In the following group have been included papers and
addresses largely by publicists or educators interested in
libraries from the general civic standpoint, and affected by
the general trend toward what has been termed here
"socialization." They have been loosely arranged in three
groups--general ideas on the field, function and
possibilities of the library, papers on books and their
uses, as affected or promoted by the library, and general
addresses, chiefly at the opening of library buildings.
Within these groups they are given in general in their
chronological order, although with some exceptions whose
purpose will be self evident. Through them all runs the
thread of consciousness that service to the community must
be the primary object of the library, although the breadth
and extent of that service, as it was destined later to grow
and develop is not generally realized and in some cases
doubtless would have been deprecated by the writers or
speakers, could they have foreseen it. But in all these
pronouncements we may clearly see the dawning light of a new
library day.
THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN
AMERICA AND ITS TRUE FUNCTION IN THE COMMUNITY
This comprehensive sketch, by Professor Tyler of Cornell
University, forms part of an address delivered at the
dedication of the Sage Library, at West Bay City, Michigan,
Jan. 16, 1884.
Moses Coit Tyler was born in Griswold, Conn., Aug. 2, 1835
and graduated at Yale in 1857. He was professor of English
at Michigan University in 1867-81 and from the latter year
to his death, Dec. 28, 1900, held the chair of American
History at Cornell.
In this address, Prof. Tyler has added to his equipment as a
philosophical historian his personal knowledge and
experience of the service that a properly administered
collection of books may render to a community.
Looking over the entire course of American society, from its rough and
hardy beginning, in the first years of the 17th century, I find six
distinct stages of development with reference to the possession and use
of books by the people. The first stage is that of private libraries;
the second is that of special institutional libraries, like those of
colleges and other learned corporations, and intended for a limited and
rather scholastic class in the community; the third is that of
association or joint stock libraries, _i.e._, libraries of a more
miscellaneous and general character, but for the use only of those whose
names are on the subscription list; the fourth is that of common school
libraries; the fifth is that of endowed libraries, _i.e._, public
libraries founded and sustained entirely by private endowment and thrown
open to the public without any cost whatever to the public; and finally,
the sixth is that of free public libraries created, it may be, by
private benefaction, but sustained in part at least at the public cost,
_i.e._, uniting the two elements of private help and public selfhelp,
and cherished by the public only as people will cherish that which costs
them something, and of which they have some sense of real ownership.
But before proceeding to inspect these successive forms of library
evolution, the fact should be distinctly brought out as applicable to
them all, that the American people started on their career in this
country with an uncommon interest in books; and say what one will about
American philistinism and American devotion to the practical, this
people have always retained that ancient and primitive homage for books.
To an extent, I think, unapproached elsewhere, they are, and they always
have been, a bookish people. In some other nations there is,
undoubtedly, a larger leisurely class; and among persons of that class
there is a profounder and more extensive contact with books than is the
case with us. But while among most other nations, the craving for books
is the propensity of one class, with us it may be fairly described as
the propensity of all classes. A certain tincture of bookishness has
pervaded the American people from the beginning. Perhaps the most
decided quality of American civilization has been its effort to unite
the practical with the ideal; its passion for material results ennobled
by the intellectual and the spiritual; its fine reverence for
studiousness, even amid the persistent fury of dollar-hunting.
And not only was this bookish trait visible in our colonial infancy but
it may be said to have had an ante-natal origin. The two Englishmen who
in the latter half of the 16th century did most to make possible the
birth of American civilization in the first half of the 17th, were Sir
Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh; and both were men possessed by
this large zest for ideas as well as for deeds; both were contemplative
men as well as active men. The last glimpse that any surviving mortal
had of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, before his ship went down in the sea, was
of that stern hero sitting calmly on the deck, with a book in his hand,
cheering his companions by telling them that heaven is as near by water
as by land; and the last labor of Sir Walter Raleigh, before his
judicial murder in the Tower, was to write one of the learnedest and
stateliest books to be met with in the literature of modern men.
And this flavor of bookishness which belonged to these two great
pioneers and martyrs of American colonization, seems to have passed on
to the men who successfully executed the grand project in which they had
failed. When you run your eyes along the sturdy list of the great
colony-founders of the 17th century--the men who carried out the fierce
task of conveying English civilization across the Atlantic, and of
making it take root and live in this wild soil--Captain John Smith, and
William Bradford, and Winslow, and Robert Cushman, and the Winthrops,
and Dudley, and Hooker, and Davenport, and Roger Williams, and William
Penn, you will find them all, in some special sense, lovers of books,
collectors of books, readers of books, even writers of books.
And what is true of the leaders of that great act of national
transmigration is true also of the men of less note who followed in it.
The first American immigrants were reading immigrants--immigrants who
brought in their hands not only axes and shovels, but books. Their
coming hither was due to the restlessness inflicted by the possession of
ideas. Books were to them a necessary part of the outfit for the voyage
and the settlement. And so rare and so precious were books in those days
that they were cherished as family treasures, and handed down as
heirlooms; nay, they were so dealt with in wills and in contracts as if
they rose almost to the dignity of real estate. In fact, in those days,
the possession of an unusual number of books, with the reputation of
using them, constituted a sort of patent of gentility, and seemed to
bridge the chasm between the most widely separated classes in society;
as when, in 1724, a young mechanic, named Benjamin Franklin, arriving in
New York on a sloop from Newport, is invited to the house of the
Governor of New York and is honored by him with a long and friendly
interview, for no other reason than that the captain of the sloop had
told the governor of a lad on his vessel who had with him "a great many
books." "The governor received me," says Franklin in his autobiography
"with great civility, showed me his library, which was a considerable
one, and we had a good deal of conversation relative to books and
authors. This was the second governor who had done me the honor to take
notice of me, and for a poor boy, like me, it was very pleasing." So I
think I am justified in saying that we started on our career as a people
with this underlying intellectual quality--a pretty general respect for
books, love for them, habit of using them; and this is the impelling
moral force which prompts to the several efforts which society has made
for providing itself with books. Now, the first stage in the process of
library evolution--and I have called it that of private libraries--was
the prevailing condition of the American colonies during the whole of
the 17th century and the first third of the 18th. This is the picture:
Everywhere books, but few, costly, portly, solemn, revered, read over
and over again; every respectable family, however poor, having at least
a few hereditary treasures in the form of books, as in that of silver
and choice furniture; and here and there up and down the colonies, an
occasional luminous spot, drawing to itself the wide-eyed wonder of the
surrounding inhabitants, the seat of a great private library, belonging
to some country gentleman, or clergyman, or publicist, like that of
Colonel William Bird, of Westover, or of the Reverend James Blair, of
Williamsburg, or of Dr. Cotton Mather, of Boston, or of James Logan, of
Philadelphia, or of Cadwallader Colden, of New York.
This is the first stage of library evolution. And, of course, it has its
pleasant aspects; but surely there is here no adequate provision for the
intellectual wants of the entire community. Very few persons in any
community are rich enough to buy and own all the books they ought to
have access to; and the existence of great private libraries in a few
wealthy households can no more supply this general need of books than
the great private dinners which are given in the same households can
keep the entire community from going hungry.
Accordingly, the second stage in the evolution of libraries is away
from mere private ownership and use, and is toward complete public
ownership and use; but it stops far this side of it; it is the stage of
special scholastic libraries, collected by colleges and other learned
corporations, and intended for the particular use of the learned
class--students, investigators, and specialists. The earliest library of
that sort ever formed in this country was begun at Harvard College in
1638; near the close of the 17th century, another was begun at William
and Mary College, and still another at Yale; thenceforward, and
especially during the past eighty years, such libraries have been
multiplying in the land, so that at the present moment there are more
than three hundred of them, and a few of them are now really vast
library collections. The value of these libraries--who can doubt? Yet
their direct value is only for a class; they are scholars' libraries,
not people's libraries. This will not suffice; society cannot rest
satisfied, and will not rest satisfied until everywhere good books for
all are placed within the reach of all. The complete popularization of
books is the goal.
So we come to the third stage of library evolution--that of libraries
gathered and controlled by voluntary associations of people, _e.g._,
joint stock associations, but of course for the use only of those who
subscribe to them and share in the expense.
Here we have a natural step forward; a goodly step; a step in the right
direction, but still not far enough. We shall all agree that this is the
strong and hearty modern method of doing difficult things--the method of
clubbing together to do something; it is self-reliant, social,
cooperative, mutually, helpful, What the individual cannot do alone a
club of individuals can do together. Thus the hardest and grandest
achievements of our time have been brought about--vast railroads, vast
manufacturing and commercial enterprises. And so men and women, who
could not singly get the books they wanted, have joined forces and have
got them by combination.
It is a notable fact, however, that this third stage of library
evolution was not reached until more than a hundred years after the
first colonies had been settled.
Many of you, doubtless, in wandering about Philadelphia--perhaps during
our great centennial visit to that city--may have noticed the venerable
building of the Philadelphia Library company, and in the walls of it an
old tablet with this inscription: "Be it remembered in honor of the
Philadelphia youth (then chiefly artificers) that, in 1731, they
cheerfully, at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, one of their number,
instituted the Philadelphia Library, which though small at first, is
become highly valuable and extensively useful, and which the walls of
this building are now destined to contain and preserve." Now, in
reality, that year 1731, when that first subscription library was
started in America, begins a new epoch in the intellectual life of the
American people, the epoch of systematic cooperation for the procurement
by the people of the great intellectual and spiritual boon of books.
Immense results have followed from that example set in 1731. Therefore,
let us stop a moment longer, and listen to Benjamin Franklin's own
account of the way in which he came to think of that capital project.
"At the time I established myself in Pennsylvania, there was not a good
bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston.
Those who loved reading were obliged to send for their books from
England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had left the
alehouse, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in. I
proposed that we should all of us bring our books to that room; where
they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a
common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he wished
to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented
us. Finding the advantage of this little collection, I proposed to
render the benefit from the books more common by commencing a public
subscription library. I drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would
be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer to put the whole in form of
articles of agreement to be subscribed; by which each subscriber engaged
to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of the books and an
annual contribution for increasing them. So few were the readers at that
time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not
able with great industry to find more than fifty persons, mostly young
tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose forty shillings each and
ten shillings per annum. With this little fund we began. The books were
imported; the library was opened one day in the week for lending them to
the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if
not duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was
imitated by other towns and in other provinces. The libraries were
augmented by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people,
having no public amusements to divert their attention from study, became
better acquainted with books; and in a few years were observed by
strangers to be better instructed, and more intelligent, than people of
the same rank generally are in other countries."
I think you will agree with me that this is a very striking bit of
testimony, too much so to permit us to hurry past it. Note these few
things about it.
In the first place, that device of Franklin's, started in 1731--what
does it really signify in our history? It signifies this. It signifies a
new departure for mankind--the application of the democratic spirit to
the distribution of intellectual advantages. These things called
books--these bewitched and bewitching fabrics of paper and ink, which
somehow contain the accumulated thought of all nations and of all
centuries, and can communicate to us the noblest pleasures and the most
godlike powers--these potent things, in all the ages before, had been
accessible only to some few fortunate human beings--to a privileged
class--to rich men who wished them--to scholars who could win their way
to them--in short, to an aristocracy of intellectual privileges. But in
1731, by that modest device of Benjamin Franklin, the democratic
spirit--the modern humane spirit--the spirit which in its true nature is
a levelling spirit only in this grand sense that it levels upward and
not downward, and raises the general average of human intelligence and
felicity--this benign and mighty democratic spirit, I say, which was
then marching with gentle but invincible footsteps along all avenues and
pathways of modern life, and was laying its miraculous touch on church
and state, on kings and priests and peasants, on the laws and law-makers
and law-breakers, on all the old activities of society, on the old
adjustments of human relations, that spirit then began to touch this
relation also, the relation of man to the superb and royal realm of
books. And the first effect of that touch was what? It was enlargement,
liberalization, extension of intellectual opportunity for man simply as
man. Hitherto books had been the privilege of the privileged class. In
effect, Franklin says: They shall be so no more. In this year 1731 I set
agoing a device concerning books which shall abolish the privileged
class by making all classes privileged, and shall finally result in
placing the blessings of books within the reach of all.
But, in the second place, in that year 1731, who was Franklin who did
all that, and who were the persons who helped to do it? He and they were
young men; obscure men, poor men, laboring men; mechanics and tradesmen
of the town where they lived; young men just getting a start in the
world. So this new era in the brain life of the American people had its
beginning with such as they were. Who of us, therefore, however modest
be our lot in life, has any right to say to himself, "I am not in
position to do anything for the advancement of my race"? Nay; my
brother, think of young Ben Franklin, the printer, and his 50 brother
mechanics; remember what they accomplished; and do not despair of being
useful in your time also. And in the third place, this movement came
from those young men associated together in a social debating club. It
was their experience in the actual discussion of the problems of human
thought which made them feel the need of books and suggested this great
measure for popularizing books: a fact which fits in well with Mr.
Sage's idea of blending the two things together here; of giving
perpetual house-room and hospitality to a debating club, here, in the
very midst of this library. And now the fourth point is, that the plan
started by Franklin and those other young mechanics in Philadelphia, in
1731, the plan of joint-stock library associations, worked so well there
that, as Franklin tells, it was taken up in other provinces. Naturally,
the new plan was adopted first in the towns where it was heard of
first--the towns nearest to Philadelphia. But before many years, the
news of it had travelled far, to the southward and the northward, and
whether consciously or unconsciously the model set up in Philadelphia,
was imitated, with more or less closeness, in scores of places far away.
One curious example springs up in South Carolina. It is in the
Georgetown district, then given to the growth of indigo. A number of the
planters came together and formed the Winyaw Indigo Society. Their chief
business was to have a pleasant time together and talk indigo; they paid
their initiation fees in indigo; they paid their annual dues in indigo;
and presently they found their treasury so full and overflowing with
indigo, that they resolved to devote their surplus in part to the
formation of the Indigo Society Library. Then, too, at about the same
time in Charleston, seventeen young men, of very limited means, desirous
of seeing the best and freshest English magazines, formed a club for
that purpose, and started with a fund of ten pounds sterling, not
venturing at first to hope to be able to purchase books also. Soon,
however, their plan grew and took in books; and from this small
beginning arose the great "Library Society" of Charleston, which has
ministered to the pleasure and benefit of the people of that place for
nearly a century and a half.
But the Philadelphia plan travelled northward as well as southward. In
1747, at Newport, Rhode Island, was formed, also out of a discussion
club, the famous Redwood Library, which lives and flourishes still. In
1753 the Providence Library was started on the same general plan; in
1754, the New York Society Library; in 1760, the Social Library at
Salem, Massachusetts; in 1763, similar libraries at Lancaster and at
Portland, Maine; in 1753, a similar one at Hingham; and so on throughout
the country.
One of the most curious of these joint-stock library associations was
one formed in 1751 in three parishes in the towns of York and Kittery,
Maine, and called the "Revolving Library." It was not a circulating
library--that being the name of a library from which the books circulate
singly and in units; but it was called a "revolving library" because the
entire library was to revolve, in bulk, on its own axes, in an orbit
including the parsonages of the three parishes embraced in the scheme.
And thus this library began to revolve from parsonage to parsonage more
than 130 years ago; and it has been revolving ever since, occasionally
encountering some queer experiences, as when, about 15 years ago, it was
found by the new pastor of Kittery Point in the garret of the parsonage,
"dumped down on the attic floor like a load of coal," the wife of the
former incumbent having had a prejudice against books for sanitary
reasons, "considering them unhealthy, and so being unwilling to have
them in any living room" where their presence might communicate diseases
to the family.
This, of course, is a rather eccentric specimen of the class of
libraries now under view. A very good normal example of the class is
furnished us by the social library of Castine, Maine, organized in 1801;
and its articles of association I desire to read to you as exhibiting
the scope and spirit of this whole movement for supplying the public
with books through jointstock companies. The articles of association are
as follows: "It is proposed by the persons whose names are here
subjoined to establish a social library in this town. It is greatly to
be lamented that excellent abilities are not unfrequently doomed to
obscurity by reason of poverty; that the rich purchase almost everything
but books; and that reading has become so unfashionable an amusement in
what we are pleased to call this enlightened age and country. To remedy
these evils; to excite a fondness for books; to afford the most rational
and profitable amusement; to prevent idleness and immorality; and to
promote the diffusion of useful knowledge, piety, and virtue, at an
expense which small pecuniary abilities can afford, we are induced to
associate for the above purposes; and each agrees to pay for the number
of shares owned, and annexed to his name at $5 per share."
The first public library in the north-west was established by an
association formed at Marietta, Ohio, in 1796. Then followed similar
libraries at Cincinnati, and at Ames, Athens County. The latter, which
was formed as early as 1802, had a curious origin. It was popularly
known as the "Coon-skin Library." The hardy pioneers of that township of
Ames met together, it seems, to consider the subject of roads; and,
having considered it, they proceeded to consider also the subject of
books--a fine illustration, I think, of the blending of the practical
and the ideal in the American character and in American civilization.
Here were these sturdy pioneers projecting a public library even before
they had got their public roads cut out and put in order. What is called
money hardly existed among them; but they knew how to shoot bears and to
catch coons and to take their skins, and these skins could be sent to
Boston and sold for cash, and the money invested in books. This
accordingly was done. The noted politician, Thomas Ewing, then a boy at
Ames, gives this account of the affair: "All my accumulated wealth, ten
coon-skins, went into the fund," the total amount of which proved to be
about $100. "Squire Sam Brown, of Sunday Creek, who was going to Boston,
was charged with the purchase. After an absence of many weeks, he
brought the books to Capt. Ben Brown's, in a sack on a pack-horse. I was
present at the untying of the sack and pouring out of the treasures.
There were about 60 volumes, I think, and well selected; the library of
the Vatican was nothing to it, and there never was a library better
read. This, with occasional additions, furnished me with reading while I
remained at home."
That is the stuff of which strong men are made, and strong communities,
and mighty nations. And what was done at Marietta, and at Cincinnati,
and at Ames, was done in a multitude of other towns all over the
north-west. At Vincennes, Indiana, a library was started by similar
means in 1807; and one of the founders was Gen. Wm. Henry Harrison, the
hero of Tippecanoe and hard cider. That was the first public library
established in Indiana.
So, too, in Michigan, far back in its territorial days, similar
libraries were formed, especially that of the Young Men's Society of
Detroit. But in Michigan, by far the greatest service in this direction
has been rendered more recently by the ladies, whose admirable library
associations in such towns as Ann Arbor, Flint, and Kalamazoo have done
much, especially during the past twenty years, for the literary
improvement and enjoyment of the people.
But this third stage of library evolution, good and useful as it has
been during the past 150 years, has this defect: it does not offer books
freely to all who would like books; it is limited to those who
participate in its privileges by paying for them.
Therefore society pushed forward into a fourth stage of evolution--one
still nearer to the grand object to be reached--the complete
popularization of books. This fourth stage was reached chiefly through a
new idea entering into the case, namely, the duty of the state to help
in providing books for the people who compose the state. The principle
is already admitted that the state must educate its citizens, and for
that purpose must sustain schools. For the same purpose, and on the same
principle, it must sustain libraries; for these are but an annex to
schools, and the books in them are only a part of the necessary
apparatus for public education.
In this way was started the fourth plan, that of "district school
libraries," a plan which for a while was hailed with delight as a real
contribution to human progress and happiness; which was eagerly adopted
in this state and in many others; but which has, upon the whole,
resulted in failure.
The State of New York has the honor of having started this plan, which
was first publicly advocated by Governor De Witt Clinton, in his message
for 1826. In 1838 General John A. Dix, then secretary of state, was
"charged with the execution of the law giving to the school districts
$55,000 a year to buy books for their libraries, and requiring them to
raise by taxation an equal amount for same purpose." The system was
received throughout the state with enthusiastic favor. In 1841 the
school libraries of the state reported the possession of 422,459
volumes; in the following year, 200,000 volumes more; and in 1853 they
had reached the enormous number of 1,604,210 volumes.
The plan as advocated in New York soon passed over into Massachusetts,
where it was taken up and advocated by Horace Mann, that noble-minded
and eloquent champion of popular enlightenment. Through his influence
the necessary law was passed in 1837, but the operation of the plan was
never very successful in that state, and after twelve years had resulted
in the accumulation of only 42,707 volumes.
Michigan appears to have been abreast of Massachusetts in the adoption
of the plan of district school libraries, incorporating it into its
school law of 1837.
After New York, Massachusetts, and Michigan, the several other states
which adopted this plan did so in the following order: Connecticut in
1839; Rhode Island and Iowa in 1840; Indiana in 1841; Maine in 1844;
Ohio in 1847; Wisconsin in 1848; Missouri in 1853; California and Oregon
in 1854; Illinois in 1855; Kansas and Virginia in 1870; New Jersey in
1871; Kentucky and Minnesota in 1873; and Colorado in 1876.
These data will give you some idea of the wide extension of this fourth
stage in library evolution. Its merits are very great. Perhaps its
greatest merit is that it recognizes the true function of the public
library as a part of the system of public education, and therefore as
entitled to a share in public taxation. Moreover, it has undoubtedly
done a vast amount of good in placing the means of intellectual
improvement within the reach of millions of people of all ages; it has
stimulated the love of books and diffused knowledge and happiness. And
yet with all these merits, it has been a failure; and this is largely
due to just three defects in administration:
1. Lack of care and wisdom in the selection of the books, resulting in
the acquisition of many volumes of trash and of profligacy.
2. Lack of care as to the distribution and return of the books,
resulting in their rapid dispersion and disappearance.
3. Lack of care in the preservation of the books that were not strayed
and stolen, resulting in their rapid deterioration.
You have got to apply business principles to the handling of books, as
well as of any other material possessions. Libraries as well as sawmills
need to be dealt with according to common-sense and with efficiency. Now
upon the general failure of these libraries, let me quote for you a
little testimony. The superintendent of schools in New York State, in
1875, says: "The system has not worked well in this state.... The
libraries have fallen into disuse, and have become practically
valueless." [1 Pub. lib. of U.S., i. 41.]
The superintendent for 1861 says that in "nearly every quarter of the
state," the libraries are "almost totally unused and rapidly
deteriorating." [2 Pub. Lib. of U.S. i. 40.] For 1862, the
superintendent gives a more detailed picture of the condition of the
school libraries. He finds them "mainly represented by a motley
collection of books, ranging from 'Headley's sacred mountains' to the
'Pirate's own book,' numbering in the aggregate a million and a half of
volumes, scattered among the various families, constituting a part of
the family library, or serving as toys for children in the nursery; ...
crowded into cupboards, thrown into cellars, stowed away in lofts,
exposed to the action of water, the sun, and of fire, or more frequently
locked away into darkness unrelieved and silence unbroken." [2 Pub. Lib.
of U.S. i. 40.]
This graphic picture of the failure of the system in New York is perhaps
matched by a similar picture of its failure in Michigan, as drawn by our
superintendent of education in 1869:
"The books were distributed to the districts by the town clerk to be
returned by the directors every third month for exchange. This would now
require more than 60,000 miles' travel per annum, at a positive expense
to the directors, certainly, of $100,000, to say nothing of more than
10,000 days' time. This was like putting two locomotives ahead of each
other to draw a hand-car. The result was the books were generally hidden
away in the clerks' offices, like monks in their cloister, and valueless
to the world. And what kind of books were they? Some good ones,
doubtless; but generally it was better to sow oats in the dust that
covered those books than to give them to the young to read. Every year,
soon after the taxes were collected, the state swarmed with pedlers,
with all the unsalable books of Eastern houses--the sensational novels
of all ages, tales of piracies, murders, and love intrigues--the
yellow-covered literature of the world."
Finally, the superintendent for 1873 says: "The whole system seems to
have come into general disfavor; and is, more than any other feature of
our school system, the one of which we are least proud."
Now we come to the fifth stage in the evolution of libraries--that of
libraries fully endowed by private generosity, and thrown open to the
public on such conditions as the founders have been pleased to indicate;
sometimes called patronymic libraries. Notable specimens of this class
of libraries are the Astor, Cooper, and Lenox Libraries, of New York,
and the Peabody Library, of Baltimore. The note of this species of
library is this: it is for the use of the public entirely without cost
to the public. In short, it is a library completely endowed, not only as
to the original expense of its erection and equipment, but absolutely
for all subsequent expense in its increase and administration.
Concerning this species of library, I have this to say: It is a noble
use to make of private wealth; it does immense good; but it is not the
best final form of library evolution. And for two reasons: first, the
man who will completely endow a free public library does not arise in
every community; whereas, every community needs a free public library.
And, second, the wholesomest kind of a gift is not that which does it
all for the community and requires no exertion or sacrifice on their
part; but that which gives the community a good generous start, but
still leaves something for the community to do for itself. In other
words, the healthiest sort of help, whether for one man or for ten
thousand, is that help which helps a man to help himself.
And this brings us to the sixth and final form of library development.
It is the one which is the resultant of the two grand ideas; primarily,
the recognition of the free public library as an essential part of the
system of public education and therefore as a legitimate subject for
public taxation. This idea is essential to the most satisfactory form of
a public library--the public must invest something in it. But this idea
can adjust itself to that other noble one--private liberality in aid of
the public.
And it is in this final and most consummate form, combining private
help with public selfhelp, that many of the most successful libraries in
this country have been organized; and yet it is only since 1848 that
such libraries have been possible. For it was in 1848 that the first
state in our Union, Massachusetts, passed an act authorizing a
municipality to tax itself for the support of a free public library.
Since then many other states have followed with similar legislation. So
that it is only within the past thirty-five years that this grand result
has been reached: the systematic popularization of books under the
direction of the municipality, partially at least at the public expense,
and often in combination with private benefaction.
Now, it is this grand result that you have reached here in West Bay
City. The library which you to-day dedicate to the perpetual service of
the people, and which we may believe will continue as long as society
lasts here to do its serene and beneficient work for the instruction and
delight of innumerable generations of mankind--this library represents
the latest, and I think we may say the most perfect and the final term
in a process of library evolution, which has been going forward on this
continent for more than two hundred years, and has involved, as we have
seen, countless struggles and failures and sacrifices for the production
of this single result.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I venture to express the hope that this study
which we have now made of the process--the slow, costly, laborious
process--by which this brilliant result has been made possible and easy
for you, in West Bay City, is something which will enhance even your
pleasure in the acquisition of this noble library as well as your
appreciation of the princely act of Mr. Sage in his creative relation to
it?
I trust it may enhance also your feeling of responsibility for the
perpetual success of this library in the purposes for which it has been
formed. This library has been well organized; but the working of it will
depend upon you. It is on one side of it a business concern; and like
any other business concern it will go to wrack and ruin unless it is
conducted on sound business principles, accurate accounting, sharp
supervision, punctuality, system, order, promptitude, energy.
But more than ordinary business qualities are needed to make this
library all that it should be. Recognize the true function of the free
public library; it is a part of a large system of public education. It
is but a co-ordinate department of that larger institution for public
education--the people's university--including the ward schools and the
high schools. Some of the fruitfullest and best work of those schools
will be done in this library.
Then, too, the public library stands for the wholesome truth that
education is never finished and should not stop when one stops going to
school. The boy and the girl who graduate at the school do not desert
the library; they keep up and carry forward their intellectual training
by a post-graduate course in the public library, for the rest of their
lives.
Furthermore, the free public library supplements the work of the free
public schools by reaching those whom the schools never reached at all,
or only reached very slightly.
And that public library is never a complete success, in which is not
present in the officers a spirit of courtesy toward readers, of
sympathy, of cheerfulness, of patience, even of helpfulness. Don't
permit your library ever to be a dismal, bibliographical cave, in charge
of a dragon. Let it always be a bright and winsome place, hospitable to
all orderly people; a place where even those ill-informed about books
will not be made embarrassed, but encouraged. Let it be one of the most
attractive places in town; let it outshine in attractiveness the vulgar
and harmful attractions of the bar-room and the gambling den; let it
grow up into the best life of the community, a place resorted to by all,
loved by all, a blessing to all.