means the accessibility of books, to stimulate their reading and to
create a demand for the best. Its motive is helpfulness; its scope,
instruction and recreation; its purpose, the enlightenment of all; its
aspirations, still greater usefulness. It is a distinctive movement,
because it recognizes, as never before, the infinite possibilities of
the public library, and because it has done everything within its power
to develop those possibilities.
Among the peculiar relations that a library sustains to a community,
which the movement has made clear and greatly advanced, are its
relations to the school and university extension. The education of an
individual is coincident with the life of that individual. It is carried
on by the influences and appliances of the family, vocation, government,
the church, the press, the school and the library. The library is
unsectarian, and hence occupies a field independent of the church. It
furnishes a foundation for an intelligent reading of paper and magazine.
It is the complement and supplement of the school, co-operating with the
teacher in the work of educating the child, and furnishing the means for
continuing that education after the child has gone out from the school.
These are important relations. From the beginning the child is taught
the value of books. In the kindergarten period he learns that they
contain beautiful pictures; in the grammar grades they do much to make
history and geography attractive; in the high school they are
indispensable as works of reference.
Were it not for the library, the education of the masses would, in most
cases, cease when the doors of the school swung in after them for the
last time; but it keeps those doors wide open, and is, in the truest
sense of the word, the university of the people. The library is as much
a part of the educational system of a community as the public school,
and is coming more and more to be regarded with the same respect and
supported in the same generous manner.
The public library of to-day is an active, potential force, serving the
present, and silently helping to develop the civilization of the future.
The spirit of the modern library movement which surrounds it is
thoroughly progressive, and thoroughly in sympathy with the people. It
believes that the true function of the library is to serve the people,
and that the only test of success is usefulness.
JOSEPH LEROY HARRISON.
THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY
There is no institution so intimately, so universally, so constantly
connected with the life of the whole people as the free public
library--no instrumentality that can do so much to civilize society. The
public schools alone cannot accomplish the task of elevating mankind to
even the most modest ideal of a well ordered society.
Our public schools have been the chief source of the greater general
intelligence and hence the industrial superiority of our citizens over
those of other countries. But the public schools cannot accomplish
impossibilities. They are not to blame for the fact that they can reach
the great majority during only six or eight years, or that only one and
one half per cent of the children in the United States go through the
high school. But wherever there is a public library, the teachers are to
blame if they do not graduate all their pupils, at whatever age they may
leave school, into the People's University.
General intelligence is the necessary foundation of prosperity and
social order.
The public library is one of the chief agencies, if not the most potent
and far-reaching agency, for promoting general intelligence.
Therefore, money devoted to the maintenance of a public library is money
well invested by a community.
F. M. CRUNDEN.
PUBLIC LIBRARY, A PUBLIC NECESSITY
Any consideration of a public library project is complimentary to a
community, showing, as it does, a sense of civic responsibility and a
desire for future progress which are commendable. No town can hope to
live up to its greatest possibilities without a public library, and none
with a sincere desire need be denied the blessings which result from
such an institution.
There are few communities which would not provide for a public library,
if its advantages were appreciated, for it is a remedy for many ills and
is all-embracing in its scope. It vitalizes school work, and receiving
the pupil from the school, the library continues his education
throughout life. It is a home missionary, sending its messengers, the
books, into every shop and home. With true missionary zeal, it not only
sends help, but opens its doors to every man, woman and child. In most
towns, there are scores of young men and boys whose evenings are spent
in loafing about the streets, and to these the library offers an
attractive meeting place, where the time may be spent with jolly, wise
friends in the books. The library substitutes better for poorer reading,
and provides story hours for the children who are eager to hear before
they are able to read. It also increases the earning capacity of people,
by supplying information and advice on the work they are doing.
Increased taxation is one of the greatest hindrances to the opening of a
public library, but any institution which enriches and uplifts the lives
of the people, is the greatest economy. Any attempt to conduct civic
affairs without a reasonable expenditure of money for such influences is
the grossest extravagance. No economy results from ignorance and vice,
and the public library has long since established its claim as one of
the most potent remedies for such conditions.
It is no exaggeration to state that every dollar expended for library
purposes is returned to the community tenfold, not necessarily in
dollars and cents, but in the more permanent, more valuable assets of
greater happiness, comfort and progress of the people. A city is the
expression of every life within its borders, and every increase in
progress and efficiency in the individual citizen, is progress for the
whole.
The most valuable things usually are obtained at some sacrifice, and the
many advantages from a public library are certainly worth paying for.
Hundreds of small cities and towns tax themselves for electric plants
and count themselves fortunate. No one seems to regret this taxation for
electric lights which illuminate the citizen's way at night. Should
there not be an equal or greater readiness on the part of a community to
establish a library and so illuminate the mental horizon of every
citizen?
A public library is a necessity, not a luxury. Every community which
realizes this and establishes a library, proclaims itself an
intelligent, progressive town and one worth living in.
CHALMERS HADLEY.
The opening of a free public library is a most important event in any
town. There is no way in which a community can more benefit itself than
in the establishment of a library which shall be free to all citizens.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
PUBLIC LIBRARY, A PUBLIC OPPORTUNITY
Modern industrialism exacts from the artisan and the worker in every
branch, skill and knowledge not dreamed of years ago. He who would not
be trampled under foot needs to keep pace with the onward sweep in his
particular craft. The public library furnishes to the ambitious artisan
the opportunity to rise. Upon its shelves he may find the latest and the
best in invention and in method and in knowledge. Never in the history
of the country has there been such a desire manifested among the adult
population for continued education as may be noted to-day. Does it not
speak eloquently of ambition to rise above circumstances--that same
spirit that we have admired in our Franklins and our Lincolns and the
long roll of self-made men whose lives we are proud to recall? And so
library extension takes note of adult education, and combining its
forces with university extension, realizes that broader movement
variously termed home education, popular education and the people's
college.
The library gives heed to the future, and thus does not neglect the
child. The intelligent work of the children's librarian, supplementing
the related work of the teacher, aims to develop the individual talent
or dormant resource which finds no chance for expression where children
are necessarily treated as masses. And we may never know what society
has lost by failure to quicken into life this dormant talent for
invention, for art, for literature, for philosophy. "The loss to society
of the unearned increment is trivial compared to the loss of the
undiscovered resource." Had retarding influences affected half a dozen
men whom we could readily name--Morse, Fulton, Stephenson, Edison, Bell,
Marconi--we might to-day be without the locomotive, the steamship, the
telegraph, the telephone--the myriad marvels of electricity that to-day
seem commonplaces. What we have actually lost during this great century
of scientific development we can never know. Nor must we forget that
invention is the result of cumulated knowledge which the fertile brain
of man utilizes in new directions, and that the preservation of the
knowledge and experience of the centuries is the province of the public
library, where all alike may have access to its riches. The ideal
democracy is the democracy of knowledge and of learning.
The library endeavors, by applying the traveling library principle to
collections of pictures, by means of the illustrated lecture and
otherwise, to cultivate among the people an appreciation of the
beautiful and artistic that shall ultimately find expression in the home
and its surroundings.
The library believes, too, that recreative reading is a legitimate
function. We hold, with William Morton Payne, that a sparkling and
sprightly story, which may be read in an hour and which will leave the
reader with a good conscience and a sense of cheerfulness, has its
merits. In this work-a-day world of ours we need a bit of cheer for the
hours which ought to be restful as well as resting hours. Library
extension is imbued with optimism; its broadening field is educational,
sociological, recreative. Unblinded to the evils of the day, its
promoters realize inability to amend them except by educational
processes affecting all the people. They do not preach the gospel of
discontent, but seek realization of conditions which shall bring about
contentment and happiness. That, after all, for the welfare of the
people, wants need be but few and easily supplied. He who has food,
raiment and shelter in reasonable degree, access to the intellectual
wealth of the world in public libraries, to the riches created by the
master painters and sculptors, found in public galleries and museums, to
the untrammeled use of public parks and drives, and the many other
universal advantages which are now so increasingly many, need not envy
the richest men on earth. Many a millionaire is poorer than the most
humble of his employees, for excessive wealth brings its own train of
evils to torment its possessor. Commercial success is a legitimate
endeavor among men, and thrift is to be commended, but when these
degenerate into greed, pity and not envy should be the meed of the man
seized with the money disease.
HENRY E. LEGLER.
THE LIBRARY AND THE WORKERS
My opinion of the public library from a workingman's standpoint is, that
it is the greatest boon that could possibly be conferred upon him. It
places him at once upon the level with the millionaire, the student and
the philosopher. It opens for him (whose poverty would otherwise debar
him) the vast fields of literature. Here he may wander at will with the
master minds of humanity, hand in hand with the great thinkers of the
ages, open his mind and heart to the lessons taught by those great
leaders of men who have conquered nations and shaped the destinies of
the human race. Here he may associate with the greatest, the wisest and
the best. There is no limit to the possibilities of possessing knowledge
which is power, without money and without price. The public library
should be managed in the best interests of the workingman, and the books
should be purchased mainly with his welfare in view. The capitalist can
buy and own his own books. The workingman cannot do this. The children
of the workingman must get from the public library the general books of
reference which the business man has in his home. The children of the
workingman must have these books in order properly to do their school
work and thoroughly understand it. Their teachers require this. The
children of the workingman have their schools as well as the library.
Their work in the schools and the work in the library go hand in hand,
but the workingman himself has only the library for his school and must,
of necessity, go there. His schoolroom is the reference room, for the
knowledge he gains in that department he can at once put into practical
use in any capacity in which he may be employed.
The question arises, having presented those opportunities to the
workingman, will he take advantage of them? I answer, he surely will. It
is now more than twenty years since I joined a labor organization, the
"Stone-cutters' Union" of Minneapolis. Since that time I have always
been affiliated with organized workingmen. During all these years the
workingman has taken advantage of every opportunity to better the
condition of himself, his fellow workman and his employer. He has
learned to be more patient, more conservative and more trustworthy. His
hours of labor have been shortened, his wages are higher, and
labor-saving machinery has made his work lighter. He lives in a better
home, his family is better provided for and, best of all, his children
are better educated. What has wrought those great changes in the
conditions of the workingman? What has enabled him to keep up with the
swift march of progress during these many years? I will answer in one
word, Education. Just such institutions as the public library have made
this possible, and the public library has given the largest share.
JOHN P. BUCKLEY.
A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS
What if there were no letters and no books? Think what your state would
be in a situation like that! Think what it would be to know nothing, for
example, of the way in which American independence had been won, and the
federal republic of the United States constructed; nothing of Bunker
Hill; nothing of George Washington; except the little, half true and
half mistaken, that your fathers could remember, of what their fathers
had repeated, of what their fathers had told to them. Think what it
would be to have nothing but shadowy traditions of the voyage of
Columbus, of the coming of the Mayflower pilgrims, and of all the
planting of life in the New World from Old World stocks, like Greek
legends of the Argonauts and of the Heraclidae! Think what it would be
to know no more of the origins of the English people, their rise and
their growth in greatness, than the Romans knew of their Latin
beginnings; and to know no more of Rome herself than we might guess from
the ruins she has left! Think what it would be to have the whole story
of Athens and Greece dropped out of our knowledge, and to be unaware
that Marathon was ever fought, or that one like Socrates had ever lived!
Think what it would be to have no line from Homer, no thought from
Plato, no message from Isaiah, no Sermon on the Mount, nor any parable
from the lips of Jesus!
Can you imagine a world intellectually famine-smitten like that--a
bookless world--and not shrink with horror from the thought of being
condemned to it?
Yet the men and women who take nothing from letters and books are
choosing to live as though mankind did actually wallow in the awful
darkness of that state from which writing and books have rescued us. For
them, it is as if no ship had ever come from the far shores of old Time
where their ancestry dwelt; and the interest of existence to them is
huddled in the petty space of their own few years, between walls of mist
which thicken as impenetrably behind them as before. How can life be
worth living on such terms as that? How can man or woman be content with
so little, when so much is offered?
J. N. LARNED.
BOOKLESS HOMES
The bookless homes of the well-to-do people are familiar to all. Inside
those walls no books are to be found but a few gift books, chosen for
their bindings rather than their contents, and perhaps others which some
agent has pressed upon them. What can be done to stimulate reading in
these homes? Ten-cent magazines and cheap stories are devoured by mother
and daughters to the destruction of sane thoughts and connected ideas.
The man of the house each day reads his newspaper, containing accounts
of crimes, accidents and the funny paper. Happily, it also contains
articles of travel, invention and discovery, otherwise his brain would
be weakened.
Young people come from these bookless homes to college each year,
showing great confusion of ideas, vacuity of mind and utter lack of
information. They need us, need libraries, need the force of the state
to help them. Ninety-four per cent of our young people never get into
college. Ninety per cent, it is said, never go to school after they have
passed the age of fourteen years.
The contribution of the library is to elevate the standard of the town.
Books depicting noble, earnest, well-meaning lives will cause the social
standard to progress, and other standards with it.
OREGON LIBRARY COMMISSION.
NEED OF FREE LIBRARIES
A library is an essential part of a broad system of education, and a
community should think it as discreditable to be without a
well-conducted free public library as to be without a good school. If it
is the duty of the state to give each future citizen an opportunity to
learn to read, it is equally its duty to give each citizen an
opportunity to use that power wisely for himself and the state.
Wholesome literature can be furnished to all the readers in a community
at a fraction of the cost necessary to teach them to read, and the power
to read may then become a means to a life-long education.
The books that a boy reads for pleasure do more to determine his ideals
and shape his character than the text-books he studies in the schools.
Bad and indifferent literature is now so common that the boys will have
some sort of reading. If they have a good public library they will read
wholesome books and learn to admire Washington, Lincoln and other great
men. Without a library many of them will gloat over the exploits of
depraved men and women, and their earliest ambitions will be tainted.
Each town needs a library to furnish more practice in reading for the
little folks in school; it needs it to give the boys and girls who have
learned to read a taste for wholesome literature that informs and
inspires; it needs it as a center for an intellectual and spiritual
activity that shall leaven the whole community and make healthful and
inspiring themes the burden of the common thought--substituting, by
natural methods, clean conversation and literature for petty gossip,
scandal and oral and printed teachings in vice.
F. A. HUTCHINS.
THE LIBRARY AND BOYS
"In Madison, N. J., a bird club of boys met twice a week, once for study
and once for an expedition, and found the library's resources on this
topic to be of interest and value. How to utilize profitably the
activities of a 'gang' of boys is worth much planning. One librarian is
reported to have started a chair-caning class to interest restless boys;
another had a museum of flowers and insects, another conducted a branch
of the flower mission. Not less interesting, and perhaps more
instructive, is a series of talks on Indian legends accompanied by
hunting expeditions for the half-buried implements and relics found in
almost every meadow in some parts of the country. Boys are eager to
learn about natural history and natural science, and they will be
encouraged at the public library."
IRENE VAN KLEECK.
THE LIBRARY
Get good books; give them a home attractive to readers of good books;
name a friend of good books as mistress of this home--and you have a
library; all share in its support and all get pleasure and profit from
it if they will; without divisions religious, politic or social, it
unites all in the pursuit of high pleasure and sound learning, and gives
that common interest in a common concern which is the basis of all local
pride.
If you have rightly read a book, that book is yours.
You cannot always choose your companions; you can always choose your
books. You can, if you will, spend a few minutes every day with the best
and wisest men and women the world has ever known.
The people you have known, the things you have said and done, and the
books you have read, all these are now a part of you.
You like yourself better when you are with people who are well-bred and
clever; you respect yourself more when you are reading a bright and
wholesome book, for you are then in the company of the wise.
J. C. DANA.
After the church and the school, the free public library is the most
effective influence for good in America. The moral, mental and material
benefits to be derived from a carefully selected collection of good
books, free for the use of all the people, cannot be overestimated. No
community can afford to be without a library.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SHALL WE BE LOYAL TO THE CITY OF OUR HOME?
The opportunity is at hand to answer this question. A generous gift is
offered, shall we accept it? We can have ---- dollars for a public use,
if we will promise to support the use to which this money is dedicated.
Shall ---- have a free public library? It is up to us, her citizens.
We have passed the stage of a country town and are ranked and cataloged
as a modern, progressive city, enjoying many of the advantages of the
larger cities. Why is this true? Because the progressive spirit and
sentiment have always triumphed in her onward march. Because, inspired
by a public spirit, her people have joined hands, and shoulder to
shoulder labored for all that pertains to religious, moral, social,
industrial, educational and material development. Let us keep marching
on.
Many towns in the state, nearly all those in the counties surrounding
us, are accepting Carnegie gifts for libraries. Will it not humiliate
and degrade us in the eyes of the people of the state if we decree
against a public library? Let us not detract from our well deserved and
established reputation for progressiveness by such a mistake. We appeal
to public spirit; to pride of city; to pride of home, and urge you to
register your vote in favor of this enterprise.
IOWA LIBRARY COMMISSION.
The system of free public libraries now being established in this
country is the most important development of modern times. The library
is a center from which radiates an ever widening influence for the
enlightenment, the uplift, the advancement of the community.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.
THE SCHOOL'S GREATEST BOON
The greatest boon that the system of public schools, or the college, or
the university, can confer upon any boy or girl is to teach him or her
to use a great collection of literature, to teach them how to read; and
to plant within their hearts an irresistible impulse and an
indestructible delight in so doing. What profits it a man to learn how
to read if he does not read? For what purpose is the mind trained and
developed by the process of systematic study in the schools if it is not
inspired to go farther into the realms of knowledge? Is it a rational
procedure for one, upon the completion of his course of training, to
discontinue all further investigation and to lay aside what little love
for learning and literature and philosophy and science that may have
been aroused in his bosom by school or college inspirations? And how is
this advancing and widening of one's horizon by means of the accumulated
stores of knowledge gathered by the previous generations of the world's
strong thinkers and beautiful writers to be secured, other than by a
collection of good books, by a library?
C. C. THACH.
BOOKS AND STUDY WORK