Mary Salome Cutler, now Mrs. Milton Fairchild, is the first
librarian to be quoted in this symposium. A sketch of her
appears in Vol. II. of this series. In the paragraphs quoted
below which form part of a paper read by Miss Cutler, then
vice-director of the New York State Library School, before
the Pennsylvania Library Club and printed in _The Library
Journal_ (October, 1896), appears a definite recognition of
the social character of the library's task. Her two
fundamentals--organization and human feelings--are both
decided elements in its socialization.
In considering library interests we do well, I think, not to confine
ourselves to the limited range of library subjects.
That mysterious thing which we call society is growing more complex,
every part more curiously intertwined with every other part, each human
life bearing some relation to every other human life. Whether he will or
no, it is literally true that "no man liveth to himself alone." If it
were possible, then, as a part of this organism to discover some of the
laws which govern the whole, we might come back to our special domain
with an application of the laws which would have the force of freshness.
I believe that we gain an insight into these controlling principles only
by yielding to the tendency of solidarity, by opening ourselves to
surrounding influences, by living the fullest life of which we are
capable. I think I have seen the workings of two of these laws which
have a close relation to each other. If I am right your experience will
confirm mine, and we can together make the application to what concerns
us most--the library interests of to-day.
In any undertaking results depend directly, and often largely, upon the
perfection of organization. Organization implies a mind which can grasp
the undertaking as a whole, follow it out, each step in detail, estimate
the various factors, personal and impersonal, provide for unforeseen
contingencies, and furnish the faith, the will-power, the personal
magnetism, whatever you choose to call it, in such measure as is needed
to carry it through. Such a mind sees the end at the beginning, and
thinks of it as already done while to others it may seem far off and
even impossible. Such thought, often the work of one mind, sometimes the
result of cooperation, is behind every piece of accomplished work. Other
elements may doubtless be essential, but there can be no adequate
results without organization. And, making allowance for other elements,
the perfection of results depends upon the perfection of
organization....
For the reason of this tendency we have not far to seek. I believe it is
found in the scientific spirit of the age, which is surely pervading
every sphere of human thought and activity. The careful investigation of
facts, the deduction of the law from the phenomena, the distrust of
chance and the loyalty to the law deduced, all of which evidence the
scientific spirit, mark alike the great financier, diplomatist,
inventor, philanthropist.
In some undertakings organization alone will suffice. For example,
making a machine, laying out a railroad, compiling a volume of
statistics. In others there must needs come in what I will call the
human element, the consideration of people, not in masses, but as
individuals, that matchless, indescribable quality which we call human
sympathy....
Illustrations might be multiplied in educational, religious, and
philanthropic efforts where we work for the masses, and forget that each
one of the mass is a human being with passions, sensibilities,
aspirations like our own. This interest in the human being as such,
which is a gift to some, can be cultivated, but it can never be
simulated. The counterfeit always rings false. Joined to a good memory
for names and faces, it gives a person a power which can hardly be
estimated....
It seems to me that these two principles apply with tremendous and
unusual force to the problems of the modern library. I will speak of the
public library alone because it has a wider reach and a closer touch on
life.
We will review in imagination the library situation in this country. We
take up Mr. Flint's Statistics volume for 1893; we sum up 593 free
libraries in the New England states, 520 in New York, Pennsylvania, and
New Jersey, 285 in the Southern states, 758 in the Western states, a
total of 2156 free libraries.
We recall our friends in the American Library Association, who
constitute with some marked exceptions, who prefer to work alone, the
high-water mark of the fraternity. As their names pass before us we take
a measure of the men and women. We think of their libraries which we may
have visited, or, better still, which we have used as readers. In some
few cases we know the influence of these libraries in the town or city.
Take it for all in all we find a body of hard-working men and women
translating into practice noble ideals. As a result, the library is
beginning to get a hold upon the community. But it is only a beginning
and, compared with the possibilities, only a prophecy of what may and
will be. Are not the failures in our work due to the lack of the best
organization and the true human touch?
A librarian is appointed, let us say, to an important post. He has
doubtless had experience in library work. He comes on to consult with
the trustees. They vote to send him on a trip for getting ideas from
other libraries. He probably has on his hands a beautiful building illy
adapted to library work. He carries the plans with him, and spends most
of the time with other members of the craft, in choosing the least of
several evils in placing the reference-room, catalog, charging-desk,
etc. He secures two or three assistants with training, experience, or
both, and fills the minor places with local help chosen by examination
or by luck or by personal favor. He learns in a general way the
character of the town and selects books with that in view. If there are
certain manufacturing interests or a particular foreign population, he
makes large purchases in those lines. He decides on a system of
classification, of cataloging, and on a method of charging. The books
are rushed through the various processes, though all too slowly for an
impatient public. In a few months at the latest the big educational
plant begins to be utilized.
The circulation surprises the most sanguine, the average of fiction
drops a little below the usual mark, good service is done at the
information or reference desk by the enthusiastic man or woman having it
in charge, work is begun with the schools, and a little fraction of
teachers make the children know books because they know books
themselves. The rest go through the motions. The bookworm fills his
corner, the chronic grumbler has his little say, the usual number of
prize questions are answered. The library becomes the very bread of life
to those who are ready to receive it, and gives refreshment and
suggestion and inspiration to many more. The profession approves. At the
next A.L.A. meeting Mr. ---- is brought forward more prominently, and
the wise ones say, "I always thought he was a rising man."
But only 20 per cent. of the population ever set foot within the
library, and when a stranger asks the way within a block of the
building, a fairly intelligent-looking workman does not appear to know
there is such a thing as the public library.
In looking over the proceedings of the library association for the 18
years of its existence, we are struck by the evidences of industry and
earnestness. There are papers and discussions on libraries and schools,
access to the shelves, bookbinding, systems of classification,
cataloging rules. The keynote is cooperation in securing, with an
enthusiasm which amounts to missionary zeal, the best and most uniform
methods, with special reference to mechanical devices. The very motto
smacks of arithmetic and commerce. "The best reading for the largest
number at the least cost." All this is good and proper in its place.
Wise methods are essential to the best results. But we sought in vain
all along the years for the philosophic insight which should grasp the
higher motive of our profession and connect it with the great struggles
of our modern life. After the Columbus year in the clearer air of the
mountain-top, the word for which we were waiting came. I wish it were
possible to stop right here and give you the papers of Mr. Larned and
Mr. Brett, which were read at Lake Placid, as well as the discussion
which followed. I must content myself by quoting Mr. Larned's last
sentence: "Those of us who have faith in the future of democracy can
only hold our faith fast by believing that the knowledge of the learned,
the wisdom of the thoughtful, the conscience of the upright, will some
day be common enough to prevail, always, over every factious folly and
every mischievous movement that evil minds or ignorance can set astir.
When that blessed time of victory shall have come, there will be many to
share the glory of it; but none among them will rank rightly before
those who have led and inspired the work of the public libraries."
This leads us to the first great need of the profession to-day, that the
librarian should be in the noblest sense a large, man, that he should
add to executive and business ability and technical knowledge a broad
and generous culture in Matthew Arnold's sense of the word, "An inward
spiritual activity, having for its character increased sweetness,
increased light, increased life, increased sympathy." He must be an
omnivorous reader, skimming many books, and knowing by instinct which
books and which chapters and sentences to read carefully. He must study
from books and in life the great industrial, social, and religious
questions which stir our age. He must be a scholar without pedantry, a
man of the world without indifference, a friend of the people without
sentimentality.
There follows naturally the second necessity, that the librarian should
be a careful student of his own town. He should know its history and
topography, its social, political, business, literary, and
ecclesiastical life. To this end he should have a personal acquaintance
with the city officers, the party bosses, the labor leaders, members of
the board of trade, manufacturers, leading women in society, with the
clergy, with the school superintendent and the teachers, with those who
shape the charitable organizations, with reporters, policemen, and
reformers.
To what end? Broadly that he may catch the spirit of the civic life and
relate the library to the whole as the organs to the body. Specifically,
that he may reach the entire population through the natural leaders,
that he may select books, establish branches, open up new avenues of
communication between the library and the people.
The church may be aristocratic, industry, trade, and politics a war,
the public school like the drinking-fountain, though planned for the
many scorned by the few. I believe it is possible for a man with a broad
and sympathetic knowledge of our age and an intimate knowledge of his
own city, to make of the public library the one common meeting-place,
the real focus of democratic ideas. The church and the school will reach
this in the future, the library may achieve it to-day.
There is a third difficulty, which is a very real and palpable one. The
librarian himself may have a fairly high ideal of the library which is
shared by perhaps one or two assistants. The bulk of the work in a
library with a large circulation is done by young persons of less
opportunity and training. Each has a distinct part of the work to do
with little idea of its relation to the whole. Unfortunately the
loan-desk, registration-desk, and reading-room are usually manned in
this way. I have often stood amazed at the delivery-desk of librarians
whose names represent all that is best in the library profession. I
would not be understood as depreciating the work of the lower assistants
in our libraries. I know well that this service, as a whole, represents
an amount of faithfulness and devotion which it ill becomes me to
undervalue. The responsibility lies with the head of the library and the
failure comes from lack of organization. The appointing power should be
practically in his hands. The man whom we have described above does not
need to seek this power. It comes to him. It is surely possible to
secure for the library service young men and women, boys and girls, of
fair intelligence, quick wits, responsive minds, and human sympathies.
The making of these units into an organism is the severest test of a
librarian's power. The ability of a general is not enough. He must
himself have the real human touch or he cannot call it forth from
others. There must be the promptness, the accuracy, the despatch which
marks military discipline; there must be also an intelligent conception
of the purpose of the library, a strong sense of personal responsibility
and of the dignity and beauty of the public service. It is sometimes
said that spirit of the library should be that of a merchant and his
well-trained clerks, anxious to please their customers. It should be
rather the fine spirit of a hostess with the daughters of the house
about her greeting her guests.
There is a fourth failure which is perhaps the root difficulty. It is
the failure to make the most of time. The day opens. The man hastens to
his place and finds a score of voices calling him to as many different
tasks. He hastily begins the one which seems to call the loudest, and
has just begun to gather up the threads of thought when there is a
peremptory call in another direction. And so he is driven through the
day, not controlling, but controlled, and constantly lashed by the
thought of neglected duties. By dint of keeping at it all through the
day and often into the night much work is done. The man gets and
deserves the reputation of a hard-working man, deliberately sacrificing
health, ease, leisure, and the joys of a scholar's life for the public
good.
Now this is the first and natural result of the enlarged conception of a
librarian's work. The man is dazed by the sense of responsibility and
almost crushed by the demands upon his time apparently separate and
conflicting. But this should be considered only the first process from
which the strong man will speedily evolve a wiser way. The fatal mistake
lies in considering this first stage inevitable and final. If a man
tarries here it argues limitation, not power. There certainly are men
who stand high in public life as well as those holding less prominent
positions, who accomplish an enormous amount of work with a sense of
freedom and an impression of leisure. As I have observed individual
cases, I am led to the conclusion that the explanation lies not in a
stronger physique, or a stronger intellect, but in a better organization
of work with reference to time. There is no need more imperative than
this for all of us who are proud to be called busy people. The trouble
is, we think we are too busy to stop and plan. Our philosophic error
lies in believing that the work must all be done to-day. Nature herself
should teach us that the best work cannot be done in a hurry.
We may not hope in this generation to understand well the working of
that complex, mysterious thing which we call human society, but we may
at least so relate ourselves and our libraries to it that we may live,
move, and grow together.
"Not unrelated, ununified,
But to each thought and thing allied,
Is perfect Nature's every part
Rooted in the mighty Heart."