Great Britain has kept nearly equal pace with our foremost states in free library legislation. A general enabling act to establish and support free libraries for the people from munic.i.p.al rates was pa.s.sed by Parliament in 1850, and accepted with great energy and enthusiasm by many of the northern towns and cities. Eighty-six free libraries, not including branches, had been opened before 1880; but, as in this country, the conservatism of the southern portions of the country has prevented their general establishment. For similar reasons only the province of Ontario has made any considerable movement in this direction in the Dominion of Canada.
This hasty historical sketch would be very incomplete without some account of the recent legislation, in several states, for the a.s.sistance of the smaller towns and villages in the establishment and increase of public libraries. This legislation has already had marvelous results.
Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1890, appropriated one hundred dollars to any town that would raise by taxation, or appropriate from the dog tax, or otherwise raise, at least fifty dollars (or if its valuation was less than one million dollars it should raise twenty-five dollars, or if less than $250,000 it should raise at least fifteen dollars); and should agree to take care of the books, and furnish the agency of distribution.
The sums granted by the state are in the hands of a board of commissioners appointed by the governor (with the advice and consent of the council); and so far these commissioners--librarians and others--have been eminent citizens, serving without salaries, and having only $500 in their hands annually for clerk hire and traveling expenses.
The commission is also required to give advice and information to librarians and others concerning selection of books, cataloguing, and administration; and to select and forward the books granted by the state.
Now for results. The commission has thus aided in establishing, in four years, more than sixty free public libraries in small towns (out of one hundred and four not thus supplied) and its action has shamed a few larger towns into establishing them; so that now only two and three fourths per cent of the population of the state, in forty-four small towns, were in January, 1894, without their advantages. And this has been accomplished with an entire expense to the commonwealth of less than ten thousand dollars. _Per contra_, more than half a million dollars were given by individuals in a single year for similar purposes within the state. Certainly, this has been a most economical and effective public outlay; free, too, from all suspicion of any one"s fattening by political jobbery.
The record of New Hampshire is even more remarkable. This state pa.s.sed a law in 1891, similar to the one outlined above, and over eighty towns accepted its provisions, and established free libraries within a twelvemonth after it came in force. We are glad to read that the states of Maine, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are moving in the direction of a measure that has proved so effective in its operation, and that must be so widely beneficent.
The state of New York has adopted another system to stimulate the development of the free library. Her enabling act of many years ago produced, as we have seen, comparatively small results; and in 1892 a law was pa.s.sed authorizing the Regents of the University of New York to lend for a limited time--usually six months--selections of books from the duplicate department of the state library, or from books purchased for the purpose, to any public library in the state; or, where none exists, to twenty-five pet.i.tioners in any town or village of the state.
A fee of five dollars is required, to cover cost of transportation, catalogue, etc., for a loan of one hundred volumes, and a smaller sum (three dollars) for a loan of fifty volumes. This plan, it will be seen, is a revival of the old school district method; and of that inst.i.tuted by Samuel Brown in Scotland, and the later one found successful in Australia. The antipodes have a fashion lately of suggesting valuable object-lessons for social legislation. In small communities it has the advantage of making books do manifold duty, and of meeting the wants of varied communities and occupations. By judicious and varied selection, clubs, cla.s.ses, schools, and reading circles may be aided in special courses and investigations. At the end of twenty months one hundred and twenty-five of these free loan libraries had been sent out by the New York Board of Regents; of which nearly one half (44) went to communities without public libraries, the remainder going to libraries already established (22), to university extension centers (18), and to academy libraries open to the public (22). Eleven thousand nine hundred volumes were thus made accessible to the public, with a total circulation of not far from 25,000 volumes and 9,000 readers. This system, which seems even more economical than the Ma.s.sachusetts one, has greatly promoted interest in good reading, and led to the establishment of several local public libraries. The system is very elastic and is easily adapted to the rapidly growing demands for its privileges. As a pioneer method, or as auxiliary to munic.i.p.al libraries, it promises excellent results.
After this historical survey it would hardly seem necessary to dwell upon the arguments in behalf of the free public library. "There is probably no mode of expending public money," says Stanley Jevons, "which gives a more extraordinary and immediate return in utility and innocent enjoyment." He affirms that in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and some other great towns in England, as in similar communities in this country, where such libraries have existed for years, there is but one opinion about them. "They are cla.s.sed with town-halls, police courts, prisons, and poorhouses as necessary adjuncts of our stage of civilization." A more natural, and certainly more cheerful, collocation would cla.s.s them with free schools, museums, and public parks, as Jevons himself afterwards suggests. "The main _raison d"etre_ of free public libraries, as indeed of public museums, art galleries, parks, halls, public clocks, and many other kinds of public works, is the enormous increase of utility which is thereby acquired for the community at a trifling cost." He proceeds to ill.u.s.trate by several instances what he calls "the remarkable multiplication of utility" in the case of free lending libraries by several instances. Every book, in the first year of the Birmingham Free Library, was issued on an average seventeen times, and the periodical literature turned over fifty times. In Leeds, every book was used eighteen times. In larger libraries and in later use, of course, the figures are less, averaging from three to ten times, the whole cost of each issue averaging only from two to five cents. Similar statistics may be found in the _Forum_ article already referred to in regard to the manifold use of books furnished in New York.
The comfort and moral economy of a cheerful, well-lighted reading-room, too, is overwhelmingly ill.u.s.trated. Mr. Jevons found that in Manchester all persons of suitable age visited the free libraries on an average thirteen times a year, of whom three fourths came to read in the reading-rooms. Such a refuge from the perils of the saloon and the street is an immense benefaction in any neighborhood.
The relative cheapness of securing this means of general culture and enjoyment, this efficient antidote to vice and ignorance, is strikingly shown by comparing its cost with other items of governmental expenditure, and the statistics of national luxuries and vices. The eighty-six free libraries in the large cities of Great Britain cost not more than half a million dollars per year--one fifth the cost of a first cla.s.s ironclad. The statistics I have given show that the cost of the two war vessels just voted by Congress might be abundantly sufficient to insure the organization on the Ma.s.sachusetts plan of a free library in every village and country town of the United States, not now accessible to such a library. The expenditure for drink, for horse-racing, or even for tobacco, for a single year, would royally equip and endow a public library for every thousand people now without such privileges. As post-office savings banks are, wherever established, a mighty engine for teaching thrift, as public parks are an incalculable source of health and enjoyment in our cities, so the public library, "the free literary park," as Jevons calls it, is a most effective agency for the promotion of culture and civilization.
In the year 1851, George Ticknor, the distinguished author of the "History of Spanish Literature" and a benefactor of the Boston Public Library, wrote to Edward Everett: "I would establish a library which differs from all free libraries yet attempted; I mean one in which any popular books tending to moral and intellectual improvement shall be furnished in such numbers that many persons can be reading the same book at the same time; in short, that not only the best books of all sorts, but the pleasant literature of the day, shall be made accessible to the whole people when they most care for it--that is, when it is fresh and new. I would thus by following the popular taste--unless it should demand something injurious--create a real appet.i.te for healthy reading.
This appet.i.te once formed will take care of itself. It will in a great majority of cases demand better and better books."
Mr. Everett"s conservatism doubted the wisdom of these principles for the foundation of a library: but they are essentially those which have proved sound in the free library system of England and New England, of Australia and the Northwestern cities. In the light of fifty years"
experience, indeed, Everett"s skepticism reads like Governor Berkeley"s report on education in Virginia, in which he thanked G.o.d that there were no free schools in Virginia and hoped that there would be none for a hundred years. The communities in which libraries, approaching George Ticknor"s ideal, have been longest established, would do without paved streets or electric lights sooner than without these libraries, and they support them by taxation as cheerfully as the public schools. Indeed, the free library in not a few communities is reckoned an invaluable and indispensable adjunct of the public school, the very crown of the system of popular education. Such librarians as Green of Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Whitney of Watertown, and Hosmer of Minneapolis, keep in touch with the work of the schools, and apprize the various cla.s.ses of pupils of new books especially valuable for their work. More than this, they have regard to the needs of the various clubs, trades, and professions, and keep their members aware of valuable books in their special departments. But perhaps the most helpful service of all is rendered by capable librarians in the constant advice given to inexperienced readers, and the frequent bulletins sent out to stimulate the interest and instruct the intelligence of the community. It is of special interest to note that the demand for good reading has been greatly increased wherever the public library has been administered in this way. Indeed, booksellers and proprietary libraries have come to favor the opening of the free library as largely increasing the demand for their books.
It is not strange that with this large and various capacity of social service, the free library should be rapidly growing in public favor; nor that private munificence should frequently come to the munic.i.p.al provision. There is no public object for which so generous gifts are often made. In the year 1893, for instance, five hundred thousand dollars were contributed to public libraries and the erection of library buildings in Ma.s.sachusetts alone. "There has been ready perception,"
says Fletcher in his "Public Libraries in America," "of the truth that one"s memory cannot better be perpetuated than by a.s.sociation with an inst.i.tution so popular and at the same time so elevating and refining as the public library. Memorial libraries are therefore very abundant, and as expense has not been spared in the erection of such memorials, many of our towns, even the smaller ones, are ornamented by library buildings which are gems of architecture.... The fact remains, with all its significance, that about the public library cl.u.s.ter naturally the affections and the interest of the community. In its endowment, on the one hand by private beneficence, and on the other by public taxation, is ill.u.s.trated that collaboration of the rich and the poor in the pursuit of the highest ends which has in it the promise, and perhaps the potency, of the solution of vexing social questions."
The remembrance that these statements are only locally accepted, and that large portions of England and the United States have hardly moved toward the establishment of public libraries, may prompt a consideration of certain objections which are still sometimes urged. Civilization accepts its most benignant and effective agencies of progress only under protest; and it is not, therefore, wholly inexplicable that fifty years of unmixed and increasing success should have left some excellent and otherwise intelligent people unconvinced of the beneficence of the free public library. A friend of mine was enthusiastically setting forth the advantages of such libraries, and their rapid multiplication and growing service in New England, at the dinner table of one of the most distinguished, philosophic, and progressive of contemporary Englishmen; and was not a little surprised to be cut short with the decided comment, "I do not believe in it." The Englishman"s fastidious preference for high fences and compartment railway carriages pervades all his intellectual conceptions also; and makes him impervious even to Stanley Jevons"s overwhelming demonstration of the moral, social, and economic utility of the free public library; impervious even to the appeal that ignorance and narrow intellectual opportunity must be supposed to make upon enlightened philanthropy.
Mr. Herbert Spencer and the individualists oppose to the public library, supported by taxation, their wellworn declamation about the injustice of making one man pay for another man"s culture and amus.e.m.e.nt; and urge the dictum of _laissez faire_ in civilization and government.
But as the post-office and the public school have survived their onslaughts we may not feel compelled to surrender the advantages of the free library. For, as with the school, it is easy to show that mental health and light are as primary interests of the community as material; and that it is precisely because those most deficient are least sensible of their defect that society must seek to remedy it. Mr. Spencer"s a.n.a.logy between hunger for food and hunger for knowledge is utterly fallacious. The physical appet.i.te may be trusted to seek vigorously its own supply; the intellectual appet.i.te has most to be aroused where intellectual starvation is most imminent; and it grows only by what it feeds on. Men usually value most, indeed, what they work or pay for; but it is precisely those who do not value good books at all who need to be tempted and trained to their appreciation. And it is just the children of those whose parents will not, or cannot, provide them wholesome reading, that society cannot afford to let go wholly unprovided.
The smallest fee here proves an effective bar, as the experience of all subscription libraries proves. When the Springfield (Ma.s.s.) library was made free, its circulation was trebled the first year--though the fee had been only one dollar--and in a few years rose six or seven fold.
"The Mercantile Library of Peoria, Ill.," says Mr. Crunden, "turned over to the city and made free, notes an increase in ten years, of members from two hundred and seventy-five to four thousand five hundred, and of issues from fifteen thousand to ninety thousand." So always. If the dollar fee were removed from the circulation of the books of our Meadville City Library, for instance, within five years they would go into fifteen hundred families instead of less than three hundred, as now; and the added twelve hundred families would be the very ones where the books would be of highest service. And, perhaps, more beneficent still would be the influence upon the vastly larger number who would frequent the library, and grow intelligent through the multiplied use of its reading facilities, and the help of its valuable reference department. The reaction upon the general intelligence of the community would make itself felt in the increasing intelligence of its working men and the higher standard of life this would bring among them. In short, it would insure economic progress.
Besides the economic advantages, and much more important, the influence of a well-furnished free library would tell in the training of citizens.
The discussion of economic and social questions, eager and often bitter as it is, would become less crude and partisan in the knowledge of the best books and magazine articles upon the topics involved. The reading of history, biography, and travels would exert a broadening, enlightening, and often inspiring influence. To make wholesome literature more accessible than dime novels would save many boys and girls from ruin, rouse many dormant intellects to higher life, and supply effective rivals to the saloons and other low resorts.
Philanthropy and religion alike demand the wide opening of such an "effectual door" to the opportunities of the higher life.
It is sometimes objected that the records of all public libraries show that the lightest literature is most read, that fiction const.i.tutes one half or three fourths of the books circulated. But besides the obvious consideration that only wholesome fiction finds place in all well-appointed public libraries, Horace Greeley"s view has much to commend it, viz.: that all pure reading, however light, tends to develop a taste for more vigorous and instructive literature. Besides, it may well be urged that fiction is not only the current form of literary art, but also the effective vehicle of current social theories, philanthropies, and reforms; and that much of the most earnest thinking and serious moral purpose of this age is embodied in it. Under such intelligent and careful selection as the public opinion of the community may provide for, the public library will furnish a healthful subst.i.tute and corrective for the unappointed and vagrant reading of that large section of young people most in need of guidance.
I have left myself but a moment to suggest one or two practical questions that may need consideration in the establishment of a new system of free public libraries in communities or a commonwealth. Next to thorough discussion of their proved beneficence, an efficient enabling act is certainly the first desideratum, in any state still without it, so that towns and cities may tax themselves for this purpose. And it is most important that this act be not so narrowly limited that communities shall be unable to attempt anything worth while. Better wait five years, or ten years, more for the statute that will enable our communities to put themselves in line with the most advanced in the country in this respect, than to enact a starveling and ineffective statute that shall
"Keep the word of promise in our ear, And break it to our hope,"
as has already sometimes happened. The public appropriation is so limited by penny-wise legislation in a number of states as to discourage all action, and kill all interest in the matter.
In the same way, it is to be hoped that these states will accompany their enabling acts by auxiliary legislation similar to that in Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hampshire; or, perhaps still better, patterned upon that of New York. It is difficult to decide upon the comparative advantages of these two systems. That of Ma.s.sachusetts seems to me better for permanent results; but that of New York seems likely to be more immediately effective in stirring the sluggish interest of indifferent communities. Both are wonderfully economical in money, and both have great effectiveness when worked by the intelligent interest of even a few enthusiastic friends of the free library movement in any community. It would seem that even a governor who thinks five million people cannot afford $25,000 for the "Birds of Pennsylvania" might consent to spend a fifth of that sum per year to begin a work that would not end, if once well begun, without putting a new and most effective agency of social culture and even economic progress within the reach of every boy and girl in the state.
The machinery through which to plan and begin this great and hopeful experiment should be carefully considered. Ma.s.sachusetts"s unsalaried commission of eminent citizens, New York"s Board of University Regents, alike insure that in those commonwealths the work will be carried on under the most hopeful and efficient conditions. Some such unpartisan and public-spirited agency is absolutely demanded for the success of the movement in a state that has to begin it _de novo_; and the _personnel_ of the agency is the most important point in any legislation initiating it.
There is also a difference of opinion as to whether school boards, or boards specially const.i.tuted for the purpose, should have charge of public libraries. My opinion is decidedly in favor of the latter; for while school boards would bring the library, as is most desirable, into closer relation with the public schools, an independent board, chosen, perhaps, by the school board in connection with the city council, as sometimes in Ma.s.sachusetts, would be likely to bring more ability, independence, and careful consideration to the affairs of the library, and to separate it more completely from injurious partisan and personal politics.
THE COMMUNITY"S SERVICE TO THE LIBRARY
The Public Library, like the Public School, is the creature of the community, which owes it provision for keeping it in condition to render the service for which it was created.
This duty of course, includes adequate financial support but does not end here. Among the most important adjuncts to such support are the aid that can be given by enlightened public opinion and by organized groups in the maintenance of liberal and helpful policies, and the appointment of a governing board equally conscious of its responsibilities and its limitations.
THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
This statement of first principles was made by Melvil Dewey at the Second International Library Conference, held in London, July 13-16, 1897, and is reprinted from the Transactions and Proceedings of the Conference (London, 1898). In reading this address, it must be kept in mind that it was made to Englishmen, whose conception of the functions of a public library were then, as now, much more conservative than ours. A sketch of Dr. Dewey will be found in Vol. I. of this series.
We have been listening to an admirable account of the development of the library movement from earliest times to the present day, and I venture to believe that when the history of the age in which we live is written, and is looked back upon by those who shall come after, it will be known distinctively as the "Library Age."
Libraries of one sort or another have existed from the beginning of human history, and we are now well into the fifth century since the invention of printing; so that it would seem as if there had been abundant time for library development. But so great an inst.i.tution as the modern library is of slow growth. It has taken a thousand years to develop our school system from university down to kindergarten. The public library is much more rapidly going through corresponding stages in order to come to its own. The original library was a reservoir, getting in and keeping safely, a storehouse for posterity. That was and is a great function, for which I have profound respect. Then, after many centuries, came another library epoch, for which we all feel still greater respect. The cistern was made a fountain; giving out was seen to be more important than getting in. The library is no longer merely a pa.s.sive receptacle, but becomes an aggressive educational force in every community. The reservoir will not become a stagnant pool, for, in its branches and deliveries, the public library has mains and pipes laid through every street, and reaching almost to the door of every householder. And we live now not in the age of the reservoir, but in the age of the fountain. In our zeal and admiration, however, we are apt to forget that there is yet another and even more important stage to reach.
In my own city, some time ago, we spent half a million dollars in providing an ample supply of water. But we found that we had really opened convenient communication with the cemetery by water, for the quality of the new and abundant beverage was such that our death-rate steadily rose. The burning question became qualitative, not quant.i.tative, and we are now spending our money on efficient filtration.
Of course no library intends to circulate injurious books, but equally no town intends to distribute harmful water. We are concerned more with the results than with the intention. The mortality tables make plain the physical defect, but alas! science has as yet devised no instruments delicate enough to record the greater danger to the individual and the State from poison in the great current, which has come to be a mighty flood, of modern reading matter. The most hopeful, and perhaps the only practicable, method of guarding against this serious danger is through the public library, which must now in the last days of this eventful century recognise the gravity of the new responsibility which it cannot shirk. Before another audience I might dwell at length on what this problem of selection means, but the representative librarians of the world will understand my claim that, wonderful as was the development from the cistern to the fountain, its importance is overshadowed by this great question of excluding the pernicious, which I sum up in the word filtration. This is the great problem of the modern library, and its solution must depend largely on the State.
It is often said that the modern periodicals and newspapers are our greatest danger; but this, of course, is true only of the sensational and other objectionable types. I yield to none in my high appreciation of what the best kind of newspaper may do in its capacity as the strongest ally of the public library and of the public school. I am confident that early in the next century such journals will be recognised as a distinct part of our educational machinery, but I am equally clear that the worst journals, conducted merely as money-making enterprises, and catering to the worst instead of to the best elements of both society and individuals, are the most potent factors for evil, and the greatest enemy which the ideal librarian has to combat in carrying forward his best work. They leave their habitual readers with neither time nor taste for anything above their own low plane. The mind will inevitably rise or fall to the level of its habitual reading, and we apostles and missionaries of the book have no more disheartening outlook than on the readers whose literary atmosphere is limited to the modern sensational newspapers. But the apologists for such reading say that the history of their own times is of more importance to them than any other history; should they not, therefore, become as familiar as possible with it? But when a man, on account of "pressure of business,"
never looks inside any good book, yet has time to read everything in the newspapers, he is--well, specialising too much in "history." How many men and women there are, who, from year"s end to year"s end, read nothing but the so-called history of their own times, and who can tell you nothing better than which dog won the last fight! It is a good thing to know the history of our own times; so is a pinch of salt a good thing on one"s breakfast potato, but it is not necessary to drink a barrel of sea water each morning in order to get it.
It is highly desirable that I should know the geology and topography of my own State, but I can learn all that is worth knowing without creeping on hands and knees with nose close to the ground over the barnyards and dump heaps of our commonwealth, under the vain delusion that I am exhaustively studying its geology. We must join this battle squarely.
The eternal conflict of good and the best with bad and the worst is on.
The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the librarian triumphant. At the end of another century, when a conference like this is held, our descendants will look back with wonder to find that we have so long been satisfied to leave the control of the all-pervading, all-influencing newspaper in the hands of people who have behind them no motive better than the "almighty dollar." The solution of our difficulties lies in recognition by the State that public libraries are not only good things, but that they are an absolutely necessary part of our educational system. We started with the university, but found that we had to put under it the college. Then we went a step further, and had the academy and high school to prepare for the college; the primary and grammar schools to prepare for the high school; and now we have the kindergarten under the primary school. I am not giving a chronology, but simply pointing out that during these centuries educators have constantly been facing the question of adequate provision for meeting completely the public wants. We have at last reached step by step from the university to the nursery, and have provided a series of schools covering the entire field. Yet, with all this, we have not attained the full system of education that we ought to attain, and every thoughtful person is now asking, "What next?"
Huxley has well said that a system of education which in the early years trains boys and girls to read and then makes no provision for what they shall read during all the rest of their lives, would be as senseless as to teach our children the expert use of the knife, fork, and spoon, and then make no provision for their daily food. The whole history of education has been a series of broadening conceptions. I can recall no case in which the ideal has narrowed, but step by step we have come to a general recognition that education is for poor as well as rich, for plebeian as well as prince, for black and white, for native and foreigner, for brilliant or backward, for women as well as men, for deaf, dumb, and blind, and all defectives and delinquents, who in the old conception were left without the pale. It is almost within our memory that we have come to substantial agreement that the State owes an elementary education to every boy and girl born within its limits, not alone as a right to the child, but as a matter of safety and practical wisdom on the part of the State; and this broader conception is followed closely by a second and still broader one, that every boy and girl is ent.i.tled not only to an elementary, but to something also of higher education. I have met no competent student of this subject who dares deny that hereafter the State must recognize that education is not alone for the young, for limited courses, in schools which take all the time of their pupils, but that it must regard adults as well; and not alone for short courses, but all through life--not in our recognised teaching inst.i.tutions alone, but in that study outside of office or working hours that may be carried on at home. I may sum it up in the one sentence, "Higher education, for adults, at home, through life."
In this home education, which must hereafter be recognised side by side with school education, the library is the great central agent round which study clubs, reading circles, extension teaching, museums, and the other allied agencies must cl.u.s.ter. A statesman solicitous for the future welfare of his country will find his most fruitful field in protecting and guiding the reading of the people. It is what a man reads that shapes his future, which depends, not at once upon the rostrum and the pulpit, but on the book and the newspaper. In education we recognise that the supreme end is the building of character, but many of us have never thought clearly how directly this character-building rests upon the public library. It is reading that begets reflection, reflection begets motive, motive begets action, and action begets habit, and habit begets character; and who here dares question this, that it is not the air nor the water, nor yet the "roast beef of Old England," not its history nor traditions nor laws nor geographic location, but _character_, that has made the Anglo-Saxons, England and her daughters across the seas, the most wonderful people of the earth. It is not brawn, but brain. The dogs and horses might have the physical qualities, but it is the mind and soul, and those elements of true greatness which can best be instilled into a people through the reading of good and great books, that have made a race of which we are justly all so proud.
One of the wisest of Frenchmen said of the Franco-Prussian War, when the needle-gun was suggested as the explanation of German victory, "No; it was not the needle-gun, nor the German soldier who held it, nor yet the German schoolmaster who trained the soldier, but it was the German university that made the schoolmaster."
"Knowledge is power," and it is knowledge that has made England and America great. Think of the men who read the poorest newspapers, but know nothing of our best books. Can the State afford to make other things free, and not make free true and useful knowledge as preserved in books? Can the State recognize the necessity for free schools, and fail to provide free access to the best reading in all realms of knowledge?
"Free as air," was the old-time strongest expression. Then men learned how absolutely essential to physical well-being was abundance of water, and our language records in its favourite expression, "free as water,"
the meaning of the untold millions that civilization has spent to supply all people freely with this essential. We are learning the greater lesson about the necessity of free knowledge more slowly, because intellectual and spiritual things are not so readily discerned by our mortal eyes, and it takes more time to read even those messages that G.o.d has written very large for those who have eyes to see; but the time is not far distant, mark my words, when our speech will again record the general acceptance of a great truth in the common phrase, as "free as knowledge." We should make the public understand the relation of the school system to the library system; that the library is not merely a collection of books, or a storehouse, but an aggressive and active source of education, side by side with the free schools. If the issue came--but, thank G.o.d, it never will--between giving up either the library or the free school, I am not sure that I would not choose for the welfare of the country the public library rather than the school.
This may sound strange from one who has given his life to education, but I believe that even without our schools nearly every boy and girl would somehow learn to read; and when I soberly consider the influence on lives and characters and on the State, it seems probable that, infinitely valuable as is the work of our free schools, it would be exceeded by what could be done by a system of free public libraries, reaching every boy and girl and man and woman in the community, and so administered as to provide each freely from childhood to the grave with the best reading in every field of interest and activity.
The State, whatever it may or may not do, should recognise the library as being as essential to public welfare as is the school, and it should give it as careful protection from dangers without and within as it gives to inst.i.tutions like banks and insurance companies. The State should protect the library against unjust laws, improper interference, or pernicious influence of any kind from without. It should guard it also against misconduct, incapacity, or neglect on the part of its trustees, officers, or employees. Beside the direct appropriations for its support, it should grant the most liberal powers for holding property given by individuals for the public benefit, and, above all, should grant entire exemption from taxation. To tax a free public library for doing its beneficent work is theorising gone mad. It is as absurd as for a missionary to refuse admission to his preaching, or for the manager of a theatre in which a fire has just started to shut out every fireman till he had presented the conventional coupon for a reserved seat. The example first set by my own State (New York) in the statute which I had the honour of drawing ought to be followed universally. We created a public libraries department, to devote its entire attention to advancing the best interests of public libraries. It would take the entire morning to sketch to you the various forms of beneficent work which we have found practicable. We help to establish new libraries, reorganise old ones, revise methods, select books, lend single books or entire libraries, grant books or money up to $200 yearly to any library raising an equal sum from local sources, and, by means of correspondence, personal inspection, and steady work in a dozen directions, help every community to get the greatest practical good from the labour and money given to its free library. We have now about five hundred travelling libraries moving about in all parts of the State. The public library is rapidly becoming universal. For the Government not to recognise it in its own organisation is as absurd as it would be to have a standing army and no war department, or schools dotted all about the state and no department of education. Time forbids more than the mere naming of what is needed, but the first great step in summing up the relation of the State to public libraries is the establishment of a public libraries department, in charge of a strong man who appreciates the almost limitless opportunities for usefulness which this new field affords.
Our discussions this morning took such a turn that you could almost hear behind them, like the recurring motive of one of Wagner"s operas, the question, "Who shall be greatest among librarians?" In our State Library School I give each year a course of five lectures on the qualifications of a librarian, and point out under a half-hundred different heads the things we should demand in an ideal librarian; but when we have covered the whole field of scholarship and technical knowledge and training, we must confess that overshadowing all are the qualities of the man. To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. He must have a head as clear as the master in diplomacy; a hand as strong as he who quells the raging mob, or leads great armies on to victory; and a heart as great as he who, to save others, will, if need be, lay down his life.
Such shall be greatest among librarians; and, when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who will achieve this greatness will be women.