fyxmW ^nxvmii^ Jihatg THE GIFT OF J8: A.ifJ.'^.'^t.s-.. ^^../^.jlgOi.. l"-*-!-. University of the State of New York Home Education Bulletin {Continuation of Extension bulletins) No. 31 May 1900 PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION BY HERBERT B. ApAMS PH.D. LL.D. Professor of American and institutional history, Johns Hopkins university CH. PAGE Preface 49 1 Social economic introduction 54 2 The Carnegie libraries 61 3 The people's university 72 4 New York pioneers of free libra- ries and popular education .... 92 5 Library extension in New York. 100 6 Public library movement in Massachusetts no 7 Local types of New England town libraries 117 8 Cooperation -between library and community ; 131 9 Historical retrospect and recent progress 138 10 Traveling libraries 154 11 Traveling pictures and library exhibitions of art 1 72 12 Educational clubs and libraries.. 182 13 Wisconsin historical society..... 193 14 Public libraries and public schools 197 15 Library schools 201 16 Educational bibliographies 222 1 7 National and international influ- ence of librarians 236 18 Select bibliography of libraries and popular education 239 Index 265 Illustrations preceding page N. Y^. state library : exterior aijd reference room ' . 49 Portrait of Andrew Carnegie ; Car- negie libraries, at Braddock and Pittsburg 57 Carnegie libraries at Pittsburg, Al- legheny and Homestead 65 Milwaukee public library and museum 73 preceding ragb Illustrations {cont'd) Milwaukee public museum; Boston public library 81 New York (city) public library, Lenox reading room ; N, Y. free circulating library, Bond street and Bloomingdale branches 89 Buffalo public library; Osterhout free library; Chicago, Topeka and Cleveland public libraries ; portraits of Jesse Torrey jr, A. C. Flagg ■ apd Melvil Dewey 97 Library growth in New York : charts ; N. Y. state library 105 Massachusetts state library ; Dedham and Amherst public libraries; Forbes library ; Springfield and Providence public libraries ; Scoville memorial library ; Taylor free library 113 Library company of Philadelphia : main library ; Ridgway branch ; Philadelphia free library ; branch ; Dayton public library ; Enoch Pratt free library ; Michigan, Cor- nell and Columbia university li- braries ... 145, Wisconsin traveling libraries; Car- negie home library group, Pittsburg l6l New York state traveling pictures } ,^^ children's rooms in Pratt institute, Brooklyn and in Buffalo, Milwau- kee, Kansas City and Los Angeles^^^l^ public libraries . 177 Wisconsin historical society building 1 93 Library schools : University of Il- linois, Pratt institute and New York state 209 ALBANY UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK' Eio4m-D99-sooo 1900 Price 40 cents * _3\ i- University of the State of New York REGENTS With years of election i874 Anson Judd Upson L.H.D. D.D. LL.D. Chancellor, Glens Falls 1892 William Croswell Doane D.D. LL.D. Vice-chancellor, Albany 1873 Martin I. Townsend M.A. LL.D. - - Troy 1877 Chauncey M. Depew LL.D. - _ _ - New York 1877 Charles E. Fitch LL.B. M.A. L.H.D. - Rochester 1877 Orris H. Warren D.D. - - - - - Syracuse 1878 Whitelaw Reid LL.D. - - - - New York 1881 William H. Watson M.A. M.D. _ _ _ Utica 1881 Henry E. Turner _ _ _ _ - Lowville 1883 St Clair McKelway L.H.D. LL.D. D.C.L. - Brooklyn . 1885 Hamilton Harris Ph.D. LL.D. - _ _ Albany 1885 Daniel Beach Ph.D. LL.D. _ _ _ _ Watkins 1888 Carroll E. Smith LL.D. _ _ _ _ Syracuse 1890 Pliny T. Sexton LL.D. _____ Palmyra 1890 T. Guilford Smith M.A. LL.D. C.:^. - Buffalo 1893 Lewis A. Stimson B.A. M.D. _ _ _ _ New York 189s Albert Vander Veer Ph.D. M.D. _ _ _ Albany 1895 Charles R. Skinner M.A. LL.D. Superintendent of Public Instruction, ex officio 1897 Chester S. Lord M.A. LL.D. - - - Brooklyn 1897 Timothy L. Woodruff M.A. Lieutenant-Governor, ex officio 1899 Theodore Roosevelt B.A. LL.D. Governor, ex officio 1899 John T. McDoNOUGH LL.B. LL.D. Secretary of State, ex officio 1900 Thomas A. Hendrick M.A. LL.D. - - Rochester SECRETARY Elected by reg^ents 1900 James Russell Parsons jr M.A. directors of departments 1888 Melvil Dewey M.A. State library and Home education 1890 James Russell Parsons jr M.A. Administrative, College and High school defts 1890 Frederick J. H. Merrill Ph.D. State museum Z665 .A2?'"^" """"''"y '-'*>""y ''"'imilllliltemiiiiillilliiiPSP"'^^ education / olin 3 1924 029 505 017 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029505017 z ABBREVIATIONS USED States Ala Alabama Ariz. Arizona Ark. Arkansas Cal. or Calif. California Col. Colorado Ct. or Conn. Connecticut Del. Delaware Fla. Florida Ga. Georgia la. Iowa Id. Idaho 111. Illinois Ind. Indiana Kan. Kansas Ky. Kentucky La. Louisiana Mass. Massachusetts Md. Maryland Me. Maine Mich. Michigan Minn. Minnesota Miss. Mississippi Mo. Missouri Mont. Montana N. C. North Carolina N. D. North Dakota N. H. New Hampshire N.J. New Jersey N. Y. New York Neb. Nebraska Nev. Nevada 0. Ohio Or. Oregon Pa. or Penn. Pennsylvania R. I. Rhode Island S. C. South Carolina S. D. South Dakota Tenn. Tennessee Tex. Te.xas Va. Virginia Vt. Vermont W. Va. West Virginia Wash. Washington Wis. Wisconsin Wy. Wyoming References In references to periodicals, volume and page are separated by a colon ; e. g. 3:144 means vol 3, beginning on page 144. University of the State of New York Home Education Bulletin {Continuation of Extension bulletins') No. 31 May 1900 PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION BY HERBERT B. ADAMS PH.D. LL.D. Professor of American and institutional liistory Johns Hopkins university PREFACE The following monograph on the relation of public libraries to popular education is descriptive and selective^ rather than technical. It does not pretend to be a complete account of the library movement in any part of the United States. It is merely illustrative of certain phases of library extension and library cooperation for the promotion of popular education. These sketches are necessarily limited by time and local ofiportunity, for they are simply vacation studies pursued by the writer in the summer of 1899 at Albany, N. Y. and at Amherst in western Massachusetts. They will perhaps serve to advance certain manifest tendencies toward a higher, broader and better education for the common people. Public education is not merely common school education. Henry D. Thoreau once said: " It is time we had uncommon schools." William E. Foster, public librarian of Providence, R. I. in an admirable paper entitled " How to develop public interest in the library," said at University convocation, Albany, June 25, 1896: " The public school is for but one portion of the community, the so UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK younger portion, while the public library is for all, young as well as old, for those of limited knowledge and the more learned and accomplished alike." Mr Foster finds the same underlying pur- pose in the public library as in the art museum: " The predominant idea is that of advancing the intellectual life of the community. Both are among the great civilizing forces of our time, the art museum as containing within itself that which is best of the art of all time, and the public library that which is best in the literature of all time." When historical, industrial and scientific museums are added to the art institute and the public library, there will be such a group of uncommon schools as enlightened communities really need. Springfield (Mass.) Buffalo (N. Y.) and Milwaukee (Wis.) afford modest types of what progressive and flourishing towns should foster. [See chapters on " Local types of town libra- ries in New England " and " The people's university "] For convenience and perspective the writer has grouped his materials under a few salient chapter headings. This is a study of some significant movements and local library examples, not a com- pilation for the next census, which of course must needs be in 1900. The time is near for an exhaustive and complete report on Ameri- can libraries of every type, prepared by cooperation, possibly under authority of the U. S. commissioner of education, with the coopera- tion of the American library association, according to the prece- dent established in the centennial year, 1876, when a superb series of special reports, embracing nearly 1200 printed pages in one or two bound volumes, on Public libraries in the United States of America, their history, condition and management, was issued from the government printing office at Washington, D. C. In 1897 the Illinois state library association undertook to col- lect library statistics for that state. With the aid of the Chicago library club and of the Illinois state library school at Urbana, valuable materials have been compiled or tabulated. On the basis of such information a history of libraries in Illinois will soon be written by representatives of its library school and probably pub- lished by the state association. This is certainly a good way of promoting by cooperation the history of American libraries. They PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 5I should be first grouped by states for manifest public and practical considerations. A select grouping of library types, with special treatment of progressive institutions and of important topics in library economy and administration, is also needed for scientific, educational and professional reasons. More than lo years ago the U. S. bureau of education began to publish a cooperative history of American higher education. Colleges and universities were treated descriptively by their own professors or representatives and were presented to some extent pictorially in state groups, each with a state editor and all under supervision of a general editor, the present writer, immediately responsible to the U. S. commissioner of education. 25 of these state monographs have already (1899) been issued from the U. S. government printing office, and the entire series will be pushed to an early completion, if possible, with the close of the present century. In time for the Paris exposition is a French digest and attractive presentation of the chief contents of the early numbers of this American national series. The first volume on the Origines et progres de I' education en Amerique by Charles Barneaud (Paris: Arthur Savaete, 1898) relates to Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania. Massachusetts, Connecticut and other states have already issued handsomely illustrated reports, containing brief readable descrip- tions of all the public libraries within their borders. The free library commissions, state library associations and the American library association will doubtless combine, before the expiration of the year 190G, to promote the cooperative history of American libraries. Such monumental works of scholarly cooperation as Justin Winsor's Memorial history of Boston and his Narrative and critical history of America, and Larned's History for ready reference will continue to inspire librarians and other scholars of the present generation. Libraries, schools, colleges, universities, museums (national and local) educational clubs and people's institutes all contribute to the concrete realization of George Washington's noble and far- reaching, statesmanlike policy. He said in his farewell address: " Promote as an object of primary importance, institutions for the 52 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK general diffusion of knowledge." The English founder of the Smithsonian institution^ helped Americans to realize Washington's grand idea. The national university will realize it more fully, for that ideal university, in its highest form, is the growing national association of all the higher educational, historical, and scientific interests in these United States. Among the most efficient mem- bers of this vast and ever widening national federation are the col- leges, universities, learned societies, public libraries and library schools of America. The American library association, like the National educational association, is loyal to the highest ideas of public service in city, state and nation. Every state library association, every state uni- versity and efficient library school is a living illustration of that growing consciousness of American unity which those early colonial federations and conventions in church and state anticipated in politics, religion and education. Great American interests, economic, social and educational, are now developing along federal and national lines. Some are already international in tendency. American universities and libraries are cooperating for the benefit of the round world of knowledge and education. The report of the second international library confer- ence in London, 1897, is quite as encouraging in its social, edu- cational way as are the proceedings and results of the peace con- ference at the Hague in 1899. Dr William T. Harris, U. S. commissioner of education, has long maintained that libraries, schools, and newspapers are among the essential educational factors of modern civilization. The encourag- ing attitude of the U. S. government toward libraries and popular education is indicated not only by the present and past policy of the library of congress, but by the numerous helpful publications of the bureau of education issued under the direction of the present commissioner and of his predecessors. [See chapters 8 and 9 of \ An account of the Smithsonian institution: its origin, history and achievements. Washington, 1895. " I bequeath the whole of my property to the United States to found at Washington an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." James Smithson, 1826. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 53 the education report for 1895-96, Public, society and school libraries in the United States zvith library statistics and legislation of the various states] From its very foundation in 1867 the bureau of education has regarded libraries as one of the most efficient educational agencies in this country and has published from time to time library lists and statistics with as much prominence as school and college sta- tistics. In 1893, the bureau published 20,000 copies of the Catalog of the A. L. A. library, 5000 volumes for a public library selected by the American library association and shozvn at the World's Colum- bian exposition (reprinted in 1896). In the report of the commis- sioner for 1893, p. 691-1014, were collected the papers prepared by about 20 specialists for the American library association and read at the Chicago meeting of the American library association in 1893. Cutter's Rides for a dictionary catalogue, originally published by the bureau in 1876, were republished by it in 1891 and again in 1893. A complete list of all our government publications relating to libraries, and American educational exhibits in that connection, will be found on p. 339-40 of the education report for 1895-96. These natfonal contributions to the library cause in America deserve local recognition and farther extension. It is the writer's larger purpose to outline some of the popular ag'encies in the manifest process of nationalization now going for- ward in American schools, colleges, churches, libraries, educational institutes and universities. In a report on Summer schools and university extension, prepared for and published by the department of education and social economy for the Paris exposition of 1900, he has treated i) the Chautauqua system of popular education; 2) select types of summer and winter schools; and 3) examples of uni- versity extension. In the Johns Hopkins university studies he intends to publish a monograph on the " Church and popular edu- cation." The U. S. commissioner of education wiU publish more elaborate reports on i) university extension in Great Britain and America; 2) educational extension in the United States (by nation, state, city, press and other agencies). The University of the State of New York proposes to publish, in addition to this report on 54 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK Public libraries and popular education, an illustrated cooperative monograph on lyceums and educational institutes. The writer herewith expresses his great obligations to Melvil Dewey, director of the New York state library, and to his able assistants for helpful cooperation in preparing this monograph, specially to Frederick William Ashley, for his careful preparation of the accompanying bibliography, which still farther illustrates the cooperation of libraries with the great and growing cause of popular education. Chapter i SOCIAL ECONOMIC INTRODUCTION The enormous disparity in the United States between the wealth devoted to public libraries, universities and colleges and the capital invested in certain material pursuits is indicated in the following facts and figures extracted from the recent oration of Hampton L. Carson at the 143d annual commencement of the University of Pennsylvania, June 15, 1899. The facts are very suggestive, for they show what a relatively unimportant place books and the higher education occupy in American social economy and, at the ^ame time, what enormous material resources socially undeveloped now exist in America for the future extension of the higher civic and national life. The year 1895 is taken as the last for which we have reliable com- parative statistics. In that year the value of the grounds and build- ings owned by colleges and universities in the entire United States amounted to $114,362,542, the accumulated wealth of over 200 years.i But in that same year the western pork packers paid for hogs alone $172,697,000. In that year also was invested in the manufacturing of electric supplies $1,500,000,000. In that year the capital invested in breweries was $400,000,000 and their annual out- put was $200,000,000. In that year the productive funds in all universities amounted to $102,574,808. In 1895, there was paid in wages to textile workers alone $176,000,000 and the sale of their 1 The entire jplant of the University of Pennsylvania, after i6o years of toil, is equal in value to the cost of two first class battleships. .\nd yet how much greater than a battleship is a university ! — H. L. Carson. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 55 work amounted to $722,000,000. On the other hand, the total income of all the universities and colleges in the United States, from all sources, fees, productive funds, appropriations by city, state and nation, amounted to $16,783,638. In 1895, the output of American mines was $553,356,499. The value of the cotton crop was $294,495,711; the corn crop, $544,985,534; the wheat crop, $237,938,998; the tobacco crop, $35,574,220. In 1895, the pre- miums paid on fire insurance were $140,000,000; on life insurance, $205,132,044. That year's profit in business for the Western Union telegraph company was $6,141,389. In 1895, there were but four universities in the United States with endowments exceeding $5,000,000, while the aggregate capital of the Adams express com- pany amounted to over $60,000,000. The investments in telephones were $77,500,000; in steel railways, $1,300,139,711; and in railroads, $10,741,363,319. These are some of the most striking economic facts presented to a university audience by Mr Carson. They are not at all depressing in their significance, but really afiford an encouraging recognition of American industry^ on which a small portion of the nation's wealth and prosperity is based. Neither corn nor cotton now is or ever will be king of Democracy. Mines and railroads, telegraph and insurance companies, cattle and hogs are indeed among the great potentates in the American economic realm, but applied science is at the basis of American agriculture and all our greatest industries. Education is not yet the acknowledged sovereign of this country, but some time will be by force of law and public opinion. "Our population today (1899) numbers 75,000,000, and yet the total number of students in all the universities and colleges, public and private, in the United States, including colleges for women, agricultural and scientific schools, is only 97,134. In schools of medicine, law, and theology, including dentistry, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine, the number is 52,249. If you add all the pupils in normal schools, and all those receiving elementary instruc- tion of the primary and grammar grades, and then all those receiv- ing secondary instruction of the high school grade, you have a grand total of 16,255,093. Sixteen milHons and a quarter in a population of seventy-five millions! After making due allowance 56 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK for those who have been alread\' educated, is it not apparent that a vast host of at least 20,000,000 of people, boys and girls, are awaiting instruction, even in its most rudimentary form? What a burden and a strain upon the resources of our educational establish- ments! How are we prepared to meet it?" The cure for the social and political ills of democracy is better democracy, in education, religion and life. The enormous material interests in the industries, trades, manufactures and natural pro- ducts of America will certainly contribute to the solution of the problem. Out of the porkpacking of Chicago arises the Armour institute for the industrial and technical training of Chicago. From the profits of Standard oil proceed the Pratt institute of Brook- lyn and the University of Chicago, founded by John D. Rockefeller. This one institution in its far reaching influence on higher, second- ary, primary, and popular education of the Mississippi valley and the great northwest is already commanding national and inter- national attention. Chicago extension and " the fourth term " were first suggested by Dr Harper's summer school experience as principal of Chautauqua ; and Chicago is surely converting the older colleges and universities, eastern as well as western, into more popular and more useful public institutions. School teachers and other busy people are now resorting to college premises in the summer season in New England, New York, and the great west, as well as to the Oxford and Cambridge summer meetings. Both England and America are steadily moving in many directions toward educational democracy. Church and state have both become more popular in the present century and so must education. Probably the most wonderful phenomenon in American social- economic development at the present time is the sudden conversion (as by the Bessemer process of transforming molten iron into steel) of great wealth, accumulated by long years of well directed labor, into great libraries, educational institutes, and universities. The most recent and remarkable example is witnessed in the founding of the Carnegie public libraries and the sale of the Carnegie steel interests for $300,000,000, of which 6o;v^ or $180,000,000, is still con- trolled by one patriotic, public-spirited Scotch-American, author of Triiimphaut democracy. What he will do with the income can Andrew Carnegie Carnegie library, Braddock (Penn.) PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 57 be prophesied only from his having already founded many free public libraries in the United States and Scotland and having endowed a scientific college in Birmingham, one of the capitals of England's economic empire. The London Times, in an article, the " Colossus of modern industry," said in June, 1899, of the sale of the Carnegie steel inter- ests : " It is an event of extraordinary public importance as mark- ing the culminating point of a private enterprise, which is absolutely unique for its extent and its controlling influence, and of a career to which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a parallel." The London Times is also authority for the statement that the $300,000,000 received for the iron ore mines, coal and coke proper- ties, railways and works of the Carnegie steel company is almost certainly the largest sum that has even been paid for a single busi- ness in the industrial history of the world. This business was founded by Andrew Carnegie and Harry Phipps less than 40 years ago on a very small scale. For some years the staple product was iron and steel rails, but after a time the firm added the manufactxire of girders, beams, pillars, and armor plates. Plant was added to plant, mill to mill, furnace to furnace, till the company's resources were equal to the production of 3,000,000 tons of steel a year. In 1870, the Carnegie company produced more than five times the total steel output of the rest of the world. In 1880, the company still enjoyed a gigantic monopoly, at least 755^ of the total make of steel throughout the world. During the present year the output^ by the Carnegie steel company will be twice that of the whole United Kingdom by the Bessemer process in 1898. The Carnegie steel company keep their various plants always at full work. A small difterence of price and of profit iThe Carnegie steel company, Aug. i, 1899, began to fill the largest steel contract ever awarded to a single firm. It is for steel plates and amounts to about $144,000,000 By an agreement with the Pressed steel car company the Carnegie company is to fur- nish 30,000 tons of steel plates a month for a period of 10 years. The operation of the various Carnegie properties now requires an industrial army of 50,000 men, more than the United States has in the Philippines or had in Cuba before Santiago. See " The Carnegie interests," jVc'io Yori ti-ibune, 23 July 1899. 58 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK in Steel rails means a great deal to this well organized industry, owning its own mines, collieries, coke ovens, blast furnaces and railways. Americans understand why their steel rails and loco- motives, their bridges and machinery can compete with England's in the world's market. Mr Carnegie retired from business with steel rails advancing in price and in possession of $200,000,000, which he is not the man to hoard. " There is, perhaps, no parallel record in history of a man who, entirely unaided, without the direct help of any one, and without even the advantages of an ordinary school education, within 40 years, in legitimate manufacturing enterprise, without adventitious aid from speculation, as such, has amassed any such fortune." In the light of current facts and of several million dollars already expended by Mr Carnegie for the good of science, literature and the common people, no one need despair of the Ameri- can republic or of contemporary American democracy, whose history Andrew Carnegie has written and illustrated. The age in which the American people begins to realize its better self is not another Silver age nor yet another Age of gold. It is the living Age of steel, and is best seen in railroads, bridges, machinery, and armored cruisers. Brooks Adams, in a recent address to the National sculpture society, thus acknowledges the power, already enlisted in Ameri- can inventions, which art and education are trying to ennoble: " Only the other day I traveled from Pittsburg to New York, and from New York to Albany, and in the whole round world there is no sight which can compare with it. That great artery through which throbs the life-blood of this nation is to what has existed elsewhere as the Hudson is to the Thames. We must accept the world as we find it. Probably mankind has lost the passionate devotion which created Chartres and Bourges; that magic instinct for form which was the heritage of Greek art has died; but one great emotion still remains to us: we have a countrv, and we have the sense of power which made the dignity and majesty of Rome. That is the emotion which is destined, if we survive and flourish, PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 59 to be the dominant instinct of our land. . . It is for you [Ameri- can sculptors and painters] to conceive and execute memorials which shall commemorate our empire. "^ One of those tremendous trains which rush from New York to Buffalo over the New York central railroad has long been known as the " Empire state express," the fastest regular train in the world; but more than a century ago, before railroads were dreamed of, George Washington, the prophet as well as the father of these United States, foresaw in those river courses of the Mohawk and the Potomac the channels of " the extensive and valuable trade of a rising empire."^ He truly said, " There is nothing which binds one country or one state to another but interest." He meant the United States, east and west. ' Those great railroads from ocean to ocean and the newer seaboard lines have accomplished their national and conti- nental mission. They have bound together the east and the far west, the north and the south with bands of steel. Rightly do they absorb millions of the nation's capital, for they are among the greatest makers, organizers, civilizers and educators of the new world. They carry the mails and the news as they carry passen- gers, traffic and traveling libraries all along their routes. Their presidents are paid as much as the president of the United States and five times as much as the best paid president of any American university. Justly so, for the Pennsylvania railroad, the New York central, with their far reaching business connections are among the most important and highly organized institutions of America. They are superior even to a modern battleship, though even guns are educative when men are behind them. The New York times for July 17, 1899, recorded the interesting fact that a great American railroad combination representing the " Big four," together with the Chesapeake and Ohio, has created the position of arbitrator for some of the leading railroads of the 1 The early, almost prophetic use of the word "empire" by the fathers of the American federal republic is noteworthy. Washington, Hamilton and Madison all spoke of our " empire." 2 "Washington's interest in the Potomac company," by H. B. Adams, Jolms Hop- kins university studies^ 3:Sl. 6o UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK United States. Mr Ingalls resigned two railroad presidencies in order to accept this responsible and unique office, which, it is hoped, will prevent, within his sphere of influence, farther railroad strikes, riots and lockouts. The salary to be paid is $75,000 a year, half as much again as that received by the president of the United States. At the very nioinent when the diplomatists of the world were talking at the Hague about an international tribunal, the rail- road magnates were taking effective means toward preserving the industrial peace of America. Mr Ingalls will become arbitrator of the Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt and Morgan railroad interests. An even more startling incident was quietly reported in the same paragraph by the same excellent authority; viz, that Alexander McDonald, first vice-president of the Standard oil company, receives an annual salary of $200,000. It is from such colossal incomes, drawn from such corporate interests as railroads, steel works and standard oil companies, that public libraries and popular univer- sities will continue to be built up in this republic. As a mere study in contemporary history and social economics, it is worth while to inquire what Andrew Carnegie, who triumphed over anarchy in the Homestead riots, has been doing with his accumulated millions. Since January i, 1899, he has given about $3,705,315 for public libraries in America, England and Scotland. " Things as they are in the world," says J. N. Larned, " look extremely disheartening to me; but I think I can see forces at work which will powerfully change them before many generations have passed. Among such forces, the most potent in my expecta- tion is that which acts from the free public library. Through its agency, in my belief, there will come a day — it may be a distant day, but it will come — when the large knowledge, the wise thinking, th"; fine feeling, the amplitude of spirit that are in the greater literatures will have passed into so many minds that they will rule society democratically by right of numbers."^ ij. N. Larned, "The mission and missionaries of the book," proceedings of the 34th University Convocation of the State of New York, 1896 (Regents bul. 36), p. 90- 103 ; also Wisconsin library commission, first biennial report, 1896, p. 19-34. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 6l Chapter 2 THE CARNEGIE LIBRARIES Free libraries founded by citizens are among the best examples of the possible conversion of great material resources into educa- tional institutions for the American people. And there is no better illustration than the Carnegie libraries of the rich fruit which may be evolved in a democratic country from literary and philanthropic germs early planted in a boy's mind. The author of Triumphant democracy himself said at the opening of one of these institutions: " My own personal experience may have led me to value a free library beyond all other forms of beneficence. When I was a boy in Pittsburg, Col. Anderson of Allegheny — a name I can never speak without feelings of devotional gratitude — opened his little library of 400 books to boys. Every Saturday afternoon he was himself in attendance at his house to exchange books. No one but him who has felt it can know the intense longing with which the arrival of Saturday was awaited, that a new book might be had. My brother and Mr Phipps, who have been my principal business partners through life, shared with me Col. Anderson's precious generosity,^ and it was when reveling in these treasures that I resolved if ever wealth came to me, that it should be used to establish free libraries, that other poor boys might receive oppor- tunities similar to those for which we were indebted to that noble man." In a recent address to the industrious and clever boys of McDonogh school, June 3, 1899, on the subject, "A useful life," the Rev. DeWitt M. Benham, Ph. D. made the following interest- mg reference to the boyhood of Andrew Carnegie : "About 48 years ago a telegraph boy in the city of Pittsburg, without five dollars to his name, announced that he was going to accomplish three things in life. He was going to become one of the iron kings of the United States; he was going to provide his mother with every luxury that money could afford; and he was going to build public iCol. J. B. Anderson's library of about 5000 volumes is now in the college of Emporia, Kan. It is said that Mr Carnegie has promised a new library building for that institution — Evening foil, New York, 5 Oct. 1899. 62 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK libraries for the city of Pittsburg and for his native town in Scot- land. That bo)r lived to realize his aspiration. He has accom- plished each one of these three things. His name is Andrew Car- negie; and he has lately made known his intention of devoting the rest of his days, and the surplus of his income, to works of benevolence." The most authentic sketch of Andrew Carnegie's early life is the autobiographic sketch, " How I served my apprenticeship as a business man," originally written for the Youth's companion, but reprinted by Daniel Butterfield in Andrew Carnegie's college lec- tures, on Wealth and its uses and Business [New York, F. Tennyson Neely]. Andrew Carnegie was born in 1837, the son of a master weaver in Dunfermline, who was ruined by the factory system. The entire family, father, mother, Andrew and his younger brother, came out to Allegheny City, where the father entered a cotton fac- tory, but died when Andrew was only 14 years old. His social- economic evolution briefly stated v/as: i) a bobbin boy on $1.20 weekly wage; 2) a fireman of a small engine in a cellar; 3) a tele- graph messenger at $2.50 a week in Pittsburg; 4) a clerk and tele- graph operator for Thomas A. Scott; 5) an investor of a $500 family loan in Adams express company stock; 6) an investor in Woodrufif's first sleeping car; 7) superintendent of the Pittsburg division of the Pennsylvania railroad; 8) organizer of a company in Pittsburg to build iron in place of wood bridges; 9) manu- facturer of steel; 10) founder of public libraries, art institutes, and museums for the promotion of popular education. Think of the underlying sentiments which moved Andrew Carnegie to found so many free libraries at home and abroad. Back of all his millions lay pious gratitude to his early benefactor and hearty love for his adopted country as well as for old Scotland and Dunfermline, where he was bred. In this age of iron and steel the primary emotions are as constant as other forces of nature. Men, apparently hard and austere, are still moved by real sentiment, by such feelings as love of country, of kith and kin. Men ever return to the ideals of youth as well as to old familiar places. How else can we explain those Carnegie foundations in Ayr, Dun- fermline, and Edinburgh; those free public libraries in Pittsburg, PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 63 Allegheny City, Braddock, Johnstown, Atlanta (the industrial capital of the New South) and the proposed circulating library in the federal city on the Potomac? There is great hope of future triumphs for democracy when such institutions as these for the moral and intellectual improvement of the people can be created out of the material earnings of a Scotch immigrant from Dun- fermline, who learned how to master Pennsylvania coal and iron and thus to dominate the world's market for steel rails. There is something tremendous in the Vulcanic energy of the Carnegie steel works, viewed by night or by day, but it is a nobler spectacle to behold the combined output of nature, capital and labor, when converted into free libraries and art institutes, museums and other institutions of learning in England, Scotland and America. At the opening of the Pittsburg library Mr Carnegie expressed his views on the responsibilities of wealth as follows: My views of wealth and its duties soon became fixed, and to these I have ever since sought to give expression upon fitting oc- casions, which are, that under existing industrial conditions, which we will not see changed, but which may be modified in the course of centuries to come, surplus wealth must sometimes flow into the hands of a few, the number, however, becoming less and less under the operation of present conditions, which are rapidly causing the general distribution of wealth day by day, the proportion of the combined earnings of capital and labor going to labor growing greater and greater, and to capital less and less. To one to whom surplus comes there comes also the question: what is my duty? what is the best use that can be made of it? The conclusion forced upon me and which I retain is this: that surplus wealth is a sacred trust to be administered during life by its possessor for the best good of his fellow men, and I have ventured to predict the coming of the day — the dawn of which, indeed, we already begin to see — when the man who dies possessed of available mil- lions which were free, and in his hands to distribute, will die dis- graced. He will pass away "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," as one who has been unfaithful to his trust. There must sometimes be surplus wealth, then, and it is our duty to use this for the public good. But, having proceeded thus far, the most serious question of all remains: how is good to be accomplished? How is wealth to be used so that it will not tend to pauperize the community, or to increase the very evils we fain would extirpate? Distributed equally among all the people in the mOrning, we know there would be pandemonium at night. Imagine a man with millions looking 64 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK upon the poorer districts of a great city, and saying, " I shall cure all this." To the wretched poor he says, " You have not your share of wealth, take 'this," and to each one he gives his portion. A few nights later this zealous philanthropist takes his friends to see what he has accomplished, the evils of poverty he has cured. Imagine the sight they behold. Poverty, wretchedness, misery, and crime cured, or even diminished? No, all these increased. The hitherto well doing and industrious have seen the thriftless and idle in re- ceipt of unearned funds, and these hitherto self-respecting people have said, " Why should we rise in the dark and go forth and toil? There is no special reward for the toiler; the idle receive equally with the industrious; we shall join their ranks." The surplus money gathered in one great sum and spent by Peter Cooper in establishing the Cooper institute, of New York; by Mr Pratt, of Baltimore, in establishing the Baltimore libraries; Mr Pratt, of Brooklyn, in the Pratt institute; the Drexel institute of Philadelphia, or spent by Seth Low for the Columbia library, or by my friend and partner, and your distinguished fellow citizen, Mr Phipps, for the conservatories, is put to better and nobler ends than if it had been distributed from week to week in driblets among the masses of the people; concentrated in one great educative in- stitution lasting for all time, its usefulness is forever; it ministers to the divine in man, his reason and his conscience, and thus lifts him higher and higher in the scale of being; he becomes less and less of the brute and more and more of the man. I am not con- tent to pass down in the history of Pittsburg as one who only helped the masses to obtain greater enjoyment of those appetites which we share equally with the brutes: more to eat, more to drink, and richer raiment. What we must seek, for surplus wealth, if we are to do -real, genuine good, are uses which give nothing for nothing, which re- quire cooperation, self help, and which by no possibility can tend to sap the spirit of manly independence, which is the only sure foun- dation upon which the steady improvement of our race can be built. We were soon led to see in the free library an institution which fulfilled these conditions and which must work only for good and never for evil. It gives nothing for nothing. Pittsburg. Mr Carnegie began his bounty to Pittsburg in i88i by offering $250,000 for the construction of a public library, for the support of which the city was asked to appropriate annually at least $15,000. On account of the danger of party interference in the management, Mr Carnegie proposed that it should be in the hands of a civic committee of his own choosing. Undoubtedly the example set by Enoch Pratt, of Baltimore, influenced the final Carnegie library, music hall and athletic club. Homestead (Peiin.) Carnegie library. Homestead: delivery room Carnegie library, Homestead: reference and reading room Carnegie library, Homestead: children's room Carnegio library. Homestead: music hall Carnegie library. Homestead: gymnasium, showing suspended running track Carnegie library, Homestead: ladies' billiard room Carnegie library, Homestead: main billiard room PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 65 organization of the Pittsburg library. The people were at first a little backward in encouraging Mr Carnegie's offer, for there were legal obstacles in the way of the city council's appropriating public money to the maintenance of a library. But the city was finally empowered by the legislature, the citizens became more favorable, and, on conference with Mr Carnegie, a committee found him dis- posed to enlarge his original offer to $1,000,000, provided Pitts- burg would annually appropriate $40,000 to the support of a main library with branches, and accept a board of library directors, one half municipal and the other half named by himself. The larger project was ultimately carried out and Pittsburg, in the fall of 1895, found herself possessed of a splendid public library. At one end there is a music hall capable of seating over 2000 people. There is also an " art wing " for loan exhibitions, plaster casts, etc. Another division of the structure contains rooms for popular lectures, industrial classes, and local scientific societies. Over the lecture rooms is a suite designed for collections in natural history, etc. In addition to the main library, costing $800,000, seven branch libraries or local distributing stations, costing $300,000 more, were projected. " The manner in which the Enoch Pratt library of Baltimore has been able, through its excellent administrative service and system of branches, to carry the best books to the greatest number of a compact city population has afforded an exam- ple which will not be lost sight of at Pittsburg. The system in its details has not been fully worked out for the latter city, but it is expected that the general plan which has been found to work advantageously in Baltimore will be followed in Pittsburg, with such modifications as local conditions may require."^ Mr Carnegie has extended his idea of public libraries as a means of popular education throughout that whole region of Greater Pitts- burg. No sooner was the original prospect of a public library 1 See article on the " Carnegie libraries : notes on a popular educational movement in the Greater Pittsburg," by William B. Shaw, in the Review of revieivs, Oct. 1895. Another illustrated article on the " Carnegie library in Pittsburg" appeared in Harper's weekly, 9 Nov. 1895. A good article on the same subject with illustrations, republished from the Review of reviews and from Peterson's magazine may be found in the Library journal, Nov. 1895. The annual reports of the Carnegie library of Pittsburg, 1899, contain interesting views of recent local branches of the main library. Attention is called to the " Home library group " (Hebrew) and to the " Home library group " (colored). The diagrams of the floor plans of these Carnegie branches are suggestive to students of library interior arrangements. 66 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK held out to that city than the neighboring Allegheny City, on Alle- gheny river, just opposite Pittsburg, began to agitate for a similar endowment. The town offered to provide a site and Mr Carnegie gave $300,000 for a library building, with a concert hall, an organ, a lecture room, and art gallery. It is not generally understood that Mr Carnegie's system of libraries, which has gradually been extended through the boroughs of Greater Pittsburg, represents a well organized plan for popular education by means of music and lectures as well as by good books. He himself has long taken an active part in American public instruction by voice and pen. A Carnegie free library was early instituted (1889) at Braddock on the Monongahela river. These places are on historic ground between the two great rivers which unite at Pittsburg to form the Ohio. At Braddock, where, July 9, 1755, the English were defeated, 10 miles east of old Fort Duquesne (afterwards Fort Pitt), a fine collection of historic relics, and books on American and local history with other good literature has been made. The free library at Braddock soon outgrew its original quarters. Additions were made in 1894 for the Carnegie club, which contains a hall or theater seating over iioo people, a well equipped gymnasium, with baths and swimming pool, also billiard and card rooms. For these club privileges there is a fee of $1 every three months. Braddock is the seat of the principal Carnegie steel works. Before the opening of either the Allegheny library, or the later foundation at Pittsburg, Mr Carnegie thus provided a building and a circulat- ing library for his own people. Here was planted his original institution; and here at Braddock, just opposite Homestead, was first established the librarian who now directs the Carn(>gie library at Pittsburg itself, Edwin H. Anderson, who was trained at the New York state library school, and bears the same name as Andrew Carnegie's early patron in Pittsburg, Col. Anderson. Great care is taken in the selection of books, librarians, and admin- istrative heads throughout Mr Carnegie's popular educational work. The same principles which have made the Carnegie steel works such a business success can be carried into the management of clubs, libraries, and music halls. The one great underlying prin- ciple, however, which the Carnegie system of library extension represents is that of municipal ownership of a private foundation. Libraries and universities should be carefully and continuously PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 67 administered like a private business. Carnegie got that idea from the late Enoch Pratt, of Baltimore, and expressed it tersely in the following language: "The result of my own study of the question, 'What is the best gift which can be given to a community?' is that a free library occupies the first place, provided the community will accept and maintain it as a public institution, as much a part of the city property as its public schools, and, indeed, an adjunct to these." The growing success of Mr Carnegie's public libraries demon- strates the wisdom of his educational foundations in the old world as well as in the new. His is the best example of library extension on record, and deserves mention before those earlier social and historic library movements which were due less to individual effort than to more complex social forces. Washington. Theodore W. Noyes, president of the board of trustees, submitted a report on this subject to the commissioners of the District of Columbia, October i6, 1899. The following state- ments are noteworthy: The most notable event of the year in the library's history is the assurance given to it of a spacious, well equipped and attractive permanent home through the considerate legislation of congress in meeting the conditions of Mr Carnegie's gift. The original legisla- tion creating the library gave promise of a future permanent home by providing " that in any municipal building to be hereafter erected in said District suitable provision shall be made for said library and reading room, sufficient to accommodate not less than 100,000 volumes." Through the good fortune which has befallen the library its enjoyment of a home of its own has been hastened by years, and accommodations are assured far superior in every respect to the best that the proposed municipal building could furnish. On the I2th day of January, 1899, Mr Carnegie, in response to a verbal suggestion of B. H. Warner, vice-president of the library trustees, offered to give $250,000 for the erection of a building for the library, if congress would provide a site and suitable main- tenance. The trustees and other friends of the library labored diligently for the legislation by congress upon which Mr Carnegie's donation was conditioned, and finally, on the 3d day of March, 1899, the following measure was enacted: " Be it enacted by the senate and house of representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled. That authority is hereby conferred upon a commission, to consist of the commis- sioners of the District of Columbia, the officer in charge of public buildings and grounds and the president of the board of trustees 68 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK of the Washington pubHc Hbrary, to cause to be erected upon Mount Vernon square, in the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, a building for the use of the Washington public library, with funds to be contributed by Andrew Carnegie: provided, that such a building shall be commenced within 12 months and com- pleted within three years from the passage of this act: and provided, further, that no liability shall be incurred by the United States or the District of Columbia for the cost of the erection of said building." The full report is printed in the Evening star, October 16, 1899. Diagrams of the interior arrangements of the proposed library and a general exterior view are there published. The following informa- tion is of special interest: Reading and lecture rooms. In the east wing, to the right of the main entrance, will be located the public reading room. It will occupy a space of 3000 square feet, and will be lighted by broad windows reaching to the ceiling. The west wing will be divided into two departments, one half being given over to open-shelf accommodations for books and the other half to the use of children. The reception room will be in the western section of the building. This room will be in close communication with the open-shelf room, and will be provided with wall shelving. The open-shelf room will contain 1500 square feet, and the reception room 456 square feet. The children's room is of the same dimensions as the open- shelf department, and will be separated from the latter by a tem- porary partition which may be easily removed. Thus, if the growth of popularity of the open-shelf facilities demands it, this depart- ment can spread itself over the entire west wing and occupy a total space of 3456 square feet. In the event of such growth, the children's room would be transferred to the basement wing reserved for that purpose, or it might possibly be removed to the second floor. The reading room in the east wing will be fitted with wall shelves. The value of the open-shelf provision, rendering books easily accessible, has not been underestimated, and arrangements have been made for the occupancy of every available space for this purpose. On the second floor the west wing will be occupied by a lecture or class room of about 3000 square feet. In the east wing will be situated the newspaper and periodical department. The trustees' room and four special study rooms will also be situated on this floor. General departmental library. There is a possibility that legisla- tion may be secured from congress which will turn over to the library the miscellaneous books not necessary for reference and official use in the departmental libraries. These number between 20,000 and 30,000 volumes. Their withdrawal from the 300,000 PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 69 volumes of the departmental libraries would not injure the latter as technical reference collections for official use, but would cause the Washington public library to become a general departmental library for the enjoyment and free circulating use of all the employes in all the departments. These books, accessible in the main only to the clerks in three of the departments, and accessible to them only so far as the fraction contained in their own library is con- cerned, would, if collected in the Washington public library, be open to all the clerks, and a great body of the government employes would enjoy privileges of which they are now entirely deprived. The establishment of such a general departmental library, open also to the public, would save the government the expensive duplication of books in numerous small collections, and would also economize in the room space devoted to departmental library purposes. There is also a possibility of securing the use for circulating purposes of some of the duplicates, copyrighted or uncopyrighted, in the Library of congress. The creation of a circulating depart- ment of the latter library has been forcibly urged in congress, but has also met with determined opposition. A compromise between these conflicting views of the true functions of the Library of con- gress should result in the popular circulating use of many of these books through their loan to the Washington public library. A government institution. The relations of nation and capital make the Washington public library as much of a government insti- tution in principle as the Library of congress. By continuing to develop the latter exclusively along its natural lines as a great refer- ence library for scholars and students, and by rendering available for public use its circulating books through the medium of the W'ashirfgton public library as the national local lending library, the nation will waste no fraction of its library resources, and instead of permitting thousands of miscellaneous volumes, copyrighted and uncopyrighted, to decay unused on the shelves, they will all be rendered most fully available, both for reference and circulating purposes, for the benefit of the people of the republic. In plan- ning and preparing for an enlarged library in the new building on Mount Vernon square to be available perhaps within two years, the existing library in rented quarters on New York avenue, which is performing under many disadvantages a most important and use- ful function in the community, is not to be neglected. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S GIFTS TO 1 American libraries Alameda, Cal Oct. 1899 $10000 Allegheny, Pa Dec. 1886 53° 000 Atlanta, Ga Jan.-Nov. 1899 125 000 Augusta, Me. Lithgow library Oct. 1893 ' 9000 Beaver, Pa Oct. 1899 50 000 "JO UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK Beaver Falls, Pa Oct. 1899 $50000 Blairsville, Pa June 1899 15 000 Eraddock, Pa Dec. 1886 500 000 Bradford, Pa Jan. 1900 25 000 Butler, Pa Oct. 1898 5 000 Carnegie, Pa Apr. 1898 230 000 Cheyenne, W_yo Dec. 1899 50 000 Chillicothe, Mo Jan. 1900 25 000 Clarion, Pa Dec. 1899 10 000 Connellsville, Pa Apr. 1899 50 000 Covington, Ky Jan. 1900 40 000 Dallas, Tex Aug. 1899 50 000 Davenport, Iowa Dec. 1899 50 000 Dennison, Tex Oct. 1899 I 700 Duluth, Minn Oct. 1899 5° 000 Duquesne, Pa Dec. 1899 3 SO 000 East Liverpool, Ohio. . . . June 1899 50 000 East Orange, N. J Jan. 1900 50 000 Emporia, Kan Jan. 1900 30 000 Erie, Pa Oct. 1898 7 000 Fairfield, Iowa Apr. 1892 40 000 Fort Worth, Tex June 1899 50 000 Gardiner, Me Dec. 1897 2 500 Greensburg, Pa June 1899 50 000 Greenwich, Conn Oct. 1898 ' 5 000 Grove City, Pa Feb. 1900 30 000 Hazelwood, Pa ]\Iar. 1899 4 000 Homestead, Pa Dec. 1896 500000 Houston, Tex Oct. 1899 50 000 Jefferson City, ]\Io Jan. 1900 25 000 Johnstown, Pa May, 1890 60 000 Leavenworth, Kan Jan. 1900 Lincoln, Neb Dec. 1899 Louisville, Ky Oct. 1899 ^lanassas, Va June 1899 JMatanzas, Cuba 1898 ]\IcKeesport, Pa Apr. 1899 New York free circulating library Dec. 1889 6 000 25 000 75000 125 000 I 000 2000 50000 PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 7I New York Caledonian club library Nov. 1899 $2 750 Newport, Ky Oct. 1899 20000 Oakland, Cal Aug. 1899 50 000 Oakmont, Pa Apr. 1899 25 000 Oil City, Pa Jan. 1899 40 000 Oklahoma City, Okl Oct. 1899 25 000 Ottumwa, la Jan. 1900 50 000 Penn. state college Dec. 1898 100 000 Pittsburg, Pa Dec. 1886 3 870 000 Pittsburg, Tex July, 1898 5 000 Prescott, Ariz July, 1899 4 000 San Antonio, Tex Jan. 1900 50 000 San Diego, Cal July 1899 50 000 Sandusky, Ohio Oct. 1899 50 000 Seaboard air line library. . June 1899 i 000 Sedalia, Mo Oct. 1899 50 000 Steubenville, Ohio June 1899 50 000 Tucson> Ariz Oct. 1899 25 000 Tyrone, Pa Oct. 1899 50 000 Uniontown, Pa Dec. 1899 50 000 Waco, Tex July 1899 2 000 Washington, D. C Feb. 1899 350 000 York, Pa Jan. 1900 50 000 $8 482 950 2 British libraries Aberdeen Feb. 1890 $54 800 Ayr Dec. 1890 50 000 Bandridge June 1899 5 000 Banff June 1899 5 000 Bonar Bridge Oct. 1899 7 500 Dumfries Aug. 1898 50 000 Dunfermline Nov. 1885 100 000 Edinburgh Dec. 1886 250 000 Falkirk Feb. 1899 2 500 Grangemouth May 1899 5 500 Inverness Apr. 1899 8 750 Jedburgh June 1897 10 000 72 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK Keighley, Yorkshire Sep. 1899 $50000 Peterhead May 1899 5 000 Portmahamock Oct. 1898 3 000 StirHng Jan. 1900 30000 Tain May 1899 5 000 Wick Apr. 1899 19 615 Total $661 665 Grand total $9,144,615 Chapter j THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY The best university for the people is a library of good books, critical and popular magazines and readable illustrated papers, political, social and literary. A visit to any large reading room in a well conducted American public library will reveal to the passing observer a public high school suited to the needs not only of advanced pupils from the public schools, but of graduates and adults. Public libraries seem to favor coeducation. Chicago and Boston public libraries are literally crowded with readers from every walk in life and disclose the possibilities of higher popular education for every class in our leading American cities, east and v/est. The scholar is there in a quiet nook, investigating difficult questions in history and science by means of the rich stores of accumulated material. The school teacher and school children are there in class- rooms preparing their special work. The representatives of labor and of organized industry are gathering facts and illustrations inter- esting to the labor party. The inventor is examining patent reports in a special room. Genealogists are inquiring into family history; literary men and women are studying and writing on their chosen themes. Everybody, even the old man and the small boy, find con- genial occupation in this paradise of books and pictures. " The library in which we are interested today," said Melvil Dewey at University convocation, Albany, 1888, " combines the good features of both these [the preservative and the recreative libraries] with others of its own and is the institution that deserves the name of people's university. It might well copy that broad legend from the seal of Cornell, 'An institution where any person may find instruction in any study.' Perhaps we should more clearly recognize its proper functions and be in less danger of confusing Milwaukee (Wis.) public library and museum: rotunda, first floor Milwaukee (Wis.) public library: deliTery room «VNI?06p'riALLENBECK CRAWFORD CO. Milwaukee (Wis.) public library: reference room PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 73 it with old ideas, if we called it, not a ' library,' but a ' people's university.' " In the same suggestive address Mr Dewey also says : " Just as truly as we found in popular education that the real school for the mass of people was the library, so in the higher education the real university is a great library thoroughly organized and liberally administered." Emerson once said: "Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library; a company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civihzed countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of inter- ruption, fenced by etiquet; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here writen out to us, the strangers of another age." Andrew Carnegie has given millions of dollars for the founding of these highest of high schools in certain favored cities. He has planted a free public library in the nation's capital at Washington just as he did years ago in Edinburgh, the historic capital of his mother land. A visit to any of these great foundations, whether in Edinburgh, Pittsburg or Allegheny City, wiU suggest the wonderful possibilities of accumulated wealth in American towns and cities when it begins to express itself more widely in these generous institutional forms. Carnegie is simply a conspicuous example of a liberal and patriotic tendency, long manifest in American indus- trial life. Public libraries. The foreign traveler through New England, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minne- sota, and on to California will be everywhere impressed with the growth of public libraries. He will find that in very many instances they are memorial libraries erected by some generous townsman or former citizen of the place, who returned to benefit his old home after acquiring wealth in distant lands and places. No institutional foundation is more common in New England or the west than the public library.^ Here will be seen in the general reading room a 1 The eighth report (1898) of the free public library commission of Massachusetts contains a three page list of givers of free public library buildings in that state. Ill towns or parts of towns owe their library buildings to private givers. By laws of 1890, ch. 347, any Massachusetts town can be supplied at state expense with $100 worth of books on condition of maintaining a free public library. In 1898 there were only 10 towns in Massachusetts that were not fully entitled to the privileges and rights of a free public library. Only three fifths of one per cent of the people of the old Bay state were without this latest of free institutions. Now, 1899, only seven Massachusetts towns lack a public library. 74 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK popular class of readers representing all ages^ both sexes, and the most varied intellectual interests. Almost everywhere the public library has been brought into organic connection with the public schools, which are allowed special privileges for the promotion of investigation in history, biography, literature, art and science. Sometimes teachers come with their classes to public libraries for special exercises, but oftener the pupils come alone for inquiry along certain lines suggested by the teacher. Everywhere librarians are in cordial and cooperative relations with the public schools, which are in some cases delivery stations of the public library. Reference lists are prepared by busy librarians on subjects uppermost in the public mind, and these lists are posted conspicuously in public places or printed in the newspapers, which carry working catalogues into every intelligent household. If lyceum lectures are in progress, or if there is a course of University extension lectures, the local librarian will certainly place all the resources of his library at the service of citizens and students who may happen to be specially interested. In building up the public library there is often a select committee of competent, well educated men and women who take into con- sideration the needs of the public schools as well as the popular taste. Great attention is always paid to standard history and biog- raphy as well as to travels, natural sciences, the arts, modern litera- ture, English, French and German, the best novels and books for children. On the wise choice made by this library committee, or by the librarian, depends the development of public intelligence and public morals, and the gradual refinement of growing boys and girls. Pictures and plans of library buildings. In the monthly bulletin of books added to the Boston public library, vol. 4, no. 8, published in August 1899, there is a valuable index to the pictures and plans of library buildings to be found in the Boston public librarv. The person who would found a public library can here discover the ap- pearance, exterior or interior, of any important library from " Aber- deen, Scotland" to "Yale college" and "Yarmouth, Massachusetts," with bibliographic notes, which will enable the reader to review the history of any given institution. From the manifest impossibility of visiting and studying all the leading American types of the people's university, the present writer can merely say c.v uno discc oinncs and declare his earnest original intention of inquiring particularly re- PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 75 garding the most important new public libraries ; but present limita- tions of time and space compel the restriction of this chapter to the illustrations already gathered, which were determined by chance and local opportunity. BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY . In his address at the opening of the free library in Wilkesbarre, Pa. in 1889 Melvil Dewey said: " All nations recognize the United States as leading in the matters of libraries. The United States recognizes the New England states, and specially Massachusetts as its head, and Massachusetts looks to Boston as the Mecca of the ideal library system." [Library journal, 14 :95] Of the work accomplished by Justin Winsor, at one time librarian of the Boston public^ Herbert Putnam said at Chautauqua: " Panizzi raised a great dome wherein scholars might find studious refuge; his achievement was no greater than that of Justin Winsor when he widened out his reading room so that it took in a whole city." Josiah Quincy, the broad-minded mayor of Boston, discussing in the Saturday evening post (Philadelphia) June 3, 1899, the work of a modern city, has given bold and graphic expression to a new educational and social ideal. He says: "The work of our public library is of such a comprehensive character that it partakes very largely of the nature of a popular university, and comes very near to constituting an example of municipal socialism carried into prac- tice. Our library plant — building, books and equipment — repre- sents an investment of at least $5,000,000. 350 persons are em- ployed in connection with its service, and it costs the city over a quarter of a million dollars a year to maintain it. Besides the cen- tral library we have 10 branch libraries, containing independent col- lections of books, and 18 delivery stations. There are, outstanding, 65,000 active cards for a population of 530,000 people. Over 700 readers are generally to be found in the central building alone, and about 1,250,000 books are annually issued to card holders for use at home. "Our library is indeed an educational institution for adults, rather than a mere collection of books, as indicated by the fact that in at least half a dozen departments the library has upon its staff scholars of recognized ability, who direct readers in the pursuit of advanced lines of reading. The people of Boston contribute nearly half a dollar annually per capita for the support of this great institution, and I doubt whether a community can be found anywhere in the "jd UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK world which taxes itself as heavily to provide library facilities, or which makes a larger use of them. Boston was a pioneer in the establishment of municipal libraries in this country, and there is no branch of municipal activity in which our citizens take a greater pride. Our library is believed to undertake a greater variety of service than any other, yet the demand for the extension of its facilities is never fully met." Extent. The library system of Boston as described in the latest report, 1898-99, p. 7, now comprises: 1 Ten branches, with large permanent collections of books; 2 Five reading rooms, all of them also delivery rooms and one having an independent collection of books; 3 Thirteen delivery stations, all also deposit stations; 4 Twenty-two engine houses and one postofTlce receiving books regularly on deposit; 5 Four public schools (two high and two grammar) receiving de- posits; 6 One public school — a delivery station; 7 Five public institutions receiving deposits. This makes a total of 61 outlying agencies of the Boston public library. If any institution in New England deserves preeminently the name of an uncommon school or a people's university, surely Boston is the seat of it. The most recent official report of her public library is prefaced with a picture of the magnificent central building in Copley square; but, in order to appreciate the splendid system of library extension which Boston represents, one should examine carefully in that same report, 1898-99, the map of the citv library. The percentage of card holders in the public library ac- library. The percentage of cardholders in the public library ac- cording to the population of each ward is given under the ward number. A comparative survey of this graphic and truly cultural map of Boston will show that the public library, highest of high schools in an enlightened city, has secured a stronghold in every Boston ward. The city is now fairly illuminated with her 61 beacon lights representing a widely extended library system. It reaches from East Boston to West Roxbury, from the North Brighton readingroom to the South Boston branch. Beacon street extended could not rival this Boston library extension for intelligence and light. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION ']J Use and circulation. The 47th annual report of the Boston public library, 1898-99, shows that the use and efificiency of the library are increasing from year to year. The number of card holders in 1897 was 64,973; in 1898 it was 72,005, an increase of nearly 11^. A classification of holders of "live cards" Jan. 31, 1899, [see p. 31 of above report] indicates that the most active users of library books belong largely to classes in the grammar schools. Students, teachers, business men and women are also good patrons of the people's university. There is a general increase in book circulation and in the number of readers not only at the central library but also at the branches. The circulation from the local delivery stations was 175,552 in 1898-99, as compared with 163,938 the vear before, a gain of 7^. The total circulation of books from the branch libraries for the year ending Jan. 31, 1899, was 660,171 as compared with 659,099 for the previous administrative year, a gain of less than i^. The greater circulation from delivery stations is largely if not wholly due to free access to shelves, which is per- mitted in compensation for the small number of books to choose from. At branches the large number of books is held to make such a privilege impracticable, consequently many books remain on the shelves, which would be taken out if readers could see and handle them. The total circulation of books for home use from the Boston public library with all its 61 branches and stations, was last year 1,245,842, as compared with 1,199,658 for the year 1897-98. Expense. The cost of maintaining the Boston public library dur- ing the year 1898-99 was: Salaries $162 690.48 Books 29 035 . 04 Periodicals 5 900.06 Newspapers 2 146.44 Maintenance 64 808.02 — — $264 580 . 04 Of this amount the city appropriated $246 855 . 87 the trust funds yielded 13 674. 11 miscellaneous gifts, etc. made up 4 050.06 $264,580.04 Documents and statistics. The trustees of the Boston public li- brary have added to it a new and important department during the 78 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK past year, that of documents and statistics. The American statistical association presented in June, 1898, its valuable collections to the public library, which has now combined with them its own statisti- cal and sociological materials, so that Boston has become another first-rate center for social and economic research. The special report of the chief of this new department^ Worthington C. Ford, formerly chief of the bureau of statistics of the treasury department at Washington, describes, p. 64-72 of the library report for 1898-99, the subjects covered by these collections: i) vital statistics; 2) com- mercial statistics, including transportation; 3) labor statistics, in- cluding production, agricultural and industrial ; 4) financial statistics and all questions of banking, currency and taxation; 5) state and private penal and charitable institutions. Mr Ford says, " The pub- lic library was strong on economic writings of a general character, but weak in the results of economics applied in administration and government; the statistical association was strong on this practical side, but almost wanting in theoretical works. Its most remarkable feature was the series of issues of foreign governments, long since out of print and difficult to obtain. As an example of the disinter- ested zeal of one man, Dr Edward Jarvis, the collection is notable as a foundation on which to build for the future." Art exhibitions. In the report of the Boston public library for 1898-99, Otto Fleischner gives a complete list of exhibitions since February 1898 in the fine arts department of the central library, and also a list of the exhibitions at the branch libraries and stations. He says the collection of photographs belonging to the department numbers 9870; of process reproductions there are 3509. These are all classified and catalogued. " There is no doubt that this col- lection of photographs has not only increased the usefulness of the fine arts department, but has stimulated the study of art among various classes in the community." [For a special discussion of popular education in art at Boston, see chapter entitled " Traveling pictures and library exhibitions of art."] Sunday opening. The report of the Boston public library, 1898- 99, p. 83, states that two delivery stations, Broadway extension read- ing room and Roxbury crossing, have been open on Sunday during the past year. At both stations books have been issued for home use. Statistics show that the Broadway extension station is literally PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 79 crowded with Sunday readers. The experiment of issuing books on Sunday from branch Hbraries was tried last year at Charlestown, East Boston, and South Boston. The Sunday opening was adver- tised on placards and in the newspapers. The issue of books was small but the use of these branches for reading and reference on Sundays has continued to increase. This form of experiment with the Sunday opening is nothing new and is an acknowledged success. The trustees of the Boston public are fully justified in their modest expression of belief that " the library not merely supplies a valuable school of instruction to those resident within the limits of the city, but secures for Boston a wide reputation for liberal and wise public expenditure, of which it may well be proud." PHILADELPHIA One of the best examples of a free public library system in America is that which now flourishes in the city of Philadelphia under the able direction of John Thomson. He represents some excellent ideas in good librarj^ administration, among others, the idea of easy access to the book shelves. The visitor or reader who enters one of the numerous public library stations of Philadelphia will find it easy and inviting to go direct to the shelves, where books are conveniently classified, and examine the authorities on any given subject. The old method of guiding readers in the use of books was the printed catalogue; but public experience in America long- ago demonstrated that men and women want to see the books rather than mere titles of books. A brief examination of a printed volume soon convinces the reader whether he wants to read that particular book. Moreover, access to a varied collection of authorities on one subject like that of money, or labor, China or Cuba quickly deter- mines the reader's choice. Oldtime methods of scholastic adminis- tration often raised barriers between the books and the people, just as medieval theories raised monastic walls between social life and religion. Another good idea which Mr Thomson has well represented in Philadelphia is that of branch libraries or local library stations in place of one grand, central library as a mausoleum or cold storage of literature. The prevailing idea of too many American cities and librarians is that of a central palace or repository of book collections, an architectural fabric which shall be an ornament to the city. As well might a city have one good central schoolhouse. The truth is, 8o UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK many public schools and many public libraries are needed in every great town. At least there should be branch libraries in every densely populated neighborhood or section of the city. Mr Thom- son has done much in Philadelphia to promote this conception, which is now growing everywhere. It is not distinctively a Phila- delphia idea, for it flourishes in Boston, New York, Chicago, also in Baltimore and many other cities. These local or branch libraries are veritable hives of literary industry. They are crowded with the sons and daughters of the people, who obtain easy access to the springs of knowledge now brought to their very doors. In Chicago, collections of books are locally distributed every day in various neighborhoods by means of wagons and carriers. It is an easy step from this idea of really circulating libraries to that of traveling libraries, which Mr Thomson has also represented in Philadelphia, though the idea is one borrowed from New York and from English university extension. In America the idea was first worked out successfully by ]\Ielvil Dewey, secretary of the University of the State of New York. Albany was the distributing center for that state, as Philadelphia now is for the state of Pennsyl- vania. Mr Thomson has introduced a bill in the Pennsylvania legis- lature which will provide by legal enactment a state system of travel- ing libraries. The bill will almost certainly be passed and this ex- cellent feature thus added to the free librarv system for which Mr Thomson has done so much. As an illustration of his methods, the story is told that he went one day to a rich Philadelphian who owned a spacious private house and told him that his house would make a good branch library, and Mr Weidner actually gave up his premises for that excellent object. In his address as president of the American library association, at Chautauqua, 1898, Herbert Putnam said, " After suffering long reproach for being without any free library system whatever, Philadelphia has suddenly expanded a li- brary system whose activity, measured by home use, leads the world." BUFFALO (IV. Y.) PUBLIC LIBRARY This library is particularly interesting to the writer, for it was here, in the winter of 1887-88, that the first library experiment in university extension began [see detailed account by H. B. Adams in the Forum, July 1891]. The size and character of the rooms of this library make it specially convenient for educational and social, historical and scientific purposes. An examination of the diagrams Bates hall Boston public library: ground floor CcN-TRAL Library Plan or C'ntucsql A Cc^TR^.!. LlCRARY Plan oi- Batcs Mali. fu30K Central LibrakV Plan ofCntkcsolB CCNTRAL LlD"ARY Pu^u or Special LiB'^arics rtooR Area of City, 4^ Square Miles. Population, 528,912, PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 8l published herewith will show clearly the interior arrangements on the ground floor and on the second floor, where there is a good- sized lecture hall for public or class courses. Close by is the room occupied by the Buffalo society of artists, who have an excellent col- lection of art periodicals representing the best work of various countries. In three adjoining galleries the Buffalo fine arts acad- emy exhibits pictures. The children's department is on the same floor with the periodical room of the general library. On the third floor are the rooms and interesting collections of the Buffalo histori- cal society, and in the basement are the collections of the Society of natural sciences, including the best museum specimens of stuffed buffalos in the United States. Probably the original donor of a herd of six live American bison to the city of Buffalo desired to endow it with a good collection of animal symbols reminding the Buffalo man of his own proper totem; but the animals all died, and here they are preserved better than were the sacred bulls of ancient Egypt. A picture of the exterior of the Buffalo free library is herewith presented as one of the best American types of that highly desirable combination: i) the free library; 2) the free museum; 3) the art gallery; 4) a local historical society; 5) a local natural history so- ciety. Transformation of the Buffalo library. The Buffalo library, in- corporated originally in 1837, and now (1899) in its 65th year, was an association or subscription library up to 1897. In that year the institution, not being able to bear the burden of taxation, was legally transformed into the Buffalo public library by act of the New York legislature and a contract between the old corporation and the city of Buffalo whereby the net income of the Buffalo library endow- ment, also all its books, amounting to upward of 84,000 volumes and 10,000 pamphlets, valued at $160,000, was transferred to the city in trust for 99 years with option of renewal. The institution is now declared to be " a free public and reference library for the use and benefit of the residents of the city of Buffalo." The common council is authorized to raise in connection with the general annual tax not more than .05^ of the total taxable, assessed valuation of 82 UNIVER&ITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK the property of Buffalo. One fifth of the amount of this tax is paid over to the trustees of the Grosvenor Hbrary of reference and four fifths to a board of lo directors, five representing the city of Buffalo and five the old library corporation. The year before this transfer of library property, the entire cir- culation was 142,659. In four months from the public opening- September 2, 1897, the circulation increased to 262,232. In 1898 its circulation was 768,028. Nathaniel W. Norton, a representative of the old corporation and president of the new board of directors, says: " The great masses appreciate what the city has done for them. The people not only know that the city has made appropriations for the public library, but they also know that the appropriations have been well expended under the guidance of our efficient super- intendent [H. L. Elmendorf]." Educational cooperation in Buffalo. Mr Elmendorf in his first annual report, 1897, says: " The library is in the closest cooperation with the high schools. An assistant visits each school before the opening hour on every school day, receives books to be returned and lists of books wanted, and makes delivery at the close of school; plans are being made in connection with the superintendent of public education to include all schools of the city in a traveling library system." In 1898, Buffalo had 40 traveling libraries reaching schools, literary clubs, chapter houses, and social settlements. These small portable collections of good and attractive books are among the best educational devices of our time. If university ex- tension had accomplished nothing else in the United States, it would deserve the hearty gratitude of all librarians, for it led to another great step in popular education — library extension. Children's room. In the children's department of the Buffalo pub- lic library, according to the report for 1898, the circulation was 129,587, a daily average of 423. Besides the main hbrary, there were in that year 11 schools with 163 classroom libraries and, in all, 6407 volumes. The total circulation amounted to 27,469. In the report for 1898, p. 21, we read: " Several thousand pictures have been selected from extra or worn-out numbers of the best magazines and weeklies. These have been carefully mounted on PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 83 cardboard, classified and clearly labeled. This is a particularly in- teresting part of the school work and may be made of no little im- portance. For example, the beautiful and spirited drawings for Lodge's Story of the revolution have been cut from Scribner's maga- zine and form a gallery of illustration for that period which increases the impression made by the narration of events as given in the text- books. This is but one of hundreds of examples that could be given." Manuscript collection. The visitor will be impressed with the educational use made of manuscripts and autographs by the Buffalo public library. They are well displayed in frames and cases, with sufficient labels and explanations to make various Hterary treasures really interesting and instructive to the public. A descriptive or annotated catalogue of the Gluck collection of manuscripts and autographs was published in July 1899. James Fraser Gluck (1852- 1897) presented the library with this collection in 1887. It repre- sents choice gleanings by James R. Osgood and many other Ameri- can publishers. ROCHESTER Reynolds library. Because of its educational significance this de- serves special recognition by the side of the Buffalo library. Morti- mer F. Reynolds, the first white born in Rochester, was the son of a pioneer, first postmaster of that frontier town. The son of Abelard Reynolds founded the Reynolds library in 1884 with 12,000 books, which he transferred from the older Atbeneum library. For eight years he alone supported the collection in the Reynolds arcade building, and when he died in 1892 his estate of $600,000 went to the Hbrary as a memorial of his father Abelard, brother William Abe- lai'd, and himself. " Dying childless, he has made the people of Rochester his heirs by endowing for their free use the library which bears his name." The Reynolds library, now embracing over 40,000 volumes, oc- cupies the old home, one of the largest and most attractive places in Rochester, with two acres of land, trees, shrubs and flowers for a library garden or park. A gentleman's house, devoted to books and public education, made accessible to appreciative citizens, is the 84 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK constituent idea of the Reynolds library. On the ground floor front is a reference or study library with 3000 books most in demand directly accessible to the public. Here a reference librarian is always ready to mediate between seekers after knowledge and the best sources of it. The time is coming when every public library will have such a man to personify every department. The librarian should be a living soul, a master of art and Hterature, an expert with indexes and bibliographies, a friendly guide into any truth that may be desired. The Reynolds library, besides the usual public features, contains a lecture room seating 125 persons, with platform and arrange- ments for showing lantern views. Here meet the Rochester histori- cal society, the local academy of science and various smaller clubs and literary societies. Indeed the historical society has been al- lowed to install its own library and museum in the third story of the Reynolds building, so that the interests of local history and public education can be happily combined. " The collection of each in- stitution supplements that of the other so that now the student of Americana, local history and genealogy can find close at hand the material to carry on his investigations." This illustrates the proper spirit of cooperation and association for municipal institutions of an educational character. They grow in strength and in public usefulness b)' proper combination. Roch- ester and BufYalo are among the best New York examples of such institutional federation outside of New York city, which will soon afford a model of the highest of all city types of public libraries, the associated or federal system, corresponding to what has already come to be constitutionally in the United States and what is sure to prevail among American colleges and universities. George F. Bowerman, at one time reference librarian of the Rey- nolds library, but now librarian of another university for the people (the New York tribune), thus described June 7, 1896, in the Illus- trated Buffalo express the higher educational methods now prevailing in Rochester for the benefit of the community: The purpose of this library is to do educational work. This is shown by the fact that a majority of its books are in the reference PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 85 department and that a special librarian is employed who is in im- mediate charge of this department. Moreover, the books of the circulating department are not placed there primarily for recreation, but that they may directly contribute to the educational work of the reference department. In thus laying the foundations on the basis of education, the trustees have planned wisely. Early in every scholastic year, that is, in August or September, the managers of university extension courses, the secretaries of literary societies and reading clubs, etc. are invited to send in their courses of study for the season, together with the lists of books which they wish for their use. Any books on these lists which the library does not have are ordered and the books laid down in each course are brought together and reserved in the reference room for the club members during the season. A number of clubs took ad- vantage of this offer last winter, so that three large revolving book- cases were filled with books, each shelf being marked with the name of the club for which the books were reserved. Some clubs had only a dozen books on their lists, while others had as many as 50. As soon as one course was finished the books would go back into the circulating department and their places be occupied by those of another course. . . The university extension courses carried on in this city during the past winter have been specially interesting and successful. For four of them we gladly bought long lists of books, because these new purchases were not only useful for the time being, but are valuable accessions to these various departments of our library. In enumerating some of the various lines of activity and useful- ness which the library strives to enter, mention should also be made of the Rochester Atheneum and Mechanics institute, with its more than 1000 students. . . So far as possible the library provides the books and periodicals on the technical subjects pursued at the in- stitute. Considerable use is made of these helps by the institute, and the hope is that the two institutions will work more and more for each other's benefit. In offering places of meeting at the library for these clubs, we aim to make it a center of post-school education. In supplying them with the books necessary for carrying on their studies, we are able to make a comparatively small library of great educational use. . . Carlyle said " the university of the future is a great collection of books." The truth of this statement is coming more to be recog- nized and the best education of today is centering in the library. Here is gathered the accumulated knowledge of the past in the literature of the world and here is brought together the best thought of the present in the files of the magazines. Here also should be found those books which will help every man to understand his own trade better and will thus make him more efficient in it. The high 86 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK school and the college furnish education to those who have not yet entered on the active duties of life and some form of university ex- tension (whether called by that name or not) furnishes education to those whose school days are over. By thus supplying the means of study, the most important factor in anything deserving the name of education, the Reynolds library finds its work. In fact, for Roches- ter it strives to supply a vital, helpful institution, a true people's university. The above is a perfectly fair picture of what is going on in dozens of progressive though small public libraries in the United States. From a few types, we may learn all. Public libraries are not to be measured by their size or circulation, but by their educational standards and social efficiency. Some library methods and some respectable library trustees are as antiquated as the builders of the pyramids; while others are real organizers, advancing like Lord Cromer in Egypt and Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham and South Africa. American librarians should remember Abelard and Mortimer Fabricius Reynolds. They, with other library founders and helpful workers, will march on with the pioneers. Imperial states and enlightened towns will rise up and bless them. wilkesbarre;, pa. Osterhout free library. This library is an interesting architectural example of a church building transformed. Its cost including necessary alterations was $48,500. The stack room, catalogue room, and delivery desk all afford interesting reminders of the ec- clesiastical purposes which this structure formerly served. The librarian, Miss James, is one of the most progressive ministers 6f education for the people, and a leader in library guidance for chil- dren. In Miss Sargent's valuable and very suggestive report at the St Louis conference in 1889 on Reading for the young, Miss H. P. James is quoted as saying: " In selecting our books, I was careful to leave out all sensational reading and give the preference to stories with some historical basis. We have a good store of Henty's books, and have appended a note to each entry, showing the time of the incidents covered. . . Of course we have all the books of Coffin, Drake, Knox, Butterworth, French and Scudder. In the reference PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 87 room I have a goodly constituency of small readers with ragged clothes, not very clean faces, but their hands are clean. The lava- tory close by the door is visited before they come to me for books, as they have learned that it is indispensable. . . I feared that the beauty of the room might be a little forbidding, but they don't mind it in the least. A better behaved set than the little ragamuffins are would be hard to find." [Library journal, 14:233]. When the Osterhout free library was formally opened to the people, Jan. 29, 1889, Melvil Dewey spoke of it as " Wilkesbarre's university, a place where any person may be instructed in any study," adding, " This is a university not bounded by insurmount- able limits. It reaches beyond the college or high school. About everything important gets into print, everything worthy of preserva- tion on all subjects. And if each subject finds itself recorded in a public library, easy of access and so arranged that a person may extract from the folded leaves the subject upon which he wishes to be enlightened, then truly we have a university." [Library journal, March 1889, p. 95]. NEW YORK CITY New York public library. This new institution, based on the Astor, Lenox and Tilden foundations, is the highest type of a peo- ple's university thus far evolved in New York city. This type may be called the federal or associated library system. The union of the above individual libraries under one general manager, Dr John S. Billings, marks the beginning of a new and popular regime. While the consolidated library building, which is to embody concretely the New York public library, is not yet erected in Bryant park, the plans are drawn and the enlarged idea is already recognized by the people and the press. The New York tribune, Aug. 20, 1899, re- marks on the library impovements and popular changes now in progress : The Astor and the Lenox libraries are entering upon a new era. The circumstance is altogether too important to pass by. The old rooms that hitherto never knew what rush and crowds were are now taxed to their utmost capacity, both as regards seats and book de- livery. The stafif is very nearly tripled, now numbering 120 per- sons. With the old days of lack of funds and limited possibilities of 88 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK development over, it has come to pass, at both the Astor and the Lenox, that there are now many conveniences where there were few before. The increased attendance, the additional research, show that scholars and others fully appreciate these benefits. The daily combined average of readers at the Astor and Lenox was found last March to be 488. In August, which is usually ac- counted the dullest month in the year, the library seats are still filled, as they are in Chicago and Boston. The daily average of readers in the British museum is 516, not much higher than the present average of the Astor and Lenox. The library of the British museum numbers 1,900,000 volumes. With its superb historic and cultural collections, it is the largest people's university in the English-speaking world. Paris only, the mother of English and German schools, excels London. Next to the British museum comes the Library of congress, which some ex- perts (e.g. Herbert Putnam at the Chautauqua conference 1898) truly call our " National library." The Boston public library is second only to this Washington head-center and numbers 716,050 volumes. The New York public stands third with its 610,000 volumes, but it is increasing at the rate of 50,000 a year, whereas, in 1898, Boston added only 25,470 new books to her collections. New York city will sooner or later possess one of the best libraries in the United States for the study of American institutional history and social economics. Dr Billings some time ago sent out this circular letter: "The New York public library desires to ob- tain, preserve and make accessible to the public as complete a col- lection as possible of all government and municipal documents and reports, and of reports and pamphlets relating to associations of men and women for any purpose. Those relating to such associa- tions in the city and state of New York and neighboring states are specially desired. These include plans of organization, charters, constitutions, by-laws, regulations, lists of members and reports of corporations, institutions and organizations of all kinds." This appeal is bringing in tons of documentary matter, some even from South America, all of which materials will be duly classified. The work of organizing and cataloguing the New York public library and its constituent parts is now going on apace. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 89 " The new card catalogue is the consolidated library's master- work. Nearly 50 cataloguers are employed on it, the most of them women, and besides these, there is an " open class " in catalogue work that has continually from 12 to 24 students. The task of mak- ing this new catalogue is fairly colossal. All in all, more than 650,000 pieces are to be catalogued. These figures are deceptive, however, and by no means tell the story, for they take no account of the constantly arriving accessions, the leading articles of the magazines and reviews that must be indexed here, and the number of cards that must be written or printed for each piece." One characteristic of the old regime in New York library manage- ment was that it was supposed to be for the benefit of the learned few; but modern arts of cataloguing, classification and unification have made private labyrinths more accessible than ever before, even to scholars. With annotated bibliographies of subjects and well trained reference librarians or intelligent personal guides through the mazes of history, literature and science, even the by-paths will soon become so direct that " the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein." A great public library, like a great railway station, must have a bureau of information, and every department should have its active personal representative. Institutions are what the men and women are who administer them. New York free circulating library. This was first incorporated in 1880. The object declared in the constitution was to furnish free reading to the people of the city of New York by establishing at one or more places a library or hbraries, with or without reading rooms, open without payment to the public. There is a board of 21 trustees, with three standing committees: i) on ways and means; 2) on buildings; 3) on libraries and reading rooms. Elected mem- bers pay $10 a year; associate members, $25; donors, $100. Life members pay $200; patrons, property amounting to $1000; founders, $5000. All such supporters can vote at meetings of the society. The first local library opened by this organization was at 49 Bond street in 1880, the year of incorporation. Contributions and endowments by various wealthy individuals made it possible to open similar useful and popular branch libraries all over the city. It is thought to be only a question of time when the 10 circulating libraries now existing shall become local branches of the New York 90 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK public library system. Aid has already come from the city itself and this excellent private movement will surely become public. There are now over 100,000 volumes in the existing branches of this popular system, which has grown with marvelous rapidity. There is a general catalogue of all the branches, which are connected by telephone, and books are sent from one branch to another. As yet there is no central building, but an executive center of the system was early established at the George Bruce branch, a memorial library opened in 1888 at 226 West 42d street, between 7th and 8th avenues. Another well-known local type is the Bloomingdale branch in a new building (1898) at 206 West looth street, between Amsterdam avenue and the Boulevard. A children's corner and special privileges for children are here afforded. The amount spent for books in each branch is regulated by the circulation. Various features make the New York free circulating library very attractive to the people: i) The local branches, which suit popular convenience; 2) access to the shelves (even for children, if over nine years of age) and opportunity to see and handle the books; 3) a dictionary card catalogue^ with simple explanations as to its use; 4) picture bulletins, made of pictures cut from illustrated papers or magazines, followed by typewritten reading lists on the subjects represented by the pictures; 5) a great variety of reading lists cut out from printed bulletins exhibited to the public gaze; 6) the fact that the circulating library is entirely free, only a guarantor being required for an intending card holder. The circulation of this New York system is now more than 1,250,000 volumes a year. Altogether since 1879 the circulation has amounted to more than 9,000,000 volumes. The open-shelf system is a pronounced success and is now in general use in nearly all the branch circulating libraries. Nothing but lack of space prevents its universal adoption. Large numbers of school children come daily to these branch libraries to consult references in preparing for class work. An official report says that " it has been a great satis- faction to feel that the library is a regular part of the city's system of public education." The board of education suggested two years ago that the traveling library department supply the vacation PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 9I schools and public playgrounds with books. This has been at- tempted with gratifying success. It is believed that great possibili- ties of development lie in the direction of traveling libraries, par- ticularly in connection with industrial schools^ children's aid socie- ties, etc. Traveling libraries are also circulated in the different engine houses and hook and ladder companies of New York city. So called " home libraries " have also been introduced into New York tenement houses. Small collections of lo to 15 readable books are placed temporarily in the charge of some reliable young person in a household, who acts as librarian, and admits five or six members to the home library. Once a week a visitor calls on the children. Some branches now circulate select photographs of works of architecture, painting and sculpture, with brief typewritten de- scriptions and references to books for fuller information regarding artists and their work. The whole experiment is the outgrowth of a public educational spirit and is guided by such liberal spirits as Francis C. Huntington, Jacob H. Schiff, J. Frederic Kernochan, Henry Marquand, Frederic W. Stevens, William W. Appleton, and Charles Scribner. Among the founders are Andrew Carnegie, Henry G. Marquand, and George W. Vanderbilt. The chief libra- rian is John N. Wing, 226 W. 42d street. The 19th annual report contains pictures of the following 10 branches of the New York circulating library: Bond street branch, opened in 1880, 49 Bond st. Ottendorfer, opened in 1884, 135 2d av. George Bruce (memorial), opened in 1888, 226 W. 42d st. Jackson square, opened in 1888, 251 W. 13th st. Harlem, opened in 1892, 18 E. 125th st. Mechlenberg, opened in 1893, 130 West 23d st. Bloomingdale, opened in 1896, new building completed in 1896, new building completed in 1898, 206 West looth st. Riverside, opened in 1897, 261 West 69th st. Yorkville, opened in 1897, 1523 Second av. S4th St., opened in 1898, 215 East 34th st. ~ The Traveling library department is at 135 Second av. 92 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK Cathedral library. This library, at 123 East 50th st., is one of the most useful and efficient catholic church libraries. Any resident of the city, whether catholic or protestant, if properly recommended, may become a member of the Cathedral library association without charge, on promising to comply with the rules and regulations. Even non-residents are allowed to subscribe to the Cathedral library association. The library is open Sundays from 10 a. m. to 12 m. and on week days at convenient afternoon and evening hours. Per- sons who can not come to the library at all can have desired books delivered at their own homes for only five cents charge and the carfare of the messenger. The director of the Cathedral library is the Rev. Father Joseph H. McMahon, who represents a very pro- gressive spirit in library administration. Chapter 4 NEW YORK PIONEERS OF FREE LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION An educational pioneer. An early champion of free public libraries and of free schools as a means of national education was Dr Jesse Torrey jr, who is mentioned by F. J. Teggart jr in " An early champion of free libraries " in the Library journal of November 1898 [reprinted from New York Evening post]. Jesse Torrey was born about 1787 and spent the early part of his life at New Lebanon, near Albany, N. Y. In a pamphlet entitled the Intellectual torch published at Ballston Spa, near Saratoga, in 1817, he made a plea for " the universal dissemination of knowledge and virtue, by means of free public libraries." This pamphlet, a second edition, is believed to be a revision of one entitled the Intellectual iiainbeau, published in Washington, D. C. in 1816. Dr Torrey's arguments for free public libraries were much the same as those used afterward in Boston and Albany. This patriotic herald of free libraries, which now constitute the people's university, shows an evident familiarity with George Washington's idea of encouraging national education, an idea which led historically PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 93 to the noble bequest of the EngHshman, James Smithson, and to the founding of the Smithsonian institution. This is already a partial realization -of the national university and is perpetuating in large ways Washington's historic notion of extending and diffusing knowledge among men and nations. Dr Torrey in his preliminary address to the people of the United States said: " Let American legislators^ both national and sectional, perform their duty to their country and its posterity and to man- kind, by listening to the wise counsels of many conspicuous living sages and pursue without hesitation the inestimable ' parting advice '^ of George Washington, Benjamin Rush, Samuel Adams^ and other departed friends and patrons of man, and establish public schools and judiciously selected free public circulating libraries in every part of the republic." Dr Torrey was a pioneer in the cause of temperance reform, and in order to discourage intemperance and encourage pubHc education he seriously proposed a liquor tax for " the universal establishment of free Lancastrian schools and free public libraries." This sug- 1 Dr Torrey refers particularly to Washington's famous words : " Promote, as objects of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge." (See Tor- x^y^% Portraiture of domestic slavery in the United States. Phil. 1817, p. 22 While not a violent abolitionist, Dr Torrey believed in the gradual conversion of slaves into tenants and indentured servants "bound for the present." He believed in gradual emancipation and colonization. He also advocated negro education as a moral right: " Let every slave, less than 30 years of age of either sex, be taught the art of reading, sufficiently for receiving moral and religious instruction, from books in the English language. For this purpose, the Lancastrian mode of instruction would be admirably adapted. A well conducted economical library of such books as are calculated to in- culate the love of knowledge and virtue ought to form an essential appurtenance to every plantation." Think of it, a free library for every slave plantation ! Dr Torrey was certainly an educator in advance of his age. 2 Samuel Adams, like Dr Torrey, was a strong believer in primary schools as nurseries of the republic. On the title-page of his Pleasing companion for little boys and girls . , . designed for the use of primarv schools and domestic nurseries. (New York 1835, ed. 3), the doctor printed this motto from Adams : " To secure the perpetuation of our republican form of government to future generations, let the divines, philosophers, statesmen and patriots unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of the people with the importance of educating their little boys and girls." Dr Torrey prepared and published other educational works for children, e. g.. Mental museum for the rising generation. ("Poughkeepsie i835). 94 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK gestion should remind us that England for many years has hand- somely supported technical education in her towns and counties by a whisky tax. Dr Torrey's essays on the general diffusion of knowledge and his miscellaneous articles on " Universal education " with other tracts were shown to the writer of this report in the state library at Albany, N. Y. The essays form a duodecimo volume entitled Moral instructor, printed for the author at Ballston Spa, 1819, (ed. 4, Philadelphia 1824). On p. 223-26 of the first edition appears a remarkable anticipation of the now rapidly extending New York educational institutions of free libraries and study clubs. It ap- pears that Dr Torrey actually put his theories into local institu- tional practice. We find under the date 1804 the text of a con- stitution of the " New Lebanon juvenile society for the acquisition of knowledge." Jesse Torrey jr signed this document with 147 others. This early reading society must therefore have been a study club of unusual size. Dr Torrey's blank form of subscription among the " citizens of New Lebanon " for a free circulating library is appended to the constitution. It was no narrow subscription scheme, for the doctor distinctly says: " Many were admitted who contributed nothing." Dr Torrey's portrait forms the frontispiece of his Moral instructor, Ballston Spa 1819, and is here reproduced. This forgotten New York physician and philanthropist, this ad- vocate of temperance reform and of sound legislation, this champion of physical exercise, negro emancipation, African colonization and national education deserves to be honored in his own state of New York and to be forever remembered in the history of American culture. His writings were once apparently well known and often reprinted in Philadelphia. In London he was introduced to the reading public by WilHam Cobbett, the English tribune of the people. Dr Torrey's words like the educational ideas of George Washington deserve to be revived in the federal city, where, in 1822, was published Torrey's Herald of knowledge, an address to the citizens of the United States, proposing a new system of national education. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 95 Originator of the school district library.' If Dr Jesse Torrey was an early champion and pioneer of the thought of free pubHc Hbraries, not only in New York, but throughout the nation, there is another son of this state, an ofifshoot of New England, who deserves to be remembered as a warm friend and practical promoter of the school district library, itself the immediate historic forerunner, as a public institution, of the free public library. It is not generally known that the .free library movement in America is connected his- torically with the English idea of the Society for promoting use- ful knowledge. Among nations as well as among men, good ideas act and interact. A country editor, lawyer, and democrat under Van Buren, member of the New York assembly for Clinton county in 1823 and 1824; secretary of state from 1826 to 1833; controller from 1834 to 1839, and again from 1842 to 1847, this is the brief biography of Azariah C. Flagg, son of Dr Flagg of Whiting, Vt. In a report as superintendent of common schools Jan. i, 1830, Hon. A. C. Flagg said : A society has been established in England for the purpose of im- parting useful information to all classes of the community, par- ticularly to such as are unable to avail themselves of experienced teachers. To effect this object, treatises on the various sciences and books of practical utility have been published at such moderate prices as to bring them within the reach of all classes. A small sum applied to the publication and distribution among the several works would have the most favorable influence. This idea was transmitted by Mr Flagg to his successor in the office of secretary of state, John A. Dix, who, in his report on com- mon schools, Jan. 8, 1834, first proposed a district tax for libraries. The needed authority was voted by the legislature in 1835, which thus enacted the first state law in the United States favoring the idea of school district Hbraries. The school district, it should be remembered, was in New York state a communal unit resembling in some respects a New England 1 An interesting point suggested to the writer by William R. Eastman, inspector of libraries for the University of the State of New York. (See Plattsburg Republican, Aug. I, 1896. Azariah C. Flagg was the editor of that paper from 181 1 to 1826). He served as controller for a longer term than any other incumbent except one. State hall in Albany still stands as a monument to the good judgment of a building commission of which Mr Flagg was an efficient member. 96 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK town, though New England also had her school districts, which became centers of organized activity in various directions. These school districts were simply local, geographic divisions of the town- ship or parish. The central idea of the district was the support of a common school. Now when the thought had penetrated the public mind that " the school district library " deserved economic support by taxation, on the same principle as district schools, a very important chapter of American institutional history had begun. Many of the old towns of New England, the middle states and the south, a horde of townships in the west and far west have not yet risen to the idea that free libraries should be public institu- tions, founded and supported by public money; but they will rise to the duty and the privilege as they rise in self-government and pros- perity. One point alluded to by Azariah C Flagg,^ that keen son of a Vermont doctor, deserves closer attention. He observed incident- ally: " Books of practical utility have been published at such moder- ate prices as to bring them within the reach of all classes." It will reward the antiquary to look up in the state library at Albany or elsewhere specimen books^ from those old district Hbraries and note who published them. There are many reminders of that English Society for promoting useful knowledge, many examples of pub- lishers' textbook extension, many forerunners of modern educational enterprise. But it was legitimate and honorable. The most con- spicuous and useful series in those days was " Harper's universal library," of which the school districts of New York and other states saw many thousand copies. School district library movement in the state of New York. The school district library of the state of New York is a good historic starting point for American popular education in connection with libraries. The permissive law of 1835 which led directly to the in- lA souvenir of A. C. Flagg, late controller, was found at the state library in Albany in an octavo volume of 91 pages, published in 1868, entitled, A few historical facts respecting the establishment and progress of parks and the business of banking in the state of New York from the adoption of the constitution in 1777 to 1864. 2 A specimen, Irving's Goldsmith, was shown at Albany with the inscription on the fly leaf, " Town of Johnstown, district no. 22." Washington St. T1 c EUicott St. H O o o 5 > r w o > < Melvil Dewey PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 97 stitution first named is said to be '' the first known law of a state allowing the people to tax themselves to maintain genuine public libraries. The law did not establish libraries for schools, but for the people, in districts of the size of a school district." (Dr Homes on " Legislation for public libraries," Library journal, July-August^ 1879). In the report of the department of public instruction for 1889, it is said that New York state was the first to undertake to establish libraries as factors in educational work. Gov. De Witt Clinton was the father of the idea. He first proposed as early as 1827 that a small library of books should be placed in every schoolhouse. John A. Dix, secretary of state in 1833, urged the establishment of district libraries. He said of his law which passed in 1835: "The object . . . was not so much for the benefit of children attend- ing school, as for those who have completed their common school education. Its main design was to throw into school districts, and place within the reach of all their inhabitants, a collection of good works on subjects calculated to enlarge their understandings and store their minds with useful knowledge." In 1838, on recommendation of Gov. Marcy, $55,000 a year was set apart from the so called United States deposit fund for books and apparatus for school districts, provided the districts would give as much more as their pro rata share. The economic impulse to this district library movement really came from the United States government, which in 1836 distributed to the states an accumulated surplus of which New York received $5, 000,000 as her share. The original ideas of Clinton, Dix and ]\Iarcy seem to have led to the local distribution of this fund for planting school district libraries. By hundreds of little canals this great public reservoir of economic power was made the means of irrigating the lowly fields of village life. It was the historic be- ginning of the district library movement throughout the United States. The example of New York was followed by many other states, in New England and in the west, and led the way to a broader and better system of free public libraries. 98 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK In 1841 Gov. Seward said of the New York system: "Hence- forth, no citizen who shall have improved the advantages offered by our common schools and district libraries will be without some scientific knowledge of the earth, its physical condition and its phenomena . . . the principles of morals and political economy; the history of nations and specially that of our own country; the progress and triumph of the democratic principle in government upon this continent, and the prospect of its ascendency throughout the world . . . The fruits of this enlightened enterprise are chiefly to be gathered by our successors. But the present genera- tion will not be altogether unrewarded." The highest development of the New York system was during the period from 1838 to 1851, when the free school act was passed and the school districts were released from the obligation of self-help in paying their share toward sustaining these local libraries. It was a serious mistake in public policy and led to grave evils. Soon the school districts were allowed to apply library money to the pay- ment of school teachers. Then the little collections began to be re- garded as more or less private property by the local trustees in whose houses the district library was sometimes deposited. In 1853 it is said that there was a total of 1,604,210 volumes in the district libraries. The number gradually dwindled till in 1888 there were only 762,388 volumes remaining, less than one half of what really belonged to the public. From 1839 to 1888 there were annual state appropriations to school libraries amounting to a total of $2,740,000. The amount actually expended for libraries was only $1,985,144. This fact shows that there was an extraordinary diver- sion of public money to other than library uses. As early as 1874-75 New York state superintendents of education expressed their dissatisfaction with the district school library. In 1875, the superintendent said: " I am satisfied that the day of use- fulness of district libraries is ^past ", and recommended in their stead a system of town libraries into which the old collections should be gathered, (see " Legislation for public libraries," Library journal, July-August 1879, p. 263). ■^1 Among chief reasons for failure were the smallness of the district as a unit, and lack of proper administration and supervision — Ed. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION 99 A radical reform in the old and poorly managed system was finally brought about by the energy and intiative of Melvil Dewey, director of the state library, and the active influence of the superin- tendent of public instruction, A. S. Draper, who in 1889 brought the question squarely before the legislature whether the district library should be for the use of the school or for the use of the pubHc. Mr Draper rightly maintained that the district libraries were not originally intended to be school libraries, but public libra- ries for the use of all the people of the district. Clearly that was Gov. Seward's conception. The district library was to be a kind of local public library for the graduates of the common schools. Mr Draper recommended: i) that henceforth a sharp distinction be drawn between school libraries and free public libraries; 2) that the organization and extension of school libraries be provided for from the free school fund; that they consist largely of books of reference for use in the schoolroom, pedagogic works for the aid of the teachers and suitable reading matter for children; 3) that city and township library associations be provided for by law, so that free public libraries could be regularly instituted " for the use of all the people". Mr Draper further suggested in the line of the original and wholesome legislation of 1838: " Help those who will help themselves by giving $200 the first year and $100 each succeeding year to all towns upon condition that they raise as much more, either by general taxation or by gift. Collect together the remnants of old libraries. Provide that no books shall be purchased except from a catalogue furnished from the board of regents or the director of the state library." This broad and sensible policy outlined in 1889 has been prac- tically followed during the past decade by the lawmakers of New York and the regents of the University. Saving remnants of the old district libraries were gathered up so that nothing essential should be lost. Books of reference and educational interest to children and teachers were reserved for the school libraries and books of general interest to adults were put aside for the public library. This institution has now developed in many localities throughout the state of New York. In every case a wonderful lOO UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK transformation has been wrought. As a historic institution the school district library spread from New York, 1833-38, into Massa- chusetts and Michigan, 1837, and into 14 other states: Connecticut 1839; Rhode Island and Iowa 1840; Indiana 1841; Maine 1844; Ohio 1847; Wisconsin 1848; Missouri 1853; CaUfornia and Oregon 1854; IlHnois 1855; Kansas and Virginia 1870; New Jersey 1871; Kentucky and Minnesota 1873; and Colorado 1876. Though the free public library is now the prevailing type in the United States, the school district type is worthy of historic com- memoration because it marks pioneer influence in many individual American commonwealths and the recognized principles that the library is a feature of public education, and deserves to be supported like common schools by public taxation. It is not enough for a ■ community to educate its children; it should educate itself. The public library is for all, adults as well as children. Chapter 5 LIBRARY EXTENSION IN NEW YORK Public library movement. The first public library law in America was that passed by New York in 1835 (ch. 80) providing that: § I The taxable inhabitants of each school district in the state, shall have power, when lawfully assembled at any district meeting, to lay a tax on the district, not exceeding $20 for the first year, for the purchase of a district library, consisting of such books as they shall in their district meeting direct, and such further sum as they ma}' deem necessary for the purchase of a bookcase. The intention to propose such tax, shall be stated in the notice required to be given for such meeting. § 2 The taxable inhabitants of each school district shall also have power, when so assembled in any subsequent year, to lay a tax not exceeding $10 in any one year, for the purpose of making ad- ditions to the district library. § 3 The clerk of the district, or such other person as the taxable inhabitants may at their annual meeting designate and appoint by a majority of votes, shall be the librarian of the district, and shall have the care and custody of the library, under such regulations as the inhabitants may adopt for his government. § 4 The taxes authorized by this act to be raised, shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as a tax for building a schoolhouse. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION lOI The first law authorizing the maintenance of free pubUc Hbraries by towns and cities in New York dates from May i, 1872, but, as no money could be appropriated for the library unless more than half the taxable inhabitants had petitioned for establishing it, the law was practically prohibitive and a dead letter. Syracuse, Newburgh and Poughkeepsie early maintained town libraries under the school law of 1847. 'Thfi introduction of free public libraries into the state through the instrumentality or mediation of the regents of the University and in cooperation with the state library marks an epoch in the history of popular education in America. Under the district system, the annual library appropriation of $55,000 had been gradually diverted to school uses, but with the new laws of 1892 it was strictly limited to libraries, and for that year $30,000 was assigned to school and $25,000 to public libraries. This has since been the regular annual grant for public libraries, but is supplemented by amounts corresponding to the increase in number of libraries. The state now duplicates up to $200 the amount raised for a public library by local effort. The usual way now adopted in order to share in this state bounty is to secure a charter from the University. The local trustees of an old district library must apply to the regents, who have the power to transform the old corporation into an institutional member of the University by an absolute charter^ provided the local library has books or other property amounting to $1000. A provisional charter may, however, be obtained for five years by a small community with literary property amounting to at least $100. Any libraries may be registered at Albany after examination and approval by the state inspector, who can determine whether they are worthy of state aid. The conditions of the award are: 1 The library receiving aid must be under state supervision and registered by the regents as an approved library. 2 It must be free to the public for either reference or circulation. 3 A college or academy library used as a public library must be open every day while classes are in session, and in vacation must conform to the rules for other public libraries. 102 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 4 Other libraries must be open at least one hour on three days each week and oftener in the larger places according to population. 5 The grant to each library is limited to $200 a year. 6 An equal amount, and for reference libraries a double amount, must be raised from local sources. 7 The whole amount must be spent for books approved by the regents. Under these conditions an outworn and moribund system of local libraries throughout the state of New York has been quickened to new life. New blood from the University center at Albany is sent coursing through the entire state to the local library extremities. The old system of district libraries is becoming a system of free city and village libraries. Corporation or association libraries, col- lege and academy libraries have also become free to the public for either reference or circulation and are registered at Albany as free libraries sharing in public money. This transformation in the whole library system of New York has wrought wonders for popular education. The free circulation of good books and the constant increase of local collections by fresh supplies of new literature have quickened the interest' of readers everywhere. Public libraries have become fountains of living waters in hundreds of towns and villages. A more lasting and perennial good has been accomplished by this library extension than by any existing form of university extension ; but the two move- ments ought to advance together. When live men and teachers are lacking, readable books are wholesome substitutes. To promote the extension and upbuilding of public libraries in the state of New York the present inspector, W. R. Eastman, is always ready to exhibit the most practicable plans of library con- struction to public-spirited men in any town or village. At the state library in Albany the writer has seen the helpful and pictur- esque means of illustrating the whole subject. Printed matter and diagrams are not only exhibited, but on application are freely sent out to local committees. The influence of free lending libraries subject to state supervision as compared with free lending libraries not under supervision is PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND POPULAR EDUCATION IO3 graphically shown, for 1893-1898, by rising and descending curves in the accompanying diagram i. In diagram 2 the number of volumes and their circulation in free libraries in the borough of Manhattan in New York city from 1893 to 1898 are compared with the population in 1892. The same report [for 1898] gives also the number of volumes in all the libraries of the state and their circula- tion, 1893 to 1898. The following illustrates the suggestive influence of the exchange collections sent out from the state library. The editor of the Platts- htirg republican (A. C. Flagg's old paper) said August 27, 1892: Arrangements are being made at the state library at Albany to send out cases of books to the school district applying for them under proper conditions. Instead of granting appropriations of money to school districts for their libraries (as was done down to 1892, a total of $55,000 per annum) the state will hereafter furnish books in lots of about a hundred which can be sent out to readers in the district and then returned to Albany and a new lot supplied. Plattsburg will be entitled to this privilege. Why not start a public library and largely increase the educational facilities of our village? Our people have only to unite in agitating this subject and good results are sure to flow There is now a flourishing public library at Plattsburg. The Plattsburg republican July 18, 1896, records the fact that W. R. East- man has just inspected the premises and pronounces the library to be " in good condition, ranking among the highest in the state in percentage of circulation to number of books." Plattsburg is the old home of Azariah C. Flagg, who used to look out across Lake Champlain toward his older family home in Ver- mont. There should be a good portrait of him at Plattsburg as well as in the Library school at Albany, for he is the historic father of the original school district library, which was represented on Lake Champlain for many years and spread thence throughout New York and many other states of the American union. The state and the public library. Melvil Dewey said at the second international library conference, held in London in July 1897: The state,- whatever it may or may not do, should recognize the library as being as essential to public welfare as is the school, and it I04 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK should give it as careful protection from dangers without and within as it gives to institutions like banks and insurance companies. The state should protect the library against unjust laws, improper inter- ference, or pernicious influence of any kind from without. It should guard it also against misconduct, incapacity or neglect on the part of its trustees, olicers or employees. Besides the direct appropria- tions for its support, it should grant the most liberal powers for holding property given by individuals for the public benefit, and above all, should grant entire exemption from taxation. To tax a free public library for doing its beneficent work is theorizing gone mad. . . The example first set by my own state (New York) in the statute which I had the honor of drawing ought to be fol- lowed universally. We created a public libraries department, to devote its entire attention to advancing the best interests of public libraries. . . We help to establish new libraries, reorganize old ones, revise methods, select books, lend single books or entire libraries, grant books or money up to $200 yearly to any library raising an equal sum from local sources, and, by means of corres- pondence, personal inspection, and steady work in a dozen direc- tions, help every community to get the greatest practical good from the labor and money given to its free library. We have now about 500 traveling libraries moving about in all parts of the state. Tlie public library is rapidly becoming universal. It is almost within our memory that we have come to substantial agreement that the state owes an elementary education to every boy and girl born within its limits, not alone as a right to the child, but as a matter of safety and practical wisdom on the part of the state, and this broader conception is followed closely by a second and broader one, that every boy and girl is entitled not only to an ele- mentary education but to something higher. I have met no com- petent student of this subject who dares deny that hereafter the state must recognize that education is not alone for the young, for limited courses, in schools which take all the time of their pupils, but must regard adults as well; and not alone for short courses, but all through life — not in our recognized teaching institutions alone, but in that study outside of office or working hours that may be carried on at home. I may sum it up in the one sentence: Higher education, for adults at home, through life. In this home education, which must hereafter be recognized side by side with school educa- tion, the library is the great central agent round which study clubs, reading circles, extension teaching, museums, and the other allied agencies must cluster. The following brief synopsis of the library work of the University of the State of New York was prepared by W. R. Eastman. Refer- ences are to sections of University law, 1892, ch. 378. Diagram i showing volumes and circulation of free lending libraries under state supervision and of those not under state supervision, 1893-98. [From Extension bulletin of the University of the State of New York, no. 27, p. 19] 0) 10 CO O) .sftooooo "Jfiooooo .^4ofiono S2.noooo snonooo 4ftnoono 4600000 4400000 42.00000 40OOOO0 ifloonno 1 ^fioo ono 3400OOO J ^200000 1 300O0O0 i ?.fiooooo J ^fiooooo / !?400000 J 2.200000 f 2 000000 ^ Iflooooo ...^^^ ^-^^ 1600 000 .^ / \ l4ooono ^>>' / \ 1200000 ; \ „.^^ loooono J^ ,:s i^^^SiiiJi- ftooooo /^^ .V^ ..-^^" fiooooo 40OO0O .-a^-^- :5;?ijJff ee J«ri iSonnon 2.fiooono 2700000 ?.6noooo 2,50DOOO ; 2400 000 / 2.10 0000 / ? 2nnnno ■*./ 2.ioooon c/ 7nncioQct -J iQonnnn iflon fton Popul;=i + n ,n ifisa. lftOI7.1.q 0/ iToonoo 0/ V ifionono ■?7 ifioooon 4 - c 7 1400000 1 loonoo 12.00000 / 1 moooo lOOOOOO / qooooo flooooo 700000 fiooooo ."ioooon 400000 ■. o<^ ..,^>-^^-^ 300000 g,j \p.r»d \ .aJi^----^- .roy*"'"' 2ooono vjoll"--- moooo .PQQQQQ. Diagram 3 showing volumes in all libraries in the state ; volumes in free lending libraries and their circulation 1893-98 compared with population in 1892. [From Extension bulliiin of the University of the State of New York no. 27, p. 56] + to lO ff> 01 Ci tD