This section, devoted to the general relations of the
library and society, which opened with a historical account
by Prof. Moses Coit Tyler, may appropriately close with
another of similar tenor, contributed eleven years later to
_The American Magazine of Civics_ (New York, May, 1895) by
Prof. Henry H. Barber. It covers some of the same ground but
gives results to a later date, while it is still only
introductory to the social development of more recent years.
Henry Hervey Barber was born in Warwick, Mass., Dec. 30,
1835, graduated at Meadville Theological Seminary in 1861
and after holding several Unitarian pastorates was professor
of philosophy and theology there from 1884 to 1904. He was
also editor of the Unitarian Review from 1875 to 1884. He
died about 1915.
No public institution has made greater progress during the last few
years or grown more rapidly in public interest and favor than the free
public library. The building of a magnificent structure in Chicago,
together with the excellent Newberry free reference library, and in
cooperation with the fast growing library of the Chicago University,
will make perhaps the most superb public provision for free literary
culture ever furnished by any municipality. Boston has lately
transferred its more than half a million volumes to the new and noble
public library building on the Back Bay. The newspapers of this last
week tell us that in New York Mr. Tilden is after all not to be finally
counted out; but that the two millions rescued from his estate by the
high sense of honor of one of his heirs is to be joined with the
invaluable Astor Library, and the choice Lennox Reference Library, and
all made free and available to the public--a property valued in the
aggregate at eight million dollars. These events, together with the
recent founding of the Carnegie free libraries in Pittsburg and
Allegheny, the not very remote establishment of the Enoch Pratt Free
Library in Baltimore, and the addition by Mr. Henry C. Lea to the
splendid Ridgway foundation in Philadelphia, constitute a series of
brilliant triumphs for the free public library, unparalleled in the
history of educational institutions, and seldom equalled, I must think,
in the intellectual progress of civilization.
Nor do these metropolitan successes indicate, after all, the most
essential advance. The frequency with which private beneficence is
coming to the aid of public enterprise in smaller cities and country
towns, for the establishment and increase of these libraries; the recent
notable instances of stimulative auxiliary legislation; and the growth
of intelligent interest in new and widely scattered sections of the
civilized world, are equally significant, and perhaps even more widely
beneficent. It is the era of the free public library; and it is of
special interest to us to see that our community and our commonwealth
are moving in accord with this tide of new feeling and enterprise
concerning it.
Of special interest, I say, to us as Pennsylvanians; for we are glad to
remember that it is here that the first impulse was given to the
foundation of the system of circulating libraries, the development of
which is the free public library in England and America. Benjamin
Franklin, after considerable effort, founded in 1732 the Philadelphia
Library Company, the "mother," as he himself calls it, "of all the
subscription libraries in North America."
This library which Franklin started for the advantage of himself and his
fifty young business associates, in the early time, when, as he says,
"there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the
southward of Boston," and when most of the books had to be imported from
England, was followed soon by the establishment of more ambitious
similar libraries in Newport (1747) and Hartford (1774); and later in
many other places in England and this country. These were called public
libraries, though books could only be taken out by subscribers.
Probably, however, as in Philadelphia, the librarian could "permit any
civil gentlemen to peruse the books of the library in the library room."
But it was in the formation of many so-called "Social Libraries" in the
smaller cities and country towns of New England and the Middle States,
early in the present century, that the foundations of the free municipal
library were laid. These subscription libraries, in their growth and in
their decay, no less than in the appetite for books they developed,
created a demand and at length a necessity for public provision for what
had come to be one of the prime intellectual needs of many communities.
Meantime in Scotland, in 1816, Samuel Brown of Haddington, following in
part the methods of London booksellers, established a system of free
itinerating libraries, loaning without cost selections of fifty books in
each package to villages and neighborhoods that would engage to
circulate and take proper care of them. At the end of two years each
loan was called in, and another of different works sent in its place.
This scheme was for many years highly successful, and doubtless highly
useful; but seems to have failed soon after the death of its projector
and inspirer in 1839. The system had the earnest sanction of Lord
Brougham, and about 1825 was taken up in some parts of England; and, in
a modified form, has had a great success in Melbourne and its
neighborhood, in Australia. Stanley Jevons, whose article on the
rationale of free public libraries in his "Methods of Social Reform" is
one of the most interesting and valuable contributions to the literature
of this subject, commends it as the best form of extending free public
libraries in the rural portions of Great Britain, and he estimates that
there ought to be three thousand such literary itinerants in England and
Wales.
This system was copied in this country in the School District Libraries
which were started in the state of New York in 1835, and a few years
afterward were in successful operation in Massachusetts and other New
England states, and in Michigan and Ohio at least, among states further
west. At first every school district raising thirty dollars the first
year and ten dollars thereafter, by tax or subscription, was assisted by
the state--I cite the Massachusetts statute--to a like sum; and a small
but choice selection of books sent to it for free circulation within the
district. A little later Massachusetts, at least, removed this
condition; and supplied every school district with such a library. These
libraries after remaining in use for a while, and generally being
thoroughly read, were exchanged among the districts. New books were thus
continually coming to new readers. This movement was earnestly forwarded
by that pioneer among American educators, Horace Mann, and during the
period of my boyhood was a godsend to the young people of New England. I
want to bless the memory of Samuel Brown, Father Page (a pioneer of the
system in New York), and Horace Mann for the gleams of literary light
thus cast across the bookless darkness of New England rural homes forty
to fifty years ago. This highly economical missionary agency of general
intelligence passed away in New England with the incoming of the more
satisfactory town system of free libraries. The cause of its decadence
elsewhere is not clear, but it has lately had a remarkable resurrection
in New York, as we soon shall see.
The first free town library in America, or the world, supported by
municipal taxation, was established by the efforts of Abiel Abbot, D.D.,
in Peterboro, New Hampshire, in 1833. A decayed social library and an
operatives' library, and perhaps some other small collections, were thus
gathered under the shelter of the town; and took on new life from its
fostering care, and the small annual appropriation for new books which
is the breath of life to all libraries. Here, as always, it was _a man_
that inspired the advance movement and carried it on to successful
fulfilment.
In 1849, New Hampshire passed a general law enabling towns and cities to
maintain free libraries by taxation; and in 1851 Massachusetts, which
had granted Boston in 1847 the right to establish such a library, passed
a similar general enabling act. Several other states followed almost
immediately, and nearly every northern and northwestern state, except
Pennsylvania, has since adopted the measure. In 1893, twenty states had
enacted similar statutes; and, in all, more than seven hundred free
libraries have been established under them. They have increased--as
might naturally have been expected--most rapidly in the portions of the
country where other library agencies, and where an efficient public
school system, have been longest and most efficiently at work. Thus, of
the seven hundred libraries, more than three hundred are in
Massachusetts (according to the returns of the Public Library Commission
for 1894), or 1,233 volumes for every thousand of population; in New
Hampshire something over one hundred (in 1894), or 464 volumes per
thousand of inhabitants.
Great Britain has kept nearly equal pace with our foremost states in
free library legislation. A general enabling act to establish and
support free libraries for the people from municipal rates was passed by
Parliament in 1850, and accepted with great energy and enthusiasm by
many of the northern towns and cities. Eighty-six free libraries, not
including branches, had been opened before 1880; but, as in this
country, the conservatism of the southern portions of the country has
prevented their general establishment. For similar reasons only the
province of Ontario has made any considerable movement in this direction
in the Dominion of Canada.
This hasty historical sketch would be very incomplete without some
account of the recent legislation, in several states, for the assistance
of the smaller towns and villages in the establishment and increase of
public libraries. This legislation has already had marvelous results.
Massachusetts, in 1890, appropriated one hundred dollars to any town
that would raise by taxation, or appropriate from the dog tax, or
otherwise raise, at least fifty dollars (or if its valuation was less
than one million dollars it should raise twenty-five dollars, or if less
than $250,000 it should raise at least fifteen dollars); and should
agree to take care of the books, and furnish the agency of distribution.
The sums granted by the state are in the hands of a board of
commissioners appointed by the governor (with the advice and consent of
the council); and so far these commissioners--librarians and
others--have been eminent citizens, serving without salaries, and having
only $500 in their hands annually for clerk hire and traveling expenses.
The commission is also required to give advice and information to
librarians and others concerning selection of books, cataloguing, and
administration; and to select and forward the books granted by the
state.
Now for results. The commission has thus aided in establishing, in four
years, more than sixty free public libraries in small towns (out of one
hundred and four not thus supplied) and its action has shamed a few
larger towns into establishing them; so that now only two and three
fourths per cent of the population of the state, in forty-four small
towns, were in January, 1894, without their advantages. And this has
been accomplished with an entire expense to the commonwealth of less
than ten thousand dollars. _Per contra_, more than half a million
dollars were given by individuals in a single year for similar purposes
within the state. Certainly, this has been a most economical and
effective public outlay; free, too, from all suspicion of any one's
fattening by political jobbery.
The record of New Hampshire is even more remarkable. This state passed a
law in 1891, similar to the one outlined above, and over eighty towns
accepted its provisions, and established free libraries within a
twelvemonth after it came in force. We are glad to read that the states
of Maine, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are moving in the direction of a
measure that has proved so effective in its operation, and that must be
so widely beneficent.
The state of New York has adopted another system to stimulate the
development of the free library. Her enabling act of many years ago
produced, as we have seen, comparatively small results; and in 1892 a
law was passed authorizing the Regents of the University of New York to
lend for a limited time--usually six months--selections of books from
the duplicate department of the state library, or from books purchased
for the purpose, to any public library in the state; or, where none
exists, to twenty-five petitioners in any town or village of the state.
A fee of five dollars is required, to cover cost of transportation,
catalogue, etc., for a loan of one hundred volumes, and a smaller sum
(three dollars) for a loan of fifty volumes. This plan, it will be seen,
is a revival of the old school district method; and of that instituted
by Samuel Brown in Scotland, and the later one found successful in
Australia. The antipodes have a fashion lately of suggesting valuable
object-lessons for social legislation. In small communities it has the
advantage of making books do manifold duty, and of meeting the wants of
varied communities and occupations. By judicious and varied selection,
clubs, classes, schools, and reading circles may be aided in special
courses and investigations. At the end of twenty months one hundred and
twenty-five of these free loan libraries had been sent out by the New
York Board of Regents; of which nearly one half (44) went to communities
without public libraries, the remainder going to libraries already
established (22), to university extension centers (18), and to academy
libraries open to the public (22). Eleven thousand nine hundred volumes
were thus made accessible to the public, with a total circulation of not
far from 25,000 volumes and 9,000 readers. This system, which seems even
more economical than the Massachusetts one, has greatly promoted
interest in good reading, and led to the establishment of several local
public libraries. The system is very elastic and is easily adapted to
the rapidly growing demands for its privileges. As a pioneer method, or
as auxiliary to municipal libraries, it promises excellent results.
After this historical survey it would hardly seem necessary to dwell
upon the arguments in behalf of the free public library. "There is
probably no mode of expending public money," says Stanley Jevons, "which
gives a more extraordinary and immediate return in utility and innocent
enjoyment." He affirms that in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and
some other great towns in England, as in similar communities in this
country, where such libraries have existed for years, there is but one
opinion about them. "They are classed with town-halls, police courts,
prisons, and poorhouses as necessary adjuncts of our stage of
civilization." A more natural, and certainly more cheerful, collocation
would class them with free schools, museums, and public parks, as Jevons
himself afterwards suggests. "The main _raison d'être_ of free public
libraries, as indeed of public museums, art galleries, parks, halls,
public clocks, and many other kinds of public works, is the enormous
increase of utility which is thereby acquired for the community at a
trifling cost." He proceeds to illustrate by several instances what he
calls "the remarkable multiplication of utility" in the case of free
lending libraries by several instances. Every book, in the first year of
the Birmingham Free Library, was issued on an average seventeen times,
and the periodical literature turned over fifty times. In Leeds, every
book was used eighteen times. In larger libraries and in later use, of
course, the figures are less, averaging from three to ten times, the
whole cost of each issue averaging only from two to five cents. Similar
statistics may be found in the _Forum_ article already referred to in
regard to the manifold use of books furnished in New York.
The comfort and moral economy of a cheerful, well-lighted reading-room,
too, is overwhelmingly illustrated. Mr. Jevons found that in Manchester
all persons of suitable age visited the free libraries on an average
thirteen times a year, of whom three fourths came to read in the
reading-rooms. Such a refuge from the perils of the saloon and the
street is an immense benefaction in any neighborhood.
The relative cheapness of securing this means of general culture and
enjoyment, this efficient antidote to vice and ignorance, is strikingly
shown by comparing its cost with other items of governmental
expenditure, and the statistics of national luxuries and vices. The
eighty-six free libraries in the large cities of Great Britain cost not
more than half a million dollars per year--one fifth the cost of a first
class ironclad. The statistics I have given show that the cost of the
two war vessels just voted by Congress might be abundantly sufficient to
insure the organization on the Massachusetts plan of a free library in
every village and country town of the United States, not now accessible
to such a library. The expenditure for drink, for horse-racing, or even
for tobacco, for a single year, would royally equip and endow a public
library for every thousand people now without such privileges. As
post-office savings banks are, wherever established, a mighty engine for
teaching thrift, as public parks are an incalculable source of health
and enjoyment in our cities, so the public library, "the free literary
park," as Jevons calls it, is a most effective agency for the promotion
of culture and civilization.
In the year 1851, George Ticknor, the distinguished author of the
"History of Spanish Literature" and a benefactor of the Boston Public
Library, wrote to Edward Everett: "I would establish a library which
differs from all free libraries yet attempted; I mean one in which any
popular books tending to moral and intellectual improvement shall be
furnished in such numbers that many persons can be reading the same book
at the same time; in short, that not only the best books of all sorts,
but the pleasant literature of the day, shall be made accessible to the
whole people when they most care for it--that is, when it is fresh and
new. I would thus by following the popular taste--unless it should
demand something injurious--create a real appetite for healthy reading.
This appetite once formed will take care of itself. It will in a great
majority of cases demand better and better books."
Mr. Everett's conservatism doubted the wisdom of these principles for
the foundation of a library: but they are essentially those which have
proved sound in the free library system of England and New England, of
Australia and the Northwestern cities. In the light of fifty years'
experience, indeed, Everett's skepticism reads like Governor Berkeley's
report on education in Virginia, in which he thanked God that there were
no free schools in Virginia and hoped that there would be none for a
hundred years. The communities in which libraries, approaching George
Ticknor's ideal, have been longest established, would do without paved
streets or electric lights sooner than without these libraries, and they
support them by taxation as cheerfully as the public schools. Indeed,
the free library in not a few communities is reckoned an invaluable and
indispensable adjunct of the public school, the very crown of the system
of popular education. Such librarians as Green of Worcester,
Massachusetts, and Whitney of Watertown, and Hosmer of Minneapolis, keep
in touch with the work of the schools, and apprize the various classes
of pupils of new books especially valuable for their work. More than
this, they have regard to the needs of the various clubs, trades, and
professions, and keep their members aware of valuable books in their
special departments. But perhaps the most helpful service of all is
rendered by capable librarians in the constant advice given to
inexperienced readers, and the frequent bulletins sent out to stimulate
the interest and instruct the intelligence of the community. It is of
special interest to note that the demand for good reading has been
greatly increased wherever the public library has been administered in
this way. Indeed, booksellers and proprietary libraries have come to
favor the opening of the free library as largely increasing the demand
for their books.
It is not strange that with this large and various capacity of social
service, the free library should be rapidly growing in public favor; nor
that private munificence should frequently come to the municipal
provision. There is no public object for which so generous gifts are
often made. In the year 1893, for instance, five hundred thousand
dollars were contributed to public libraries and the erection of library
buildings in Massachusetts alone. "There has been ready perception,"
says Fletcher in his "Public Libraries in America," "of the truth that
one's memory cannot better be perpetuated than by association with an
institution so popular and at the same time so elevating and refining as
the public library. Memorial libraries are therefore very abundant, and
as expense has not been spared in the erection of such memorials, many
of our towns, even the smaller ones, are ornamented by library buildings
which are gems of architecture.... The fact remains, with all its
significance, that about the public library cluster naturally the
affections and the interest of the community. In its endowment, on the
one hand by private beneficence, and on the other by public taxation, is
illustrated that collaboration of the rich and the poor in the pursuit
of the highest ends which has in it the promise, and perhaps the
potency, of the solution of vexing social questions."
The remembrance that these statements are only locally accepted, and
that large portions of England and the United States have hardly moved
toward the establishment of public libraries, may prompt a consideration
of certain objections which are still sometimes urged. Civilization
accepts its most benignant and effective agencies of progress only under
protest; and it is not, therefore, wholly inexplicable that fifty years
of unmixed and increasing success should have left some excellent and
otherwise intelligent people unconvinced of the beneficence of the free
public library. A friend of mine was enthusiastically setting forth the
advantages of such libraries, and their rapid multiplication and growing
service in New England, at the dinner table of one of the most
distinguished, philosophic, and progressive of contemporary Englishmen;
and was not a little surprised to be cut short with the decided comment,
"I do not believe in it." The Englishman's fastidious preference for
high fences and compartment railway carriages pervades all his
intellectual conceptions also; and makes him impervious even to Stanley
Jevons's overwhelming demonstration of the moral, social, and economic
utility of the free public library; impervious even to the appeal that
ignorance and narrow intellectual opportunity must be supposed to make
upon enlightened philanthropy.
Mr. Herbert Spencer and the individualists oppose to the public
library, supported by taxation, their wellworn declamation about the
injustice of making one man pay for another man's culture and amusement;
and urge the dictum of _laissez faire_ in civilization and government.
But as the post-office and the public school have survived their
onslaughts we may not feel compelled to surrender the advantages of the
free library. For, as with the school, it is easy to show that mental
health and light are as primary interests of the community as material;
and that it is precisely because those most deficient are least sensible
of their defect that society must seek to remedy it. Mr. Spencer's
analogy between hunger for food and hunger for knowledge is utterly
fallacious. The physical appetite may be trusted to seek vigorously its
own supply; the intellectual appetite has most to be aroused where
intellectual starvation is most imminent; and it grows only by what it
feeds on. Men usually value most, indeed, what they work or pay for; but
it is precisely those who do not value good books at all who need to be
tempted and trained to their appreciation. And it is just the children
of those whose parents will not, or cannot, provide them wholesome
reading, that society cannot afford to let go wholly unprovided.
The smallest fee here proves an effective bar, as the experience of all
subscription libraries proves. When the Springfield (Mass.) library was
made free, its circulation was trebled the first year--though the fee
had been only one dollar--and in a few years rose six or seven fold.
"The Mercantile Library of Peoria, Ill.," says Mr. Crunden, "turned over
to the city and made free, notes an increase in ten years, of members
from two hundred and seventy-five to four thousand five hundred, and of
issues from fifteen thousand to ninety thousand." So always. If the
dollar fee were removed from the circulation of the books of our
Meadville City Library, for instance, within five years they would go
into fifteen hundred families instead of less than three hundred, as
now; and the added twelve hundred families would be the very ones where
the books would be of highest service. And, perhaps, more beneficent
still would be the influence upon the vastly larger number who would
frequent the library, and grow intelligent through the multiplied use of
its reading facilities, and the help of its valuable reference
department. The reaction upon the general intelligence of the community
would make itself felt in the increasing intelligence of its working men
and the higher standard of life this would bring among them. In short,
it would insure economic progress.
Besides the economic advantages, and much more important, the influence
of a well-furnished free library would tell in the training of citizens.
The discussion of economic and social questions, eager and often bitter
as it is, would become less crude and partisan in the knowledge of the
best books and magazine articles upon the topics involved. The reading
of history, biography, and travels would exert a broadening,
enlightening, and often inspiring influence. To make wholesome
literature more accessible than dime novels would save many boys and
girls from ruin, rouse many dormant intellects to higher life, and
supply effective rivals to the saloons and other low resorts.
Philanthropy and religion alike demand the wide opening of such an
"effectual door" to the opportunities of the higher life.
It is sometimes objected that the records of all public libraries show
that the lightest literature is most read, that fiction constitutes one
half or three fourths of the books circulated. But besides the obvious
consideration that only wholesome fiction finds place in all
well-appointed public libraries, Horace Greeley's view has much to
commend it, viz.: that all pure reading, however light, tends to develop
a taste for more vigorous and instructive literature. Besides, it may
well be urged that fiction is not only the current form of literary art,
but also the effective vehicle of current social theories,
philanthropies, and reforms; and that much of the most earnest thinking
and serious moral purpose of this age is embodied in it. Under such
intelligent and careful selection as the public opinion of the community
may provide for, the public library will furnish a healthful substitute
and corrective for the unappointed and vagrant reading of that large
section of young people most in need of guidance.
I have left myself but a moment to suggest one or two practical
questions that may need consideration in the establishment of a new
system of free public libraries in communities or a commonwealth. Next
to thorough discussion of their proved beneficence, an efficient
enabling act is certainly the first desideratum, in any state still
without it, so that towns and cities may tax themselves for this
purpose. And it is most important that this act be not so narrowly
limited that communities shall be unable to attempt anything worth
while. Better wait five years, or ten years, more for the statute that
will enable our communities to put themselves in line with the most
advanced in the country in this respect, than to enact a starveling and
ineffective statute that shall
"Keep the word of promise in our ear,
And break it to our hope,"
as has already sometimes happened. The public appropriation is so
limited by penny-wise legislation in a number of states as to discourage
all action, and kill all interest in the matter.
In the same way, it is to be hoped that these states will accompany
their enabling acts by auxiliary legislation similar to that in
Massachusetts and New Hampshire; or, perhaps still better, patterned
upon that of New York. It is difficult to decide upon the comparative
advantages of these two systems. That of Massachusetts seems to me
better for permanent results; but that of New York seems likely to be
more immediately effective in stirring the sluggish interest of
indifferent communities. Both are wonderfully economical in money, and
both have great effectiveness when worked by the intelligent interest of
even a few enthusiastic friends of the free library movement in any
community. It would seem that even a governor who thinks five million
people cannot afford $25,000 for the "Birds of Pennsylvania" might
consent to spend a fifth of that sum per year to begin a work that would
not end, if once well begun, without putting a new and most effective
agency of social culture and even economic progress within the reach of
every boy and girl in the state.
The machinery through which to plan and begin this great and hopeful
experiment should be carefully considered. Massachusetts's unsalaried
commission of eminent citizens, New York's Board of University Regents,
alike insure that in those commonwealths the work will be carried on
under the most hopeful and efficient conditions. Some such unpartisan
and public-spirited agency is absolutely demanded for the success of the
movement in a state that has to begin it _de novo_; and the _personnel_
of the agency is the most important point in any legislation initiating
it.
There is also a difference of opinion as to whether school boards, or
boards specially constituted for the purpose, should have charge of
public libraries. My opinion is decidedly in favor of the latter; for
while school boards would bring the library, as is most desirable, into
closer relation with the public schools, an independent board, chosen,
perhaps, by the school board in connection with the city council, as
sometimes in Massachusetts, would be likely to bring more ability,
independence, and careful consideration to the affairs of the library,
and to separate it more completely from injurious partisan and personal
politics.