The first free town library in America, or the world, supported by municipal taxation, was established by the efforts of Abiel Abbot, D.D., in Peterboro, New Hampshire, in 1833. A decayed social library and an operatives' library, and perhaps some other small collections, were thus gathered under the shelter of the town; and took on new life from its fostering care, and the small annual appropriation for new books which is the breath of life to all libraries. Here, as always, it was a man that inspired the advance movement and carried it on to successful fulfilment.
In 1849, New Hampshire passed a general law enabling towns and cities to maintain free libraries by taxation; and in 1851 Massachusetts, which had granted Boston in 1847 the right to establish such a library, passed a similar general enabling act. Several other states followed almost immediately, and nearly every northern and northwestern state, except Pennsylvania, has since adopted the measure. In 1893, twenty states had enacted similar statutes; and, in all, more than seven hundred free libraries have been established under them. They have increased—as might naturally have been expected—most rapidly in the portions of the country where other library agencies, and where an efficient public school system, have been longest and most efficiently at work. Thus, of the seven hundred libraries, more than three hundred are in Massachusetts (according to the returns of the Public Library Commission for 1894), or 1,233 volumes for every thousand of population; in New Hampshire something over one hundred (in 1894), or 464 volumes per thousand of inhabitants.
Great Britain has kept nearly equal pace with our foremost states in free library legislation. A general enabling act to establish and support free libraries for the people from municipal rates was passed by Parliament in 1850, and accepted with great energy and enthusiasm by many of the northern towns and cities. Eighty-six free libraries, not including branches, had been opened before 1880; but, as in this country, the conservatism of the southern portions of the country has prevented their general establishment. For similar reasons only the province of Ontario has made any considerable movement in this direction in the Dominion of Canada.
This hasty historical sketch would be very incomplete without some account of the recent legislation, in several states, for the assistance of the smaller towns and villages in the establishment and increase of public libraries. This legislation has already had marvelous results. Massachusetts, in 1890, appropriated one hundred dollars to any town that would raise by taxation, or appropriate from the dog tax, or otherwise raise, at least fifty dollars (or if its valuation was less than one million dollars it should raise twenty-five dollars, or if less than $250,000 it should raise at least fifteen dollars); and should agree to take care of the books, and furnish the agency of distribution. The sums granted by the state are in the hands of a board of commissioners appointed by the governor (with the advice and consent of the council); and so far these commissioners—librarians and others—have been eminent citizens, serving without salaries, and having only $500 in their hands annually for clerk hire and traveling expenses. The commission is also required to give advice and information to librarians and others concerning selection of books, cataloguing, and administration; and to select and forward the books granted by the state.
Now for results. The commission has thus aided in establishing, in four years, more than sixty free public libraries in small towns (out of one hundred and four not thus supplied) and its action has shamed a few larger towns into establishing them; so that now only two and three fourths per cent of the population of the state, in forty-four small towns, were in January, 1894, without their advantages. And this has been accomplished with an entire expense to the commonwealth of less than ten thousand dollars. Per contra, more than half a million dollars were given by individuals in a single year for similar purposes within the state. Certainly, this has been a most economical and effective public outlay; free, too, from all suspicion of any one's fattening by political jobbery.
The record of New Hampshire is even more remarkable. This state passed a law in 1891, similar to the one outlined above, and over eighty towns accepted its provisions, and established free libraries within a twelvemonth after it came in force. We are glad to read that the states of Maine, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are moving in the direction of a measure that has proved so effective in its operation, and that must be so widely beneficent.
The state of New York has adopted another system to stimulate the development of the free library. Her enabling act of many years ago produced, as we have seen, comparatively small results; and in 1892 a law was passed authorizing the Regents of the University of New York to lend for a limited time—usually six months—selections of books from the duplicate department of the state library, or from books purchased for the purpose, to any public library in the state; or, where none exists, to twenty-five petitioners in any town or village of the state. A fee of five dollars is required, to cover cost of transportation, catalogue, etc., for a loan of one hundred volumes, and a smaller sum (three dollars) for a loan of fifty volumes. This plan, it will be seen, is a revival of the old school district method; and of that instituted by Samuel Brown in Scotland, and the later one found successful in Australia. The antipodes have a fashion lately of suggesting valuable object-lessons for social legislation. In small communities it has the advantage of making books do manifold duty, and of meeting the wants of varied communities and occupations. By judicious and varied selection, clubs, classes, schools, and reading circles may be aided in special courses and investigations. At the end of twenty months one hundred and twenty-five of these free loan libraries had been sent out by the New York Board of Regents; of which nearly one half (44) went to communities without public libraries, the remainder going to libraries already established (22), to university extension centers (18), and to academy libraries open to the public (22). Eleven thousand nine hundred volumes were thus made accessible to the public, with a total circulation of not far from 25,000 volumes and 9,000 readers. This system, which seems even more economical than the Massachusetts one, has greatly promoted interest in good reading, and led to the establishment of several local public libraries. The system is very elastic and is easily adapted to the rapidly growing demands for its privileges. As a pioneer method, or as auxiliary to municipal libraries, it promises excellent results.
After this historical survey it would hardly seem necessary to dwell upon the arguments in behalf of the free public library. “There is probably no mode of expending public money,” says Stanley Jevons, “which gives a more extraordinary and immediate return in utility and innocent enjoyment.” He affirms that in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and some other great towns in England, as in similar communities in this country, where such libraries have existed for years, there is but one opinion about them. “They are classed with town-halls, police courts, prisons, and poorhouses as necessary adjuncts of our stage of civilization.” A more natural, and certainly more cheerful, collocation would class them with free schools, museums, and public parks, as Jevons himself afterwards suggests. “The main raison d'être of free public libraries, as indeed of public museums, art galleries, parks, halls, public clocks, and many other kinds of public works, is the enormous increase of utility which is thereby acquired for the community at a trifling cost.” He proceeds to illustrate by several instances what he calls “the remarkable multiplication of utility” in the case of free lending libraries by several instances. Every book, in the first year of the Birmingham Free Library, was issued on an average seventeen times, and the periodical literature turned over fifty times. In Leeds, every book was used eighteen times. In larger libraries and in later use, of course, the figures are less, averaging from three to ten times, the whole cost of each issue averaging only from two to five cents. Similar statistics may be found in the Forum article already referred to in regard to the manifold use of books furnished in New York.
The comfort and moral economy of a cheerful, well-lighted reading-room, too, is overwhelmingly illustrated. Mr. Jevons found that in Manchester all persons of suitable age visited the free libraries on an average thirteen times a year, of whom three fourths came to read in the reading-rooms. Such a refuge from the perils of the saloon and the street is an immense benefaction in any neighborhood.