Why do we need a public library? Part 5

BOOKLESS HOMES

The bookless homes of the well-to-do people are familiar to all. Inside those walls no books are to be found but a few gift books, chosen for their bindings rather than their contents, and perhaps others which some agent has pressed upon them. What can be done to stimulate reading in these homes? Ten-cent magazines and cheap stories are devoured by mother and daughters to the destruction of sane thoughts and connected ideas.

The man of the house each day reads his newspaper, containing accounts of crimes, accidents and the funny paper. Happily, it also contains articles of travel, invention and discovery, otherwise his brain would be weakened.

Young people come from these bookless homes to college each year, showing great confusion of ideas, vacuity of mind and utter lack of information. They need us, need libraries, need the force of the state to help them. Ninety-four per cent of our young people never get into college. Ninety per cent, it is said, never go to school after they have pa.s.sed the age of fourteen years.

The contribution of the library is to elevate the standard of the town.

Books depicting n.o.ble, earnest, well-meaning lives will cause the social standard to progress, and other standards with it.

OREGON LIBRARY COMMISSION.

NEED OF FREE LIBRARIES

A library is an essential part of a broad system of education, and a community should think it as discreditable to be without a well-conducted free public library as to be without a good school. If it is the duty of the state to give each future citizen an opportunity to learn to read, it is equally its duty to give each citizen an opportunity to use that power wisely for himself and the state.

Wholesome literature can be furnished to all the readers in a community at a fraction of the cost necessary to teach them to read, and the power to read may then become a means to a life-long education.

The books that a boy reads for pleasure do more to determine his ideals and shape his character than the text-books he studies in the schools.

Bad and indifferent literature is now so common that the boys will have some sort of reading. If they have a good public library they will read wholesome books and learn to admire Was.h.i.+ngton, Lincoln and other great men. Without a library many of them will gloat over the exploits of depraved men and women, and their earliest ambitions will be tainted.

Each town needs a library to furnish more practice in reading for the little folks in school; it needs it to give the boys and girls who have learned to read a taste for wholesome literature that informs and inspires; it needs it as a center for an intellectual and spiritual activity that shall leaven the whole community and make healthful and inspiring themes the burden of the common thought--subst.i.tuting, by natural methods, clean conversation and literature for petty gossip, scandal and oral and printed teachings in vice.

F. A. HUTCHINS.

THE LIBRARY AND BOYS

"In Madison, N. J., a bird club of boys met twice a week, once for study and once for an expedition, and found the library's resources on this topic to be of interest and value. How to utilize profitably the activities of a 'gang' of boys is worth much planning. One librarian is reported to have started a chair-caning cla.s.s to interest restless boys; another had a museum of flowers and insects, another conducted a branch of the flower mission. Not less interesting, and perhaps more instructive, is a series of talks on Indian legends accompanied by hunting expeditions for the half-buried implements and relics found in almost every meadow in some parts of the country. Boys are eager to learn about natural history and natural science, and they will be encouraged at the public library."

IRENE VAN KLEECK.

THE LIBRARY

Get good books; give them a home attractive to readers of good books; name a friend of good books as mistress of this home--and you have a library; all share in its support and all get pleasure and profit from it if they will; without divisions religious, politic or social, it unites all in the pursuit of high pleasure and sound learning, and gives that common interest in a common concern which is the basis of all local pride.

If you have rightly read a book, that book is yours.

You cannot always choose your companions; you can always choose your books. You can, if you will, spend a few minutes every day with the best and wisest men and women the world has ever known.

The people you have known, the things you have said and done, and the books you have read, all these are now a part of you.

You like yourself better when you are with people who are well-bred and clever; you respect yourself more when you are reading a bright and wholesome book, for you are then in the company of the wise.

J. C. DANA.

After the church and the school, the free public library is the most effective influence for good in America. The moral, mental and material benefits to be derived from a carefully selected collection of good books, free for the use of all the people, cannot be overestimated. No community can afford to be without a library.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

SHALL WE BE LOYAL TO THE CITY OF OUR HOME?

The opportunity is at hand to answer this question. A generous gift is offered, shall we accept it? We can have ---- dollars for a public use, if we will promise to support the use to which this money is dedicated.

Shall ---- have a free public library? It is up to us, her citizens.

We have pa.s.sed the stage of a country town and are ranked and cataloged as a modern, progressive city, enjoying many of the advantages of the larger cities. Why is this true? Because the progressive spirit and sentiment have always triumphed in her onward march. Because, inspired by a public spirit, her people have joined hands, and shoulder to shoulder labored for all that pertains to religious, moral, social, industrial, educational and material development. Let us keep marching on.

Many towns in the state, nearly all those in the counties surrounding us, are accepting Carnegie gifts for libraries. Will it not humiliate and degrade us in the eyes of the people of the state if we decree against a public library? Let us not detract from our well deserved and established reputation for progressiveness by such a mistake. We appeal to public spirit; to pride of city; to pride of home, and urge you to register your vote in favor of this enterprise.

IOWA LIBRARY COMMISSION.

The system of free public libraries now being established in this country is the most important development of modern times. The library is a center from which radiates an ever widening influence for the enlightenment, the uplift, the advancement of the community.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.

THE SCHOOL'S GREATEST BOON

The greatest boon that the system of public schools, or the college, or the university, can confer upon any boy or girl is to teach him or her to use a great collection of literature, to teach them how to read; and to plant within their hearts an irresistible impulse and an indestructible delight in so doing. What profits it a man to learn how to read if he does not read? For what purpose is the mind trained and developed by the process of systematic study in the schools if it is not inspired to go farther into the realms of knowledge? Is it a rational procedure for one, upon the completion of his course of training, to discontinue all further investigation and to lay aside what little love for learning and literature and philosophy and science that may have been aroused in his bosom by school or college inspirations? And how is this advancing and widening of one's horizon by means of the acc.u.mulated stores of knowledge gathered by the previous generations of the world's strong thinkers and beautiful writers to be secured, other than by a collection of good books, by a library?

C. C. THACH.

BOOKS AND STUDY WORK

Have our missionary societies access to Bliss's "Encyclopedia of Missions," or to Dennis's great "Missions and Christian Progress"? Do our Bible students know Moulton's "Literary Study of the Bible"?--a book so illuminating as to seem almost itself inspired. How many of the members of the young people's societies of our churches have access to a standard concordance, Bible dictionary, or a dictionary of sects and doctrines? Has the W. C. T. U. the reports of the Committee of Fifty, that great committee of master minds, who made exhaustive investigation and authoritative reports on the various aspects of the liquor question?

Have the Masons a history of free-masonry? Has the Shakespeare Club books on Shakespeare, and is the Political Equality Club acquainted with standard works on political science and the franchise? Who has a good "Cyclopedia of Quotations," or a "Reader's Handbook," where we can satisfy our curiosity regarding allusions to "Fair Rosamond," "Apples of Hesperia," "Atlantis" and "Captain Cuttle"?

If we were to see a farmer laboriously cutting his wheat with a scythe, tying it into bundles by hand, and then carrying the bundles on his back to the barn, we would think he was crazy. Is it not as foolish, however, for us in our study work to do without the suitable tools and helps which we might have in a public library?

HOLLEY (N. Y.) STANDARD.

WHY CITIES SUPPORT PUBLIC LIBRARIES

The proposition that only an enlightened and an intelligent people can make self-government a success is so self-evident as to make argument but a vain repet.i.tion of empty words. And yet we know that the public school side of our system of free public education is as yet only able to secure five years' schooling for the average child in this country--an all too narrow portal through which to enter upon successful citizens.h.i.+p. There is an imperative demand, then, for the establishment and the development and for the wise administration of that other branch of our system of free public education which we know as the public library.

We must understand clearly that the beneficent result of this system of education is just as possible to the son of the peasant as to the son of the president, is just as helpful to the blacksmith as to the barrister, to the farmer as to the philosopher; and in its possibilities and in its helpfulness is a constant blessing to all and through all, and is needed by all alike.

The most worthy mind, that which is of most value to the world, is the well-informed mind which is public and large. Only through the development of such, both as leaders and as followers, can all cla.s.ses be brought into an understanding of each other, can we preserve true republican equality, can we avoid that insulation and seclusion which are unwholesome and unworthy of true American manhood. The state has no resources at all comparable with its citizens. A man is worth to himself just what he is capable of enjoying, and he is worth to the state just what he is capable of imparting. These form an exact and true measure of every man. The greatest positive strength and value, therefore, must always be a.s.sociated with the greatest positive and practical development of every faculty and power.

This, then, is the true basis of taxation for public libraries. Such a tax is subject to all the canons of usual taxation, and may be defended and must be defended upon precisely the same grounds as we defend the tax for the public schools.

JAMES HULME CANFIELD.