Memoirs of a millionaire

by Lucia True Ames Mead

I find that Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Colorado have but one each; and that Louisiana and Maryland have none outside of the one largest city in each.

“Of course what I have said does not imply that there are no libraries in the states referred to. But it does mean that there are but few, and that those few are either subscription libraries or else belong to schools or institutions, and are not open to the general public.

“How is this all to be explained? Is it sufficient to say that the West is young and that the South is poor and sparsely settled? The West is young, indeed, but not too young to have magnificent opera houses, hundreds of millionaires’ palaces, and, in many of the new cities, richer clothes for every one and more of them than the average New Englander thinks he can afford.

“The South is poor, very poor, and very sparsely settled compared with the North. But the fact that in those Southern states which I have mentioned there is not one free library open to all, such as one may find in scores of little villages in the North, is not due entirely to poverty.

“Even New York State, with her superior wealth and population, and with an aggregate number of all kinds of libraries nearly as great as that of Massachusetts, has

NO MORE THAN THIRTY

which are absolutely free and general as compared with the two hundred such in Massachusetts. And Pennsylvania, with all her wealth and numbers, shows no more than ten such libraries.

“The farther one travels from New England, the more surely does one find public sentiment indifferent to these matters, and whole communities preferring to tax themselves for the adornment of their cities, rather than to provide every poor man with books. Books are considered a luxury, not a necessity; to be indulged in only by those who can afford to pay for them.

LEARNING FOR ALL

was the idea of the men who made the North what it is. Learning for the few was the idea of the men who made the South what it is. And the men of this generation are reaping the harvest of the seed which those men sowed.