Part 4 (2/2)
It is no exaggeration to state that every dollar expended for library purposes is returned to the community tenfold, not necessarily in dollars and cents, but in the more permanent, more valuable a.s.sets of greater happiness, comfort and progress of the people. A city is the expression of every life within its borders, and every increase in progress and efficiency in the individual citizen, is progress for the whole.
The most valuable things usually are obtained at some sacrifice, and the many advantages from a public library are certainly worth paying for.
Hundreds of small cities and towns tax themselves for electric plants and count themselves fortunate. No one seems to regret this taxation for electric lights which illuminate the citizen's way at night. Should there not be an equal or greater readiness on the part of a community to establish a library and so illuminate the mental horizon of every citizen?
A public library is a necessity, not a luxury. Every community which realizes this and establishes a library, proclaims itself an intelligent, progressive town and one worth living in.
CHALMERS HADLEY.
The opening of a free public library is a most important event in any town. There is no way in which a community can more benefit itself than in the establishment of a library which shall be free to all citizens.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
PUBLIC LIBRARY, A PUBLIC OPPORTUNITY
Modern industrialism exacts from the artisan and the worker in every branch, skill and knowledge not dreamed of years ago. He who would not be trampled under foot needs to keep pace with the onward sweep in his particular craft. The public library furnishes to the ambitious artisan the opportunity to rise. Upon its shelves he may find the latest and the best in invention and in method and in knowledge. Never in the history of the country has there been such a desire manifested among the adult population for continued education as may be noted to-day. Does it not speak eloquently of ambition to rise above circ.u.mstances--that same spirit that we have admired in our Franklins and our Lincolns and the long roll of self-made men whose lives we are proud to recall? And so library extension takes note of adult education, and combining its forces with university extension, realizes that broader movement variously termed home education, popular education and the people's college.
The library gives heed to the future, and thus does not neglect the child. The intelligent work of the children's librarian, supplementing the related work of the teacher, aims to develop the individual talent or dormant resource which finds no chance for expression where children are necessarily treated as ma.s.ses. And we may never know what society has lost by failure to quicken into life this dormant talent for invention, for art, for literature, for philosophy. ”The loss to society of the unearned increment is trivial compared to the loss of the undiscovered resource.” Had r.e.t.a.r.ding influences affected half a dozen men whom we could readily name--Morse, Fulton, Stephenson, Edison, Bell, Marconi--we might to-day be without the locomotive, the steams.h.i.+p, the telegraph, the telephone--the myriad marvels of electricity that to-day seem commonplaces. What we have actually lost during this great century of scientific development we can never know. Nor must we forget that invention is the result of c.u.mulated knowledge which the fertile brain of man utilizes in new directions, and that the preservation of the knowledge and experience of the centuries is the province of the public library, where all alike may have access to its riches. The ideal democracy is the democracy of knowledge and of learning.
The library endeavors, by applying the traveling library principle to collections of pictures, by means of the ill.u.s.trated lecture and otherwise, to cultivate among the people an appreciation of the beautiful and artistic that shall ultimately find expression in the home and its surroundings.
The library believes, too, that recreative reading is a legitimate function. We hold, with William Morton Payne, that a sparkling and sprightly story, which may be read in an hour and which will leave the reader with a good conscience and a sense of cheerfulness, has its merits. In this work-a-day world of ours we need a bit of cheer for the hours which ought to be restful as well as resting hours. Library extension is imbued with optimism; its broadening field is educational, sociological, recreative. Unblinded to the evils of the day, its promoters realize inability to amend them except by educational processes affecting all the people. They do not preach the gospel of discontent, but seek realization of conditions which shall bring about contentment and happiness. That, after all, for the welfare of the people, wants need be but few and easily supplied. He who has food, raiment and shelter in reasonable degree, access to the intellectual wealth of the world in public libraries, to the riches created by the master painters and sculptors, found in public galleries and museums, to the untrammeled use of public parks and drives, and the many other universal advantages which are now so increasingly many, need not envy the richest men on earth. Many a millionaire is poorer than the most humble of his employees, for excessive wealth brings its own train of evils to torment its possessor. Commercial success is a legitimate endeavor among men, and thrift is to be commended, but when these degenerate into greed, pity and not envy should be the meed of the man seized with the money disease.
HENRY E. LEGLER.
THE LIBRARY AND THE WORKERS
My opinion of the public library from a workingman's standpoint is, that it is the greatest boon that could possibly be conferred upon him. It places him at once upon the level with the millionaire, the student and the philosopher. It opens for him (whose poverty would otherwise debar him) the vast fields of literature. Here he may wander at will with the master minds of humanity, hand in hand with the great thinkers of the ages, open his mind and heart to the lessons taught by those great leaders of men who have conquered nations and shaped the destinies of the human race. Here he may a.s.sociate with the greatest, the wisest and the best. There is no limit to the possibilities of possessing knowledge which is power, without money and without price. The public library should be managed in the best interests of the workingman, and the books should be purchased mainly with his welfare in view. The capitalist can buy and own his own books. The workingman cannot do this. The children of the workingman must get from the public library the general books of reference which the business man has in his home. The children of the workingman must have these books in order properly to do their school work and thoroughly understand it. Their teachers require this. The children of the workingman have their schools as well as the library.
Their work in the schools and the work in the library go hand in hand, but the workingman himself has only the library for his school and must, of necessity, go there. His schoolroom is the reference room, for the knowledge he gains in that department he can at once put into practical use in any capacity in which he may be employed.
The question arises, having presented those opportunities to the workingman, will he take advantage of them? I answer, he surely will. It is now more than twenty years since I joined a labor organization, the ”Stone-cutters' Union” of Minneapolis. Since that time I have always been affiliated with organized workingmen. During all these years the workingman has taken advantage of every opportunity to better the condition of himself, his fellow workman and his employer. He has learned to be more patient, more conservative and more trustworthy. His hours of labor have been shortened, his wages are higher, and labor-saving machinery has made his work lighter. He lives in a better home, his family is better provided for and, best of all, his children are better educated. What has wrought those great changes in the conditions of the workingman? What has enabled him to keep up with the swift march of progress during these many years? I will answer in one word, Education. Just such inst.i.tutions as the public library have made this possible, and the public library has given the largest share.
JOHN P. BUCKLEY.
A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS
What if there were no letters and no books? Think what your state would be in a situation like that! Think what it would be to know nothing, for example, of the way in which American independence had been won, and the federal republic of the United States constructed; nothing of Bunker Hill; nothing of George Was.h.i.+ngton; except the little, half true and half mistaken, that your fathers could remember, of what their fathers had repeated, of what their fathers had told to them. Think what it would be to have nothing but shadowy traditions of the voyage of Columbus, of the coming of the Mayflower pilgrims, and of all the planting of life in the New World from Old World stocks, like Greek legends of the Argonauts and of the Heraclidae! Think what it would be to know no more of the origins of the English people, their rise and their growth in greatness, than the Romans knew of their Latin beginnings; and to know no more of Rome herself than we might guess from the ruins she has left! Think what it would be to have the whole story of Athens and Greece dropped out of our knowledge, and to be unaware that Marathon was ever fought, or that one like Socrates had ever lived!
Think what it would be to have no line from Homer, no thought from Plato, no message from Isaiah, no Sermon on the Mount, nor any parable from the lips of Jesus!
Can you imagine a world intellectually famine-smitten like that--a bookless world--and not shrink with horror from the thought of being condemned to it?
Yet the men and women who take nothing from letters and books are choosing to live as though mankind did actually wallow in the awful darkness of that state from which writing and books have rescued us. For them, it is as if no s.h.i.+p had ever come from the far sh.o.r.es of old Time where their ancestry dwelt; and the interest of existence to them is huddled in the petty s.p.a.ce of their own few years, between walls of mist which thicken as impenetrably behind them as before. How can life be worth living on such terms as that? How can man or woman be content with so little, when so much is offered?
J. N. LARNED.
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