I trust you will pardon me for adding the word "Nebraska" to my topic.
Six years ago last October the Nebraska Federation of Women's Clubs held
its second annual meeting at our state capital. Some two weeks before
the meeting Mrs. Peabody, a name familiar to every librarian in this
room, who was at that time our president, wrote me: "I am very anxious
to bring the travelling library movement before the women of our state.
Will you talk for 15 or 20 minutes on this topic before the Lincoln
meeting?" If she had asked me to talk on the study of comparative
anatomy, I should have been just as familiar with the topic, but in the
reference room of the Omaha Public Library, I held a consultation with
Poole's index, and succeeded in finding just one article on travelling
libraries; it was in the January _Forum_ of 1895, and if I am not
mistaken, it was a brief history or sketch of the traveling library
movement in New York. Here was my opportunity; what had been done in New
York, could be done in Nebraska, although upon a smaller scale, by the
Federation of Women's Clubs. I shall not forget how I trembled as I
stood before that large audience and made my first plea for a travelling
library. However, the secretary, in reporting the meeting, was kind
enough to say that the audience at once caught the speaker's enthusiasm,
and a committee was appointed for the formation of plans for a
federation travelling library. A hundred dollars was subscribed, and
sixty books purchased and sent out to eight clubs that first year. I
know it seems like a small beginning to-day, but it was serious,
earnest, and full of possibilities, and to-day the work is an
educational factor in our state. I believe that these books which have
gone out to the club women have not only enabled them to pursue certain
lines of study, which otherwise it would not have been possible for them
to have taken, but they have created in the minds of other members of
the family a desire to possess good reference books. These books are
sent out from my own home. The clubs receiving them are at no expense
except in paying express charges for their return. The work is supported
by voluntary contributions, and as to the salary of the librarian, she
is paid over and over again in the thankful letters which she receives
from the people who are using the books.
In 1897, the Nebraska Library Association succeeded in introducing a
bill in the legislature, creating a library commission for travelling
libraries. It passed the lower house, and went into the senate, where it
was "lost to sight, though to memory dear." In 1899, nothing daunted,
the Nebraska Library Association was there again with its library bill.
It passed the lower house, but it never reached the senate. Last June,
the National Federation of Women's Clubs was held in the city of
Milwaukee. Mrs. Buchwalter, of Ohio, the chairman of the program
committee, planned for a bureau of library instruction or information,
and this bureau was located in an upper room in the Milwaukee Public
Library. The presiding genius in the room was Miss Stearns; I always
think of her as the pioneer travelling library woman of the northwest. A
clubwoman from Nebraska was in attendance at that meeting and instead of
spending her time listening to the program, she passed the greater part
of the week in that upper room, and there she learned the work which is
being done by women's clubs throughout the length and breadth of our
land in this library field, and she went back to Nebraska determined, if
possible, to secure legislation for free travelling libraries in the
coming year. It was a strange coincidence, that last October the
Nebraska Federation of Women's Clubs again held their annual meeting at
our state capital, and as before, the same woman who had presented six
years before to that meeting, a plan for a Federation travelling
library, was there to present a plan for free travelling libraries and a
state library commission for Nebraska. The plan was formally and
unanimously adopted, and a committee was appointed to co-operate with
the Nebraska Library Association to secure legislation. In all this
work, we never had any one who assisted us more ably than Mr. Wyer, the
librarian of the state university, who was never too busy to advise us
or to see a man that we could not reach, and he it was who drafted our
bill and saw it through. To make a long story short, the first thing we
did was to send out circulars suggesting that "a library day" be
observed in the clubs; this library day was generally discussed
throughout the state. Then we sent a petition which was circulated, not
only in the towns, but among the farmers and their wives; and finally
one March morning I received the following telegram: "Rejoice and be
exceeding glad"--and I have been rejoicing ever since, for house bill
no. 20, carrying with it an appropriation of $4000 for free public
libraries, for free travelling libraries, and for the state commission,
had passed, not only the lower house, but the senate. It received the
governor's signature, and it means we are to have travelling libraries
in Nebraska.
Miss FREEMAN: Mrs. Morris, of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission and
the General Federation of Women's Clubs, will be unable to be with us
this morning on account of illness. We are, however, fortunate in being
able to hear from Mrs. Youmans, the president of the Wisconsin
Federation of Women's Clubs.
Mrs. YOUMANS: I cannot possibly fill Mrs. Morris' place, but I should
not like to have this subject discussed without Wisconsin being
represented.
We may gather from the deliberations of this association, that Wisconsin
keeps a prominent place in library work among the states of the Union.
If this is so, and I do not doubt it, it is, as we all know, due to the
enthusiasm and energetic efforts of the Free Library Commission, and
this commission will assure you that its members have had no more
enthusiastic allies than the club women of the state. Work for libraries
was the first work undertaken by Wisconsin women's clubs--the first work
outside of their regular literary programs--and since the organization
of the federation in 1896, it has been one of its most prominent lines
of work. I suppose there are few clubs among the 150 in the federation
that have not done something, sometimes important and sometimes
unimportant, for the library movement. They have established libraries
and free reading-rooms; they have helped to support libraries; they
have made donations of books and money; they have sent out travelling
libraries on their errands of usefulness; and they have also sent out
travelling reference libraries especially for the uses of the study
clubs. The federation at the present time is making a special effort
toward securing as many of these travelling reference libraries as
possible. The club women in the interior of the state have very
inadequate reference facilities; we have now only six or seven of these
reference libraries, and we feel comparatively rich that we are soon to
have half a dozen more.
A great many of the public libraries in Wisconsin are due directly to
efforts of club women. The public library of Waukesha is due directly to
the efforts of a little coterie of club women; they started seven years
ago, with prospects that could not possibly be called brilliant. They
kept the library going for seven years from one month to another, in
some way securing the money, and finally the burden was taken from their
shoulders by the city council. Now, the library is not large; it is not,
from a technical point of view, fine; and it certainly lacks many things
that we hope to have in the future; but it has 2500 volumes, generally
read and much valued by the people, it has become established as a
regular necessary part of the municipal life, and I think it is sure of
a regular though moderate support from the public funds. In a city a few
miles north of here a woman's club has a fund of $500 towards a library
building. It does not intend building a library with that sum; it does
not intend to go on earning money by rummage sales and private
theatricals; but it does expect to use that money and to use the
interest of the members of the club as a center for developing library
interests in the vicinity.
This work is illustrative of what is being done all over the state, and
it is not so much the money that the club women collect for the
libraries, nor the books they may secure, nor even the direct work that
they do; it is the feeling that they disseminate as to the value of
public libraries. The club woman, in her club work, finds the need of a
good library; her associations and connections are such that she learns
to value books more than she ever did before; she learns, too, that for
the intellectual life of her vicinity it is necessary to have a public
library; she helps to develop the public spirit that demands a public
library; she helps to bring out an atmosphere in which public libraries
germinate and grow and flourish. This, it seems to me, is the most
important part of club work among club women. This is what they are
doing in Wisconsin, and what they will continue to do.
Mr. HUTCHINS: I have been watching for years the work of the women's
clubs and their enthusiasm for libraries. They are accomplishing a great
deal, and there is just one thing I would like to say to the club women
of the country, "Plan a study club, and in a few years you get a public
library. Plan a library, and in a few years you get five study clubs."