Chapter V: Part 5

The most elementary form is that of the person who tells you where you can get something that you want--a simple statement that someone is a barber or an inn-keeper, or gives music lessons, or has shoes for sale. This may be accompanied by an effort to show that the goods offered are of specially good quality or have some feature that makes them particularly desirable, either to consumers in general or to those of a certain class. This is all surely economic, so long as nothing but the truth is told. Next we have an effort not only to supply existing wants and to direct them into some particular channel, but to create a new field, to make people realize a lack previously not felt; in other words to make people want something that they need. This may be done simply by exhibiting or describing the article or it may require long and skillful presentation of the matter. All this is still economic. But it requires only a step to carry us across the line. Next the enthusiastic advertiser strives to make someone want that which he does not need. As may be seen, the line here is difficult to determine, but this sort of advertising is surely not economic. So long as the thing not needed is not really injurious, however, the advertising cannot be called illegitimate. It is simply uneconomic. The world would be better off without it, but we may look for its abolition only to the increase of good judgment and intelligence among consumers. When an attempt however, is made to cause a man to want something that is really injurious, then the act becomes illegitimate and should be prevented. Another class of illegitimate advertising is that which would be perfectly allowable if it were truthful and becomes objectionable only because its representations are false. It may be ostensibly of any of the types noted above.

As we have already noted, the material objects distributed by the librarian are valued not for their physical characteristics but for a different reason altogether, the fact that they contain stored ideas. Ideas which, according to some, are merely the relative positions of material particles in the brain, and which are indisputably accompanied and conditioned by such positions, here subsist in the form of peculiar and visible arrangements of particles of printer's ink upon paper, which are capable under certain conditions of generating in the human brain ideas precisely similar to those that gave them birth. And although the book cannot think for itself, but must merely preserve the idea intrusted to it, without change, it is vastly superior in stability to the brain that gave it birth, so that thousands of years after that brain has mouldered into dust it is capable of reproducing the original ideas in a second brain where they may germinate and bear fruit. How familiar all this is, and yet how perennially wonderful! The miracle of it is sufficient excuse for this digression.

Now books, beside this modern form of distribution by loan, are widely distributed commercially both by loan and by sale, and especially in the latter form advertisement is now very extensively used in connection with the distribution. In fact we have all the different types specified above--economic, uneconomic and illegitimate, both through misrepresentation and the harmful character of the subject matter. The reason for all illegitimate forms of advertising is of course not a desire to misrepresent or to do harm per se, but to make money, the profit to the distributor being proportioned to the amount of distribution done and not at all dependent on its economic value. Distribution by public officers is of course not open to this objection, nor are the distributors subject to temptation, since their compensation does not depend on the amount of distribution. If they are capable and interested, furthermore, they are particularly desirous to increase the economic value of the work that they are doing. Since this is so and since the danger of uneconomic or harmful forms of advertising is thus reduced to a minimum, there would seem to be special reason why the economic forms should be employed very freely. But the fact is that they have been used sparingly, and by some librarians shunned altogether.

Let us see what library advertising of the economic types may mean. In the first place it means telling those who want books where they may get them. This simple task is rarely performed completely or satisfactorily. It is astonishing how many inhabitants of a large town do not even know where the public library is. Everyone realizes this who has ever tried to find a public library in a strange place. I once asked repeatedly of passers-by in a crowded city street a block distant from a library (in this case not architecturally conspicuous) before finding one who knew its whereabouts; in another city I inquired in vain of a conductor who passed the building every few hours in his car. In the latter case the library was a beautiful structure calculated to move the curiosity of a less stolid citizen. In New York inquiry would probably cause you to reach the nearest branch library, anything more remote than that being beyond the local intelligence. Sometimes I think we had better drop all our far-reaching plans for civic betterment and devote our time for a few years to causing citizens, lettered and unlettered alike to memorize some such simple formula as this: "There is a Public Library. It is on Blank street. We may borrow books there, free."

You will notice that I have inserted in this formula one item of information that pertains to use, not location. For of those who know of the existence and location of the Public Library there are many whose ideas of its contents and their uses, and of the conditions and value of such uses, are limited and crude. The advertising that succeeds in bettering this state of things is surely doing an economic service. All these things the self-respecting citizen should know. But beyond and above all this there is the final economic service of advertising--the causing a man to want that which he needs but does not yet desire. Every man, woman and child in every town and village needs books in some shape, degree, form or substance. And yet the proportion of those who desire them is yet outrageously small, though encouragingly on the increase. Here no memorizing of a formula, even could we compass it, could suffice. This kind of advertising means the realization of something lacking in a life. Is the awakening of such a realization too much for us? Are we to stand by and see our neighbors all about us awakening to the undoubted fact that they need telephones in their houses, and electric runabouts, and mechanical fans in hot weather, and pianolas, and new kinds of breakfast food, while we despair of awakening them to their needs of books--quite as undoubted? Are we to admit that personal gain, which was the victorious motive that spurred on the commercial advertisers in these and countless other instances, is to be counted more mighty than the desire to do a service to our fellowmen and to fulfill the duties of our positions--which should spur us on?

I am not foolish enough to suppose that by placarding the fences with the words "Books! Books!" as the patent medicine man does with "Curoline! Curoline!" we shall make any progress. The patent medicine man is right; he wants to excite curiosity and familiarize the public with the name of his nostrum. They all know what a book is--and alas the name is not even unknown and mysterious--would that it were! It calls up in many minds associations which, if we are to be successful we must combat, overthrow, and replace by others. To many--sad it is to say it--a book is an abhorrent thing; to more still, it is a thing of absolute indifference. To some a book is merely a collection of things, having no ascertainable relationships, that one is required to memorize; to others it is a collection of statements, difficult to understand, out of which the meaning must be extracted by hard study; to very few indeed does the book appear to be what it really is--a message from another mind. People will go to a seance and listen with thrills to the silliest stuff purporting to proceed from Plato or Daniel Webster or Abraham Lincoln, when in the Public Library, a few blocks away are important and authentic messages from those same persons, to which they have never given heed. Such a message derives interest and significance from circumstances outside itself. Very few books create their own atmosphere unaided. They presuppose a system of abilities, opinions, prejudices, likes and dislikes, intellectual connections and what not, that is little less than appalling, if we try to follow it up. Dislike of books or indifference toward them is often simply the result of a lack of these things or of some component part of them. We must supply what is lacking if we are to arouse a desire for books in those who do not yet possess it. I say that such a labor is difficult enough to interest him whose pleasure it is to essay hard tasks; it is noble enough to attract him who loves his fellow-man; success in it is rare enough and glorious enough to stimulate him who likes to succeed where others have failed. Advertising may be good or bad, noble or ignoble, right or wrong, according to what is advertised and our methods of advertising it. He who would scorn to announce the curative powers of bottled spring-water and pink aniline dye; he who regards it as a commonplace task to urge upon the spendthrift public the purchase of unnecessary gloves and neckties, may well feel a thrill of satisfaction and of anticipation in the task of advertising ideas and of persuading the unheeding citizen to appropriate what he has been accustomed to view with indifference.

To get at the root of the matter, let us inquire why it is that so many persons do not care for books. We may divide them, I think, into two classes--those who do not care, or appear not to care for ideas at all, whether stored in books or not; and those who do care for ideas but who either do not easily get them out of storage or do not realize that they can be and are stored in books. Absolute carelessness of ideas is, it seems to me, rather apparent than real. It exists only in the idiot. There are those to be sure that care about a very limited range of ideas; but about some ideas they always care.

We must, in our advertisement of ideas, bear this in mind--the necessity of offering to each that which he considers it worth his while to take. If I were asked what is the most fundamentally interesting subject to all classes, I should unhesitatingly reply "philosophy." Not, perhaps, the philosophy of the schools, but the individual philosophy that every man and woman has, and that is precisely alike in no two of us. I have heard a tiny boy, looking up suddenly from his play, ask "Why do we live?" This and its correlative "Why do we die?" Whence come we and whither do we go? What is the universe and what are our relations to it--these questions in some form have occurred to everyone who thinks at all. They are discussed around the stove at the corner grocery, in the logging camp, on the ranch, in clubs and at boarding-house tables. Sometimes they take a theological turn--free will, the origin and purpose of evil, and so on. I do not purpose to give here a catalogue of the things in which an ordinary man is interested, and I have said this only to remind you that his interest may be vivid even in connection with subjects usually considered abstruse. This interest in ideas we may call the library's raw material; anything that tends to create it, to broaden it, to extend it to new fields and to direct it into paths that are worth while is making it possible for the library to do better and wider work--is helping on its campaign of publicity. This establishes a web of connecting fibers between the library and all human activity. The man who is getting interested in his work, debaters at a labor union, students at school and college, the worker for civic reform, the poetic dreamer--all are creating a demand for ideas that makes it easier for the library to advertise them. Those who object to some of the outside work done by modern libraries should try to look at the whole matter from this standpoint. The library is taking its place as a public utility with other public utilities. Its relations with them are becoming more evident; the ties between them are growing stronger. As in all cases of such growth it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the boundaries between them, so fast and so thoroughly do the activities of each reach over these lines and interpenetrate those of the others. And unless there is actual wasteful duplication of work, we need not bother about our respective spheres. These activities are all human; they are mutually interesting and valuable. A library need be afraid of doing nothing that makes for the spread of interest in ideas, so long as it is not neglecting its own particular work of the collection, preservation and distribution of ideas as stored in books, and is not duplicating others' work wastefully.

When we observe those who are already interested in ideas, however, we find that not all are interested in them as they are stored up in books. Some of these cannot read; their number is small with us and growing smaller; we may safely leave the schools to deal with them. Others can read, but they do not easily apprehend ideas through print. Some of these must read aloud so that they may get the sound of the words, before these really mean anything to them. These persons need practice in reading. They get it now largely through the newspapers, but their number is still large. A person in this condition may be intellectually somewhat advanced. He may be able to discuss single-tax with some acumen, for instance. It is a mistake to suppose that because a person understands a subject or likes a thing and is able to talk well about it, he will enjoy and appreciate a book on that subject or thing. It may be as difficult for him to get at the meat of it as if it were a half-understood foreign tongue. You who know enough French to buy a pair of gloves or sufficient German to inquire the way to the station, may tackle a novel in the original and realize at once the hazy degree of such a person's apprehension. He may stick to it and become an easy reader, but on the other hand your well-meant publicity efforts may place in his hands a book that will simply discourage and ultimately repel him, sending him to join the army of those to whom no books appeal.

Next we find those who understand how to read and to read with ease, but to whom books--at any rate certain classes of books--are not interesting. Now interest in a subject may be so great that one will wade through the driest literature about it, but such interest belongs to the few--not to the many. I have come to the conclusion that more readers have had their interest killed or lessened by books than have had it aroused or stimulated. This is a proportion that it is our business as librarians to reverse. More of this unfortunate and heart-breaking, interest-killing work than I like to think of goes on in school. Not necessarily; for the name of those is legion who have had their eyes opened to the beauties of literature by good teachers. This makes it all the more maddening when we think how many poor teachers, or good teachers with mistaken methods, or indifferent teachers, have succeeded in associating with books in the minds of their pupils simply burdensome tasks--the gloom and heaviness of life rather than its joy and lightness. Such boys and girls will no more touch a book after leaving school than you or I would touch a scorpion after one had stung us.

Perhaps it is useless to try to change this; possibly it is none of our business, though we have already seen that there are reasons to the contrary. But we can better matters, and we are daily bettering them, by our work with children. If a child has once learned to love books and to associate them powerfully with something else than a burdensome task, then the labors of the unskillful teachers will create no dislike of the book but only of the teacher and his methods; while those of the good teacher will be a thousand times more fruitful than otherwise.

So much for the ways in which interesting books are sometimes made uninteresting. Now for the books that are uninteresting _per se_--and how many there are! When a man has something to distribute commercially for personal gain, the thing that he tries above all to do is to interest his public--to make them want what he has to sell. His success or failure in doing this, means the success or failure of his whole enterprise. He does not decide what kind of an entertainment his clients ought to attend and then try to make them go to it, or what kind of neckties they ought to wear and then try to make them wear them. Of ten promoters, if nine proceeded on this principle and one on the plan of offering something attractive and interesting, who would succeed? It is one of the marvels of all time that this never seems to have occurred to writers of books. We are almost forced to conclude that they do not care whether their volumes are read or not. In only one class of books, as a rule, do the writers endeavor to interest the reader first and foremost; you all know that I refer to fiction. What is the result? The writers of fiction are the ones read by the public. More fiction is read, as you very well know, than all the other classes of literature put together. The library that is able to show a fiction percentage of 60, points to it with pride, while there are plenty with percentages between 70 and 80. Now this is all to the credit of the fiction writers. I refuse to believe that their readers are any more fundamentally interested in the subjects of which they treat than in others. They simply follow the line of least resistance. They want something interesting to read and they know from experience where to go for it. Of course this brings on abuses. Writers use illegitimate methods to arouse interest--appeals perhaps, to unworthy instincts. We need not discuss that here, but simply focus our attention on the fact that writers of fiction always try to be interesting because they must; while writers of history, travel, biography and philosophy do not usually try, because they think it unnecessary. This is simply a survival. It used to be true that readers of these subjects read them because of their great antecedent interest in them--an interest so great that interesting methods of presentation became unnecessary. No one cared about the masses, still less about what they might or might not read. Things are changed now; we are trying to advertise stored ideas to persons unfamiliar with them and we are suddenly awakening to the fact that our stock is not all that it should be. We need history, science and travel fascinatingly presented--at least as interestingly as the fiction-writer presents his subjects. This is by no means impossible, because it has been done, in a few instances. We are by no means in the position of the Irishman who didn't know whether or not he could play the piano, because he had never tried. Some of our authors have tried--and succeeded. No one after William James can say that philosophy cannot be made interesting to the ordinary reader. Tyndall showed us long ago that physics could interest the unlearned, and there are similarly interesting writers on history and travel--more perhaps in these two classes than any other. But it remains true that the vast majority of non-fiction books do not attract, and were not written with the aim of attracting, the ordinary reader such as the libraries are now trying to reach. The result is that the fiction writers are usurping the functions of these uninteresting scribes and are putting history, science, economics, biology, medicine--all sorts of subjects, into fictional form--a sufficient answer to any who may think that the subjects themselves, as distinguished from the manner in which they are presented, are calculated to repel the ordinary reader. Fiction is thus becoming, if it has not already become, the sole form of literary expression, so far as the ordinary reader is concerned. This is interesting; it justifies the large stock of fiction in public libraries and the large circulation of that stock. It does not follow that it is commendable or desirable. For one thing it places truth and falsehood precisely on the same plane. The science or the economics in a good novel may be bad and that in a poor novel may be good. Then again, it dilutes the interesting matter with triviality. It is right that those who want to know how and when and under what circumstances Edwin and Angelina concluded to get married should have an opportunity of doing so, but it is obviously unfair that the man who likes the political discussions put into the mouth of Edwin's uncle, or the clever descriptions of country-life incident to the courtship, should be burdened with information of this sort, in which he has little interest.

To those who are interested in the increase of non-fiction percentages I would therefore say: devise some means of working upon the authors. These gentry are yet ignorant of the existence of a special library public. Some day they will wake up, and then fiction will be relieved from the burden that oppresses it at present--of carrying most of the interesting philosophy, religion, history and social science, in addition to doing its own proper work.

Meanwhile the librarian, who is interested in advertising ideas, must do what he can with his material. There is still a saving remnant of interesting non-fiction, and there is a goodly body of readers whose antecedent interest in certain subjects is great enough to attract them to almost any book on those subjects. I have purposely avoided the discussion here of the details of library publicity, which has been well done elsewhere; but I cannot refrain from expressing my opinion that the ordinary work of the library and its stock of books if properly displayed, are more effective than any other means that can be used for the purpose. From a series of articles entitled "How to Start Libraries in Small Towns" by A.M. Pendleton, I quote the following, which appears in The Library Journal for May 13, 1877:

"Plant it [the library] among the people, where its presence will be seen and felt,... Other things being equal, it is better to have it upon the first floor, so that passers-by will see its goodly array of books and be tempted to inspect them."

Excellent advice; we might take it if we had not built our libraries as far away from the street as possible and lifted them up on as high a pedestal as our money would buy. Who, passing by a modern library building, branch or central, can by any possibility see through the windows enough of the interior to tell whether it is a library rather than a postoffice, a bank, or an office?

Before moving into its new home the St. Louis Public Library occupied temporarily a business building having a row of six large plate-glass windows on one side, directly on the sidewalk, enabling passers-by to see clearly all that went on in the adult lending-delivery room. The effect on the circulation was noteworthy. During the last months of our occupancy we went further and utilized each of the windows for a book display. This was in charge of a special committee of the staff, and its results were beyond expectation. In one window we had a shelfful of current books, open to attractive pictures, with a sign reminding wayfarers that they might be taken out by cardholders and that cards were free. In another we had standard works, without pictures, but open at attractive pages. In another we had children's books; in another, open reference or art books in a dust-proof case--and so on. Each of these windows was seldom without its contingent of gazers, and the direct effect on library circulation was noticed by all. At the end of the year we moved into our great million-and-a-half-dollar building; and beautiful as it is--satisfactory as are its arrangements--we have had--alas--to give up our show windows. We can, it is true, have show cases in the great entrance hall, but we want to attract outsiders, not insiders. Some of our enthusiastic staff want to build permanent show cases on the sidewalk. What we may possibly do is to rent real show windows opposite. What we do not desire, is to abandon our publicity plan altogether. But when, oh when, shall we have libraries (branches at any rate, if our main buildings must be monumental) that will throw themselves open to the public eye, luring in the wayfarer to the joys of reading, as the commercial window does to the delights of gumdrops or neckties?

One of the greatest steps ever taken toward the advertisement of ideas was the adoption, on a large scale, of the open shelf. This throws the books of a library, or many of them, open to public inspection and handling; it encourages "browsing"--the somewhat aimless rambling about and dipping here and there into a volume.

If we are to present ideas to our would-be readers in great variety, hoping that among them there may be toothsome bait, surely there could be no better way than this. The only trouble is that it appeals only to those who are already sufficiently interested in stored ideas to enter the library.

We must remember, however, that by our method of sending out books for home use we are making a great open-shelf of the whole city. While the number of volumes in any one place may be small, the books are constantly changing so that the non-reader has a good chance of seeing in his friend's house something that may attract him. That this may affect the use of the library it is essential that he who sees a library book on the table or in the hands of a fellow passenger on a car must be able to recognize its source at once, so that, if attracted, he may be led thither by the suggestion. Nothing is better for this purpose than the library seal, placed on the book where all may see it; and that all may recognize it, it should also be used wherever possible, in connection with the library--on letter heads, posters, lists, pockets and cards, so that the public association between its display and the work of the library shall become strong.

This making the whole outstanding supply of circulating books an agency in our publicity scheme for ideas is evidently more effective as the books better fit and satisfy their users; for in that case we have an unpaid agent with each book. The adaptation of book to user helps our advertisement of ideas, and that in turn aids us in adapting book to user. When a dynamo starts, the newly arisen current makes the field stronger and that in turn increases the current. Only here we must have just a little residual magnetism in the field magnet to start the whole process. In the library's work the residual magnetism is represented by the latent interest in ideas that is present in every community. And I can do no better, in closing, than to emphasize the fact that everything that advertises ideas, even if totally unconnected with their recorded form in books, helps the library and pushes forward its work.

Itself a product of the great extension of intellectual activity to classes in which it was formerly bounded by narrow limits, the library is bound to widen those limits wherever they can be stretched, and every movement of them reacts to help it. Surely advertisement on its part is an evangel--a bearing of good intellectual tidings into the darkness. We are spiritualistic mediums in the best sense--the bearers of authentic messages from all the good and great of past or present time; only with us, no turning on of the light, no publicity however glaring, will break the spell or do otherwise than aid, for whether we succeed or fail, whether we live or die, those messages, recorded as they are in books, will stand while humanity remains.

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, THE PUBLIC SCHOOL, AND THE SOCIAL CENTER MOVEMENT[7]

[7] Read before the National Education Association.

The center of a geometrical figure is important, not for its size and content, but for its position--not for what it is in itself, but for its relations to the other elements of the figure. And words used with derived meanings are used best when their original significations are kept in mind. The business center of a city does not contain all of that city's commercial activity; when we speak of the church as a religious center, we do not mean that there is to be no religious activity in the home or in other walks of life; as for the center of population of a large and populous country, it may be out in the prairie where neither man nor his dwellings are to be seen. All these centers are what they are because of certain relationships. It is so with a social center. But social relationships cover a wide field. The relationships of business, of religion, even of mere co-existence, are all social. May we have a center for so wide a range of activities? Even the narrower relations of business or of religion tend to form subsidiary groups and to multiply subsidiary centers. In a large city we may have not only a general business center but centers of the real estate business, of the hardware or textile trades, and so on. Our religious affiliations condense into denominational centers.

In the district of a large city where newly arrived foreign immigrants gather, you will be shown the group of blocks where the Poles or the Hungarians have segregated themselves from the rest, and even within these, the houses where dwell families from a particular province or even from one definite city or village. Man is social but he is socially clannish, and the broadest is not so much he who refuses to recognize these clan or caste relationships as he who enters into the largest number of them--he who keeps in touch with his childhood home, has a wide acquaintance among those of his own religious faith and of his chosen business or profession, keeps up his old college friendships, is interested in collecting coins or paintings and knows all the other collectors, is active in civic and charitable societies, takes an interest in education and educators, and so on. The social democracy that should succeed in abolishing all these groups or leveling them--that should recognize no relationships but the broader ones that underly all human effort and feeling--the touches of nature that make the whole world kin--would be barren indeed.

We cannot spare these fundamentals; we could not get rid of them if we would; but civilization advances by building upon them, and to do away with these additions would be like destroying a city to get at its foundation, in the vain hope of securing some wide-reaching result in economics or aesthetics. Occupying a foremost place among these groupings is the large division embracing our educational activities. And these are social not only in the broad sense, but also in the narrower. The intercourse of student with student in the school and even of reader with reader in the library, especially in such departments as the children's room, is so obviously that of society that we need dwell on it no further.

This intercourse, while a necessary incident of education in the mass, is only an incident. It is sufficiently obtrusive, however, to make it evident that any use of school or library building for social purposes is fit and proper. There is absolutely nothing new nor strange about such use. In places that cannot afford separate buildings for these purposes, the same edifice has often served for church, schoolhouse, public library, and as assembly room for political meetings, amateur theatricals, and juvenile debating societies. The propriety of all this has never been questioned and it is difficult to see why it should not be as proper in a town of 500,000 inhabitants as in one of 500. The incidence of the cost is a matter of detail. Why should such purely social use of these educational buildings--always common in small towns--have been allowed to fall into abeyance in the larger ones? It is hard to say; but with the recent great improvements in construction, the building of schools and libraries that are models of beauty, comfort, and convenience, there has arisen a not unnatural feeling in the public that all this public property should be put to fuller use. Why should children be forced to dance on the street or in some place of sordid association when comfortable and convenient halls in library or school are closed and unoccupied? Why should the local debating club, the mothers' meeting--nay, why should the political ward meeting be barred out? Side by side with this trend of public opinion there has been an awakening realization on the part of many connected with these institutions that they themselves might benefit by such extended use.

Probably this realization has come earlier and more fully to the library, because its educational function is directed so much more upon adults. The library is coming to be our great continuation school--an institution of learning with an infinity of purely optional courses. It may open its doors to any form of adult social activity.

There are forms of activity proper to a social center that require special apparatus or equipment. These may be furnished in a building erected for the purpose, as are the Chicago fieldhouses. Here we have swimming-pools, gymnasiums for men and for women, and all the rest of it. A branch library is included and some would house the school also under the same roof. We may have to wait long for the general adoption of such a composite social center. Our immediate problem is to supply an immediate need by using means directly at our disposal. And it is remarkable how many kinds of neighborhood activity may take place in a room unprovided with any special equipment. A brief glance over our own records for only a few months past enables me to classify them roughly as athletic or outdoor, purely social, educational, debating, political, labor, musical, religious, charitable or civic, and expository, besides many that defy or elude classification.

The athletic or outdoor organizations include the various turning or gymnastic clubs and the Boy and Girl Scouts; the social organizations embrace dancing-classes, "welfare" associations, alumni and graduate clubs of schools and colleges, and dramatic clubs; the educational, which are very numerous, reading circles, literary clubs galore, free classes in chemistry, French, psychology, philosophy, etc., and all such organizations as the Jewish Culture Club, the Young People's Ethical Society, the Longan Parliamentary Class, and the Industrial and Business Women's Educational leagues. Religious bodies are parish meetings, committees of mission boards, and such organizations as the Theosophical Society; charitable or civic activities include the National Conference of Day Nurseries, the Central Council of Civic Agencies, the W.C.T.U., playground rehearsals for the Child Welfare Exhibit, and the Business Men's Association; and the Advertising Men's League; musical organizations embrace St. Paul's Musical Assembly, the Tuesday Choral Club, etc. Among exhibitions are local affairs such as wild flower shows, an exhibit of bird-houses, collections from the Educational Museum, the Civil League's Municipal Exhibit, selected screens from the Child Welfare Exhibit, and the prize-winners from the St. Louis Art Exhibit held in the art room of our central library. Then we have the Queen Hedwig Branch, the Clay School Picnic Association, the Aero Club, the Lithuanian Club, the Philotechne Club, the Fathers' Club, and the United Spanish War Veterans.

I trust you will not call upon me to explain the objects of some of these, as such a demand might cause me embarrassment--not because their aims are unworthy, but because these are skilfully obscured by their names. If anyone believes that there is a limit to the capacity of the human race for forming groups and subgroups on a moment's notice, for any reason or for no reason at all, I would refer him to our assembly room and clubroom records; and he would find, I think, that these are typical of every large library offering the use of such rooms somewhat freely.

It will be noted that the library takes no part in organizing or operating any of these activities; it does not have to do so.

The successful leader is he who repairs to a hill and raises his standard, knowing that at sight of it followers will flock around him. When you drop a tiny crystal into a solution, the atoms all rush to it naturally: there is no effort or compulsion except that of the aptitudes that their Creator has implanted in them. So it is with all centers, business or religious or social. No one instituted a campaign to locate the business center of a city at precisely such a square or corner. Things aggregate, and the point to which they tend is their center; they make it, it does not make them. The leader on a hill is a leader because he has followers; without them he would be but a lone warrior. The school or the library that says proudly to itself, "Go to; I will be a social center," may find itself in the same lonely position. It can offer an opportunity: that is all. It can offer houseroom to clubs, organizations, and groups of all kinds, whether permanent or temporary, large or small, but its usefulness as a social center depends largely on the existence of these and on their desire for a meeting place. We have in St. Louis six branch libraries with assembly rooms and clubrooms--in all a dozen or so. I have before me the calendar for a single week and I find 55 engagements, running from 24 at one branch down thru 13, 8, 6, and 3 to one. If I had before me only the largest number I should conclude that branch libraries as social centers were a howling success; if only the smallest, I should say that they were dismal failures. Why the difference? For the same reason that the leader who displays his standard may or may not be surrounded with eager "flocking" followers. There may be no one within earshot, or they may have no stomach for the war, or they may not be interested in the cause that he represents. Or again, he may not shout loud or persuasively enough, or his standard may not be attractive enough in form or color, or mounted on a sufficiently high staff.

I have said that all we can offer is opportunity; to change our figure, we can furnish the drinking-fountain--thirst must bring the horse to it. But we must not forget that we offer our opportunity in vain unless we are sure that everyone who might grasp it realizes our offer and what it means.

Here is the chance for personal endeavor. If the young people in a neighborhood continue to hold their social meetings over a saloon when the branch library or the school is perfectly willing to offer its assembly room, it is pretty certain that they do not understand that offer, or that they mistrust its sincerity, or that there is something wrong that might be remedied by personal effort. In the one of our branches that is most used by organizations there is this personal touch. But I should hesitate to say that the others do not have it too. There are plenty of organizations near this busiest library and there are no other good places for them to meet. In the neighborhood of some other branches there are other meeting-places, and elsewhere, perhaps, the social instinct is not so strong, or at any rate the effort to organize is lacking. Should the librarian step out and attempt to stimulate this social instinct and to guide this organizing effort? There is room for difference of opinion here.

Personally I think that he should not do it directly and officially as a librarian. He may do it quietly and unobtrusively like any other private citizen, but he needs all his efforts, all his influence, to bring the book and the reader together in his community. Sometimes by doing this he can be doing the other too, and he can always do it vicariously. He should bear in mind that the successful man is not he who does everything himself, but he who can induce others to do things--to do them in his way and to direct them toward his ends. Even in the most sluggish, the most indifferent community there are these potential workers with enthusiasms that need only to be awakened to be let loose for good. The magic key is often in the librarian's girdle, and his free offer of house room and sympathy, with good literature thrown in, will always be of powerful assistance in this kind of effort. He will seldom need to do more than to make clear the existence and the nature of the opportunity that he offers. I know that there are some librarians and many more teachers who hesitate to open their doors in any such way as this; who are afraid that the opportunities offered will be misused or that the activities so sheltered will be misjudged by the public. It has shocked some persons that a young people's dancing-class has been held, under irreproachable auspices, in one of our branch libraries; others have been grieved to see that political ward meetings have taken place in them, and that some rather radical political theories have been debated there. These persons forget that a library never takes sides. It places on its shelves books on the Civil War from the standpoint of both North and South, histories of the great religious controversies by both Catholics and Protestants, ideas and theories in science and philosophy from all sides and at all angles. It may give room at one time to a young people's dancing-class and at another to a meeting of persons who condemn dancing. Its walls may echo one day to the praises of our tariff system and on another to fierce denunciations of it.

These things are all legitimate and it is better that they should take place in a library or a school building than in a saloon or even in a grocery store. The influence of environment is gently pervasive. I may be wrong, but I cannot help thinking that it is easier to be a gentleman in a library, whether in social meeting or in political debate, than it is in some other places. In one of our branches there meets a club of men who would be termed anarchists by some people. The branch librarian assures me that the brand of anarchism that they profess has grown perceptibly milder since they have met in the library. It is getting to be literary, academic, philosophic. Nourished in a saloon, with a little injudicious repression, it might perhaps have borne fruit of bombs and dynamite.

In this catholicity I cannot help thinking that the library as an educational institution is a step ahead of the school. Most teachers would resent the imputation of partisanship on the part of the school, and yet it is surely partisan--in some ways rightly and inevitably so. One cannot well explain both sides of any question to a child of six and leave its decision to his judgment. This is obvious; and yet I cannot help thinking that there is one-sided teaching of children who are at least old enough to know that there is another side, and that the one-sided teaching of two-sided subjects might be postponed in some cases until two-sided information would be possible and proper. Where a child is taught one side and finds out later that there is another, his resentment is apt to be bitter; it spoils the educational effect of much that he was taught and injures the influence of the institution that taught him. My resentment is still strong against the teaching that hid from me the southern viewpoint concerning slavery and secession, the Catholic viewpoint of what we Protestants call the Reformation--dozens of things omitted from textbooks on dozens of subjects because they did not happen to meet the approval of the textbook compiler. I am no less an opponent of slavery--I am no less a Protestant--because I know the other side, but I think I am a better man for knowing it, and I think it a thousand pities that there are thousands of our fellow citizens, on all sides of all possible lines, from whom our educative processes have hid even the fact that there is another side. This question, as I have said, does not affect the library, and fortunately need not affect it. And as we are necessarily two-sided in our book material so we can open our doors to free social or neighborhood use without bothering our heads about whether the users are Catholics, Protestants, or Jews; Democrats, Republicans, or Socialists; Christian Scientists or suffragists. The library hands our suffrage and anti-suffrage literature to its users with the same smile, and if it hands the anti-suffrage books to the suffragist, and vice versa, both sides are certainly the better for it.

I have tried to make it clear in what I have said that in this matter of social activity, public institutions should go as far as they can in furnishing facilities without taking upon themselves the burden of administration. I believe fully in municipal ownership of all kinds of utilities, but rarely in municipal operation. Municipal ownership safeguards the city, and private or corporate operation avoids the numerous objections to close municipal control of detail. So the library authorities may retain sufficient control of these social activities by the power that they have of admitting them to the parts of the buildings provided for them, or of excluding them at any time. These activities themselves are better managed by voluntary bodies, and, as I have said, there is no indication that the formation of such bodies is on the wane. The establishment and operation of a musical or athletic club, a debating society, or a Boy Scouts company, are surely quite as educational as the activities themselves in which their members engage. Do not let us arrogate to ourselves such opportunities as these. I should be inclined to take this attitude also with regard to the public playgrounds, were they not somewhat without the province of this paper; and I take it very strongly with regard to the public school. Throw open the school buildings as soon as you can, and as freely as you can to every legitimate form of social activity, but let your relationship to this activity be like that of the center to the circle--in it and of it, but embracing no part of its areal content. So, I am convinced, will it be best for all of us--for ourselves, the administrators of public property, and for the public, the owning body which is now demanding that it should not be barred out by its servants from that property's freest and fullest use.

THE SYSTEMATIZATION OF VIOLENCE

The peace propaganda has suffered much from the popular impression that many of those engaged in it are impractical enthusiasts who are assuming the possibility of doing away with passions and prejudices incident to our very humanity, and of bringing about an ideal reign of love and good will. Whether this impression is or is not justified we need not now inquire. It is the impression itself that is injuring the cause of peace, and will continue to injure it until it is removed.

It may at least be lessened by allowing the mind to dwell for a time on another aspect of the subject in which the regime of peace that would follow the discontinuance of all settlement of disputes by violence will appear to consist not so much in the total disappearance of violence from the earth as in the use of it for a different purpose, namely, the preservation of the peaceful status quo, by a systematic and lawful use of force, or at any rate, the readiness to employ it.

A state of peace, whether between individuals or nations, whether without or within a regime of law, always partakes of the nature of an armed truce: under one regime, however, the arms are borne by the possible contestants themselves; under the other, by the community whose members they are. If there is a resort to arms, violence ensues under both regimes; in both cases it tends ultimately to restore peace, but the action is more certain and more systematic when the violence is exerted by the community.

These laws may apply indifferently to a community of individuals or to one of nations. The most cogent and the most valid argument at the disposal of the peace advocate is the fact that we no longer allow the individual to take the law into his own hand, and that logically we should equally prohibit the nation from doing so. This is unanswerable, but its force has been greatly weakened by the assumption, which it requires no great astuteness to find unwarranted, that the settlement of individual quarrels by individual force has resulted from--or at least resulted in--the discontinuance of violence altogether, or in the dawn of a general era of good-will, man to man. On the contrary, it is very doubtful whether there is less violence to-day than there would be if the operation of law were suspended altogether; the difference, is that the violence has shifted its incidence and altered its aim--it is civic and social and no longer individual.

If we are to introduce the regime of law among nations as among individuals, our first step must be similarly to shift the incidence of violence. In so doing we may not decrease it, we may, indeed, increase it--but we shall none the less be taking that step in the only possible direction to achieve our purpose.

Among individuals, custom, crystallizing into law, generally precedes the enforcement of that law by the community. Hence, a somewhat elaborate code may exist side by side with the settlement of disputes, under that code, by personal combat. We have among nations such a code, and we yet admit the settlement of disputes by war, because the incidence of violence has not yet completely shifted. We have established a tribunal to act, in certain cases, on behalf of the community of nations, but we have not yet given that tribunal complete jurisdiction and we have given it no power whatever to enforce its decrees. It is on this latter point that I desire to dwell. In a community of individuals, there are two ways of using violence to enforce law--by the professional police force and by the posse of citizens. The former is more effective, but the latter is often readier and more certain in particular instances, especially in primitive communities. To give it force we must have readiness on the part of every citizen to respond to a call from the proper officer, and ability to do effective service, especially by the possession of arms and skill in their use. These requisites are not generally found in more advanced communities.

In like manner, the decrees of an international tribunal might be enforced either by the creation of an international army or by calling upon as many of the nations as necessary to aid in coercing the non-law-abiding member of the international community. Each nation is already armed and ready.

Whatever may be thought of the ultimate possibility of an international army, it must be evident that the principle of the posse must serve us at the outset. An international army would always consist in part of members of the nation to be coerced, whereas, in selecting a posse those furthest in race and in sympathy from the offender might always be chosen, just as members of a hostile clan would make up the best posse to arrest a Highlander for sheep-stealing.