The public library has not only to carry out its mission to the individuals of these groups as its part in social advancement, but it has to coöperate in the work of betterment with the schools, and with clubs and "movements" and with all manner of philanthropic and social endeavor.
There is no lack of appreciation of this function of the public library and we need not emphasize it any more than the service which it renders promptly and liberally to the scholars and other leaders of the mental life of the community. If we should fail to recognize our duty in either respect, objection would be promptly expressed.
The real value of a public library as a municipal institution can be best measured by its service toward building up a more intelligent, hopeful and happier citizenship.
It is possible to help the immigrant through the writers of his native tongue which bring him pleasure and pastime. We may even now help him in his material progress in his new home by giving him elementary books in English, from which he may acquire some knowledge of American institutions and American life, and the time may come when we will be able to do far more with great effect by having American books translated into other tongues for this purpose.
We need to help by far the greater proportion of foreigners to acquire English, because it is a tool which all must have in this country for intelligent bread-winning purposes. We need to study the race history of those represented in the population, and we should know something of their conditions before coming to America; something of their education and their mental development. Many sections of our large cities have different problems in the amalgamation of the population and the library should do what it can to help solve them.
A library agency in the neighborhood of these newcomers is a center of real service and helpfulness. No work shows more definite results, or is appreciated more than that which we do among the immigrants and their children, who are often used as go-betweens by the parents and the library.
While there are many agencies at work upon the children of the immigrant, the library has a very important place and much responsibility. No matter what the other demands may be, we cannot afford to neglect these children, and we must make generous provision to get them interested in good books through the schools and the library.
Between the immigrants and their children at one extreme, and the educational institutions and the scholar at the other, there is that very large group of the community made up of the more or less educated people, concerning whose needs and desires most of the questions on bookbuying are raised. This is a reading group. A certain part of it consumes tons and tons of newspapers and cheap magazines, the very names of which are strange in libraries. This is the reading—perhaps the only reading—of many of them, and we find that they go to the newspapers for the stirring and morbid records of crime, for scandal, for gambling news and other sensational matter, and they are reading the magazines for stories of much the same character.
Such readers crave excitement; they seldom read a book for pleasure, and they have never used the printed page for the purpose of obtaining information since their school days. It seems vital that the public library should find some meeting place with this section of the community. The plane of the cultivated reader has no temptation whatever. One must get down to earth to start growth, and the danger of bending down is far less than that of keeping aloof by reason of too high a standard. It is possible to do this without wholly giving up our demand for good quality, and we may find popular books free from vulgarity and from any pernicious influence, which, if properly used, may create a zest for better books when they are offered.
In selecting books of different grades for the purpose of leading readers from the poorer books to the better, we do, of course, put before the readers of the better books a selection of descending quality. Fortunately, however, there is little danger in this, for there is a safeguard in the fact that a taste for the better books carries with it a dislike to those of inferior quality.