Is it not true that greed, selfishness, privilege, injustice and neglect are five of the great sins of civilization? These obstructions to progress are largely due to ignorance and indifference, two causes which are in themselves as great evils as their results. In order to attain the best of social conditions, positive cures must be found for these devastating evils—cures that will replace greed by liberality, selfishness by the brotherhood of man, privilege by equality, injustice by justice and neglect by service—cures that will transform ignorance and indifference into clear-eyed knowledge and active responsibility. Laws and revolutions have failed more miserably than we enjoy admitting and only through the far reaching, beneficent influences of education and religion may we expect to touch the roots of these great evils.
Is it possible that many of our public libraries, who reach the individual and his family long before and for many years following the efforts of our public schools, can consider themselves excused from a large part of their responsibility in the educational movements now striving to improve the physical, mental and moral conditions of these men who suffer for want of better things? How can it be that some librarians stand by indifferently and heed not the cry of need from these weaker members of society, who, with their distinctive and curable social difficulties, have been left alone to carve their own destinies, unappreciated and unaided? The time is near at hand when everyone shall recognize that it is the "common right of all men to share in the culture, prosperity and progress" of society, and that the conservation of life by raising it to its highest value is to be the cry of our new era of heightened individuality.
In his inaugural address President Wilson uttered these accusing heart searching words: "We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen without mercy the years through. The groans and agony of it all, the solemn moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories and out of every home where the struggle has had its intimate and familiar seat, have not yet reached our ears."
The "vision of the open gates of opportunity for all" must first be seen by those who lead before they who follow can dream dreams and go forth to realize them.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: The next speaker, who is now the librarian of the Rochester public library, was for many years librarian of one of the most important libraries south of what Mr. O. Henry was accustomed to call "Mason & Hamlin's Line." I have the pleasure of introducing Mr. WILLIAM F. YUST, who will speak to us on
WHAT OF THE BLACK AND YELLOW RACES?
The form in which this subject is expressed is first a question asking for information which has never before been collected. Possibly there is in it also a mild challenge to library authorities calling for a declaration of purpose and policy.
So far there is no indication of a yellow race problem in public libraries. When foreigners enter a field which is already occupied they do not produce a real race problem so long as they are so few in number that they are chiefly objects of curiosity.
It is difficult to understand how the Japanese can be a serious race problem in California where they constitute only two and one-half per cent of the population and own and lease only twelve one-hundredths of one per cent of the land. And yet it sounds as if there is trouble there. Whatever may be its nature and its causes, the difficulty has not extended to public libraries. The Chinese on the Pacific coast, as elsewhere, are seldom seen in a library. They live in their own quarter and hardly ever penetrate other sections of the city except for purposes of trade.