No one has done more to inspire library workers with the
feeling that what they are doing is worth while than Dr.
Melvil Dewey, pioneer in this country of the modern library
and of the socialized library spirit. A sketch of Dr. Dewey
will be found in Vol. I. of this series. The following is
from the stenographer's report of a brief talk at the
Atlanta Conference of the American Library Association, as
printed in _Public Libraries_ (Chicago, June, 1899).
Atlanta has been known long in this country as a southern city that
believes supremely that education pays, and as the revelation has come
late in this century of what the library is or should be, and what the
library can do, on this line I will say a few words to you tonight.
We have had an illustration in the recent war with Spain that education
pays, in what it means to have the man behind the guns trained. We have
an illustration in Mr. Carnegie's work, whose name has been mentioned
here in his competition with the rest of the world, illustrating another
peculiar American feature that American education pays in dollars and
cents; but it is a more recent conception of the part the library has in
a system of public education. It took a thousand years to develop our
educational system from the university down; first the university as the
beginning of all education, and then we must have the colleges to
prepare for the universities, the academies and common schools to
prepare for the colleges, and it is only in our own generation that we
have come to understand that we must begin with the kindergarten and end
in our libraries.
I am really pleased tonight that the Young men's association has done
this generous work, and that Atlanta is going to pay the money from the
taxes. It would be no advantage to this city if your schools were
provided for you without charge to the people. Those who study the
question from the low plane of dollars and cents, without regard to the
higher things in life, have learned that no investigation pays well. In
many a community men are giving liberally to the schools, and are
beginning to give liberally to the libraries, and they do it because
they know it makes everything more valuable--it makes their business
more prosperous.
The library is going through the same process the public school went
through. Henry Barnard, of Connecticut, visited 27 different states and
spoke before them to urge upon them the system of public education, and
to provide a guidance for the children.
It is true that the educated parents are more likely to have children
educated highly, but there is no question whatever that the great
majority of the men and women who are to shape the future of this
country will be born in the humblest homes, and we come back to the
problem of the general education of all the people as the best possible
advancement and the chiefest defense of the nation; it is the concern of
the state because it is the duty of the state, because it pays, and
because the state does not dare any longer to neglect it. Therefore I
call your attention to the fact that we are repeating in libraries
exactly the process of the school, and that there were meetings to urge
the acceptance of them. There are few who doubt the wisdom of donating
money to support the free library, and when the history of the time is
written it will be marked as the history of free libraries.
Why is it that the people are taxing themselves erecting beautiful
buildings, buying books, paying salaries, printing catalogs, incurring
all these expenses, paying out an amount of money that a short time ago
would have been thought only a dream? It is a recognition of its
necessity and importance. We understand that it is a good thing.
A broad conception at the end of the century of the work of the schools
is simply this, to teach the children to think accurately, with strength
and with speed. If it is in the school that they get their start, then
where do they get their education? Tell me from your own experience, was
it from the school that you got most of your ideas? We had an experiment
some time ago, when the teachers of New York made an elaborate
investigation as to the teaching of boys and girls. The thing that
influenced those boys and girls most was the books they read. What,
after all, is the supreme end of education? I state that we should teach
them to think with accuracy and with speed, but I doubt if there is one
who denies the supreme necessity of the building of character. That is
what is winning in the peaceful conflicts of commerce. If you care to
analyze how character is built, follow it back briefly. Character comes
from habits, and habits from actions repeated, and actions from a
motive, and a motive from reflection. What makes me reflect? What makes
you reflect? What is the cause? Isn't it something that you have read in
a book, a magazine, or a paper? So the genealogy is this: reading begets
reflection, reflection begets motive, motive begets action, and action
begets habit, and habit begets that supreme thing--character. So we have
come to recognize that if we are to accomplish the chief end that is
before the people, we must strive to control the reading for others.
Reading sometimes carries downhill, as it often carries upward, and
there is no way that we can reach the people except through the free
library and with proper help from the people.
What Atlanta wants to make out of her citizens is not to train privates,
but to train officers. If you go out on the streets you can find a
thousand men to do the work of a laborer, where you can find only a few
to do the work that will demand five or ten thousand dollars. The world
is looking for that class of men. It is the highest salaried man that is
the hardest to find. If you would buy a machine, there enters into it
the material that is in it; the process of manufacture throughout which
has transformed it, and then the approved fitness for performing its
functions. The same way with a man--the native that is manufactured;
then comes the experience which proves the fitness for his work; and you
pay the salary for these things. And by means of our schools and
libraries we must reach these girls and boys.
Thomas Edison and other great men say that their whole lives are
governed from reading a single book. So the province of the library is
to amuse, to inform and inspire. We have the old proverbs, As free as
air; As free as water; but the new one that is important to the race is,
As free as knowledge. The people of this state cannot afford to have any
boy in Georgia who is anxious to know more, how to make his life more
valuable, who wants inspiration and is ready to read, and not furnish it
to him. Education is the chief concern of the American people, and the
states that have done most for their education have been the most
prosperous.
It is the concern of the richest as to what should be done for the
poorest; you should provide free schools and free libraries, or the
failure to do so will react in your own lives. If you say that this
ideal is too high, that the library has important functions, but it does
not take its place as the equal of the schools, it is because you have
not studied this question in all its details. When you do, you will be
forced to the conclusion that while we must say that this is the
inspiration of a dreamer, remember that it is the devotion of noble
minds that never falters, but endures and waits for all it can find, and
what it cannot find, creates.