(AN ARGUMENT AGAINST PUBLIC SUPPORT)
This paper, by M.D. O'Brien, forms Chapter IX of the
compilation of essays entitled "A Plea for Liberty" edited
by Thomas Mackay (3rd ed. London, 1894). The sub-title of
the book, "an argument against socialism and socialistic
legislation," gives its viewpoint. There is a formidable
introduction by Herbert Spencer in which he condemns even
the extremely limited state support given at that time to
general education in England as a "tyrannical system tamely
submitted to by people who fancy themselves free." Mr.
Spencer ends by asserting that the end, if this sort of
thing is to go on, "must be a society like that of ancient
Peru, dreadful to contemplate, in which the mass of the
people, elaborately regimented in groups, ... were
superintended in their private lives as well as in their
industries and toiled hopelessly for the support of the
governmental organization."
A Free Library may be defined as the socialists' continuation school.
While State education is manufacturing readers for books,
State-supported libraries are providing books for readers. The two
functions are logically related. If you may take your education out of
your neighbour's earnings, surely you may get your literature in the
same manner. Literary dependency has the same justification as
educational dependency; and, no doubt, habituation to the one helps to
develop a strong desire for the other. A portion of our population has
by legislation acquired the right to supply itself with necessaries and
luxuries at the cost of the rates. The art of earning such things for
themselves has been rendered superfluous. Progress therefore halts
because this all-important instinct has fallen into disuse. At a point
the rates will bear no more, and those who depend on them for their
pleasures are doomed to disappointment. The identity of principle
exemplified alike by compulsory education and compulsory libraries,
logically involves the justification or condemnation of both; and, let
us disguise the unpleasant truth in as many sounding phrases as we
please, the fact remains that the carrying out of this socialistic
principle means pauperism pure and simple. Have we forgotten the evils
that resulted from the application of this principle under the old poor
law? or do we imagine that when an evil changes its outward appearance
it changes its inner essence also? The harm done to the national
character by a policy of this nature varies in intensity in proportion
to the necessity of the want supplied. If the thing supplied at public
cost is really necessary and eagerly accepted by the people, it becomes
more readily a potent cause of dependency, and a heavy and at length an
insupportable charge on the ratepayers. This was the experience of the
old poor law. The cost of national education is fast approaching to the
same state of things, and the problem will one day have to be faced:
'How is the burden of the cost of education to be returned to the
shoulders of those who are responsible for it?' In this paper we are
concerned with a smaller question. A very inconsiderable section of the
people really want the Free Library; the question at the polls is
generally treated with apathy, and only a very small proportion of the
ratepayers record their votes one way or the other. As a matter of fact
the Free Library is forced upon the public by a number of doctrinaire
believers in the superhuman value of a mere literary education. It is
not a popular want. The vast majority of people have still a greater
faith in the training which results from practical contact with the real
facts of life, and still only regard book-learning as a useful
supplement, easily obtainable by those who really desire it and are
likely to profit by it.
The history of the Education Acts is very analogous. The literary
classes became alarmed at the ignorance of the poor, and instead of
allowing the efforts of philanthropists, aided by the growing
appreciation of education amongst the labouring class--already giving
great promise of providing a true and voluntary remedy for the supposed
evil--to work out a system of education on natural and healthy lines of
spontaneous evolution, a course which would have added dignity and
stability to the domestic life of the parents and given a real and
technical system of education to the children--instead of this, the
hasty politician rushed forward crying. 'The people do not want
education, so we must compel them.' The compulsory and demoralizing
character of the means reacts on the otherwise advantageous nature of
the end, and the result is a mind-destroying system of cram for the
children; summons, fines, and police for the parents. This is how the
politician makes education a lovely and desirable thing. It is almost
impossible to over-estimate the evils resulting from the State not
allowing teachers and parents to adjust the educational arrangements so
as to meet the felt requirements of the case. This communal despotism
strikes at the very foundation of personal virtue, viz. the home, the
instrument by which nature lifts human character above the non-moral
sensuousness of the animal world. Let us never forget that the human
mind is made up of lower and higher elements, and that the removal of
personal duties--the practice-ground of the virtues--favours the
development of the lower factors of character at the expense of the
higher, of weeds at the expense of flowers.
What else can possibly result from the carrying out of a principle which
means the public feeding, clothing, and lodging of children under
official superintendence and control? Will it be contended that State
officers can know better than parents what is really needed for
children? Yet this is what our Free Educationalists are leading us to.
The system which robs the parent of one of the noblest motives to
effort--the desire to give a good education to his children--which
weakens the sense of duty and takes away a wholesome stimulus to the
mental and moral faculties, is only the beginning of an evil that
menaces civilization and threatens to swallow up all natural
distinctions and relationships in a low and promiscuous communism. This
bribe of parental irresponsibility--this patent method of shirking
duties--which the politician offers us in exchange for our manhood, is a
scheme for encouraging the race to cast itself forth into the moral
darkness of a world where the parents are all childless and the children
all orphans.
The Free Library, however, has not yet reached the same degree of
compulsion as the Free School. A majority of the local public must vote
for it before it can be established; or rather, we should say, there
must be a majority favourable to it amongst _those who do take the
trouble to record their votes_: usually only a very small proportion of
the electorate think it worth while to cross the street in order to pay
a visit to the poll. When the Library is established, its real
popularity is to be measured by the fact that its books are borrowed by
only about one per cent. of the population. We make bold to say that if
it ever becomes popular, it will be an extremely mischievous
institution. As yet it is merely a plaything for a number of
well-meaning busybodies, and an occasional convenience to a few
middle-class readers. The limited amount generally spent upon it
prevents it from doing anything more than minister to the sensational
indulgences of a very limited section of the reading public. If the
working classes of the country ever really become students, it will be
impossible to supply them with adequate store of books from the rates:
if this is attempted, it can only be at a time when books will be but a
small item in the expenditure which a dominant State Socialism seeks to
lay on the public purse. On the one hand will stand a class whose only
plan for satisfying their wants is the imposition of a new tax, and on
the other a harried remnant of ratepayers, both soon to be overwhelmed
by the near approach of national bankruptcy.
Want is the spring of human effort. Self-discipline, self-control,
self-reliance, are the habits which grow in men who are allowed to act
for themselves. The meddlesome forestalling of individual effort, which
is being carried into mischievous excess, is going far to bind our
poorer classes for another century of dependence.
Let us run, as rapidly as possible, through a few of the pleas set up
by the advocates of this form of municipal socialism. Good books, it is
said, are out of the reach of the working man. Whether this is true as
regards books we shall see, but obviously it would be easy to make out a
much stronger case for many other forms of amusement which are far more
popular with the million than books; yet no one seriously proposes that
the amusements of the poorer classes can _all_ be supported by the
rates. But a glance down the lists of some of our publishers will show
any one that the statement is not true--is the very reverse of truth.
When books like 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,'
'Rasselas,' 'Paul and Virginia,' Byron's 'Childe Harold,' 'Lady of the
Lake,' 'Marmion,' and others, can be purchased from Messrs. Dicks at
twopence each; when all Scott's novels can be obtained from the same
publishers for threepence per story; when, from the same source, any of
Shakespere's plays can be got for a penny each, it will not do to say
that the best kind of literature is unpurchasable by a class that spends
millions a year on alcohol, as well as thousands on tobacco and other
luxuries. Three or four pence, which even comparatively poor people
think nothing now-a-days of spending on an ounce of tobacco or a pipe,
will buy enough of the best literature to last an ordinary reader at
least a week or a fortnight. And when the book is read, there is the
pleasure to be derived from lending or giving it to a friend, and of
accepting the loan or gift of his in return; a custom that largely
obtains in country districts where no socialistic collection of unjustly
gotten books exists to hinder the development of personal thrift or
poison the springs of spontaneous generosity. Lying on the table where
this is written is a list of the works published in Cassell's National
Library. How some of the old book-lovers who are gone--who lived in the
days when the purchase of a good book involved some personal
sacrifice--would have appreciated this valuable library! Here are 208 of
the world's best books, each one of which contains some 200 pages of
clear readable type. The published price is threepence each; but a
discount of twenty-five per cent. is allowed when four or five or more
are purchased. It would be a waste of space to give the entire list; but
a few typical examples may be taken. Here are the Essays of Lord
Macaulay; here are works by Plutarch, Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon,
Lucian, Fénelon, Voltaire, Boccaccio, Gothe, and Lessing--in English, of
course. Here is Walton's 'Complete Angler,' Goldsmith's 'Plays,' Bacon's
'Wisdom of the Ancients' and 'Essays.' Here are works by Burke, Swift,
Steele and Addison, Milton, Johnson, Pope, Sydney Smith, Coleridge,
Dickens, Landor, Fielding, Keats, Shelley, Defoe, Dryden, Carlyle,
Locke, Bolingbroke, Shakespere, and many others. All Shakespere's plays
are here complete, and each play is accompanied by the poem, story, or
previous play on which it is founded. Here, for example, is the last of
the series as yet published, 'All's Well that Ends Well'; it contains a
translation of the story of Giletta of Narbona from Painter's 'Palace of
Pleasure'; it is worth threepence to a student, if only for showing the
difference between raw material and finished product. Hundreds of new
novels, including some of those of Thackeray, Kingsley, Dickens, Lytton,
and other well-known authors, are to be obtained in most places for
4-1/2_d._, and their secondhand price is less still. Considering the
marvellous cheapness of good books, it is difficult to understand how
any one can either blackmail his neighbour for them, or encourage
working-men to do so. If a man will not deduct a few coppers now and
then from his outlay in other luxuries to purchase literature, he cannot
want literature very badly; if he does not value books sufficiently well
to buy them with his own earnings he does not deserve to have them
bought for him with other people's earnings. That poor women and others,
who are often the sole support of a large family of children, should
have their hard earnings confiscated to maintain readers--many of them
well-to-do--in gratuitous literature, is an injustice not to be
palliated by all the hollow cant about culture and education so freely
indulged in at the present time. Some time ago there was a discussion on
'the sacrifice of education to examination.' There is another question
quite as serious--the sacrifice of justice to so-called education.
Let us next consider the educational value of this institution.
It is hardly necessary for us to say that we have no objection, either
for ourselves or for our neighbours, to novel-reading. On the contrary,
we regard it as a legitimate form of recreation. All we argue is that it
is not a luxury which should be paid for out of the rates. Now, to
listen to the advocates of Free Libraries one would imagine that these
institutions were only frequented by students, and that the books
borrowed were for the most part of a profound and scholarly character.
But the very reverse of this is the case. The committee of the Blackpool
Free Library, in their Report for the year 1887-8, say:--'Works of
fiction and light literature enjoy the greatest degree of popularity,
each book circulating eleven times in the year, while _the more
instructive books in the other classes circulate only once during the
same period_.' According to this Report, out of a total average daily
issue of 150 volumes, 137 are works of fiction and light literature. The
average issue of history, which is the next largest item, is only 9 per
diem.
No wonder is it, after such results as this, that the Committee should
express the opinion 'that the rich stores of biography, history,
travels, and works of science and art which have been added in recent
years are deserving of greater attention than has hitherto been given to
them.'
Although the nominal and frequently exceeded limit is now one penny in
the pound, there is no knowing how soon it may be raised. Already one of
the members of the Library Association of the United Kingdom, a body
composed to a considerable extent of librarians whose bureaucratic
instincts naturally impel them to push their business by all possible
means, has awarded a prize of ten guineas for a draft Library Bill,
which, among other things, permits a twopenny instead of a penny rate.
'But,' says the _Daily News_ of Oct. 4th, 1889, 'the feeling appeared to
be unanimous that it would be _unwise_ to put this forward as a part of
the Association's programme, as it would enormously increase the
opposition to the adoption of the Act in new localities.' No regard for
the ratepayers' pockets holds them back; but only a fear of injuring
business by frightening the bird whose feathers are to be plucked. Were
it not for this the Bill would be pushed forward, and those ratepayers
who have voted for the adoption of the Act in the belief that no more
than one penny can be levied, would have the rate suddenly doubled over
their heads without knowing it. Perhaps, after all, it would serve them
right.
The intervention of this Association in the conduct of the agitation for
Free Libraries is instructive, and points to the fact that if we admit
the principle that the wants of the poorer classes generally are to be
supplied from the rates, it is not the poorer classes themselves who are
allowed to say what form the gift shall take. On the contrary the law is
manipulated by a number of amiable enthusiasts who succeed in foisting
their own fad on the public charges. If the working classes were allowed
to choose the application of _1d._ or _2d._ in the pound it would not go
to Free Libraries.
The enormous amount of light reading indulged in by the frequenters of
Free Libraries leads us to expect that these places are largely used by
well-to-do and other idlers. And this is exactly what we find. Free
Libraries are perfect 'god-sends' to the town loafer, who finds himself
housed and amused at the public expense, and may lounge away his time
among the intellectual luxuries which his neighbours are taxed to
provide for him. Says Mr. Mullins, the Birmingham librarian, 'No
delicacy seemed to deter the poor tramp from using, not only the
news-room, but the best seats in the reference library _for a snooze_.
Already the Committee had to complain of the use of the room for
_betting_, and for the transaction of various businesses, and the
exhibition of samples, writing out of orders, and other pursuits more
suited to the commercial room of an hotel.' And referring to another
Free Library, the same authority continues:--'In the Picton Room of the
Liverpool Library, alcoves were once provided with small tables, on
which were pens, ink, &c., but it was found that pupils were received in
them by tutors, and much private letter-writing was done therein; so
that when a respectable thief took away £20 worth of books they were
closed.
After the nonsense usually indulged in by the officials of literary
pauperism such candour as this is positively refreshing. It is seldom
the high priest allows us to look behind the curtain in this fashion. As
a rule, the admission is much less direct, and can only be gathered from
a careful analysis of the statistics. According to the Bristol Report
for last year, there were 416,418 borrowers during the twelve months
preceding December 31, 1889: of these 148,992 are described as having
'no occupation.' The Report of the Atkinson Free Library of Southport
informs us that out of the 1283 new borrowers who joined the library
last year, 536 are written down as of 'no occupation.' At the same town,
in the years 1887-8, there were 641 who, according to the report, were
without any occupation, out of a total of 1481. According to the annual
Report of the Leamington Free Public Library for 1888-9, 187 made a
return 'no occupation,' out of a total of 282 applicants. In the
Yarmouth Report for the same year, out of a total of 3085 new borrowers,
1044 are described as of 'no occupation'; the report for the previous
year states the proportion as follows:--Total of borrowers, 2813; 'no
occupation,' 1078; in the year before that the total was--3401; 'no
occupation,' 1368.
Some reports give a fuller analysis of the different classes of people
who use the libraries to which they refer. In the Wigan Report for last
year we are told that 13,336 people made use of the reference library in
that town during 1888-9. The largest items of this amount are given as
follows:--Solicitors, 1214; clergy, 903; clerks and book-keepers, 1521;
colliers, 961; schoolmasters and teachers, 801; architects and
surveyors, 418; engineers, 490; enginemen, 438. At Newcastle-on-Tyne,
last year, there were 11,620 persons used the reference library, and
only 3949 of these were of 'no occupation.' Yet, notwithstanding the
numerical weakness of the latter, they managed to consult nearly half
the books that were consulted during that year. The total number
consulted was 36,100; and 16,800 were used by people who had 'no
occupation.' And this is legislation for the Working Classes!
There is little doubt that at least forty-nine out of every fifty
working-men have no interest whatever in these institutions. For one
penny they can buy their favourite newspaper, which can be carried in
the pocket and read at any time; whereas if they wanted to see a paper
at a Free Library they would generally have to wait half an hour or an
hour in a stuffy room, without being allowed to speak during the time.
The following sensible remarks are from the pen of one who has risen to
an honourable position from a very humble beginning without the aid of
either Free Libraries or Free Schools:--
Not long ago a conference of working men was held at Salford
to consider the question of rational amusement, when, in
reply to a series of questions, it was stated that Free
Libraries were not the places for poor, hard-working men,
who had social wants which such libraries could not gratify.
It was argued that people who went to work from six in the
morning till six at night did not want to travel a mile or
so to a Free Library. Music, gymnastics, smoking and
conversation rooms, and other things were suggested, but in
summing up the majority of replies, it appeared that
amusement rather than intellectual improvement, or even
reading, was what was most wanted by men after a hard day's
toil. This appears to have been realised in the erection,
according to Mr. Besant's conception, of the Palace of
Delight in the east end of London.
The truth is that a Free Library favours one special section of the
community--the book-readers--at the expense of all the rest. The
injustice of such an institution is conspicuously apparent when it is
remembered that temperaments and tastes are as various as faces. If one
man may have his hobby paid for by his neighbours, why not all? Are
theatre-goers, lovers of cricket, bicyclists, amateurs of music, and
others to have their earnings confiscated, and their capacities for
indulging in their own special hobbies curtailed, merely to satisfy
gluttons of gratuitous novel-reading? A love of books is a great source
of pleasure to many, but it is a crazy fancy to suppose that it should
be so to all. If logic had anything to do with the matter we might
expect to hear proposals for compelling the attendance of working men at
the Free Library. But surely in this nineteenth century men might be
trusted to choose their own amusements, and might mutually refrain from
charging the cost thereof to their neighbours' account. This pandering
to selfishness is bad for all parties, and doubly so to the class it is
specially intended to benefit.
The following imaginary dialogue will perhaps serve to show the inherent
injustice of literary socialism.
_A_ and _B_ earn _1s._ each by carrying luggage. Says _A_ to _B_: 'I am
in favour of circulating books by means of a subscription library; from
this _1s._ I therefore propose to deduct _1d._ in order to compass my
desire. There is my friend _C_, who is of the same opinion as myself,
and he is willing to subscribe his quota to the scheme. We hope you will
be willing to subscribe your mite, but if not, we intend to force you to
do so, for, as you know, all private interests must give way to the
public good.'
'Perhaps so,' replies _B_,'but then, you see, I have my own opinions on
the subject, and I do not believe that your method of supplying
literature is the best method. Of course I may be wrong, but then I am
logically entitled to the same freedom of thought and action as you
yourself are. If you are entitled to have your views about a "Free"
Library and to act upon them, I am equally entitled to the same liberty,
so long as I don't interfere with you. I don't compel you to pay for my
church, my theatre, or my club; why should you compel me to pay for your
library? For my own part I don't want other people to keep me in
literature, and I don't want to keep other people. I refuse therefore to
pay the subscription.'
'Very well,' rejoins _A_, 'if that is the case I shall proceed to make
you pay; and as I happen to represent a numerical majority the task will
be an easy one.'
'But are we not man and man,' says _B_,'and have not I the same right to
spend my earnings in my own way as you have to spend yours in your way?
Why should I be compelled to spend as you spend? Don't you see that you
are claiming more for yourself than you are allowing to me, and are
supplementing your own liberty by robbing me of mine? Is this the way
you promote the public good? Is this your boasted free library? I tell
you it is founded upon theft and upon the violation of the most sacred
thing in this world--the liberty of your fellow man. It is the
embodiment of a gross injustice, and only realises the selfish purpose
of a cowardly and dishonest majority.'
'We have heard all this before,' replies _A_, 'but such considerations
must all give way before the public good. We are stronger than you are,
and we have decided once and for all that you shall pay for a "Free"
Library; don't make unnecessary resistance, or we shall have to proceed
to extremities.'
And, after all, the so-called Free Library is not really free--only so
in name. If the penny or twopenny rate gave even the shabbiest
accommodation to anything like a fair proportion of its compulsory
subscribers, there would not be standing room, and the ordinary
subscription libraries would disappear. According to Mr. Thos.
Greenwood, who in his book on 'Free Libraries' has given a table of the
daily average number of visitors at the different Free Libraries
distributed up and down the country, there is only one per cent., on an
average, of visitors per day of the population of the town to which the
library belongs accommodated for a rate of one penny in the
pound,--sometimes more, sometimes less;--but the general proportion is
about one per cent. Now what do these facts mean? If it costs one penny
in the pound to acommodate so few, what would it cost for a fair
proportion to receive anything like a share that would be worth having?
Even now it is a frequent occurrence for a reader to wait for months
before he can get the novel he wants. Says Mr. George Easter, the
Norwich librarian:--'Novels most read are those by Ainsworth,
_Ballantyne_, _Besant_, _Braddon_, _Collins_, _Craik_, Dickens, Fenn,
Grant, _Haggard_, _Henty_, _C. Kingsley_, _Kingston_, _Edna Lyall_,
Macdonald, Marryat, Oliphant, Payn, Reade, Reid, Verne, Warner, _Wood_,
_Worboise_, and _Young_; of those underlined (in italics) the works are
nearly always out.' The fact is, the Free Library means that the many
shall work and pay and the few lounge and enjoy; theoretically it is
free to all, but practically it can only be used by a few.
While there is such a run on novels, solid works are at a discount. At
Newcastle-on-Tyne during 1880-81 we find that 2100 volumes of Miss
Braddon's novels were issued (of course some would be issued many times
over, as the whole set comprised only thirty-six volumes), while Bain's
'Mental and Moral Science' was lent out only twelve times in the year.
There were 1320 volumes issued of Grant's novels, and fifteen issues of
Butler's 'Analogy of Religion'; 4056 volumes of Lever's novels were
issued, while Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' circulated four times;
4901 volumes of Lytton's novels were issued, while Locke 'On the
Understanding' went eight times. Mill's 'Logic' stands at fourteen
issues as against Scott's novels, 3300; Spencer's 'Synthetic Philosophy'
(8 vols.) had forty-three issues of separate volumes; Dickens' novels
had 6810; Macaulay's 'History of England' (10 vols.) had sixty-four
issues of separate volumes. Ouida's novels had 1020; Darwin's 'Origin of
Species' (2 vols.) had thirty-six issues; Wood's novels, 1481. Mill's
'Political Economy' had eleven issues; Worboise's novels, 1964. Smith's
'Wealth of Nations' (2 vols.) had fourteen issues; Collins' novels,
1368.
'No worse than in other libraries,' it may be said; 'knowledge is at a
discount: sensation at a premium everywhere!' Perfectly true; but are
people to be taxed to give facilities for this? Novel reading in
moderation is good: the endowment of novel reading by the rates is
bad--that is our contention. And when it is remembered that any book
requiring serious study cannot be galloped through, like a novel, in the
week or fourteen days allowed for use, it becomes at once evident that
this gratuitous lending system is only adapted for the circulation of
sensation, and not for the acquirement of real knowledge. And this is
the sort of thing people allow themselves to be rated and taxed for!
This is progressive legislation, and its opponents are backward and
illiberal!
Free Libraries are typical examples of the compulsory cooperation
everywhere gaining ground in this country. Like all State socialism they
are the negation of that liberty which is the goal of human progress.
Every successful opposition to them is therefore a stroke for human
advancement. This mendacious appeal to the numerical majority to force a
demoralising and pauperising institution upon the minority, is an
attempt to revive, in municipal legislation, a form of coercion we have
outgrown in religious matters. At the present time there is a majority
of Protestants in this country who, if they wished, could use their
numerical strength to compel forced subscription from a minority of
Catholics, for the support of those religious institutions which are
regarded by their advocates as of quite equal importance to a Free
Library. Yet this is not done; and why? Because in matters of religion
we have learnt that liberty is better than force. In political and
social questions this terrible lesson has yet to be learned. We deceive
ourselves when we imagine that the struggle for personal liberty is
over--probably the fiercest part has yet to arise. The tyranny of the
few over the many is past, that of the many over the few is to come. The
temptation for power--whether of one man or a million men--to take the
short cut, and attempt by recourse to a forcing process to produce that
which can only come as the result of the slow and steady growth of ages
of free action, is so great that probably centuries will elapse before
experience will have made men proof against it. But, however long the
conflict, the ultimate issue cannot be doubted. That indispensable
condition of all human progress--liberty--cannot be permanently
suppressed by the arbitrary dictates of majorities, however potent. When
the socialistic legislation of to-day has been tried, it will be found,
in the bitter experience of the future, that for a few temporary, often
imaginary, advantages we have sacrificed that personal freedom and
initiative without which even the longest life is but a stale and empty
mockery.