Is the Hungarian's enjoyment of Jokai or their patriot poets for Hungarians alone? One can better appreciate how to sustain effort and enthusiasm in a person or a group of this nationality if one knows that much of their best poetry came almost from the cannon's mouth on the field of battle; and if one has seen the glistening eyes and heard the voices of kerchief-capped girls and boys in trousers to shoe tops as they sang in ringing tones "Esküszünk!" and then heard their national song in English for the first time. At home they may not celebrate their Independence Day, March 15; but when they are invited to, here, in the library, they do it with much genuine feeling and true sentiment, which I believe leads them to appreciate and adopt as their own our Independence Day. Through such as they, perhaps, patriotic sentiment and feeling may once more be evident in our Fourth of July celebrations.
If we try to think of a library without the contributions of writers of other nationalities, we must face almost empty shelves in some classes of knowledge. This makes us realize more clearly that immigrants have rich possessions by right of inheritance while these are ours only by adoption. Some of the newcomers to our shores may have lost their heritage temporarily; but they will warmly cherish as a friend the library that restores to them this valuable possession and for us that friendship is preeminently a contribution.
There are other special ways in which the library seems happily successful in forming such friendships. With adults it comes through our co-operation with neighborhood associations, or organizations working for the benefit of foreigners, such as the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. who conduct in our lecture rooms classes to teach English to foreigners. In these instances it is our pleasure to supplement with books the copies treated. The book work is, perhaps, most marked in connection with the English classes where we have opportunity to watch progress and needs of the individual more carefully from the time when an eager pupil may ask, as one did, for a book called a "Woman's Tongue" wanting Arnold's "Mother Tongue" to his reading of Hale's "Man without a country," perhaps, or Andrews' "The perfect tribute." There are also many semi-social, semi-educational clubs, or associations, which hold their meetings in the libraries. The Slavia is a Bohemian club, which has as its only meeting place the Bohemian department of one of our branches. Its members have done much to help form a splendid Bohemian library. Several Hungarian associations work in co-operation with three branches, where are collections of Hungarian books. A large Polish society gives its educational lectures twice a month in one branch and its advice in the selection of books; but perhaps the "German Association for Culture" best illustrates my point. They state: "We are working for culture, and we aim to give the Germans in America and the Americans a better understanding of our contemporary German literature and art. We are bending our efforts more particularly for our members who as artists, poets, writers, etc., are producing valuable works. And we want to help as much as possible those talented artists, poets, etc., who are not yet known." Their distinction is that they succeed! Even in the et ceteras!
As concrete instances of other possible contributions by foreigners to library progress, I want to tell of the discussion of one City History Club chapter and the action of a settlement organization. The membership in both is composed of foreign-born young men from sixteen to twenty years of age, and both groups interest themselves in present day civic welfare. The Settlement Club wrote to the mayor, comptroller, library trustees and several daily papers a dignified plea for increase in library appropriation and in salaries. The year's closing meeting of a certain City History Club was a discussion of the city budget, the club members representing New York's mayor, aldermen and comptroller. The main contention of the majority was that cutting the appropriation of the public library meant seriously handicapping one of the city's most efficient servants and they ended with a warm appreciation of service rendered by library assistants and a vigorous plea for better salaries. This was later reproduced for an audience of representative citizens by the City History Club as a token typical of their work. Both these happenings came as complete surprises to librarians. It seems as if in their eagerness to "get on" young foreigners, especially, seek and use every possible public means for advancement. They soon appreciate what good service means and how to get it. They make us feel toward what ends they are tending and suggest definitely our part in the building for civic betterment.
To sum up, immigrants do bring very rich contributions in arts and literature. They bring many capabilities, that of acquiring intellectual cultivation being not the least among them. I am not blind to the seriousness of the problems they create, having worked among them about ten years; but the conviction strengthens that knowing and understanding their racial and social inheritance and first hand contact with groups of individuals stimulate to broader thought and living. It is not an argument! It is a suggestive statement! Immigrants can contribute to library progress.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: We will now have a paper from Mr. CHARLES E. RUSH, the librarian of the St. Joseph public library, on
THE MAN IN THE YARDS
This great country of ours has become within the last century a huge "melting pot" for all the nations of the world. Foreign and English speaking tongues from the four corners of the earth have sought our shores as a haven of relief and opportunity. No other nation has experienced a like growth and none other has ever gained the changing cosmopolitan characteristics which have come to us from such widely differing component parts. Those of us who call ourselves Americans owe our life, liberty and happiness to the conditions which brought about this great growth and upon us devolves the great burden of relieving many of the unfortunate conditions which naturally result from the continued and increasing wave of humanity still seeking better things in our so-called land of freedom and equality.
During the past ninety years nearly thirty millions of people have entered our immigration gates, adding to our numbers more inhabitants than the total population of the United States three score years ago, and almost one-third of our present total figure. At the close of the year of 1912 the total and combined population of five states of the Union did not equal the number of immigrants admitted during the preceding twelve months. Eighty per cent of these thirty millions arrived during the last fifty years. Eighty-seven per cent of them were more than fourteen years of age, while only thirteen per cent were under fourteen. These figures easily demonstrate that the problem is a growing one and that the large proportion of new arrivals are destined to become citizens and parents of future citizens in a short time. Our past policy of devoting our greatest efforts to the thirteen per cent while largely neglecting the eighty-seven per cent seems very similar to the losing method of mending a leaking boat by removing the water with a sponge rather than by repairing the hole.