The Home Element.
A home reading box which has no other source of supply than that mentioned is not to be despised, but many advantages of the movement are lost, of course, if it is so restricted. It is desirable and customary, therefore, to interest as large a number of homes as possible in the movement. There are, first, the homes from which reading matter comes. The first problem is to arouse interest in such homes. The conversation goes something like this:
“Haven’t you some reading matter that you wish to get rid of, that we could have for the Home Reading Box Movement?”
Fig. 2
This shows a typical collection of magazines ready to go to the Home Reading Box at the plant.
Fig. 3
This shows the passing of magazines from the wagon into the plant. The plant box is placed directly below the window, where, if no one is inside waiting to take the magazines, they may easily be dropped from the outside of the plant without disturbing any one in the plant.
“Just what do you want?”
“Well, anything that is interesting, but especially magazines of recent date, with which you have finished.”
“Oh, but we get hardly any magazines. Let me see. We do take the Saturday Evening Post, and my wife reads the Home Journal and the Woman’s Home Companion, and I buy some of the weeklies and some of the monthlies.”
“And you get trade catalogs and trade papers of various kinds besides?”
“Oh, yes, we get some of those that pertain to our business.”
“Well, what do you do with them all, when you have finished reading them?”
“Why, we throw the advertising matter into the waste-basket, and the trade papers we keep with the idea of binding some day, but we never have bound them. I don’t know exactly what does become of them. I don’t think we ever really look at the old ones.”
It is this reading matter that we desire to send promptly into some home reading box. As to the other homes to which the reading matter ultimately goes, these may be, or may become, or may help others to become, the same type of home. At present little reading matter can enter, because the wage earner cannot spare enough from his wages to buy much literature, and is too tired to go to the library in the evening. There is often the same desire for reading in this home, though it has not had such a chance to become trained. The whole family has the same desire to see the pictures, and the children the same joy in colouring the drawings or cutting them out. The neighbours will like to borrow anything that is interesting, and the reader will increase his stock of information and his vocabulary, and form the habit of reading besides. There are exactly the same possibilities of developing habits and tastes. All that is lacking is the opportunity.
The one hope for the working man is through education, and the greatest educational possibilities now, with very few exceptions, go into the waste-baskets of the nation. For example, consider the pile of Saturday Evening Posts that come out each week. These would make a pile more than three miles high each week. Think of the many other magazines and their effect upon homes that cannot afford to buy them.[5]