But more than ordinary business qualities are needed to make this library all that it should be. Recognize the true function of the free public library; it is a part of a large system of public education. It is but a co-ordinate department of that larger institution for public education—the people's university—including the ward schools and the high schools. Some of the fruitfullest and best work of those schools will be done in this library.
Then, too, the public library stands for the wholesome truth that education is never finished and should not stop when one stops going to school. The boy and the girl who graduate at the school do not desert the library; they keep up and carry forward their intellectual training by a post-graduate course in the public library, for the rest of their lives.
Furthermore, the free public library supplements the work of the free public schools by reaching those whom the schools never reached at all, or only reached very slightly.
And that public library is never a complete success, in which is not present in the officers a spirit of courtesy toward readers, of sympathy, of cheerfulness, of patience, even of helpfulness. Don't permit your library ever to be a dismal, bibliographical cave, in charge of a dragon. Let it always be a bright and winsome place, hospitable to all orderly people; a place where even those ill-informed about books will not be made embarrassed, but encouraged. Let it be one of the most attractive places in town; let it outshine in attractiveness the vulgar and harmful attractions of the bar-room and the gambling den; let it grow up into the best life of the community, a place resorted to by all, loved by all, a blessing to all.
THE LIBRARY AS A FIELD FOR PHILANTHROPY
At a dinner given to Andrew Carnegie by the Authors' League in New York, he said: “They say I am a philanthropist. I am no such foolish fellow.” Nevertheless, to the North American Review for December, 1889, he contributed an article, entitled “The Best Fields for Philanthropy,” in which he gives the Library first place. It is of course impossible to tell whether the title was his or a suggestion of the editor. The extract printed here is interesting as embodying Mr. Carnegie's gospel of “help by self-help,” but also as giving credit to Enoch Pratt of Baltimore as an earlier exponent of it.
Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Nov. 25, 1835. He was brought by his family to Pittsburgh, Pa. as a boy of 13, and after working as a weaver's assistant and a telegraph messenger boy, became an operator, rose to be head of his division, made money by organizing a sleeping-car company and after the Civil War became an ironmaster, retiring in 1901 as a multi-millionaire. Much of his fortune he gave to build libraries, almost always on the condition that the municipality should assure them a stated support. He died in New York, Aug. 11, 1919.
The reception given to the first paper [1] upon this subject, to which our lamented friend, the late editor and proprietor of this Review, was pleased to give the first place in the June number, has been most encouraging to its author, as it would surely have been to the editor had he been spared, for he was most deeply interested in the subject.
[1] “Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie. In the North American Review, June, 1889.