The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses

by Unknown

As a result, women are becoming, to a degree without example in the past, the possessors and transmitters of the life of culture. I do not believe that fewer men read good literature than formerly, but the increase in masculine readers of this type has been so much less than the increase in women readers that in comparison the number of men seems to have shrunken greatly. Of course much of this reading by women for culture is desultory and aimless, much is misdirected. But after all deductions are made, it remains true that the knowledge of books seems to be tending to become the possession of women rather than of men. It has always belonged to a certain class of men—not a very large part of the community—and it is still theirs; but its extension to other classes has been along female lines rather than male, and its transmission to the next generation seems only too likely to depend in a large measure upon the female line. College statistics at present show the same facts. Language, literature, and art are the chosen studies of women. Men turn rather to science, economics, or politics—subjects which, they suppose, bear directly on future plans for life. These great subjects whose main purpose in education is the uplifting of the mind, the widening of the mental horizon without direct reference to any specific line of life—these appeal far more strongly to women than to men, and their influence, in a rapidly increasing degree, will reach the next generation through the mother rather than through the father. It would be a pessimistic view which would say that modern society is coming to depend on the mothers for the accumulation and transmission of culture, while retaining in the male line the function of accumulating and transmitting wealth, though much could be said for the thesis and a very plausible argument could be constructed for it.

If all this is true, it is inevitable that women should use libraries far more than men. It is equally inevitable that in this large use much should be trivial, much customary, much misdirected and unwise. Nature has no means of reaching success except by the rule of natural selection—the old-fashioned plan of “cut-and-try,” and this means much failure along the road of advance. We who see the work of the library from our daily experience know how much it is contributing of culture, how much of happiness, to the life of women, and through them to that of the community.

But men—why do they not use the library, say the critics, and what shall the library do to increase its use by men? You have all read the vigorous article that the Independent published on this subject last summer, which, with much of error, contains a good deal of truth in a stimulating form. It presents a subject which must have a somewhat larger treatment.

It ought first to be said that in this and other articles on the topic the terms women and men are by no means similarly used. The writers are not concerned about men at large—the husbands and brothers of the women who are said to visit the library—the women of comparative leisure, who are seeking information on art, literature, or ancestry, who are trying to get up a paper for the club, or who visit the library for recreation. It is the plumber, the machinist, the grocer, whose absence they deplore, and to whom they think the library ought to give help. Not only so, but it is the plumber, rather than as a man, whose presence is desired and who is to be aided. The library, says the Independent in effect, ought to teach the plumber how to “plumb”; ought to furnish him with information which his boss is unable to give. But this is a new function for libraries, however useful it may be, and a function which libraries do not attempt for women. Dressmakers do not (I speak under correction, but I think I am right) expect to secure at a library a knowledge of how to fit a difficult customer, any more than do tailors. Yet this sort of thing, we are told, the library ought to do for men; and we are told in a tone which implies that here is an obvious duty which only wilful ignorance can overlook.

It ought rather to be recognized that in undertaking this work the public library is entering a new and almost unexplored field of effort, and also that it is trying to extend its influence to classes of the community which it has not hitherto reached, and along lines of knowledge which it has never seriously attempted to follow. In such a work there must be many experiments and many failures, and the positive results will be small for a long time....

The problem for the library, as regards men, is therefore twofold: 1. Can men be induced to visit the library for general purposes, to use it in ways similar to those for which women come to it? 2. How can the wage-earners and handicraftsmen be induced to visit the library and use its books for their practical advantage?

Let us first consider the general question: Can we reach the men? The women come to the libraries, say the critics, in shoals and droves, for all sorts of intellectual purposes, good and bad. You catch the children, they say, in school, when they cannot get away, and indeed are glad of relief from lessons; but the men—can you reach them and affect their lives? In reply we must say at once and frankly that no such large volume of success with men is possible as has been the case with women. The public library came to women at the precise moment when increased education disposed them to use it, and increased leisure gave them the opportunity. It fills a space in their lives which would be otherwise void. But the present time is one of decreased leisure and increased intensity of work for all classes of men. Perhaps I ought to except from this statement the wage-earner, who as eight hour laws and customs come into force will have more time for reading than the man of almost any other class in the community. This movement toward lessened hours of labor is more effective where libraries are best organized and therefore presents an opportunity for the extension of library influence, both general and special. The opportunity must be improved, yet neither the wage-earner nor the business man will be easy to reach; neither has been among the active patrons of the library in the past. Their lives are already full, both with business and pleasure, and if the library is to reach them, it must attract them on lines which appeal to them more strongly than business or present pleasure. It must reach needs which they know and feel to be real.

I do not believe that men of the present generation will come to libraries in great numbers for the purposes that attract women. We might as well admit that they will not substitute the novel for the cigar, the printed story for the companionship of the club. They will not read good books because they ought to do so, and the number who will read them because they like to do so is unfortunately not great. Men have not thus acted since the world began, and man-like, they will not do so now, even though such conduct on their part would help our library statistics very greatly. Nor will any great number of them read in order to enlarge the basis of life, for, in spite of the greatness of the movement toward books, it affects at first hand only a few people in the community. The mass of workmen, now and always, will get their knowledge from tradition or at second hand. It will be the unusual man who will get his ideas from books at first hand and thus improve his work and that of his fellows.

The problem is then to reach these few, and through them the community; and this brings us to the second phase of the question. I do not find that the problem has been solved; perhaps it is too recent. But libraries have been attempting its solution by various methods and with varying success.

The first and most successful attempt is that of the large libraries, like that of Pittsburgh and the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, which maintain a technical library for the men—a library adequately housed in its own rooms and administered by a special librarian. These technical libraries for working men succeed in their aim of reaching many of the class for which they are established. They offer not merely an opportunity for reading, but that guidance in the use of books which all classes of the community need, if they are to use books for a serious purpose. They show us that success in this line of effort may be reached if the library has an income sufficient to enable it to undertake the task on a large scale.