I
Turning for a text to Victor Hugo's stirring epic of Paris, these words
may be found in the section for May, and in the third chapter thereof:
"A Library implies an act of faith
Which generations still in darkness hid
Sign in their night, in witness of the dawn."
When Johann Gutenberg in his secret workshop poured the molten metal
into the rough matrices he had cut for separate types, the instrument
for the spread of democracy was created. When early Cavaliers and
Puritans planted the crude beginnings of free public schools, the
forces of democracy were multiplied. When half a century ago the
first meager beginnings of the public library movement were evolved,
democracy was for all time assured. Thus have three great stages,
separated each by a span of two hundred years from that preceding,
marked that world development whose ultimate meaning is not equality of
station or possession, but equality of opportunity.
Not without stress and strife have these yet fragmentary results
been achieved. Not without travail and difficulties will universal
acceptance be accorded in the days to come. But no one may doubt the
final outcome which shall crown the struggle of the centuries. The
world was old when typography was invented. Less than five centuries
have passed since then, and in this interval--but a brief period in
the long history of human endeavor--there has been more enlargement of
opportunity for the average man and woman than in all the time that
went before. Without the instrumentality of the printed page, without
the reproductive processes that give to all the world in myriad tongues
the thought of all the centuries, slavery, serfdom and feudalism would
still shackle the millions not so fortunate as to be born to purple and
ermine, and fine linen.