Still another inestimable feature of the public library is that it maintains a public reading room for children as well as adults.
Finally, the library furnishes reading at home to those who are not yet in a position to become owners of books. The benefit derived from reading of this character is often of questionable value. The habitué of the circulating library makes his selections from misleading or sensational titles. Little care and less intelligence is exercised in choosing either title or author. As a result librarians are constantly complaining that only the trashiest and most worthless books are read.
The circulating department of the public library is now supplemented by others that are conducted for cash profit. These have sprung up in many cities. And now we have the "Book-Lovers' Library," a corporation with capital stock, engaging in business for profit. It has the advantage of certain trust features. It proposes to organize branches in all of the principal cities and towns in the country. For five dollars a year it proposes to supply fifty dollars' worth of reading to each subscriber. An automobile is employed, with an attendant to deliver the books to subscribers each week and take up those that have been read. Having paid five, ten or more dollars, at the beginning of the year, the subscriber can read from morning till night, while the new books come and go with the lightning speed of the automobile.
As in many other circulating libraries, new copyrighted fiction is the chief staple supplied by the "Book-Lovers' Library"—the sweetest pabulum automatically administered.
After a season of such dissipation call in a neurologist to diagnose your patient, and he will advise you that by continuing the treatment the mind will be reduced to a sieve, if not ultimately to absolute imbecility. Having abandoned the more serious literature that calls into use all the faculties of the mind, the reader of nothing but fiction converts what would otherwise be a healthful recreation into dissipation, that is enervating and permanently debilitating to all the faculties of the mind, when carried to an extreme. Had the reader been denied the use of this automatic machine, and been compelled, as formerly, to browse through the book store in search of something to read, more serious books would have been selected—history, travel, descriptive writing or popular science, with an occasional novel by way of recreation.
But to continue the argument, suppose we abolish the bookseller, as has been proposed. This would not be a difficult matter. Most of them would gladly be "abolished" if they could sell out their stock for anything near what it cost them. Their profits have been so reduced by unfair competition that they are not sufficient to pay the cost of doing business. They have been compelled to carry side lines, as stationery, newspapers, periodicals, sporting goods, bric-a-brac, wall paper, etc., in order to make a living. By this means they have learned that other lines of merchandise yield a better profit than books. As a result most of them have greatly reduced their book stock, or entirely abandoned the sale of books, and put in more profitable lines of merchandise.
The causes that have led up to this result are manifold: 1st. They were strenuously urged, and they finally consented to allow discounts:
(a) To ministers of the gospel, since they are public benefactors.
(b) To school teachers, since they are public educators and benefactors.
(c) To public libraries, since they are for the most part eleemosynary institutions, and hence entitled to charity.
Indeed, when I recount the charitable benefactions that have been exacted and received at the hands of the retail bookseller, he seems to me to have been the most saintly character that has lived in my day and generation. And right here it is of interest to note that these ministers, these teachers, these physicians, these public librarians were actually receiving out of the hands of the public stated salaries that exceeded by far the annual net profit of the average bookseller.
2d. Having secured from the local dealer a discount equal to the best part of his profit, many librarians have gone behind him and appealed directly to the publishers for a larger discount. This has been granted in most cases, so that most librarians have recently been receiving as large a discount as local dealers.