Why do we need a public library? Part 6

WHY MR. CARNEGIE ESTABLISHES LIBRARIES

I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the ma.s.ses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. They never pauperize. They reach the aspiring, and open to these the chief treasures of the world--those stored up in books. A taste for reading drives out lower tastes.

Besides this, I believe good fiction one of the most beneficial reliefs to the monotonous lives of the poor. For these and other reasons I prefer the free public library to most if not any other agencies for the happiness and improvement of a community.

ANDREW CARNEGIE.

TO TEACHERS

Libraries are established that they may gather together the best of the fruits of the tree of human speech, spread them before men in all liberality and invite all to enjoy them. The schools are in part established that they may tell the young how to enjoy this feast. They do this. They teach the young to read. They put them in touch with words and phrases; they point out to them the delectable mountains of human thought and action, and then let them go. It is to be lamented that they go so soon. At twelve, at thirteen, at fourteen at the most, these young men and women, whose lives could be so broadened, sweetened, mellowed, humanized by a few years' daily contact with the wisest, n.o.blest, wittiest of our kind as their own words portray them--at this early age, when reading has hardly begun, they leave school, and they leave almost all of the best reading at the same time. If, now, you can bring these young citizens into sympathy with the books the libraries would persuade them to read; if you can impress upon them the reading habit; then the libraries can supplement your good work; will rejoice in empty shelves; will feel that they are not in vain; and the coming generations will delight, one and all, in that which good books can give; will speak more plainly; will think more clearly; will be less often led astray by false prophets of every kind; will see that all men are of the one country of humanity; and will--to sum it all--be better citizens of a good state.

I believe you will find there is something yet to do in reading in which the library can be of help. Reading comes by practice. The practice which a pupil gets during school hours does not make him a quick and skilful reader. There is not enough of it. If you encourage the reading habit, and lead that habit, as you easily can, along good lines, your pupils will gain much, simply in knowledge of words, in ability to get the meaning out of print, even though we say nothing of the help their reading will give them in other ways.

J. C. DANA.

RIGHT USE OF BOOKS

When we consider how much the education that is continued after schooltime depends upon the right use of books, we can hardly be too emphatic in a.s.serting that something of that use should be learned in the school. Yet almost nothing of the sort really is learned. The average student in high school does not know the difference between a table of contents and an index, does not know what a concordance is, does not know how to find what he wants in an encyclopedia, does not even know that a dictionary has many other uses besides that of supplying definitions. Still more pitiful is his nave a.s.sumption that a book is a book, and that what book it is does not particularly matter.

It is the commonest of all experiences to hear a student say that he has got a given statement from a book, and to find him quite incapable of naming the book. That the source of information, as long as that information is printed somewhere, should be of any consequence, is quite surprising to him, and still more the suggestion that it is also his duty to have some sort of an opinion concerning the value and credibility of the authority he thus blindly quotes. If the school library, and the instruction given in connection with it, should do no more than impress these two elementary principles upon the minds of the whole student body, it would go far towards accounting for itself as an educational means. That it may, and should, do much more than this is the proposition that we have sought to maintain, and we do not see how its essential reasonableness may be gainsaid.

DIAL, Feb. 1, 1906.

THE TRUE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY

The library supplies information for mechanics and workingmen of every cla.s.s. Just as the system of apprenticeship declines and employers require trained helpers, must the usefulness of the library increase.

Library work offers great opportunity for philanthropy, and philanthropy of the higher form, because its work is preventive, rather than positive. It antic.i.p.ates evil by subst.i.tuting the antidote beforehand.

It fosters the love of what is good and uplifting before low tastes have become a chronic propensity. Pleasure in such books as the library would furnish to young readers will interest the mind and occupy the thoughts exclusive of those evil practices invited by the open door of idleness.

The children generally come of their own free will; they are influenced silently, unconsciously to themselves; they feel themselves welcome, loved, respected. Self-respect, the mighty power to lift and keep erect, is fostered and developed.

The work of the library is for civic education and the making of good citizens, a form of patriotism made imperative for the millions of foreigners coming yearly to our sh.o.r.es.

The public library offers common ground to all. There are no social lines to bar the entrance; the doors open at every touch, if only the simple etiquette of quiet, earnest bearing is observed. No creeds are to be subscribed to, the rich and poor meet together in absolute independence. Even the aristocracy of intellect does not count in the people's university. The ideal public library realizes the true spirit of democracy.

WALLER IRENE BULLOCK.

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AS THE CENTER OF THE COMMUNITY

In more than one locality the local public library has come to be recognized as the natural local center of the community, around which revolve the local studies, the local industries, and all the various local interests of the town or village. Here, for instance, is the home of the local historical society; here also is the home of the local camera club; of the natural history society; of the study club and debating societies. Why is this? It is because those in charge of the library have so thoroughly realized the fact that in a community the interests of all are the interests of each, and that while this is true of other inst.i.tutions as related to each other, yet there is no one of them on which the lines of interest so invariably converge from all the others--as "all roads lead to Rome."

W. E. FOSTER.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

The very presence of a public library has a meaning and exerts a power for good. Especially is this the case when this presence is made evident by a separate and worthy building. The building which stands for books, for knowledge, for the records of human experience; a house not just like other houses but with marks of permanence, dignity and grace, and evidently so contrived as to call the people in and to distribute freely to them these wise and entertaining books, must be a positive influence in itself.

The children know it for what it is. Old and young, rich and poor, recognize its meaning. It embodies the great idea of a man learning and growing by his a.s.sociation with the wisdom and experience of other men.

It is the great clearing house of human intelligence where knowledge is mutually exchanged and every one can learn what the rest know. It tells the lowest and meanest and most ignorant that here is the opportunity open to everybody to know, and therefore that books are a common concern of the village, by which it sets great store.

If, on the other hand, the public library is neglected, or starved with excessive thrift, or if it is crowded into a corner, opened at rare intervals and approached with difficulty, all this influence is lost.

The increase of reading tends to a general broadening of life. Human nature is selfish so long as the man is isolated, for he is controlled by his impulses and pa.s.sions, and guided by his own narrow ideas.

Our views of life are moulded by reading. The records are here, describing lands and people we have never seen, centuries in which we have not lived, men who pa.s.sed off the stage in past ages. The discoveries of science, the developments of workmanship, the growth of civilization; thought, wit, fancy, feeling, which has appealed to the world, and that study, the study of man, is ill.u.s.trated in infinitely diverse forms of story and song: all these are in books and they give us the advantage of wide horizons and enlarged acquaintance with life. A community leavened with such influences, where people generally understand, where all grow up from their youth to know, to think, to communicate and to have common acquaintance with the past and the distance and with the secrets of nature, and all the many ways of doing things, is a stronger, happier and more prosperous community because of that very fact, and the books are plainly a means to so desirable an end.

W. R. EASTMAN.

HOW A LIBRARY HELPED THE BOYS

As the children have grown up since our library was established, it is wonderful how their demands for books have widened. A boy in his casual reading finds some particular branch of study, in science, mechanics, art or politics, which arouses a sleeping instinct. Straightway he forsakes his stories and his plays and goes to the library to satisfy his new desires. Year by year the demand upon the library has broadened and books have been added treating of electricity, the X-ray, wireless telegraphy, mending bicycles, telephones, bee-keeping, care of pet animals, political, social and economic questions, and still the books do not meet all demands. New subjects are called for and new books must be bought.

BEAVER DAM ARGUS.

Side by side in the wilderness, our forefathers planted the church and the school; and on these two supports the nation has stood firm and grown great. But a tripod is necessary for stable equilibrium. As the country has grown, its industrial, economic and political problems have grown more numerous and more complex, and the nation required a broader base of intelligence and morality for its security and perpetuity. The third support for a wider and higher national life has been found in the public library, which co-operating with the school, doubles the value of the education the child receives in school and further incites and furnishes him with facilities for doing so. It also enables the adult to make up for the opportunities he neglected or, more often, did not have in early life. It does this, too, at an expense to the community of not more than one tenth of the cost per capita of school education.

F. M. CRUNDEN.

THE LIBRARY SUPPORT

This is the fundamental matter after all--money. Whence shall the funds come? The church plan, the club plan--all are dependent on the spasmodic and irregular support that results from the labors of a soliciting committee using persuasive arguments with business men and others. There are certain expenses that are absolutely essential--books first and most, a room for which, probably, rent must be paid (though some generous citizen may give the use of it), periodicals to be subscribed for, heat, light, table, chairs, etc., besides the most important feature of the whole scheme--the librarian.

The wisest form of organization is the tax-supported free public library. Is it desirable that the small town shall in its beginning in library matters attempt at once to secure a munic.i.p.al tax to found and maintain a free public library under the state law? There are those who believe this is the only way to make a beginning. Eventually, if not in the beginning, the free public library on a rate or tax-supported basis is the most desirable form of library organization.

ALICE S. TYLER.

WHY THE FREE LIBRARY SHOULD BE SUPPORTED BY TAXATION

1 Such a tax puts the library on the right basis as a public inst.i.tution. The purpose of the library is the same as that of the school--public education, the enlargement and enrichment of the intellectual life of the community--and it should, therefore, be supported on the same grounds and by the same methods as the school.

2 The library supported by local taxation ceases to be a charity, contributed by the few to the many, and becomes the right and property of all. When I use a library supported by private gifts, I am accepting a favor; when I use a library supported by public tax, I am using what is mine by right. The tax thus promotes a feeling of independence and self-respect in the library's patrons.

3 Taxation is the easiest and fairest way to raise the needed money.

Five hundred dollars raised by entertainments, subscriptions, sales, etc., means a great burden of labor, care and expense to a few, and usually to net that sum a very much larger sum must be expended, while $500 spread on the tax rolls would hardly be felt even by the largest taxpayer.

4 It adds dignity to the library and increases the respect in which it is held. To be made each year an object of charity for which private subscriptions are solicited and rummage sales held tends to bring it into contempt and greatly lowers its influence in the community.

5 A stated tax, yielding a known and fixed income, enables the trustees to pursue a consistent and stable plan for library development, such as is impossible where the income is dependent on fluctuating impulse or effort.

6 There is no village tax levied from which the people can get so large a return for so little money. A $500 tax in a village of 3,000 people is equivalent to about 16 cents for each resident. For this insignificant sum each person in the village is offered a pleasant reading room, as good as that supplied by many a club, a dozen or more of the best periodicals, a collection of books such as only a very few of the more wealthy can possess as individuals, and about $200 worth of new books to read every year.