The six small cities tabulated are all in Massachusetts, because the latest and fullest reports came to hand from them.
Of various comparisons which could be formulated from the above figures, the following are the most pertinent now:—
(1) Of the five large cities listed, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee give from one fifty-first part to one eighty-second part of their tax levies for their libraries; San Francisco, one one-hundred and twenty-fifth part.
(2) Of the actual sums so set apart by these cities, Boston, with half as many more people, gives nearly seven times as much; Chicago, with twice as many, gives three times as much; Cincinnati, with one-tenth more gives two and two-thirds times as much; Milwaukee, with one-half as many, gives nearly as much ($300 less).
(3) Accordingly, San Francisco would expend every year for its library, if it were as liberal as Boston, about $84,000; if as liberal as Chicago, $27,000; and so on.
(4) The actual comparative size of their libraries is: Boston seven times as large as San Francisco; Chicago nearly twice; Cincinnati twice and a half; Milwaukee only is smaller, being somewhat more than one-third as large.
(5) The rate of increase is: from 16,478 volumes a year at Boston, to 2,778 at Milwaukee; and in San Francisco, for the coming year none (for the loss in worn-out volumes will more than equal any probable total of gifts), none at all.
(6) The number of volumes circulated in a year for each dollar of salaries paid is in San Francisco more than twice as great as in Boston or Milwaukee, and decidedly larger than in Chicago or Cincinnati. It may be added, although the figures are not in this table, that a much more striking evidence of the stringent economy of the library administration here is the fact that there is paid at the Boston Public Library in salaries, in the cataloging department alone, without allowing anything for printing, nearly as much as the whole of this year's library appropriation by the city of San Francisco.
(7) Similar comparisons with the six smaller cities listed would give results generally similar, but showing a still more liberal rate per head and dollar of expenditure for libraries.
In addition to this exposition of comparative parsimony a feature of it should be remembered which might easily escape notice: that, while the money for running expenses is all gone at the end of the year, nearly all of the allowance above running expenses remains represented by valuable property. Thus, if the year's allowance for this library had been $28,000, instead of $18,000, it would not have cost a cent more to run the library and at the year's end about $10,000 worth of books would remain added to the permanent property of the city.