say that it stands for peace; for it is by force only, or by the
possibility of it, that peace is assured and maintained.
These are a few of the many things for which our flag of the Stars and
Stripes stands. We are right to doff our hats when it passes; we are right
to love it and to reverence it, for in so doing we are reverencing union,
patriotism, liberty and justice. That it shall never become an empty
symbol; that it shall never wave over a land disunited, animated by hate,
shackled by indifference and feebleness, permeated by injustice, unable to
exert that salutary strength which alone can preserve peace without and
within--this is for us to see and for our children and grandchildren. We
must not only exercise that "eternal vigilance" of which the fathers
spoke, but we must be eternally ready, eternally active. The Star-Spangled
Banner! Long may it wave over a land whose sons and daughters are both
free and brave--free because they are brave, and brave because they are
free, and both because they are true children of that eternal father
without whom both freedom and bravery are but empty names.
THE PEOPLE'S SHARE IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY[12]
[12] Read before the Chicago Woman's Club. January 6, 1915.
The change that has come over the library in the last half century may be
described, briefly but comprehensively, by saying that it has become
predominantly a social institution; that is, that its primary concern is
now with the service that it may render to society--to the people. Books,
of course, were always intended to be read, and a library would have no
meaning were it never to be used; yet in the old libraries the collection
and preservation of the books was primary and their use secondary, whereas
the modern institution exists primarily for public service, the collection
of the books, their preservation, and whatever is done to them being
directed to this end. To a social institution--a family, a school, a club,
a church or a municipality--the persons constituting it, maintaining it,
or served by it are all-important. A family without parents and children,
a school without pupils, a club without members, a church with no
congregation, a city without citizens--all are unthinkable. We may better
realize the change in our conception of the public library by noting that
it has taken its place among bodies of this type. A modern library with no
readers is unthinkable; it is no library, as we now understand the word;
though it be teeming with books, housed in a palace, well cataloged and
properly manned.
It is no longer possible to question this view of the library as a social
institution--a means of rendering general service to the widest public. We
have to deal not with theories of what the library ought to be, but, with
facts indicating what it actually is; and we have only to look about us to
realize that the facts give the fullest measure of support to what I have
just said. The library is a great distributing agency, the commodities in
which it deals being ideas and its customers the citizens at large, who
pay, through the agency of taxation, for what they receive. This
democratic and civic view of the public library's functions, however, does
not commend itself to those who are not in sympathy with democratic
ideals. In a recent address, a representative librarian refers to it as
"the commercial traveler theory" of the library. The implication, of
course, is that it is an ignoble or unworthy theory. I have no objection
to accepting the phrase, for in my mind it has no such connotation. The
commercial traveler has done the world service which the library should
emulate rather than despise. He is the advance guard of civilization. To
speak but of our own country and of its recent years, he is responsible
for much of our improvement in transit facilities and hotel
accommodations. Personally, he is becoming more and more acceptable. The
best of our educated young men are going into commerce, and in commerce
to-day no one can reach the top of the ladder who has not proved his
efficiency "on the road." Would that we could place men of his type at the
head of all our libraries!
We need not think, however, that there is anything new in the method of
distribution by personal travel. Homer employed it when he wished his
heroic verse to reach the great body of his countrymen. By personal travel
he took it to the cross-roads--just as the distributor of food and
clothing and labor-saving appliances does to-day; just as we librarians
must do if we are to democratize all literature as Homer democratized a
small part of it. Homer, if you choose to say so, adopted the
"commercial-traveler theory" of literary distribution; but I prefer to say
that the modern public library, in laying stress on the necessity of
distributing its treasures and in adopting the measures that have proved
effective in other fields, is working on the Homeric method.
Now, without the people to whom he distributed his wares, Homer would have
been dead long ago. He lives because he took his wares to his audience.
And without its public, as we have already said, the public library, too,
would soon pass into oblivion. It must look to the public for the breath
of life, for the very blood in its veins, for its bone and sinew. What,
then, is the part that the community may play in increasing the efficiency
of a public institution like the public library? Such an institution is,
first of all, a medium through which the community does something for
itself. The community employs and supports it, and at the same time is
served by it. To use another homely illustration, which I am sure will not
please those who object to comparing great things with small, this type of
relationship is precisely what we find in domestic service. A cook or a
housemaid has a dual relation to the mistress of the house, who is at the
same time her employer and the person that she directly serves. This sort
of relation does not obtain, for instance, in the case of a railroad
employe, who is responsible to one set of persons and serves another. The
public library is established and maintained by a given community in order
that it may perform certain service for that same community directly. It
seems to me that this dual relationship ought to make for efficiency. If
it does not, it is because its existence and significance are not always
realized. The cook knows that if she does not cook to suit her mistress
she will lose her job--the thing works almost automatically. If the
railroad employe does not serve the public satisfactorily there is no such
immediate reaction, although I do not deny that the public displeasure may
ultimately reach the railroad authorities and through them the employe. In
most public institutions the reaction is necessarily somewhat indirect.
The post office is a public institution, but public opinion must act on it
generally through the channels of Congressional legislation, which takes
time. Owing to this fact, very few postmen, for instance, realize that the
persons to whom they deliver letters are also their employers. In all
libraries the machinery of reaction is not the same. In St. Louis, for
instance, the library receives the proceeds of a tax voted directly by the
people; in New York City it receives an appropriation voted by the Board
of Apportionment, whose members are elected by the people. The St. Louis
Public Library is therefore one step nearer the control of the people than
the New York Public Library. If we could imagine the management of either
library to become so objectionable as to make its abolition desirable, a
petition for a special election could remove public support in St. Louis
very soon. In New York the matter might have to become an issue in a
general election, at which members of a Board of Apportionment should be
elected under pledge to vote against the library's appropriation.
Nevertheless, in both cases there is ultimate popular control. Owing to
this dual relation, the public can promote the efficiency of the library
in two ways--by controlling it properly and by its attitude toward the
service that is rendered. Every member of the public, in fact, is related
to the library somewhat as a railway stockholder, riding on a train, is
related to the company. He is at once boss and beneficiary. Let us see
first what the public can do for its library through its relation of
control. Besides the purse-strings, which we have seen are sometimes held
directly by the public and sometimes by its elected representatives, we
must consider the governing board of the institution--its trustees or
directors. These may be elected by the people or appointed by an elected
officer, such as the mayor, or chosen by an elected body, such as the city
council or the board of education.
Let us take the purse-strings first. Does your public library get enough
public money to enable it to do the work that it ought to do? What is the
general impression about this in the community? What does the library
board think? What does the librarian think? What do the members of his
staff say? What has the library's annual report to say about it? It is not
at all a difficult matter for the citizen to get information on this
subject and to form his own opinion regarding it. Yet it is an unusual
thing to find a citizen who has either the information or a
well-considered opinion. The general impression always seems to be that
the library has plenty of money--rather more, in fact, than it can
legitimately use. It is probably well for the library, under these
circumstances, that the public control of its purse-strings is indirect.
If the citizens of an average American city had to go to the polls
annually and vote their public library an appropriation, I am sure that
most libraries would have to face a very material reduction of their
income.
The trouble about this impression is that it is gained without knowledge
of the facts. If a majority of the citizens, understanding how much work a
modern public library is expected to do and how their own library does it,
should deliberately conclude that its management was extravagant, and that
its expenditure should be cut down, the minority would have nothing to do,
as good citizens, but submit. The citizens have nothing to say as directly
as this, but the idea, so generally held, that libraries are well off,
does operate in the long run to limit library appropriations and to
prevent the library from doing much useful work that it might do and ought
to do.
It is then, every citizen's business, as I conceive it, to inform himself
or herself of the work that the public library is doing, of that which it
is leaving undone, and of the possibilities of increased appropriations.
If the result is a realization that the library appropriation is
inadequate, that realization should take the form of a statement that will
sooner or later reach the ears, and tend to stimulate the action, of those
directly responsible. And it should, above all, aid in the formation of a
sound public opinion. Ours is, we are told, a government of public
opinion. Such government will necessarily be good or bad as public opinion
is based on matured judgment or only on fleeting impressions.
Inadequacy of support is responsible for more library delinquency than the
average citizen imagines. Many a librarian is deservedly condemned for the
unsatisfactory condition of his institution when his fault is not, as his
detractors think, failure to see what should be done, or lack of ability
to do it, so much as inability to raise funds to do it with. This is
doubtless a fault, and its possessor should suffer, but how about the
equally guilty accessories? How about the city authorities who have failed
to vote the library adequate support? How about the board of trustees who
have accepted such a situation without protest? And what is more to our
purpose here, how about the citizens who have limited their efforts to
pointing out the cracks in the edifice, with not a bit of constructive
work in propping it up and making possible its restoration to strength and
soundness?
In conversation with a friend, not long ago, I referred to the financial
limitations of our library's work, and said that we could add to it
greatly and render more acceptable service if our income were larger. He
expressed great surprise, and said: "Why, I thought you had all the money
you want; your income must be all of $100,000 a year." Now, our income
actually is about $250,000, but how could I tell him that? I judiciously
changed the subject.
Let us look next, if you please, at the library board and examine some of
its functions. There appears to be much public misapprehension of the
duties of this body, and such misapprehension assumes various and opposing
forms. Some appear to think that the librarian is responsible for all that
is done in the library and that his board is a perfunctory body. Others
seem to believe that the board is the direct administrative head of the
library, in all of its working details and that the librarian is its
executive in the limited sense of doing only those things that he is told
to do. Unfortunately there are libraries that are operated in each of
these ways, but neither one relationship nor the other, nor any
modification of either, is the ideal one between a librarian and his
board. The board is supreme, of course, but it is a body of non-experts
who have employed an expert to bring about certain results. They ought to
know what they want, and what they have a right to expect, and if their
expert does not give them this, the relation between him and them should
terminate; but if they are men of sense they will not attempt to dictate
methods or supervise details. They are the delegated representatives of
the great public, which owns the library and operates it for a definite
purpose. It is this function of the board as the representative of the
public that should be emphasized here. Has the public a definite idea of
what it wants from the public library, and of what is reasonable for it to
ask? If so, is it satisfied that it is represented by a board that is of
the same mind? The citizens may be assured that the composition of the
library board rests ultimately upon its will. If the board is elective,
this is obvious; if appointive, the appointing officer or body would
hardly dare to go counter to the expressed desire of the citizens.
What has been said above may be put into a very few words. The public
library is public property, owned and controlled by the citizens. Every
citizen, therefore, should be interested in setting standards for it and
playing his part toward making it conform to them--in seeing that its
governing body represents him in also recognizing those standards and
trying to maintain them--in laboring for such a due apportionment of the
public funds as shall not make an attempt to live up to such standards a
mere farce.
So much for the things that the citizen can and should do in his capacity
of library boss. His possibilities as a beneficiary are still more
interesting and valuable.
Perhaps you remember the story of the man who attempted to board the
warship and, on being asked his business, replied, "I'm one of the
owners." One version of the tale then goes on to relate how the sailor
thus addressed picked up a splinter from the deck, and, handing it to the
visitor, remarked: "Well, I guess that's about your share. Take it and get
out!"
I have always sympathized with the sailor rather than with his visitor.
Most of us librarians have had experiences with these bumptious "owners"
of public property. The fact has already been noted that in a case like
this the citizen is both an owner and a beneficiary. He has duties and
privileges in both capacities, but he sometimes acts the owner in the
wrong place. The man on the warship was doubtless an owner, but at that
particular moment he was only a visitor, subject to whatever rules might
govern visitors; and he should have acted as such. Every citizen is a part
owner of the public library; he should never forget that fact. We have
seen how he may effectively assert his ownership and control. But when he
enters the library to use it his role is that of beneficiary, and he
should act as such. He may so act and at the same time be of the greatest
service to the institution which he, as a member of the public, has
created and is maintaining.
I know of no way in which a man may show his good citizenship or the
reverse--may either demonstrate his ability and willingness to live and
work in community harness, or show that he is fit for nothing but
individual wild life in the woods--better than in his use of such a public
institution as a library. The man who cannot see that what he gets from
such an institution must necessarily be obtained at the price of
sacrifice--that others in the community are also entitled to their share,
and that sharing always means yielding--that man has not yet learned the
first lesson in the elements of civic virtue. And when one sees a thousand
citizens, each of whom would surely raise his voice in protest if the
library were to waste public money by buying a thousand copies of the
latest novel, yet find fault with the library because each cannot borrow
it before all the others, one is tempted to wonder whether we really have
here a thousand bad citizens or whether their early education in
elementary arithmetic has been neglected.
Before the present era there were regulations in all institutions that
seemed to be framed merely to exasperate--to put the public in its place
and chasten its spirit. There are now no such rules in good libraries. He
who thinks there are may find that there is a difference of opinion
between him and those whom he has set in charge of the library regarding
what is arbitrary and what is necessary; but at any rate he will discover
that the animating spirit of modern library authority is to give all an
equal share in what it has to offer, and to restrain one man no more than
is necessary to insure to his brother the measure of privilege to which
all are equally entitled.
Another way in which the citizen, in his capacity of the library's
beneficiary, can aid it and improve its service is his treatment of its
administrators. Librarians are very human: they react quickly and surely
to praise or blame, deserved or undeserved. Blame is what they chiefly
get. Sometimes they deserve it and sometimes not. But the occasions on
which some citizen steps in and says, "Well done, good and faithful
servant," are rare indeed. The public servant has to interpret silence as
praise; so sure is he that the least slip will be caught and condemned by
a vigilant public. No one can object to discriminating criticism; it is a
potent aid to good administration. Mere petulant fault-finding, however,
especially if based on ignorance or misapprehension, does positive harm.
And a little discriminating praise, now and then, is a wonderful
stimulant. No service is possible without the men and women who render it;
and the quality of service depends, more than we often realize, on the
spirit and temper of a staff--something that is powerfully affected,
either for good or for evil, by public action and public response.
Years ago, at a branch library in a distant city, a reader stood at the
counter and complained loudly because the library would not send her a
postal reserve notice unless she defrayed the cost, which was one cent.
The assistant to whom she was talking had no option in the matter and was
merely enforcing a rule common, so far as I know, to all American public
libraries; but she had to bear the brunt of the reader's displeasure,
which she did meekly, as it was all in the day's work. The time occupied
in this useless business spelled delay to half a dozen other readers, who
were waiting their turn. Finally, one of them, a quiet little old lady in
black, spoke up as follows: "Some of us hereabouts think that we owe a
great debt of gratitude to this library. Its assistants have rendered
service to us that we can never repay. I am glad to have an opportunity to
do something in return, and it therefore gives me pleasure to pay the cent
about which you are taking up this young lady's time, and ours." So
saying, she laid the coin on the desk and the line moved on. I have always
remembered these two points of view as typical of two kinds of library
users. Their respective effects on the temper and work of a library staff
need, I am sure, no explanation.
In what I have said, which is such a small fraction of what might be said,
that I am almost ashamed to offer it to you, I have in truth only been
playing the variations on one tune, which is--Draw closer to the library,
as it is trying to draw closer to you. There is no such thing, physicists
tell us, as a one-sided force. Every force is but one aspect of a stress,
which includes also an equal and opposing force. Any two interacting
things in this world are either approaching each other or receding from
each other. So it should be with library and public. A forward movement on
the one hand should necessarily involve one to meet it.