The fourth considerable library founded in the United States was due in a large degree to the industry and zeal for knowledge of the illustrous Franklin. As unquestionably the first established proprietary library in America, the Library Company of Philadelphia merits especial notice. Let us reverently take a leaf out of the autobiography of the printer-statesman of Pennsylvania:
"And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library. I drew up the proposals, got them put into form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and by the help of my friends in the Junto [the Junto was a club for mutual improvement, founded by Franklin] procured fifty subscribers at forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our company was to continue. We afterwards obtained a charter, the company being increased to one hundred; this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries now so numerous. It is become a great thing itself, and continually increasing. These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defence of their privileges."
When this Philadelphia Library was founded, in 1731, not a single city or town in England possessed a subscription library. Even the library of the British Museum, since become the greatest collection of books in the world, save one, was not opened until 1759, more than a quarter of a century afterwards. Although not designed as a public library of circulation, save to its own subscribers, the Philadelphia Library has been kept free to all for reference and consultation. The record of the gradual increase of the first Philadelphia Library from its first few hundred volumes, when Franklin was but twenty-five years of age, to its present rank as the largest proprietary library in America, with 195,000 volumes of books, is highly interesting. Its history, in fact, is to a large extent the history of intellectual culture in Philadelphia, which remained, until the second decade in the present century, the foremost city of the Union in population, and, from 1791 to 1800, the seat of government of the United States.
The Philadelphia Library Company, in 1774, voted that "the gentlemen who were to meet in Congress" in that city should be furnished with such books as they might have occasion for; and the same privilege was exercised on the return of the Government to that city, in 1791, and until the removal of Congress to Washington in 1800. During the nine months' occupation of Philadelphia by the British army, it is refreshing to read that the conquerors lifted no spear against the Muses' bower, but that "the officers, without exception, left deposits, and paid hire for the books borrowed by them." The collection, in respect of early printed books, is one of the largest and most valuable in America, embracing some books and files of newspapers which are to be found in no other public library. The selection of new books has been kept unusually free from the masses of novels and other ephemeral publications which overload most of our popular libraries, and the collection, although limited in extent in every field, and purposely leaving special topics, such as the medical and natural sciences, to the scientific libraries which abound in Philadelphia, affords to the man of letters a good working library. The shares in the library cost forty dollars, with an annual assessment of four dollars to each stockholder.
In 1869, the great bequest of Doctor James Rush to the Philadelphia Library of his whole property, valued at over $1,000,000, was accepted by its stockholders, by the bare majority of five votes in a poll of over five hundred. This lack of harmony is attributable to the fact that the bequest, so generous in itself, was hampered by the donor with numerous conditions, deemed by many friends of the library to be highly onerous and vexatious. Not the least among these was the following, which is cited from the will itself:
"Let the library not keep cushioned seats for time-wasting and lounging readers, nor places for every-day novels, mind-tainting reviews, controversial politics, scribblings of poetry and prose, biographies of unknown names, nor for those teachers of disjointed thinking, the daily newspapers."
Here is one more melancholy instance of a broad and liberal bequest narrowly bestowed. The spirit which animated the respectable testator in attempting to exclude the larger part of modern literature from the library which his money was to benefit may have been unexceptionable enough. Doubtless there are evils connected with a public supply of frivolous and trifling literature; and perhaps our periodicals may be justly chargeable with devoting an undue proportion of their columns to topics of merely ephemeral interest. But it should never be forgotten that the literature of any period is and must be largely occupied with the questions of the day. Thus, and thus only, it becomes a representative literature, and it is precious to posterity in proportion as it accurately reflects the spirit, the prejudices, and the personalities of a time which has passed into history, leaving behind it no living representatives. If we admit that the development of the human intellect at any particular period is worth studying, then all books are, or may become, useful. It is amazing that a person with any pretensions to discernment should denounce newspapers as unfitted to form a part of a public library. The best newspapers of the time are sometimes the best books of the time. A first-class daily journal is an epitome of the world, recording the life and the deeds of men, their laws and their literature, their politics and religion, their social and criminal statistics, the progress of invention and of art, the revolutions of empires, and the latest results of science. Grant that newspapers are prejudiced, superficial, unfair; so also are books. Grant that the journals often give place to things scurrilous and base; but can there be anything baser or more scurrilous than are suffered to run riot in books? There is to be found hidden away in the pages of some books such filth as no man would dare to print in a newspaper, from fear of the instant wrath of the passers-by.
When I consider the debt which libraries and literature alike owe to the daily and weekly press, it is difficult to characterize with patience the Parthian arrow flung at it from the grave of a querulous millionaire, who will owe to these very newspapers the greater part of his success and his reputation. The father of the respectable testator, Doctor Benjamin Rush, has left on record many learned speculations concerning the signs and evidences of lunacy. We may now add to the number the vagaries of the author of a ponderous work on the human intellect, who gravely proposed to hand over to posterity an expurgated copy of the nineteenth century, with all its newspapers left out.
The Library of Congress, or, as it was called in its first general catalogue in 1815, "The Library of the United States," was founded in 1800, by the purchase of five thousand dollars' worth of books by act of Congress, upon the removal of the government to Washington. By the act of January 26, 1802, entitled "An act concerning the Library for the use of both Houses of Congress," this library was placed in charge of a joint committee of both Houses of Congress, consisting of three Senators and three Representatives, and a Librarian, to be appointed by the President of the United States. It had grown to the number of only 3,000 volumes in 1814, when the British army made a bonfire of our national Capitol, and the library was consumed in the ruins. The first library of Congress being thus destroyed, ex-President Jefferson, then living, involved in debt, and in his old age, at Monticello, offered his fine private library of 6,700 volumes to Congress, through friends in that body, the terms of payment to be made convenient to the public, and the price to be fixed by a committee. The proposition met with able advocacy and also with some warm opposition. It is illustrative of the crude conceptions regarding the uses of books which prevailed in the minds of some members, that the library was objected to on the somewhat incongruous grounds of embracing too many editions of the Bible, and a number of the French writers in skeptical philosophy. It was gravely proposed to pack up this portion of the library, and return it to the illustrious owner at Monticello, paying him for the remainder. More enlightened counsels, however, prevailed, and the nation became possessed, for about $23,000, of a good basis for a public library which might become worthy of the country. The collection thus formed grew by slow accretion until, in 1851, it had accumulated 55,000 volumes. On the 24th of December in that year, a defective flue in the Capitol set fire to the wood-work with which the whole library was surrounded, and the result was a conflagration, from which 20,000 volumes only were saved. Congress at once appropriated, with praiseworthy liberality, $75,000 for the purchase of new books, and $92,500 for rebuilding the library room in solid iron; the first instance of the employment of that safe and permanent material, so capable of the lightest and most beautiful architectural effects, in the entire interior structure of any public building. The appropriation of $75,000 was principally expended in the purchase of standard English literature, including complete sets of many important periodicals, and a selection of the more costly works in science and the fine arts. In 1866, two wings, each as large as the central library, and constructed of the same fire-proof material, were added to it, and quickly filled by the accession, the same year and the following, of two large libraries, that of the Smithsonian Institution, and the historical library of Peter Force, of Washington. The latter was the largest private library ever then brought together in the United States, but its chief value consisted in its possession of a very great proportion of the books relating to the settlement, history, topography, and politics of America, its 45,000 pamphlets, its files of early newspapers of the Revolution, its early printed books, and its rich assemblage of maps and manuscripts, many of the latter being original autographs of the highest historical interest, including military letters and papers of the period of the American Revolution. The Smithsonian library, the custody of which was accepted by Congress as a trust, is rich in scientific works in all the languages of Europe, and forms an extensive and appropriate supplement to the Library of Congress, the chief strength of which lies in jurisprudence, political science, history, and books relating to America. Yet no department of literature or science has been left unrepresented in its formation, and the fact has been kept steadily in view that the Library of the Government must become, sooner or later, a universal one. As the only library which is entitled to the benefit of the copyright law, by which copies of each publication for which the Government grants an exclusive right must be deposited in the National Library, this collection must become annually more important as an exponent of the growth of American literature. This wise provision of law prevents the dispersion or destruction of books that tend continually to disappear; a benefit to the cause of letters, the full value of which it requires slight reflection to estimate.
This National Library now embraces 840,000 volumes, besides about 250,000 pamphlets. It is freely open, as a library of reference and reading, to the whole people; but the books are not permitted to be drawn out, except by Senators and Representatives and a few officials for use at the seat of government. Its new, commodious and beautiful building, which may fitly be called the book-palace of the American people, open day and evening to all comers, is a delight to the eye, and to the mind.