Part 1

Chapter 14,052 wordsPublic domain

LIBRARY IDEALS

HENRY E. LEGLER

Compiled and Edited by His Son,

HENRY M. LEGLER.

CHICAGO:: LONDON THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 1918

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

Preface VII

The Problem of the Cities 1

Certain Phases of Library Extension 10

Next Steps 21

The World of Print and the World's Work 36

Library Work With Children 57

Traveling Libraries 64

Administration of Library Funds 73

PREFACE

Wisconsin, a true cradle of freedom and successful government, has fostered several librarians who were true humanists. Dr. Peckham was one. Dr. Thwaites was another. Henry E. Legler was unlike either of these, but greater than either in his continued and unabated activity for the good of the people.

Once, on being complimented for his splendid work in natural history and his persistence in the pursuit of scientific facts, Dr. Peckham remarked: "Oh, yes, but the facts have no value in themselves. They merely build up the groundwork of the ideas, and help you climb to the point of view where the deeper aspects of the subject spread out before you like a landscape beneath a mountain-top."

Mr. Legler's activity in behalf of libraries will support the same explanation. He seemed always immersed in detail, always planning some movement and carrying it into effect by his peculiar, dynamic persistence. But he who observed the man kindly and closely cannot have failed to have noticed that there was a distinct _Beyond_ illumining and overshadowing it all. There was a dream to come true, a vision to be unfolded. The dream and vision were in the man's speech and eye. He lived under a prophecy.

It is not for us to estimate whether this prophecy became fulfilled in his life as one of us. But it is our privilege to confess that it brought to us the things which Europeans have designated as "culture" and which really is enlightenment. Thus it is that many of Mr. Legler's associates and friends will recollect with gratitude that some gave them knowledge, and others gave them opportunities, but it was for Mr. Legler to illumine their knowledge and opportunity with the live spark of inspiration.

The dream was in his eye, inspiration was in his speech and manner. Library work was the means in his power of making his fellow-men ever more free and happy, ever more master of themselves, ever more capable of being guided, not by fear and never by prejudice, but by a live responsibility to the spirit within them. Personally, though a most assiduous worker at his official desk in Milwaukee, Madison or Chicago, he always thought of escaping and of seeking some quiet spot in the wilderness--where, doubtless, he hoped to view his work from _above_. How many librarians nowadays have such a hope?

Of his method with the men and women of his age many of us will retain unforgettable memories. He was prompt, precise, perhaps even brief, but invariably gracious. His Italian ancestry told in the inimitable grace he unfolded to kindred spirits in confidence. We never were in doubt of the things he admired and fostered. We never felt there were hidden recesses of doubt and perplexity behind his sympathies. His grace of manner never was marred by contact with less enlightened surroundings. It is inimitable and unforgettable how he would pause in the midst of some matter of the moment, to plunge into some subject which he knew would interest and benefit the other person. And how grateful he was to strike a vein of gold in a seemingly unpromising human ore!

Secretary of the Milwaukee Board of Education, and Secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, Mr. Legler was already well versed in official service when chosen Librarian of the Chicago Public Library. He had declined several offers of important posts before that time, because the work he would give called for perfect freedom to work out the problems as he saw them. Wisconsin had given him this freedom. Chicago promised it--and kept her promise. There was sufficient prestige within the Chicago Public Library to warrant respect for, and liberal support of, its work, but the public estimate of this prestige was lacking. Other large cities possess this estimate in varying degree. Chicago--not its library--had fallen behind.

The effect of Mr. Legler's presence in Chicago has been most fortunate for all concerned. He took his place in public affairs naturally and effectively. The library's prestige grew in public recognition as the work of himself and his associates progressed. He gave all--and they accepted all, naturally and easily. But the giving and taking required all his bodily strength. He knew that an easier life was possible, but his humanity could not accept the easier form, and so the strength gave out.

But the spirit remains. Mr. Legler gave valuable contributions to historical investigation and to literary criticism, and he has published notable contributions to the elucidation of American forms of life. His contributions to library science and the art of books have been in part collected in the volume herewith presented. The main purpose in collecting them in the present form is to convey their purposes to the friends who like to remember the mind out of which they grew--and to perpetuate to others a memory of that burning zeal, that aspiring enthusiasm, that radical idealism, which animated Mr. Legler in choosing the library as the place where true humanism may be fostered and American enlightenment may flourish.

"Whatever began in the course of time--if of the Spirit of Truth and Love, it will be in time completed."

J. CHRISTIAN BAY.

THE PROBLEM OF THE CITIES

Uncle Sam's last tabulation of his people holds within its maze of figures a basis for prophecy, as well as a summary of the present, and a comparison with the past. For those who are concerned with the making of an intelligent citizenship, perhaps the striking and significant fact is not the marvelous industrial development of the country, but rather the amazing growth of the cities. It needs no searching analysis to give emphasis to the sinister elements which are embodied in this bare statement. It means an approach to that critical period in the history of popular government when wise leadership and extension of education alone can serve to avert threatened disruption. Upon the people who are near to the soil will devolve the task of holding in balance the restless and turbulent elements which now make up so large a proportion of the dwellers in cities.

The modern growth of the city, with all that this movement in population implies, must be reckoned with everywhere. Greater New York has a population exceeding that of any state in the Union except its own. Chicago has within its city limits more people than any of forty states. The ten leading cities comprise together one-eighth of the total population of the United States. If New York City and Chicago and their conditions are extreme manifestations, it must be taken into account that in perhaps not to exceed a quarter and at most a half century, this growth cityward will be duplicated in every section of the United States. There are now 58 cities in the United States each counting more than 100,000 population, eight of them in excess of half a million each; there are 180 cities more each counting from 25,000 to 100,000 inhabitants.

It is hard to realize the rate of urban growth. In spite of the opening of vast tracts of land to be had almost for the asking, the total town population has multiplied in the last hundred years from 3 to approximately 50 per cent.

For the third or fourth time, the city is becoming the dominant factor in the world's history. The city-states of Greece rose and fell. Some of them became spoils of conquerors, others wasted from internal causes. Corinth once exercised sovereignty of the seas, but half a million of her population were slaves. When destroyed by the Carthaginians, Agrigentum was said to number two millions of people.

Genoa, Venice, the cities of the Hanseatic league, played their brief part in the commercial supremacy of their day. Rome once possessed a population of one million and a quarter, but though circled by beautiful villas and gardens, the common people lived congested in buildings whose floors and apartments were divided among numerous families. Famous writers have told us of the splendor and size of hundred-gated Thebes and Babylon and Antioch and Ephesus. But if there was splendor, there was vice; there was magnificence, but there dwelt squalor as well. Beauty and opulence fattening on human misery could not withstand famine, pestilence, and vice. The glories of the cities on the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tiber are but a memory. And unless in the civic life of the modern city there is introduced an element that shall embrace the common good, perhaps Macaulay's oft-cited description of the New Zealander standing on the wreck of London bridge surveying the ruins of St. Paul's may yet become historic instead of merely prophetic.

It is perhaps but one of many evidences of the restlessness of the day that the lure of the city beckons with attraction inescapable to the youth of the countryside. Young men and young women who yield to the fascination find too late that they have sought Dead Sea Fruit,

"Which charms the eye But turns to ashes on the lips."

The refuges and jails and lazarets and foul places of the great cities are filled with the derelicts of humanity who in less hectic atmosphere might have led lives of usefulness and contentment. Much has been done to give the life in the rural regions attractiveness and comfort; much more remains to be done, and particularly in supplying educational advantages, if the young men and women are to be made to feel that their opportunities are no less than those to be secured in larger cities of pulsing life. How wretchedly as yet this want has been met in most states, those charged with the supervision of educational activities can testify.

There are those who in the face of present-day economic conditions contend that any attempt to stop the great trek cityward must prove as futile as the back-to-the-soil movement has on the whole proved to be. Any such admission bodes but ill for the future of this land. It means that the number of men who feel an ownership in the land, in houses, in the government must decrease. And therein lies a danger not to be lightly disregarded.

Something of the dream and _Sehnsucht_ that comes to the dreaming country boy, Robert Louis Stevenson has pictured with his wonder touch in his idyl of the miller's boy. Something, too, he has suggested in his ending of the story:

WILL O' THE MILL

"The mill where Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a falling valley between pine woods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill soared upwards until they soared out of the depths of the hardiest timber, and stood naked against the sky. Below, the valley grew ever steeper and steeper, and at the same time widened out on either hand: and from an eminence beside the mill it was possible to see its whole length and away beyond it over a wide plain, where the river turned and shone, and moved on from city to city on its voyage towards the sea. All through the summer, traveling carriages came crawling up, or went plunging briskly downwards past the mill; and as it happened that the other side was very much easier of ascent, the path was not much frequented, except by people going in one direction; five-sixths were plunging briskly downwards and only one-sixth crawling up.

"Whither went all the tourists and pedlars with strange wares? Whither all the brisk barouches with servants in the dicky? Whither the water of the stream, ever coursing downward and ever renewed from above? Even the wind blew oftener down the valley and carried the dead leaves along with it in the fall. It seemed like a great conspiracy of things animate and inanimate, they all went downward, fleetly and gaily downward, posting downward to the unknown world, and only he, it seemed, remained behind, like a stock upon the wayside.

"From that day forward Will was full of new hopes and longings. Something kept tugging at his heartstrings; the running water carried his desires along with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface; the wind, as it ran over innumerable tree-tops, hailed him with encouraging words; branches beckoned downward; the open road, as it shouldered round the angles and went turning and vanishing faster and faster down the valley, tortured him with its solicitations. He spent long whiles on the eminence, looking down the rivershed and abroad on the low flatlands and watched the clouds that traveled forth upon the sluggish wind and trailed their purple shadows on the plain; or, he would linger by the wayside, and follow the carriages with his eyes as they rattled downward by the river. It did not matter what it was; everything that went that way, were it cloud or carriage, bird, or brown water in the stream, he felt his heart flow out after it, in an ecstacy of longing.

"One day, when Will was about sixteen, a young man arrived at sunset to pass the night. He was a contented-looking fellow, with a jolly eye, and carried a knapsack. While dinner was preparing, he sat in the arbour to read a book; but as soon as he had begun to observe Will, the book was laid aside; he was plainly one of those who prefer living people to people made of ink and paper. Will, on his part, although he had not been much interested in the stranger at first sight, soon began to take a great deal of pleasure in his talk, which was full of good nature and good sense, and at last conceived a great respect for his character and wisdom. They sat far into the night; and Will opened his heart to the young man, and told him how he longed to leave the valley and what bright hopes he had connected with the cities of the plain. The young man whistled, and then broke into a smile.

"'My young friend,' he remarked, 'you are a very curious little fellow, to be sure, and wish a great many things which you will never get. Why, you would feel quite ashamed if you knew how the little fellows in these fairy cities of yours are all after the same sort of nonsense, and keep breaking their hearts to get up into the mountains. And let me tell you, those who go down into the plains are a very short while there before they wish themselves heartily back again. The air is not so light or so pure; nor is the sun any brighter. As for the beautiful men and women, you would see many of them in rags and many of them deformed; and a city is a hard place for people who are poor and sensitive.'

"'You must think me very simple,' answered Will. 'Although I have never been out of this valley, believe me, I have used my eyes. I do not expect to find all things right in your cities. That is not what troubles me; it might have been that once upon a time; but although I live here always, I have asked many questions and learned a great deal in these last years, and certainly enough to cure me of my old fancies. But you would not have me die and not see all that is to be seen, and do all that a man can do, let it be good or evil? You would not have me spend all my days between this road here and the river, and not so much as make a motion to be up and live my life? I would rather die out of hand,' he cried, 'than linger on as I am doing.'

"'Thousands of people,' said the young man, 'live and die like you, and are none the less happy.'

"'Ah!' said Will, 'if there are thousands who would like, why should not one of them have my place?'

"It was quite dark; there was a hanging lamp in the arbour which lit up the table and the faces of the speakers; and along the arch the leaves upon the trellis stood out illuminated against the bright sky, a pattern of transparent green upon a dusky purple. The young man rose, and, taking Will by the arm, led him out under the open heavens.

"'Did you ever look at the stars?' he asked, pointing upwards.

"'Often and often,' answered Will.

"'And do you know what they are?'

"'I have fancied many things.'

"'They are worlds like ours,' said the young man. 'Some of them less; many of them a million times greater; and some of the least sparkles that you see are not only worlds, but whole clusters of worlds turning about each other in the midst of space.'

"Will hung his head a little, and then raised it once more to heaven. The stars seemed to expand and emit a sharper brilliancy; and as he kept turning his eyes higher and higher, they seemed to increase in multitude under his gaze. * * *

"Will went to and fro minding his wayside inn, until the snow began to thicken on his head. His heart was young and vigorous, and if his pulses kept a sober time, they still beat strong and steady in his wrists. He stooped a little, but his step was firm, and his sinewy hands were reached out to all men with a friendly pressure. His talk was full of wise sayings. He had a taste for other people and other people had a taste for him. His views seemed whimsical to his neighbors, but his rough philosophy was often enough admired by learned people out of town and colleges. Indeed, he had a very noble old age, and grew daily better known; so that his fame was heard of in the cities of the plains. Many and many an invitation to be sure, he had, but nothing could tempt him from his upland valley. He would shake his head and smile with a deal of meaning: 'Fifty years ago you would have brought my heart into my mouth; and now you do not even tempt me.'"

There is a legend of how a flying party of wanderers encountered a very old man shod with iron. The old man asked them whither they were going; and they answered with one voice: "To the Eternal City!" He looked upon them gravely. "I have sought it," he said, "over the most part of the world. Three such pairs as I now carry on my feet have I worn out upon my pilgrimage, and now the fourth is growing slender underneath my steps." And he turned and went his own way alone, leaving them astonished.

In the effort to make rural life of equal attractiveness with city life, it must be admitted that educational opportunities have lagged behind. Those who, by compulsion or otherwise, have left school in early years, find in the cities today abundant opportunity for self-help in the public libraries, in night schools, and in other agencies; the same opportunities are not provided to any appreciable extent in the country regions.

In the present stage of educational development, there are today millions of young men and women who find in the public library the only open door through which they catch glimpses of opportunity beyond their own immediate domain. With all the limitations involved, this is a hopeful circumstance, for instances are plentiful where "the chance encounter with a book has marked the awakening of a life." One need not go to works of fiction to seek such stories, but in them may be found types which have been plucked from bits of real life. And in real life they could be multiplied a thousand times. Perhaps you recall the household of the Tullivers' when misfortune came upon it, and the change which a few well-thumbed volumes made in one of its members:

"The new life was terrible to Maggie--Maggie with her strange dreams, with her hunger for love. Her father no longer stroked her hair as he used to do when she sat down in her low stool beside him at night, though he was more dependent on her than ever. Tom, weary and full of his new business ambitions, did not respond to her caresses. The poor mother remained hopelessly bewildered under the blow that had fallen on her placid existence.

"The girl fell back on the meagre remnant of books that had been left by the creditors. She studied Virgil and Euclid and spent her days in the fields with the Latin dictionary and Tom's thumbed schoolbooks. One day she chanced on a worn copy of Thomas á Kempis, and she pushed her heavy hair back from her sad brow as if to see a sudden vision more clearly. That chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, faith and triumph came to her in her need and filled her heart with the writer's fervor of renunciation.

"Her new inward life shone out in her face with a tender, soft light that mingled itself as added loveliness with the enriched color and outline of her blossoming youth. Maggie was beginning to show a queenly head above her old frocks, and her mother felt the change with a puzzled, dim wonder that the once 'contrary' and ugly child should be 'growing up so good.'"

The higher life of the citizen has received too little attention, and the lower and baser life seems to have absorbed all the sympathy and care of the authorities. But we have touched the fringe of better days, and soon no municipality or local governing body will be considered complete unless it has under its administration a library and a museum, as well as a workhouse, a prison, and the preserves of law and order. It is for the provision for this higher national life that this plea is made, and upon municipalities is earnestly urged the need of giving the fullest and best attention to this question. The fact should be emphasized that the municipality can do for the people in the way of libraries and museums what cannot possibly be done by private enterprise. It may be unhesitatingly asserted that in fullest usefulness, economical management, and best value for money invested, the existing rate-supported libraries are far in advance of the private institutions of this nature.

It is some forty years since Carlyle asked the question, "Why is there not a Majesty's library in every county town? There is a Majesty's gaol and gallows in every one," and it is as long since the Public Libraries Act was passed, and yet the lack of libraries is still one of the most startling deficiencies in these islands. We have given the people ever greater and greater political power, but they displayed no marked inclination to benefit themselves by means of books or other means of culture.

"We must now educate our masters," said Mr. Lowe when the Reform Bill of 1867 was passed. He was quite right, for the said masters were by no means quick to educate themselves, and the number of public libraries which they consented to establish for three years after 1867 was about ten.

Then came Mr. Forster's Education Act, and great things were expected of it. Now that everybody was to be taught his letters, everybody would surely want books to read also. What, indeed, would be the good of teaching people to read at all unless they were also to have a supply of good books? You might as well teach a man the use of his knife and fork and then not give him any meat.

Public libraries are the natural and legitimate outcome of compulsory education.

CERTAIN PHASES OF LIBRARY EXTENSION[1]