James Manning Winchell.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES.
Many a mickle makes a muckle, says the proverb, and whoever looks into the operations of society on the great scale will find how true the saying is. A national debt, a national crop, the cattle feeding on the hills of a broad continent, the school-going children of a populous commonwealth, the number of its vagabonds and criminals at large or in jail, all need such an array of figures for their expression that the amounts really convey no impression to the mind. The number of books collected in public libraries does not reach such unwieldy proportions as these, but it is still very large. The information gathered by the Bureau of Education for the purpose of exhibiting the condition of American society at the end of the first century of our independence shows that the libraries which are classed as "public" number 3,682 in the United States, and contain 12,276,964 volumes and 1,500,000 pamphlets.
Of our private libraries little is known. In 1870 the census-takers reported 107,673 collections of this class, containing in all 25,571,503 volumes, but these numbers are known to be much below the truth. The acute and practical superintendent of the ninth census declared that this part of his work had no value, and even said that "the statistics of private libraries are not, from any proper point of view, among the desirable inquiries of the census." What a commentary upon the progress of society is contained in this opinion of the most accomplished statistician ever engaged in studying our social movements! It is but a short time since the owning of books was a mark of superior station in the world. What has produced the change?
We can perhaps learn the cause of it better by a comparison than by direct study of bibliographical history. In Voltaire's time thermometers were so great a rarity that the owner of one of them was considered to be a savant. Time and social progress have so completely altered this state of things that thermometers are now made in factories, are owned by all classes, and applied to the commonest uses. The thermometers hanging on our walls no longer indicate familiarity with science, but merely that a new tool has been added to household appliances. So in book-making. The art which once served chiefly to record discoveries in knowledge, conduct controversies in polemics, philosophy, and politics, and for other grave and important purposes now adds to these a multitude of common uses. A library may contain scores and even hundreds of volumes, and yet have nothing but those books which have served in the education and amusement of the children in an ordinary family. Or it may be the result of a chance aggregation of "railway literature," bought to relieve the tediousness of travel. Or it may consist, as is sometimes the case, of the small and precious collections in frontier log huts, of the gratuitous contributions of the patent medicine vender, the plough-maker, and the lightning-rod man, mingled with the dear-bought subscription books of the wandering peddler! Books are so common that the possession of them is no longer an indication of the intellectual tendency of their possessors.
With libraries open to the public the case is different. Their condition affords one standard by which the character and tastes of the people may be measured.
The United States are considered to be far behind foreign countries in their book collections. We have nothing to compare with Dresden, Berlin, and Paris, with their 500,000, 700,000, and 2,000,000 volumes. We do not reach the wealth of even such second-rate places as Wolfenbüttel, Breslau, and Göttingen, if their collections are correctly reported at 300,000, 340,000, and 400,000 volumes. And yet each year witnesses the purchase of more than 400,000 volumes for our public libraries, taken collectively, a number that is larger than any one collection in this country! The permanent fund of our libraries, so far as known, amounts to $6,105,581 and their annual income to $1,398,756. These figures do not, in fact, represent anything like the truth, for not half the libraries reported their permanent fund, or their yearly purchases, and only one-quarter reported their yearly income. About one-fifth of the whole number (769 exactly) report their expenditures for new books at $562,407, and in 742 libraries the use of books amounts to 8,879,869 volumes yearly. In these figures Sunday-school libraries, one of the most constantly used kinds, are not included. Looking at the magnitude of the numbers reported, and considering all that is omitted, we obtain an inkling of the immense exchange of books among the people from these public distribution points.
The existing public libraries, excluding all under 300 volumes, and all in Sunday-schools of whatever size, may be considered as belonging to six principal divisions. These, with the number of libraries and the volumes in each, are as follows: