WHAT A LIBRARY DOES FOR A TOWN
1 Completes its educational equipment, carrying on and giving permanent value to the work of the schools.
2 Gives the children of all classes a chance to know and love the best in literature. Without the public library such a chance is limited to the very few.
3 Minimizes the sale and reading of vicious literature in the community, thus promoting mental and moral health.
4 Effects a great saving in money to every reader in the community. The library is the application of common sense to the problem of supply and demand. Through it every reader in the town can secure at a given cost from 100 to 1000 times the material for reading or study that he could secure by acting individually.
5 Appealing to all classes, sects and degrees of intelligence, it is a strong unifying factor in the life of a town.
6 The library is the one thing in which every town, however poor or isolated, can have something as good and inspiring as the greatest city can offer. Neither Boston nor New York can provide better books to its readers than the humblest town library can easily own and supply.
7 Slowly but inevitably raises the intellectual tone of a place.
8 Adds to the material value of property. Real estate agents in the suburbs of large cities never fail to advertise the presence of a library, if there be one, as giving added value to the lots or houses they have for sale.
A. W. in NEW YORK LIBRARIES.