of any other material possessions. Libraries as well as sawmills need to be dealt with according to common-sense and with efficiency. Now upon the general failure of these libraries, let me quote for you a little testimony. The superintendent of schools in New York State, in 1875, says: “The system has not worked well in this state.... The libraries have fallen into disuse, and have become practically valueless.” [1 Pub. lib. of U.S., i. 41.]
The superintendent for 1861 says that in “nearly every quarter of the state,” the libraries are “almost totally unused and rapidly deteriorating.” [2 Pub. Lib. of U.S. i. 40.] For 1862, the superintendent gives a more detailed picture of the condition of the school libraries. He finds them “mainly represented by a motley collection of books, ranging from ‘Headley's sacred mountains‘to the ‘Pirate's own book,’ numbering in the aggregate a million and a half of volumes, scattered among the various families, constituting a part of the family library, or serving as toys for children in the nursery; ... crowded into cupboards, thrown into cellars, stowed away in lofts, exposed to the action of water, the sun, and of fire, or more frequently locked away into darkness unrelieved and silence unbroken.” [2 Pub. Lib. of U.S. i. 40.]
This graphic picture of the failure of the system in New York is perhaps matched by a similar picture of its failure in Michigan, as drawn by our superintendent of education in 1869:
“The books were distributed to the districts by the town clerk to be returned by the directors every third month for exchange. This would now require more than 60,000 miles' travel per annum, at a positive expense to the directors, certainly, of $100,000, to say nothing of more than 10,000 days' time. This was like putting two locomotives ahead of each other to draw a hand-car. The result was the books were generally hidden away in the clerks' offices, like monks in their cloister, and valueless to the world. And what kind of books were they? Some good ones, doubtless; but generally it was better to sow oats in the dust that covered those books than to give them to the young to read. Every year, soon after the taxes were collected, the state swarmed with pedlers, with all the unsalable books of Eastern houses—the sensational novels of all ages, tales of piracies, murders, and love intrigues—the yellow-covered literature of the world.”
Finally, the superintendent for 1873 says: “The whole system seems to have come into general disfavor; and is, more than any other feature of our school system, the one of which we are least proud.”
Now we come to the fifth stage in the evolution of libraries—that of libraries fully endowed by private generosity, and thrown open to the public on such conditions as the founders have been pleased to indicate; sometimes called patronymic libraries. Notable specimens of this class of libraries are the Astor, Cooper, and Lenox Libraries, of New York, and the Peabody Library, of Baltimore. The note of this species of library is this: it is for the use of the public entirely without cost to the public. In short, it is a library completely endowed, not only as to the original expense of its erection and equipment, but absolutely for all subsequent expense in its increase and administration. Concerning this species of library, I have this to say: It is a noble use to make of private wealth; it does immense good; but it is not the best final form of library evolution. And for two reasons: first, the man who will completely endow a free public library does not arise in every community; whereas, every community needs a free public library. And, second, the wholesomest kind of a gift is not that which does it all for the community and requires no exertion or sacrifice on their part; but that which gives the community a good generous start, but still leaves something for the community to do for itself. In other words, the healthiest sort of help, whether for one man or for ten thousand, is that help which helps a man to help himself.
And this brings us to the sixth and final form of library development. It is the one which is the resultant of the two grand ideas; primarily, the recognition of the free public library as an essential part of the system of public education and therefore as a legitimate subject for public taxation. This idea is essential to the most satisfactory form of a public library—the public must invest something in it. But this idea can adjust itself to that other noble one—private liberality in aid of the public.
And it is in this final and most consummate form, combining private help with public selfhelp, that many of the most successful libraries in this country have been organized; and yet it is only since 1848 that such libraries have been possible. For it was in 1848 that the first state in our Union, Massachusetts, passed an act authorizing a municipality to tax itself for the support of a free public library. Since then many other states have followed with similar legislation. So that it is only within the past thirty-five years that this grand result has been reached: the systematic popularization of books under the direction of the municipality, partially at least at the public expense, and often in combination with private benefaction.
Now, it is this grand result that you have reached here in West Bay City. The library which you to-day dedicate to the perpetual service of the people, and which we may believe will continue as long as society lasts here to do its serene and beneficient work for the instruction and delight of innumerable generations of mankind—this library represents the latest, and I think we may say the most perfect and the final term in a process of library evolution, which has been going forward on this continent for more than two hundred years, and has involved, as we have seen, countless struggles and failures and sacrifices for the production of this single result.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I venture to express the hope that this study which we have now made of the process—the slow, costly, laborious process—by which this brilliant result has been made possible and easy for you, in West Bay City, is something which will enhance even your pleasure in the acquisition of this noble library as well as your appreciation of the princely act of Mr. Sage in his creative relation to it?
I trust it may enhance also your feeling of responsibility for the perpetual success of this library in the purposes for which it has been formed. This library has been well organized; but the working of it will depend upon you. It is on one side of it a business concern; and like any other business concern it will go to wrack and ruin unless it is conducted on sound business principles, accurate accounting, sharp supervision, punctuality, system, order, promptitude, energy.
But more than ordinary business qualities are needed to make this library all that it should be. Recognize the true function of the free public library; it is a part of a large system of public education. It is but a co-ordinate department of that larger institution for public education—the people's university—including the ward schools and the high schools. Some of the fruitfullest and best work of those schools will be done in this library.
Then, too, the public library stands for the wholesome truth that education is never finished and should not stop when one stops going to school. The boy and the girl who graduate at the school do not desert the library; they keep up and carry forward their intellectual training by a post-graduate course in the public library, for the rest of their lives.
Furthermore, the free public library supplements the work of the free public schools by reaching those whom the schools never reached at all, or only reached very slightly.
And that public library is never a complete success, in which is not present in the officers a spirit of courtesy toward readers, of sympathy, of cheerfulness, of patience, even of helpfulness. Don't permit your library ever to be a dismal, bibliographical cave, in charge of a dragon. Let it always be a bright and winsome place, hospitable to all orderly people; a place where even those ill-informed about books will not be made embarrassed, but encouraged. Let it be one of the most attractive places in town; let it outshine in attractiveness the vulgar and harmful attractions of the bar-room and the gambling den; let it grow up into the best life of the community, a place resorted to by all, loved by all, a blessing to all.
THE LIBRARY AS A FIELD FOR PHILANTHROPY
