REASONS FOR HAVING A FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
Public libraries have without delay become an essential part of a public education system and are as clearly useful as the public schools. They are not only classed with schools, but have generally become influential adjuncts of the public schools. The number of readers is rapidly increasing and the character of the books is constantly improving.
Not infrequently the objection is heard that the public libraries are opening the doors to light and useless books; that reading can be, and often is, carried to a vicious and enervating excess, and therefore that the libraries' influence is doubtful and on the whole not good. This argument does not need elaborate exposure.
The main purpose of the library is to counteract and check the circulation and influence of the empty and not infrequently vicious books that are so rife. A visit to any news-stand will disclose a world of low and demoralizing "penny dreadfuls" and other trash. These are bought by boys and girls because they want to read and can nowhere else obtain reading material. This deluge of worthless periodicals and books can be counteracted only by gratuitous supplies from the public library.
Whether these counteracting books be fiction or not, they may be pure and harmless, and often of intellectual merit and moral excellence. The question is not whether people shall read fiction—for read it they will—but whether they are to have good fiction instead of worthless and harmful trash.
The tendency to read inferior books can soon be checked by a good library. If the attention of the children in school is directed to good books, and the free library contains such books, there will be no thought of the news-stand as the place for finding reading matter.
The economical reason for establishing free public libraries is the fact that public officers and public taxation manage and support them efficiently and make them available to the largest number of readers. By means of a free library there is the best utilization of effort and of resources at a small cost to individuals.
While a private library may greatly delight and improve the owner and his immediate circle of friends, it is a luxury to which he and they only can resort.
A library charging a fee may bring comfort to a respectable board of directors by ministering to a small and financially independent circle of book-takers, by its freedom from the rush of numerous and eager readers, and by strict conformity to the notions and vagaries of the managers. But such a library never realizes the highest utility. The greater part of the books lie untouched upon the shelves, and compared with the free library it is a lame and impotent affair.
The books of a public library actively pervade the community; they reach and are influential with very large numbers and the utility of the common possession—books—is multiplied without limit. Before several of our towns lies the question of opening to all what is now limited to those who pay a fee. This is not merely a limitation—it is practically a prohibition.
Whether right or wrong, human beings as at present constituted will not frequent in large numbers libraries that charge a fee. The spirit of the age and the tendency of liberal communities are entirely in favor of furnishing this means of education and amusement without charge. Certainly towns which can maintain by taxation, paupers, parks, highways and schools have no reasonable ground for denying free reading to their inhabitants.
These towns spend vast sums of money in providing education, and yet omit the small extra expenditure which would enable young men and women to continue their education.
The experience of Library Commissions of various states has amply demonstrated that libraries and literature are sought for and appreciated quite as much by rural communities as by the larger towns, and not infrequently the appreciation is apparently keener, because of the absence of interests and amusements other than those provided by the library. There is now no real reason why every part of this state may not enjoy the advantages and pleasures of book distribution, for concentration of effort in the small towns elsewhere has provided efficient, attractive and economical libraries, and could as well do so here.
F. A. HUTCHINS.