Buggsville, Mo.
Dear Friend: The trustees told me that they thought you would be glad to receive a letter from me, telling you something about my experiences in addition to the official report, a copy of which they will forward.
Buggsville, as you already know, is the first town to put up a library building with aid from the Western and Southern Library Fund. Therefore I naturally feel considerable pride and interest in this, the first-fruits of my labors, so far as the erection of a building is concerned.
I will say, by the way, however, that I have been very successful in starting reading-rooms in the little villages, sixty-eight little towns already having them well equipped and beginning to produce a marked result.
Three months ago we started a reading-room at Onetumka, ten miles from here. The people were a rough, ignorant set, for the most part. A good many foreigners are there, and a number of land speculators and some mill hands, for they have a good water-power, and are already beginning to do a little manufacturing.
It was really one of the most hopeless places I have ever seen. The bad element had got the upper hand from the first. There were five saloons, and several low dance-halls and pool-rooms. There was no resident minister, and they had preaching only once in two weeks by an overworked Baptist preacher with much goodwill and little tact in managing so difficult a community.
I always make it a point to get the ministers to help me first of all, but here it was useless. So I appealed to the school-teacher, the doctor, and the mill-owner. The latter took little interest, although I assured him that anything that could entice his workmen from the saloon would make them serve him better.
The little school-mistress talked to her children about it, but with no success; the doctor was indifferent, and, as I had a more promising field elsewhere, I stayed in the town only a few days.
But presently the county papers began to be full of the library business, and I was asked to speak here and there in the little schoolhouses and churches. At first I trembled at facing an audience of one or two hundred, but I had not been a schoolma’am for nothing, and I soon got over that, at last finding myself no more afraid of them than of my fifty boys and girls in the old school-room at home.
I found that this was the best way to arouse interest. I gave them a practical talk, told them about book clubs, Chatauqua circles and other things, and suggested ways and means of raising money. Most of them live pretty comfortably, but money is scarce, and I find that most of the farms are mortgaged. Generally, however, I found some degree of enthusiasm, especially among the women, when they learned that after the first month it could be so arranged that the magazines might be taken from the reading-room and circulated.