As a serious danger this is something quite new. It has come upon us within recent years. I can remember a state of things in which it was difficult for a man in common life to join himself with other men, much beyond his own neighborhood, in any effectual way, excepting as he did it on the lines of an old political party or an older church. But, to-day, leagues, unions, federations, associations, orders, rings, form themselves among the restless, unstable elements of the time as clouds are formed in the atmosphere, and with kindred lightning flashes and mutterings of thunder. Any boldly ignorant inventor of a new economical theory or a new political doctrine, or a new cornerstone for the fabric of society, can set on foot a movement from Maine to California, between two equinoxes, if he handles his invention with dexterity. This is what invests popular ignorance with terrors which never appeared in it before, and it is this which has brought the real, responsible test of democracy, social and political, on our time and on us.
Democracy, in fact, has remained considerably, hitherto, an unworked theory of society, even in communities which have supposed themselves to be democratically constituted. It has remained so through want of conditions that would give a clear sound to the individual voice and free play to the individual will. Those conditions are now arriving in the world, and the democratic régime is consequently perfecting itself, not politically alone, but economically, and in all the social relations of mankind.
So it is not exaggeration to say that we have come to a situation in which society must fight for its life against popular ignorance. The old agencies of education are inadequate, when the best has been made of them. The common school does not go far enough, and cannot. Its chief function is to prepare a soil in the young mind for the after seed-planting which will produce fruits of intelligence. Unsupplemented, it is well-nigh barren of true educational results. The higher schools and colleges reach too small a number to count for much in a problem which concerns the teaching of the universal millions. What agency, then, is there, that will prepare the democracy of the present and the future for its tremendous responsibilities?
Some may say, the newspaper press: and I would rejoice if we could accept that reply. For the press is an educating power that might transform the civilization of the world as swiftly in mind and morals as steam and electricity have transformed its material aspects. There is nothing conceivable in the way of light and leading for mankind which a conscientious and cultivated newspaper press might not do within a single generation. But a press of that character and that effect seems possible only under circumstances of disinterestedness which are not likely to exist. The publication of a newspaper may sometimes be undertaken as a duty, but not often. As a rule it is a business, like any other, with the mercenary objects of business; and as a rule, too, the gain sought is more readily and more certainly found by pandering to popular ignorance than by striving against it. A few newspapers can secure a clientage which they please best by dignity, by cleanness, by sober truthfulness, and by thoughtful intelligence, in their columns; but the many are tempted always, not merely to stoop to low tastes and vulgar sentiments, but to cultivate them; because there is gravitation in the moral as well as the physical world, and culture in the downward way is easier than the upward.
The vulgarizing of the news press has been a late and rapid process, nearly coincident in cause and event with the evolution of this modern democracy which it makes more problematical. We need not be very old to have seen the beginnings: the first skimming of the rich daily news of the world for the scum and froth of it; the first invention of that disgusting brew, from public sewers and private drains, with which the popular newspapers of the day feed morbid appetites. We can recall the very routes by which it was carried from city to city, and taken up by journal after journal, as they discovered a latent, un-developed taste for such ferments of literature in the communities around them. The taste was latent, potential; it did not exist as a fact; it was not conscious of itself; it made no demands. The newspapers deliberately sought it out, delved for it, brought it to the surface, fed it, stimulated it, made it what it is to-day, an appetite as diseased and as shamefully pandered to as the appetite for intoxicating drams.
And, so far as I can perceive, this action and reaction between what is ignorant and vulgar in the public and what is mercenary and unscrupulous in the press will go on until popular education from other sources puts an end to it. For it is the saving fact that there are other sources; and foremost among them are the public libraries. If it has been our privilege to see, and for some in our circle to bear a part in, the beginnings of the active educational work of the libraries, I am persuaded that it is only the beginnings we have witnessed as yet. I am persuaded that the public library of the future will transcend our dreams in its penetrating influence. Consider for a moment what it is, and what it offers to the energies of education which a desperate necessity is awakening and organizing in the world! It is a store, a reservoir, of the new knowledge of the latest day and the ripened wisdom of the long past. To carry into the memory and into the thought of all the people who surround it, in a town, even some little part of what it holds of instructed reasoning and instructed feeling, would be to civilize that community beyond the highest experience of civilization that mankind has yet attained to. There is nothing that stands equally beside it as a possible agent of common culture. It is the one fountain of intellectual life which cannot be exhausted; which need not be channeled for any fortunate few; which can be generously led to the filling of every cup, of every capacity, for old or young. There is little in it to tempt the befouling hand of the politician, and it offers no gain to the mercantile adventurer. For those who serve it on behalf of the public there are few allurments of money or fame. Its vast powers for good are so little exposed to seduction or corruption that it seems to give promises for the future which are safer and surer than any others that society can build hopes upon.
In this view, those who serve the public libraries have a great responsibility laid on them. They hold in their hands what would give to civilization an ideal refinement if it could be distributed and communicated to all. As we know very well, that is impossible. There is a part of mankind, in every community, which never will feel, never can be made to feel, the gentle attractiveness and influence of books. The fact is one not to be disputed or ignored. At the same time it is a fact to be treated practically as though it did not exist. It is our business to assume that the mission of good books, books of knowledge, books of thought, books of inspiration, books of right feeling, books of wholesome imagination, can be pushed to every hearth, and to every child and parent who sits by it. And it is our business to labor unsparingly toward the making of that assumption good, without reckoning any fraction of hopelessness in it.