The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses. Various

are proud to be called busy people. The trouble is, we think we are too busy to stop and plan. Our philosophic error lies in believing that the work must all be done to-day. Nature herself should teach us that the best work cannot be done in a hurry.

      We may not hope in this generation to understand well the working of that complex, mysterious thing which we call human society, but we may at least so relate ourselves and our libraries to it that we may live, move, and grow together.

      “Not unrelated, ununified,

       But to each thought and thing allied,

       Is perfect Nature's every part

       Rooted in the mighty Heart.”

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WHAT A LIBRARY SHOULD BE AND WHAT IT CAN DO

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      No one has done more to inspire library workers with the feeling that what they are doing is worth while than Dr. Melvil Dewey, pioneer in this country of the modern library and of the socialized library spirit. A sketch of Dr. Dewey will be found in Vol. I. of this series. The following is from the stenographer's report of a brief talk at the Atlanta Conference of the American Library Association, as printed in Public Libraries (Chicago, June, 1899).

      Atlanta has been known long in this country as a southern city that believes supremely that education pays, and as the revelation has come late in this century of what the library is or should be, and what the library can do, on this line I will say a few words to you tonight.

      We have had an illustration in the recent war with Spain that education pays, in what it means to have the man behind the guns trained. We have an illustration in Mr. Carnegie's work, whose name has been mentioned here in his competition with the rest of the world, illustrating another peculiar American feature that American education pays in dollars and cents; but it is a more recent conception of the part the library has in a system of public education. It took a thousand years to develop our educational system from the university down; first the university as the beginning of all education, and then we must have the colleges to prepare for the universities, the academies and common schools to prepare for the colleges, and it is only in our own generation that we have come to understand that we must begin with the kindergarten and end in our libraries.

      

      I am really pleased tonight that the Young men's association has done this generous work, and that Atlanta is going to pay the money from the taxes. It would be no advantage to this city if your schools were provided for you without charge to the people. Those who study the question from the low plane of dollars and cents, without regard to the higher things in life, have learned that no investigation pays well. In many a community men are giving liberally to the schools, and are beginning to give liberally to the libraries, and they do it because they know it makes everything more valuable—it makes their business more prosperous.

      The library is going through the same process the public school went through. Henry Barnard, of Connecticut, visited 27 different states and spoke before them to urge upon them the system of public education, and to provide a guidance for the children.

      It is true that the educated parents are more likely to have children educated highly, but there is no question whatever that the great majority of the men and women who are to shape the future of this country will be born in the humblest homes, and we come back to the problem of the general education of all the people as the best possible advancement and the chiefest defense of the nation; it is the concern of the state because it is the duty of the state, because it pays, and because the state does not dare any longer to neglect it. Therefore I call your attention to the fact that we are repeating in libraries exactly the process of the school, and that there were meetings to urge the acceptance of them. There are few who doubt the wisdom of donating money to support the free library, and when the history of the time is written it will be marked as the history of free libraries.

      Why is it that the people are taxing themselves erecting beautiful buildings, buying books, paying salaries, printing catalogs, incurring all these expenses, paying out an amount of money that a short time ago would have been thought only a dream? It is a recognition of its necessity and importance. We understand that it is a good thing.

      A broad conception at the end of the century of the work of the schools is simply this, to teach the children to think accurately, with strength and with speed. If it is in the school that they get their start, then where do they get their education? Tell me from your own experience, was it from the school that you got most of your ideas? We had an experiment some time ago, when the teachers of New York made an elaborate investigation as to the teaching of boys and girls. The thing that influenced those boys and girls most was the books they read. What, after all, is the supreme end of education? I state that we should teach them to think with accuracy and with speed, but I doubt if there is one who denies the supreme necessity of the building of character. That is what is winning in the peaceful conflicts of commerce. If you care to analyze how character is built, follow it back briefly. Character comes from habits, and habits from actions repeated, and actions from a motive, and a motive from reflection. What makes me reflect? What makes you reflect? What is the cause? Isn't it something that you have read in a book, a magazine, or a paper? So the genealogy is this: reading begets reflection, reflection begets motive, motive begets action, and action begets habit, and habit begets that supreme thing—character. So we have come to recognize that if we are to accomplish the chief end that is before the people, we must strive to control the reading for others.

      Reading sometimes carries downhill, as it often carries upward, and there is no way that we can reach the people except through the free library and with proper help from the people.

      What Atlanta wants to make out of her citizens is not to train privates, but to train officers. If you go out on the streets you can find a thousand men to do the work of a laborer, where you can find only a few to do the work that will demand five or ten thousand dollars. The world is looking for that class of men. It is the highest salaried man that is the hardest to find. If you would buy a machine, there enters into it the material that is in it; the process of manufacture throughout which has transformed it, and then the approved fitness for performing its functions. The same way with a man—the native that is manufactured; then comes the experience which proves the fitness for his work; and you pay the salary for these things. And by means of our schools and libraries we must reach these girls and boys.

      Thomas Edison and other great men say that their whole lives are governed from reading a single book. So the province of the library is to amuse, to inform and inspire. We have the old proverbs, As free as air; As free as water; but the new one that is important to the race is, As free as knowledge. The people of this state cannot afford to have any boy in Georgia who is anxious to know more, how to make his life more valuable, who wants inspiration and is ready to read, and not furnish it to him. Education is the chief concern of the American people, and the states that have done most for their education have been the most prosperous.

      It is the concern of the richest as to what should be done for the poorest; you should provide free schools and free libraries, or the failure to do so will react in your own lives. If you say that this ideal is too high, that the library has important functions, but it does not take its place as the equal of the schools, it is because you have not studied this question in all its details. When you do, you will be forced to the conclusion that while we must say that this is the inspiration of a dreamer, remember that it is the devotion of noble minds that never falters, but endures and waits for all it can find, and what it cannot find, creates.

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN AMERICAN LIFE

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      As the last of this particular group of papers we reproduce a view of our public library system by a foreigner who had lived in this country long enough to