imbued with optimism; its broadening field is educational, sociological, recreative. Unblinded to the evils of the day, its promoters realize inability to amend them except by educational processes affecting all the people. They do not preach the gospel of discontent, but seek realization of conditions which shall bring about contentment and happiness. That, after all, for the welfare of the people, wants need be but few and easily supplied. He who has food, raiment and shelter in reasonable degree, access to the intellectual wealth of the world in public libraries, to the riches created by the master painters and sculptors, found in public galleries and museums, to the untrammeled use of public parks and drives, and the many other universal advantages which are now so increasingly many, need not envy the richest men on earth. Many a millionaire is poorer than the most humble of his employees, for excessive wealth brings its own train of evils to torment its possessor. Commercial success is a legitimate endeavor among men, and thrift is to be commended, but when these degenerate into greed, pity and not envy should be the meed of the man seized with the money disease.
HENRY E. LEGLER.
My opinion of the public library from a workingman's standpoint is, that it is the greatest boon that could possibly be conferred upon him. It places him at once upon the level with the millionaire, the student and the philosopher. It opens for him (whose poverty would otherwise debar him) the vast fields of literature. Here he may wander at will with the master minds of humanity, hand in hand with the great thinkers of the ages, open his mind and heart to the lessons taught by those great leaders of men who have conquered nations and shaped the destinies of the human race. Here he may associate with the greatest, the wisest and the best. There is no limit to the possibilities of possessing knowledge which is power, without money and without price. The public library should be managed in the best interests of the workingman, and the books should be purchased mainly with his welfare in view. The capitalist can buy and own his own books. The workingman cannot do this. The children of the workingman must get from the public library the general books of reference which the business man has in his home. The children of the workingman must have these books in order properly to do their school work and thoroughly understand it. Their teachers require this. The children of the workingman have their schools as well as the library. Their work in the schools and the work in the library go hand in hand, but the workingman himself has only the library for his school and must, of necessity, go there. His schoolroom is the reference room, for the knowledge he gains in that department he can at once put into practical use in any capacity in which he may be employed.
The question arises, having presented those opportunities to the workingman, will he take advantage of them? I answer, he surely will. It is now more than twenty years since I joined a labor organization, the "Stone-cutters' Union" of Minneapolis. Since that time I have always been affiliated with organized workingmen. During all these years the workingman has taken advantage of every opportunity to better the condition of himself, his fellow workman and his employer. He has learned to be more patient, more conservative and more trustworthy. His hours of labor have been shortened, his wages are higher, and labor-saving machinery has made his work lighter. He lives in a better home, his family is better provided for and, best of all, his children are better educated. What has wrought those great changes in the conditions of the workingman? What has enabled him to keep up with the swift march of progress during these many years? I will answer in one word, Education. Just such institutions as the public library have made this possible, and the public library has given the largest share.
JOHN P. BUCKLEY.
What if there were no letters and no books? Think what your state would be in a situation like that! Think what it would be to know nothing, for example, of the way in which American independence had been won, and the federal republic of the United States constructed; nothing of Bunker Hill; nothing of George Washington; except the little, half true and half mistaken, that your fathers could remember, of what their fathers had repeated, of what their fathers had told to them. Think what it would be to have nothing but shadowy traditions of the voyage of Columbus, of the coming of the Mayflower pilgrims, and of all the planting of life in the New World from Old World stocks, like Greek legends of the Argonauts and of the Heraclidae! Think what it would be to know no more of the origins of the English people, their rise and their growth in greatness, than the Romans knew of their Latin beginnings; and to know no more of Rome herself than we might guess from the ruins she has left! Think what it would be to have the whole story of Athens and Greece dropped out of our knowledge, and to be unaware that Marathon was ever fought, or that one like Socrates had ever lived! Think what it would be to have no line from Homer, no thought from Plato, no message from Isaiah, no Sermon on the Mount, nor any parable from the lips of Jesus!
Can you imagine a world intellectually famine-smitten like that—a bookless world—and not shrink with horror from the thought of being condemned to it?
Yet the men and women who take nothing from letters and books are choosing to live as though mankind did actually wallow in the awful darkness of that state from which writing and books have rescued us. For them, it is as if no ship had ever come from the far shores of old Time where their ancestry dwelt; and the interest of existence to them is huddled in the petty space of their own few years, between walls of mist which thicken as impenetrably behind them as before. How can life be worth living on such terms as that? How can man or woman be content with so little, when so much is offered?
J. N. LARNED.
The bookless homes of the well-to-do people are familiar to all. Inside those walls no books are to be found but a few gift books, chosen for their bindings rather than their contents, and perhaps others which some agent has pressed upon them. What can be done to stimulate reading in these homes? Ten-cent magazines and cheap stories are devoured by mother and daughters to the destruction of sane thoughts and connected ideas. The man of the house each day reads his newspaper, containing accounts of crimes, accidents and the funny paper. Happily, it also contains articles of travel, invention and discovery, otherwise his brain would be weakened.
Young people come from these bookless homes to college each year, showing great confusion of ideas, vacuity of mind and utter lack of information. They need us, need libraries, need the force of the state to help them. Ninety-four per cent of our young people never get into college. Ninety per cent, it is said, never go to school after they have passed the age of fourteen years.
The contribution of the library is to elevate the standard of the town. Books depicting noble, earnest, well-meaning lives will cause the social standard to progress, and other standards with it.
OREGON LIBRARY COMMISSION.
A library is an essential part of a broad system of education, and a community should think it as discreditable to be without a well-conducted free public library as to be without a good school. If it is the duty of the state to give each future citizen an opportunity to learn to read, it is equally its duty to give each citizen an opportunity to use that power wisely for himself and the state. Wholesome literature can be furnished to all the readers in a community at a fraction of the cost necessary to teach them to read, and the power to read may then become a means to a life-long education.
The books that a boy reads for pleasure do more to determine his ideals and shape his character than the text-books he studies in the schools. Bad and indifferent literature is now so common that the boys will have some sort of reading. If they have a good public library they will read wholesome books and learn to admire Washington, Lincoln and other great men. Without a library many of them will gloat over the exploits of depraved men and women, and their earliest ambitions will be tainted.
Each town needs a library to furnish more practice in reading for the little folks in school; it needs it to give the boys and girls who have learned to read a taste for wholesome literature that informs and inspires; it needs it as a center for an intellectual and spiritual activity that shall leaven the whole community and make healthful and inspiring themes the burden of the common thought—substituting, by natural methods, clean conversation and literature for petty gossip, scandal and oral and printed teachings in vice.
F. A. HUTCHINS.
"In Madison, N. J., a bird club of boys met twice a week, once for study and once for an expedition, and found the library's resources on this topic to be of interest and value. How to utilize profitably the activities of a 'gang' of boys is worth much planning. One librarian is reported to have started a chair-caning class to interest restless boys; another had a museum of flowers and insects, another conducted a branch of the flower mission. Not less interesting, and perhaps more instructive, is a series of talks on Indian legends accompanied by hunting expeditions for the half-buried implements and relics found in almost every meadow in some parts of the country. Boys are eager to learn about natural history and natural science, and they will be encouraged at the public library."
IRENE VAN KLEECK.
Get good books; give them a home attractive to readers of good books; name a friend of good books as mistress of this home—and you have a library; all share in its support and all get pleasure and profit from it if they will; without divisions religious, politic or social, it unites all in the pursuit of high pleasure and sound learning, and gives that common interest in a common concern which is the basis of all local pride.
If you have rightly read a book, that book is yours.
You cannot always choose your companions; you can always choose your books. You can, if you will, spend a few minutes every day with the best and wisest men and women the world has ever known.
The people you have known, the things you have said and done, and the books you have read, all these are now a part of you.
You like yourself better when you are with people who are well-bred and clever; you respect yourself more when you are reading a bright and wholesome book, for you are then in the company of the wise.
J. C. DANA.
After the church and the school, the free public library is the most effective influence for good in America. The moral, mental and material benefits to be derived from a carefully selected collection of good books, free for the use of all the people, cannot be overestimated. No community can afford to be without a library.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
The opportunity is at hand to answer this question. A generous gift is offered, shall we accept it? We can have —— dollars for a public use, if we will promise to support the use to which this money is dedicated. Shall —— have a free public library? It is up to us, her citizens.
We have passed the stage of a country town and are ranked and cataloged as a modern, progressive city, enjoying many of the advantages of the larger cities. Why is this true? Because the progressive spirit and sentiment have always triumphed in her onward march. Because, inspired by a public spirit, her people have joined hands, and shoulder to shoulder labored for all that pertains to religious, moral, social, industrial, educational and material development. Let us keep marching on.
Many towns in the state, nearly all those in the counties surrounding us, are accepting Carnegie gifts for libraries. Will it not humiliate and degrade us in the eyes of the people of the state if we decree against a public library? Let us not detract from our well deserved and established reputation for progressiveness by such a mistake. We appeal to public spirit; to pride of city; to pride of home, and urge you to register your vote in favor of this enterprise.
IOWA LIBRARY COMMISSION.
The system of free public libraries now being established in this country is the most important development of modern times. The library is a center from which radiates an ever widening influence for the enlightenment, the uplift, the advancement of the community.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.
The greatest boon that the system of public schools, or the college, or the university, can confer upon any boy or girl is to teach him or her to use a great collection of literature, to teach them how to read; and to plant within their hearts an irresistible impulse and an indestructible delight in so doing. What profits it a man to learn how to read if he does not read? For what purpose is the mind trained and developed by the process of systematic study in the schools if it is not inspired to go farther into the realms of knowledge? Is it a rational procedure for one, upon the completion of his course of training, to discontinue all further investigation and to lay aside what little love for learning and literature and philosophy and science that may have been aroused in his bosom by school or college inspirations? And how is this advancing and widening of one's horizon by means of the accumulated stores of knowledge gathered by the previous generations of the world's strong thinkers and beautiful writers to be secured, other than by a collection of good books, by a library?
C. C. THACH.
Have our missionary societies access to Bliss's "Encyclopedia of Missions," or to Dennis's great "Missions and Christian Progress"? Do our Bible students know Moulton's "Literary Study of the Bible"?—a book so illuminating as to seem almost itself inspired. How many of the members of the young people's societies of our churches have access to a standard concordance, Bible dictionary, or a dictionary of sects and doctrines? Has the W. C. T. U. the reports of the Committee of Fifty, that great committee of master minds, who made exhaustive investigation and authoritative reports on the various aspects of the liquor question? Have the Masons a history of free-masonry? Has the Shakespeare Club books on Shakespeare, and is the Political Equality Club acquainted with standard works on political science and the franchise? Who has a good "Cyclopedia of Quotations," or a "Reader's Handbook," where we can satisfy our curiosity regarding allusions to "Fair Rosamond," "Apples of Hesperia," "Atlantis" and "Captain Cuttle"?
If we were to see a farmer laboriously cutting his wheat with a scythe, tying it into bundles by hand, and then carrying the bundles on his back to the barn, we would think he was crazy. Is it not as foolish, however, for us in our study work to do without the suitable tools and helps which we might have in a public library?
HOLLEY (N. Y.) STANDARD.
The proposition that only an enlightened and an intelligent people can make self-government a success is so self-evident as to make argument but a vain repetition of empty words. And yet we know that the public school side of our system of free public education is as yet only able to secure five years' schooling for the average child in this country—an all too narrow portal through which to enter upon successful citizenship. There is an imperative demand, then, for the establishment and the development and for the wise administration of that other branch of our system of free public education which we know as the public library.
We must understand clearly that the beneficent result of this system of education is just as possible to the son of the peasant as to the son of the president, is just as helpful to the blacksmith as to the barrister, to the farmer as to the philosopher; and in its possibilities and in its helpfulness is a constant blessing to all and through all, and is needed by all alike.
The most worthy mind, that which is of most value to the world, is the well-informed mind which is public and large. Only through the development of such, both as leaders and as followers, can all classes be brought into an understanding of each other, can we preserve true republican equality, can we avoid that insulation and seclusion which are unwholesome and unworthy of true American manhood. The state has no resources at all comparable with its citizens. A man is worth to himself just what he is capable of enjoying, and he is worth to the state just what he is capable of imparting. These form an exact and true measure of every man. The greatest positive strength and value, therefore, must always be associated with the greatest positive and practical development of every faculty and power.
This, then, is the true basis of taxation for public libraries. Such a tax is subject to all the canons of usual taxation, and may be defended and must be defended upon precisely the same grounds as we defend the tax for the public schools.
JAMES HULME CANFIELD.
I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. They never pauperize. They reach the aspiring, and open to these the chief treasures of the world—those stored up in books. A taste for reading drives out lower tastes.
Besides this, I believe good fiction one of the most beneficial reliefs to the monotonous lives of the poor. For these and other reasons I prefer the free public library to most if not any other agencies for the happiness and improvement of a community.
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
Libraries are established that they may gather together the best of the fruits of the tree of human speech, spread them before men in all liberality and invite all to enjoy them. The schools are in part established that they may tell the young how to enjoy this feast. They do this. They teach the young to read. They put them in touch with words and phrases; they point out to them the delectable mountains of human thought and action, and then let them go. It is to be lamented that they go so soon. At twelve, at thirteen, at fourteen at the most, these young men and women, whose lives could be so broadened, sweetened, mellowed, humanized by a few years' daily contact with the wisest, noblest, wittiest of our kind as their own words portray them—at this early age, when reading has hardly begun, they leave school, and they leave almost all of the best reading at the same time. If, now, you can bring these young citizens into sympathy with the books the libraries would persuade them to read; if you can impress upon them the reading habit; then the libraries can supplement your good work; will rejoice in empty shelves; will feel that they are not in vain; and the coming generations will delight, one and all, in that which good books can give; will speak more plainly; will think more clearly; will be less often led astray by false prophets of every kind; will see that all men are of the one country of humanity; and will—to sum it all—be better citizens of a good state.
I believe you will find there is something yet to do in reading in which the library can be of help. Reading comes by practice. The practice which a pupil gets during school hours does not make him a quick and skilful reader. There is not enough of it. If you encourage the reading habit, and lead that habit, as you easily can, along good lines, your pupils will gain much, simply in knowledge of words, in ability to get the meaning out of print, even though we say nothing of the help their reading will give them in other ways.
J. C. DANA.
When we consider how much the education that is continued after schooltime depends upon the right use of books, we can hardly be too emphatic in asserting that something of that use should be learned in the school. Yet almost nothing of the sort really is learned. The average student in high school does not know the difference between a table of contents and an index, does not know what a concordance is, does not know how to find what he wants in an encyclopedia, does not even know that a dictionary has many other uses besides that of supplying definitions. Still more pitiful is his naïve assumption that a book is a book, and that what book it is does not particularly matter. It is the commonest of all experiences to hear a student say that he has got a given statement from a book, and to find him quite incapable of naming the book. That the source of information, as long as that information is printed somewhere, should be of any consequence, is quite surprising to him, and still more the suggestion that it is also his duty to have some sort of an opinion concerning the value and credibility of the authority he thus blindly quotes. If the school library, and the instruction given in connection with it, should do no more than impress these two elementary principles upon the minds of the whole student body, it would go far towards accounting for itself as an educational means. That it may, and should, do much more than this is the proposition that we have sought to maintain, and we do not see how its essential reasonableness may be gainsaid.
DIAL, Feb. 1, 1906.
The library supplies information for mechanics and workingmen of every class. Just as the system of apprenticeship declines and employers require trained helpers, must the usefulness of the library increase.
Library work offers great opportunity for philanthropy, and philanthropy of the higher form, because its work is preventive, rather than positive. It anticipates evil by substituting the antidote beforehand. It fosters the love of what is good and uplifting before low tastes have become a chronic propensity. Pleasure in such books as the library would furnish to young readers will interest the mind and occupy the thoughts exclusive of those evil practices invited by the open door of idleness. The children generally come of their own free will; they are influenced silently, unconsciously to themselves; they feel themselves welcome, loved, respected. Self-respect, the mighty power to lift and keep erect, is fostered and developed.
The work of the library is for civic education and the making of good citizens, a form of patriotism made imperative for the millions of foreigners coming yearly to our shores.
The public library offers common ground to all. There are no social lines to bar the entrance; the doors open at every touch, if only the simple etiquette of quiet, earnest bearing is observed. No creeds are to be subscribed to, the rich and poor meet together in absolute independence. Even the aristocracy of intellect does not count in the people's university. The ideal public library realizes the true spirit of democracy.
WALLER IRENE BULLOCK.
In more than one locality the local public library has come to be recognized as the natural local center of the community, around which revolve the local studies, the local industries, and all the various local interests of the town or village. Here, for instance, is the home of the local historical society; here also is the home of the local camera club; of the natural history society; of the study club and debating societies. Why is this? It is because those in charge of the library have so thoroughly realized the fact that in a community the interests of all are the interests of each, and that while this is true of other institutions as related to each other, yet there is no one of them on which the lines of interest so invariably converge from all the others—as "all roads lead to Rome."
W. E. FOSTER.
The very presence of a public library has a meaning and exerts a power for good. Especially is this the case when this presence is made evident by a separate and worthy building. The building which stands for books, for knowledge, for the records of human experience; a house not just like other houses but with marks of permanence, dignity and grace, and evidently so contrived as to call the people in and to distribute freely to them these wise and entertaining books, must be a positive influence in itself.
The children know it for what it is. Old and young, rich and poor, recognize its meaning. It embodies the great idea of a man learning and growing by his association with the wisdom and experience of other men. It is the great clearing house of human intelligence where knowledge is mutually exchanged and every one can learn what the rest know. It tells the lowest and meanest and most ignorant that here is the opportunity open to everybody to know, and therefore that books are a common concern of the village, by which it sets great store.
If, on the other hand, the public library is neglected, or starved with excessive thrift, or if it is crowded into a corner, opened at rare intervals and approached with difficulty, all this influence is lost.
The increase of reading tends to a general broadening of life. Human nature is selfish so long as the man is isolated, for he is controlled by his impulses and passions, and guided by his own narrow ideas.
Our views of life are moulded by reading. The records are here, describing lands and people we have never seen, centuries in which we have not lived, men who passed off the stage in past ages. The discoveries of science, the developments of workmanship, the growth of civilization; thought, wit, fancy, feeling, which has appealed to the world, and that study, the study of man, is illustrated in infinitely diverse forms of story and song: all these are in books and they give us the advantage of wide horizons and enlarged acquaintance with life. A community leavened with such influences, where people generally understand, where all grow up from their youth to know, to think, to communicate and to have common acquaintance with the past and the distance and with the secrets of nature, and all the many ways of doing things, is a stronger, happier and more prosperous community because of that very fact, and the books are plainly a means to so desirable an end.
W. R. EASTMAN.
As the children have grown up since our library was established, it is wonderful how their demands for books have widened. A boy in his casual reading finds some particular branch of study, in science, mechanics, art or politics, which arouses a sleeping instinct. Straightway he forsakes his stories and his plays and goes to the library to satisfy his new desires. Year by year the demand upon the library has broadened and books have been added treating of electricity, the X-ray, wireless telegraphy, mending bicycles, telephones, bee-keeping, care of pet animals, political, social and economic questions, and still the books do not meet all demands. New subjects are called for and new books must be bought.
BEAVER DAM ARGUS.
Side by side in the wilderness, our forefathers planted the church and the school; and on these two supports the nation has stood firm and grown great. But a tripod is necessary for stable equilibrium. As the country has grown, its industrial, economic and political problems have grown more numerous and more complex, and the nation required a broader base of intelligence and morality for its security and perpetuity. The third support for a wider and higher national life has been found in the public library, which co-operating with the school, doubles the value of the education the child receives in school and further incites and furnishes him with facilities for doing so. It also enables the adult to make up for the opportunities he neglected or, more often, did not have in early life. It does this, too, at an expense to the community of not more than one tenth of the cost per capita of school education.
F. M. CRUNDEN.
This is the fundamental matter after all—money. Whence shall the funds come? The church plan, the club plan—all are dependent on the spasmodic and irregular support that results from the labors of a soliciting committee using persuasive arguments with business men and others. There are certain expenses that are absolutely essential—books first and most, a room for which, probably, rent must be paid (though some generous citizen may give the use of it), periodicals to be subscribed for, heat, light, table, chairs, etc., besides the most important feature of the whole scheme—the librarian.
The wisest form of organization is the tax-supported free public library. Is it desirable that the small town shall in its beginning in library matters attempt at once to secure a municipal tax to found and maintain a free public library under the state law? There are those who believe this is the only way to make a beginning. Eventually, if not in the beginning, the free public library on a rate or tax-supported basis is the most desirable form of library organization.
ALICE S. TYLER.
1 Such a tax puts the library on the right basis as a public institution. The purpose of the library is the same as that of the school—public education, the enlargement and enrichment of the intellectual life of the community—and it should, therefore, be supported on the same grounds and by the same methods as the school.
2 The library supported by local taxation ceases to be a charity, contributed by the few to the many, and becomes the right and property of all. When I use a library supported by private gifts, I am accepting a favor; when I use a library supported by public tax, I am using what is mine by right. The tax thus promotes a feeling of independence and self-respect in the library's patrons.
3 Taxation is the easiest and fairest way to raise the needed money. Five hundred dollars raised by entertainments, subscriptions, sales, etc., means a great burden of labor, care and expense to a few, and usually to net that sum a very much larger sum must be expended, while $500 spread on the tax rolls would hardly be felt even by the largest taxpayer.
4 It adds dignity to the library and increases the respect in which it is held. To be made each year an object of charity for which private subscriptions are solicited and rummage sales held tends to bring it into contempt and greatly lowers its influence in the community.
5 A stated tax, yielding a known and fixed income, enables the trustees to pursue a consistent and stable plan for library development, such as is impossible where the income is dependent on fluctuating impulse or effort.
6 There is no village tax levied from which the people can get so large a return for so little money. A $500 tax in a village of 3,000 people is equivalent to about 16 cents for each resident. For this insignificant sum each person in the village is offered a pleasant reading room, as good as that supplied by many a club, a dozen or more of the best periodicals, a collection of books such as only a very few of the more wealthy can possess as individuals, and about $200 worth of new books to read every year.
NEW YORK LIBRARIES.
First—A free public library under municipal control has a regular, known income, which increases with the growth of the municipality.
Second—It is not dependent solely upon subscriptions, contributions and the proceeds of entertainments arranged for its benefit.
Third—With an income that is certain, the trustees are able to make plans for the future, and more economically administer the affairs of the library.
Fourth—A municipally-controlled library is owned by the people, and experience has demonstrated that they take a much greater interest in an institution belonging to them.
Fifth—Public libraries supplement the work of the public schools. "Reading maketh a full man," wrote Lord Bacon; and Thomas Carlyle thus expressed the same idea: "The true university of these days is a collection of books." Libraries, like the schools, should be supported by the people.
Sixth—The library is not a charity; neither should it be regarded as a luxury, but rather as a necessity, and be maintained in the same manner that the schools, parks, fire departments and public roads are maintained—through the tax levy.
Seventh—Where all contribute the burden is not felt; each aiding according to his ability.
Eighth—Permanency is acquired for the library, and many valuable governmental, state and other publications may be obtained without cost, a privilege that is often denied to subscription libraries.
Ninth—The trustees and librarian are not hampered in their work by inability to collect subscriptions or the failure of an entertainment to return a profit.
Tenth—There is a more efficient and closer co-operation with the public schools and other municipal institutions and interests.
Eleventh—Public ownership secures more democratic service and broadness in administration.
Finally—All are interested in a Free Public Library, and in an emergency there will be a more generous response to an appeal for financial assistance.
NEW JERSEY PUBLIC LIBRARY COMMISSION.
Foreign Book Lists
List of selected German books. 50c.
List of Hungarian books. 15c.
List of French books. 25c.
List of French fiction. 5c.
List of Norwegian and Danish books. 25c.
Library Tracts (5c. each)
2 How to start a public library, by Dr. G. E. Wire.
3 Traveling libraries, by F. A. Hutchins.
4 Library rooms and buildings, by C. C. Soule.
5 Notes from the art section of a library, by C. A. Cutter.
8 A village library, by Mary Anna Tarbell.
9 Training for librarianship.
10 Why do we need a public library? Material for a library campaign, by Chalmers Hadley.
Library Handbooks (15c each)
1 Essentials in library administration, by L. E. Stearns.
2 Cataloging for small libraries, by Theresa Hitchler.
3 Management of traveling libraries, by Edna D. Bullock.
4 Aids in book selection, by Alice B. Kroeger.
5 Binding for small libraries.
6 Mending and repair of books, by Margaret W. Browne.
Card Publications
1 Catalog cards for current periodical publications.
2 —for various sets of periodicals and for books of composite authorship.
3 —for current books in English and American history, with annotations.
4 —for current bibliographical publications.
5 —for photo-reproductions of modern language texts before 1600 in American college libraries.