The public library had now passed the period of the merely
academic advocacy exemplified in the Ticknor letter of 1851.
It was an actual, functioning institution, and as such was
called upon to answer criticism and to justify its
existence. The atmosphere of apologetics begins to appear in
what its friends have to say about it. This is evident in
the extract from Col. Higginson's "Men and Women" (New York,
1888) which immediately follows. The author's comparison of
the evolution of a library with that of a great railroad
system is perhaps the first hint of a comprehensive vision
of the library as something bigger than any individual town
or city institution and beyond it.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born in Cambridge, Mass.,
Dec. 22, 1823, and graduated at Harvard in 1841. He entered
the ministry in 1847 but retired in 1858 and served in the
Civil War. From that time until his death, May 9, 1911, he
devoted himself to literature, publishing a large number of
books.
Just as there is a good deal of anxiety wasted in regard to our free
public schools, especially on the part of those who have never entered
them, so there is some misplaced solicitude in regard to our libraries.
The free town or city library is one of the few things in our democratic
society that would have pleased the splenetic Carlyle, who mourned in
one of his early letters that every village in England had its jail, but
none its open library. It is a pity, therefore, when a man of high
standing and great influence writes of these institutions thus hastily
(I take the passage from a well-known literary journal): "Among the
forms of beneficence for which our own generation has been conspicuous
is the Free Library.... But it is, I apprehend, no exaggeration to say
that such well-meant generosity has _oftener than otherwise_ (the
italics are my own) been chilled and discouraged by its results.
Appreciative readers are few, the best books are largely let alone, and
the cost of the 'plant' and the taste which are put into it are often in
most painful contrast to the appreciation which they have received."
Now, while every count of this last sentence may be true indictment, it
is easy to show how little it sustains the verdict. "Appreciative
readers" are few in the most cultivated circles, if their appreciation
must be tested by "the best books" only. It is not easy even to know
what the best books are, if we may judge by the tiresome failures in
making out the list of them; and suppose that they were known, do we
find many clergymen or bishops who habitually read Plato, Æschylus, and
Dante, rather than "Ben-Hur" or "The lady or the tiger"? It does not
therefore follow that people are unworthy of public libraries because
"the best books are largely let alone"; the question is whether even the
second best may not be good reading. We have the medical authority of
Hippocrates for saying that the second best medicine may be better than
the best, if the patient likes it best. So in regard to the fine
buildings, the success of republican government happily does not depend
on how far our citizens appreciate the architecture of the Capitol at
Washington and the State House at Albany; and it is surely the same with
libraries. Grant a few over-fine library buildings, built to please some
private benefactor; grant a few mismanaged public libraries--though
where these buildings or these libraries are I do not myself know--does
the kindly writer of these lines mean to be understood as saying that
"oftener than otherwise" our free public libraries are failures?
If he does, it can only be said that this remark adds another to the
innumerable illustrations of that invaluable remark of Coleridge that we
must take every man's testimony to the value of that which he does not
know. All experience shows how easy it is to construct an institution
out of one's own consciousness and then condemn it; we see this daily in
what is written of our public school system. In General Butler's brief
career as Governor of Massachusetts he made a severe attack upon the
Normal Art School in Boston, and cited a pathetic instance of a fallen
girl who undoubtedly (as he urged) received her first demoralization
from the study of the nude in that school. It turned out on
investigation that he himself had never entered the school, and that the
young girl herself made no such charges; that there never had been any
studying from nude models in the school; that she had attended it but a
month or two, and this in its early days, when it did not possess so
much as a plaster cast of a human foot or hand. No matter; the charge
was reiterated up to the very end of His Excellency's career in office,
and is believed by many worthy people of this day. It is equally easy to
bring general charges against public libraries, and equally hard to
remove their impression, however unjust and even cruel they may be.
What are the facts? There has just been a great Librarians' Convention
assembled from all parts of the country, and keeping together for many
days. Did a single speaker at that Convention take the ground that
"oftener than otherwise" the benefactors of public libraries were
chilled and discouraged? On the contrary, it was reported that such
benefactors were never so active, and their benefactions were never so
large. The tone was not one of discouragement, but of buoyancy and hope.
Every one admitted the vastness of the educational engine created by the
free library system; every one had his own suggestion by way of
improvement or development, but every one expressed a cordial faith in
the community, and reported encouragement in all work well done. The
simple truth is that the creation of a system of such libraries is like
the creation of a great railway system; it must be an evolution, not a
creation outright. The wisest librarian in America fifty years ago had
no more conception of the free library system of to-day than had
Benjamin Franklin of our postal methods; nor can any one now foresee
what fifty years of development will do for either.
The truth is that every step in any great organization brings out new
possibilities, new dangers, and new resources. Side by side with the
perils of free libraries--as of too much light reading, and the absence
of proper appreciation of the best things--there are evoked resources to
meet these dangers.
Outside the library there come up the "association to promote study at
home," and the vast Chautauqua "reading circles"--all these being
essentially based on the free library system, and implying it for their
full development. Inside the library there grow up such methods as those
of Mr. S.S. Green, City Librarian of Worcester, Massachusetts, whose
ways of making such an institution useful to all sorts and conditions of
the people may take rank with Rowland Hill's improvements in postal
service, as to their results on democratic civilization. He has
succeeded in linking the library and the public schools so closely that
he and the teachers acting in concurrence, indirectly control the
reading of the whole generation that is growing up in that city. The
details must be sought in his reports--as, for instance, one from the
Library Journal of March, 1887, which is printed as a leaflet; but the
essential thing in managing libraries, as in managing schools, is to
have faith in the community in which one lives, and to believe that
people do, as the Scripture has it, "covet earnestly the best gifts," if
you will only show them how those best gifts are to be obtained. Put
into school and library methods one-half the organizing ability brought
to bear on railways and telegraphs, and we shall stand astonished at the
results within our reach. Those already attained, if fairly looked at,
are sufficient to encourage any one. The writer has at two different
times and in two different States been a director in these institutions.
Whenever he needed a little stimulus toward doing his duty it was his
custom to go and look over the rack containing the books lately brought
back by readers. With all necessary deduction for the love of fiction--a
love shared in these days by the wisest and best--the proportion of
sensible and useful reading was always such as to vindicate the immense
value of the free public libraries.