PUBLIC LIBRARY, A PUBLIC OPPORTUNITY
Modern industrialism exacts from the artisan and the worker in every branch, skill and knowledge not dreamed of years ago. He who would not be trampled under foot needs to keep pace with the onward sweep in his particular craft. The public library furnishes to the ambitious artisan the opportunity to rise. Upon its shelves he may find the latest and the best in invention and in method and in knowledge. Never in the history of the country has there been such a desire manifested among the adult population for continued education as may be noted to-day. Does it not speak eloquently of ambition to rise above circumstances—that same spirit that we have admired in our Franklins and our Lincolns and the long roll of self-made men whose lives we are proud to recall? And so library extension takes note of adult education, and combining its forces with university extension, realizes that broader movement variously termed home education, popular education and the people's college.
The library gives heed to the future, and thus does not neglect the child. The intelligent work of the children's librarian, supplementing the related work of the teacher, aims to develop the individual talent or dormant resource which finds no chance for expression where children are necessarily treated as masses. And we may never know what society has lost by failure to quicken into life this dormant talent for invention, for art, for literature, for philosophy. "The loss to society of the unearned increment is trivial compared to the loss of the undiscovered resource." Had retarding influences affected half a dozen men whom we could readily name—Morse, Fulton, Stephenson, Edison, Bell, Marconi—we might to-day be without the locomotive, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone—the myriad marvels of electricity that to-day seem commonplaces. What we have actually lost during this great century of scientific development we can never know. Nor must we forget that invention is the result of cumulated knowledge which the fertile brain of man utilizes in new directions, and that the preservation of the knowledge and experience of the centuries is the province of the public library, where all alike may have access to its riches. The ideal democracy is the democracy of knowledge and of learning.
The library endeavors, by applying the traveling library principle to collections of pictures, by means of the illustrated lecture and otherwise, to cultivate among the people an appreciation of the beautiful and artistic that shall ultimately find expression in the home and its surroundings.
The library believes, too, that recreative reading is a legitimate function. We hold, with William Morton Payne, that a sparkling and sprightly story, which may be read in an hour and which will leave the reader with a good conscience and a sense of cheerfulness, has its merits. In this work-a-day world of ours we need a bit of cheer for the hours which ought to be restful as well as resting hours. Library extension is imbued with optimism; its broadening field is educational, sociological, recreative. Unblinded to the evils of the day, its promoters realize inability to amend them except by educational processes affecting all the people. They do not preach the gospel of discontent, but seek realization of conditions which shall bring about contentment and happiness. That, after all, for the welfare of the people, wants need be but few and easily supplied. He who has food, raiment and shelter in reasonable degree, access to the intellectual wealth of the world in public libraries, to the riches created by the master painters and sculptors, found in public galleries and museums, to the untrammeled use of public parks and drives, and the many other universal advantages which are now so increasingly many, need not envy the richest men on earth. Many a millionaire is poorer than the most humble of his employees, for excessive wealth brings its own train of evils to torment its possessor. Commercial success is a legitimate endeavor among men, and thrift is to be commended, but when these degenerate into greed, pity and not envy should be the meed of the man seized with the money disease.
HENRY E. LEGLER.