MELVIL DEWEY: There seems to be an impression on the part of some that
the attitude I have taken in regard to this question is for the sake of
starting up discussion. I am quite sincere in what I say and in what I
believe in regard to it. In the first place, I think nothing could be
more unfortunate than for any of us to get into an attitude of
antagonism with the publishers and booksellers. There was something like
that twenty-five years ago; their organization and ours began at the
same time. There were some who wanted to fight with the booksellers and
publishers. I think that is all wrong. I am heartily in sympathy with
nearly everything that Mr. Bowker said this morning, and with what has
appeared in the columns of the _Publishers' Weekly_. I read every page
of it. I believe so profoundly in the value of the bookman's work that,
when formulating definitions of our university studies, as to what a
full-fledged university should be, I insisted it should include
publishing research and publication, not only the preservation of
learning. It is because I have so profound a respect for what may be
done by the book trade, as we call it, that I believe in these things.
But the discussion this morning seemed to be very much on the line of
Ruskin's attack on railroads, which he said always were devices of the
devil, and he said it very eloquently. You heard the same talk about the
trolley lines--about the whitening bones of the young innocents that had
been killed by them. We were assured that bicycles were to destroy the
horse trade entirely, yet horses now bring double what they did before.
Twenty-five years ago, I remember a very prominent man most earnestly
pointing out just what was pointed out this morning--that the A. L. A.
and the public libraries were simply devices to injure the interests of
publishers and booksellers. And the attitude of men on these things is
based on what Mr. Bowker called "an economic and social fallacy." I like
the phrase; only he was fitting it to me, and I fit it to him, and it is
for you to decide which is right. The question hinges on what we
understand the library to be. If the library is like a blacksmith shop,
or shoe store, or something of that kind, then he is right. If the
library is an essential part in our system of education and a necessity
for our civilization, then I am right. In New York we still have the
plank road and the toll-gate, and we are just taking them over for
public use--buying them and abolishing the tolls, so that the public's
right to use the roads has come back to them. All the arguments we heard
this morning would fit the question of abolishing the toll-roads. A
great many people keep no horses. Why should they be taxed to maintain
the roads? We have the fire department. We do not tax only the people
whose houses are on fire. It is a public necessity. We have the best
illustration of the case in our schools. The tax-supported high school
has killed off a number of private schools, and estimable people who
were earning their living that way were thrown out of employment. And
the tax-supported high school is in analogy with the public library. It
has offered instruction free and has ruined the business of others. It
is so with many professional schools. A transition has been going on
very rapidly. The last big fight we have been having is over the
business colleges, some of which are directed by mere charlatans, and
others by those who are giving admirable instruction, doing their work
well. But they have outlived their time. The public demanded that
certain instruction of this kind should be made available cheaply to all
the people.
Now, we have been charged with wanting to abolish the bookseller. I
never said anything about abolishing him. It is like saying that because
the tadpole is going to be a frog we are abolishing the tadpoles. It is
nature that does it; it is a matter of growth. Or it is like saying that
the entomologist in pointing out that the moth is going to develop into
the butterfly, is abolishing all the moths. So the good booksellers, if
they go on with the work of supplying the public with good reading, will
do it through the agency of the public library, where they can do it
cheaper. When we are sure that a certain thing ought to be done; that it
is a good thing; and, secondly, when we are sure that it can be done
cheaper than in any other way, we are not inclined to waste a great deal
of time theorizing over anybody's philosophy as to whether it is a
proper thing to do or not. We want the right things done in the best and
cheapest way. I am sorry to see the old-time bookseller, who did good
work, crowded out of the field. I do not see any way in which he can
save himself, except in the largest cities. I am sorry to see a great
many of the old schools, the secondary schools, crowded out of business
and entirely replaced by the tax-supported schools. I do not understand
that it is our purpose, either in this Association, or in life, to be
studying how we are going to feed every man after the system which has
fed him up to the present time is abolished. If the man is good for
anything, he will earn his wages; and it is utterly fallacious to say a
thing is wrong because somebody is going to lose his business. When the
railroad was built a great many worthy men who drove stage coaches were
driven out of business in just that way. Every modern improvement does
that; new machinery of all kinds has the effect of driving people out of
employment; but, in the long run, it pays.
I ought to say in the first place that the suggestion that the librarian
would sell books for a profit is one of those queer things that crop out
in connection with all great movements. I never yet heard of any library
that was buying books and distributing them. I believe that the library
will order books in connection with other work. My thesis is this: the
book owned is a great deal better than the book loaned. I believe it is
better for a man to own a book than to borrow it; that it is legitimate,
at public expense, to show him that book in the library and hand it to
him as his book--just as legitimate an expense, every way, as it is to
employ a man to sell people books so that they won't patronize the
Booklovers' Library. I think the whole thing hinges there. It is not a
matter of theory, but of fact. If that is what we want to accomplish,
can we do it best with the book store or with the library? I contend
that it is impossible to rehabilitate the old bookseller, any more than
the old private school, which could be done only by endless means in
endowment. I do not believe we should try, because it can be done better
and cheaper in another way; because the library has the books on its
shelves. The statistics this morning showed that the bookseller is dying
out. I believe it to be entirely impossible to rehabilitate that
profession. If in the library it becomes a recognized principle that
the library is supported at public expense for the purpose of lending
books. I am confident that the public will demand it to be done in that
way. I am confident of another thing. You have only to consult your
catalogs to see the remarkable development of the last decade in
publishing which is done by endowed universities and colleges and of
learned societies. See the great body of technical journals that have
been turned over the university presses. Every university that pretends
to accomplish much now has a press, and is developing it with great
rapidity. It was said this morning that the publisher hinged on the
cash; that the bookseller hinged on that. Ladies and gentlemen, the cash
profit is not a proper scale in which to weigh the questions in which we
are interested. When you take questions of education, or religion, or
philanthropy, and put them on a question of cash profit, you are in an
absolutely false attitude. I do not mean by that that we must not regard
business conditions. We must know how to pay for our coal and our rent,
but not a dividend in dollars and cents. And the moment my antagonist
says that this question is to be measured by a cash dividend, I say he
is ruled out of court in any body of librarians who are giving their
lives and their work at salaries not at all commensurate, but who make
dividends on a higher plane. There is no occasion for an attitude of
hostility; nor, I take it, for me to take issue on this new proposition
in regard to prices to libraries. There is not a librarian in this room
who has all the money he wants. If prices rise ten per cent., it will
diminish the number of books he can buy. I followed the argument this
morning. If it is correct, there is only one thing we can do. We, as
librarians, are cutting into the revenues of these men, and we ought not
only not to ask a discount but librarians ought to pay twenty-five per
cent. in addition, because we are cutting into their revenues. We ought
to appoint a committee, which without a bit of the spirit of antagonism,
should meet the publishers and booksellers and point out all over the
United States large consumers who buy for cash. I think it is a
practical mistake to try to force up the price, and that we are bound as
custodians of this money that is put in our hands, firmly and
courteously, but, I am sure, with the most friendly relations on both
sides, to see that the prices of our books shall not be cut down.
I say, therefore, in summing up, after an observation of thirty years,
that I am confident that the library of this century is going to assume
those educational functions, and that among the most prominent of these
is the putting into the hands of the people who wish to make their lives
wealthier in arts or trades the books of power and of inspiration. The
public library cannot afford not to put into their hands at a minimum
price the books they want to read. And, logically we shall be forced in
that direction. You will find that this tendency is growing all the
while, and we will have to put the library squarely alongside the high
school. Indeed the library in its development is following exactly the
line of development of the tax-supported high school and for that same
reason, that in the high school we now offer instruction free, the
library will offer books for sale without profit--there should be no
profit in the library--and will lend books freely, and will with regret
kill the local book store and supplant it by something that is worth a
great deal more.
W. I. FLETCHER: I have been so long on the Publishing Board with Mr.
Dewey that I have got thoroughly in the habit, when he gets through, of
saying something on the other side. It seems to me that a few words
might be said to clarify this subject. It is undoubtedly true, as Mr.
Dewey has said, that a book store that is worth anything could not be
established in every place in the country. There ought to be something
of the sort, even if it is a public library. The book stores exist only
in places where it is commercially possible, and that number of places
is very limited. Now I suppose that if we could ascertain the
communities where it is not commercially possible for a book store to be
carried on, we should none of us have any objection--it seems to me most
of us would favor the idea--that the public library should, to some
extent, take the place of the book store in supplying books to the
would-be owners in such a community. That leaves the question confined
to those places where a book store is commercially impossible, probably
to those places where book stores have been, even with difficulty,
maintained under past conditions. I should be willing, for my own part,
to do all I could in securing the establishment of a good book store
where there is not one, where it is commercially possible to maintain
one. Where it is not, it would be a good thing to let the library sell
the books. I am greatly impressed with the argument as to the advantages
of a book store in a community where it can be maintained. So it seems
to me that there is not very much difference of opinion among us, after
all, as I dare say those who spoke this morning would not object
seriously to the distribution of books for sale through the libraries,
where there is no hope of having a local book store. As to the amount of
discount under this new arrangement, I am entirely in accord with Mr.
Dewey in wishing that the Association might present whatever are the
views of the Association. On the subject of the amount of discount that
we ought to have, I should hardly feel that the booksellers were
treating us right in this country if they should follow the custom of
the German publishing trade and refuse any discount at all; and it is a
question whether the ten per cent. which they propose to allow under
this new system is enough. I have advised our library committee to
express a hearty readiness to accede to the proposed arrangement, to
take the ten per cent. discount, and we have given our adhesion to it.
Perhaps that was somewhat hasty, before the librarians in general had an
opportunity to act; but I do not believe anything very different from
that will be the attitude of the librarians at large. We might in time,
for example, make it fifteen per cent., but I am sure that could not be
done at present. I am heartily in sympathy with the movement that will
make it possible to have a good book store, which I believe every
librarian would like to have in his place.
W. M. PALMER: I wish to say just this: Of course in the lack of time
that was accorded me, it is difficult to say all that can be said on the
subject, and explain the by-paths, and so forth; but, as I intimated at
the introduction of my paper, I simply stated what I said as facts, and
while we wish a great many things to be different, we realize that they
cannot be reached in a certain direction all at once. In order to bring
the bookselling business to a basis which will enable the bookseller to
live, some reform had to take place. The publishers have seen fit to
institute the reform which has been outlined to-day. When I spoke this
morning, for instance, of the fact that some librarians ordered books
for friends and others at the discounts which the library and they
themselves received from the booksellers, I did not wish to impute any
wrong motive to the librarian in doing that. It is a matter within the
knowledge of the booksellers, and the booksellers wink at it. I do not
think there was any element of dishonesty in it, because the bookseller
who sold the book to the librarian knew it was again to be sold to some
friend of the librarian.
R. R. BOWKER: In offering a resolution, I wish to say just a word or
two. I had not expected Mr. Dewey to make an argument in favor of the
public library, for certainly there would be no disagreement on that
point in this room. Where he went further and suggested that the
salaried librarian should become the commercial bookseller, I think and
I hope that there are few to follow him to that length of argument. As
to the Booklovers' Library, of course that is not at all in analogy with
the public library, and I want to take this opportunity to call
attention to what seems to me an admirable use of the Booklovers'
Library scheme, so long as it can hold out. Mr. Carr has told me that he
has looked upon the Booklovers' Library as a very useful overflow or
safety-valve for the public library. When thirty-five people come at
once and want "Quincy Adams Sawyer," and a librarian sees that the two
copies that could be put on the shelves would not meet the demand, he
would say to himself "I cannot rightly spend the money for thirty-five
copies," and therefore he would say to the thirty-three, "You can go to
the Booklovers' Library and get these new books just when you want
them." So this library may be a relief to the librarian who is
conscientious in the spending of his money.
The resolution which I now ask to move is that the Council be requested
to appoint a committee on relations with the book trade, to which this
question shall be referred.
The resolution was carried.
The general session was then adjourned, and there followed a Round Table
meeting on