THE WORKING LIBRARY FOR THE ARTISAN AND THE CRAFTSMAN
It is not my privilege to speak to you at this time of the professional, technical, or practical aspects of that recent phase of library work wherein is attempted the reconciliation of shopmen with bookmen. In the very few moments placed at my disposal I may mention only that human relationship which enters so largely into a librarian's dealings with men who are concerned with and about their work.
The straightforward, sympathetic intercourse of man with man may adorn to the point of making almost beautiful a department of librarianship which is extremely matter-of-fact in its essential character and might easily become commonplace in its practicality. The business of a technology department in a public library may best be expressed in terms of the statement of the policy of the Franklin Union established in recent years in Philadelphia—"the further education of men already employed." Such a working library is strictly a library of work. It is almost oppressively utilitarian. Yet to a librarian who has had the privilege of making books known to artisans and craftsmen, and who is now denied that privilege, the sense of the loss of the fellowships, not to say friendships, that formerly were a part of his daily occupation proves that the sympathetic was after all the potential element in his experience.
I may say with Lowell, "I like folks who like an honest piece of steel.... There is always more than the average human nature in a man who has a hearty sympathy with iron."
Theodore Roosevelt has given us a maxim that deserves to be written as a rule of life—"That which one does which all can do but won't do is the greatest of greatness."
Therein is the greatness of work with practical men—the discernment of the simplest facts of life, the performance of the simplest acts of life in working out the complex things of life, recognizing, to begin with, that a man's difficulty is at once less a difficulty when it becomes the friendly concern of a fellow-man. My own first experience as a seeker after help in a public library in matters technical that were then of great importance to me, met the rebuff and disappointment that have given me a point of view which amounts to a conviction.
In the present day, the library assumes considerable confidence in inviting the workingman into its constituency, and the workingman must come to it with no less confidence if the library expects its justification. The mechanic, as formerly the scholar, must approach the library with a calculated expectation. The librarian must understand him, believe in him, and in turn make himself understood by him.
In a recent issue of the American Machinist, a writer deplores the general lack of sympathy and interest in the affairs of the "unheralded mechanic." That the life he lives has no place in men's thoughts nor in literature. This is the closing statement: "As it is, if left to themselves, mechanics will by their silence continue to let those outside the shop think of them as nothing but men tied to a whistle."
Leigh Hunt (himself very much an outsider) in a familiar essay makes this friendly observation: "A business of screws and iron wheels is, or appears to be, a very commonplace matter; but not so the will of the hand that sets them in motion; not so the operations of the mind that directs them what to utter."
But this mechanic that now nears the public library is coming neither as a pathetic figure in distress, nor as a mysterious or heroic figure beyond our comprehension. He comes as an unpretending man dignified by earnestness of purpose not to discredit an honorable vocation.
The best of mutual understanding and feeling, however, will not secure the chief ends of librarianship except so far as they splendidly prepare the way. The recognition of books as tools comes only as the books stand the same practical test that the workman applies to his instruments.
The librarian must furnish books shaped to the man's hand, books that he can use to perform work, that he can depend upon as true, accurate, precise, simple, efficient, economical, reliable in the same sense that his tools must be all these. And so, the selection of books for a working library of technology becomes not unlike the testing of instruments of precision. Care in selection is of supreme importance in fitting up a tool-shop of books.
Wisdom in application is scarcely second to intelligence in choice. A practical man does not often come to a library for this or that particular book, for the work of a specified author, or for a title that he has in mind. If he does, he cannot always be depended upon to know his own wishes in the matter. What this man wants is information about a topic that concerns him. He leaves it to the library to tell him in what printed form that information can be had—and it's risky, for the library, to trifle with him or to play him false. Hesitation, indecision, irresolution are fatal. If the library exhibits lack of faith in itself, who, indeed, shall have faith in it? The workingman will be sure to entertain the same contempt for the librarian's doubtful application of even the best books as he himself would of the misuse of good tools in his own trade.
This necessity for books that will answer to needs is the incentive in the erection of a working library to which men may resort.
At home we have a permanent and constantly revised selection of the most useful technical books registered on cards of varying colors showing the differing characteristics of the books included. This is our Works Library. And within it, on blue cards, are listed the simplest and most direct texts for the man with the least preparation for books. This is our Dinner-Pail Library. And starting with these, we may go on with a degree of confidence in teaching men the use of tools the handling of which we ourselves understand.
Preparedness in attitude, preparedness in equipment, await the arrival of the man the most skeptical of the library's guests. Does he come and go away again confirmed in his skepticism? If he does, it's the library's fault, not his. Does he come, and remain, to come again? Then he is ready to pay the tribute of his allegiance that becomes the librarian's great reward.
We have heard the American Machinist complain that the mechanic found no voice to sing his praises. Not less is the genus librarian unwept, unhonored, and unsung. He expects praise as little as he desires it, and, perhaps, I may say, deserves it. But the ready word of appreciation, the acknowledgment of the library's help in overcoming difficulties that drove a man there as a last resort, the confession of awakening to the new knowledge of the library's wider purpose and power, is expressed often with a frankness and fervor that surprise and gratify the fortunate librarian who has been instrumental in bringing things to pass.
I recall how men of few words and little sentiment have spontaneously related to me their experiences of misfortune, perplexity, disappointment, or other embarrassment that caused them to turn to the public library for a possible helping hand, and then, how the library did not fail them in their extremity. At such times, I knew that the free library was doing what it undertook to do.
Of this sort are the few, the impressive instances that illustrate how, on occasions, a working library can meet very exceptional requirements. There are also the very many—the students, apprentices, shopmen, machinists, inventors, chemists, engineers, manufacturers—all artisans and craftsmen in their various ways, who are coming to learn that in their usual daily processes they may expect from the public library the ordinary, indispensable service that the library has always performed for those who know the value of books.
It is this complete idea of a library that still fails of development in the minds of these men, an idea that the library is a live thing, a public utility of which they will naturally and inevitably avail themselves as they do of the street-cars to take them both to and away from their work. Nothing is needed to convince men that a utility is a utility save the satisfying use of it. When they have found that the library speeds them on in the direction of the day's occupation, then it becomes easy enough for them to learn that the library can also get them far removed from it. And when the workingman fully comprehends the working library, and by means of it is introduced to the diverting library, he becomes a man with the greatest capacity for usefulness, and the library's conquest of the community is finished and triumphant.
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Stevens has very forcefully brought out the factor that a book may be in bringing into life dormant faculties that might otherwise go to waste and recalls to us the remark of Prof. Dewey, that the loss of the unearned increment is as nothing compared with the loss of the undiscovered resource.
Of course you know as well as the members of the program committee that they had nothing to do with the selection of the next speaker; the topic chose her. How could anyone else be asked to present the subject of "The woman on the farm," than Miss LUTIE E. STEARNS, of the Wisconsin free library commission?