These figures show phenomenal growth, but even more impressive are
the facts that give their full meaning in detail. From a striking
compilation issued in Germany by Die Brücke a few weeks ago, together
with figures extracted by means of a questionnaire, supplemented by
statistical material gathered by the Bureau of Education, the facts
which follow have been deduced: Counting the great libraries of the
world, the six continents abutting the seven seas possess 324 libraries
whose book collections number in excess of 100,000 volumes each, and
of these 79--or approximately one-fourth--are located in the Americas.
Of the 79 American libraries 72 are in the United States, including
university, public, governmental and miscellaneous institutions, with
a combined collection of 19,295,000 volumes. If this statistical
inquiry is pursued further, a reason becomes apparent why millions
are starved for want of books while other millions seemingly have a
surfeit of them. The rural regions, save in a handful of commonwealths
whose library commissions or state libraries actively administer
traveling libraries, the book supply is practically negligible. Even
the hundreds of itinerating libraries but meagerly meet the want. All
the traveling libraries in all the United States have a total issue
annually less than that of any one twenty municipal systems that can
be named. The public library facilities in at least six thousand of
the smaller towns are pitifully insufficient and in hundreds of them
wholly absent. The movement to supply books to the people was first
launched in the rural regions seventy years ago. Indeed, the movement
for popular education known as the American Lyceum, which forecast
the activities of the modern public library just as the mechanics'
institutes of Great Britain prepared the soil for them in that country,
flourished chiefly in the less thickly settled centers of population.
The early district school libraries melted away in New York state and
Wisconsin and other states, and the devastated shelves have never been
amply renewed. The library commissions are valiantly and energetically
endeavoring to supply the want, but their efforts are all too feebly
supported by their respective states. In this particular, the policy
is that which unfortunately obtains as to all educational effort. More
than 55 per cent of the young people from 6 to 20 years old--about
17,000,000 of them--live in the country or in towns of less than two
thousand inhabitants. According to an official report from which this
statement is extracted, there are 5,000 country schools still taught
in primitive log houses, uncomfortable, unsuitable, unventilated,
unsanitary, illy equipped, poorly lighted, imperfectly heated--boys
and girls in all stages of advancement receiving instruction from one
teacher of very low grade. It is plain why, in the summing up of this
report, "illiteracy in rural territory is twice as great as in urban
territory, notwithstanding that thousands of illiterate immigrants
are crowded in the great manufacturing and industrial centers. The
illiteracy among native-born children of native parentage is more than
three times as great as among native children of foreign parentage,
largely on account of the lack of opportunities for education in rural
America." In Indian legend Nokomis, the earth, symbolizes the strength
of motherhood; it may yet chance that the classic myth of the hero who
gained his strength because he kissed the earth may be fully understood
in America only when the people learn that they will remain strong, as
Mr. Münsterberg has put it, "only by returning with every generation to
the soil."
If the states have proved recreant to duty in this particular, the
municipalities have shown an increasing conception of educational
values. The figures make an imposing statistical array. In the
United States there are 1,222 incorporated places of 5,000 or more
inhabitants, and their libraries house 90,000,000 volumes, with a total
yearly use aggregating 110,000,000 issues. Four million volumes a year
are added to their shelves, and collectively they derive an income of
$20,000,000. Their permanent endowments, which it must be regretfully
said but 600 of them share, now aggregate $40,000,000. Nearly all of
these libraries occupy buildings of their own, Mr. Andrew Carnegie
having supplied approximately $42,226,338 for the purpose in the United
States, and the balance of the $100,000,000 represented in buildings
having been donated by local benefactors or raised by taxation.
The population of these 1,222 places is 38,758,584, considerably less
than half that of the entire United States. Their book possessions,
on the other hand, are nine times as great as those in the rest of
the country; the circulation of the books nearly twelve times in
volume. Closer analysis of these figures enforces still more strongly
the actual concentration of the available book supply. The hundred
largest cities of the United States, varying in size from a minimum of
53,684 to a maximum of 4,766,883, possess in the aggregate more books
than all the rest of the country together, and represent the bulk of
the trained professional service rendered. The great majority of the
3,000 graduates whom the library schools have sent into service since
the first class was organized in 1887, are in these libraries and in
the university libraries. Forty per cent of the books circulated are
issued to the dwellers in these one hundred cities, and in fifteen of
them the stupendous total of 30,000,834 issues for home reading was
recorded last year. Without such analysis as this, the statistical
totals would be misleading. The concentration of resources and of
trained service in large centers of population, comparatively few in
number, makes evident the underlying cause for the modern trend of
library development. A further study of conditions in these human hives
justifies the specialized forms of service which have become a marked
factor in library extension within a decade. With increased resources,
with vastly improved internal machinery, with enlarged conception of
opportunity for useful service, have come greater liberality of rules
and ever widening circles of activity, until today no individual and no
group of individuals, remains outside the radius of library influence.
If this awakened zeal has spurred to efforts that seem outside the
legitimate sphere of library work, no undue concern need be felt.
Neither the genius and enthusiasm of the individual nor the enterprise
of a group of individuals will ever be permitted to go too rapidly or
too far: the world's natural conservatism and inherited unbelief stand
ever ready to retard or prevent.
V
Specialization has been incorporated into library administration
chiefly to give expeditious and thorough aid to seekers of information
touching a wide variety of interests--business men, legislators,
craftsmen, special investigators and students of every sort. This
added duty has not diminished its initial function to make available
the literature of all time, nor to satisfy those who go to books
for the pure joy of reading. The recreative service of the library
is as important as the educative, or the informative. For the great
mass of people, the problem has been the problem of toil long and
uninterrupted. The successful struggle of the unions to restrict the
hours of labor has developed another problem almost as serious--the
problem of leisure. Interwoven with this acute problem is another
which subdivision of labor has introduced into modern industrial
occupations--the terrible fatigue which results from a monotonous
repetition of the same process hour after hour, day after day, week
after week. Such blind concentration in the making of but one piece
of a machine, or a garment, or a watch, or any other article of
merchandise, without knowledge of its relationship to the rest, soon
wears the human worker out. There must be an outlet of play, of fun,
or recreation. The librarian need not feel apologetic to the public
because perchance his circulation statistics show that 70 per cent of
it is classed as fiction. If he wishes to reduce this percentage to 69
or 68 or 61, let him do it not by discouraging the reading of novels,
but by stimulating the use of books in other classes of literature. But
well does he merit his own sense of humiliation and the condemnation of
the critics if he needs must feel ashamed of the kind of novels that
he puts upon his shelves. To quote a fellow librarian who expresses
admirably the value of such literature, "A good story has created many
an oasis in many an otherwise arid life. Many-sidedness of interest
makes for good morals, and millions of our fellows step through the
pages of a story book into a broader world than their nature and their
circumstances ever permit them to visit. If anything is to stay the
narrowing and hardening process which specialization of learning,
specialization of inquiry and of industry, and swift accumulation of
wealth are setting up among us, it is a return to romance, poetry,
imagination, fancy, and the general culture we are now taught to
despise. Of all these the novel is a part; rather, in the novel are all
of these. But a race may surely find springing up in itself a fresh
love of romance, in the high sense of that word, which can keep it
active, hopeful, ardent, progressive. Perhaps the novel is to be, in
the next decades, part of the outward manifestation of a new birth of
this love of breadth and happiness."