will strengthen the burgher class and corporations in towns by compelling many who are not favorable to these classes and interests to support them, as the only means left of saving society from lapsing into complete barbarism.
We shall probably return at an early day to this subject, for it is really the great question of the hour.
[144] 1. The Dublin Review. Article IX.: The International Society. London. October, 1871.
2. The Labor Movement. Lecture of Wendell Phillips. Steinway Hall. New York Tribune, Dec. 7, 1871.
ON CATHOLIC LIBRARIES.
It must be confessed that the Catholics of this country, in proportion to their numerical strength and untiring zeal for the interests of religion, do not present that proportionately large class of readers which we find among the Protestant sects. Their exertions in building churches, schools, and charitable institutions have been beyond all praise, and have constantly elicited the admiration and astonishment of their opponents; but as yet very little organized effort has been made by the influential portion of the laity to place within easy reach of their humbler co-religionists the means of cheap and instructive reading. The more intelligent and wealthy are too often content to purchase a few standard Catholic works, and after perusing them with more or less attention place them with their other books on the shelves of their libraries, there to remain secluded from public view, and of comparatively little value to any person but their owners. The less favored class, who for obvious reasons are unable to indulge in this luxury, are still practically cut off from one of the chief sources of knowledge and amusement—good books—and are necessarily compelled from uncontrollable circumstances to go through life with their minds and tastes undeveloped, and their time dissipated in idleness, or wasted over the trashy and deleterious contents of the many
cheap story newspapers and novels which the American press is constantly scattering broadcast over the land.
This melancholy fact is most observable in the ranks of our adult immigrant population, who, coming from countries where education was almost unattainable, money scarce, and books dear, have not generally acquired either ability or taste for reading, though it has been remarked that even among them, when an opportunity is at all presented, the desire for information is excited in a remarkable degree, and only requires a reasonable impetus to develop it still more. Still, from the fact of their usually limited means and comparatively unsettled modes of life, they are as yet unable to purchase or retain any appreciable collection of desirable publications.
The remedy for this defect in our growing Catholic society lies, in our opinion, in the formation of local libraries, suitable in variety and extent to the wants and capacity of particular localities. There are at least twenty-five hundred centres of Catholic population in America where very respectable collections of books could be purchased and placed in some safe and accessible place, say in the school-rooms or church basements, and half as many more, particularly in our Western settlements, where at least a few good