The PRESIDENT: You have heard the result of the election. I shall ask Mr. Gardner M. Jones and Mr. Harrison W. Craver to show the president-elect the way to the platform.
(The committee escorted Mr. Anderson to the platform.)
Mr. President-elect, it is with special personal satisfaction that I have announced to you the result unanimously made by this conference in choosing you to the honorable position of president. I am personally gratified in that you represent, I think, so splendidly many of the elements which have been talked about during this meeting. You are yourself a graduate of a library school, yet you have sympathy with those who have not attained to that distinction. You have been associated with a great scientific library, you have been in charge of a medium-sized library and are now at the head of the largest public library in the world; and yet many of us have had evidences that you have the deepest and warmest sympathy for the small and struggling library, no matter where it may be.
Mr. President-elect, the retiring board of officers received this gavel not as an emblem of authority, but as a symbol of service. As such we commit it to your care for the next year.
For the retiring board of officers I may say, in the words of Wynken DeWorde in one of his colophons, "And now we make an end. If we have done well, we have done that which we would have desired; and if but meanly and slenderly, we yet have done that which we could attain unto."
The wish goes from the ex-president to the president that the most successful administration in the history of the Association may be the one which is about to begin.
(Mr. Legler then handed the gavel to Mr. Anderson and retired from the platform.)
PRESIDENT ANDERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow members of the Association: In the first place, I want to express my heartfelt thanks for the gracious things the retiring president has just been pleased to say concerning my humble self. Furthermore, I have to thank him for giving me an opportunity to correct a mistake which has been current in this Association for some twenty years, namely, that I am the graduate of a library school. I was at the Albany library school—more years ago than I care to tell—between seven and eight months. My money ran out and I had to get a job. I did not even complete the first year. That is a reflection on me, not upon the library school.
The exigencies of trains and luncheons would make it unfair if not cruel for me to detain you here this morning with a speech and I shall make none. But I want to beg you on this occasion to forget and forgive the disagreeable things said or done by the officers-elect in the heat of a bitter partisan campaign. (Laughter—There was no opposition ticket.)
Seriously, I want to express to you all, not merely for myself but for every member of the incoming executive board and the incoming members of the Council, our appreciation of the honor you have conferred upon us and of the responsibilities you have placed upon our shoulders. We can only hope to maintain—and it will require a struggle and great and arduous work on our part to maintain—the high standard set by our predecessors. I thank you.