which a modern critic replies, “On the contrary, genius is an infinite capacity for doing things without taking any pains at all.” Both are right. There are both these kinds of genius—and many others. The writer who attempts to bind down genius to rules and formulae will have a hard task. And what is true of genius is also true of ordinarily good work—the work that you and I are trying to do in our libraries. Some of us do it easily because we cannot help it; others do it with more or less difficulty under the pressure of one or another need. One, though the work itself comes hard to him, loves the result to be accomplished; another, perhaps, is toiling primarily to support himself and those dependent on him. What of that? We have been placed where we are, to secure certain results. We want the help of every one who can contribute a share of honest, intelligent work toward the attainment of these results, and we shall not ask for motives or inquire into the exact amount of effort that was necessary, provided the work has been done and done well.
I have the greatest sympathy for the conscientious library assistant who feels that she ought to love her work in the same way perhaps that she loves music or skating, or a walk through the autumn woods, and who, because she does not sit down to paste labels or stand up to wait on the desk with the feeling of exhilaration that accompanies these other acts, is afraid that library work is not her métier.
Such workers should possess their souls in peace. It is very common for routine work to pall upon him who does it, and we are all apt to think that no work but ours has any routine. Our weary eyes see only the glorious moments of success in the lives of other toilers; we are blind to the years of drudgery that led to them. The remedy is to look forward. You may not enjoy climbing the mountain step by step, but the view from the summit is glorious. And if to sustain yourself on the climb you think of the bread and cheese that you have in your lunch basket, I cannot see that there is aught to complain of.
All over the world there are workers who feel that they are not worthy of their work. It is dull; it palls on them. But if their lot had only been different! If their work had been that of the musician or the artist! Then toil would become pleasure, and the hours that now drag heavily would flit on wings. Very little of this feeling is justifiable, and these dissatisfied workers will do better work if they are made to realize that it is only the favored few who can bring enthusiasm to the daily routine. The most that we can ask of the average worker is a conviction of the usefulness of his work and a determination to make it as useful as possible. More: such a determination honestly lived up to is sure to beget interest—that concrete interest in one’s work that is worth much more, practically, than an ideal love for it. The woman who goes into slum work impelled only by a vague love for humanity is apt to give up after a little when she discerns that humanity in the concrete is offensive in so many ways. But if she forces herself to keep on, and to make herself as useful as possible, there comes the personal interest that will bind her to her task and that will increase its usefulness. So it is with library work; you need not love it ideally to succeed in it; you need only buckle down to it until you feel the personal interest that will carry you through triumphantly.
And what is it all about? In the broadest sense, as I have already said, we librarians are the purveyors of ideas stored up in books. These ideas are more to man than mere education—they are life itself. Life is growth, not stagnation—it involves change and acquisition. “Life is change,” says Cardinal Newman, “and to be perfect, one must have changed many times.” To contribute the opportunity and the stimulus for such change is our business. The child cries out to his environment—“Give me ideas and experiences; good and pleasurable if you can, bad or painful, if you must, but give me ideas and experiences.” Part of this craving it is the duty of the public library to satisfy. The craving may grow less keen as we grow older, but it never really ceases to exist. To satisfy that craving in legitimate ways and to guide and control it if we can is our business, stated in the broadest possible terms. That is what we are aiming at. The librarian should be the broadest minded of mortals. He should be a man in the widest sense—to him nothing human should be alien.
This is decidedly broad and correspondingly vague. Being so, it may be interpreted by every worker in the way that appeals to him most. To one, the educational work of the library will make the strongest appeal; to another its recreational function. One may prefer to lay stress on the guidance of children’s reading; another on reference work with adults. These are all phases of one and the same general class of acts—the imparting of ideas by means of books—and there is no reason why each worker should not gain interest in that work by and through the particular phase that appeals to him.
“I wish,” says one of James Lane Allen’s characters, “that some virtue—say the virtue of truthfulness—could be known throughout the world as the unfailing mark of the American. Suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtue constituted the characteristic of the American! That would be fame for ages.” We librarians, in like manner, not only wish but strive to make some one virtue characteristic of our work—say the virtue of usefulness. “As useful as a librarian,” “As indispensable as the public library”—these are not yet, I am afraid, household phrases. But why should we not make them so?
LIBRARY STATISTICS
It is a valuable exercise to examine into the origin and uses of the things that we have been accustomed to take for granted and to regard almost as part of the accepted order of nature. The result will often be startling and it will always be salutary, if the examiner be sane and conservative. Therefore a very good way to begin a discussion of statistics is to query whether they are of present value at all, or whether they are old fashioned rubbish and had better be discarded.
Statistics are the numerical statements of results or facts. Now thousands of individuals and thousands of bodies—families, clans, associations, that accomplish much in this world, go on very well without keeping any record at all of what they do. This is indisputable. On the other hand we shall see that as work is done well and carefully there is an increasing disposition to make and keep a record of results; and as the work extends in scope and complexity, the record, too, becomes more complex. Take, for instance, the record of so apparently simple a transaction as the payment and receipt of money. The individual who has little of it to receive and disburse may go all his life without keeping so much as a cash account, much less a set of books. He may even spend a considerable income in the same way, including the maintenance of a household and the support of a family, and he may, on the whole, do it wisely and well. Yet of two men of the same means, one of whom should conduct his affairs thus, while the other kept a rational system of household and personal accounts, the latter would universally be regarded as pursuing the better course. And as we pass from this to the conduct of a business we recognize that the man who engages in commerce without keeping proper accounts is a fool and courts failure, and that the larger the business and the more widespread the interests, the more complicated and extensive must be the bookkeeping. A large commercial concern may thus employ a special department with a large staff of men simply to keep record of its financial transactions. This is probably the most ancient kind of statistical record and the one whose usefulness is most generally recognized.
In like manner another common and useful statistical record—the inventory, or list of articles on hand—although not commonly and regularly taken by the individual, becomes absolutely necessary in the smallest kind of business, and without it the merchant can have absolutely no idea, of whether he is conducting his business at a profit or a loss. When we go on further and examine, the conduct of great commercial or manufacturing concerns we find that the statistical department becomes of increasing importance, the details collected by it multiply and the staff of persons whose sole duty it is to collect and to discuss them may be very considerable. That a great manufacturing company would waste time and money on a task of no value is inconceivable, and there is thus a very strong presumption that statistics are worth something. Even where bodies of men have so little power or corporate action that they
