OREGON LIBRARY COMMISSION.
NEED OF FREE LIBRARIES
A library is an essential part of a broad system of education, and a community should think it as discreditable to be without a well-conducted free public library as to be without a good school. If it is the duty of the state to give each future citizen an opportunity to learn to read, it is equally its duty to give each citizen an opportunity to use that power wisely for himself and the state. Wholesome literature can be furnished to all the readers in a community at a fraction of the cost necessary to teach them to read, and the power to read may then become a means to a life-long education.
The books that a boy reads for pleasure do more to determine his ideals and shape his character than the text-books he studies in the schools. Bad and indifferent literature is now so common that the boys will have some sort of reading. If they have a good public library they will read wholesome books and learn to admire Washington, Lincoln and other great men. Without a library many of them will gloat over the exploits of depraved men and women, and their earliest ambitions will be tainted.
Each town needs a library to furnish more practice in reading for the little folks in school; it needs it to give the boys and girls who have learned to read a taste for wholesome literature that informs and inspires; it needs it as a center for an intellectual and spiritual activity that shall leaven the whole community and make healthful and inspiring themes the burden of the common thought—substituting, by natural methods, clean conversation and literature for petty gossip, scandal and oral and printed teachings in vice.
F. A. HUTCHINS.
THE LIBRARY AND BOYS
"In Madison, N. J., a bird club of boys met twice a week, once for study and once for an expedition, and found the library's resources on this topic to be of interest and value. How to utilize profitably the activities of a 'gang' of boys is worth much planning. One librarian is reported to have started a chair-caning class to interest restless boys; another had a museum of flowers and insects, another conducted a branch of the flower mission. Not less interesting, and perhaps more instructive, is a series of talks on Indian legends accompanied by hunting expeditions for the half-buried implements and relics found in almost every meadow in some parts of the country. Boys are eager to learn about natural history and natural science, and they will be encouraged at the public library."
IRENE VAN KLEECK.