Chapter XVI: Part 16

Often the chance encounter, the mere passing remark, brings the happy inspiration as to just the right books, as when one catches a glimpse of a deep enthusiasm for nature surviving in the breast of a man through fifty years spent between city walls. To introduce him to Richard Jeffries, most intense, nearest to nature's spirit, and least known of nature's lovers, is to enrich the remaining years of this man's life.

All who go to the library go as seekers. Some are seeking merely entertainment, others are searching for knowledge, but many are struggling with the deep problems that beset us all, perhaps in moral or spiritual darkness, and looking only for light. If one's heart is with the people, nothing so quickens perception as sympathy. One notes the trend of the reading of the individual, and often what he is seeking is intuitively divined. Perhaps the simple remark, "If you can tell me just what you want I may be able to find it for you," results in a frank statement of the difficulty, or an outburst of sudden confidence is given from the impulse that makes it often easier to confide in a stranger than in a relative. And it counts for a good deal just then if the one at the information desk knows what writer has felt and thought most deeply and has written most clearly and helpfully on that subject. Few are the needs of the human heart or mind that are really beyond the reach of help from books--books in which we find the reflection of our every mood, the expression in our inmost aspiration, the conservation of the feeling, the experience and the wisdom of the race.

CONTROL AND GUIDANCE OF READING

Border regions are those of greatest interest, for they are
regions of contact and therefore places where things happen.
This is a border region between the field of the librarian
and that of the teacher. Its activities are the sole
justification for the name "library teacher" bestowed upon
assistants in many of the homelier city districts. Here the
librarian must tread warily. He can not push or pull; he
must effect what he desires by making it attractive to the
reader. In the five following papers this function is
somewhat elaborated--a very modern phase of library work and
one most nearly concerned with its socialization.

PROBABLE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL OUTCOME OF THE RAPID INCREASE OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES

A paper by Rev. Dr. Pierce, then editor of _Zion's Herald_,
a Methodist publication, read at the Lake George Conference
of the American Library Association in 1885. Notably free
from the caution and hesitancy then often appearing in the
public utterances of the clergy regarding popular libraries,
and full of belief that their power of guidance would make
them "powerful elements of culture."

Bradford Kinney Pierce was born in Royalton, Vt., February
3, 1819, and graduated at Wesleyan University in 1841.
Entering the Methodist Episcopal ministry, he was also
occupied for many years as teacher and editor, being agent
of the Sunday School Union in 1845-56, editing _Zion's
Herald_ in 1872-88 and then serving as librarian of the Free
Library at Newton, Mass., in addition to his other duties,
until his death, April 19, 1889. He has been called "the
Nestor of New England Methodism."

The free public library is now becoming the favorite posthumous beneficiary of our men of wealth. Heretofore it has hardly been esteemed respectable in the vicinity of Boston for a man of fortune to die without leaving a generous bequest to Harvard College or to the Massachusetts General Hospital. The city and town library is now beginning to share liberally in these testamentary benefactions. The college requires too considerable a sum in our days to be often adequately endowed by the estate of one patron, but the library can be established and be quite amply appointed by the accumulation of one public-spirited citizen, and be made to become his most-honored and permanent memorial. Every town of any size in our New England and Northern States either has, or will soon have, one of these people's universities, through the individual gift of a generous citizen, or by public establishment.

This general gathering of large bodies of books in all our principal towns, opened freely to all ages, can but produce a manifest influence for good or evil in the community. The familiar and forcible response to the objection made to the establishment of so many small colleges in the land, rather than securing their consecration and abundant endowment and appointment in a few centres, is that the "fresh-water institution," so called, brings the opportunities for a liberal culture near to thousands who could not otherwise be prompted to make the incident sacrifices to secure an advanced education. The immediate presence itself of the institution is an inspiration to study. So the presence of the numerous libraries, with their wide-open doors to all, and their attractive shelves, becomes a powerful incitement to those who otherwise would hardly think of seeking enjoyment or profit in reading. The statistics of these city and town libraries fully confirm this _a-priori_ presumption as to their influence in awakening and cultivating an interest in books among all classes. And this influence of books upon a reading community is very powerful. It is more subtle than human companionship. The latter strongly affects and moulds the character; but books reach us at lower depths. They inspire us more profoundly; they touch our whole being, intellect, heart, and executive purpose; they imperceptibly create or modify our ethical standards; they become our models of life and conduct; they lay hold of our highest and most sacred sentiments and color our views of the life beyond.

It can but be, where the circulation of these volumes reaches nearly all our families and enters into the thoughts and emotions of every day of the year, that manifest results for the better or the worse will follow. Many thoughtful persons have been honestly anxious in reference to the result of the experiment. The public press has sent out its serious forebodings from the pens of those who have taken depressing views of the matter, and alarming tracts have been published, giving painful criticisms upon the contents of certain libraries, the nature of special volumes found upon their shelves, and the amount of circulation of works of fiction of not the most elevating, or even wholesome, character. To all this we answer that these criticisms, whether well founded or not, have not been without their influence in calling attention to the most intelligent of our institutions. Their officers are cultured gentlemen and ladies, clearly apprehending the relation of the library to the intellectual and moral development of the community and its true office in administering to the improvement, as well as enjoyment, of its patrons. It is more and more becoming an educating rather than a simply entertaining institution. It is every day becoming more widely recognized that it is not intended to be a competitor with the circulating library, but rather an antagonist, winning the patrons of the latter to the reading and study of a higher order of literature. While the majority of library managers do not take the extreme view that has been strongly advocated by some quite intelligent library trustees, that the public funds should not be used for the purchase of fiction, which may be considered an intellectual luxury, but only for improving and educating literature, they do seek to carefully sift the lighter issues of the press, securing the best and the purest of this character. They also study at the same time, through their accomplished officers and assistants, in the use of the local press, through the cooperation of the teachers of the schools and the leaders of public opinion, with the aid of parents, to awaken especially in the minds of the young people a taste for regular and substantial courses of reading in the various departments of science, history, and _belles-lettres_. The success that has attended these efforts is full of encouragement. Our superintendents and librarians do not simply remain at their desks, or stand behind their tables to respond to the call for books, but make themselves felt in the community, aiding in the investigations of students, assisting in the search for authorities, facts, and illustrations, suggesting plans for interesting the youthful readers in scientific or literary studies, and calling attention to the rich accumulations upon the library shelves. The annual reports of these institutions are constantly showing improvement in the character of the reading in their several communities,--a gradual decrease in the lighter works, and an increase in the call for books of art and science, of travel and biography, of poetry and philosophy. A significant falling off in the number of books taken from the library, in many places, is noticed, while the patronage of the library is manifestly increased. The works that are now selected are substantial, requiring thought and time in reading. They cannot be hurried over in a day like the light novel, and hence the decrease in the number of volumes read is a most gratifying evidence of improvement in the quality of the reading.

The free library is becoming the effectual antagonist, also, of the superficial news and story papers. Their "name is legion." They assault the eye with their staring illustrations, and tempt the reader by their cheapness. Especially at the close of the week, supplies of this trash, with periodical sheets of a little higher order, but still superficial, have been heretofore laid in for the hours of respite from labor on the Sabbath. This light, disconnected, desultory reading, carried on through all the unoccupied hours of the week, while it secures a smattering of information, can but be of a very vicious intellectual tendency, not to speak of its moral influence. The free library and its reading-room offer without expense the perusal of the best periodical literature in the land, and permit and tempt their patrons to secure, for the unemployed hours of the approaching Sabbath, works of deep interest and of an improving character.

We are confident that this multiplication of well-selected and constantly growing collections of standard and current literature is full of promise of good, and, as generally managed among us, is attended with small and easily corrected evils. It is inspiring the establishment of literary and scientific clubs, awakening the ambition and inventive powers of our mechanics, encouraging a liberal and cultivating course of reading among our school students, and affording an immeasurable amount of pure and refining enjoyment throughout the community. We look upon it as one of the significant and powerful elements of a higher and general culture among the people, and prophetic of far greater and better fruits in the future.

POSSIBILITIES OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN MANUFACTURING COMMUNITIES

"A love of reading as a keynote to broader culture," and how
the librarian may guide reading by stimulating that love--a
paper by Mrs. Sanders of the Pawtucket Public Library (long
lovingly known among librarians as "Mawtucket of
Pawtucket").

Minerva Amanda Sanders was born in Providence, R.I., Feb. 1,
1837. About 1876 she became librarian of the subscription
library in Pawtucket, R.I., organized in 1852, which
preceded the present free library; and when about six months
later it was turned over to the town, she continued in
charge, serving until her death, March 20, 1912. Mrs.
Sanders did notable pioneer work in her profession,
especially in the adoption of free access to books and in
work with children. This paper was read at the Thousand
Islands Conference of the American Library Association in
1887.

Sir John Herschel, in an address to the working people of Windsor and Eton upon the occasion of opening a public library for their use in 1839, said:--

"If I were to pray for a taste, which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and as a shield against its ills however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading.

"Give a man this taste and a means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books.

"You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history; with the wisest, the wittiest, with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity.

"You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average of humanity.

"It is morally impossible but that the manners should take a tinge of good breeding and civilization from having constantly before one's eyes the way in which the best-bred and the best-informed men have talked and conducted themselves in their intercourse with each other.

"There is a gentle but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it is really the last thing he dreams of.

"It cannot, in short, be better summed up than in these few words: It civilizes the conduct of men, and suffers them not to remain barbarians."

Recognizing this love of reading as the keynote to broader culture and a higher standard of morals, one by one, during the last half-century, libraries have been thrown open to the public that were before only accessible to the scholar (and often grudgingly even to him) and new libraries established, till, in every community, a free public library is as much a necessity to-day as its churches or its schools.

Even in the troublous days of the Revolution our forefathers were awaking to this demand, for in 1776 there were 29 "partially public libraries in the colonies"; in 1800 there were 49; in 1876 the number had increased to over 3,000; while to-day we number between 5,000 and 6,000 public libraries, comprising a total of over 20,000,000 volumes.

The influence of a public library is contingent upon many circumstances--its community, its finances, and largely upon its management. Possibilities which may be developed in one library, in another remain unnoticed; while something of equal importance is made of incalculable benefit to its own community. Thus, though working on a general principle, each library independently works out the problem of the greatest good to the greatest number of its own patrons. Happily, therefore, there is no cause for the rivalry and jealousies that disturb the harmony of so many fraternities.

It is my pleasure and privilege to live in a manufacturing community; to watch the development of practical ideas; to follow the progress of mechanical improvement, and witness with pride their results, for the distinctive feature of Pawtucket is the variety of its industries.

We remember with pride our parentage and the honor due to it; but surely when Samuel Slater, after a weary time of toil and discouragement, perfected the first power machinery for cotton spinning in this country, and with a pardonable pride saw it in successful operation in the first bona fide cotton mill in the United States, which still stands in the centre of our city--(I speak with authority though I am fully aware that this is a case parallel to the "Seven Grecian cities striving for Homer dead.")--When, as I said, this was accomplished in 1791, there was no power of the imagination that could have foreseen the change from the little mill village on the Blackstone River, with its few hundred inhabitants, to the present city of 25,000, 13,000 of whom are engaged in industrial pursuits, its 70 schools, its 600 manufacturing establishments, embracing the greatest variety of industries.

But Pawtucket is only one of many thriving manufacturing communities.

Waltham, Mass., the adoptive parent of the American Watch Co., which had in 1865 a population of but 7,000, now numbers over 16,000, with not less than 7,000 employes, 2,500 of whom alone are employed by the American Watch Co.

Lowell, Mass., according to the census of 1883, had a population of 66,000, one third of whom were employed in its 300 manufactories.

Manchester, N.H., with a population of 40,000, employs 15,000 persons in its 102 manufactories.

And so I might go on enumerating special statistics, but these are simply representative communities. It is sufficient for my purpose to say that there are in the United States about 254,000 manufacturing establishments, employing nearly 3,000,000 persons, at an average wage of $1.15 per working day.

It is to this great class that we look for much of the prosperity of our country; for we find that the value of the product of the manufactures of the United States for the last ten years was $5,400,000,000.

It is also an important factor in our government, for the pride and principle of our country is "Vox populi, vox Dei."

In these days when skilled labor is at a premium, when issues are constantly arising requiring the best legislative ability, and the demand for both is far greater than the supply, how are we to meet it? The reply comes from far and near, "Educate the people." Yes, educate the people! for they are very ready to be educated, many of them striving with a self-denial known only to themselves to give to their children the education that was denied them; our schools of to-day are showing good work from the sons and daughters of these parents, and its influence is blessing their homes.

But many are denied that privilege, and cannot afford to spare their children's wages for even the three months covering the compulsory law of education.

At the average wage a private library though small is unattainable; a newspaper may be a luxury indulged in. Where, then, is the royal road to learning? We do not hesitate to say the free public library is that long-sought highway. Then open wide the doors; let us stock our shelves with the best mechanical and scientific works; see that each craft is especially represented; supply the works on the leading questions of the day, also works pertaining to the civil government. In this we must not be partisan; these subjects must be considered in all their bearings, and in the broadest manner.

The biographies of working men who have attained honor by their practical worth and perserverance either in mechanical, civil, or military service must have a prominent place; history and travel will receive their share of attention; while we will not forget that the working man and woman must have some amusement and recreation, and that "strong meat" is not always desirable; our fiction department must be supplied with all that is bright, fresh, inspiring, and helpful, but nothing that will create a craving for greater stimulant, or tend in the least degree to weaken the moral character; for the office of a public library is to develop to its fullest capacity the best powers of a community. The extent of such development must depend largely upon the manner of its use.

Believing that the first entrance into a library should bring with it that most delightful sensation, the companionship of books, we have at our own library, contrary to the custom which now obtains, thrown open our shelves to the public, with the title and name of author plainly printed on each volume so that literally "he who runs may read."

An old man said to me a few days since: "I get little time for reading now, but I love to come in and look at the books; they bring to mind many a thing that I read long ago, and I carry it with me all the day through; 'tis an education just to be with them." You say, How can this be done without loss of books?

Ten years of experience has taught us that there is a point of honor in these working people in this regard, with which we must come in contact to fully appreciate; we have lost no more books with our open system than other libraries with their closed shelves.

Understanding fully the value of a catalogue, especially a closely classified one, to the scholar; to an uneducated man it is a labyrinth through which he gropes till in despair he either lays it aside or appeals for help. What is a catalogue to a man who asks for "a book on birds," and when we direct an attendant to give him a certain work on ornithology, quickly replies, "'Tis not that I want; 'tis a book on birds;" or the girl who wants an "adequate book" to furbish up her society manners. Not one in ten persons comes to a library with a definite object.

Roaming at will among the books, the sight of Blaikie's "How to get strong" has been the first step toward the recovery of health otherwise lost; John B. Gough's "Darkness and daylight" has brought in the same way happiness to a wretched household; while Andrew Carnegie's "Triumphant Democracy" has awakened in more than one citizen an interest and pride in his native or adopted country heretofore unknown.

There are the contents of the shelves to select from; no fear of any one leaving the library without a book; whereas, after presenting from the catalogue a list of books to be returned as "not in," he either "hasn't time," or "will make no further trouble," and passes out unsatisfied.

I have already said that a possibility in one community may be impracticable in another; with us this open system has proved an unqualified success.

A community of this class is not aggressive; on the contrary they are in a library rather shy. They should be met with prompt service, and the courtesy of the drawing-room. Make them welcome as they enter the library; it is their own; help them to cultivate a personal pride in it; ascertain their tastes, (many of them will surprise us), and call their attention to such works as will gratify them, gradually leading them to higher standards when it is necessary.

If they are seeking special subjects and need our help, let us exhaust our references. To "give to him that asketh" and "the Lord loveth a cheerful giver" should be a librarian's watchword.

What does it matter if half of the pleasures, and all of the ills of our patrons be poured into our ears? It only brings us nearer to them, and shows us how to be more helpful, and widens the influence of our work.

'Tis a wise community that enables its trustees to give to their librarian sufficient clerical assistance to allow him to mingle with the people, to learn their habits and tastes, to direct their reading (especially of the young), and to assist them in their researches; for we all know that peculiarly inherent weakness of human nature, to seek for information from the highest source, and to be better satisfied, even though the same help may be rendered us by a subordinate.

The reading-room in connection with a public library may be made an important agent in the education of a community, especially of its young men and children.

After a day of hard work, what are the homes to which many of these young men return? The accommodations of a cheap boarding-house, which means a room generally occupied by two or more, with barely furniture for necessity to say nothing of comfort.

What inducement has he to spend his evenings at home? Where, then, will he go? Into the street, to drift into the place offering the most attraction for the least money; alas! too often at the bitter cost of misery to himself and sorrow for his friends hereafter.

This, then is our work, to make our reading-rooms so attractive that they will be drawn hither. Have them well lighted, well heated and ventilated, supplied with the daily papers of our own and other cities, also the current magazines. We cannot afford to be niggardly in this work. Let us supply our tables with illustrated mechanical and art works, also the best literature of the day. The more freedom that we can give, the better the results. The young man will pass in and out at his pleasure, spending an hour or two with whatever pleases him best, till the reading-room largely takes the place of home, and reading becomes a part of his daily existence, the beneficent effect of which he will carry through life.

There are lying on our tables week after week by actual count 600 papers, magazines, and books, from "Baby Days" to "The Cathedrals of the World," free to the public. This has ceased to be an experiment, for during the ten years our losses have not amounted to $10; and there are days when nearly if not quite 500 persons sit at our tables.

The greater possibilities, however, are with our children, the future parents and guardians of our commonwealth. What are we doing for them as public libraries, as educators? Working hand in hand with the schools faithfully and well, as shown by the valuable and interesting reports published in the Library journal, without which we would know as little of the library work outside our own as we would know of the outside world without our newspaper. Long may it live!

Does our responsibility rest here? What of the multitude of waifs worse than homeless, without restraining or guiding influence, to be thrown into the community to swell the numbers of paupers and criminals, many of whom, yes, the majority of whom, have the same gentle instincts and latent ability as our own little ones so tenderly nurtured.

We may say this is the work of charitable institutions and humane societies; not so; this is essentially our work. We call ourselves educators, and have the honor to be recognized as such; the work of a public library is to teach, to elevate, to ennoble, there is no limit to its possible influence.

Must we wait, then, until our children (for they are all ours as a community) are fourteen years of age or upwards before we begin to teach them the first principles of right living, of mental growth, of love to their neighbor?

We maintain that we cannot begin too early, and that this is a part of library work from which we get the greatest percentage of reward. Again I ask, What are we doing for these children, the future pride or dishonor of our communities?

Brockton, Mass., has a reading-room to which children are admitted, and which they are encouraged to visit, so well patronized that it will soon double its seating capacity.

Waltham, Mass., has taken a step in the right direction. The trustees of the public library have supplied two tables in their waiting room with Wide awake and St. Nicholas for the children.

Lowell, Mass., admits children during the day, and supplies them with juvenile magazines. Manchester, N.H., admits children to the reading-room; but unfortunately, from various causes, they are unable to offer the necessary attractions, and few visit it.

Newport, R.I., can only furnish St. Nicholas for want of money, but children may come and go at their pleasure.

Olneyville, R.I., is offering every inducement that their means will allow to draw children to their reading-room; and to interest and instruct them seems to be the object of those in charge.

Willimantic, Conn., admits children at the age of 12 years.

Somerville, Mass., supplies juvenile magazines, and has no limit to age.

Springfield, Mass., also admits children at all ages.

The Boston Public Library, the parent of the public libraries of New England, true to its paternal instinct, begins to exert its influence over the children at the earliest years.

There are doubtless others from whom we would be glad to hear, but I confess that, after visiting and inquiring among public libraries concerning this work, I became disheartened and ceased investigation, for the popular verdict seems to be "Children and Dogs not allowed."

With our experience in this work with the children since the opening of our library in 1876, and knowing the possibilities only waiting for development, I am emboldened to speak earnestly.

Let us gather the children in; give "milk for babies," in the illustrated books which they may understand though they cannot read; juvenile magazines and literature of a healthy nature to counteract the pernicious trash that is flooding our communities.

It is only necessary to refer you to the specimens of flash literature which our boys have relinquished to us, with pale faces and trembling hands, after reading from the scrapbook here on exhibition the cuttings from the newspapers of the day showing the bad influence of the dime novel. It tells its own story far better than I can tell it, and the one in whose mind this great remedial agent originated is daily blest in seeing the good results of his experiment.

Help the children to begin early to understand that even they are of use in a community; awaken their pride and ambition in the right direction, and their future is assured.

If there are those who doubt the practicability of this work, and, like Hosea Bigelow, would

"Give more for one live bobolink
Than a square mile of larks in printer's ink,"

come and see our "Flower Band," numbering 200 children, gathered from the little girls and boys who frequent our library and reading-room, from five years of age to fourteen; from the little fellow who brings three wilted daisies, or a rose without a stem, to the dainty miss with a bouquet from the greenhouse.

Their badges signify a pledge to bring flowers once a week (if possible), and to respond to a call to distribute them in any place where they will add a bit of brightness to a shadowed household; also to seek out such homes and report them. Several names have been already stricken from our list, of those who have died leaving a blessing for these little missionaries.

The influence of this work upon the children and the community cannot be told. It must be seen to be appreciated.

I have endeavored to show that upon the influence of the public library working in harmony with the spirit of the churches and the schools, with the single object of the highest welfare of the people, depends much of the prosperity, morality, and culture of our industrial communities--I might also say of our country; but when we consider that there are less than 6,000 public libraries in the United States, are we not tempted to say in the words of old, "What are they among so many?"

But let us remember that the same spirit that gave power to feed the multitude from the "five loaves and fishes" still lives in the hearts of men to animate them to good works, as shown by Messrs. Ames, Hail, Pratt, Carnegie, Osterhout, Newberry, and a host of others whose names are yet to be engraved as public benefactors on the tablets of public libraries.

May God speed the work!

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS OF JOSEPH N. LARNED

The need of stronger forces in popular education--the
failure of the press--the library's opportunity, as it
appeared to a scholarly librarian of the so-called "old
school" in 1894.

Joseph Nelson Larned was born in Chatham, Ontario, May 11,
1836, and was educated in the public schools of Buffalo,
N.Y. He served on the editorial staff of the Buffalo
_Express_ in 1859-72, was superintendent of education in
Buffalo in 1872-73 and superintendent of the Buffalo Library
from 1877 until it became the Public Library in 1897, after
which he devoted himself to literature until his death in
1913. His best known work is his History for Ready Reference
and Topical Reading. He was president of the A.L.A. in
1893-94.

It was my misfortune to be absent from the meeting at which you did me the honor to elect me to this place, and I had no opportunity, either to give my advice against that action, or to thank you for the distinction with which it clothes me. The advice I would have given is now belated; but my thanks have lost no warmth by the delay, and I pray you to accept them with belief in their sincerity. At the same time I shall venture to draw from the circumstances a certain claim upon your generosity. If it happens to me to be tripped in some of these tangles of procedure which, in such meetings as this, await the stumbling feet of an untrained presiding officer, be good enough to remember the warning I would have given you if I had had the opportunity.

We are gathered for the sixteenth meeting of the American Library Association, in the eighteenth year of its existence. Our league of the libraries is young; its history is unpretentious; but it is the history of a movement of higher importance to the world that many others that have marched with trumpets, and drums. Eighteen years ago, the conception of the Library militant, of the Library as a moving force in the world, of the Librarian as a missionary of literature, was one which a few men only had grasped; but with which those few had already begun the doing of a revolutionary work. To-day such ideals are being realized in most corners of the American republic. The last generation, and the generations before the last, were satisfied with the school as an agent of popular education. In our time we have brought the library to the help of the school, and the world is just opening its eyes to perceive the enormous value of the reinforcement that is gained from this new power.

And the discovery has come none too soon; for a desperate need of more and stronger forces in the work of popular education is pressing on us. If we reflect on the social conditions of the present day, and review a little the working of the ferments in civilized society during a few years last past, we shall marvel, I think, at the timeliness of the movement which brings the public library, just now, to the front of action among the instruments and agencies of popular education. It is our fortune, good or ill as we may regard it, to be unmistakably passing through one of the greater crisies of human history. In the last century, modern democracy got its political footing in the world. Its birth was older, and it had been cradled in divers nursing places, Swiss, Dutch, English, and New English; but last century it stepped into political history as the actor of the leading part; as the sovereign of the future, mounting his throne. From the moment it came on the stage, all wise men knew that its need above every other need was education. They made haste, in our country, to build school-houses and to set the school-master at work; seeing plainly that all they might hope for and strive for in the future would depend on the intelligence that could be put into the brain of this omnipotent sovereign who had risen to rule the world.

Well, the schools and the school-masters served their purpose reasonably well for a reason. Democracy was fairly equipped with a spelling-book and a quill-pen for the duties and responsibilities of a simple, slowly-moving time. The mass of its members, the every-day people of the farm and the shop, read the pamphlets and the weekly gazettes of their day, and were gently drawn, with unconfused minds, into one or the other of two straightly opposed political parties which sought their votes. If they lacked knowledge, there was a certain ingenuousness in their character which paid respect to the opinions of men who had more. If blundering in politics occurred, it was blundering leadership, for the most part, and more easily corrected than perversity in the ranks. So the reign of democracy was successful enough while society kept the simpler state.

But that simpler state is gone. We who are beyond middle age may say that we have seen it disappear. We have witnessed a miraculous transformation of the earth and of the people who dwell on it. We have seen the passing of Aladdin, who rubbed his magical electric lamp as he went calling Afreets from the air to be the common servants of man. A change has been wrought within fifty years that is measureless, not only in itself, but in its effects on the human race. The people who whisper in each other's ears across a continent; who know at noon-time in Nebraska what happened in the morning at Samarcand; the people to whom a hundred leagues are neighborhood, and a thousand but easy distance; for whom there is little mystery left on the face of the earth, nor anything hidden from their eyes; these people of our day are not in the likeness of the men and women who ambled horseback or rode in coaches from town to town, and who were content with a weekly mail. The fitting and furniture of mind that would make a safe member of society and a good citizen out of the man of small horizons, who lived the narrower life of a generation or two ago, are perilously scant for these times.

It is true that all the wonderful quickening of life which has occurred carries something of education in itself, and that men learn by living under the conditions of the present day; but the learning caught in that way is of the dangerous kind. It is the delusive knowledge of the surface of things; the deceitful lore which breeds mischievous beliefs and makes them fanatical. It goes but a little way, if at all, toward the saving of society, as against the unrest, the discontent, the desire, which torment such an age of revolution as ours.

And the threatening fact is this: that ignorant opinions have acquired at the present day a capacity for harm enormously increased over that of the elder times. They share the magnified potency that is given to all things, good or ill, by the science of the modern man. Its million tongues are lent to them for propagation; but that is a matter of small seriousness compared with the boundless ease of combination which it offers to them at the same time. It is in that appalling facility of alliance and organization, which present conditions have given to men and women of every class and character, for every kind of aim and purpose, that the greatest peril of society lies in our day. A peril, that is to say, so long as society has no assurance that the leagues and confederacies formed within its bosom will be prevailingly well instructed and intelligently controlled.

As a serious danger this is something quite new. It has come upon us within recent years. I can remember a state of things in which it was difficult for a man in common life to join himself with other men, much beyond his own neighborhood, in any effectual way, excepting as he did it on the lines of an old political party or an older church. But, to-day, leagues, unions, federations, associations, orders, rings, form themselves among the restless, unstable elements of the time as clouds are formed in the atmosphere, and with kindred lightning flashes and mutterings of thunder. Any boldly ignorant inventor of a new economical theory or a new political doctrine, or a new cornerstone for the fabric of society, can set on foot a movement from Maine to California, between two equinoxes, if he handles his invention with dexterity. This is what invests popular ignorance with terrors which never appeared in it before, and it is this which has brought the real, responsible test of democracy, social and political, on our time and on us.

Democracy, in fact, has remained considerably, hitherto, an unworked theory of society, even in communities which have supposed themselves to be democratically constituted. It has remained so through want of conditions that would give a clear sound to the individual voice and free play to the individual will. Those conditions are now arriving in the world, and the democratic regime is consequently perfecting itself, not politically alone, but economically, and in all the social relations of mankind.

So it is not exaggeration to say that we have come to a situation in which society must fight for its life against popular ignorance. The old agencies of education are inadequate, when the best has been made of them. The common school does not go far enough, and cannot. Its chief function is to prepare a soil in the young mind for the after seed-planting which will produce fruits of intelligence. Unsupplemented, it is well-nigh barren of true educational results. The higher schools and colleges reach too small a number to count for much in a problem which concerns the teaching of the universal millions. What agency, then, is there, that will prepare the democracy of the present and the future for its tremendous responsibilities?

Some may say, the newspaper press: and I would rejoice if we could accept that reply. For the press is an educating power that might transform the civilization of the world as swiftly in mind and morals as steam and electricity have transformed its material aspects. There is nothing conceivable in the way of light and leading for mankind which a conscientious and cultivated newspaper press might not do within a single generation. But a press of that character and that effect seems possible only under circumstances of disinterestedness which are not likely to exist. The publication of a newspaper may sometimes be undertaken as a duty, but not often. As a rule it is a business, like any other, with the mercenary objects of business; and as a rule, too, the gain sought is more readily and more certainly found by pandering to popular ignorance than by striving against it. A few newspapers can secure a clientage which they please best by dignity, by cleanness, by sober truthfulness, and by thoughtful intelligence, in their columns; but the many are tempted always, not merely to stoop to low tastes and vulgar sentiments, but to cultivate them; because there is gravitation in the moral as well as the physical world, and culture in the downward way is easier than the upward.

The vulgarizing of the news press has been a late and rapid process, nearly coincident in cause and event with the evolution of this modern democracy which it makes more problematical. We need not be very old to have seen the beginnings: the first skimming of the rich daily news of the world for the scum and froth of it; the first invention of that disgusting brew, from public sewers and private drains, with which the popular newspapers of the day feed morbid appetites. We can recall the very routes by which it was carried from city to city, and taken up by journal after journal, as they discovered a latent, un-developed taste for such ferments of literature in the communities around them. The taste was latent, potential; it did not exist as a fact; it was not conscious of itself; it made no demands. The newspapers deliberately sought it out, delved for it, brought it to the surface, fed it, stimulated it, made it what it is to-day, an appetite as diseased and as shamefully pandered to as the appetite for intoxicating drams.

And, so far as I can perceive, this action and reaction between what is ignorant and vulgar in the public and what is mercenary and unscrupulous in the press will go on until popular education from other sources puts an end to it. For it is the saving fact that there are other sources; and foremost among them are the public libraries. If it has been our privilege to see, and for some in our circle to bear a part in, the beginnings of the active educational work of the libraries, I am persuaded that it is only the beginnings we have witnessed as yet. I am persuaded that the public library of the future will transcend our dreams in its penetrating influence. Consider for a moment what it is, and what it offers to the energies of education which a desperate necessity is awakening and organizing in the world! It is a store, a reservoir, of the new knowledge of the latest day and the ripened wisdom of the long past. To carry into the memory and into the thought of all the people who surround it, in a town, even some little part of what it holds of instructed reasoning and instructed feeling, would be to civilize that community beyond the highest experience of civilization that mankind has yet attained to. There is nothing that stands equally beside it as a possible agent of common culture. It is the one fountain of intellectual life which cannot be exhausted; which need not be channeled for any fortunate few; which can be generously led to the filling of every cup, of every capacity, for old or young. There is little in it to tempt the befouling hand of the politician, and it offers no gain to the mercantile adventurer. For those who serve it on behalf of the public there are few allurments of money or fame. Its vast powers for good are so little exposed to seduction or corruption that it seems to give promises for the future which are safer and surer than any others that society can build hopes upon.

In this view, those who serve the public libraries have a great responsibility laid on them. They hold in their hands what would give to civilization an ideal refinement if it could be distributed and communicated to all. As we know very well, that is impossible. There is a part of mankind, in every community, which never will feel, never can be made to feel, the gentle attractiveness and influence of books. The fact is one not to be disputed or ignored. At the same time it is a fact to be treated practically as though it did not exist. It is our business to assume that the mission of good books, books of knowledge, books of thought, books of inspiration, books of right feeling, books of wholesome imagination, can be pushed to every hearth, and to every child and parent who sits by it. And it is our business to labor unsparingly toward the making of that assumption good, without reckoning any fraction of hopelessness in it.

That is the business to which we are appointed in this world. Let us be careful that we do not misconceive it in one most important particular! It is not the mission of _books_ that we are charged with, but the mission of _good books_. And there lies a delicate, difficult, very grave duty in that discrimination. To judge books with adequate knowledge and sufficient hospitality of mind; to exercise a just choice among them without offensive censorship; to defend his shelves against the endless siege of vulgar literature, and yet not waste his strength in the resistance--these are really the crucial demands made on every librarian.

For the first condition of successful work is a good tool; and our tools are not _books_, but _good books_. These given, then follow those demands on us which we sometimes discuss as though they came first of all: the demands, that is, for a perfected apparatus in the working library, for a tireless energy in its motive forces, and for a large intelligence in the directing of them.

Not many years ago, our missionary undertakings from the library seemed to be bounded by its own walls. The improving, annotating, and popularizing of catalogues; the printing and distributing of bulletins and reference lists; the surrounding of readers and seekers in a library with willing help and competent suggestion; these labors seemed, only a few years ago, to include almost everything that the librarian most zealous as a missionary could do. But see what doors have been opening in the last few years, and what illimitable fields of labor now invite him! Through one, the great army of the teachers in the common schools is coming into co-operation with him. Through another, he steps into the movement of university extension, and finds in every one of its servants a true apostle of the library mission of good books. From a third, he spreads his beneficient snares about a city in branches and delivery stations; and by a fourth he sends "traveling libraries" to the ends of his State.

The arena of our work is large enough already to make claims on every faculty and power we can bring to it; and yet our plainest duty is to enlarge it still. I think we may be sure that there are portals yet to open, agents yet to enlist, alliances yet to enter, conquests yet to make. And in the end--what?

Those of us who have faith in the future of democracy can only hold our faith fast by believing that the knowledge of the learned, the wisdom of the thoughtful, the conscience of the upright, will some day be common enough to prevail, always, over every factious folly and every mischievous movement that evil minds of ignorance can set astir. When that blessed time of victory shall have come, there will be many to share the glory of it; but none among them will rank rightly before those who have led and inspired the work of the public libraries.

THE LIBRARY AS AN INSPIRATIONAL FORCE

What a librarian may do to direct the attention of his
readers to the really great writers and thinkers--a plea for
original work and for innovation in the library--a note
frequently heard in 1920, but new in 1899 when Mr. Foss,
librarian and popular poet, sounded it in _Public Libraries_
for March.

Sam Walter Foss was born in Canadia, N.H., June 19, 1858,
graduated at Brown University in 1882 and served on the
editorial staff of various papers. In 1895 he left that of
the _Boston Globe_ and from 1898 to his death, Feb. 26,
1911, he was librarian of the Somerville, Mass., Public
Library. He published several volumes of popular verse.

A library has no especial reason for self-felicitation simply because it distributes a large number of books. In fact, it is possible for it to give out a very large number of books and do more harm than good. The test question to ask is: Is it grinding out a product of enlightened and symmetrical men and women? Is it transforming the community into intellectual, thoughtful, better equipped, more roundly developed citizens? Is it making life any ampler, is it making men any manlier, is it making the world any better? If there is any library that cannot answer these questions affirmatively, its librarians are doddering their lives away in useless activity, and receiving a salary without rendering any real service in return. The activities of such a library are useless contortions, and the taxpayers have a right to protest its further existence.

What can a librarian do to make his library an inspirational force? In the first place he must be as accessible as a turnpike road. It seems to me that he can do more good by talking to people than in any other way. To do this, of course, it is a prerequisite that he should know something. I have no faith in the miserable heresy that a librarian who reads is lost. A librarian who does not read would better not be found in the first place. A librarian who does not read is simply a stable keeper for books. He may see to it that they are well blanketed, groomed, and put in the proper stalls, and that the various implements about his stable are kept in good order; but such a librarian will never be mistaken for an intellectual giant in his community. Let him know the books he handles so that he can talk with schoolgirls about Sophie May and Virginia Townsend, and with boys about Henty and Brooks and Knox and Butterworth. Let him be able to discuss Herbert Spencer and David Harum with equal zest, and know something about Kant and a good deal about Kipling, and venerate Marcus Aurelius, and not despise Mark Twain. His mind should be a live coal in its love for books, and then nestle up to other minds and let them get ignited also.

But it may be said that a librarian hasn't the time for such extensive reading. Did you ever know a boy who couldn't find time to play? One always finds time to do the thing he loves to do; and a man who has a genuine love for reading will find time for it even in a library.

One of the greatest longings that any soul can have is a longing for some one to talk with who is interested in identical subjects.