i. Are books discharged near your return desk or away from

it?

Near or at desk, 28.

j. Do you inspect carefully all books returned?

Affirmative, 18; negative, 8.

k. Is this inspection made when books are discharged or when shelved?

When discharged, 8; before shelved, 8; at both times, 3.

The most interesting thing brought out by this investigation is the fact that it has taken your committee two years to ascertain and tabulate the simple facts regarding methods of procedure, in a very limited number of institutions, in the performance of only two of the many operations that go to make up their current work. From this it may be imagined how long and difficult a task it would be to carry out a really comprehensive survey of all the work of all kinds of libraries as currently performed. And yet such a survey would appear to be a necessary preliminary to a study of the subject whose aims should be definite suggestions toward the improvement of this work in the direction of greater efficiency. It would seem, at present, a task beyond this committee's powers, although we may be prepared to take general advisory charge of such a work if others can be induced to undertake the details. Possibly some of the library schools may regard this as profitable employment for their students.

In the next place we are struck with the complete negative that our results place upon the general impression that the various details of modern library work are becoming--possibly even have already become--thoroughly standardized. No one thinks, of course, that everyone does everything alike; but we are apt to believe that there are now a few generally approved ways of doing each thing, and that each library selects from these the one that suits its own conditions and limitations. On the contrary, we seem to be in an era of free experiment. Nothing in the two sets of operations that we have studied--not even the existence and value of the operations themselves--would appear to be regarded as sacred. Everyone has his own methods and is apparently satisfied, either with them, or with his own ways of departing from them and groping after something better.

We cannot regard this as altogether desirable. Doubtless no one most efficient way of doing any of these things can be settled upon, so long as conditions differ, but we cannot believe that differences so fundamental and complexities so varied as those revealed in this report are due merely to differing conditions, and that each is the best in the place where it is practised. We must conclude, therefore, that many of our libraries are doing these particular things, and by inference others also, in wasteful, inefficient ways.

Having made a survey of the facts, the next step would be to inquire concerning all variations from a method selected as the simplest in each case--possibly accessioning as practised at Pratt Institute Free Library or the Public Library of the District of Columbia and the charging system at Pittsburgh or at East Orange, New Jersey. The cost of these variations in time and money and the skill necessary in carrying them out, should be ascertained and the practical value of each, if it has any, should be found. It may then be possible to select, for a library of a given type, a standard method of procedure, which will be, all things considered, the most efficient for it.

In regard to cost, the report of the sectional committee on the cost of cataloging, to be made at this conference, will doubtless throw some interesting light on the problem.

Questionnaires

The use of the questionnaire by this committee may require some justification in the light of the growing feeling among librarians that the multiplicity of such demands upon their time is becoming a nuisance; and possibly some general recommendations on the use of library questionnaires may be in order.

We feel that the value of the questionnaire, and the way in which it should be received, regarded and disposed of, depend primarily on the purpose for which it is intended and also largely on the skill and tact of the questioner. We distinguish three main classes of library questionnaires: (1) Those intended to gather data for the information of librarians in general; (2) those intended for the use of single libraries; (3) those intended for the information of individuals. Those of the first class, it seems to us, it is the duty of all librarians to answer, as far as possible. They include questions sent out by A. L. A. or state association committees and those put by individual libraries or librarians with a promise to publish the results or to put them into shape that will make them available to the public, provided, of course, the information sought appears likely to be of value when tabulated.

Questionnaires of the second class will generally be answered, not so much as a matter of public duty as of personal courtesy. They include requests from one librarian to another about details of administration for guidance in making improvements or alterations in method. A librarian feels usually that it is good policy, if nothing more, to comply with such requests so far as his rules permit, for he may at any time desire to make a similar request on his own part. It is suggested, however, that whenever possible such data as these should be asked in a way, and from a sufficient number of libraries, to warrant throwing the results into a form that will make them generally available.

The third category includes most of the questionnaires that excite the ire of librarians and cause a feeling that questions of all kinds are nuisances demanding abatement. They come from students writing theses, from assistants preparing papers for local clubs, from individuals obsessed with curiosity, from reporters, from persons of various degrees of irresponsibility. There is no reason why any attention at all should be paid to these and we recommend librarians to return to them merely a stereotyped form of polite acknowledgement and refusal.

It is hoped that the Headquarters of the Association may become more and more the clearing house for systematized information of this kind, saving thereby much wasteful duplication of material and effort. We recommend that the originators of legitimate questionnaires send to Headquarters before making up their list of questions, to see how many can be answered in this way.

Much of the feeling against questionnaires is due to lack of good judgment on the part of the framers. It is obviously unfair to ask another librarian to answer questions that could be answered from the resources of the questioning library, even if the latter would require a little more time and trouble. A large proportion of the items in questionnaires of all three grades specified above are of this character. If it is desired that all the answers shall appear in the same form on one sheet, answers obtainable in the questioning library may be written in before sending out the list, and the attention of the correspondent may be called to this fact. In any case a statement should accompany the questionnaire that the information asked cannot be obtained by any other means at the asker's disposal.

In some cases questions are asked that require the collection of unusual data regarding the current work of the library. The answers to such questions can evidently not be given, even if the library is willing and anxious to undertake at once the additional work of collection, until the expiration of the period for which the figures are asked--generally one year. The usual method seems to be to send out such questions to a large number of libraries in the hope that a few will be able to answer them at once. A better way would be to send out to a large number of libraries a statement of the desired data, asking those willing to undertake their collection to notify the asker. At the expiration of the period of collection the sender of the questions would then have accurate data and he would not expect them before the end of this period--whether one year or less.

It would seem to be unnecessary to remind those who receive and answer questionnaires that returned blanks should bear the name of the library to which they refer, were it not for the fact that this is so often omitted. In one recent case the name was given simply as "Carnegie library," with no address.

Briefly set forth, the recommendations of this committee, regarding the use of library questionnaires, are, then, as follows:

(1) That questionnaires should always be for the information of librarians in general, or for improving the service of one library in particular, preferably the former.

(2) That no questions should be included that can be answered in the questioning library or at A. L. A. Headquarters.

(3) That questions requiring the collection of current data over a specified period of time be asked proportionately in advance of the report desired, in cases where the data are not such as are usually recorded.

(4) That those who answer questionnaires be careful to include the name and address of their library.

Labor Saving Devices

It is a commonplace of library history that librarianship has contributed the card catalog idea to commercial life. The library in turn is indebted to commercial life for many labor-saving devices. Very likely a few of the largest libraries utilize all available labor-saving devices to the utmost. Your committee is, however, of the opinion that the medium size and smaller libraries might reduce the cost of administration through the more general use of mechanical appliances. We recommend that at a coming meeting of the Association there be held an exhibition of all available competing labor-saving devices adapted to library use. The assembled demonstration of such devices should prove most instructive to the members of the association and would itself be a time-saving device. Such an exhibition could probably not be advantageously assembled except in a large city. Your committee therefore recommends that either it or a special committee be authorized to arrange for such an exhibition and demonstration.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

Committee on Administration.

COMMITTEE ON LIBRARY TRAINING

At the beginning of the year the committee began the consideration of an outline, prepared by the chairman, of possible points considered in the proposed examination of library schools. This outline was submitted to the members of the committee individually and valuable suggestions obtained and was afterwards discussed by such members of the committee as were present at the January meetings in Chicago.

This outline which is appended to the present report is not to be considered as necessarily final, for the committee invites criticisms and suggestions from other members of the profession. What the committee desires if library schools are to be examined, is that the schools should be examined from the point of view of the needs of the profession, not simply from the point of view of the interests of the library schools. The real vital questions lying at the foundation of the examination of library schools are these: Does this method of obtaining recruits for the profession give the best results which can be secured by such a method? Do the library school trained workers prove in actual experience that their training has been of the right sort? These questions cannot be answered from an examination of the records of any one or even any half dozen library school graduates, but only from the examination of many such records.

As was before said, criticisms on the outline are invited from members of the profession and from any of the library schools, as the desire of the committee is to make an absolutely thorough, and impartial study of the whole library school problem.

At the January meeting in Chicago the members of the committee were rejoiced to learn that the executive board had re-appropriated the appropriation for 1912 with a like amount for the work of 1913.

With these financial limitations in mind the committee considered the question of an examiner, and one having been agreed upon, made the proposition with great confidence, only after considerable delay to have it declined. Further search through the field discovered another person who seemed equally suitable and she was approached only to decline.

The real difficulty evidently lies in the fact that we are asking the examiner to undertake a large piece of professional work and practically offering only expenses and the cost of a substitute for the regular work during such times as it is necessary to leave it. Naturally enough, it is not easy to find anyone willing to take this additional burden.

The committee now have in consideration other names and hope, if reappointed, to be able to announce an examiner before the beginning of the next library school year to such schools as indicate their readiness to receive an examination.

For the Committee.

AZARIAH S. ROOT, Chairman.

Appendix

Scheme of Efficiency Tests for a Library School

(Note.--In its general outline this scheme is indebted to the admirable Test of College Efficiency prepared by Dean Charles N. Cole of Oberlin College.)

I. THE PROCESS OF EDUCATION

A. Government and control of the school:

1. Trustees:

(a) How chosen. Fitness to direct library training;

(b) Tenure of office;

(c) Meetings, how often;

(d) Ad interim power vested where;

(e) Determination of policy: does it lie with trustees, president, director or faculty.

B. Equipment of the school:

1. Connection with other educational work:

(a) With college or university;

(b) With other institutions;

2. Connection with a library:

(a) Of what type;

(b) What constituency and to what extent used;

(c) How far equipped with modern library methods;

(d) Actual practice work in library by students;

3. Bibliographical apparatus:

(a) General reference books;

(b) Trade Bibliographies;

(c) Special Bibliographies;

(d) Library economy;

(e) Samples of library blanks and supplies;

4. Housing:

(a) Recitation rooms;

(b) Study or work rooms;

(c) Rest and social rooms;

(d) Library facilities.

C. Administration of the school:

1. Officers:

(a) How many;

(b) How obtained;

(c) Qualifications;

(d) Tenure of office;

(e) Estimate of work;

(f) Compensation;

(g) Vacation;

2. Faculty:

(a) Do new teachers have a voice in determination of educational questions;

(b) Faculty meetings, how often;

(c) Committees, how many; what duties.

D. Instruction in the school:

1. Faculty:

(a) How obtained;

(b) Qualifications;

(c) Tenure of office;

(d) Estimate and adjustment of work;

(e) Requirements of teachers;

(f) Number of hours of instruction given by each teacher in a school year;

(g) Compensation;

(h) Vacation;

(i) What supervision of teachers' work;

2. Students:

(a) How admitted, examination, certificates, etc.;

(b) How far does actual practice differ from catalog statements;

(c) Requirements for admission;

(d) Requirements for admission of students to advanced standing (in two year courses);

3. Supervision of student work:

(a) Regulation of amount of work;

(b) Guidance in choice of studies;

(c) Requirements for passing grade;

(d) What is done about conditions and failures;

(e) What methods for enforcing the regularity of work;

(f) What provision for the individual help of weak students;

(g) Graduation;

(h) Records, how kept, etc.;

4. Curriculum:

(a) Arrangement and order of studies;

(b) Length of time devoted to each subject;

(c) System of required studies;

(d) System of electives;

(e) What training for special fields of library work, e. g., children's librarians, legislative reference librarians, etc.

5. Class Room Work:

(a) Size of classes;

(b) What part of the course is class room work;

(c) Method of conducting class room work;

6. Practice Work:

(a) What part of course is practice work;

(b) How revised and supervised;

(c) What is the purpose in practice work;

(d) Is this purpose realized;

7. Informal Instruction:

(a) Lectures, etc.;

(b) Opportunities to see work of libraries;

(c) Actual experience in libraries other than that connected with the school.

E. Student Life and Work:

1. Number of students:

2. Work of students:

(a) What seem to be the scholastic ideals of the students;

(b) To what extent do the students seem to have professional enthusiasm;

(c) What studies do they elect when there is an option;

(d) Outside activities of students;

(e) Social life and cultural development of students;

(f) Environment particularly with reference to breadth of culture;

(g) Room and board; are students housed under sanitary and elevating conditions;

(h) Health;

(i) Social conditions and standing of students;

(j) Previous educational advantages;

(k) Literary, musical and artistic opportunities during library school course;

(l) Opportunities to form personal relationships with members of the faculty.

II. THE TESTING OF SCHOOL WORK IN PRACTICAL ACTIVITY

1. What has been the professional success of the graduates:

(a) To what extent have they taken prominent places in the library world;

(b) Omitting as far as possible personal qualities, is there any general characteristic stamping the students of the school;

(c) Do the interests of the graduates seem to be broadly professional, or narrowly confined to a particular type of work which they have entered;

2. What has been the general intellectual standing of the graduates:

(a) Have they shown themselves equal to cope with their opportunities;

(b) Have they shown a range of interest which has enabled them to connect their work with that of philanthropic, charitable, sociological;

(c) Have they taken influential places in the towns in which they work.

COMMITTEE ON WORK WITH THE BLIND

The libraries which circulate embossed books have continued their services throughout the year with ever increasing results, the largest circulation having been attained by the New York public library, which circulated 21,938 books and pamphlets. The Free library of Philadelphia sent out 17,706 volumes; the Carnegie library of Pittsburgh, 3,218; the Perkins Institution, 6,000; Wilmington, Delaware, 567.

=Library of Congress.= The most important event in the history of the Reading Room for the Blind during the year was the appointment of Mrs. Gertrude T. Rider as Assistant in charge.

=Perkins Institution.= The school is now in its new home where the library is housed in commodious quarters, and is in charge of a trained librarian from Albany, Miss Laura M. Sawyer, and a trained assistant from Simmons, Miss Louise P. Hunt, who devote their time to the care of the valuable special collection in ink print about the blind as well as to the circulation of embossed books.

=New York State Library.= Eight new titles in New York point were embossed for the New York state library in 1912 and an additional list of well chosen titles is now in press for 1913.

=Saginaw, W. S., Michigan.= The Free lending library for the blind has asked the legislature for $2,000 to replenish the collection with new books. Of 202 borrowers the librarian reports that 117 persons have drawn no reading matter during the latter half of the year.

=California State Library.= Mr. Charles S. Greene, of the committee, sends the following report of the work of the State library and the San Francisco reading room:

The California state library for the blind wishes to report progress during the last year. Although we have had very little money to buy books, accessions have increased from 2,309, April 1, 1912, to 2,659 April 1, 1913, mainly through gifts and the regular receipt of magazines. Borrowers have increased from 475 to 550. The most satisfactory advance, however, has been in the increased use the blind borrowers are making of the library in borrowing all kinds of writing appliances and games to try before buying and in asking information on all subjects of interest to them. Such questions as what occupations are followed by the blind, and where different articles for their use can be purchased, are constantly being asked. With an increase in the State library fund, which the present legislature will probably grant, it is hoped to buy all the new publications as fast as possible, as well as to complete our collection of appliances for the blind.

The San Francisco reading room and library for the blind has about 400 volumes. It conducts an emporium for the sale of articles made by the blind and teaches Braille reading and writing, Braille stenography, weaving, basketry and broom making.

=Pennsylvania.= All borrowers residing in the western part of the state are now supplied with books from the Carnegie library of Pittsburgh; those residing in the eastern part of the state have the use of books deposited with the Free library of Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania home teaching society.

=Cincinnati, Ohio.= Miss Smith, of the committee, sends the following report: "There seems to be nothing new here in the library work for the blind. The Clovernook Home, which is to be opened May 30, has absorbed the attention largely of Miss Trader and her sister and this spring the flood interfered somewhat with the meetings at the library."

=Minnesota.= Miss Carey, of the committee, writes as follows of the work in Minnesota: "As far as I know the entire work of providing books for the blind in this state is done through the School for the Blind at Faribault. The library there is in excellent condition, being on a wholly modern basis as to classification and details of management. It is open throughout the year and circulates to outside readers on an average 25 books a month. There are 80 regular readers outside the institution and about 90 in residence this year. As the school is small this is a large number. The librarian in charge is one of the teachers and for years in this school it has been considered something of an honor to hold this position, although it is by no means a sinecure.... The library work is always stimulated by the annual summer school for adult blind which brings in new readers each year. At the close of the session the pupils, many of them, become patrons of the library 'for good.'"

=New Publications.= Since the first embossed book was issued in Philadelphia in 1833, the publishing of literature in raised print has been increased until there are now 16 presses in active use in this country. The record of new publications for 1912 is as follows:

American Braille, 56 titles in English; 2 titles in German.

New York point, 14 titles, of which 8 were embossed by the New York state library.

In European Braille new titles have been issued in England and Scotland; in Moon type 11 titles have been added and 10 other titles are in press.

=The Catholic Review=, monthly, published by the Xavier free publication society for the blind, 824 Oakdale Avenue, Chicago, Ill., in American Braille.

=The Illuminator=, a quarterly Braille magazine, published by the Holmes-Schenley literary society of the Western Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind, Pittsburgh, Pa.

=Society for the Promotion of Church Work Among the Blind.= Volumes 3 and 4 of the music of the Hutchins' Hymnal have been finished and copies distributed to a number of the leading circulating libraries where the volumes will be available to those who may not wish to purchase them.

=Bible Training School=, South Lancaster, Mass. "Some friends of the blind, in looking over the catalogs of books in different libraries for the blind, were impressed with the small amount of Christian literature that had been placed in the embossed type, especially in New York point and American Braille, so the plan was conceived of creating a fund and printing one book after another as the funds would accumulate, placing them in the circulating libraries throughout the United States." To obtain the volumes in New York point and American Braille, free of charge, address Mrs. S. N. Haskell, South Lancaster, Mass.

=Gould Free Library for the Blind=, 555 East 6th Street, South Boston, Mass. "The library is working under the auspices of the International Bible Students' Association headquarters, Brooklyn, N. Y., which supplies financial aid in the main, while donations have been accepted from outsiders. Our books are all Bible studies, very helpful and appreciated by the blind. We circulated 3,474 books and pamphlets last year in the three point systems and a few books in Line type and Moon type."

=Free Theosophical Circulating Library for the Blind=, 32 Waverly Street, Everett, Mass., has issued three titles in American Braille; also a monthly paper of 7 or 8 pages.

=New postal law.= Under an act of Congress of August 24, 1912, "magazines, periodicals and other regularly issued publications in raised letters for the blind, which contain no advertisements and for which no subscription fee is charged, shall be transmitted in the U. S. mails free of postage and under such regulations as the Postmaster General may prescribe."

=The Twelfth Convention of Workers for the Blind= will be held in Jacksonville, Illinois, June 24-27, 1913, and among those who will attend the conference are several representatives from public libraries interested in the circulation of embossed literature. Miss L. A. Goldthwaite, of the New York public library, has been asked to conduct a round table. In the general discussion of the subject of catalogs for the blind it is hoped to obtain the best opinion of those in attendance upon the most convenient form for such catalogs or finding lists for use by those who read by touch. The Library of Congress, the New York public library, the Brooklyn public library, the New York state library, the Free library of Philadelphia, as well as institutions for the blind, will be represented by the assistants in charge of the circulation of embossed books.

At this conference there will be given the report of the "Uniform Type Committee" appointed at the Overbrook conference in 1911. The two agents of that committee, who made an extended tour of this country from May, 1912, until February, 1913, visited many schools and other institutions for the blind and tested over 900 readers in one or more of the three systems--New York point, American Braille and British Braille. Scientific tests to determine the best size of type, spacing, etc., have been made to establish a standard or uniform system of writing and printing. The recommendations of the committee have been reserved until the meeting of the American Association of Workers for the Blind at Jacksonville; they are awaited with interest by all.

EMMA R. N. DELFINO, Chairman.

The PRESIDENT: As you will see from your printed programs we are privileged this morning to receive an accredited delegate from the Library Association of the United Kingdom, and it is our especial pleasure to greet as this accredited delegate an old friend of American librarians. He was with us at the Conference of 1904, and we have since that time watched with a great deal of interest the strong, splendid work which is manifest in the library over which he presides. I have the honor of introducing to you this morning the Honorary Secretary of the Library Association of the United Kingdom and the accredited delegate from that organization, Mr. L. STANLEY JAST, chief librarian of the Croydon Public Libraries.

Mr. BOWKER: And, Mr. President, I move that we receive our welcome guest from the L. A. U. K. by a rising vote of welcome.

Mr. Jast spoke as follows:

PRESENT CONDITIONS AND TENDENCIES OF LIBRARY WORK IN GREAT BRITAIN

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: I should like first of all to express the peculiar personal pleasure I feel at being privileged for the second time to attend a conference of the American Library Association. As you have said, sir, it was my pleasure in 1904 to attend a meeting of your body, then as now the accredited delegate of my Association, but that meeting of 1904 was, as you know, an international meeting, and an international meeting anywhere is apt to take on general rather than special characteristics, and I have long wished to be present at an ordinary meeting of the American Library Association, so that I might see for myself how you conduct your work and hear you discussing your own problems in your own way. So that I trust, Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen, that you will kindly forget that

"A chiel's amang ye takin' notes."

Iam authorized by the Council of the Library Association to extend to you, sir, and the members present their very heartiest greetings and to express on their behalf their high appreciation not only of the special invitation which you sent to them to send a delegate but for the extremely generous offer of hospitality which was attached thereto. My Council felt that to such an invitation only one response is possible and that was to accept.

We were in hope that Mr. Henry R. Tedder, who is the chairman of the Council of the Library Association and its honorary treasurer and an ex-president,--and otherwise the secretary of the Athenaeum Club,--would have come as our delegate, because Mr. Tedder's importance is intrinsic and not like mine purely adventitious and depending wholly upon the office which I at the moment have the privilege to hold; but it was impossible for Mr. Tedder to come on this occasion and, ladies and gentlemen, I am the best that we can do for you at this time.

But I am happy to say that it is the general feeling of the Council that in future we should not let many meetings of the A. L. A.--at all events in the eastern states--go by without sending one or more members of our Association to be present at them. I do not think that there is anything from which our Association is likely to get a more valuable return than by the visits of some of its more prominent members to America in order that they may see for themselves and not merely read about what you are doing, and how you are doing it and get some knowledge of the conditions under which you are working, of your achievements and of your difficulties, and so bring to library work in Great Britain that added power which must inevitably come from a wider knowledge. So that I trust that the imperfections of the present delegate will be overlooked, in the hope not only of more but of better to come.

I am also requested by my Council to extend a very hearty invitation to the members of the American Library Association to attend the annual meeting of the Library Association to be held in 1914. That meeting will almost certainly be held at Oxford, by invitation of the University and of the city. I need not of course point out the extreme suitability of the city of Oxford for a meeting of librarians, nor the attractions which Oxford must possess for everyone who likes an atmosphere of ancient learning and who revels in the architectural glories of a bygone day. So we hope that as many of you as possible will come over there for that meeting in order that we may make of it a sort of Americo-Anglican conference. Observe the order, please, in which I mention those words. I draw special attention to that because I believe I have somewhat of a reputation for an absence of tact on these occasions--at any rate among our own members.

When I informed Mr. Utley that I was coming he was good enough to write me a letter, which I received just before I sailed, and he asked--not knowing me very well of course, or he might not have been so liberal in his invitation--that I should talk to you on any subject I liked. I thought that it would be best perhaps if I should say something about the present conditions of library work in Great Britain. Of course it is impossible, in an address lasting only a few minutes, to cover anything like the whole field, and if I did attempt it I should only bore you. But you may be interested in one or two of the outstanding features of our recent work, because they throw light upon conditions which are in many respects very different from yours. First of all, there are two features in what I may perhaps call the domestic situation, which to us are of considerable significance. The most important step which the Library Association as an association has ever taken has been the recent reorganization of its membership along the lines of the professional qualifications of the members. In our old grouping we took no account whatever of whether a member of the Association was a professional librarian or merely a member of a library committee or just a person interested in library work. The honorary fellows of the Association and the fellows were any persons, whether librarians or not, whose names would add dignity and importance to the Association, or who had distinguished themselves by some special service rendered to the Association or the movement as a whole. Then in addition Mr. Tedder himself had a small group of what he called _very_ honorary fellows who were the honorary fellows who insisted on paying their annual dues. That was an entirely private group of Mr. Tedder's. Now we have changed all that. Fellows and members of the Association are now professional librarians only, and non-professional librarians are known as associate members. The privileges of membership including the power to vote and to serve on the Council are shared equally by all members of the Association. The fellows consist in the main of librarians only, but there is a small sprinkling of deputy and sub-librarians. The by-law referring to fellows who do not hold chief positions states that "they must be librarians of approved status," but we interpret that phrase "approved status" in the widest possible way. The members consist of assistant librarians--all those assistant librarians who are not in the small group of fellows; they must be twenty-five years of age and have had six years' experience. That is so at the moment. But after the 31st day of December, 1914, only librarians who possess the diploma of the Association will be entitled to fellowship, and in order to receive the diploma you must have taken in addition to possessing practical experience in an approved library, the six examinations held by the Association, have obtained the six certificates, have gone through if necessary a ~vive voce~ examination and have submitted a thesis. Then professional librarians who possess four out of the six certificates will be entitled to membership. A good deal of criticism has been leveled at the scheme owing to the fact that the librarian of some pettifogging little library, with perhaps a total rate income of a couple of hundred a year or even less, because he is a chief in a small way, is entitled to fellowship, while an assistant in a big library system, who may have infinitely more responsibility, is only entitled to membership. But we had to begin somewhere and we had to draw the line somewhere and we drew the line at the sub-librarian, because when we got below the sub-librarian we should not know where on earth we were, because there is no accepted nomenclature of library positions in our country. I do not know whether there is in yours. "Sub-librarian" does not always mean the same thing. The term "chief assistant" is used in a very different way in different libraries. Moreover, the Privy Council would not have approved these by-laws unless we had opened the door as widely as possible to the holders of all existing chief positions.

There is one weak point so far which we have discovered in our scheme. We have no provision for non-professional members corresponding to professional fellowship among the professional members, but we have a new by-law now before the Privy Council creating a group of associate fellows and the associate fellowship will be conferred upon chairmen of library committees and upon non-professional members of the Association who have served the Association in some definite capacity as members of the Council or in some other way.

That, I think, then is the most important domestic thing that we have ever done because we have now made the beginnings at all events of a definite organization of the profession.

The other important thing will not have the same interest for you, but I mention it because it throws light upon our own conditions. We have settled, by a new by-law, the relations of branch associations to the parent body. Until recently we had a by-law which merely provided that branches in any particular district may be formed but it did not state what the powers of the branches were, and owing to that absence of definition we have suffered for a great many years past from a considerable amount of trouble. One or two of the branches grew considerably in recent years, in numbers and in importance; and they began to resent the fact, the inevitable fact of course, that for the most part the actual work of running the Association fell upon the members of the Council who were resident in London or near it. It may seem absurd to you to speak of the distance of London from the great provincial centers in Great Britain, but it is not absurd, because every country measures distance on its own scale, and to all intents and purposes Manchester is just as far from London as Chicago is from New York--because we =think= it is. As Hamlet says, you will remember--anticipating Mrs. Eddy by several centuries--

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

And as an illustration of the result of this friction I may mention that in London, at the library school--which is hardly a library school because it has not the organization that your schools have, so I ought not to use that term really, but a department of library lectures at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which is a department of the University of London; at these lectures all persons are admissible whether they are librarians or not, but at similar lectures in the provinces everybody was excluded who was not already engaged in library work. So that you had the absurd situation that while the parent body was running one policy at headquarters you had branch associations running an entirely different policy in their own centers. The question of the "open door," as it was termed, was a very hotly debated one at one time in our Association. Well, the general effect of the stress between the branches and the Council was of course bad, each branch being a more or less permanent storm center. While no absolute harm was done perhaps, and while the fireworks let off at the annual meetings were of a more or less harmless character, at the same time we had a general condition of irritation which affected injuriously the work of the Association as a whole. Now we have done away with that, very largely at all events, at least, we hope, by a new by-law, the main points of which are these: First of all, membership of a branch association includes membership of the parent body; the parent body receiving the subscription to the branch association returns to the branch association a rebate of so much a head for the expenses of the branch and, most important of all, the constitution and by-laws of a branch must be approved by the headquarters council and must in no case conflict with the by-laws and constitution of the parent body.

The Council meets monthly, I may say, and one of the quarterly meetings is held on the occasion of the annual meeting. So that means that the expenses of the provincial members are paid to three of the quarterly meetings held during the year; and all the important business--especially contentious business--is relegated to those quarterly meetings.

Leaving the domestic question and coming to the library situation as a whole in Great Britain, I think that the phrase "marking time" fairly describes it. The public libraries in the United Kingdom have accomplished, I think, great things with extremely limited means. But though the first library act was passed in 1850, though the libraries have since then justified themselves many times over, though the demands made upon the libraries have gone on increasing time after time, yet the libraries are still strangled by the statutory limitation of one-penny-in-the-pound on the tax leviable for library purposes which was imposed not by the Ewart Act of 1850, which limited the rate to a halfpenny, but by the amending act of 1855. It is quite true that about forty of the large towns of the country have promoted special parliamentary bills giving them power to levy a rate of two-pence or even more in the pound, but in very few cases is two-pence actually levied, and of course it is the smaller towns, which can not face the expense of promoting special legislation, which really need greater rating powers even more than the larger boroughs.

As the incidence of a library tax in Great Britain is quite different from yours I may perhaps give you some general idea of what it means by taking the case of my own town, simply because I happen to remember the facts more clearly. Croydon is a town in the outer London ring, with a population of 174,257 people. Its income from the penny rate is a little over £4,000 sterling. It circulates about 555,000 volumes per annum and its fiction percentage is about fifty. Whether that is something to be apologized for or not I am not quite clear, after the president's address of last evening. Then one has to remember that the ratable value of a place like Croydon is a good deal higher than the ratable value of most of the provincial towns. But those figures will give you a general idea of the yield of the penny-in-the-pound rate. A rate of that kind results, you will easily see, in the case of the smaller towns, in a condition of genteel poverty, and in the case of many small towns of absolute hopeless starvation. And this unfortunate position has been accentuated by the tremendous growth of branches in recent years. Of the three b's which constitute a library--building, brains and books,--the ordinary British rate-payer thinks mainly of buildings. The building usually does not cost him anything, because he gets it from Mr. Carnegie, and it is something to look at and something "we've got for our ward, don't you know," books will drop from the sky, and "anyhow you don't require brains to hand books over a counter." Hence, from this you have a town, which will perhaps support, in passable efficiency, one central building and two branches, endeavoring to support one central building perhaps and six branches, and so on. Hence the limited book funds which we have in our libraries and hence on the whole the poorly remunerated library staffs.

And that brings me to a point which it was suggested to me by one of your members I should say something about, and that is the position of women in English public libraries. I am not going to express any opinion on the subject of women in libraries. After all, as George Bernard Shaw says somewhere, opinions are really only serious when you act on them, and my capacity for courage has never been equal to the task of acting upon many of my opinions. But as things are at present, a number of libraries employ women assistants. There are very few places where women are chief librarians; there are a few in the quite small towns. There are very few libraries which have women sub-librarians or deputy-librarians. These are almost invariably men. But the number of women employed in secondary and tertiary positions in English public libraries is considerable and is very definitely increasing. And whether that be a good thing or a bad thing, I am quite clear about this, that it is increasing for the wrong reason. Women are employed in English public libraries not because they are better, but because they are cheaper--with the unfortunate result that the increase of women in the library staffs tends necessarily to lower the already low average of salaries paid.

The Library Association have long recognized of course that the root of all our present difficulties lies in the limitation on the library income, and in order to do away with that they have been promoting for the last three or four years or more a library bill, the main clause of which permits a town to levy a rate, not exceeding two-pence-in-the-pound, that is exactly double the present amount. When we originally drafted the bill we did away with the limitation altogether, but we have now put a limitation in order to placate possible opposition. That bill has been already read once before the present parliament--but the first reading of course is a purely formal matter; it is the second reading which is the crucial one; and owing to the exasperating nature of the orders of the House of Commons any one member has only to rise in his seat and say, "I object," to a private member's bill for that bill to be labeled "contentious business" and for its second reading to be deferred to the Greek kalends, owing of course to the enormous number of private members' bills and to the growing inefficiency of the House of Commons as a legislating machine. It is choked with bills and it can not adequately attend to the thousand-and-one matters which call for its attention. The best chance for the bill would be for the government to grant facilities for it. If they would do that I have not the slightest doubt that the bill would pass because so far as we can see there is little or no serious opposition to it; but we can not get it discussed. The unfortunate fact seems to be that the government will not worry about anything which does not sway votes. Nobody is going to get excited about a library bill. If it is true that there is no particular opposition to it, it is also true that there is no crowd of electors passionately demanding it.

Then we suffer to a considerable extent in Great Britain from the attitude of the superior people to the public library. In America all the superior people are sympathetic with the public library--apparently so anyhow. In England usually they sneer at it. Why, Heaven knows! Only the other day a cabinet minister who was considered to be a friend of ours, whose name before he reached cabinet rank was actually a backer to a bill on similar lines to the present one, in a meeting which he addressed referred to the country as being "drenched" with public libraries. I think his point was the far greater importance of public wash-houses or something of that sort. And, as I say, he used the extremely unpleasant, and peculiarly unappropriate adjective "drenched." Now of course no one objects to a cabinet minister talking nonsense. After all, what else can you talk to a popular audience in politics but nonsense? But this particular variety is pernicious nonsense. The press, of course, with their usual avidity for seizing on anything silly, print that sort of thing ad nauseam and a good deal of real harm is done and difficulty created. I think the minister in question has stated somewhere that he owes a great part of his own education to the public library. Mr. Carnegie has said the same thing. Behold how differently men requite the benefits they have received!

Well, Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen, I have perhaps given you the idea that I take a rather pessimistic view of library conditions at the present moment in Great Britain, but that is not so at all--most emphatically not so. I am absolutely convinced that the future of the public library in Great Britain is as certain as it is with you, and though the next step forward may be delayed, the longer it is delayed the bigger that step will be when it is taken.

The PRESIDENT: Mr. Honorary Secretary and our Guest: I would that the gift of speech had been given me that I might adequately express to you the sense of appreciation that we all feel for your coming, for your gracious words of greeting in behalf of your Association and for the view that you have given us of not only the conditions that obtain in Great Britain but also what the future holds forth for the libraries of your country. In our American assemblages it is customary, when some procedure is taken that no one is particularly interested in, to pass it by; but when something transpires that requires further and more careful thought it is our parliamentary custom to refer this to a committee. In this particular case I am sure that I am meeting the wish of the Association as well as my own personal desire when I refer your splendid message to a committee of the whole, consisting of all the librarians present, all the members who have unavoidably been kept at home and that other, smaller group who come within the classification of Mr. Dewey's "private collections." What you have said to us, sir, has emphasized to us particularly that not only is there in the relationship between your libraries in Great Britain and ours in this country a kinship of interest, brought about through identical language, and a kinship of literature, but also there are common aims and aspirations. Just as the language is subject to local variations, due to the customs of geographical centers, so there are differences in method perhaps. But, after all, we are each, in our own way, attempting to do the same things and to achieve a common purpose. I trust, sir, that you will convey to your associates in Great Britain our gratitude for the kindly expressions which you have brought to us from them, and we venture the hope that we shall be enabled to carry forward the splendid precedent which has been set in your coming.

As you glance at the names of those who are to participate at this session, you will note that this is practically New York Day; the one, sole participant who is credited to another part of the country is after all perhaps merely loaned to Missouri, because he is a graduate of the New York library school. I shall ask the First Vice-President, Mr. Anderson, to preside over the rest of this meeting.

The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, I can take that kind of punishment with great composure. The subject for the regular program this morning, as you all know, is work with foreigners and with the colored races. I have the honor to be a neighbor of the first speaker and I may say to you confidentially that she has recently moved a mile or two farther away from me without adequate explanation. The author of "The Promised Land" needs no introduction to this audience. All of you have read with enthusiasm and appreciation the chapter of her book in which she testifies to the value of the service of the Boston public library to her. It gives me very great pleasure to introduce to you MARY ANTIN, who will talk to you on

THE IMMIGRANT IN THE LIBRARY

It is very difficult to be interesting or impressive while telling people things that they already know. I won't try to do that. Any one of you sitting in this audience could tell me a great deal more about the immigrant in the library than I can possibly tell you. What I am going to do is to ask you to have in mind what you know about the immigrant, to call up the figure of the immigrant in your libraries as you have seen him daily, and test by your knowledge what I have to say.

You know better than I do in what numbers the immigrants come to your libraries, how much of their time they spend there, what books they seek there. What I want to ask you is to share your knowledge of these things with as many people as possible; tell your neighbors every time you have a chance what the immigrant does in the library. Every little while we begin anew the discussion of the immigrant--to let him in, or not to let him in--and all sorts of arguments are presented on both sides. Representatives of various organizations--capitalistic, unionistic or what-not--hurry their advocates to Congress to speak for or against, on this side and on that side. I want to ask you to see to it that the knowledge that you have of the immigrant is also widely spread on such occasions. The caricaturist is always ready with his pencil to give us pictures of the immigrant in various amusing poses--more or less true, more or less false; the interesting author of the comic paragraph is always there; the artist of the vaudeville stage, and enthusiasts of one sort and another--enemies or friends of the immigrant--are ready to speak up whenever the question comes up. ~You~ have a fund of knowledge on the subject which is very special, very different. Bring it out on every occasion! When the gentlemen in Congress want to pass a law to hold up the immigrant at the gate because he cannot read fifty lines of our Constitution, say to them, "Hold! Wait and see what the immigrant's boys and girls will read when they are let loose in a public library." Remind them that the ability to read is not in itself a test of intellectuality. You know scores, hundreds of boys and girls of educated, cultured American families who do not take such an interest in your libraries as the boys and girls of these illiterate immigrants. You know what you know. Please tell it so loudly that every one may hear. Talk about the "five-foot shelf of classics"! Is it not true that the boys and girls of the immigrants swallow it whole and make no boast about it? Why, they are saturated with the classics the minute they get a chance. The mere ability to read--what does that amount to? You know what book the immigrant calls for. Every little while I read a short paragraph in the New York papers telling that the East Side branches of the public library have the greatest circulation of the classics. I would like to see those little paragraphs enlarged, printed big and spread where everybody can see them. We need to know these things.

Please let me speak today as an American, and not as an immigrant. I wish I could efface from your memory this once the knowledge of my origin. Don't make allowances for what I say because of what I was. I am not speaking as an immigrant making an appeal for the immigrants. I am speaking to you as an American. My credentials are these: I have been with you nearly twenty years. My father was an Americanized citizen before I got here and I married a native American. Please accept me as an American today. Let me speak as one of yourselves.

We are so ready to classify people by externals--by their habits, their customs, by the way they dress, by their gestures. Why, a better test of a man than the way in which he makes a living is the way in which he spends his leisure; and to that you can testify in the case of the immigrant. To gain our bread and butter we are forced to do this, that, and the other thing. But nobody drives us into the public library if the saloon is across the way. Speak up and tell to which door the immigrant turns in his leisure hours. People of dainty habits are disgusted with the personal habits of the poor foreigners. They have noticed a smell of herring and onions in the East Side of New York. The smell of onions, my friends, can be driven out, but a mean habit of mind is harder to eradicate. Many gentlemen who feast daintily on caviar content themselves with the sensational newspaper or the trashy novel. Are they superior to the hired laborers who feast on boiled potatoes and herring and onions and have a volume of the classics propped up before them while they eat? There are people who object to the uncouth manners of the alien. It would do us good to make a study of the natural history of the personal habits of the immigrants. There is a reason for the shrug of the shoulders, for the gestures that are so easily caricatured. They have a history, way back, that it would do us good to realize.

You workers in the libraries, you see the immigrant in hundreds, you see him off guard; for a man in his hours of relaxation is not posing; you see the alien as he is at least on one side of his nature. Let your neighbors know what you know about the immigrant. Whenever testimony is being taken on the subject, let your voice be as loud as any. Almost every day you will read in your favorite paper letters to the editor, about "the immigrant peril"; how the foreigners lower our standard of life, demoralize our habits, spoil the manners of our children in the public schools. Some of these things are true, to a certain extent. But you, under whose observation the immigrant comes, and the immigrant's children, ought to be ready with an explanation of many of these things, and you ought to be ready to suggest a remedy. You know what kind of homes these immigrant children come from, and that explains a great deal. You sit there and agree with me, I can see by your faces. You nod and you smile and you turn to one another, as much as to say, "That is so." Don't tell it to me! I know it!! Tell it to those who do not know it.

A few days ago I received a delegation of boys and girls from the nearest village high school. They represented the debating clubs of their school. They were preparing a debate on the subject of immigration, and who could help them except I? We talked very earnestly for about an hour at my fireside about this perennial question, and these young people took me at my word and were very much in earnest about what I had to say and in the way in which they received what I had to say. That is all right. As a subject for discussion in the high schools that question may be made immortal, but as a subject for national agitation it ought to be laid at rest. Why is it that certain questions have been settled once and for all and others are always being reopened? Those questions are settled finally which are considered in relation to their underlying principles. Let us not confine ourselves to the superficial aspect of the immigration question.

Every once in a while, when we come to moralize about these immigrants--there are too many of them, they come from the wrong quarters of the globe, and what not--let us ask ourselves, Is that the real thing that concerns us, or is there something at the bottom of this agitation that ought to receive attention first? Are we really afraid that the immigrant is going to take the bread from our mouths? If so, let us stop and think about it. It is the law of nature that the best man shall come out ahead. Are we going to stop the immigrant by temporarily locking the door, while we have possession of the key? It will not be for long. Right to the end it is going to be a struggle between the better and the worse, and the better will get ahead. We need not be afraid that the immigrants will take the bread from our mouths if we see to it that we are equally able or better able than they to earn our bread. It is said they are taking the earth from under our feet. Not if we are strong enough to stand and hold our ground. If they are getting the better of us, it is because they are better than we, or else, if that is not so, then they can not be getting the better of us, and we need not be afraid of them.

We will never settle this question until we are willing to consider it along fundamental lines. Did our forefathers, when they launched the declaration that all men were created free and equal, refer to the few hundreds or few thousands of people who were then in this country? Why, in that case, many of you are here only as guests! Was there any thought in their minds that of all the people in the world, those who happened to get in here before they set to work to compose the Declaration of Independence were the ones who were born free and equal, and with equal opportunities, and all the rest of mankind with limitations? You heartily approve the sentiments expressed in our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence. How then can you limit the application of their principles? When did the day dawn when it was time to shut the gate? When did the hour arrive when we could say that all those of free and equal origin were already here and the rest could stay outside? I don't know at what moment immigrants begin to be immigrants and not pilgrims and voyagers for spiritual freedom.

People were surprised at a phrase I used not long ago, and quoted it right and left, as if I had made a great discovery, when I said that every ship that brings over the immigrants is another Mayflower. Why, I can not think of it in any other terms. Ships are now made to run with steam instead of with sails, and our forefathers did not come in the steerage because the Mayflower wasn't built that way.

You see I am not sticking to my text--a proof of an inexperienced speaker. But I am not a speaker. I am a witness on the witness stand. I have been called from the ranks to testify. Now each of you is in the same position. It would have been an impertinence on my part to get up before a body of scholars without a finished address, if I had any idea that I was going to make an intellectual contribution. I simply answer to my name as a witness, and each of you can do no less: testify to what you know. Now remember I am not asking this for the sake of the immigrant. If this were the proper time and place I would tell you just how, in what order, my interest in the immigrant on the one hand and in America on the other developed. With me it was America first, and it still is so. I was not conscious of the immigrant as a special class of our citizenship until I became conscious of certain American problems. It is with me the immigrant for the sake of America, not America for the sake of the immigrant, and I beg you to believe me. And why do I insist that all the truth you know about the immigrant shall be brought out? I am not speaking--I can not repeat it emphatically enough--because I am an immigrant, not even because I represent that specially large group of immigrants, the Jews. If America should go back on its ancient traditions and close its hospitable doors, the Jews would suffer bitterly. But what is one more disappointment in the history of the Jews? They have known how to lift up their hearts and thank God for disappointments before. They would simply adopt another dream. It is not for them that I speak. Nor is it because I am a great lover of justice. I want to see that justice is done to the stranger, to be sure; let us know all sides of the immigrant that no injustice may be done. But the thing that makes me speak to you more than any other is my love for America, for the ideals that I was taught to cherish in the public school. I took everything in my school books literally; when I read that this is the land of freedom; that the door is open to all worthy men and women, and that all shall have an equal opportunity. I want to hold you to that, to a literal interpretation of those terms.

I went back to Russia two years ago, to Polotzk on the Dvina, the city in the Pale where I was born, and again I felt as I felt in the beginning, when I first came here, after seeing how those people over there regard us. They still take us at our word. When we turn them away at the gate, for this and that petty excuse at the bottom of which is some selfish motive that we do not dare to acknowledge, they are bitterly disappointed. And yet they are not the worst sufferers. It is we who suffer, we as Americans, for in turning them away we abandon our ideals, and lose the consciousness that we are still conserving the ideals of our forefathers. It always seems to me that in our attitude towards the immigrant, more than in any other branch of our national policy, we make manifest our true ideals. In our formal dealings with foreign governments we may make blunders, we may betray weaknesses, but on the whole these matters remain a secret with the foreign ambassador. The people at large do not follow very closely these dignified negotiations about treaties and tariff and what-not; but as we meet these individual men and women at the gate, here we give ourselves away. There, at the gate of entrance, we, the people of America, deal directly with the people of the world. The immigrant with his million eyes is looking at us, and he will tell whether or not we still believe in the things for which we honor our forefathers on all our patriotic anniversaries.

There was a young Jewish girl working in my household as a cook, who had been through very unhappy experiences in this country, experiences which, unfortunately, have been multiplied in the lives of many other girls who come here unprotected. She told me her story once, and I saw that what hurt her more than her own misfortunes, more than the agony she had been through, more than the disgrace she had suffered, was her disappointment in America. She found that in America, in this instance that she knew of in her own life, a man may do a gross wrong and there is no way to get hold of him and punish him. She had times of discouragement when she would talk to me and complain of that thing. Oh, it shook me to find that in the mind of this ignorant, illiterate child of seventeen, we, the American people, had lost something of our prestige. I talked to her--perhaps the need inspired me--and explained to her that our laws, like the laws of civilization at large, are not yet perfect; that law and civilization are things of gradual growth; and showed her that although we are still to blame for many things that here exist, we have done far better than other people in some respects. I made it my business to try to prove to this ignorant Russian girl, my cook, who waited on me every day, that America was still America, despite some mistakes and some failings, and that, on the whole, we have gone further in the quest of justice than other nations. It mattered to me that this one girl should think we were still Americans, and surely it matters to you just as much.

Do not let these millions that come to our gates get the wrong impression of us. Do not let people with selfish interests to serve, who send representatives to Congress, speak louder than you do when this question comes to be discussed. Let the truth out every time. For the sake of our country I am asking it, not for the sake of the unfortunate foreigners. We owe them something, as a people of charitable heart, to be sure, but we owe more to ourselves and to our traditions.

This same girl of whom I speak also afforded an illustration of some of the nobler traits of many of our immigrants that you are aware of, and that you ought to testify to. I mean the reverence for learning that is found among the ignorant, the illiterate, of many of our immigrants. This girl who could not read or write a word in any language until she came to me (when gradually, by means of the cook-book, she made some progress), had a genuine reverence for learning, which is in itself half of the material for making a scholar. I kept her pretty busy in my household, as I usually do keep our maids, and sometimes, when there would be a rush of more work than I could do, I would put her to extra trouble, to bring my luncheon upstairs, perhaps, when I could not stop for meals. "Oh, Miss Antin," she used to say, "it is wonderful that I can wait on somebody who can write books!" A respect for letters such as this is not one of our prominent characteristics as Americans. I ought to have the courage of our foreign visitor, who told the truth about his people. I can do no less. We can not boast of too much reverence for learning. Is it not a great asset these foreigners bring with them, this reverence for learning? The man behind the pushcart can't read fifty lines of the Constitution, but his heart bows in reverence before the man who can, and that is worth more than the ability to read the Constitution and forget it.

There are so many ways of classifying the immigrants--as laborers, as a peril, as a help, according to one's point of view. But I always think of them as a cloud of witnesses in the tribunal of the nations. They go back and forth, in person or through letters; their experience is reported all over the world, and they tell the truth about us. The immigrant is the only visitor, you know, who comes to stay and finds us out. The tourists, the critics, the honorable guests of various honorable institutions, who are taken around in carriages and shown our best front, what do they know about us? The letters home that go out from the East Side, shiploads of letters, some of them written at dictation, sent by persons who cannot write themselves--(I used to write letters for my cook; I have never forgotten some of them)--those are the documents that go all over the world. They are forming their opinion of us in the far corners of the earth. What shall they say of us?

If you see that justice is done in the case of the immigrant, they will have no evil to say of us. Our traditions of liberty, of hospitality to the oppressed, will be realized in the eyes of the world.

Now it does not matter that the immigrants today may not be running away from religious oppression, or may not be victims of political martyrdom. Martyrdom of the worst kind is martyrdom of the spirit, and immigrants who have suffered such martyrdom are still coming to us by the shipload. It is accurate to say, in a certain way, that the immigrants in the beginning came in search of liberty, and today they come in search of bread. That may all be, but with most of our present-day immigrants, if you give them bread and nothing else, they are not satisfied. You know it. And I know what the people said in Polotzk only two years ago. If any of you thought, from reading my story, that I had put down the reminiscences of my early childhood, with the haze of the past over all, that I had idealized everything in my enthusiasm, I can assure you that while my story was in manuscript I went back to Polotzk, to find out if I had told the truth, and I found that I had. I found there my old rabbi, my teacher who taught me my Hebrew letters. I talked with various of the old scholars, who were very old when I got back after seventeen years' absence--these old men who spend their time over the Talmud in the corridors of the synagogues--and I found among them just that attitude toward America which I remembered to have existed when I came away nearly twenty years ago. They look on us today as on the upholders of justice and true liberty. They still believe in us.

Do not let them lose that faith! It is more to us than it is to them that they shall be satisfied in their high longings. That is all I ask of you. You know the immigrant as he is in the library; you have a view of him that most people have not. You send your little paragraphs to the New York papers. They are not printed big enough. Nobody sees them. Speak up and tell what you know about the immigrant, that justice may be done, that we may remain sound-headed and true-hearted in our national life, true to our traditions; and the immigrant will hear with a million ears and see with a million eyes and run with a million feet to the far corners of the earth, to cry that America is still America.

The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: I shall ask you to rise as an expression of thanks and appreciation of Miss Antin's address. (The audience remained standing for a moment.)

The next speaker will discuss the subject of immigrants as contributors to library progress. It gives me very great pleasure to introduce to you Mrs. ADELAIDE B. MALTBY, who is in charge of the Tompkins Square branch, on the lower East Side, of the New York public library.

IMMIGRANTS AS CONTRIBUTORS TO LIBRARY PROGRESS

I should prefer to let Miss Antin's personality and accomplishments bear home to you the point I had hoped to make; and silently let what she has said to us possess our imaginations to the end that our interest and will-to-do will be vigorously stirred. Fortunately, this will happen in spite of my words.

A little girl with a fairy book in her hand gleefully remarked: "I can tell what kind of stories are in the book by the continents." Would that we could so tell the stories of our peoples! Yet the story of immigrants in this country is not unlike that of the "Ugly Duckling;" and Miss Antin is living proof of the swan-like qualities. We, as a nation, have persisted in hatching the odd egg; have been apparently proud of the duckling's ability to swim untaught, like other ducks; and were duly troubled, when because of his unlikeness, he was not acceptable to closer acquaintance with cock and gander in the barn-yard. We have witnessed, with but feeble protest, his struggle to feel at home, his association with wild ducks and all it entailed. It seems as if the winter of his agony is enduring. He's had a stirring within as of something better to come! The question is will we make greater effort to recognize the swan-like qualities and to give freedom for their development? In this direction lies progress.

As contributors, I shall not single out great personalities from among our foreigners. They will belong to history. Nor do I mean only the well educated groups. They are generally accorded recognition. But I do name the masses who earn just consideration slowly.

First of all, immigrants have kept us alive in every generation. Shall we say on the "qui vive" in some localities? All agree that living is no minor art, so to stimulate life is a contribution. Frank Warne in his book, the "Immigrant Invasion," tells how the distribution of immigrants previous to our civil war practically determined the outcome of that struggle, by giving to the North balance of power in Congress because of larger population, which was made up of able-bodied men who replaced Federal soldiers and kept shops and farms going to furnish supplies to the army. It is interesting to note that Mr. Warne ascribes the trend of immigration to the north and west very largely to what was read in the old countries about life in different parts of America, mentioning "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as the one product of literature most influencing distribution.

Cold statistics tell us that New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois and California have the greatest number of foreign born. With this as a basic fact we naturally suppose that in these states, at least, public libraries will be found catering to and helping to Americanize and to educate these citizens-to-be; because, if for no other reason, we proudly call ourselves the "university of the people." If the truth were told through questionnaire, or otherwise, about twenty-five out of one hundred libraries throughout New York state are sufficiently alive to the problem to supply books to attract and interest foreigners. Yet for twenty years, at least, the task of assimilating the almost overwhelming influx of immigrants has been acute in the states named and in many localities elsewhere. A gentleman working for the education of foreigners in American ways has said that he thought libraries seemed most indifferent to their opportunities. While another, a foreigner, devoting himself and two fortunes to bettering conditions for immigrants, thinks that public libraries, when they do work sympathetically--I mean that in the broadest sense--with the foreign born are the only organizations which accomplish with real altruism the implanting of American ideals and the developing of better citizens. This, he believes, is done when we appreciate and build on the natural endowment of the individual or race.

Since the national government has been facing this stupendous problem, commissions and organizations galore, official and philanthropic, have sprung into existence as aids. So many are there in New York City alone, a possible list would bewilder one! Yet in how many reports of such work when educational assets of communities are being cited, is there mention made of libraries as a force in educating the immigrant? Through libraries, however, more than through most educational agencies may self-expression and development of natural gifts be realized by individuals of all ages and nationalities. Where does the trouble lie? Have we been open-minded or eager enough to discover the excellent contributions foreigners bring to the end that we respond to live issues, thus building progressively?

Old habits can be changed to new compunctions. There is no standardized method of discovering or of spiritualizing men, of holding intercourse with aliens or of receiving what they bring; but we can develop sympathy and understanding, by knowing the people as individuals, their countries, literatures, languages, arts, great national characters--in a word, their histories, even to economic conditions. Thereby do we come to an understanding of reasons for immigration of the present day and of aspirations for life here. Thus equipped mentally for further sympathetic appreciation, first hand observation of conditions will help; or if that is not possible, an imaginative putting ourselves in the immigrants' places from the time they leave their old world homes with all their worldly goods in their hands and, in spite of homesickness and fears, with courage and hope in their hearts--with them as they exist in their steerage quarters and with them when they pass through the portals and mazes of Ellis Island, in the main uncomprehendingly but always trustfully. I can not attempt here to draw the detailed picture; but if you cannot see it for yourself, Mr. Edward Steiner gives it graphically and faithfully in his "On the Trail of the Immigrant." At last, the Federal government accessions the immigrant. He is passed on, properly numbered, to be shelf-listed by states, cities and towns, coming finally to libraries and other institutions to be cataloged. It remains to us then to decide for our own work whether there shall be one entry under the word "alien" or whether his various assets shall be made available by analytical entries.

Somewhat of all this we must know to appreciate what the immigrant can contribute to life here, and to library progress, if we are wise enough to call it forth or make opportunity for its expression. It is vain to hope for the assimilation of the alien as a result of conscious benevolent effort. We too often forget that each of the hundreds of thousands is a human being! With a sense of the finest they can bring with them, we should have an increasing knowledge of how they live here, what they think and how these elements can be influenced by books and personal contact. The pressure of a congested neighborhood goads to thoughtful search for remedies.

No one will go far along these paths without realizing how avid libraries must be to reap the benefits of such diverse gifts, rather than to suffer from the dregs. We must correlate books and people as never before to attain progress.

"If we once admit the human, dynamic character of progress, then it is easy to understand why the crowded city quarters become focal points of that progress." As an earnest of what is being done in many libraries elsewhere, may I tell of our work in New York, of that only because I know it best. What has been done in one place and more, can be done in another through interest, desire and adaptation.

The necessity of having the library near the people for whom its use is intended is, of course, recognized. This is more especially true when the people are foreigners. The New York public library has forty-one branches and all that are located in districts where foreigners live have, beside English books, collections of books in languages native to the residents. By so doing we believe that we convince of our friendship those adults who do not and even those who may never read English. This is a fundamental necessity, opening up various possibilities for imparting American ideas and ideals. The less English the grown people read the more they need knowledge of true American ideas to help keep them in touch with their children, who rapidly take on ways and manners strange to their parents, many of whom are uncomprehending, reticent and often sad. We go still further. We have assistants of the nationalities represented in the neighborhood, whose special duty it is to make known to their peoples the library privileges, also to know their people individually as far as possible and, of course, the books. Right here may I say that a foreign born assistant imbued with respect for her own countrymen and with true American ideals can in her enthusiasm do more to make real citizens than many Americans. This cannot be accomplished if, as happens with so many young foreigners, their own people as we see them in this country, are held in contempt. It were pity to scorn the strong qualities they possess, these "Greenies," as they call themselves. They live daily too close to the vital facts of existence to develop self-consciousness or artificialities to any great extent. We talk of simplicity. They have it. Courage, singleness of purpose, happiness in modest circumstances and astonishing capacity for work are elements of everyday life unconsciously developed. Their wealth of imagination, fostered by their own folk-lore and early traditions, could not be more wonderfully illustrated than it has been just recently in New York. The majority of us think of New York and other large cities as vast factories with the machine-like and vicious qualities of human nature uppermost, so it is most refreshing to contemplate "Old Home Week in Greenwich Village" and the "Henry Street Pageant."

"Old Home Week" successfully recalled Greenwich Village history in a dramatic way to its residents--American, Irish and Italian--and aroused a new sense of fellowship in sharing the district's activities.

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Henry Street Settlement, a pictorial representation of the history of the neighborhood from the days of the Indians to the present time was given by its residents--men, women and children--before an assemblage of spectators from all parts of the city and representative of all its activities--civic and social. The last living picture, or episode, was of all the nationalities that have lived in the last fifty years in Henry Street, once the center of Manhattan's fashionable life. The Irish, the Scotch, the Germans, the Italians and the Russians appeared. They sang the songs and danced the dances that contribute so much poetry to the life of the city, while onlookers marveled at the temperamental qualities which made it possible for foreigners to reproduce with unconscious realism historical scenes of a city and a country not their own!

Such neighborhood pageants as this and the celebration in Greenwich Village, exert a wholesome and a permanent influence in our municipal life. In both these events the libraries of the neighborhoods took part. The library aimed to show that folk-songs and folk-dances are kept alive by folk-stories. The contrast between old New York and the present time was shown by the use of historical scenes--lantern slides--and a story; in the one case reminiscent of early Dutch settlers and in the other a poetic interpreting of the spirit of service in municipal life. Those planning the pageant felt that this was a direct help in making atmosphere or in inducing an interpretive mood in participants. Festival occasions like these bind together by national ties the people and institutions of a neighborhood and are rich with possibilities for the library. To a delightful degree they broaden our understanding of the folk-spirit.

So it seems natural to have stories in the library told by foreigners in their native tongues. From time to time we have groups of Bohemians, Germans, Hungarians, Italians listening to old world traditions and tales. Knowing the original and the translation enhances the value of the story in English for narrator and listeners. Through these story hours we are reminding the foreigner of his unique contribution to life here, and are showing our respect for his best. For a simple example, our picture books and book illustration in general do not express life as vividly or realistically as Russian, Bohemian or Swedish artists do. Having some of these in our juvenile collections has been a distinct contribution to establishing sympathetic relations with foreigners.

Yes, it is true that the Italian laborer loves Dante and Italian classics. It is relatively true of other nationalities. If we take for granted that we should know and libraries should have, French and German standard writers--and this largely because their literature is older, more translated or their languages better known--may we not also take for granted that literary history is still in the making? Should we not bestir ourselves to know latter-day masterpieces, if such there be, and the older literature which has helped mould or inspire writers of them, in Swedish, Finnish, Bohemian, Polish, Hungarian or any other language spoken by the people surrounding us? Perhaps the need of realizing what these literary contributions may mean can be emphasized by the fact that in one week, June 2 to June 9, 1913, thirty thousand souls, nearly five thousand daily, passed the man at the Eastern gateway. Eighty per cent or thereabouts are going beyond New York City these days.

Is the Hungarian's enjoyment of Jokai or their patriot poets for Hungarians alone? One can better appreciate how to sustain effort and enthusiasm in a person or a group of this nationality if one knows that much of their best poetry came almost from the cannon's mouth on the field of battle; and if one has seen the glistening eyes and heard the voices of kerchief-capped girls and boys in trousers to shoe tops as they sang in ringing tones "Esküszünk!" and then heard their national song in English for the first time. At home they may not celebrate their Independence Day, March 15; but when they are invited to, here, in the library, they do it with much genuine feeling and true sentiment, which I believe leads them to appreciate and adopt as their own our Independence Day. Through such as they, perhaps, patriotic sentiment and feeling may once more be evident in our Fourth of July celebrations.

If we try to think of a library without the contributions of writers of other nationalities, we must face almost empty shelves in some classes of knowledge. This makes us realize more clearly that immigrants have rich possessions by right of inheritance while these are ours only by adoption. Some of the newcomers to our shores may have lost their heritage temporarily; but they will warmly cherish as a friend the library that restores to them this valuable possession and for us that friendship is preeminently a contribution.

There are other special ways in which the library seems happily successful in forming such friendships. With adults it comes through our co-operation with neighborhood associations, or organizations working for the benefit of foreigners, such as the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. who conduct in our lecture rooms classes to teach English to foreigners. In these instances it is our pleasure to supplement with books the copies treated. The book work is, perhaps, most marked in connection with the English classes where we have opportunity to watch progress and needs of the individual more carefully from the time when an eager pupil may ask, as one did, for a book called a "Woman's Tongue" wanting Arnold's "Mother Tongue" to his reading of Hale's "Man without a country," perhaps, or Andrews' "The perfect tribute." There are also many semi-social, semi-educational clubs, or associations, which hold their meetings in the libraries. The Slavia is a Bohemian club, which has as its only meeting place the Bohemian department of one of our branches. Its members have done much to help form a splendid Bohemian library. Several Hungarian associations work in co-operation with three branches, where are collections of Hungarian books. A large Polish society gives its educational lectures twice a month in one branch and its advice in the selection of books; but perhaps the "German Association for Culture" best illustrates my point. They state: "We are working for culture, and we aim to give the Germans in America and the Americans a better understanding of our contemporary German literature and art. We are bending our efforts more particularly for our members who as artists, poets, writers, etc., are producing valuable works. And we want to help as much as possible those talented artists, poets, etc., who are not yet known." Their distinction is that they succeed! Even in the et ceteras!

As concrete instances of other possible contributions by foreigners to library progress, I want to tell of the discussion of one City History Club chapter and the action of a settlement organization. The membership in both is composed of foreign-born young men from sixteen to twenty years of age, and both groups interest themselves in present day civic welfare. The Settlement Club wrote to the mayor, comptroller, library trustees and several daily papers a dignified plea for increase in library appropriation and in salaries. The year's closing meeting of a certain City History Club was a discussion of the city budget, the club members representing New York's mayor, aldermen and comptroller. The main contention of the majority was that cutting the appropriation of the public library meant seriously handicapping one of the city's most efficient servants and they ended with a warm appreciation of service rendered by library assistants and a vigorous plea for better salaries. This was later reproduced for an audience of representative citizens by the City History Club as a token typical of their work. Both these happenings came as complete surprises to librarians. It seems as if in their eagerness to "get on" young foreigners, especially, seek and use every possible public means for advancement. They soon appreciate what good service means and how to get it. They make us feel toward what ends they are tending and suggest definitely our part in the building for civic betterment.

To sum up, immigrants do bring very rich contributions in arts and literature. They bring many capabilities, that of acquiring intellectual cultivation being not the least among them. I am not blind to the seriousness of the problems they create, having worked among them about ten years; but the conviction strengthens that knowing and understanding their racial and social inheritance and first hand contact with groups of individuals stimulate to broader thought and living. It is not an argument! It is a suggestive statement! Immigrants can contribute to library progress.

The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: We will now have a paper from Mr. CHARLES E. RUSH, the librarian of the St. Joseph public library, on

THE MAN IN THE YARDS

This great country of ours has become within the last century a huge "melting pot" for all the nations of the world. Foreign and English speaking tongues from the four corners of the earth have sought our shores as a haven of relief and opportunity. No other nation has experienced a like growth and none other has ever gained the changing cosmopolitan characteristics which have come to us from such widely differing component parts. Those of us who call ourselves Americans owe our life, liberty and happiness to the conditions which brought about this great growth and upon us devolves the great burden of relieving many of the unfortunate conditions which naturally result from the continued and increasing wave of humanity still seeking better things in our so-called land of freedom and equality.

During the past ninety years nearly thirty millions of people have entered our immigration gates, adding to our numbers more inhabitants than the total population of the United States three score years ago, and almost one-third of our present total figure. At the close of the year of 1912 the total and combined population of five states of the Union did not equal the number of immigrants admitted during the preceding twelve months. Eighty per cent of these thirty millions arrived during the last fifty years. Eighty-seven per cent of them were more than fourteen years of age, while only thirteen per cent were under fourteen. These figures easily demonstrate that the problem is a growing one and that the large proportion of new arrivals are destined to become citizens and parents of future citizens in a short time. Our past policy of devoting our greatest efforts to the thirteen per cent while largely neglecting the eighty-seven per cent seems very similar to the losing method of mending a leaking boat by removing the water with a sponge rather than by repairing the hole.

Economists tell us that the "rise and fall of the immigration waves are very closely connected with the phenomenon of prosperity in this country," and that the general causes of westward expansion lie in the presence of foreign political and religious persecutions, low wages, bad economic conditions, ease of transportation, inflated rumors of great opportunities in America, and the appeal of separated friends and relatives.

The early immigrants, being largely of Teutonic and Keltic origin, were thrifty and self-reliant by nature and entered our American life as skilled workmen in agriculture and in the trades. In the last quarter of a century the source of the tide has changed from the northern to the southern countries, resulting in a far different type of foreigner who is generally unskilled, lacking independence and initiative, and blindly submissive to authority. Many come from nations with a per cent. of illiteracy rising as high as seventy, and notwithstanding the fifty per cent decrease in the total percentage of illiteracy in this country during the past thirty years we must face the fact that some twenty-eight out of every one hundred of the new arrivals over fourteen years of age are annually classed as illiterates. In the future we may expect to receive an increasing flood of immigration from China, Japan and India, with problems and conditions even more perplexing.

Some say that the incoming foreigner directly affects the entire laboring class native to America in that he adds materially to the supply of wage earners, lowers the scale of wages due to lower standards of living, changes working conditions through the subdivision of labor, modifies labor organizations, influences local and national politics and increases social difficulties. It has been said that "low standards of living on the part of unskilled workers menace the higher standards of the skilled workers. The man of skill is recognizing this fact and he is frequently found joining hands with the unskilled to right the grievances of the latter. In the cotton mills, in the meat packing industry, in the coal mines, in the clothing industry and elsewhere, one nationality has been displaced by another satisfied with a lower standard of living. In turn the second has been displaced by a third, and so on. Wave after wave of immigrants may be traced in the history of one of these industries. As rapidly as a race rises in the scale of living, and through organization begins to demand higher wages and to resist the pressure of long hours and over-exertion, the employers substitute another race and the process is repeated. Each race comes from a country lower in the scale than that of the preceding until finally the ends of the earth have been ransacked in the search for low standards of living combined with patient industriousness." (Carlton).

Our civilization cannot remain unaffected by these changing characteristics and the threatening, industrial conditions confronting us. With the army of the unemployed rapidly growing larger and larger, it behooves the American nation to encourage immediate consideration of ways and means to prevent unfortunate results in our industrial, political and social life.

The national government, being concerned chiefly with the admission or rejection of the immigrant, quickly places him under the care of state and local governments, who are duty-bound to assume the entire responsibility of developing him into an efficient worker and a good citizen. The regulation of private employment agencies, protection of the foreigner in transit, adoption of standard employment laws, creation of municipal unemployment commissions, etc., indicate that state and city governments are beginning to respond to this duty of offering more sympathetic understanding, more adequate care and better protection to the newly arrived, confused, unemployed and homeless immigrant. These governments are slowly realizing that their obligations have been sorely neglected in the past when such problems were wholly consigned to the well meaning but quite inadequate field of private philanthropy. Public libraries, as departments of city governments, concerned with the dissemination of knowledge of the masses, must soon realize their large responsibility in the naturalization, education and socialization of our foreign born population. It is very gratifying to announce that the state of Massachusetts has very recently taken the lead in this particular field of service by the passage of an act authorizing the appointment by the Board of library commissioners of a field worker to direct the educational work of libraries among the aliens of the state.

Libraries, like human beings, can reach a high point of efficiency and service in a particular line only when that line is encouraged and promoted. The development of libraries favoring certain classes of citizens has been quite general and extremely successful. Much has been said but comparatively little has been done for the foreigner among our laboring men. The "man in the yards," the unskilled foreign wage-earner, being taxed, while needing more and receiving less from society than others, "has done much of the rough and hard work of recent decades. He has built the roadbeds of our railways, mined our coal and iron, unloaded our vessels, and cleaned our streets. The recent immigrant has performed the crude manual labor necessary for the upbuilding of big industrial plants and huge transportation systems. His services in developing the resources of the nation have been extremely important. Many industries would be almost depleted if divested of all wage-earners of foreign birth and those born on American soil but of foreign born parents. If the foreign born and the native born of foreign parents were removed from our large cities, the latter would shrink to approximately one-third of their recent size." (Carlton.)

This "man in the yards" with whom "intimate contact removes prejudice, inspires appreciation and kindles self-respect," displays an astounding amount of seriousness and earnestness in his desire to learn and to improve himself when once informed of the possibilities in our libraries. Very often he finds his chief delight in the best of books, like a child calling for good instead of new books, and many times he is not as dull and as ignorant as generally supposed, being more appreciative of better things than our average native laboring man. The opportunity is a great one to be of practical and inspirational help to an eager reader seeking to increase his earning power and joy in life, and to learn of the higher ideals of citizenship and the coming brotherhood of all.

In order to devise worth-while methods of approaching him and securing his interest, place yourself in imagination in similar surroundings and conditions on a foreign shore. Only through direct appeals touching your personal needs, pleasure and occupation would you be attracted in like circumstances by strangers. The same is true with our new Americans.

Foreigners who speak the same language largely settle in the same locality and move from place to place in groups. A thorough educational survey of these groups in the community tributary to the library or branch is of first importance to determine the characteristics, conditions and needs of each group. Whenever it is possible an experienced library and social worker should be employed. The advice and assistance of factory managers, labor leaders and social workers cannot be valued too highly. Following these steps branch and deposit stations administered by local assistants may well be located in favorable shops, yards, factories, settlements, centers, and labor headquarters, without arousing undue suspicion among the men, even more extensively than in many of our progressive library systems today.

The formation of the recently named "Creative" or "Extension" departments and the appointment of one or more trained assistants to create interest and regularly visit and supervise the library work in each district, group and institution will soon become a customary feature in the large cities. I firmly believe that it will not be many years until our large manufacturing institutions employing much labor will construct recreational centers in their plants equipped with social, reading and gymnastic departments sufficient to meet the needs of their employees. Furthermore, I see little to discourage the establishment of traveling library collections on wheels, visiting certain districts on scheduled time, after the manner of the now famous Maryland wagon and automobile. In libraries near foreign centers special departments are needed to supply practical and simple information in different languages on requirements for naturalization, instruction, employment, investments, American customs, travel and history, demands of law and order, American money and banks, and friendly advice on many things of fifty-seven or more varieties.

The development of our present line of tactics, including the presentation of lectures emphasizing the possibility of increased wages through practical reading, the formation of classes in the study of English, the promotion of special foreign entertainment programs and exhibitions, the extension of the library habit to adults through publicity directed to their children, the publication of daily news for workers by means of special library papers and the general press, the creation of more effectively printed library advertising done in many languages, the co-operation with individuals and societies promoting educational, social and recreation centers, etc., will open a new era in library service for foreign laboring men.

A great number of specialized and technical industrial books may not often be found necessary in library collections, since the great need among this class of readers is a large supply of trade journals and more elementary mechanical books for the unskilled workman, the student mechanic and the future tradesman.

On the other hand life as well as livelihood must be considered and met. All men must live while they are earning a living and in these days they must be trained for vacation as well as vocation. The tendency today is to place too much emphasis on the daily struggle for livelihood and to neglect the hours of life during leisure time. In defense of the "man in the yards" the crying answer returns, "but what of the man whose soul-deadening toil leaves little or no time for leisure or whose daily labor kills all mental and physical desire for leisure, rest and improvement." This cry will return again and again until all labor shall be so equalized that all men will have more of what life offers and less of what it demands. Those who work on specialized labor done under intense strain and through long hours are destined to become weakened, brutalized and almost incapable of showing intelligent interest in social-betterment. Even "family life," the first school of morals, is a closed book against the man who comes home dead-tired late at night.

Consider some of the perils through which the working boy must pass from year to year, such as economic waste in un-educational trades, stinted physical development, early maturity, suppression of the spirit of boyhood, indifference towards knowledge and efficiency, personal weakness, and delinquency. The dire results due to these perils are well illustrated by the following replies made by a number of Chicago factory children when asked why they quit school:

"Because it's easier to work in a factory than it is to learn at school."

"You never understand what they tell you in school and you can learn right off to do things in a factory."

"They don't call you a Dago."

"You can buy shoes for the baby."

"Our boss he never went to school."

"School ain't no good. The Holy Father he can send ye to hell, and the boss he can take yer job away er raise yer pay. But the teacher, she can't do nothing."

Is it not true that greed, selfishness, privilege, injustice and neglect are five of the great sins of civilization? These obstructions to progress are largely due to ignorance and indifference, two causes which are in themselves as great evils as their results. In order to attain the best of social conditions, positive cures must be found for these devastating evils--cures that will replace greed by liberality, selfishness by the brotherhood of man, privilege by equality, injustice by justice and neglect by service--cures that will transform ignorance and indifference into clear-eyed knowledge and active responsibility. Laws and revolutions have failed more miserably than we enjoy admitting and only through the far reaching, beneficent influences of education and religion may we expect to touch the roots of these great evils.

Is it possible that many of our public libraries, who reach the individual and his family long before and for many years following the efforts of our public schools, can consider themselves excused from a large part of their responsibility in the educational movements now striving to improve the physical, mental and moral conditions of these men who suffer for want of better things? How can it be that some librarians stand by indifferently and heed not the cry of need from these weaker members of society, who, with their distinctive and curable social difficulties, have been left alone to carve their own destinies, unappreciated and unaided? The time is near at hand when everyone shall recognize that it is the "common right of all men to share in the culture, prosperity and progress" of society, and that the conservation of life by raising it to its highest value is to be the cry of our new era of heightened individuality.

In his inaugural address President Wilson uttered these accusing heart searching words: "We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen without mercy the years through. The groans and agony of it all, the solemn moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories and out of every home where the struggle has had its intimate and familiar seat, have not yet reached our ears."

The "vision of the open gates of opportunity for all" must first be seen by those who lead before they who follow can dream dreams and go forth to realize them.

The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: The next speaker, who is now the librarian of the Rochester public library, was for many years librarian of one of the most important libraries south of what Mr. O. Henry was accustomed to call "Mason & Hamlin's Line." I have the pleasure of introducing Mr. WILLIAM F. YUST, who will speak to us on

WHAT OF THE BLACK AND YELLOW RACES?

The form in which this subject is expressed is first a question asking for information which has never before been collected. Possibly there is in it also a mild challenge to library authorities calling for a declaration of purpose and policy.

So far there is no indication of a yellow race problem in public libraries. When foreigners enter a field which is already occupied they do not produce a real race problem so long as they are so few in number that they are chiefly objects of curiosity.

It is difficult to understand how the Japanese can be a serious race problem in California where they constitute only two and one-half per cent of the population and own and lease only twelve one-hundredths of one per cent of the land. And yet it sounds as if there is trouble there. Whatever may be its nature and its causes, the difficulty has not extended to public libraries. The Chinese on the Pacific coast, as elsewhere, are seldom seen in a library. They live in their own quarter and hardly ever penetrate other sections of the city except for purposes of trade.

The Japanese who frequent the libraries are not numerous. They belong almost entirely to the student class and the books they take are used in connection with their school work. In some places they "appear to be more resourceful, more polite and more intelligent than the average high school student" with whom the libraries come in contact. As a class of patrons they are not only inoffensive but desirable.

While the yellow man is clearly not a problem in libraries, it is equally certain that the black man is a problem. This is especially true in the South. In northern libraries it is the rule to admit him without distinction. Throughout the South, with very few exceptions, the segregation maintained in all social, educational and religious institutions is enforced in libraries.

This paper will deal primarily with the public library question. But account should also be taken of the institutional libraries to which negroes have access.

Institutional Libraries

The report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1910 contains a list of 189 secondary and higher schools for the colored race in 16 states and the District of Columbia. Of these 160 report libraries aggregating 368,684 volumes with an estimated value of $295,788. Following is a summary of the institutions and their libraries arranged by states. Of these libraries 84 have less than 1,000 volumes; 56 have 1,000 to 5,000 volumes; 11 have between 5,000 and 10,000 volumes; 6 have between 10,000 and 20,000. Two have 26,607 and 27,000 respectively.

Schools Volumes Estimated Reporting. in Value. Library.

Alabama 14 49,522 $26,525 Arkansas 6 9,450 5,150 Delaware 2 1,900 800 District of Columbia 2 27,253 43,569 Florida 7 8,267 7,120 Georgia 14 49,025 32,181 Kentucky 6 3,950 2,350 Louisiana 10 14,353 16,051 Maryland 5 7,250 5,735 Mississippi 11 18,432 14,920 Missouri 3 4,950 5,500 New Jersey 1 35 25 North Carolina 20 16,560 13,097 Ohio 1 6,500 2,500 Oklahoma 1 975 1,450 Pennsylvania 2 19,500 20,500 South Carolina 16 27,600 21,000 Tennessee 11 30,025 17,935 Texas 8 13,550 17,830 Virginia 18 52,030 35,950 West Virginia 2 7,557 5,600 --- ------- -------- Total 160 368,684 $295,788

Many of these collections except in the larger institutions, have been characterized as "so unsuitable as to be almost worthless ... the discarded refuse of garrets and overcrowded store rooms, which should have gone to the paper mill, but was sent to these poor children through mistaken kindness."

These libraries are primarily for the use of the students, but they are usually open to the townspeople for reading and reference. While the people thus have access to a collection of books for consultation, it can not be said that they have the equivalent of a public library, even where the selection is good. It is a common occurrence, however, throughout the country for institutional libraries to operate against the establishment of a public library without acting as a satisfactory substitute.

General Attitude

The prevailing attitude toward libraries for negroes is one of indifference among the masses of both races. But the same conditions existed for many years and still exist in other parts of the country. The library must follow the school, it can not precede it. When it is remembered that the educational awakening of the South is of comparatively recent date and that anything like general education of the negro is still more recent, the small number of public libraries for negroes will not appear so strange. In a few places a vigorous demand has arisen. In a few places the authorities have not only supplied the demand but have endeavored to stimulate and enlarge it.

It may be said, however, that there are still people who think that the negro is incapable of education and that it actually unfits him for usefulness. Uncle Remus has a saying, "When you put a book into a negro's hand you spoil a good plow hand." This notion still lurks in the minds of a surprisingly large number of people, who cite the wretched condition and dense ignorance of millions of negroes after fifty years of freedom. In 1910 thirty per cent of them were still illiterate. Libraries can not flourish in illiteracy as trees can not grow in a desert.

There are, however, oases in the desert, bright and shining examples of individuals, schools and whole communities, which have demonstrated the negro's capacity for the highest education and development. There is a growing disposition to afford him full opportunity for making the most of himself.

While some librarians are urging action, others shrink from it as from a disagreeable task. One is endeavoring to look at the subject of a negro library from the missionary standpoint and is trying to convince the trustees that such an innovation would be desirable, but finds it very hard to arouse any interest and enthusiasm. Another proposes to let the question alone till forced to take action. Another reports that the city is on the verge of the question. Another is having difficulty to find a central location for a colored library where white people do not object. One city with a branch library in a negro high school considers it an easy way out of a difficult situation. The authorities realize that the time is coming when these facilities will no longer be adequate. At present their funds are needed so much in other directions that they hope to be able to postpone this added expense for some time to come. One library having a special room for negroes never pushes this part of its work, but does only what it is compelled to do by city ordinance. Another where there is no race distinction tells how the library is overrun at times with negroes and what a drawback this is to the work.

Some lend books to negroes but do not allow them to sit in the reading room. This practice is not established by rule and regulation but rests on the disposition of the librarians to be helpful to all. Public sentiment will tolerate it in this form while it would rebel at an attempt to guarantee the same service in formal rules.

Table of Leading Cities

Following is a table of some of the chief southern cities showing their status with respect to negro libraries. The letter x denotes a negro educational institution having a library of 1,000 volumes or more.

Negro Population 1910 Public Remarks City Total Negro Lib.

=Alabama=

Birmingham 132,685 52,305 No Mobile 51,521 22,763 No Montgomery 38,136 19,322 No

=Delaware=

Wilmington 87,411 9,081 Yes Admitted to Wilmington Lib. without distinction.

=District of Columbia=

Washington 331,069 94,446 Yes Admitted to Pub. Lib. without distinction. 2 x.

=Florida=

Jacksonville 81,640 40,020 Yes Sep. room & sep. books in Carnegie lib.

=Georgia=

Atlanta 154,839 51,902 No 4 x. Macon 40,665 18,150 No Savannah 65,064 33,246 Yes Small sep. lib. of little consequence.

=Kentucky=

Covington 53,270 2,899 No Lexington 35,099 11,011 Yes Draw bks. at same desk with whites; sep reading room; little used. Louisville 223,928 40,522 Yes $30,000 Carnegie branch of pub. lib.; 2nd branch $22,500 being built.

=Louisiana=

New Orleans 339,075 89,262 No $25,000 Carnegie branch to be built. 4 x.

=Maryland=

Baltimore 558,485 84,749 Yes Pratt free lib. admits without distinction. 2 x.

=Missouri=

Kansas City 248,381 23,566 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction. St. Louis 687,029 43,960 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction. St. Joseph 77,403 4,249 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction.

=North Carolina=

Raleigh 19,218 Yes Sep. bldg. erected by city. Poorly supported.

=Oklahoma=

Oklahoma City 64,205 6,546 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction.

=Tennessee=

Chattanooga 44,604 17,942 314 vols. placed in col. high schools as a beginning. Memphis 131,105 52,431 Yes Cossitt Lib. supplies books thru LeMoyne Inst. 1 x.

Nashville 110,364 36,523 No $25,000 Carnegie Branch to be built. 2 x.

=Texas=

Dallas 92,104 18,024 No Galveston 36,981 8,036 Yes Branch of Rosenberg lib. in col. high sch'l. Houston 78,800 23,924 Yes $15,000 Carnegie bldg. under negro board. San Antonio 96,614 10,716 ?

=Virginia=

Norfolk 67,452 25,039 No Richmond 127,618 46,733 No This city has no pub. library.

Cities Having Colored Libraries

Charlotte, N. C., is the first and only city to build a library for negroes with its own funds. After erecting a $25,000 Carnegie building it spent $5,000 on a site and a separate building for negroes which was opened in 1906. But its only income for maintenance is $400 a year from the city. Most of the books have been donated. In 1911 the librarian of the white library enlisted the interest of a Pittsburgh woman who collected about 600 volumes for it in the North. The librarian at Wilkes-Barré, Pa., sends it the best of her discarded books. From these facts one may infer what kind of standard is maintained.

The white library was incorporated by the legislature in a special act, which at the same time created a separate negro board. Several ineffectual efforts have been made to have the act changed to place the colored library under control of the white board and the supervision of the white librarian. This would undoubtedly result in greater efficiency, as now everybody including the colored board seems to be inactive and indifferent toward it. Its failure however can hardly be ascribed to the negro board alone because it is manifestly impossible with such resources under such conditions to conduct a library which would command the respect and the interest of either race.

Savannah, Ga., also has a small library for negroes. It was organized in 1907 and is housed in rented quarters, but very few persons seem to know of its existence. The city appropriates $360 a year for it. In 1911 it had 2,611 volumes and 1,244 were drawn for home use. Its total receipts were $375.77. At the end of the year $35 was due the librarian for salary and there was a deficit of $33.93. In 1910 Mr. Carnegie offered $12,000 for a colored branch building and the city has promised an increased appropriation on the completion of the building. For a time the negroes tried to raise the money for a site by subscription, but so far they have not succeeded.

Jacksonville, Fla., has in its Carnegie building a separate room and books in charge of a colored attendant. Of its 81,000 population half are colored, but the negro registration is only five per cent and the circulation six per cent of the whole. No effort is being made to extend it. The opinion prevails that the arrangement is a mistake and that a branch library in the negro quarter would bring out a much larger use.

Galveston, Texas, has had a branch of the Rosenberg library in the colored high school since 1904. It contains 2,745 volumes. With a colored population less than one-fifth as large as Jacksonville it has twice as many borrowers but circulates only one-fourth as many books, 2,433 last year. This seems a very small number and does not bear out the theory that a separate branch enlarges its use.

In Memphis, Tenn., the Cossitt library in 1903 entered into an agreement with the LeMoyne Institute, a colored normal school, which furnishes the room, and the Cossitt library furnishes the librarian and the books, which number about four thousand added to a like number belonging to the school. While these are used mainly by pupils and teachers of the school, it serves as the book supply for all interested negroes in the city and surrounding district.

The facilities thus furnished seem to meet the present demands pretty fully. Much depends on the librarian's attitude, which is helpful and encouraging. The circulation last year was 13,947 vols. The institute is erecting a new school building, which will provide better library accommodations.

Louisville, Ky., was the first to establish a full-fledged branch on a broad basis and to erect a separate branch library building for negroes. The original plan for ten Carnegie branch libraries, of which seven have been built, included two for negroes. The first of these was opened in rented quarters the same year as the main library in 1905. Three years later it was moved into the new $30,000 building.

In its administration the colored branch is a part of the general library system and is under the supervision of the main library. The branch librarian, who is a graduate of Hampton Institute, and the two assistants are colored.

The branch serves as the reference library for the colored high schools and other educational institutions. It is in close co-operation with the grade schools through the collections of books which it sends to the classrooms to be drawn by the pupils for home use.

It has an assembly room which is used for lectures, entertainments and numerous other public meetings, and two classrooms for smaller gatherings. There is a story hour for children and several reading and debating clubs for boys and girls and adults. Through its various activities the library not only circulates books and furnishes facts but it is an educational and social center from which radiate many influences for general betterment.

Fine work is being done with children, who draw 68 per cent of the books circulated. An interesting account of it is given in the Library Journal for April, 1910, 25:160-61, by Mrs. Rachel D. Harris, a former teacher in the colored schools, who is in charge of this department.

When the branch was started eight years ago it was somewhat of an experiment and there was doubt and apprehensiveness all around with regard to the outcome of the undertaking. But it has been a pronounced success from the beginning. It has grown steadily until last year 73,462 vols. were drawn from it for home use. It has become so popular that the second branch is now under construction in the eastern colored section of the city.

The colored people are proud of this library and its achievements. Its opening marked an epoch in the development of the race which is second in importance only to the opening of the first colored free schools there in 1870.

Houston, Texas, also has a separate branch building opened last April. For the past four years it was maintained in a small way in the colored high school. The new building is distinctively a product of negro enterprise. Booker T. Washington's secretary called on Andrew Carnegie personally and secured the promise of $15,000 on condition that the city of Houston would agree to provide not less than $1,500 annually for its maintenance. The $1,500 for the site was raised by colored citizens entirely among their own people. The plans for the building were drawn by a colored architect and its erection supervised by a committee of a separate board of trustees, which consisted of nine colored men. The librarian is a colored girl who is responsible only to the colored trustees. Although she and the trustees consult freely with the librarian and trustees of the public library, the latter act only in an advisory capacity to them. They are therefore justly proud of the library as their own achievement. It contains 5,000 volumes. From a colored population of 30,000 the registered borrowers were only 1,261 last year and the books drawn 5,117. These numbers seem very small, but no doubt there will be a large increase in the new building.

While the Houston method of management may contribute to the negro's self-respect and minister somewhat to the pride and independence of a few of their number, the wisdom of the plan may well be questioned. The results are bound to be inferior unless experience counts for nothing. It is unfortunate that so many cities in their first venture proceed with such disregard of the experience of other places. But the limit is reached when the same city repeats the process with a second board after one board has learned its lesson. This applies not only to the details of planning, erecting and furnishing a building but equally if not more to its operation, the selection, purchase and cataloging of books, the appointment of assistants and the transacting of its daily business.

The white public library boards of Nashville and New Orleans both have plans under way for the erection of Carnegie colored branch buildings, each to cost $25,000. In Nashville the negroes are raising $1,000 and the city is paying $5,000 toward the site. In New Orleans the city will purchase the site. In neither of these places is there any public provision at present for supplying books to negroes.

In Atlanta, Ga., the leading educational center of the South for negroes, they are still without public library facilities, although agitation on the subject began over ten years ago. On the day of the opening of the beautiful $125,000 Carnegie building a committee of colored men called on the library board. Prof. W. E. B. DuBois of Atlanta University acting as spokesman said:

"Gentlemen, we are a committee come to ask you to do justice to the black people of Atlanta by giving them the same free library privileges that you propose giving to whites. Every argument which can be adduced to show the need of libraries for whites applies with redoubled force to the negroes. More than any other part of our population they need instruction, inspiration and proper diversion; they need to be lured from temptation of the streets and saved from evil influences, and they need a growing acquaintance with what the best of the world's souls have thought and done and said. It seems hardly necessary in the twentieth century to argue before men like you the necessity and propriety of placing the best means of human uplifting into the hands of the poorest and lowest and blackest.

"The spirit of this great gift to the city has not the spirit of caste or exclusion but rather the catholic spirit which recognizes no artificial differences of rank or birth or race, but seeks to give all men equal opportunity to make the most of themselves. It is our sincere hope that this city will prove itself broad enough and just enough to administer this trust in the true spirit in which it was given."

The chairman asked, "Do you not think that allowing whites and negroes to use this library would be fatal to its usefulness?" Another member of the committee replied that they did not ask to use this library nor even ask equal privileges but only some privileges somewhere.

The chairman then made these points clear: (1) That negroes would not be permitted to use the Carnegie Library in Atlanta; (2) That some library facilities would be provided for them in the future; (3) That the city council would be asked to appropriate a sum proportionate to the amount of taxes paid by negroes of the city; (4) That efforts would be made to induce northern philanthropists to aid such a library.

Later Mr. Carnegie offered to give the money necessary for the erection of a branch library for negroes. When the details of its administration came up for consideration the negroes demanded representation on the library board. This was positively refused and the proceedings were so completely blocked that the negroes of Atlanta are still without any public library advantages.

Methods of Management

From the cases cited it appears that there are four distinct methods of dealing with this question in the South: (1) To admit the negro to the same building on equal terms with others as is done in Baltimore, Wilmington, Washington and some of the Missouri libraries. This method is not satisfactory to the whites. As one report says, "There are white people who are deterred from using the library because in so doing they must touch elbows with colored folks.... We could do better service to both races if there could be a separation, for we must take the people with their prejudices, especially in the use of the library, which is a purely voluntary matter." (2) To admit him to the same building but to a separate room, which is not satisfactory to the negro. One library which has this plan reports, "Many of the educated and cultured negroes (for there are some even in the South) will not come unless they can do so on the same social equality and use the same apartments as the white patrons." (3) To have a separate library under control of members of their own race. This is almost certain to produce inferior results on account of their inexperience and lack of knowledge regarding every phase of the work. (4) To have a separate branch in charge of colored assistants who are under the direction and supervision of one board and one librarian, who have control over the entire library including all branches and other agencies. This plan assures the greatest economy and efficiency and will probably be adopted by all the libraries whose funds will permit it. A separate colored board is as unnecessary and unbusinesslike as would be a separate board for each white branch.

On the advantages of a separate branch library one colored man writes: "In the South the separation is not only necessary for the peace and cordial relations desirable to be maintained but the colored branches are desirable because the colored people would use them so a hundred times more than they would otherwise. The feeling of perfect welcome, ownership and unqualified privilege are all necessary to patrons who are to get the best possible from libraries among them. These things in the South can only be had in separate branches as much as it is regrettable that there should be a mind and spirit demanding separate libraries."

Traveling Libraries

Delaware and Kentucky are the only state library commissions reporting special traveling libraries for negroes. Last year "seven traveling libraries of 30 to 50 volumes each were arranged for the use of the colored schools in Delaware, and the entire charge and care of these libraries was given over to the State College for Colored Students near Dover." The Kentucky commission has two libraries of 50 volumes each in circulation and is planning to send more. Hampton Institute also sends out traveling collections of books.

Another system of traveling libraries is that established in 1910 by James H. Gregory of Marblehead, Mass., for distribution through Atlanta University among the negroes of the South. There are about 60 libraries of 48 volumes each. They are sent to any community, school, church or other organization for one year and then exchanged for a different set. Two interesting articles on these libraries and their founder were published by G. S. Dickerman in the Southern Workman, August and September, 1910.

What the Negro Reads

What the negro reads is in itself a large and interesting subject. A brief article on it dealing equally with what the negro does not read, appeared in the Critic, July 1906, from Mr. George B. Utley, then librarian of the Jacksonville public library. The first book drawn from the Louisville library was Washington's "Up from slavery." The most striking feature of the circulation in general is the comparatively small percentage of fiction read. Of the 258,438 volumes drawn from the Louisville library during its first six years only 46 per cent was fiction.

This may be due to the fact that the so-called leisure class, who are supposed to read most of the fiction, is smaller among the colored people; or that the novel does not appeal so strongly to the negro mind; or that the library is used more largely by pupils, teachers, ministers and other professional people, who come to it for more serious purposes.

A book entitled "Tuskegee and its people," edited by Booker T. Washington, contains biographical sketches of many negroes who have gone out from that school to work for the elevation of their race. These sketches give a remarkable picture of the "conditions that environ the masses of the negro people," as well as their struggles for improvement.

One of them describing the country school which he attended writes, "When I reached the point where the teacher ordered me to get a United States history, the book store did not have one, but sold me a biography of Martin Luther instead, which I studied for some time thinking that I was learning something about the U. S."

Years later "I betook me to the woods, where I read everything I could get. It was during this time that accidentally, I may say providentially, I got hold of a book containing the life of Ignacius Sancho; and I have never read anything that has given me more inspiration. I wish every negro boy in the land might read it."

Another Tuskegee graduate, a woman whose mother as a slave had been taught to read by her master's daughter, writes: "Sundays, with my sisters gathered about her knees, we would sit for hours listening as mother would read church hymns for us."

The articles by Mr. Dickerman above referred to give the results of some investigations on their choice of books. He received answers from 35 leading negro schools in response to a request for a list of such "books as had been found in the experience of their schools to be the most popular and the best and which they would recommend." The "Life of Lincoln" appeared on 15 of these lists; "Little women" 15; "Robinson Crusoe" 14; "Paul Dunbar" 11; "Uncle Tom's cabin" 10; "Ivanhoe" 9; "Souls of black folk" 9; "Ramona" 8; "Life of Douglass" 8; "Uncle Remus" 7. Six lists included "Alice in wonderland," Grimm's "Fairy tales," "John Halifax," "Last days of Pompeii," and "Swiss family Robinson."

These lists all came from schools and therefore bear the earmarks of the schoolmaster. But the largest part of the reading by negroes is done by the pupils and teachers in connection with their school work. This would account for the preponderance of the literature and history classes. Miss Sarah B. Askew observes that among the general readers in a public library "the colored people's tastes are for quick action, strong emotion, vivid coloring, and simplicity of narration." Books by and about their own people are in constant demand. The colored magazines, those devoted especially to their interests and those published by colored men are always popular.

There is also a growing demand for books useful to the mechanic in his daily work. Chauffeurs "avail themselves of technical books on automobiles." An early experience in the Louisville library was with a woman who made a business of raising chickens. She called at the library for medical help because many of them were dying. Strangely enough this subject had been overlooked in selecting the books and the librarian was unable to prescribe for sick chickens. But a book on poultry was ordered for her immediately.

Conclusions

Following are some conclusions regarding libraries for negroes:

(1) That books and reading are of the utmost value in the education, development and progress of the race.

(2) That in northern public libraries they are admitted to all privileges without distinction.

(3) That in southern libraries the segregation of the races prevails, as it does, in all educational, religious and other social institutions.

(4) That in many places institutional libraries are supplying the book wants of the few negroes who really have need of libraries.

(5) That among the masses of the colored race there is as yet very little demand for libraries.

(6) That where a genuine demand has manifested itself and up-to-date facilities have been provided negroes have been quick to use them and have made commendable progress.

(7) That in some of the large cities containing a great many negroes who are intelligent and who pay taxes the provision made for them is sadly inadequate or is entirely lacking.

(8) That southern librarians generally are kindly and helpfully disposed toward them and that the majority of the white people favor a fair deal for them, including the best training and the fullest enlightenment.

(9) That in the South any arrangement which aims to serve the two races in the same room or in the same building is detrimental to the greatest good of both. Complete segregation is essential to the best work for all.

(10) That many libraries are not financially able to conduct separate departments and so the negro loses out.

(11) That a few cities have splendid facilities for them, a few others are now establishing branches, a considerable number are discussing the question seriously and another considerable number which should be at work are doing nothing.

(12) That the best solution of the problem is the separate branch in charge of colored assistants under the supervision and control of the white authorities.

(13) That even in northern cities which have large segregated colored districts such separate branches would result in reaching a larger number of negroes and doing better work for both races.

(14) That the South is entitled to the sympathy and help of the North on this question, which is only a part of the larger question of negro education. That sympathy will come with fuller information and will increase as the size and seriousness of the problem is more fully understood.

Adjourned.

THIRD GENERAL SESSION

(Wednesday morning, June 25, 1913)

The PRESIDENT: There is a matter of business to come up this morning. At the last conference the Association adopted an amendment to the Constitution which, to become effective, must be ratified at this meeting. It may be added that the requisite notice required by the Constitution, of thirty days, has been given by the Secretary, through publication in the Bulletin, where you have doubtless seen the proposed amendment together with the by-law which is dependent, of course, upon the adoption of the amendment itself. The Secretary will please read the proposed amendment as adopted at the Ottawa conference.

The SECRETARY: I will also read that portion of Section 14 of the Constitution to which the amendment would apply:

"=Council.= Membership. The Council shall consist of the executive board, all ex-presidents of the Association who continue as members thereof, all presidents of affiliated societies who are members of the Association, twenty-five members elected by the Association at large, and twenty-five elected by the Council itself,"--

And the proposed amendment consists of the following words to be inserted at that place:

--"and one member from each state, provincial and territorial library association or any association covering two or more such geographical divisions which complies with the conditions for such representation set forth in the by-laws."

The PRESIDENT: The amendment is before you for consideration. What is your pleasure? Are you ready for the question?

(The question being called for and put, the amendment was adopted.)

The PRESIDENT: Dependent upon the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution there is now before you for consideration a proposed amendment to the by-laws. The Secretary will please read the suggested amendment which carries into effect now the Constitutional amendment which you have just adopted and which becomes effective, in that it has now been adopted by two successive conferences.

The Secretary then read the proposed amendment Section 3a, which is as follows:

"Sec. 3a. Each state, territorial and provincial library association (or any association covering two or more such geographical divisions) having a membership of not less than fifteen members, may be represented in the Council by the president of such association, or by an alternate elected at the annual meeting of the association. The annual dues shall be $5.00 for each association having a membership of fifty or less, and ten cents per additional capita where membership is above that number. The privileges and advantages of the A. L. A. conferences shall be available only to those holding personal membership or representing institutional membership in the Association."

The President then put the question and the above amendment to the by-laws was duly adopted.

Dr. ANDREWS: I move the addition of the words "or to members of other affiliated societies," in order not to bar these members from attendance at our meetings.

The PRESIDENT: Dr. Andrews' amendment is to include the words "or to members of other affiliated societies."

Mr. RANCK: I think, as a member of the Committee that had something to do with the drafting of the proposed by-law, that I can say that the purpose of that provision was that there should be some advantage to persons holding membership in these organizations, to get the railroad rates, hotel rates, etc.; in other words, to have some pecuniary advantage in their becoming members and not to be able to come and get those advantages without holding any kind of a membership.

If I may be permitted, Mr. President, I should like to give a few figures with reference to the distribution of the members of the Council as it now exists, as given in the last handbook. There were 72 members of the Council, counting the one or two who have died, representing 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. However, in the Council only 20 States in the Union have representation. In other words, there are 28 states in the Union that are not represented in the Council. The population of these 28 states is nearly thirty-three millions and their area is nearly two million square miles, whereas the area of the states that are represented is a little over a million square miles. The point is, Mr. President, the purpose of the amendment to the Constitution and these amendments is to give a wider geographical distribution of representation in the Council; in other words, that more than half of the area of the United States may be brought in, on account of this geographical representation, and that the thirty-three millions of people who live in those states may be able to get a representation which it seems at the present time they do not have.

The PRESIDENT: The question before the conference is on the proposed amendment of the by-law as offered by Dr. Andrews.

(The President put the question and the amendment was duly adopted.)

The PRESIDENT: The question now is upon the amendment to the by-laws as amended.

(The President put the question and the amendment to the by-laws was duly adopted.)

The PRESIDENT: The Association during the past year suffered grievous loss in the passing of two of its notable members, members who had long been identified with the Association and its work, and I may add the loss of a friend of librarians everywhere, that splendid gentleman, Mr. Francis Fisher Browne, of The Dial,--a man gentle of soul, keen of intellect and fine of fiber. While perhaps we are not called upon to take official notice of his passing it seems to me very well that we should group him with those whose loss we mourn at this time. By request of the Executive Board and of the Council a committee consisting of Dr. Putnam, Mr. Bowker and Mr. Wellman have been asked to draft memorial resolutions on the passing of Dr. Billings and Mr. Soule and I would ask Dr. Putnam to report at this time.

Dr. PUTNAM: With your permission I will ask Mr. Wellman to read the suggested minute with reference to Mr. Soule. And the Committee would suggest that if the expression in these minutes appears to you just, that they be adopted by a rising vote.

Mr. Wellman then read the following resolution which was unanimously adopted by a rising vote.

CHARLES CARROLL SOULE

With profound sorrow, we record the death of Charles C. Soule, whose services and relation to the American Library Association were in many ways unique. Though himself not a librarian, yet in the early days of the public library he was one of those who foresaw the great force which it might be made to exert in our democratic civilization; and to promote the wise realization of this vision, he labored unceasingly as a member of this Association for more than thirty years and was a constant attendant at the meetings. He served as vice-president in 1890, as member of the Institute for six years, as member of the Council for eight years, as trustee of the endowment fund for twelve years, and as a member of the Publishing Board for eighteen years. But his distinctive contribution was in efforts towards the improvement of library architecture; and here by his study and writings, as well as by creating the office of advisory expert in building, he did more than any other man to further the planning of library buildings for library work.

In reciting the tale of his accomplishment, it is impossible to forget the man. Unselfish and high-minded, a good counsellor and a consistent friend, he ever showed eager and affectionate interest in the work of his fellow members, and especially in the success of those beginning their careers. Above all, he possessed a generous faith in his associates and an unfailing good will. These were but a few of the qualities which enabled him to achieve so much for the public library, and which endeared him to hosts of librarians throughout the land.

Dr. PUTNAM: Mr. President, this is proposed as a minute for the records of the Association. It is therefore headed "John Shaw Billings."

The resolution was unanimously adopted by a rising vote.

JOHN SHAW BILLINGS

April 12, 1838--March 18, 1913

A member of the American Library Association 1881-1913--Its President, 1901-02

It is seldom that the death of an individual removes from two professions a unit of singular power in each. But such was the loss in the recent death of John Shaw Billings; a scientist in a department of science intensive and exacting, a librarian rigorously scientific in a profession broadly humane. To the former he made original contributions which constituted him an authority within special fields; but also in his great Index-Catalog of Medical Literature, one which assured certainty and promoted advance in every field--and left the entire medical profession his debtor. As a librarian, having first brought to preeminence the professional library entrusted to him, he was called to the organization into a single system of isolated funds and institutions, achieved that organization, and lived to see it, under his charge develop into the largest general library system in the world, with a possible influence upon our greatest metropolis of incalculable importance to it, and through it, to the welfare of our entire country.

The qualities which enabled him to accomplish all this included not merely certain native abilities--among them, penetration, concentration, vigor, tenacity of purpose and directness of method, but others developed by self-denial, self-discipline, and a complete dedication to the work in hand. It was through these that he earned his education and his scientific training; and they hardened into habits which attended him to the end of his days, when he concluded in toil that shirked no detail a life begun in toil and devoted to detail.

Such habits, a keen faculty of analysis, and a scientific training kept him aloof alike from hasty generalizations and from the impulses of mere emotion; while his military training induced in him three characteristics which marked alike his treatment of measures and his dealings with men; incisiveness, a distaste for the superfluous and the redundant, and an insistence upon the suitable subordination of the part to the whole. In this combination, and in the knowledge of, and power over, men which accompanied it, he was unique among librarians; in his complete lack of ostentation he was unusual among men. His mind was ever on the substance, indifferent to the form. A =power= in two professions, to have termed him the "ornament" of either would have affronted him; for he was consistently impatient of the merely ornamental. Any =personal= ostentation was actually repugnant to him; and he avoided it as completely in what he suffered as in what he achieved; bearing, with a reticence that asked no allowances, physical anguish in which most men would have found ample excuse from every care.

If such a combination of traits assured his remarkable efficiency, it might not have seemed calculated to promote warm personal or social attachments. Yet there was in him also a singular capacity for friendship; not indeed for impulsive and indiscriminate intimacies, but for those selective, deep, steady and lasting friendships which are proof of the fundamental natures of men. And however terse, austere, and even abrupt, his manner in casual relations, where a really human interest was at stake he might be relied upon for sympathies both warm and considerate, and the more effective because consistently just and inevitably sincere.

The testimonies to these qualities in his character, to these powers, and to his varied achievements, have already been many and impressive. The American Library Association wishes to add its own, with a special recognition not merely of the value to the community of the things which he accomplished, but of the value to individuals in the example of a character and abilities so resolutely developed and so resolutely applied to the service of science and the service of men.

The PRESIDENT: To offer a telegram as a substitute for a long and pleasurably anticipated paper is cause for regret, but such must be the case this morning as Miss Arnold finds it impossible to be with us. The telegram reads as follows:

"Emergency meeting of Simmons College Corporation has been appointed for Wednesday and prevents me from attending library meeting. Extreme regrets.

SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD."

The general theme of this morning's session is "Library influence in the home, in the shop, on the farm, and among defectives and dependents." We shall begin the morning's program with a paper on "The working library for the artisan and the craftsman," by EDWARD F. STEVENS, librarian Pratt Institute free library, and director of the school of library science, Brooklyn.

THE WORKING LIBRARY FOR THE ARTISAN AND THE CRAFTSMAN

It is not my privilege to speak to you at this time of the professional, technical, or practical aspects of that recent phase of library work wherein is attempted the reconciliation of shopmen with bookmen. In the very few moments placed at my disposal I may mention only that human relationship which enters so largely into a librarian's dealings with men who are concerned with and about their work.

The straightforward, sympathetic intercourse of man with man may adorn to the point of making almost beautiful a department of librarianship which is extremely matter-of-fact in its essential character and might easily become commonplace in its practicality. The business of a technology department in a public library may best be expressed in terms of the statement of the policy of the Franklin Union established in recent years in Philadelphia--"the further education of men already employed." Such a working library is strictly a library of work. It is almost oppressively utilitarian. Yet to a librarian who has had the privilege of making books known to artisans and craftsmen, and who is now denied that privilege, the sense of the loss of the fellowships, not to say friendships, that formerly were a part of his daily occupation proves that the sympathetic was after all the potential element in his experience.

I may say with Lowell, "I like folks who like an honest piece of steel.... There is always more than the average human nature in a man who has a hearty sympathy with iron."

Theodore Roosevelt has given us a maxim that deserves to be written as a rule of life--"That which one does which all can do but won't do is the greatest of greatness."

Therein is the greatness of work with practical men--the discernment of the simplest facts of life, the performance of the simplest acts of life in working out the complex things of life, recognizing, to begin with, that a man's difficulty is at once less a difficulty when it becomes the friendly concern of a fellow-man. My own first experience as a seeker after help in a public library in matters technical that were then of great importance to me, met the rebuff and disappointment that have given me a point of view which amounts to a conviction.

In the present day, the library assumes considerable confidence in inviting the workingman into its constituency, and the workingman must come to it with no less confidence if the library expects its justification. The mechanic, as formerly the scholar, must approach the library with a calculated expectation. The librarian must understand him, believe in him, and in turn make himself understood by him.

In a recent issue of the =American Machinist=, a writer deplores the general lack of sympathy and interest in the affairs of the "unheralded mechanic." That the life he lives has no place in men's thoughts nor in literature. This is the closing statement: "As it is, if left to themselves, mechanics will by their silence continue to let those outside the shop think of them as nothing but men tied to a whistle."

Leigh Hunt (himself very much an outsider) in a familiar essay makes this friendly observation: "A business of screws and iron wheels is, or appears to be, a very commonplace matter; but not so the will of the hand that sets them in motion; not so the operations of the mind that directs them what to utter."

But this mechanic that now nears the public library is coming neither as a pathetic figure in distress, nor as a mysterious or heroic figure beyond our comprehension. He comes as an unpretending man dignified by earnestness of purpose not to discredit an honorable vocation.

The best of mutual understanding and feeling, however, will not secure the chief ends of librarianship except so far as they splendidly prepare the way. The recognition of books as tools comes only as the books stand the same practical test that the workman applies to his instruments.

The librarian must furnish books shaped to the man's hand, books that he can use to perform work, that he can depend upon as true, accurate, precise, simple, efficient, economical, reliable in the same sense that his tools must be all these. And so, the selection of books for a working library of technology becomes not unlike the testing of instruments of precision. Care in selection is of supreme importance in fitting up a tool-shop of books.

Wisdom in application is scarcely second to intelligence in choice. A practical man does not often come to a library for this or that particular book, for the work of a specified author, or for a title that he has in mind. If he does, he cannot always be depended upon to know his own wishes in the matter. What this man wants is information about a topic that concerns him. He leaves it to the library to tell him in what printed form that information can be had--and it's risky, for the library, to trifle with him or to play him false. Hesitation, indecision, irresolution are fatal. If the library exhibits lack of faith in itself, who, indeed, shall have faith in it? The workingman will be sure to entertain the same contempt for the librarian's doubtful application of even the best books as he himself would of the misuse of good tools in his own trade.

This necessity for books that will answer to needs is the incentive in the erection of a working library to which men may resort.

At home we have a permanent and constantly revised selection of the most useful technical books registered on cards of varying colors showing the differing characteristics of the books included. This is our Works Library. And within it, on blue cards, are listed the simplest and most direct texts for the man with the least preparation for books. This is our Dinner-Pail Library. And starting with these, we may go on with a degree of confidence in teaching men the use of tools the handling of which we ourselves understand.

Preparedness in attitude, preparedness in equipment, await the arrival of the man the most skeptical of the library's guests. Does he come and go away again confirmed in his skepticism? If he does, it's the library's fault, not his. Does he come, and remain, to come again? Then he is ready to pay the tribute of his allegiance that becomes the librarian's great reward.

We have heard the =American Machinist= complain that the mechanic found no voice to sing his praises. Not less is the genus librarian unwept, unhonored, and unsung. He expects praise as little as he desires it, and, perhaps, I may say, deserves it. But the ready word of appreciation, the acknowledgment of the library's help in overcoming difficulties that drove a man there as a last resort, the confession of awakening to the new knowledge of the library's wider purpose and power, is expressed often with a frankness and fervor that surprise and gratify the fortunate librarian who has been instrumental in bringing things to pass.

I recall how men of few words and little sentiment have spontaneously related to me their experiences of misfortune, perplexity, disappointment, or other embarrassment that caused them to turn to the public library for a possible helping hand, and then, how the library did not fail them in their extremity. At such times, I knew that the free library was doing what it undertook to do.

Of this sort are the few, the impressive instances that illustrate how, on occasions, a working library can meet very exceptional requirements. There are also the very many--the students, apprentices, shopmen, machinists, inventors, chemists, engineers, manufacturers--all artisans and craftsmen in their various ways, who are coming to learn that in their usual daily processes they may expect from the public library the ordinary, indispensable service that the library has always performed for those who know the value of books.

It is this complete idea of a library that still fails of development in the minds of these men, an idea that the library is a live thing, a public utility of which they will naturally and inevitably avail themselves as they do of the street-cars to take them both to and away from their work. Nothing is needed to convince men that a utility =is= a utility save the satisfying use of it. When they have found that the library speeds them on in the direction of the day's occupation, then it becomes easy enough for them to learn that the library can also get them far removed from it. And when the workingman fully comprehends the =working= library, and by means of it is introduced to the =diverting= library, he becomes a man with the greatest capacity for usefulness, and the library's conquest of the community is finished and triumphant.

The PRESIDENT: Mr. Stevens has very forcefully brought out the factor that a book may be in bringing into life dormant faculties that might otherwise go to waste and recalls to us the remark of Prof. Dewey, that the loss of the unearned increment is as nothing compared with the loss of the undiscovered resource.

Of course you know as well as the members of the program committee that they had nothing to do with the selection of the next speaker; the topic chose her. How could anyone else be asked to present the subject of "The woman on the farm," than Miss LUTIE E. STEARNS, of the Wisconsin free library commission?

THE WOMAN ON THE FARM

Modern programs of library extension through public libraries as distinguished from traveling library systems are practically confined to an arbitrary line drawn tightly around the city's limits. Charters, laws, or ordinances under which many libraries operate are usually interpreted to restrict the use of such institutions to a narrow area and no great attempt has been made through legislation, save in California and a few isolated examples elsewhere, to extend library privileges to adjacent communities. It is a happy omen for the future that the president of the American Library Association, the custodian of a library catering to two-million city dwellers with a circulation second in rank to Greater New York, should have seen fit on his own initiative to place among the topics of this meeting the needs of the woman on the farm, the real founder of the city's citizenship.

"Who's the greatest woman in history?" was the query debated by Kansas school teachers recently. They considered Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth, Semiramis, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa, Grace Darling, Florence Nightingale, Susan B. Anthony, and half a hundred others. When they came to deciding, all the names known to fame were ruled out. And to whom do you suppose the judges awarded the palm? Here is the answer: "The wife of the farmer of moderate means who does her own cooking, washing, ironing and sewing, brings up a family of boys and girls to be useful members of society and finds time for intellectual improvement."

These teachers knew that woman, they knew the drudgery she faced at four or five o'clock every morning the year 'round. There are twenty millions of her in this country of ours, she makes up nearly one-fourth of the population of the country, and while we are dealing with these most "vital statistics," we may include the tragic fact that sixty-six per cent of those committed to insane hospitals are from rural districts, the farm women constituting the great majority thereof.

And yet the needs of this great, deserving class of "humans" with minds and hearts even more receptive to ideas than are city women--the needs of such as these are as yet almost wholly unrealized by librarians aside from Commission workers. No committee of the American Library Association has ever had the joy of working out a program of library extension from the great city systems to rural readers. The question put by the then President Roosevelt to his Country Life Commission, "How can the life of the farm family be made less solitary, fuller of opportunity, freer from drudgery, more comfortable, happier, and more attractive?" still awaits solution from the library standpoint.

Though agriculture is our oldest and by far our largest and most important industry, it has only recently occurred to us in the United States that we had a rural problem. It is only within the last decade or so that we have awakened to the fact that there is a rural as well as an urban problem, and the library world is too prone to keep from recognizing it. We are not concerned in this connection with the problem of the retired farmer who moves into a town to spend his last days which are, seemingly, all he is willing to spend; nor shall we discuss those restless flat dwellers in our cities who, tempted by such alluring and wholly immoral titles as "The Fat of the Land," "The Earth Bountiful," "A Self-Supporting Home," "Three Acres and a Cow," or "Three Acres and Liberty"--"for those to whom the idea of liberty is more inspiring than that of the cow"--attempt to start ginseng, guinea pig, pheasant, and peacock farms, and who return to the city as shorn of guineas as the pigs they leave behind them.

In the serious solution of this problem, we may, in truth, differ as to the sort of farmers we would benefit. As Sir Horace Plunkett has said in his "Rural problem in America," "The New York City idea is probably that of a Long Island home where one might see on Sunday, weather permitting, the horny-handed son of weekday toil in Wall Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic fowls." These supply a select circle in New York City with butter and eggs at a price which leaves nothing to be desired unless it be some information as to cost of production. Full justice is done to the new country life when the Farmers' Club of New York fulfills its chief function--the annual dinner at Delmonico's. Then Agriculture is extolled in fine Virgilian style, the Hudson villa and the Newport cottage being permitted to divide the honors of the rural revival with the Long Island home. "But to my bucolic intelligence," concludes Sir Horace, "it would seem that against the back-to-the-land movement of Saturday afternoon, the captious critic might set the rural exodus of Monday morning."

To the New England librarian there probably comes the picture of rugged, bean-clad hills with "electrics" in every valley eager to take the intellectual rustics to the Lowell lectures or the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That books are appreciated in the rural districts even in a state that boasts a library in every town is shown by a letter from one who had received the volumes sent out by the "Massachusetts Society to Encourage Studies at Home." "I do not know where I should stop if I tried to tell how much these library books have helped me in my isolated life--I have craved so much and there seemed no access possible to anything I wanted. I have lived always with a longing for something different; life was a burden to be carried cheerfully, yet I never quite conquered the feeling that the burden was heavy. Books have taken away that feeling and before I was aware, the load was gone. I have written thus of myself, not because my individual experience is of importance enough to interest anyone, but because I believe the world is full of people with the same wants that I have and it may be some satisfaction to know how fully you are supplying them."

To the librarian of New Jersey, the isolated dwellers of the salt marshes would come to mind. Maryland suggests to some librarian epicures the oyster farm, with its succulent product, but to others comes the vision of the "real thing" supplied as in Washington County with the ideal arrangement of central library, branches, deposit stations, traveling libraries, and automobile delivery to the very doors of the Maryland farm homes--the most ideal arrangement of rural extension that exists in America today.

To the Georgian, the "cracker" presents itself with its "Uneeda" book appeal. The "mountain-white" of Kentucky, who comes to Berea in his seventeenth year to learn his letters, would surely appreciate an opportunity to go on with them when he gets "back home." In the north middle west, where farms are still surrounded by a fringe of pine and an "infinite destiny," a farmer's wife writes as follows: "For many years I have lived on a farm on the cleared land of Northern Wisconsin, and I have made an earnest study of the conditions that surround the lives of the average isolated farmer and his family. I have seen all of the loneliness and desolation of their lives, I have witnessed all the dreariness and poverty of their homes. I have been with them when our nearest railroad station meant a twenty-eight mile trip through bottomless mud or over shaking corduroy; where our nearest post-office was eighteen miles away, over the same impassable roads and where we were often without mail for weeks at a time; when the nearest public library was sixty miles away; when the only element of culture or progress we possessed was the little backwoods school, housed in a tumble-down log shack and presided over by careless or incompetent teachers. I have watched civilization come to us step by step,--the railroad, the rural mail delivery, the country telephone, and other modern rural conveniences. But, before any of these, right into the midst of our lonely backwoods life, came the traveling library, for it is characteristic of the traveling library that it is not dependent on modern conveniences for its appearance. I can recall the thrill of joy with which we received our first case of books. I read their titles over and over, handled and caressed them in a perfectly absurd manner. Almost all of the books were old friends of mine; but, to our little neighborhood of foreigners, they were "brand new" and the enthusiasm over that library knew no bounds.

"We had a regular literary revival that winter. We talked books in season and out of season; and from talking about the books in the little library we fell to talking of other books; of books we had read in our younger, happier days. It mattered little if in the course of these conversations books and authors were hopelessly mixed.

"I cannot say that we derived any great amount of knowledge from our first library, but I do know that it brought into our little backwoods settlement, that which we needed much more--hope and courage and an interest in life. That was my first introduction to the traveling library, but during the years that have gone since then, I have seen much of the work of these little cases of books. While it is true that the traveling library does not always meet with as enthusiastic a reception as our little settlement gave it that winter, yet it always comes to our rural communities as a help and inspiration. My appreciation of the worth of the traveling library has grown with the years."

"Once a library meant nothing but rows of books and its influence was confined to narrow limits. However with the establishment of the traveling library, these books have become veritable missionaries penetrating to all sorts of dreary, isolated places, carrying with them a culture and a pleasure that will aid in illuminating the long, dreary path of existence with the color of happiness."

As one farmer's wife has it in another locality, "Good books drive away neighborhood discussion of the four deadly D's--Diseases, Dress, Descendants and Domestics."

Olive Schreiner in her wonderful and heart searching study of "Woman and Labor," has pointed out that at first woman hunted with the man, and later when the race settled in one spot, the woman was the tiller of the soil and the man the hunter and warrior. Then when man no longer needed to hunt or fight, the woman moved within the house and the man tilled the fields. The woman became the isolated one. Isolation is the menace of farm life just as congestion is of city life. This isolation has a depressing effect upon the intellectual life of those who require the stimulus of contact with others to keep their minds active. The woman on the farm, as Mr. Bailey has pointed out, is apt to become a fatalist. Floods, drought, storms, tornadoes, untimely frosts, backward seasons, blight, predatory beasts, animal and plant diseases render a season's great labor of no avail, or destroy the fruits of it within the hour. Along with these perennial discouragements comes the interminable round of getting up before sunrise and cooking, baking, dishwashing, sewing, mending, washing and ironing clothes from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, with additional work peculiar to the seasons, such as at planting times, threshing and harvesting, fruit gathering and preserving, etc., etc., etc. The work of the farm is carried on in direct connection with the home, thus differing from nearly all the large industries, such as manufacturing and the like. The fact that agriculture is still a family industry where the work and home life are not separated, differentiates it from life in the city with its lack of a common business interest among all the members of the family. This condition tends to make rural life stable. The whole family stay at home evenings and one book is read aloud to the entire family circle. We still find the big family in the country where bridge whist and race-suicide--cause and effect--are as yet unknown. But the big family puts cares and responsibilities upon the mother on the farm and when one sees the "bent form, the tired carriage, the warped fingers and the thin, wrinkled features" of so many farmer's wives, one does not at first see anything but cruelty to animals in urging recreation and reading upon such overburdened women. But a brighter, industrial day is at hand. From perpetual motion to hours of reasonable industrial requirements the daily working period of the farmer is coming to be reduced by labor saving machinery. The modern gasoline engine, to my mind the most important contribution to civilization and culture in recent times, now pumps the water, saws and cuts the wood, runs the lighting plant, the washing machine, the milking machine, the cream separator, the churn, the sewing machine, the bread-mixer, the vacuum cleaner, the lawn mower, the coffee grinder, the ice cream freezer and even the egg-beater. These, with the fireless cooker, have relieved the housewife and made time for reading and other recreation. Good roads, rural free delivery, the interurban trolley car, the automobile and the rural telephone are removing the old-time isolation and are making possible enjoyment and a culture and refinement equal to that of the business and professional classes of the cities. One thing only is still withheld from distinctly rural communities--the opportunity to get good books.

It has been said so often it has become a truism that the rural districts are the seed bed from which the cities are stocked with people. Upon the character of this stock more than upon anything else does the greatness of a nation and the quality of its civilization ultimately depend. The importance of doing something with and for these people is paramount for the farms furnish the cities not alone with material products but with men and women. Census returns indicate that cities are gaining on the country all the time. We who wish to stop the rural exodus must co-operate with other agencies to make farm life more attractive and this we can do by opening our doors to farmers and their wives, the makers of men. It is our city's self-protection that there should come from the farms strong, well-educated minds, and we each should contribute our share to this end. A Chinese philosopher has said, "The well-being of a people is like a tree; agriculture is its root, manufacturing and commerce are its branches and its life; if the root is injured, the leaves fall, the branches break away and the tree dies." State universities and other free educational agencies are recognizing the fact that not the few but all, farm and city-bred alike, must be educated for life and through life. Commencement day is no longer the educational day of judgment for the individual. Rural consolidated high schools are being built to supplement the little red schoolhouse. Libraries, through extension of their service, must aid in the great agrarian movement of the day. We cannot all, perhaps, have the ideal arrangement as worked out in Maryland by Miss Titcomb. It may not be possible to cover other states with book wagons as Delaware proposes to do. We may not accomplish the California ideal of the county as the unit. We may not be able to send traveling libraries on their beneficent mission, but we each may try to let down the bars at our own reservoirs so that whosoever is athirst may come and drink of the waters of life freely.

The PRESIDENT: Whenever I become rash enough to venture a comment upon any paper of Miss Stearns I always take the precaution to do it before she presents it; afterwards it is entirely superfluous. Yet I venture to express a thought which I am sure has occurred to you likewise; that there is a very strong relationship between the two papers which have been presented this morning; that there is cause and coming effect in that the one activity of the library, as represented by the first paper, is making possible the multiplication of these various devices which shall make for the woman on the farm the new day of which Miss Stearns has prophesied.

During the last few years the library has entered another new field, an unsuspected field. Those of us who have had an opportunity to go about to the various institutions where the defectives and the dependents and other unfortunates are incarcerated have marvelled at the--shall we say ignorance, which has been at the bottom of the book work with these people. But scientific methods have been introduced and during the last few conferences we have had something of the promise which has now grown into fuller realization. I shall ask Miss JULIA A. ROBINSON, who has done strong, splendid work in Iowa in this connection, to present the next paper, on

BOOK INFLUENCES FOR DEFECTIVES AND DEPENDENTS: HELPING THOSE WHO CANNOT HELP THEMSELVES

Needy humanity divides itself into three classes, those whom it is said the Lord helps, those who will not and those who cannot help themselves. In no form of need, however, are we interested today save that of the book, nor with the willfully book needy.

For are not they served by the public libraries which go even into the highways and byways and wellnigh compel the uninterested to come to the feast freely offered to them? And though there are still rural districts not yet supplied with public or traveling libraries, many of them have the ability to provide themselves with books had they the desire.

But there are those, not always removed by space but far removed by condition from such privileges, because crime, weakness or misfortune has deprived them of their freedom and for the safety of society, their own restoration to health or their care and education they are detained behind closed doors. These are the morally, mentally and physically defective and the dependent upon the bounty of the state. With this class of helpless are we concerned, with their needs and with what is being done to bring to them the influence of books. Of their needs let me speak briefly while I define and locate the different classes, giving a few figures which perhaps may not be amiss in helping us to realize their numbers.

Of the moral defectives 113,579 have heard the grated doors of prison, penitentiary or reformatory close behind them, for some never to open. For others in a few years perhaps these doors will swing outward to freedom. Shall it be to useful citizenship, or to become a greater menace to society and again to be put behind the bars? Most of these are men who are employed during long working hours. There is much time for idle thoughts during those hours, in addition to evenings and Sundays spent alone in locked cells. Large is the opportunity here for the book in its threefold mission of recreation, instruction and inspiration to lives barren of pleasure and interest.

But these are not all. We must add 22,900 juvenile delinquents found in the state industrial and training schools of the United States, boys and girls whose steps have early found the downward path, in most cases, I believe, because of the influences into which life ushered them. But many of these are yet within the years of susceptibility and to the other upward influences with which it is now sought to surround them should be added the society of books which will bring wholesome pleasure while they present high standards and make right living attractive.

These numbers are exceeded by the mentally defective of whom 187,454, disturbed or confused, dazed or depressed, look through grated windows or sit in shadowed corners of the insane hospitals. To take their thoughts from themselves and direct them into healthful channels may mean a step toward mental healing and adjustment. This books will often do and to fail to furnish them may mean to omit a remedial influence in their treatment. Of the feebleminded, there are 20,199 in the institutions for that class of defectives. With them the task is not so encouraging, but a right to the pleasure of books is theirs and should not be withheld.

There are 61,423 to whom the printed page must speak for they hear no other voice, and 44,310 to whose touch the raised letters bring their message. Shut out from so much which others enjoy shall these be denied this means of recreation and instruction?

The charitable institutions shelter 268,656 dependents which include the old, the sick and the children in the state public schools, orphanages and homes. The former need books to cheer them in their fight for health and strength, or to while away the hours of waiting for their final summons. The children need them not only for the enjoyment which comes from childhood reading, but as a means of development of mind and character. I would lay especial emphasis on the importance of libraries in these and in the industrial and training schools. Useful as books are in the other institutions, there the help which they bring is but to the readers themselves. Here we have citizens in the making and the state has not only the opportunity of laying the foundations of character, but by laying them deep and broad and strong of receiving returns for their efforts in intelligent and useful citizens. To librarians I need not speak of the value of books in giving the education which makes for intelligence and the ideals which make for usefulness.

To meet these needs what do the institutional libraries offer? I shall not give you figures which at best would be inaccurate and incomplete, but such information as could be obtained showing the efforts which are being made to provide books and reading for defectives and dependents, the adequacy and suitability of the libraries and their use of modern library methods.

The list of states is incomplete, some failing to respond, others giving vague information, and an omission may not mean that nothing is being done along this line. What is given will serve to show the general trend of interest in the work.

California plans to serve the institutions through the county system of libraries, but just how this is to be done or whether any institutions have libraries or have received assistance was not stated.

Colorado reports libraries in all the state institutions, the best being that at the state penitentiary where the visitors' fees yield a considerable income which is used for books. In Georgia two institutions only have libraries, which are reported to be neither well selected, kept up to date nor administered according to modern methods.

The only information received from Idaho was that traveling libraries are sent to the industrial school.

In Illinois libraries are reported in the eighteen charitable and three penal institutions of the state, though not all are adequate or suitable in selection.

In Indiana several institutions receive annual library appropriations ranging from $1,000 down to $200. No institution is without a library though not all are organized or well selected or large enough for the needs of the institution. The library commission lends an organizer to assist in this work and in some cases the book selection and the affairs of the library are put into the hands of the commission. The librarian from the School for Feeble Minded Youth will attend the summer school.

In Iowa libraries exist in all of the fourteen state institutions; all are classified, organized and administered according to approved library methods. All except the penitentiaries have appropriations of $300 to $500 each for the purchase of books. In the penitentiaries the fund received from visitors' fees is used for this purpose. Reports are made each month to the Board of Control showing the reading done by classes in each institution. A trained librarian appointed by the Board of Control gives all her time to the institutional libraries, superintending the work, doing the book selection, supplying the technical knowledge, instructing the librarians and stimulating the reading.

In Kentucky the prisons and hospitals are under separate boards, neither of which has done much for the libraries in the institutions under their charge, but both have the matter under consideration and better things are looked for in the future. The prison libraries are represented as inadequate and unsuitable. One only has a fund for the purchase of books and that only $50. The only books in the Houses of Reform are the traveling libraries loaned by the library commission. Two state hospitals have very small libraries and no fund. One has about 800 volumes and an annual fund of $250.

The chairman of the Board of Control of State Institutions in Kansas writes that considerable interest is taken in providing suitable reading for the dependents and defectives of that state and that the institutions are urged to systematic work, but does not state whether all have libraries.

The Maine Insane Hospital has an endowment which yields an income of about $600 annually which is expended for books for the general library, periodicals and medical books. According to the chaplain of the Maine state prison "additions are made to that library from three sources, a few volumes by purchase, some by gifts from individuals, but mostly by gifts from the state library of =books no longer useful in the traveling libraries=."

The Massachusetts prison commission reports libraries in substantially all the prisons. The larger ones are classified.

Michigan has a state appropriation for books. All the institutions have libraries of some kind, but none are classified or organized according to modern methods. The selections are made by the state librarian.

Minnesota has also an appropriation for books in the state institutions. The public library organizer from the Library Commission pays regular visits to the institutions, selects the books and supervises the work. Not all are classified and several need new books. The two asylums for incurable insane and the hospital for inebriates have only traveling libraries.

In Missouri five institutions have no libraries. Traveling libraries are sent to the insane hospitals. In the boys' training school the library is managed without system. If a boy wants a book the superintendent takes what may be at hand and gives it to him.

Nebraska has a state appropriation of $2,000 made directly to the Library Commission to be expended by them for the thirteen institutional libraries. This is used for books, supplies and periodicals except in two institutions which supply their own magazines. The institutions are asked to furnish cases only and some one to loan the books. Books are selected by the commission and prepared for circulation in the commission office.

In New Hampshire the legislature makes an appropriation for the libraries in the state prisons and state hospitals.

The February number of New York Libraries was made an institutional number and among other things contained reports from the institutional libraries of the state showing libraries in all but two or three institutions which are supplied by traveling libraries. The following editorial comment is made on these libraries: "Of the thirty-six institutions from whose libraries detailed reports are herewith presented, there are not more than two or three whose library conditions would be regarded as up to the standard commonly expected and demanded for public libraries. For not one of them does the state provide a sufficient appropriation for the attainment of such a standard." The committee appointed by the State Library Association on libraries in the penal institutions in the state of New York in making their report recommend a change of title for the committee to include the charitable as well as the penal and reformatory institutions and a request that the legislature pass an act authorizing the appointment of a supervising librarian for the state institutions.

The libraries in many of the state institutions of North Carolina are reported so small and poorly cared for that they are practically useless. The School for the Blind has a separate library building called the Laura Bridgman Library and there is a good library in the School for the Deaf classified by the teachers. The value of this work is appreciated by the Board of Charities but there is a lack of funds.

The North Dakota Library Commission has recently been asked to assist in selecting books and organizing a library for the state penitentiary where a thousand dollars is to be expended. No libraries exist in the other state institutions.

The Oregon Library Commission reports libraries in all the state institutions except one just opened. All the institutions are located at Salem and receive direct assistance from the commission in organization and book selection and management of their libraries. Purchases are made from a general fund. All are reported adequate except one to be made so. Three are classified and the rest are to be.

Pennsylvania has libraries in all the state institutions but none are organized, classified or administered according to accepted library methods. The Library Commission takes the position (wisely it seems to me) that their part lies in stirring up the boards in charge of the institutions to active interest in these libraries, rather than themselves mixing in the affairs of another organization, though as yet little has been accomplished in that direction.

Tennessee has a library in the School for the Blind, the School for the Deaf and the state prison, but none in the insane hospitals. These are organized and classified to a limited extent only.

From the biennial report of the Texas Library Commission I quote the following: "Only a few of the institutions have libraries and as a rule these are small and without reference to the purpose they are to serve. Some have nominal librarians, but none trained and a library without a trained librarian is like a piano without a pianist, valuable, even expensive, but of little use or pleasure."

In Vermont an appropriation of $500 was made in 1910 and $200 is now appropriated annually. This is divided between the libraries in the State Prison, House of Correction, State Industrial School and Insane Hospital and is under the control of the Free Public Library Commission which purchases the books and oversees the cataloging. A card catalog of each institution is kept at the commission office. The State Prison also has a printed catalog.

Washington has a library of some kind in all its institutions, but in none is it a real factor. None are classified.

In Wisconsin no institution is wholly without a library. They are organized and classified in a limited way only. The commission assists to some extent in book selection.

From these reports we may draw the following conclusions: (1) Libraries of some kind exist in many state institutions. (2) Probably most of these libraries are only partially adequate, if not wholly inadequate and unsuitable. (3) Few are organized or administered according to the best methods, have proper rooms or a librarian in charge to render even their present collection useful. (4) In a few states only is there trained supervision or systematic library work undertaken in the institutions. (5) Where appropriations are made they are seldom sufficient to properly maintain the libraries.

The responsibility for this work lies (1) with the governing bodies, the Boards of Control and other boards to whom is committed the care and welfare of the defectives and dependents of the state and the superintendents of the various institutions who are directly responsible for this care, and (2) with the librarians entrusted with library extension and the carrying of books to those who would otherwise be bookless, the state library commissions.

That the superintendents partially appreciate the value of the book is evidenced by library beginnings in many institutions and their readiness to co-operate in movements toward the improvement and increased usefulness of the libraries. But they are busy men with many departments on heart and mind and the boards are charged with many interests.

It is not surprising, therefore, that it is the librarians who have recognized the importance of these libraries and the fact that if they are to become a real force in the institutions the work must be given to some one whose business it shall be, who is trained for it, and who has the time to give it proper attention.

As few institutions are yet in a position to individually employ a trained librarian, the solution of the problem has seemed to be a joint or supervising librarian for all the institutions of a state or of a kind in a state.

Iowa through the influence of Miss Tyler and Mr. Brigham was the first to undertake this work and is still the only state in which institutional library work is done by a librarian working under the Board of Control and giving all her time to the institutions. The other states having institutional supervision are Indiana, Minnesota, where an officer from the commission gives part and Nebraska the whole of her time to the institutional libraries, and Oregon, Michigan and Vermont where the work seems to be done directly by the secretary.

If the Board of Control and the institutional heads are not affected by party changes the advantage, it seems to me, lies with the librarian employed by them, who goes into the institutions with authority from the board to do what needs to be done and not as a guest, who is sometimes unwelcome. The book selection can thus be better guarded and I believe books purchased with institution funds will be better cared for by both officers and inmates than those received by donation. Appropriations are also likely to be larger if made directly to each institution than if made in a lump sum to the commission.

The initiative, however, will undoubtedly lie with the library commission and the importance of institutional library work is such that should the boards fail to use their opportunity it may become the part of the library commission to at least inaugurate the work, which having begun they will probably be allowed to continue.

Before closing may I emphasize very briefly three important points in connection with institutional library work. I wish I might elaborate both these and the other points which I have touched so hurriedly, but time forbids.

1. If the libraries are to become a real factor for good in institutional work, the book selection must be differentiated to meet the needs of the different classes of readers, and great care used to exclude the harmful and include helpful books only. 2. To make these libraries most useful there should be suitable rooms, not only for the proper shelving of the books, but for use as reading rooms where the atmosphere of book lined walls may yield its helpful influence and prepare the way for public library use by the boys and girls at least when the opportunity shall come to them. 3. Though there may be a supervising librarian in the field, there should be a competent institutional librarian who shall not only do the routine work, but have sufficient knowledge of books and readers to be able to fit them together and sufficient time to do the work properly.

Thus shall these libraries, not only bring brightness and cheer to lives otherwise dull and colorless, for

"This books can do;--nor this alone; they give New views to life, and teach us how to live; They sooth the grieved, the stubborn they chastise, Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise; Their aid they yield to all: They never shun The man of sorrows, nor the wretch undone; Unlike the hard, the selfish and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd; Nor tell to various people various things. But show to subjects what they show to kings."

The PRESIDENT: I am very glad to be able to announce that Miss Rathbone has kindly consented to exhibit some extremely interesting charts which have been prepared and exhibited in connection with the work of the library school at Pratt and I am sure that all of you will miss something if you do not avail yourselves of the opportunity which is here presented to see them and to hear the explanation concerning them.

Miss RATHBONE: I am very glad indeed to tell you a little about our exhibition because we found it an interesting thing to do and the people who saw it were interested in it. The genesis of the matter was this: When Miss Alice Tyler was at the school this spring we were speaking about budget and other exhibitions and she said, "I do wish librarians could find some way of graphically presenting library work so that people could understand it as the child welfare work has been presented." That remark of hers, coupled with the fact the library school has never taken part in the exhibition that Pratt Institute has held for a great many years, at the end of the third term, suggested to me the idea of putting the problem to the class of devising an exhibition that should be a visual presentation of the school course and also of library work in general in a form that would be interesting and intelligible to the general public. After a visit to the Bureau of Municipal Research, where Dr. Allen gave them a talk on the value of graphic presentation of facts, I told the students that they were to have the entire responsibility of the planning and execution of this exhibition as a problem in the library administration seminar. It was, of course, an experiment but I was sufficiently convinced of its success after the class made their first and only report of progress, to invite the staffs of the neighboring public libraries to the exhibition. When the material was assembled and installed it created a good deal of interest both in the Institute among the librarians who saw it, and, best of all, on the part of the public at large. We had about five hundred visitors in the four days it was open and it seemed to awaken in the minds of the people who saw it some conception of what library work means. We heard many comments of this kind, "Well, now that I understand the work the library does, I am going to use it more intelligently." One high school boy said, "Gee! I've had an awful time trying to use this library before, but I think I know what it is about now." That sort of a thing made me realize that the exhibition might be of value to some of you as showing one way by which people could be interested in the actual work done in a library, so I wrote to see if space could be had to install it here. It was too late, however, so I simply brought up a few of the charts as examples.

The exhibition began with the technical work of the library--the progress of a book through the various steps was illustrated by a ladder the rungs of which were labeled, Book Selection, Ordering, Receiving, Accessioning, Classification, etc. Books were shown running toward this "Library Ladder," nimbly climbing the rungs, while at the top they acquire wings and fly "off to the public." This chart hung over a table on which the successive operations were shown in detail the same book being used as an illustration throughout. The successive steps were numbered to correspond to the rungs of the ladder. For example, Book Selection was shown by a group including the A. L. A. Booklist, the Book Review Digest and two or three of the reviews. The descriptive card read "No. 1. These are a few of the aids in book selection."

Following that was a chart (exhibiting it) to illustrate the utility of classification, on which was presented a group of ten scientific books unclassified, followed by the same ten in D. C. order, with the question, "In which group would it be easier to find the books on insects." That was followed by another exhibit to prove the utility of subject cataloging. Two copies of the same book were obtained, one new and the other quite worn, the book being Gleason White's "Practical designing," which is made up of a number of papers on minor arts, by different authorities. The new book with a single author card lay on the table surrounded by radiating interrogation points, questions unanswered, and over the book hung this inscription: "This book looks new. Why? Because nobody knows what is in it. It is poorly cataloged." The worn copy lay on the next table and radiating from that were a number of questions with the catalog cards that answer them attached. Over that was the screed: "This book shows wear. Why? Because it can be reached from twenty-four sources. It is well cataloged." People who had not known before what a catalog meant studied that thing out and the change of expression which came to their faces when they saw the new book and the worn book side by side and understood what it signified was delightful. It struck home.

The work of the reference department was tellingly illustrated by an arch in which the reference library was the keystone, all intellectual activities depending on it.

(Miss Rathbone then exhibited various other charts and described them in detail.)

In addition to this, children's work, the field work, the courses in binding and printing, the making of reading lists, the course in fiction were represented.

Altogether we felt that graphic illustration of library work was not only possible but distinctly worth while and that the exhibition had done a good work in educating the library's public, as well as the class, and we expect to make it a permanent feature of the year's work.

Adjourned.

FOURTH GENERAL SESSION

(Thursday morning, June 26, 1913)

The PRESIDENT: We begin this morning the fourth session of this Thirty-fifth Annual Conference and I shall ask the chairman of the Committee on Library Administration to submit at this time his report.

(Dr. Bostwick here read the report.)

The PRESIDENT: You have heard the report of the Committee on Administration. This report embodies some recommendations which it seems to the Chair should be acted upon. Therefore the recommendation which suggests the appointment of a committee to undertake certain work will be referred to the Executive Board for their attention, as, in accordance with the terms of the Constitution, it devolves upon the Executive Board to name the committees. The report will be printed in the proceedings.

(This report is printed with other committee reports. See page 126.)

Mr. RANCK: Mr. President, there is just one item, about questionnaires, if I may have a moment to state it, that I think the committee has not referred to. It is a matter of some importance to us at our library. I think we answer, in the form of questions of one kind or other, not all from libraries however, about a thousand a year. I should like to insist on the importance, when a blank is sent out on which spaces are left for writing in the answers, that a duplicate be sent so that a library can keep a copy of the answers sent. Again and again we have to copy them because we feel it very important that we should know just exactly what we are sending out in that way. And if possible, in the printing of that report I should like to see the committee include that, if they are willing to accept the suggestion.

The PRESIDENT: The suggestion is a very good one.

The PRESIDENT: I feel like congratulating you this morning upon the program for this fourth session, the general theme being: "Children and young people; their conditions at home, in the school and in the library." No matter how splendid a structure may be reared nor how beautiful it may be, without an adequate foundation it is most insecure. We have learned to realize in library work that we must begin at the beginning if our work is to have any perpetuity or any permanent result. We feel that, splendid and admirable in every way as the work with the adults is, that that alone is not enough. That work invites, as it deserves, our respect and admiration, but in the work with children is centered our affection. And when I say this I do not mean to intimate for one moment that that work is enveloped in sentiment. I believe most firmly that the work with children is constructive work of the very highest order. If there are any in this audience who doubt that I am sure that after we shall have heard the papers of this morning the doubts will be dispelled. We shall have this work in three volumes this morning, the first volume comprising two chapters. The title of the first volume is The Education of Children and the Conservation of their Interests, and Chapter One will be contributed by Miss FAITH E. SMITH, of the Chicago public library, on

I. CHANGING CONDITIONS OF CHILD LIFE

It is now twenty-eight years since some one first recognized the fact that children needed to have special libraries or special collections of books in libraries, and thereupon opened a children's reading room in New York City.

Some of the conditions affecting child life today existed then, but we know more about them now than we did then. We have many specialists in sociological fields who are making investigations, compiling statistics, drawing conclusions, and telling other people how to make the world a better place. Our rapid industrial development is producing many problems concerning child welfare, some of which are of vital interest to us as library workers; others we may well leave to playground associations, juvenile courts, health bureaus, social settlements, child labor committees, schools and churches. It is not ours to change housing conditions or to do away with child labor, but it is ours to meet these conditions, to be god-parents to those whose natural parents are not inclined or not able to guide their reading, to present to the children's minds other worlds than the tenement or street, and to give to children worn with daily labor such books as will be within their grasp, and will help them to permanent happiness.

In 1885 when a children's library was opened by Miss Hanaway in New York City, there were fewer means of recreation than there are now. There were no motion-picture shows, no children's theaters, no municipal recreation parks with free gymnasiums, swimming pools and baths. Child labor had only begun to be exploited by large manufacturing establishments (1879). Then there were more homes, permanent abiding places, where there was room for children both to work and to play. There was more family life, where father and mother and children gathered about the evening lamp, and father read aloud while mother sewed and the children listened, or where each member of the family had his own book in which to lose himself. There were daily duties for each of the children, the performance of which gave them training in habits of responsibility.

Today such conditions may be found only rarely, except in small cities and villages.

Congestion in large cities has led even well-to-do families to live in apartment houses. In Chicago this sort of life began only thirty-four years ago, and today one-third of all that city live in residences having six families per main entrance. (Chicago City Club-Housing exhibit.) This tendency to apartment life means the loss of the joy of ownership, the feeling of not-at-homeness and consequent restlessness, due to frequent change of environment.

Book agents say that they cannot sell books to families in apartment houses, because they have no room for books. Scott Nearing in his "Woman and social progress" regrets "the woeful lack of provision for the needs of the child in the construction of the modern city home. Huge real estate signs advertise the bathroom, bedrooms, the dining room and kitchen, the library, and reception hall. But where is the children's room? Owners do not care to rent houses to people having children. Many of the apartment houses exclude children as they exclude dogs or other objectionable animals." Yet we say, and rightly, that this is the century of the child.

The complexity of modern life, the tendency to materialism, the multiplicity of interests, have deterred many parents from being actively concerned in the growth of the minds and the souls of their children. This part of their development is being left to teachers, church workers, leaders of boys' and girls' clubs, etc. There is not time for reading aloud to children at home, and little concern is manifested by many intelligent parents, regarding their children's choice of books. The "poor, neglected children of the rich" are not allowed to use the public library books, because there may be germs hidden among the leaves. They may have their own books, but they are denied the joy of reading a book that some other boy or girl has read and pronounced "swell".

Because of this lack of concern on the part of parents in children's reading, are we not justified in our hitherto condemned paternalism?

Home life among the very poor in the congested districts of our large cities is often such as is not worth the name. The practice of taking lodgers which prevails among some foreign elements of the population, means the undermining of family life, and often the breaking down of domestic standards. (Veiler, "Housing reform," p. 33.) "Thousands of children in Chicago alone are being exposed to the demoralizing influences of overcrowded rooms, of inadequate sanitary provisions, and of unavoidable contact with immoral persons."

"Bad housing is associated with the worst conditions in politics, poverty, population density, tuberculosis, and retardation in the schools. It is directly related to many cases of delinquency of boys and girls, who have been brought before the juvenile court." (Breckenridge and Abbott, "The delinquent child and the home.")

Furthermore wrong home conditions result in driving children to the street. The child who finds no room at home to do the things that he wishes to do, not even room to study his school lessons, is inevitably forced into the street, "not only in the day time, but as common observation shows, until late at night, not only in good weather but in foul." Here he grows up, and is educated "with fatal precision." The saloon and its victims, the hoboes and their stories, criminals dodging the police, lurid signboards, a world of money-getting, all become only too familiar to him. Sin loses its sinfulness, and gains in interest and excitement.

Are we placing our attractive children's rooms, clean and orderly, adorned with flowers and fine pictures, where they may be readily seen from the street, where picture books placed in the windows may vie in alluring powers with the nickel-novel window displays?

The boy of the street may be a member of a boys' gang, and if so, this becomes one of the great influences acting upon his life, either for good or for ill. Mr. Puffer makes the statement that three-fourths of all boys are members of gangs. (Puffer, "The boy and his gang," p. 9.)

Those boys are fortunate whose gang is an organized body efficiently directed, such as the Boys' Scout Patrol. This, Mr. Puffer says, "is simply a boys' gang, systematized, overseen, affiliated with other like bodies, made efficient and interesting, as boys alone could never make it, and yet everywhere, from top to bottom a gang." Here lies an opportunity for co-operation on the part of the library, and many are the interests awakened by the Boy Scout movement which may be encouraged by the library.

Another influence constantly appealing to children of the street as well as to others, is the glaring advertisement of the moving-picture show. Moving pictures are now the most important form of cheap amusement in this country; they reach the young, immigrants, family groups, the formative and impressionable section of our cities, as no other form of amusement, and can not but be vital influences for good or ill. In 1910 it was estimated that more than half a million children attended motion pictures daily. (Juvenile Protective Assn. of Chicago, "Five and ten-cent theaters"--pamphlet.)

Is it not possible for the library to make permanent whatever good, though fleeting, impression may be made by educational pictures or pictures from great books, by co-operating with the picture shows, and being ready to supply to the children copies of the stories, nature books, or histories to which the children may have been attracted by the motion pictures?

During the meetings this week our interest in the adult immigrants and their relation to the library has been aroused and augmented, and it has been proven conclusively that the solution of the immigrant problem must of necessity rest with the children. The change in the type of immigration in recent years from a large percentage of English-speaking and Scandinavian races having a low percentage of illiteracy, to a leadership among races of eastern and southern Europe, with a very high percentage of illiteracy, has had a decided influence on standards of living.

These people of other lands do not adapt themselves to American ways as readily as their children. Many do not know the English language, they do not stir far from home or from work, and have few new experiences. "Many things which are familiar to the child in the facts of daily intercourse, in the street or in the school, remain unintelligible to the father and mother. It has become a commonplace that this cheap wisdom on the part of the boy or girl leads to a reversal of the relationship between parent and child. The child who knows English is the interpreter who makes the necessary explanations for the mother to the landlord, the grocer, the sanitary inspector, the charity visitor, and the teacher or truant officer. It is the child again who often interviews the boss, finds the father a job, and sees him through the onerous task of 'joining the union.' The father and mother grow accustomed to trusting to the child's version of what 'they all do in America,' and gradually find themselves at a disadvantage in trying to maintain parental control. The child develops a sense of superiority towards the parent and a resulting disregard of those parental warnings which, although they are not based on American experience, rest on common notions of right and wrong, and would, if heeded, guard the child." (Breckenridge and Abbott, "The delinquent child and the home.")

Can books not teach children to honor their father and mother, and "that the head and the hoof of the Law, and the haunch and the hump is obey"?

We are told that one of the causes of crime among the children of foreigners is transmitted ambition. "The father left the homeland because he was not satisfied.... He worked hard and saved money, that the dream of better things might be realized.... The son manifests this innate tendency by a desire to excel, by the longings to rise and be masterful, the ambition to beat the other fellow--these are the motives which impel him to an intensive life that carries him to excess and transgression." (Roberts, "The new immigration," p. 325.)

It is for us to interest this ambition and turn it into right channels. We may also discover what special interests are uppermost in the minds of those of different nationalities, things they wish their children to love, traditions they have cherished, and which we may help the children to cherish.

Driven by necessity or by the spirit of the age, the immigrant quickly develops a strong ambition for acquiring money, supposing that he landed on our shores without that impelling force. One of the consequences is that he withdraws his children from school as soon as they are old enough to secure their working papers. "To the Italian peasant, who, as a gloriously street laborer begins to cherish a vision of prosperity, it matters little whether his girls go to school or not. It is, on the contrary, of great importance that a proper dower be accumulated to get them good husbands; and to take them from school to put them to work is, therefore, only an attempt to help them accomplish this desirable end." (Breckenridge and Abbott.)

In 1911 the National Child Labor Committee conducted an investigation of tenement house work in New York City. Among 163 families visited having 213 children, 196 children ranging in ages from 3-1/2 to 14 years were working on nuts, brushes, dolls' clothes, or flowers. These are truly not the good old-fashioned domestic industries in which children received a good part of their education. Those working in factories and tenement sweat shops, where labor is specialized and subdivided into innumerable operations, do not get the variety of employment that cultivates resourcefulness, alertness, endurance and skill. (Child labor bulletin, Nov., 1912.)

We cannot expect these children, with bodies retarded in development by overwork, and without proper nourishment, to be able to take the same mental food that is pleasing to other children of the same age, who have had all necessary physical care.

The hours when working children, those engaged in gainful occupations, and those who are helping in the homes, are free for recreation, are in the evening and on Sunday. Are we placing our most skilled workers on duty at these times, and are we opening our story hours and reading clubs on Sunday afternoons, when the minds of these children are most receptive of good things, when the children are dressed in their good clothes, their self-respect is high, and they are free from responsibility?

It is a well-known fact that the need of money is not the only cause of the exodus from school that occurs in the grades. An investigation made by the Commissioner of Labor in 1910 (Condition of woman and child wage-earners in the U. S., vol. 7), examining the conditions of white children under 16, in five representative cities, showed that of those children interviewed, 169 left school because earnings were necessary, and 165 because dissatisfied with school. The Chicago Tribune (Nov. 11, 1912) stated that in 1912 there were in Chicago over 23,000 children between 14 and 16 years of age, who were not in school. Over half of these were unemployed, and the remainder had employment half the time at ill-paid jobs, teaching little and leading nowhere. In 1912 there were 34,000 children of Philadelphia not in school, and only 13,000 were employed. (Philadelphia City Club Bulletin, Dec. 27, 1912.)

The curriculum of our public schools is in a transitional stage. The complaint of parents who take their children from school before they have completed the high school course, is that it does not teach them to earn a living. The desire of commercial men is to have such courses introduced as will lessen the need of apprentice training in their establishments. These changes may help boys and girls to earn a living, but those courses which teach them how to live may be sacrificed. Man does not live by bread alone. Mrs. Ella Flagg Young says, "The training must also implant in the mind a desire to become something--I mean by that an ideal.... It must make the boys and girls able to know that they have possibilities of greater development along many lines." This sort of training is within the sphere of the library as well as within that of the schools.

The children in the rural districts (which the 1910 census interprets as meaning people of towns of less than 2,500 inhabitants, and people of the country) are the library's great opportunity. In these districts may be found the old-fashioned home life, where parents are glad to be aided in the direction of their children's reading. There are fewer distractions in the way of amusements. Books are not seen by the thousands, until they have become so confusing that one knows not what to read or where to begin. Homes are owned, instead of rented, and a library worker is not liable to lose her group of children each first of May.

The pleasures of city life have been made easily accessible to children and grown people by means of trolley lines, good roads, telephones, etc., and the music of grand opera has been carried to the country homes by means of talking machines. Still the distractions of modern life have not absorbed a large part of the everyday life of the children, so that their minds may be appealed to along the line of their natural interests. As Miss Stearns told us yesterday, there is less of drudgery in farm life today than there was thirty years ago, and children have more time for study and reading; but they need direction and assistance.

The consensus of opinion among writers on rural sociology is that the great need of the people of the country is more education; education that will make farming more scientific and efficient, and less fatiguing, education that will help boys and girls to find amusement in the life about them; education that will guide that passion for nature which every normal child possesses.

* * * * *

Because children today have many more opportunities for recreation than they had thirty years ago; because many leave school long before they have acquired the education that will teach them how to live, as well as how to earn a living; because in many homes mothers and fathers cannot train their children in American ideals of citizenship, which they themselves do not understand; because in other homes the physical needs of children are held to be of most importance, while mental and moral needs are left to the care of teachers and social workers, the time seems ripe for the library to place emphasis upon the educational side of its work, rather than upon the recreative. Let the recreative be truly recreative, giving relaxation, new visions, higher standards of living, and increased belief in one's self, but let the educational work meet the children's needs, increase their efficiency, teach them how to live, and to be of service in the world's work.

Mr. Bostwick, in the Children's section, mentioned three eras in library work with children; first, the era of children's books in libraries; second, era of children's room; third, era of children's department. These concerned books and organization, the machinery of getting the books to the children. We think we have learned something about children's books, and we know approved methods of administration. Possibly we are now on the verge of the fourth era, when we shall know ~children~. Not the child with a capital C, a laboratory specimen, but living children, with hearts and souls. Do we know the conditions under which the children of our own neighborhood live? Do we understand their interests, and are we sanely sympathetic?

The PRESIDENT: We are glad to get Chapter Two: How the Library is Meeting these Conditions, by Miss GERTRUDE E. ANDRUS, of the Seattle public library.

II--HOW THE LIBRARY IS MEETING THE CHANGING CONDITIONS OF CHILD LIFE

Every month, if the mails are regular, we receive assurance that the public library is an integral part of public education, and the complacence with which we accept this assurance gives ample opportunity to our critics for those slings and arrows with which they are so ready. Ideas and ideals of education are rapidly changing and it behooves the librarian, and more particularly the children's librarian, to see that she keeps pace with the forward movement and that the ridicule of her censors is really undeserved.

The old idea of education was to abolish illiteracy, "to develop the ability, improve the habits, form the character of the individual, so that he might prosper in his life's activities and conform to certain social standards of conduct."

The new idea of education is that of social service, to train children to be not mere recipients, but distributors, not merely to increase their ability to care for themselves, but also their ability to care for others and for the state.

This perhaps sounds a note of the millennium, but we have been told to hitch our wagon to a star and although the star proves a restive steed and often lands us in the ditch, we travel further while the connection holds than we should in a long, continuous journey harnessed to a dependable but slow-going snail.

It may seem a far cry from these comments on education to the topic of my paper: How the library meets the changing conditions of child-life, but in reality it is only a step, for just as in philanthropy the emphasis is placed more and more upon prevention rather than remedy, so in education the task is coming to be the training of the good citizen rather than the correction of the bad citizen. And if the library is, as we are anxious to claim, an integral part of public education, it must have a share, however small, in the preventive policy of modern educators, which will in time effect a change in present social evils. Unless the library, as it meets these constantly changing conditions, can do something to improve them and to make the improvement stable, it has small claim to be included in the educational scheme of things.

In the conditions of child life which Miss Smith has outlined, the breaking up of the home is the most serious handicap which the children have to face. It is on this account that all social agencies working with children endeavor, so far as each is able, to supply an "illusory home" and to give, each in its own capacity, the training in various lines which ought in a normal home to come under the direction of the mother and father.

There is a spreading belief in the value of reading but there is a woeful lack of knowledge as to what should be read, and the children's library therefore fills a double rôle; it provides books which it would be impossible for many of the children to get otherwise, and it selects these books with thoughtful care of the special place each one has to fill, so that it becomes a counselor, not only to the children but to those parents who are anxious to assume their just responsibility in the guidance of their children's reading, and yet feel their inability to breast unaided the yearly torrent of children's books. The stimulation of this feeling of responsibility on the part of parents is one of the most effective means at the library's disposal of striking a blow at the root of the whole matter, for it is on the indifference of the parents that the blame for many juvenile transgressions should rest, which is now piled high upon the shoulders of the children.

In this connection mention should be made of the home library, the most social of all the library's activities. This small case of books, located in a home in the poorer quarters of a city and placed in charge of a paid or volunteer library assistant has been proved to be a potent force in the life of the neighborhood, for the "friendly visitor," if she be of the proper stuff, is not merely a circulator of books, she is an all-round good neighbor to whom come both children and mothers for help in their big and little problems, so that the results have proved to be "better family standards, greater individual intelligence, and more satisfactory neighborhood conditions."

But even granting that the mothers and fathers show a deep concern in what their children read, the connection between books and children is often left of necessity to the children's librarian who is selected with special reference to her adaptability to this particular kind of work. Now, no matter how strong a personality this young woman may possess, no matter how high her literary standards, nor how far-reaching her moral influence, it is obviously impossible for her to come in contact with more than a few of the children in her community. And in order to provide that intimacy with books from which we wish no child to be debarred, she must depend not alone upon her children's room, beautiful and homelike though that may be, but she must place her resources at the disposal of other educational agencies, all of which are working toward a common end. Of these the most powerful is the school, and through the lessons in the use of the public library, through the collections of books placed in the schoolrooms, and most of all through the influence of the teacher, the public library will touch the lives of thousands of children who might otherwise be in ignorance of its resources, and who through this contact will receive a vivid impression of their share as citizens in a great public institution. In this correlation of school and library care must be taken to place an equal emphasis upon the library as a place for recreation as well as a place for study.

Contrary to the teachings of our Puritan forefathers, we are growing more keenly alive to the imperative need of healthful recreation as a means of combating existing social conditions, and our great cities and our little villages are gradually making provision for the gratification of the desire of the people to play. Nowhere does the library find an alliance more satisfactory than with these play-centers, for it is in the union of the physical and mental development that education comes to its fullest fruition and the striving to instill "imagination in recreation" can find no better field than in these places where not only muscles but minds may be exercised.

These are the well-worn channels through which the children's library pours its stream of books into a thirsty land, channels into which run the tributary streams of deposit stations, churches, settlements, telegraph offices, newsboys' homes, and all the rest which it would only weary you to repeat.

We are constantly engaged in deepening and broadening these channels because we believe in the power of books to develop character and to broaden the vision of that "inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." Now the book that does this most effectively is the book behind which lies some personality. We all know the popularity of "the book Teacher says is good." But the problem of the children's librarian is not limited as is the teacher's to two or three dozen children. She must lay her plans to reach hundreds of children and she can do this only by dealing with the children in groups: in other words, in clubs, reading circles, and story-tellings.

The natural group of child life is the boys' gang or the girls' clique which offer unlimited opportunities for good or ill. The tendency of a =neglected= group is to develop strongly a regard for the interests of the individual group and make it antagonistic, if not actually dangerous, to the larger group of society.

The possibility of touching children's interests, enlarging their horizon, and influencing their ideals through these groups has been utilized in the club work of many libraries. Although all library clubs lead eventually to books, the way may be a circuitous one and baseball, basketry, and dramatics may be met on the way. But aside from the book interest, without which no library club can be considered legitimate, there is the opportunity of guiding the activities of the group by means of debate work or similar interests so that their attention may be directed outside of their immediate environment and made to include the greater possibilities of the larger social group.

Very often in girls' clubs the charitable impulse is strong and may be so led as to instill a very thoughtful sympathy for others.

It is for the things we know best that we have the most sympathy and the truest devotion, and we may expect real patriotism and an active civic conscience only when we have taught the children to know thoroughly their country and the city in which they live. This is some of the most valuable work that is being done by libraries, and it may be well passed on, as has been done in Newark, to become a part of the school curriculum. Indifference to the fatherland is not the best foundation on which to build the superstructure of American patriotism, and the confused and homesick foreigner welcomes with gratitude the books in his own tongue provided by the library, the opportunity to use the library's auditorium for the meetings of his clubs with unpronounceable names, the respect with which his especial predilections and prejudices are considered by the library in his immediate neighborhood, the display of his national flag and the special stories told the children on the fete day of his country. A people without traditions is not a people, and if we expect these strangers to respect our institutions, we must show them an equal courtesy.

This regard shown by the library and other institutions for the national characteristics of the parents reacts upon the children and they grow to understand that though their elders may have been outstripped in the effort to become Americanized they have behind them an historical background which is respected by the very Americans whose customs the children ape so carefully.

The reading circle and the story hour are similar in their purpose for they are both intended to call the attention of the children to special books and to open up the delights of a new world to imaginations often starved in squalor and poverty. Both the reading aloud and the storytelling have their rightful place in the home and are merely grafted on the library in its attempt to supply its share of the "illusory home" for which we are striving.

If the Sunday story-tellings and clubs meet the neighborhood needs more efficiently as Miss Smith has suggested, the library schedule should be so arranged as to accommodate them.

The time of childhood is a time of unbounded curiosities. Everything is new and wonderful and open to investigation, and that library may count itself blessed of the gods which can command the co-operation of a good museum. Given an exhibit case containing a few interesting specimens, a placard bearing a brief description of the specimens, and the titles of a few books on the subject obtainable at the library, and we can all of us picture a rosy dream of budding scientists, nature-lovers, and historians.

This child-like interest is the secret of the popularity of the moving-picture show. Here we see unfolded the processes of nature, the opening of a flower, the life of a bee, we ride in a runaway train and in an aeroplane, and we see enacted the daily human drama of love and hate. Here is an opportunity which many libraries have grasped, and slides are furnished the picture theaters announcing the location of the library and bearing some such legend as this: "Your Free Public Library has arranged with this management to select interesting books and magazine articles upon the historical, literary, and industrial subjects treated in these pictures. It is a bright idea to see something good and then learn more about it." Mr. Percy Mackaye in his recent book on the Civic Theater, comments on this as follows: "A brighter idea--may we not add?--if the founders of the library had recognized the dynamic appeal of a moving-picture house, and endowed it to the higher uses of civic art! Truly, a spectacle, humorous but pathetic: Philanthropy in raiment of marble, humbly beseeching patronage from the tattered Muse of the people!"

So far as the writer knows, but one library has as yet made moving pictures a permanent addition to its activities, although a small town in Washington State has intimated that it would do so, provided the Carnegie Trust Fund would give it money. It is a sign of the times, and one of which note must be taken, for it gives the library a chance to deepen the benefit of such good pictures as there are and to raise the standard of the others.

Unfortunately the interest of many boys and girls is forced prematurely to the subject of how they may aid in the family support. They leave school untrained and unfitted for the life they have to live, and go into shops, factories, department stores, and other service. Whether they leave because of economic pressure or because of a lack of interest in their school work the fact remains that 32 per cent of the children entering school drop out before they reach the sixth grade, and only 8 per cent finish the fourth year of high school. Manual training and vocational guidance are taking a hand in the matter and the part of the library is evident, not only in its supply of books on these topics but in the personal interest of the library assistants and in their suggestions and advice to the young folks who are struggling to find themselves. This is of course but a drop in the bucket but it is an effort in the right direction.

So many of these young people leaving school prematurely are shut up at the crucial age of adolescence in huge factories and stores, creeping home at night too tired to move unnecessarily, or letting the individuality which has been so sternly repressed all day burst forth in excesses and indiscretions. Only a few will come to the library, so to make sure the library must go to them.

One of the most notable examples of this kind of work is in the main plant of Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago. The company furnishes room, heat, light, and librarian's salary and the public library provides the books. This type of library may combine the intimate personal relationships of the small branch, the club, the story hour, and the vocational bureau. It may, as the Sears, Roebuck library has done, publish lists of books covering certain grades of a school course in grammar, rhetoric, history of literature, and study of the classics, and through the personal influence of the librarian it may make these courses really used, for always in work of this kind it is the personal equation that counts.

Some commercial houses have independent libraries of their own, sometimes in connection with their service department, as does the Joseph & Feiss Co. of Cleveland, in which case the direction of the library comes under the charge of a person whose duty it is to use every means to deepen, strengthen, and broaden the capacity of every employe so that he may remain an individual and not become a machine. This is an age of industrialism which has early placed upon the boys and girls the responsibilities of life, and the love of books is one of the most important of the influences which will keep the pendulum from swinging too far upon the side of materialism and purely commercial ambition.

These are some of the ways in which the library is trying to meet the changing conditions of child life in the city through the children's rooms, the homes, the schools, the playgrounds, the factories, and other institutions which have to do with the employment, amusement, or education of children.

From many of these problems the life of the country child is mercifully free, but in place of them there is the isolation of farm life and the idleness on the part of the children so often found in country villages. As more than half of our population is in the country, it is but logical that libraries should long ago have made some attempt to reach a class of readers who, as Mr. Dewey says, "have a larger margin of leisure, fewer distractions, and fewer opportunities to get the best reading. They read more slowly and carefully and get more good from books than their high-pressure city cousins whose crowded lives leave little time for intellectual digestion."

Long before the formation of the Country Life Commission, librarians were sending traveling libraries to farm-houses and rural communities, and library commissions are now scattering broadcast the opportunities for reading which will do so much to "effectualize rural society." When we think of books and the country, we think also of Hagerstown and the book wagon, an institution which in its influence on country life may well be added to the famous trilogy of "rural free delivery, rural telephones, and Butterick patterns." Greater attention is being paid in these days to conditions of country life, both on farms and in villages, and the work of the country librarian is as broad and as interesting as that of her city co-worker.

But whether the work is done in the city or the country, in a crowded tenement district or on a thousand-acre ranch, it has as its foundation the same underlying principle: that of co-operation with all other available agencies to the end that the boys and girls may have a fuller opportunity to become good citizens. We cannot be progressive if we are not plastic, and in the adaptation of our work to the changing conditions of child life lies the secret of the value of the children's library.

The PRESIDENT: We give a sigh of satisfaction and one of regret: satisfaction over the pleasure we have had in listening to these fine, moving chapters; regret that they have been so brief. We are reconciled only by the fact that there are two fine companion volumes still to come. Mr. WILLIS H. KERR, of the Kansas State Normal School, will give us the first one, the subject being:

NORMAL SCHOOLS AND THEIR RELATION TO LIBRARIANSHIP

That there is a close relation between librarianship and the forces of education is implied both in the special topic of this paper and in the general theme of the morning: "Children and young people; their conditions at home, in the school, and in the library." Indeed librarian and teacher have more in common than we yet think. For real library work is teaching, and real teaching is guidance in living, and to live well for thy neighbor and thyself is--real library work.

The burden of this discussion will be, not whether the library is an integral part of education, but rather what modern education, as an art, science, and practice, has to say about the attitude and method and practice of library work. With open mind and modest, may we attempt a statement of "library pedagogy" to parallel current educational practice? How may we librarians knit our work more effectively into the educational fabric? How best correlate people and books?

If such a statement of library pedagogy is possible, even though tentative, it is worth our while. From college days there rings in my ears the topic of an address by Dr. Samuel B. McCormick, now President of the University of Pittsburgh: "We can achieve that which we can intelligently conceive and adequately express." We must see our whole job through and through if we are to cope with our friends who do not yet see what we are at. The good brother, a Ph. D. of one of our best universities, a successful city school superintendent, now a fellow professor, who said, "I can see how instruction of our normal school students in library methods will help them in their work here, but how will it help them as teachers? Anyone can find a book in a school library." The superintendent who complained that all his pupils got at the public library was sore eyes and ruined minds from reading trashy fiction; the library trustee who likened library work and salary to dry-goods counter service and wage; the typewriter salesman who objected to open shelves and book wagons and story hours, because they cost--I won't say how much he said; what infinite patience, what skillful teaching power must we librarians have, to turn this tide and use it?

Lest we paint the picture too darkly, let it be said with all thankfulness and cheer that multitudes of teachers, superintendents, boys, girls, men and women, do understand. There is Superintendent Condon, formerly of Providence, now of Cincinnati, of whom Mr. Foster says in the last (1912) Providence report: "Mr. Condon's co-operation with the library was constant, intelligent, and effective." There is Mary Antin and her brothers and sisters, Americans all, to whom one of the richest gifts of the "Promised Land" is the public library. There is State Superintendent Alderman, of Oregon, and Mrs. Alderman. There is the United States Commissioner of Education, Mr. Claxton, and Mrs. Claxton. In every state are men like a western Kansas superintendent (way out next to Colorado, on the prairies), who found his community destitute of books; even school books and tablets had to be ordered by the drug store from a distant city; no community interest, no debating societies, no class plays, no school athletic teams. He made school vital to the boys and girls. Then because to his thinking education does not end with school days, and because he had the library vision, before he was there a year he passed the subscription paper, organized the library association, got the books and magazines, and opened the public library. He gave that town something to live for. And every state has librarians like the little Kansas lady in a country community who does reference work and draws patrons from sixteen surrounding school districts by the use of the rural telephone.

What have the normal schools to do with all this? Before answering this question, it may be well to note that the term "normal school" has not always the same significance. In the United States there are 194 public normal schools. Scholastic standards are of three general types: First, the old-time normal school, whose graduates have little more than completed a high school course including some required pedagogy. Second, the largest division, the two-year normal school, which requires two years of college cultural and professional work, high school graduation being required for entrance. Third, the normal college or state teachers' college, which grants the bachelor's degree for the completion of four years of college cultural and professional work. As a rule the graduates of the high school normal course go into the rural or the small-town schools; the graduates of the two-year college course, into elementary schools and special subjects; and the graduates of the four-year college course, into high school subjects, principalships, and superintendencies. The four-year state teachers' colleges of the United States can be counted on the ten fingers, and their ultimate sphere of influence is being debated. It would seem, however, that the adequate teacher-training institution must be as broad in its facilities and standards as are the conditions of modern life with which teachers must cope.

In the normal schools of these three types, student attendance varies from 100 to nearly 3,000, the average being about 600. Faculties vary from 8 or 10 members to 125. Equipment varies correspondingly, the better schools having very complete facilities. For example, the Eastern Illinois State Normal School, at Charleston, which is said to have a faculty ranking in scholarship with the universities, has 1,200 students, 31 members of faculty, offers two college years of teacher-training, has three buildings, a library of 16,000 volumes, and like many other normal schools of its type has an assured future and a fine field of influence. You will pardon another example, I hope, cited because I can be still more definite in describing it: The Kansas State Normal School, at Emporia, is a type of the four-year normal college. It was established in 1865. Last year it had 2,750 students, 350 in the training school (comprising kindergarten and grades one to eight), 1,100 in the normal high school, and 1,300 in the college. It had a faculty of 100, nearly half of these being men, many of the best universities being represented. It has 11 buildings, including an enormous gymnasium, a library, a hospital, a training school, science building, etc. It has a department of library science, in charge of a professor giving full time to that department, and on the same plane as other departments of instruction. Of this same general type, in equipment, numbers, and standards, are the schools at Ypsilanti, Michigan; Cedar Falls, Iowa; Kirksville, Missouri; Greeley, Colorado; Terre Haute, Indiana;--I do not mean to slight other worthy examples.

Aside from these three types of public normal schools, another important type of teacher-training organization is the department of education and psychology in our best colleges and universities, exemplified notably by the School of Education of the University of Chicago, and Teachers' College of Columbia University, the last-named being perhaps the most efficient teachers' college in the world. I hasten to add mention of the conspicuously helpful work in educational psychology, pure and applied, which is being done at Clark University, Massachusetts, under the inspiring leadership of Dr. G. Stanley Hall.

Now, using the term "normal schools" to include all of these types of institutions and as representing their practices and ideals, may we ask the question we left a moment ago, "What have the normal schools to do with librarianship?" This: The normal schools have now consciously taken up the task of preparing teachers who understand the life that now is and can teach boys and girls to live that life and to be useful members of society here and hereafter. These organized institutions of teacher-training take themselves seriously, they accept the responsibility of their task, and they are measurably succeeding; despite the declarations of popular magazines and investigating committees that our schools are a colossal failure. Which they are not, for didn't they train Mary Antin, and Miss Stearns, and you and me? If librarianship is educational work, and it is, the normal schools may therefore have some suggestion of educational practice worthy the consideration of librarians.

What is the educational world thinking and doing? Examine the program of the National Education Association, to meet week after next at Salt Lake City. I group some of the topics from the general sessions: =First=, What is education?; Education for freedom; The personal element in our educational problems; Teaching, and testing the teaching of essentials; Measuring results. =Second=, What shall we do with the single-room school?; The rural school; Fundamental reorganizations demanded by the rural life problem; Rural betterments; The schoolhouse evening center. =Third=, moral values in pupil self-government, The high school period as a testing time, Public schools and public health.

Relate these groups of topics with this definition of education from the late Andrew S. Draper, of honored memory:

"Education that has life and enters into life; education that makes a living and makes life worth living; education that can use English to express itself; education that does not assume that a doctor must be an educated man and that a mechanic or a farmer cannot be; education that appeals to the masses, that makes better citizens and a greater state; education that supports the imperial position of the State and inspires education in all of the States--that is the education that concerns New York."

Mingle with educational men and women, search the educational periodicals and programs, scan the educational books, visit the normal colleges; and I think you will discover that something like this is happening in the educational world: The content of education is being adapted to meet the needs of all the classes and the masses. The method of education is being adapted to the individual. The result is that education is being universalized, socialized, democratized.

In this adaptation of educational material and method, all eyes are upon the individual child. We are studying this child, working for him. We are playing for the batter, tackling the man with the ball. We believe it is more important to develop the undiscovered resource than to run all boys and all girls through the same hopper. A phrase used in the =School Arts Magazine= for May, 1913, in describing a notable Boston exhibit of art illustration, breathes this spirit: "Instruction in illustration, should be creative and individual from the outset. Models are posed to help in expressing more truthfully the conception of the illustrator rather than as a discipline in abstract drawing."

The true teacher never gives up a boy or a girl. But mind you, we are saving the individual, making a man out of him, not that he may be a self-centered unsocial phenomenon, but that he may be a fellow among men, a useful social unit. We want strong individuality willing and able to live in society.

Perhaps the biggest word in current education is motivation. That word motivation covers a multitude of sins and a multitude of virtues. Motivation does not mean coddling. It does not mean allowing the child to do as he pleases. On the other hand, motivation does not mean forcing an unnatural process or situation upon a helpless child or a helpless public. It does not mean that we are to give something to the child. Motivation is not didactic in attitude.

The spring of action in all of us is impulse. There is no time here to go into the psychology of instinct, impulse, emotion, motive, action, and all that. Suffice it for example that through the play instinct and impulse the wise teacher leads the child to a respect for fair-play, order, law, justice. The child never knows where he got it, but he has what he needed, and he has it indelibly. This process assumes a God-given wisdom on the part of the teacher: to know how that little mind is working, what it needs, how it may be brought to feel the need, and then to lead, draw out, educate that mind--O, miracle of miracles!

A step further in the consideration of the educational process: Perhaps there have been committed more atrocities, more crimes in the name of education, in the high school than in any other period of school life. More fairly stated, the crimes have been in the upper six years of the usual twelve,--in that period which is called adolescence. Why do so many boys and girls drop out of the upper grades? Why do so many youths never complete high school? The vocational training people have one answer, and it consists in letting the boy work at something of which he feels the need. They motivate his work. The boy from the farm can't read Tennyson's "Princess;" set him at the =Breeder's Gazette= or the testing of seed-corn; you can teach him English as readily through one task as the other. Only that boy never would learn English from "The Princess,"--and I love Tennyson.

As an example of skillful motivation in teaching may I describe a case which is also an object-lesson to librarians in correlating people and books? It is a third-year high school class in argumentation. After some preliminary study, one day the teacher remarks rather inconsequentially, "Do you know I believe the 'Boston tea party' was an unjustifiable destruction of property, and that unprejudiced historians now admit it?" Now that won't "go" in Kansas any easier than it will in Massachusetts. Teacher is immediately challenged, and she replies, "Well, I'll debate it with you; and I'll be fair and square with you and tell you of some material on your side. But there is one man whose authority I would not want to dispute; you'll surely treat me fairly, won't you?" A young lady member of the class at once puts a motion to the class that it will not be considered fair to use the writings of Edmund Burke against teacher. Does that class depend upon bluffing its way through that debate with teacher? No, it keeps us busy at the library to get material out fast enough, even though we had been previously informed by the teacher that the material would be wanted. Even Dr. Johnson's "Taxation no tyranny" is read with eagerness. Teacher finally agrees to debate even against Burke. Is Burke a bore to that class? Why, the library has to buy additional copies. Of course, the end desired by the teacher all the time was Burke.

More and more, in the instruction of adolescent and adult, the teacher's effort is being directed toward arousing a problem to be solved. Whether by a class lecture, by a class discussion, or by a personal conference, the pupil is brought to feel that it is important for him to find the answer. Is it not important, then, for the librarian to be skilled in drawing out a statement of the problem, or, changing the figure, to recognize accurately the symptoms and to prescribe unerringly? I think librarians having to do with high school and college students should rather frequently visit classes and attend lectures. If this were done, the pupil would less often be ground between upper and nether millstone, and the millstones would think more of each other.

Thus far, educational ideals and practices. Now will they help us any in attempting to formulate a library pedagogy? I believe they will. I believe that the teaching attitude, the study of the individual, the putting of the individual's needs far and away before the observance of inflexible rule and practice, and the determination to correlate people and books and life to the very ends of the earth,--these four stones at least will be in the foundation of library pedagogy.

I am not sure that all educational people will agree entirely with the foregoing statement of educational principles and methods. I am quite sure that I may as well gracefully hand my head now to some of you because of the following library corollaries of the preceding educational doctrines. Some of these are my own beliefs, some are beliefs of educational men regarding libraries:

In the training of librarians, would it be more in accord with modern pedagogy to have less lecturing, less practice work done in the this-is-the-only-way-to-do-it attitude, and to have more of the come-on-and-let's-find-out, the learn-by-doing laboratory spirit?

Educational administration is being remodeled, centralized. If library work is to be more and more educational, school men have said to me, why not make the public library an integral part of the city school system, and the state library and state library commission an arm of the state department of education? It is a terrible thought, but it will not drown by denying it.

When library work becomes educational through and through, and all library assistants are experts in psychology and human nature, the fines system will be a thing of the past.

Conservation of the individual means that it is better to have a book in use than to have it lying peacefully on the shelf entirely surrounded by unbroken rules.

Conservation of society means that it is better to have the library open on holidays and Sundays, when the working man isn't "dead tired," than to report an increased circulation of fiction.

The PRESIDENT: For an object lesson as to the strenuous life we go to Oyster Bay. For library buildings we go to East Ninety-first street, New York, or when he is in Europe we go to Skibo Castle. For information as to the latest inventions we go to the laboratory of Mr. Edison. For full information as to the best in high school work we go to the Girls' High School in Brooklyn. Miss MARY E. HALL.

Miss Hall spoke extemporaneously upon the enlarging scope of library work in high schools. Some of the points discussed were treated by her in a paper before the section on Library Work with Children at the Ottawa conference, 1912. See Ottawa Proceedings in Bulletin of the American Library Association, v. 6, p. 260-68.

The PRESIDENT: As my eye roves over this audience I see it is thickly sprinkled with punctuation marks. It has been suggested that some of our papers ought to be discussed from the floor. We shall be glad to hear from any librarians who are in this audience, either in the form of experiences or comment.

Mr. OLIN S. DAVIS: While I approve fully all that the last speaker has said, I feel very strongly that the college or high school library should not be too complete and that the student should be encouraged to use the public library. Work should be given to the students in high schools and girls' schools that would require their coming to the public library, because if the children in the grades and high schools do not learn to use the public library in those years they will not be apt to use the library in later years when they have left school.

Miss HALL: I would like to say that the first thing we do with pupils is to take a census of the entering class to find out how many do not have cards in the public library; interview them to see why they have not; even to write letters to the parents and urge them to allow their children to have cards; and to see before the end of the first term that every student in the entering class has a card in the public library, has a note of introduction from the school librarian to the branch librarian of the public library, and to see that the branch librarian of our big cities and the high school librarian work together four years with that student. We have the very closest co-operation.

Miss AHERN: Most of you reading library literature lately have seen considerable criticism of the fact that when students go out from college they do not know how to use the library. That is sometimes the student's fault, but most often it is the fault of the college curriculum. That is a topic we need not discuss here. But I believe librarians will do a great service to those who are going into college activities if they emphasize and elaborate that idea of putting into the requirements for college entrance, a knowledge of how to use library machinery.

There are a good many things that are necessary for students to know before they are able to take up the work in colleges, particularly in literature and language. I am not saying that these should be any less. But here is something that I wonder no one has ever thought of before. It means a good deal more to a student to know how to use the various reference books in the college library on, say, the works of John Milton, than to have read some of the things which are included in the entrance examination. I think the idea of requiring a knowledge of how to use the library for college entrance is the best thing I have heard at a library meeting for a long time, and I hope the librarians who are present will impress that idea on their superintendents of schools, on their high school principals, and on the college authorities, as far as they can. It is a good thing. If we should not get anything else out of this 1913 meeting but to impress on the school people that a knowledge of how to use the library is a necessary requirement for a college course, we shall have gained a great point.

Mr. RANCK: I should like to ask Miss Hall about her experience with reference to the use of the library on the teaching of English and literature in the high school.

Miss HALL: I have been very much interested in this. Our school has been so large it has been very difficult to do all we would like to do. We have not been able to do what has been done in the Detroit or Grand Rapids high school in the way of instruction. But I have been interested in seeing what it has done for the English and the history departments. In the first place, our teachers are coming with their classes for instruction and the teachers are learning a great many things which they are putting in practice. For the last year we have done more with the Reader's Guide in history than ever before. Teachers are assigned to help me in my work. After they heard the talk on the Reader's Guide they said, "We can do this: we will go through the Reader's Guide and we will bring out everything that is really interesting on the history of France, Germany, China, Russia and the Balkan War; we will look over those articles and make a card of the best things." They are using the Reader's Guide in English more than ever before; they are using reference books more. After the talk on the Statesmen's Yearbook and on the almanacs and some of the yearbooks, such as the New International Yearbook, they are using them almost as textbooks. The Statesmen's Yearbook is in use nearly all the time, as is the New International Yearbook, since that talk. They are using the Reader's Guide for new material--essays that they want on special subjects, and are using it for debate work, informal debates on all sorts of interesting current problems for English work, training the students to do oral debating without any notes, and talks on the topics of the day. They are using encyclopedias more wisely than they used to. Teachers used to send scholars to encyclopedias for everything. And when we talked about the real use of encyclopedias and bibliographies, how the encyclopedia simply gave you a certain amount of definite information and often led to more important things, they began using those bibliographies.

Miss HOBART: I do not know that any librarian has been trying to work out the problem which I have of reaching the public school pupils and teachers. Some of the best things that I have found in that way are these: I made myself familiar, as early in the term as possible, with the teachers and the conditions of their home life. I found that some had very poor places to room, as they are apt to have in small communities, and to those I offered the use of the library rooms for evening use and for time out of school when they wished to correct papers. Our library is warm and light in the winter and cool and light in the summer. And the teachers were extremely glad to have a place where they could come and be quiet and comfortable and do their own work. I think that last year the teachers in our small village practically lived in the library. Even those who had homes there used to make it their abiding place most of their waking hours. For the high school pupils, at the time of their graduating essays, we laid books aside in different places in the library. Many of those children had no proper places at home where they could write. They came to the library and did their work; almost all the work on their graduating essays was done evenings. For six weeks we gave the use of our catalog rooms to two girls who had their books sent there. There were several out-of-town children; to those we gave a room in the basement. They came from school as quickly as possible at noon, ate their luncheon in a very short time and spent the rest of the intermission in the library doing reference work. The expressions of appreciation we have received and the consciousness of the help given to those children in the use of the library has been a great source of satisfaction.

Adjourned.

FIFTH GENERAL SESSION

(Friday morning, June 27, 1913.)

The PRESIDENT: We begin this morning the fifth session of this conference and the theme covering the papers is, "The library's service to business and legislation." Ten years ago it would not have occurred to anyone perhaps that it would be possible to have a series of papers upon this subject, and the surprising expansion of the service in these directions is evidenced by the fact that we have, in order at all to attempt to cover this subject adequately, a larger number of papers on this morning's program than we have on the program for any other of the subjects which have been scheduled. I will ask Mr. C. B. LESTER to start the program with his paper upon

THE PRESENT STATUS OF LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE WORK

It is now more than twenty years since the need of specialization in the library's work on subjects of legislation was recognized in New York in the creation of a special staff for such work, and it is just about ten years since the successful combination in Wisconsin of such special reference work with the formulation of bills aroused most of the states to the possibilities of usefulness in this field. It would therefore seem worth while to examine the work so far done to discover if possible such principles and tendencies as may be subject to generalization.

It is at once obvious that any such generalization in a broad sense must be difficult, for this present year shows in legislation both east and west that we have not yet come to rest on such fundamental principles as to method even though there may be substantial unanimity as to policy. The new laws in Vermont (and I think in New Hampshire) in the east--in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in the middle west--and in California on the Pacific coast show such differences that it is evident that local conditions must still be very largely controlling. And to go back a full year or more would bring to notice the new work organized in several states through university bureaus but without special legislation, and the proposals before the Congress.

Comparatively little examination shows that the conception of the work to be done differs widely. Mr. Kaiser of the University of Illinois, who is preparing a detailed study of the subject, writes me: "I find that in practically thirty-two states it is attempted in some form or other--the state library as a whole, a division of the state library created within the library, a division created by law, a separate bureau, library commission bureaus, state university bureaus, etc." Obviously this must include practically all states where the state library is other than a law library only or a historical collection only, and must credit with doing legislative reference work those states where general reference work is done on subjects of legislation. But there is a more exact use of the term which takes account of the fundamental principle well suggested in the statement of the Librarian of Congress in his communication to Congress in 1911. "A legislative reference bureau goes further [than the Division of Bibliography]. It undertakes not merely to classify and to catalog, but to draw off from a general collection the literature, that is the data, bearing upon a particular legislative project. It indexes, extracts, compiles." It breaks up existing forms in which information is contained and classifies the resulting parts, and often "adds to printed literature written memoranda as to facts and even opinions as to merit."

Such work as the legislative reference staff should be qualified to do is distinctly informational rather than educational in its reference to the patron. It does the work of research, of gathering, sorting and uniting the scattered fact material wanted and presents the results ready for use. And to be fully effective this work must in some way be co-ordinated with the formulation of legislation, so that the product offered by the legislator may be both firmly founded and properly constructed. This work is so evidently necessary that it will be done in an increasing number of states whether the state library or some other agency undertakes it and protects its efficiency by the impartial, non-political and permanent organization of it which can be there best provided.

Practically all legislation specifically providing for such work has been passed in the years beginning 1907 and it is significant that most of this emphasizes research and drafting. The laws specially providing for such work are as follows:

Alabama, 1907, no. 255. California, 1913. Illinois, 1913. Indiana, 1913, ch. 255 (1907, ch. 147). Michigan, 1907, ch. 306 (1913, ch. 144). Missouri, Stat., 1909, Sec. 8177. Montana, 1909, ch. 65. Nebraska, 1911, ch. 72. North Dakota, 1909, ch. 157 (1907, ch. 243). Ohio, 1913 (1910, no. 384). Pennsylvania, 1909, no. 143 (1913). Rhode Island, 1907, ch. 1471. South Dakota, 1907, ch. 185. Texas, 1909, ch. 70. Vermont, 1912, ch. 14 (1910, ch. 9). Wisconsin, Stat. Sec. 373 f.

An analysis of the work done, whether provided for by legislation or by administrative practice, shows certain other facts. The number of the staff in any state is often variable, temporary or part time assistance is often used, and this is true where this work is not a part of the work of a state library or other wider organization. Furthermore, the cost in money is almost impossible to estimate accurately in many places, because of this co-operation with other work. In starting a new work this difficulty in answering the question of what it costs elsewhere must be faced. The best way to meet it seems to be to make the comparison on the basis of the work wanted, definitely planning what is to be done, and asking for a lump sum to cover its estimated cost.

The drafting proposition is a most important element. Some three or four states already have official bill-drafting agencies, other than legislative reference departments, and a number of others definitely depend upon the attorney-general's office for this work. In some states there is opposition to putting this in the hands of a non-legislative agency, and in others the libraries, while ready to handle a specialized reference work, are not ready to undertake drafting. Obviously this work requires highly specialized training, and equally, I believe, it will be agreed that this service should be rendered and that it must be in the closest co-operation with the reference work. There is no doubt in my own mind that the best condition is that of a single agency to perform this dual work, where the establishment of such is possible, and the usual organization seems to include both the expert draftsmen and the special clerical and stenographic assistance.

This service in the primary formulation of bills must inevitably lead to a similar assistance as bills progress toward final enactment. This care as to form through the processes of amendment and revision will ultimately be complete if the enacted statute law is what it should be "to stand the test."

This leads me to certain suggestions of other fields of service in the legislative process which should all tend to better the whole legislative product. Of course, in much of this service the emphasis is placed upon form and make-up of the final product, the discretion as to subject matter resting elsewhere, but that discretionary judgment is to be based upon the most complete information it is possible to furnish. Most of these services are now performed by the libraries or other non-legislative agencies in some states, but of course not all, or indeed many, in any one state. They include editing, foot-noting, side-noting, indexing of session laws, and the preparation of tables of amendments, repeals and similar matter; the proper filing and care of original bills, journals, committee records, and similar matter, after the work of the session is completed; the editing and indexing of the printed journal; editorial work of various forms upon the legislative documents. These are all services needed by our states, useful to the legislative bodies, and only properly handled through some permanent agency. Is the state library that agency? I leave the question for your consideration, and suggest that some uncertainty at present as to just what may be most desirable is evident particularly in the new legislation in Vermont, Ohio, Indiana and California. It has already been brought out in prepared paper and in discussion at this conference that the state library should not be a central public library in its content or its method. It is rather possible to express the field of its activities as that of a collection of special libraries. Into that field would come quite naturally the varied services to the legislative branch of the government which have been suggested. As already stated some of them are now supplied in some states. What we shall ultimately work toward in our states is a complete organization of these allied branches of work, all of which focus about the work of the legislature. Some of these services are at once recognized as within the field of the library--about others there is a decided difference of opinion. But they all have many common elements, many points of contact. They are most effectively to be handled as a group. The tendency will surely be toward a concentration rather than a scattering of these parts of one general work. Plans for such a concentration, adapted to a particular set of conditions, to be sure, have already been put into concrete bill form in New York and the bill was before the legislature this year. The question presents many new features, but is not something to be answered perhaps in the distant future; it is rather, I believe, worthy of a very real consideration in the present.

The PRESIDENT: The second paper this morning, which follows very logically after the one which we have just heard, will be by Mr. DEMARCHUS C. BROWN, state librarian of Indiana, on

STATE-WIDE INFLUENCE OF THE STATE LIBRARY

The writer of this paper would be more than Protæan if he could say anything new on this topic. All our associations, at least the half dozen I belong to, meet so often that repetition is forced upon us. In the interim very few experiences or ideas worth recording come to us. Biennial or triennial sessions would lead to better results and save money.

The personality and attainments of the librarian (and his staff) are of prime importance in making the state library a dominating influence in the commonwealth. He is the man behind the gun. I put him first. From the negative side,--his position should not be subject to partisan or personal influence. That is a blight to start with and will ruin any institution. We are still afflicted with that curse in places, not only in the state libraries but in official positions generally.

Affirmatively, the head of the state library ought to be a person of scholarly acquirements or at least in deep and appreciative sympathy with scholarship and knowledge. If he is a scholar in a limited field he should be in accord with all who are trained in other departments. He should be able to represent the state in its educational and scientific undertakings, by papers and addresses, whenever called upon. It goes without saying that he should be a trained man in educational or library or literary work and of course an executive officer. His library is a laboratory of all for all in the state and he must be in touch with the work of that laboratory. His library is the distributer of blessings to a great commonwealth, and according to the motto of the "Library Company" of Philadelphia, that is divine (Communiter bona profundere deum est). I'll not quote the Latin--it would be classic, and to be classic is against the regulations of the Zeitgeist. I want him to be an inspirer for all to love art and poetry, and study and history and politics (real); and not merely skilled in the knowledge of card indexes and catalog rules. A certain famous general in the Confederate Army spent so much of his time on details of drill and quartermaster's regulations that he forgot how to fight his army.

I have put the librarian first in this broadening influence of the state library. All the volumes and equipment and staff will be comparatively a failure without this scholarly, well-trained, wide-awake executive officer.

As to the various ways in which the state library can extend its influence and make itself useful, permit me to suggest a few. This institution can well be the bibliographical center of the state. Every club, school, library, society, and all citizens can be made to know that here information can be obtained about books.

Our own demand is quite large and ought to be larger. There are libraries with meagre equipment, schools with none, people with none, colleges with little--all these may be taught to turn to the central institution for bibliographical information. I consider this a source of wide-spreading influence, valuable and helpful to the whole state. I have placed it second more because I deem it important, not because I think all of these points can be listed accurately as to their relative positions.

Our states heretofore have been very slow in preserving their history, both of the commonwealth and municipalities. This has led, perchance, to the unspeakable commercial county histories with their unspeakable portraits and unspeakable cost, which we are compelled to purchase in order to have something.

The state library's influence should extend over the entire state in an attempt to teach the preservation of history. The library is the natural place for the collection and organization of the history of the state. The archives may well be kept here for reference and use, though some states have a separate archives and history department.

I wish we knew how to preserve history. We don't keep or build memorials, we tear down and throw away. What we want is the new, the fresh, the raw. The old, the seasoned, the ripe, we think is effete (how we like that word in referring to the old advanced civilization of Europe). The state library has a great, unploughed field to cultivate. Personally, I find people ready to burn up newspapers or manuscripts, or sell volumes for junk rather than give them to an institution where they may be preserved. I am trying to teach them otherwise, but succeeding very slowly indeed. I trust some of you are doing better.

The women's clubs are a source of help in extending the influence of the library. They are asking for information of all kinds at all times. We laugh at them, I know. They have papers on Shakespeare, Goethe or Homer at one sitting and dispose of them all. But what shall we do? They are the conservers of culture and reading. Men don't want them, i. e. culture and reading. They are bourgeois, "practical," (à bas with that word and up with refinement and culture which is just as meaningful in books as in a field where we know culture is everything). I know many prosperous country towns without a men's reading organization or club in them, but many women's. If the state library in its state-wide influence, could convert men to reading, it would do a great work. Send your bulletin to the clubs, suggest topics for discussion, and thus distribute the leaven.

So much of our reading and study is done through periodicals of every description that it is made necessary for one central institution to be well supplied with these publications. The periodicals not taken in the average library, college or club, the foreign, like Revue de Deux Mondes, and Dublin Review, for example, and particularly the learned periodicals used only occasionally, should be found in the state library.

The state library can become a source of information, widespread over the state, by this process. Demands come sometimes from remote corners, from a teacher or some ambitious student, and he should never be neglected. This department, I fear, has been in a measure overlooked. We have about a hundred from foreign countries secured through exchange for the Indiana Academy of Science. They are not commonly called for but they form a tie between the library and the scientific men and students over the state.

By no means limit this list to scientific periodicals. Make the selection as broad as human interest, if funds and space permit.

It is commonplace to say that the state library is the document depository of the commonwealth. You know that now. Many people do not realize it, however. Every official publication of the state, counties and municipalities, if preserved here, will be a source for historical research in the future. Nothing of the kind should be thrown away. Many state libraries were founded with this particular purpose in view. The state library is the logical place for the preservation of all documents of the state. From it the municipal authorities, students of state history and political science, teachers, legislators and citizens gather the information needed on the documentary history of the state.

All the states have institutions of various kinds--colleges, hospitals for insane, the epileptic, the tubercular, reformatories, etc., etc. Why should the state library not at least supplement the small or large collections in these institutions? Their purpose is not to purchase books, though some are needed. The state library's influence and assistance should enter here, also. Much can be done to enlarge the views and inform the heads of these institutions and to make happy many of the inmates. No demand by a superintendent of a state institution for books to be purchased for and referred to by him would be overlooked in the Indiana state library. The institutions are scattered over the state and the library's influence would be spread in gathering material for the people connected with these institutions. The libraries of the state universities can be supplemented to great advantage, as has been done at least in our own state and in yours, I have no doubt.

The newspapers of the state are not kept with any regularity in the different localities. They are a valuable fund of information for the historian, who must sift rigidly of course. Our attempt is to preserve the papers from each county. We have many instances already of the value of our collection. We believe that a state-wide service is done in this way. I know the newspaper is not what we think it ought to be, but certain conditions of politics, business and social customs are pictures which will otherwise be lost. The librarian in the state library has imposed upon him here an important duty to the commonwealth, and the possibility of rendering great service.

The high schools are fond of debating. The boys are more easily aroused to reading by the discussion of a public or social problem. The local library is usually meagre. If the school principal is kept in close touch with the central library he will know where to send for material. A bulletin on "Debates" with bibliographical lists is of great service to the school men. The state library extends its work to educational centers by this method. The Indiana state library for several years has followed this system and as a result has almost been swamped with requests for debate material. As many as forty high schools in one week tried to overwhelm us, but our staff stood the test womanfully and won.

There are state-wide associations of all kinds in every state. Many of them publish reports or proceedings. The state librarian may well keep his institution in touch with all of these. The library may even be a member of some of them, especially educational, social, literary or artistic. The presence of a member of its staff at their meetings or correspondence may lead to the use of the library by these organizations in a way that will show that the library is the thing to be used--a tool for every man.

Common as it may be to say it, the assistance to the blind of the state by the central library must not be passed by. It is a great joy for any one to note the pleasure these unfortunate people obtain from the collections from which they draw daily. Very few, if any, are able to purchase their own books. The number assisted is small, but the benefit and happiness are great and lasting.

As the state library is the document and the political science center, it follows that legislative and official information are to be secured here. The officials and members of the Assembly ought to be made to know that the state library is, as it were, the fountain head from which to draw. If the library is worth anything or its head and staff worth anything, they should be consulted frequently by these persons in their work of lawmaking. The library has gathered and organized the material and by means of its use by the legislator, the library exerts a state-wide service.

It is the province of the traveling libraries department to lend collections of books to groups of citizens in localities apart from libraries. This does not hinder the state library from doing much for the farmer individually and in farmers' institutes. Addresses may be delivered, bibliographical lists on agricultural subjects sent and books loaned if the law permits it, and I think it should.

In our own library we have letters and requests from farmers; we preserve the records of their institutes and granges. One who had only half an hour a day to read asked for a volume of Jefferson, Shakespeare, or a good book on chiggers. If he could find out how to get rid of the chiggers, I would prefer that book to Jefferson, whose apotheosis is sadly overworked. That farmer's request was not so fascinating as that of a teacher who wanted a book on "the history of the human people." This is a sample of Indiana readers. Indiana, the home of authors! (I want to express my opinion in parenthesis here, that this Indiana literature talk is also sadly overworked.)

All this concerns special classes of people and books. But the general reader must be looked after. If democratization of books and reading is our keynote, and I think it is, then the citizen who wants to read on history, poetry, art, sociology, religion, must not be neglected. State-wide means much. It means an open mind for all the demos.

Our central library shall not be a trade shop, not for the bourgeoisie, but a mentor, a guide, a place of refinement and culture. Not for the practical man only--he usually does not know anything and does not want to; he has no breadth of view. Looking up a trade item or a report or some figures is good and useful; so is loving a poet because it is at the foundation of character and education.

We have recently been informed--no, we have been told--that to talk about reading, culture, the love of knowledge, is "flapdoodle." A citizen may be benefited by knowing how many miles of railroad are in his county, or what amount of money his city spends, but he will be just as much benefited by reading a lofty poem of André Chénier, Le Jeu de Paume for example, or a stanza of William Dwight Moody's, not that he will make money, but something far better.

What I want to say is that the state library shall extend the love of learning, of literature, or art and all their kin to the furthest boundaries of the state in order that all may know that here is a fountain whence all may receive instruction and refreshment. Why should the business man not read something besides the newspaper, the statements of which are denied the next day? Yet most men read nothing else. If his own town library is small let him call upon the state library and let the state library be ready to help. I believe that lending books must still be granted to the state library. We have calls from lovers of reading from every corner of Indiana, from men who love culture, knowledge and literature. These we propose to accommodate as long as the law permits. This observation is made because it has been said repeatedly that the state library shall deal in documents, reports and reference books.

We have many foreigners in Indiana. When these cannot secure what is wanted at their local library I want them to come to us, as recently happened when the Roumanians wanted the text of their native poets and something about their provincial capital Nagygebin.

I trust that we may all have one great library for reference with a minimum of popular fiction--a library that is a guide to scholarship and knowledge, a library where every man who loves to read may turn himself out to grass and browse, browse deeply. Herein will we have state-wide influence.

May I group these influences as a summary:--the personality, fitness and scholarship of the State Librarian; the bibliographical center may well be the state library; the legislative reference for the Assembly and officials; the gathering and preserving of the history and archives of the state along with the encouragement among the people to preserve local historical material; the collecting of newspapers representing the entire commonwealth; the creation of a periodical center in the state library; close connection with schools, colleges and all kinds of organizations, social, literary, commercial, etc.; assistance for all the state institutions, educational, charitable, and correctional; close relation with the women's clubs; assistance to the farmer and the foreigner in isolated localities; the center for general culture and love of knowledge where every citizen may continue to go to school.

The PRESIDENT: Mr. Lester in his paper referred to the bill-drafting department of a legislative reference bureau and Mr. Brown has just referred to the man behind the counter. We may perhaps feel that modern conditions require two men behind the counter in government: the one who prepares the ammunition and the one who fires it; and perhaps the more important is the one who prepares the ammunition; the one who draws up the law, leaving to the legislature the more perfunctory service of applying the match. Mr. MATTHEW S. DUDGEON has served in the capacity of director of the bill drafting department of the Wisconsin legislative bureau and I believe that since he has assumed the duties of the executive officer of the Wisconsin Library Commission he has continued to perform that service. We shall be glad to hear from him this morning as to

THE LAW THAT STANDS THE TEST

In an address before the New York Bar Association the Honorable Joseph E. Choate says that we in America are suffering seriously from plethora of legislation. He suggests that this whole mass of legislation pabulum that is made up and offered to the people from year to year, ought to be more thoroughly 'Fletcherized,' more completely masticated, before it is poured into the body politic for digestion. "If that were done, I am sure," he says, "that we could get along with half the quantity and it would do us just as much good." The volume of legislation now being considered is, in fact, appalling. The legislature of one Eastern state had before it at its last biennial session four thousand and eighty-one distinct bills. A Western state this year has asked its legislature to consider three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-eight measures. A Southern state actually passed at its latest session one thousand, four hundred and sixty different enactments.

Unlike the hookworm, however, this disease is neither new nor newly discovered, nor is it like the chills and fever, indigenous to our newly settled American continent. Over three hundred years ago Montaigne discovered a superabundance of legislation in France. "We have more laws in France," he says, "than in all the rest of the world." And going back still further to the first century A. D. we find Tacitus complaining that there are too many laws in Rome. "So that as formerly we suffered from wickedness," he says in his Annals, "so now we suffer from too many laws."

We may safely conclude then that the enactment of many laws which are not so fully "Fletcherized" as they should be, is a complaint which long ago became chronic among bodies politic generally and that it is high time that some cure be found for the ailment. How can the quantity of laws be diminished and the quality improved? How can our legislative acts be masticated so that one-half as many may do us as much good?

The problem of thus improving legislation and producing "the law that stands the test" is indeed a most serious one.

=Requirements.= Let us suggest the proposition that a law that stands the test must first be one which violates no provision of the constitution; second, it must be founded upon a sound economic basis; third, it should be capable of efficient administration: that is, it should be a practical, workable, usable thing; fourth, it must fit into its surroundings both legal and social. It must, as Blackstone has suggested, fit the situation as a suit of clothes fits the man. Some laws which are perfectly sound in good old occidental England have been found to be entirely impossible in oriental India. A measure which suits the Anglo-Saxon Yankee in Connecticut may be entirely out of place among the mixed peoples of the Philippines.

The law that stands the test must have all these qualities and this is the law which all the American states are striving to produce. Such a law may, of course, possess these characteristics and yet not be in every sense satisfactory. It may not accomplish all that was hoped for it; it may contain errors; it may need amendments, and still it may be a law which, in a proper sense, stands the test. To give a method by which a law may be created which will stand the test will not therefore be to suggest that a method has been discovered which will produce perfect legislation.

=Nature of subjects considered.= It should be remembered also that the difficulties of legislation arise not only from the multitude of subjects presented, but because many of the subjects are in themselves most difficult of comprehension. The Right Honorable James Bryce has said that the task of legislation becomes more and more difficult and that many of the problems which legislators now face are too hard not only for the ordinary members but even for the abler members of legislative bodies because they cannot be understood and mastered without special knowledge.

To illustrate: The legislature of a middle western state has had before it at a single session laws upon the following subjects: A comprehensive code of court procedure, initiative and referendum, recall of all officers except judges, home rule in cities, excess, condemnation, woman's suffrage, workmen's compensation, regulation of industrial accidents by commission, income tax, state aid to public highways, conservation and control of water power, forest reserve, system of industrial education, system of state life insurance, the formation of farmers' co-operative associations, limitation of the hours of labor for women, child labor, public school buildings as civic centers, and teachers' pension.

There does not exist in any learned society nor in any university in the land a single man who can do more than converse intelligently upon all of these subjects; yet this state expected its absolutely untrained legislators to understand these matters thoroughly, to express a wise judgment upon them, and to record their judgment in such form as to force it upon an entire state.

=Lack of training on the part of the legislators.= Of the one hundred members of the lower house of the legislature which voted upon all these measures sixty-five had never had any previous legislative experience. Only thirty had had the advantage of any college education. While nineteen of the one hundred were lawyers, they were for the most part young, inexperienced men, whose contact with public questions had been limited. Thirty of the one hundred were farmers, thirty-one were in business, six were doctors or dentists, eight were mechanics, three were school teachers. Yet these men, without experience, or training, or special fitness were forced to vote upon all these difficult economic and industrial problems, and also upon about two thousand other more or less important measures.

=Necessity for unbiased information.= It is of course evident that what the legislator must have is a source from which he can obtain complete information upon all sides of a controverted question. A court which purports to administer justice after hearing the contention of only one party to a transaction would open itself to ridicule. Yet this is precisely the method pursued in legislation. The legislator begins without any independent knowledge of the subject. Such knowledge as he obtains is brought to him ordinarily by a lobbyist. He receives many private suggestions whose source he hardly knows. He attends a committee hearing on a bill seeking to increase the taxes levied upon railroad property, for example. Here the best data and legal arguments that money can buy is ably and forcibly presented by the railroad attorneys. They give figures to show that the railroads are already taxed more than other forms of property. They quote economists to the effect that the proposed taxation is unsound and unscientific. They cite court decisions demonstrating to a certainty that the proposed measure is unconstitutional. They argue, wheedle, misstate, and finally convince the legislator that the measure is absurd. No similarly exhaustive arguments in behalf of the bill can be presented, for no talent comparable to that of the railroad attorneys, and in fact no talent at all is retained by the people in behalf of public interests.

This is the legislative librarian's opportunity. As the Right Honorable James Bryce has said: "No country has ever been able to fill its legislatures with its wisest men; but every country may at least enable them to apply the best methods and provide them with the amplest material."

=Legislation elsewhere.= It is to be remarked that the legislative questions before all civilized communities are essentially similar. Everywhere are problems growing out of crime and pauperism; problems relating to hours of labor, child labor, and wages; employer's liability; compulsory insurance; workman's compensation; problems arising out of inheritance, income taxation, and the regulation of public service corporations. Nothing is so new, however, but that some other legislature has worked upon the problem or is working upon it. Take, for example, such a question as employer's liability or workman's compensation. Fifty legislative bodies are working upon or have worked upon this single question. In at least three foreign countries and in one American state it has been adequately solved. The other forty-six have failed in part or altogether, either because of uneconomic and unscientific approach or because of constitutional limitations. Formerly and up to within the last ten years no effort had been made to profit by the experience of these fifty other legislative bodies. The typical American way is to let the legislators stumble along, ignorant of the results of similar experimentations elsewhere, trying out expensive, independent experiments, which inevitably end in ineffectual enactments.

What the legislator most needs to know, then, is what efforts other communities are making to solve the problem before him and how they are succeeding, to the end that good measures which have succeeded elsewhere may be adopted and their failures not repeated. Where successful legislative work is done the first effort is always to get copies of every law on every subject which is likely to be legislated upon at the current session. All data bearing upon the success or failure of this legislation in other states and countries must be collected, digested, tabulated and placed in such form as to be readily available to the legislator. If a measure has failed or been repealed the reasons for the failure or repeal are sought. If it has been successful its provisions are carefully studied and analyzed with a view to adaptability to local needs. Experience shows that in some cases it is necessary to prepare a translation of good foreign legislation which has never before been translated into English.

But no law from another jurisdiction can be safely transplanted without careful consideration. The local constitution must be studied. In such a case as the workman's compensation act referred to, it was necessary for a commission to make a close, scientific study of the causes and character of the industrial accidents within the state, to investigate the rates of the casualty insurance companies in the different industries, to discover what co-operation for the prevention of accidents could be secured from employers and employees. Hearings were held at various industrial centers within and without the state; scores of witnesses were examined; manufacturers, labor unions, engineering experts and economists were called upon. In short, the problem was treated in a thoroughly scientific manner. Contrary to the usual practice, the case was prepared and presented to the legislature with the same thoroughness and care as is usual when an important case is prepared and presented to the court. As a result the law, although not perfect, stands the test.

=Drafting.= When the legislature has discovered what measures have proved successful elsewhere and what local conditions demand, it is still helpless because the members know nothing of legislative forms and cannot use with sufficient accuracy the language expressive of its conclusion. Assistance in bill drafting is necessary. Experience has shown that the man who does this must be either a trained lawyer who is also a practical political scientist or a practical political scientist who is something of a lawyer. It is often found too that in its original form a measure is unconstitutional and a lawyer's knowledge is necessary in order to devise some means of whipping the constitutional devil around the judicial stump. For example, the workman's compensation law of England, enacted too literally in its original form, is clearly unconstitutional in America and has been so declared by the courts of our state. In another state, however, the legislative lawyers who were engaged in drafting the bill, seeing clearly the judicial stump and the constitutional devil, by a simple but clever device passed what was in effect the English law, but in such form that when it came before the Supreme Court it was not only declared constitutional but was commended.

=Fault not with legislators but with the system.= If legislation be bad the fault is, then, not with the legislator. The average legislator is a keen, bright, honest man, who has been successful in at least a small way in his business or profession. He is ignorant of legislative subjects not because he is an ignorant man, but because his knowledge is of other things. The fault is not with him. It is inherent in our unscientific system of legislating.

We put a group of farmers, grocers, and mechanics at work upon some great sociological problem. They can have no adequate knowledge of the subject. We do not give them compensation enough to pay their living expenses while they work. We allot them only a few hours to consider a given question. We provide for them no information. We furnish them with no legal counsel. Assuming, however, as is often true, that these men are men of integrity and humanity and common sense and that their ideas are sound, they enact a good law that forbids, for example, the employment of children in hazardous and immoral surroundings. In this they have accomplished an important and intelligent constructive work.

Then we hire the best trained minds in the state and put them in our courts. We pay them higher salaries than any other public servants. We give them large libraries in which is found the accumulated legal lore of the past. We grant them, for the questions before them, all the time they can use,--weeks, months, often literally years. These talented, high-minded gentlemen, by dint of industrious delving and assisted by highly paid and highly trained attorneys, discover at last in the depths of their moth-eaten law books some mummified eighteenth century idea which has become petrified into a constitutional provision. They shake their heads and decide that the splendid, humane, up-to-date, common sense legislation is unconstitutional and void because of some minor constitutional objection. They cannot be, and should not be, criticised, for they are clearly performing a duty. Neither can these judges substitute anything in place of the law which they destroy, for the work for which we pay them so well in money and honor and position is only critical,--and their function is in this case destructive.

=The law making function as important as the judicial.= Now, creative work the world over has always been recognized as requiring greater intelligence, better training, keener initiative than the purely critical. Yet, in legal matters this principle has been entirely ignored. In every way we exalt the interpretive, critical, even destructive, judicial process. We neglect and belittle the constructive creative process of law making.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that the making of the law is in principle as important,--in fact, more important, than the interpretation of it.

The legislative function must be as carefully performed as is the judicial. Men should be prepared for law making as are men for the judicial bench. They must be men of the same calibre, of good ability, of high intelligence, of absolute integrity, of broad sympathies, and of big vision. Not until we have an agency of this type assisting in law making, not until the making of laws is recognized as a distinct and important governmental function, co-ordinate with, if not superior to the judicial function, not until each state has a bureau which will, as the Honorable James Bryce says, supply the legislators with the amplest material and enable them to apply the best methods, can we hope to have laws which in the highest sense "stand the test."

The PRESIDENT: We go now from the legislature to the business man, the man who makes the wheels turn around. Those of you who had the opportunity to hear the striking address, at a meeting of the Special Libraries Association the other day, from a business man of Boston need not be reminded of the tremendous possibilities that lie in this extension of the library service. Mr. S. H. RANCK, of the Grand Rapids public library, will discuss

MAKING A LIBRARY USEFUL TO BUSINESS MEN

On first giving consideration to this paper I was inclined to believe that the story of the personal use of the library (the public library) by business men would be almost as brief as the traditional story of snakes in Ireland. Few librarians have the means of knowing how many business men use their institutions, but where statistics of registration indicate the occupation of card holders it would appear that the library gets almost as many bartenders as bankers.

To get some definite data on this subject I had the library records investigated of the 198 officers and committees of the Grand Rapids Association of Commerce, the leading business organization of our city, with a membership of 1,300. These 198 men (and a few women) represent our most active business concerns, as well as a few professions. Of this number only 53, or 27 per cent, have live library cards. In looking over the names I recognized 38 of those without cards as persons who either individually or through their employees in the interest of the house, have used the library more or less for reference purposes. There are of course others who use the library in this way without my knowledge.

These figures indicate that the library is serving directly only about 50 per cent of the livest business men of the town. The specific questions I propose to discuss are, Why do business men use the library relatively little? What can the library do to get business men to use it more?

Progressive business men use the library because they recognize the enormous value of new ideas and of new knowledge to their business, no matter where they get them. The trouble is that public libraries can't always furnish them the knowledge they need. And furthermore not all business men are progressive. There are standpatters in the business, as well as in the political world. However, there is no class of men who have a better idea of the potential power of print, rightly used, than the business men who advertise. Such men are always ready to meet the library more than half way.

In discussing this question I should have preferred to use the term "business men" in a liberal sense. We are all more or less "business" people at times, but for this occasion I am directed by our president to limit it to that one of its 24 different meanings which applies to employer rather than employee in "the occupations of conducting trade or monetary transactions" and in "employments requiring knowledge of accounts and financial methods."

Before proceeding further permit me to state my conviction that the greatest service the library is doing for business men is not to business men personally, but rather for them through their employees,--in supplying knowledge and in promoting the general intelligence and the social welfare of the community. These things are of the greatest importance to every employer, for they are the foundations on which all efficiency is built. The social welfare work of the Panama Canal, much of it the kind libraries are doing, is a conspicuous example of the immense financial value of such work.

The male portion of adult society we may roughly divide, so far as occupations are concerned, into manual workers (laborers and mechanics), professional men, business men, and drones (the idle class) who, like the lilies of the field, neither toil nor spin, but who frequently outshine Solomon in the gorgeousness and variety of their array. They live a parasitic life on the productive labor of their fellow men, giving no adequate return. In the administration of our public libraries most consideration has been given to the idle class and to the professional classes. Real service for the manual workers and business men has been largely neglected until within recent years.

There are several reasons for this neglect. Among these may be mentioned the following: Working men and business men are expressing themselves in deeds and in things rather than in words and books; and therefore until recently there has been relatively little worth-while material available for the libraries to put on their shelves for the men directly engaged in industrial or commercial pursuits. Furthermore there has been a long standing prejudice on the part of these men (those who are rule-of-thumb men) against the reliability and the utility of things in print for their everyday work. And in certain quarters this prejudice still exists to a very considerable extent. They are inclined to look upon the writers and users of books as theoretical and impractical.

A further handicap in the use of libraries by business men, is the fact that so few of us in library work know the contents of books and things in print that might be useful to them in their daily work; and oftener we know still less of the problems business men must deal with. Therefore we cannot relate the inside of books with their work.

Much of the work of the public library is a kind of salesmanship, even though there is no direct exchange of the coin of the country. Salesmanship in its best sense is service, and service is what a city is buying for all its people when it puts into its annual budget a more or less (usually less) adequate sum of money for its library. As things are today I fear that in too many cases the public instead of drawing a plum from the library pie is not infrequently handed a lemon.

Recently I had the pleasure of dining with the vice-president of a department store that employs over 2,500 people to sell nothing but clothes--wearing apparel. He told me that the great secret of the success of his institution, through whose doors there enter from 30,000 to 40,000 people every day (and remember that nearly all these people enter with the expectation of parting with some of their good money), is the fact that every employee has instilled into him or her the fact that the salesmanship that brings success is service and that it is founded on knowledge; for, said he, "No one can sell goods satisfactorily unless he knows all about them,"--where they are made, how they are made, what they are, their history, etc. And these things everyone in this store is systematically taught. Incidentally, I may add that this department store starts its people at a minimum wage higher than the minimum in many libraries, and the maximum for women in this store is double the maximum of the highest paid women in library work in this country. This store uses the public library of its city and has a library of its own whose librarian is at this convention at the expense of the store. When a department store finds such a policy a wise one the business men responsible for its management will be the first in the community to support a policy of library service based on knowledge. But business men must be shown that the library is delivering the goods.

The business man places his establishment so far as possible where it will best serve the purposes of his business, and he spends loads of good money in the first place, and annually in the form of taxation, to get his building at the right place. Besides getting his establishment at the right place he also spends more loads of good money to arrange it for the economic and expeditious handling of his affairs in it. So far as libraries relate to serving the business man, as well as nine-tenths of the other people in the community, I am convinced that 95 per cent of the library buildings of the country are badly located, and furthermore that the large proportion of these buildings are badly arranged for the work they have, or ought, to do.

The place to serve the people is where the people daily congregate and pass by in the largest numbers. This is never on a side street or in the "best" residence section of the city. Your average "best" citizen today gets more satisfaction out of his public library in showing his visitor from out of town the Greek temple set back in a beautiful grove or garden as he whirls by in his six cylinder, 60 horse-power, seven-passenger touring car than in using the books and periodicals inside. Such a building in such a setting has a value as a work of art, but not as a library for service. Incidentally, it is only fair to say that business men in most of our cities are largely responsible that we have library buildings for show rather than for use.

Every block that separates the library from the principal lines of the movement of the people, every foot that people must walk from the sidewalk to the entrance of the building and then to its books, every step that must be climbed above the level of the sidewalk to reach the first floor, are all so many hurdles, barriers, which the people are obliged to overcome before they can get to their own books, whether it be to use them for business or pleasure, for education or recreation. The bad location and arrangement of library buildings in the United States are keeping hundreds of thousands of potential users and supporters of libraries away from them and out of them every day of the year. And there is no class of persons in the community more affected by such things than business men, for they recognize (consciously or unconsciously) better than any other class the commercial value of time and convenience.

Let me put this a little more concretely. The library building in which I work is better located and arranged than the average library building of the country. And yet the total distance walked to and from the sidewalk by all those who enter that building daily is nearly 35 miles to the point where the library begins to serve them. Furthermore each one of the thousand and more persons who daily enter this building, in addition to the energy he uses in walking 180 feet to and from the sidewalk must lift his own weight and the weight of the books he carries seven feet above the level of the sidewalk. In other words the location and arrangement of this building with reference to the sidewalk requires the people who use it daily to take an extra walk of almost the distance from Baltimore to Washington and at the same time carry a weight equal to that of a ton of coal 350 feet to the top of a skyscraper and down again. And all this is in addition to the walk of 450 feet from the nearest car line, which few people use, 800 feet from the car lines which are generally used, and over 400 feet from the nearest thoroughfare. The library to be a friend to man, and to serve him, must "live in a house by the side of the road where the race of men go by."

The business man who studies usually buys his own printed matter that deals directly with his work, and in this respect he is usually far ahead of the library both in knowledge and in material at hand; and the bigger his business the more is this likely to be the case. The librarian will almost invariably find such a man a most helpful person in the selection of things to be purchased and in the relative value of both authors and books. It should be the business of every librarian to know intimately, as far as possible, all such men in the community.

Our public libraries must largely increase on their shelves the number of things in print that are of real service to the business man in his work. First of all we must know what these things are, and next we need to have the nerve to spend money for them much more freely than we have ever done before. This is expensive and most such expenditures will not show in the statistics of circulation. As an illustration of this let me refer again to the institution I have the honor to serve. For a number of years we have been spending $400 a year for books in only one line of business. Besides the books, we take some two dozen current periodicals on the same subject. All are used to a considerable extent and the use made of them by only a dozen men is of the greatest commercial and financial importance to our city. And yet so far as the figures of circulation are concerned the expenditure of $450 of our annual book fund for this one business is practically nothing.

We must get away from the idea of measuring the usefulness or the efficiency of the library by the number of books issued for home use. So long as this idea dominates our public library work we can never do our best for the community, and especially the business part of it.

We need of course many books for the business man in our circulating departments, but these by no means meet the need. Many of these books are out of date in a few years at the best. To keep up to date there is necessary a liberal purchase of yearbooks, transactions and publications of industrial, technical and commercial associations which bring down to date annually, and in convenient form, the latest knowledge in their respective fields. For progressive business men such works are vastly more important than encyclopedias, important as encyclopedias of all kinds are.

Then too we must pay greater respect to the material published in pamphlet form. On a multitude of subjects some of the latest and best things have appeared in this form. Most of us do not handle this material properly, if at all. In many libraries pamphlets are regarded and cared for with about the same degree of disrespect as were public documents in most libraries twenty years ago, and I regret to say, in many libraries today. And as for the public use made of pamphlets, it is practically nothing.

But more important for the wide-awake business man than books, documents and pamphlets, is a large collection of current periodicals relating to every kind of business activity in your city, with clipping files on many subjects, for it is only through these that it is possible to keep up with the latest information or for the library to supply the thing that is most needed at the minute. As an illustration of such use I recall several recent instances of business men getting up briefs in connection with the proposed Underwood tariff bill. The latest information, even when compiled sometimes by government authorities, was secured from technical or trade journals before it could be received from the Government Printing Office.

In short the best work the library can do for the business men personally is in the building itself, supplemented by extensive use of the telephone and the mails (reference or information work if you please), and not by issuing to them for home use books whose information at the best is rarely less than a year old, but in reality is more likely to be five, ten, or even twenty years old. The circulating book has a most important place and I would not for one moment take from it the importance that is its due. My plea is that we recognize more fully for our business man, and especially the so-called small business man--the man of small business, or the young man who hopes to establish a business of his own, the great importance of library assistants who know the contents and the relative value of books, pamphlets and periodicals, and who understand the art of library salesmanship whereby the business man gets the things he really needs.

And then when we have done all this--have librarians who know, and the things in print the business man needs, this one thing more we must do, we must let the business man know what we have for his particular problem and how we can serve him. The library must advertise the utility of ideas and of knowledge in the every day work of the world as well as advertise its resources and its service.

The best advertising is that which comes from a well served patron. But our libraries have thrown away one of the best means of publicity by locating their buildings where people must go out of their way to find them and by so arranging them that the passerby sees nothing but stone, brick and glass--things that suggest nothing of the joy and usefulness of books. Seeing great crowds enjoying and using books, as well as seeing attractive things in print through properly arranged show windows, would appeal to the average library user in a way that would simply compel his interest and attention in the things we have for him.

The architecture of the average library building suggests a tomb--a place for dead ones--rather than a place chock-full of the things that appeal with tremendous force to the soul that is alive with the throbbing impulses of this wonderful time in which we live.

Since our buildings deny us this great means of publicity which the show window enables every merchant to use to such great advantage, we must use as best we may such means as we find available. In a general way I may state my conviction that we should make a much larger use of the specific personal appeal as over against general publicity, though the latter is also necessary. When a man has a definite task assigned him put the resources and service of your library directly up to him for his particular problem, especially if the problem is one a little outside the circle of his regular business. It will come to him at the psychological moment and he is most likely to act on your suggestion; whereas had it come to him as a general statement before he was personally interested most likely it would have been promptly forgotten. As a part of our regular routine letters from the library go to all such persons, as we see their names in the newspapers, on programs, etc.

At the meeting of the Associated Advertising Clubs of America early this month in Baltimore I had the pleasure of "getting next" to some of the livest business men in the country. The thing that impressed me most was not the interesting exhibitions there shown or the various "stunts" that were pulled off, but the new note that some of the men were striking. It was this: "Business and business efficiency for service rather than for profit." This is a high ideal, worthy of any profession, and I venture the prediction that it will be men of this type who will more and more dominate the business world of the future. Such men will appreciate and support the public library more than business men have ever done before; but they will also require more. To get their support we as librarians must think less of measuring our efficiency in terms of circulation statistics, a kind of impersonal, bookkeeping standard, but more of measuring it in terms of human service--human service not only for the business man, but for every man, every woman and every child in all this vast continent of America.

The PRESIDENT: Great as is the opportunity of the public library to serve the business man, it can't do it all, for so highly specialized are some of the departments of interest of the various business houses that no public library without a treasury like that of our millionaire concerns could hope to undertake a work of that character. Therefore, each large business concern necessarily must supplement the resources of the public library by means of library facilities of its own. We shall hear something of this form of work this morning in the paper which is to be presented by one of the most successful of the libraries of this type, that of H. M. Byllesby & Co. of Chicago, whose librarian, Miss LOUISE B. KRAUSE, will give us the paper.

LIBRARIES IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS: THEIR EXPANDING FUNCTION

The service which books render mankind may in general be designated as falling into two classes; namely, books for inspiration and books for information. Dismissing the use of books as a means of inspiration, because the subject does not fall within the scope of this paper, let us consider the most important use to which printed information can be put, in the service of mankind. At first thought it might seem that the use of the printed page for purposes of information reached its highest service in the function of education, but granted that it does not play an important part in education, we know education to be something vastly larger than a mere knowledge of facts, and we also know that many men and women who are repositories of information derived from the printed page do not always put it into operation for the best welfare of their fellows; for, as James Russell Lowell has said, "There is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship;" and truly scholarship without the ultimate purpose of practical service is one of the most selfish possessions in the world.

Let us therefore exclude the use of printed information in the service of education as its highest form of usefulness and consider the following statement. The use of print in furnishing information performs its most important service in the function which it exercises in modern business, because it is business which lays hold of abstract science and knowledge and puts them into practical operation for the greatest benefit to mankind; for the commercial age in which we live is not a sordid age, but an age which is distinctly marked by the development and conservation of resources for the supplying of man's needs, by means of the extension of applied science into the field of business. Now lest this statement should be too abstract, and the speaker be accused in the words of Leonard Merrick of "voicing the sentiments of the unthinking in stately language," let us consider this proposition for a moment in the concrete. It is business enterprise that has brought about, through the perfection of the steam engine, the swiftness and convenience which we enjoy in twentieth century travel by railroad. It is business that has brought the service of the telephone and telegraph to their highest perfection. It is business that has developed artificial lighting by gas and electricity and emancipated us from candles and kerosene lamps. It is business that is transforming raw and waste materials by the application of pure science, into products of service and value for the needs of innumerable homes, in addition to perfecting agricultural machinery, and producing fertilizers to enrich the land, thereby making possible the production of better crops. Thus we might continue to multiply illustrations of how business enterprise has equipped us with the means of meeting great needs which at various times have seriously threatened the welfare of human life. This fact of the application of abstract science to the world's practical needs, through the medium of business enterprise, has become permanently recognized by institutions of learning, as seen in the establishment of technical schools, schools of commerce and finance, and instruction in business administration, for, as a recent writer in the Journal of Political Economy has said, "The methods of American industry are rapidly being intellectualized."

A variety of professional work of which engineering and chemistry are noteworthy examples are also carried on by large business organizations, and we find professional men of the highest rank as prime movers in large commercial enterprises. (In this connection it might not be amiss to state that out of an experience as university librarian and business librarian the speaker is inclined to think that the professional business man keeps more adequately informed and up to date on his specialties than does the average university professor.)

An additional fact which bears directly on the general subject under discussion is, that the age in which we live is not only a business age, but that it is an age marked by the magnitude of its business organizations; an age of "big business," as some one has called it; and because of the economic conditions of our advancing civilization, business will undoubtedly continue to be "big business" even though subjected to federal and state regulation. Now correlating these two facts, namely, that modern business is conducted by means of large organizations and that its success is based upon the intelligent application of scientific knowledge to practical needs, we have cleared the way for an appreciation of the function of printed information as embodied in the work of libraries in business organizations.

The business organization builds up its own library, first, on account of the convenience of having close at hand the information constantly needed by its workers, and subject to no borrowing restrictions, which would be inevitable even if the facilities of outside libraries were available; and second, on account of the necessity for careful selection of material particularly adapted to its individual needs. Business organizations have for many years collected information in a desultory manner, but it has been only in the last few years that some of them have awakened to the fact that more was needed than mere collection of printed information, and for the same reason that they were availing themselves of all modern devices for the quick and adequate handling of their various products and were systematizing their methods to obtain more efficient results, so they must lay hold of modern library methods under experienced supervision if they were to keep up with the steadily growing and important mass of printed information. Therefore we find business organizations securing the services of professional library workers, trained to use books in the broadest and most practical manner. Some hesitation was at first expressed in various quarters as to whether so-called professional library methods used in public and university libraries were suited to business library needs, and as to whether library workers educated for general library work would adequately meet the business library situation. In fact it was intimated that the business librarian was a worker of a different brand than the ordinary librarian and therefore he had both knowledge and needs which set him apart from his library fellows, in a special class by himself. Out of four years' experience as a business librarian the speaker takes pleasure in stating that practical experience has proved the fallacy of both of these conceptions. It is true that business librarians are called upon to exercise certain functions which the librarians of public and university libraries are not, but which any efficient head of a public or university library would be quite capable of exercising if the occasion demanded it. In fact the recent rise of library interest in business men and their needs can be directly traced to the heads of some of our public libraries and the work they have inaugurated in making their libraries as helpful as possible to all classes of citizens.

The characterization of the function of libraries in business organizations by the word "expanding" in the title assigned to this paper by the President of the American Library Association, is most apt, and indicative of the real status of the case. The business library is in a process of evolution, and just what the final result will be, it is a little too early in its development to state.

The elemental idea of the function of a business library that was held by the officers of the business organization with which the speaker is most familiar, was to have the books and data which were the property of the company, classified and cataloged so that material could be found quickly, and a librarian was employed solely on the basis of this need.

With the acquisition of a librarian the library situation soon changed from the inquiry for certain definite books and periodicals, to the inquiry as to whether the company had any specific information on a given subject, and if not as to whether printed information on the subject was available elsewhere and how quickly it could be obtained.

The evolution in the function of a library from that of furnishing a definite book asked for, to furnishing all the information obtainable on a given subject as quickly as possible is decidedly expensive, and the what, how and where of the case would furnish ample material for a separate paper.

The evolution in the function of the library did not stop at this point; for it was soon expected that the librarian would understand the specific interests of the members of the organization, and to a certain degree think for them in keeping up with the field of print and in bringing to their attention, without a request on their part, certain facts of which they would like to be cognizant. To this duty was added the forecasting of possible future needs, and the collection of information in advance of rush demands.

The magnitude of the work of modern business organizations requires the division of labor into a number of departments, and the workers in any one department may not always be acquainted with the information which may be available in another department. The library, by keeping in touch with individuals in all departments, becomes a central bureau of information in being able to refer the members of one department to those in another who possess the particular information desired.

The business library also assembles and files the manuscript data of original research conducted by members of the organization, materials which constitute one of its valuable assets. Research data in the possession of business corporations is often a worthy contribution to scholarship. An illustration of this fact was recently brought to the attention of the speaker, by the statement of a university student, who said that in making a study of the drinking waters of a certain state the only analyses of waters on record were those which a railroad had made primarily for the purpose of ascertaining the suitability of the waters for boiler use on locomotives.

In addition to these briefly outlined functions, which are more or less technical, attention should be directed to several others, lest a mistaken impression be given that business library work is entirely technical in its nature.

Business men are often called upon to serve the public as good citizens in various capacities, and also to serve as officers or on committees of national business organizations, and thus have interests outside of their regular company work. Their librarian is expected to assist in any need which arises by reason of these outside interests, and not only may be called upon to furnish information but also to do editorial work in preparing material for publication.

The welfare and education of employees has also become a prominent feature in the work of many large business corporations, and the library is expected to be a prominent factor in this work, as it is the logical educational center of the organization. Some of our business libraries have recently been drawn rather deeply into welfare work with the result that certain phases of practical library service are being neglected. It does not seem advisable, however, that the business librarian should annex any line of welfare work which does not legitimately center in the library; for the librarian is best fitted to serve the interests of the organization by maintaining high standards of efficient library service rather than by annexing other kinds of work belonging solely to the sphere of a social worker. This is particularly important at the present stage of business library development, as the business world in many sections has not yet learned what professional library service really is, and how to utilize it most effectively.

In view of the fact that the business world except for comparatively few organizations is not utilizing the undoubtedly valuable service which professional librarians are able to render, and that the American Library Association has always endeavored to extend the use of books and their widest application, it might not be amiss to suggest that it would be legitimate work for the American Library Association with its library prestige and well known motives of personal disinterestedness, to undertake a campaign of education to bring before business men the subject of what library work really is, and the character of service it is prepared to render; for in these days of the over-emphasized and often superficial cry for more efficiency, there is no line of work that is more genuinely efficient than that of the trained librarian. The information, to be put before business men, should be free from library technicalities and details, and its arguments should be framed, not to enlighten librarians, but to convince busy men of affairs possessed of shrewd judgment and large foresight, as to the practical worth of the matter as a business proposition. For library work in business organizations is no longer a theory or a tentative experiment, but has proved itself in the firms adopting it to be an integral part of the successful work of the corporation. This fact is well illustrated by a bulletin recently issued by a large business firm, in which it endeavored to put before the public, in a pamphlet entitled "Why it is qualified" the value of the consulting services of one of its departments, and among the prominent reasons given under "Why it is qualified" is the fact of the commercial library maintained by the company, with the library's particular resources under competent supervision.

Because printed information has proved to be an integral factor in the successful prosecution of business and because it can be most effectively utilized by means of professional library methods, therefore, the business library hopes to take its place in the ranks of the American Library Association as one in purpose with all libraries in the realization of a common ideal, namely, the largest possible use of books in the practical service of mankind.

The PRESIDENT: I have just received a message that Mr. McAneny will be here in a very short time. In the few moments intervening it might be well perhaps to discuss some of the trenchant papers which we have had this morning.

Miss AHERN: Mr. President, I would like to take exception to one thing Mr. Ranck said in his paper. I do not believe that the idea that the contents of books are useful to men in the business world is of recent date. I think, perhaps, the second statement that these things have only come recently into the arrangement of resources of the library is the truer one. We certainly have had knowledge of chemistry and of geology and technical knowledge in manufacture for many, many years, only many librarians have been more interested in the purely educational or inspirational part of the library and have neglected that large field of usefulness and that large company of people who contribute to the welfare of work and of the world, as Miss Krause has pointed out. The best chemists in the country are being sought by the business houses; the best knowledge of soils, of minerals, of woods, of lumber, of stone has long been sought by the men who are making a commercial use of these things. And their information is not held in reserve: it is all in printed form and only the scope of the librarian's knowledge of where things may be obtained in the world of print places the limit on this material for the library shelves. And so I hope that librarians will not say that books on these subjects, that material on these subjects is a recent product. It is our knowledge of them, a knowledge that this is a part of the province of library work, that makes for recent activity.

The PRESIDENT: Mr. Ranck is here to answer for himself. The statement has been challenged and he can answer it.

Mr. RANCK: I think there is not so much difference between the view I take and the view taken by Miss Ahern. I do not know that I followed my manuscript very closely at that point, but what I had in mind was the business man rather than the professional, technical man. I fully grant what Miss Ahern says with reference to technical subjects, scientific subjects, and so on. As I said, I think there is no radical disagreement between Miss Ahern's and my position. There may be a misunderstanding.

Miss AHERN: I was not questioning what Mr. Ranck had said, but, rather, removing any excuse that the library folk may put to themselves for a lack of interest or a lack of activity along this line by saying that the material was scant or hard to command.

Dr. ANDREWS: There is the other side, that Miss Krause's paper emphasized and which Miss Ahern seems to neglect. Miss Krause's paper states that American industry is becoming intellectualized, and that this is a great factor in the development of business life. It ought also to be an extra incentive to the public library to meet the demands. I think that much of this development in the technical side of library work has come from the increasing study by business men of their own world and that we ought to remember that while the public libraries have neglected in the past to furnish business men with what they wanted, yet the latter did not want it then as much as they do now.

The PRESIDENT: Those of us--and I assume that that means every librarian--who read the June number of the World's Work were impressed by one strong article therein concerning the growing magnitude of municipal administration and the great problems that confront those who are charged with such administration. Without repeating to you the very striking comparisons which the author made with some of the governmental functions of states and even some of the kingdoms of Europe, showing the tremendous problems confronting the municipal officials, problems of tremendous budgets, of great public works, and so on, it will be sufficient for me to say that it is a happy omen that we are now getting into the public service men of high civic ideals and constructive ability and who are replacing men whose self-seeking interests or vanity led them to seek the votes of their fellow citizens. I am glad that we have with us today a man of this high type. I need not say further concerning him because we took advantage of his absence to get from Mr. Bowker a pretty good who's-who bearing upon himself, and I shall simply introduce to you at this time to speak to us upon the subject of "The municipal reference library as an aid in city administration," the Honorable GEORGE McANENY, president of the borough of Manhattan, New York.

THE MUNICIPAL REFERENCE LIBRARY AS AN AID IN CITY ADMINISTRATION

It is a very real pleasure to meet with the American Library Association, and to convey in behalf of my colleagues in the administration of the City of New York, and in behalf of other colleagues in public business throughout the country, our hearty congratulations and possibly a friendly warning and a word of appeal.

Congratulations are due you for having established on so high a plane and in so short a time the profession of librarian. Especially are you to be congratulated for having welcomed the new profession of municipal reference librarian; for your adaptability in the constant extension of the reference work, and for the resiliency which is showing again in another field that real Father Williams never grow old. Could Benjamin Franklin look upon this gathering, and hear your reports of social service, through circulating, home, reference and municipal reference libraries, I am sure that no fruit of his patriotism would seem to him more promising than the recent application of the circulating library idea to government affairs.

My friendly warning has to do with your requests to fiscal bodies for appropriations. In many parts of the country, there is the feeling that the less the library has to do with public officials the better it is for the library, consequently, as a short cut, we find compulsory minimum appropriations--so many mills or so many parts of mills for library development. We also find that too many towns are satisfied with this compulsory minimum tax, and that the only time their fiscal representatives hear about libraries is just before the budget appropriations are voted. You must be indulgent with those who vote the money, if the outcome of this habit suggests the man who was exasperated by his wife, who he said "just nagged and nagged him for money, when he came, when he left, on Sunday, always." Finally, when a neighbor summoned the courage to ask, "What in the world does she do with all the money?" he, perforce, must answer; "Well, I don't know; you see I haven't given her any yet." Councils and Mayors will understand your library problem best if you will help them understand at those quieter seasons of the year when they are not harassed, as they are at budget time, by appeals from every other city department and for every other thing.

When presenting your budget, give the fiscal officer credit for wanting to know the whole truth, and for wanting reasons for giving you the money you request. Seldom will it help to ask for a great deal more than you need. Always, it will help not to present in a single total items that do not belong together. Classify your budget. State your program clearly. If all the money you want is not voted this year, stick clearly to the plan that has been voted, and show both the fiscal authorities and the town where your service has been crippled, if at all, for want of funds. It will be well to begin your budget campaign so that the first idea which the public and the fiscal officers get is that of the service you wish to render, rather than the money you wish to get. Most library budgets, like most other budgets of the United States, are apt to be put in without the explanatory matter which alone will make the dollar-and-cent facts show social reasons for library support.

Now for my appeal. In asking you to consider certain needs of public business, I want to speak quite frankly, as a city official who, like thousands of other city and county officials, must step into other people's business, with no time for getting acquainted with detail, and with a public to deal with that not only expects us on the first day we take office to use all the machinery of our predecessor and to get better results, but also really expects us to fail. We inherit a stack of mail. We are flooded with suggestions and complaints; many of them in confidence and most of them confusing. We are urged to attend club and church meetings, and dinners, and graduating exercises. We are expected, without any change in subordinate personnel, while giving our attention to large community problems and to the political aspects of public works, to get an efficient product out of our employees, no matter who they are or what they have been. In most places, we find no disinterested adviser, either on the inside or on the outside.

Such a situation would not necessarily be serious if we stepped into a thoroughly efficient organization where every employee and supervisor had his place, and where the institution as such had its "continuing memory." When Mr. Rea succeeded Mr. McCrea as president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, he inherited a splendid organization, every part related to another part; a system under which experts had tabulated within a moment's reach the successes and the failures of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the costs of its various contracts, the difference between estimates and final costs, and an efficiency ranking both of its various employees and its stations. When the present administration in New York City stepped into office, we inherited an aggregation of departments and divisions then spending--if we count in installments and interest paid on the city debt--more than $160,000,000 for the expenses of a single year. There were ninety thousand employees. Side by side with one another were clerks paid one $600 and another $1,800 for the same kind of work; in another grade were clerks paid $1,600 and others paid $2,400 for the same kind of work. When salaries had been increased, and why, was not a matter of record. Supplies were contracted for by no standard form. Specifications, either for supplies or for construction work, were worded differently at different times, according to the individual wish or whim of the department officer preparing them. The public was but poorly protected at any point. Plans were made for new buildings, for new roads, and for other vast improvements, often without estimates of cost; often with assurances of only slight cost, where, too frequently, cost had been estimated as an entering wedge only. Thus a great city would stumble into an experiment or public improvement demanding millions of dollars, without ever reckoning the ultimate amount of its obligation. For example it may be fair in this presence to recall that the first bill for the New York public library carried with it an appropriation of $2,500,000. The city decided to spend this $2,500,000 and actually it spent $10,000,000. The New York public library is worth every dollar it cost, ten times over; I am merely emphasizing that the public should have had its eyes open and, in this case as in every other, should have known what it was doing. Although this same gap occurred over and over again--between estimate and actual cost--no steps were taken to recall the fact when each new amount was under consideration.

Ignorant as we have been of our own experience, still less informed have we been regarding the experience of neighbor cities. Some years ago, Denver, in operating its street railway, found it expedient to substitute electric motor power for the old cables. After Denver had discarded these cables, Baltimore adopted the cable. Rochester has recently adopted a device to attach drinking fountains to its ordinary fire hydrants. The idea is a new one, and may prove valuable. I say it merely by way of instance; but if it is a good idea, New York City and your city should adopt it. Each successive experiment of the sort should, at least, be brought promptly to the attention of public officials.

Again, New York City has worked out an improved system of accounting and budget making. The village of Dobb's Ferry, the cities of Duluth and Cincinnati have used an improvement upon New York's budget exhibits--recently called a new kind of "confidence game"--that is, taking the public into official confidence about the public's own business. Instead of waiting a generation for cities to adopt these new methods, their officials should promptly be given the facts they need.

Is it not criminal waste and error for one city to introduce a system of sewer disposal, or of milk regulation, which another city has found endangering the lives of its citizens? If a measure has proved bad and dangerous for one city, modern science in the hands of a librarian should make it unnecessary for every other city to go through the same experience.

To help us in ending all this waste, and to help us, in short, in putting city government upon a thorough scientific and efficient basis, the municipal reference library is beginning to take its highly important place. Without a municipal reference library, it will in future be difficult for any administrative officer to do his best. I will not attempt to review the laborious steps of my colleagues in the present board of estimate and apportionment--our governing municipal body--to incorporate into standard specifications, standard salaries and standard contracts the memory of our past failures, so that we may hold the gains that we have made and avoid the weaknesses and the errors of our experience. But I venture some suggestions as to a reference library that, although general in their application, will indicate our reasons for establishing such a library in New York.

Our reasons for placing the library in our new Municipal Building--as we propose to do--apply everywhere. It must be made easy for officials to get information, and for the librarian to get the information promptly and directly to the officials. It is not enough to know that it may be had. To have important information an hour away from the office is almost as bad as to have it a thousand miles away. It must be easier for the busy official to get the information he wants than to endure the thought of going without it. In putting the library where the users are, instead of where they are not, we are following the simple rule of trade that meters city property by the foot instead of by the acre.

The municipal library is a place not for everything, but for particular needed things. If it were true that Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other constituted a college, it is even more true that a librarian in a bare room, anxious to serve the public via the public official and knowing where the material is, constitutes an infinitely better municipal reference library than a place perfectly equipped which suggests erudition rather than immediate help. There is great danger that our municipal reference libraries will become junk shops, as interesting and as helpful, as out of date or as unrelated to today's problems as an encyclopedia or a "compendium of useful knowledge." A municipal reference library should suggest answers to today's questions; not answers either to yesterday's questions or to next year's. Will you, the librarians, consider the importance and the advisability of keeping these libraries workshops, as they ought to be, and of using your general reference libraries as the place for the storage of materials.

The ordinary city official hasn't the time to plough through a mass of pamphlets looking for what he wants. He wants the facts collated and marshalled, ready for use--and "he wants what he wants when he wants it." Some time ago I was interested in drawing an ordinance to license all vehicles using the New York streets, and to regulate the weight, the width and size of tires, etc., of our great trucks that have been tearing up our pavements. I wanted to know about the policy of other cities in this matter, and to devise, if possible, a way of making those vehicles that destroy the streets help pay for their maintenance. Similarly, today, as Chairman of the committee on the height, size and arrangement of buildings within the city limits, I am interested in the adoption of some reasonable basis for regulating our modern skyscraper in order to keep the city, literally, from choking itself to death.

Again, we have had to restore to the public many miles of city sidewalks that had been preempted by stoops, and other encroachments. We have wanted to plan our public buildings and related matters with a view to the future, and to the grouping of building sites in a "Civic Center." So, in dealing with our transit problem; in investigating the health department, and in improving the type and quality of street pavements, I have wanted not all the information there was to be had--not books or formal reports--but concrete answers to immediately pressing questions. I wanted to be referred to the latest article or report which would make it unnecessary to go through twenty or a hundred other articles, books or reports. It is enough to know that in a great central library are all the working materials for scientific research. Frankly, I feel that the actual use that will be made of the municipal reference library will be in inverse ratio to the number of books that are in evidence, and that require the time of the librarian.

I would go so far as to say that anything that a public official has not just called for, or that the librarian is not about to call to the attention of a public official for departmental study or report, or for the drawing of ordinances, should be kept in the general library, and out of the municipal reference library.

Comptroller Prendergast and Librarian Anderson are even planning to have New York's official correspondence "clear" through the municipal reference library--so far as the writing and answering of letters calling for special information goes. I am told that when Portland recently started its municipal reference library the mayor promptly availed himself of its facilities for answering innumerable sets of questions and special questions that came from outside the city, and advised his heads of departments to follow his example. I wish the Carnegie Institution for Scientific Research or some other great foundation interested in the conservation of national resources and human energy would investigate what it is now costing this country to fill out the innumerable blanks from college boys wishing help on their commission government debate; college students writing theses; national organizations compiling reports, etc. Niagara unharnessed was wasting much less power than are we officials, school superintendents, mayors, and engineers who are answering such questionnaires. It would be lamentable enough if we always answered right; but most of us answer quite inadequately, and many of us answer wrong. Last year, a certain national society wrote me, asking certain questions about civil service reform. I had had more or less to do for some years with that line of public service. My instinct was to take time from pressing duties to answer these questions; but a neighbor who had received a similar set of questions was thoughtful enough to write to this national body and suggest that before he answered he would like to know how many other New York officials and private agencies had received the same set of questions. It appeared then that twenty different people, including a dozen officials, had been asked to fill out that blank. Whereupon it was suggested that instead of drawing upon twenty people who did not possess the facts, the investigator might turn directly to the Civil Service Commission that did possess the facts, and there, no doubt, he readily found what he wanted.

Now, if a municipal reference library could have served as a clearing house, it would have been brought to light at once that one answer would have served the purpose of twenty, or that one answer, at least, would have served the purpose of the dozen official answers. Moreover, just as the official reports give fresher material than published books, such correspondence, manuscript reports of investigating committees, etc., give fresher material than published reports.

Such data should be kept properly classified, available upon call or when the librarian sees its time for usefulness.

Another practical suggestion I make from my experience as an official. While it seems to apply especially to administrative departments or to private agencies specializing in certain fields, I really do not see much prospect of getting it unless from a municipal reference library or from the municipal reference activity of a general library. I refer to an up-to-date "Poole's" or cumulative index of the passing subject matter of city government. You get, the library gets, once a month a list of all the articles in the principal books. Why should we not have a list of the advance steps taken in public affairs? Just as soon as a few librarians call for such information, it will become commercially possible to reduce it. The individual library can then add to the material the particular points that are of interest to its own community.

Similarly, it would be of the greatest assistance to every city official if the matters under his jurisdiction were listed and material grouped under proper heads. For example, the president of the Borough of Manhattan has jurisdiction over the streets and sidewalks; encroachments and encumbrances; street vaults and street signs; the sewer system; the public buildings; the baths and markets; and the control of private buildings through the enforcement of the buildings laws. If information in regard to what other cities were doing in all these matters were listed, plus suggestions and advance steps taken in these same matters at home, the reference librarian would be of incalculable help to that office.

Finally, just a word about the expense of the municipal reference library. The amount which it is justified in demanding will depend naturally upon the service it renders. The merit of our new segregated and classified budget is that it calls for the work needing to be done, as well as the cost of not having the work done, and that it shifts attention from the personality that requests the budget allowance. A circumscribed program means circumscribed budget. Frankly, I believe that extension of program should and must precede extension of budget. But this new kind of social work which serves a community at those points where it is now least equipped to serve itself, will not want for financial support when it talks about the work that should be done--and not about itself.

No municipal activity will, in my judgment, find it easier in the next twenty-five years to secure adequate financial support than the municipal reference library which is not a compendium of knowledge but a forecaster of service needed and an ever-present help in time of trouble.

The PRESIDENT: May I express to you, Mr. McAneny, the thanks of the American Library Association for your coming and the assurance that we have profited greatly from it.

Adjourned.

SIXTH GENERAL SESSION

(Saturday morning, June 28, 1913.)

THE PRESIDENT: During the other sessions of the Conference we have been considering people--and books. At this concluding session the topics on the program have special reference to books--and people. The first paper invites our interest by its suggestion of the flavor which old books bring. Miss G. M. WALTON, of the Michigan State Normal College, will present this paper.

THE FRIENDLY BOOK

It was Mr. Lowell who reminded me the other day, by quoting Ecclesiasticus in one of his essays, that we owe the ideal of the man of leisure to a book of the Apocrypha wherein we read, "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure."

Our profession standing as a guarantor of our wisdom and our learning, I am here today to bespeak a portion of our large opportunity of leisure for--The Friendly Book.

There is small fear that we librarians forget the books of power and the books of knowledge which DeQuincey (the ofttimes quoted) presses upon all men. And most of us undoubtedly possess that ardent zeal for knowledge which filled the soul of the literal-minded librarian who read quite seriously (and found therein a working category for her own improvement) Lamb's letter to an old gentleman whose early education had been neglected, where, among the qualifications of a preceptor, the following will serve to refresh your memories: "He must be a thorough master of vernacular orthography, with an insight into the accentualities and punctualities of modern Saxon. He must be competently instructed in the tetralogy, or first four rules. He must have a genius capable in some degree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce from thence the not much dissimilar computation of the cardinal points. He must instruct you in numeric and harmonious responses, and he must be capable of embracing all history, so as from the countless myriads of individual men, who have peopled this globe of earth--for it is a globe--by comparison of their respective births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct, prowess, etc., to pronounce, and teach you to pronounce, dogmatically and catechetically, who was the richest, who was the strongest, who was the wisest, who was the meekest man that ever lived; to the facilitation of which solution, you will readily conceive, a smattering of biography would in no inconsiderable degree conduce."

I sometimes question if professions are not tinged with the culture epoch epidemic. It is not so very long since we were half hesitatingly taking a place among the other learned professions, almost with the apologetic air of the young boy making his first appearance in long trousers, and wondering if his fellow-men appreciate his coming into their midst--but the youth soon assumes the aggressive attitude which compels attention--and one symptom of this attitude which I feel among ourselves is the large and learned talk about =new= books--the self-satisfied air and monumental confidence in our sometimes sophomoric knowledge and understanding of all things "in the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth," until I wonder if the pleasant counsel about reading "books at least a year old, that we like, and that are great books" must be relegated with the rest of our Emersonian philosophy to the lumber room of our many youthful joys and dreamings.

I believe we all love best to mark the passing years by the friends they bring us, and it were a barren year that brings not one more friend, and so with our friendly books, which like all friendships fill our lives with genial warmth and gratitude. Neither is really a matter of choice, for a book like a person yields its intimate charm only to the sympathizing heart. We have no care to answer why, other than, "because"--"We love them because we =must= love them." A new book friend comes to us now and then, and we cling to the old ones. Sometimes we lose the personal touch, but we see their kindly faces and after a separation from them we arrange them on the shelves, and we rearrange them, and, as Mr. Arnold Bennett says, "The way we walk up and down in front of those volumes, whose faces we have half forgotten, is perfectly infantile."

I remember once in Rome a friend, selecting photographs, said, "I must take a good Cicero to my son Frank, who used to say he felt as well acquainted with Cicero as he did with Bishop Huntington," and dear old Dean Hook, when a lad at Oxford expresses this same intimate feeling in one of his lively inimitable letters, "I have got into a very dissolute set of men, but they are so pleasant that they make me very often idle. It consists of one Tuft, H. R. H., Henry Prince of Wales, and a gentleman Commoner named Sir John Falstaff, and several others. I breakfast with them, drink tea, and sometimes wine with them," and, again, on hearing the good news of the recovery of his grandfather, he writes, "The minute I opened the letter and saw the news, I pulled down my Shakespeare and had a very merry hour with Sir John Falstaff. I was determined to laugh heartily all that day. I asked Sir John to wine with me. I decanted a bottle of my beloved grandfather's best port and Sir John and I drank his health right merrily. Perhaps you will want to know how my old friend Sir John drank my grandfather's health. Why I took care to find out the place where he drank Justice Shallow's health. And so when I said, 'Here's to Sir Walter,' I looked on the book and the Knight said, 'Health and long life to him.'"

Among the oldest and dearest of my friendly books is the "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," of which I became the happy owner, when it was fresh off the press, during a sojourn in the west, far away from my home library. The dates along the margins (one of Macaulay's habits which I adopted as I read) bring pleasant thoughts of a journey from Colorado to the western coast, and long before I knew Dean Hook (whom I first met here as the Vicar of Leeds) I was pulling Macaulay down from the shelf, not indeed to drink with Sir John, but to refer to some particular talk of men or of books--always to read on and on with equal delight whether he were breakfasting with a party of old Trinity College friends, reading in his study, or acting as a guide and escort on a half holiday of sight-seeing with his nieces and nephews, with whom he was always the prince of playfellows. It was on one of these excursions to the zoological gardens that Thackeray overheard someone say, "Never mind the hippopotamus! Never mind the hippopotamus! There's Mr. =Macaulay=!" When absent he exchanged long and frequent letters with the children, sealing those to his nephew at Harrow with an amorphous mass of red wax, which, in defiance of all postal regulations, usually covered a piece of gold.

A scrap from one of his letters to a little niece will serve also as an example of the poetry, which he usually attributed to the Judicious poet, for whose collected works the children vainly searched the library.

"Michaelmas will, I hope, find us all at Clapham over a noble goose. Do you remember the beautiful Puseyette hymn on Michaelmas day? It is a great favorite with all the Tractarians. You and Alice should learn it. It begins:

'Though Quakers scowl and Baptists howl, Though Plymouth Brethren rage, We churchmen gay will wallow today In apple sauce, onions and sage.

Ply knife and fork, and draw the cork, And have the bottle handy; For each slice of goose we'll introduce A thimbleful of brandy.'

Is it not good? I wonder who the author can be? Not Newman, I think. It is above him. Perhaps it is Bishop Wilberforce."

The Macaulays and the Wilberforces living at Clapham Common are very real people to me, and my firm allegiance to Trinity College, Cambridge, has never wavered since Macaulay's undergraduate days, not even when Samuel Wilberforce, the future bishop, went up to Oriel College, Oxford.

And how doubly precious is a book-friendship, whose introduction claims a personal touch; as when, with the same friend who bought the photograph in Rome, I afterwards visited Winchester Cathedral and standing beside the chantry tomb of Bishop Wilberforce she said, "When you go home, read his life. He was a great and good man," and I have continued reading it for nearly thirty years. Wilberforce was undoubtedly for twenty-five years the greatest figure in the English Church. His great sorrows made him tender and tolerant, and many who saw only the brilliant man little dreamed of the causes and depth of his power. He was made Bishop of Oxford in the troublous times of the Tractarian Movement, and so great was the work he accomplished and so devoted to him were his clergy that when translated to Winchester, Bishop Stubbs, who succeeded him, coming from quiet Chester, where his history was his chief occupation, ruefully asked, "Why am I like the Witch of Endor? Because I am tormented by the spirit of Samuel." His quickness and humor flashed an unexpected light on many a question, as when asked why he was called Soapy Sam he answered it was probably because he was always in hot water and always came out with hands clean. And his whimsical reply to "Who are the greatest preachers in England?"--is one of those comical self-evaluations which it is generally most hard to give--"I must refer you to an article on a lady's dress--Hook and I." His absolute freedom from personal animosity shows itself in the story I like best of all. During a stormy committee meeting in which he and the Bishop of London were violently opposed to each other, he threw a note across the table. Supposing it to be some point on the business in hand, the Bishop of London read, "My dear Bishop: You really should not wear such boots. Your life is too precious and valuable to us all to allow such carelessness."

Nothing could more touchingly express the devoted and loving esteem in which he was held than these words written at the time of his death: "With others who loved him, kneeling reverently beside the body, was Mr. Gladstone, whose sobs attested how deeply his feelings were moved by the sudden loss of his long-tried friend."

The last time I was in England I made a Sussex pilgrimage to his old home at Lavington. It was in June, and my companion smiled as I exclaimed with enthusiasm, "St. Barnabas day, the eleventh of June--the Bishop's wedding day!" We saw the trees he had planted and loved, the spot whence he would turn for a last homeward look, saying he was as proud of being a Sussex squire as a bishop; and best of all the great clumps of rhododendron which he planted with his own hands.

Since so many librarians are gardening as a favorite recreation, why not have a friendly corner in the garden, where we may "Consider the lilies of the field," as we are bidden in that dearest of all books, and where each mood, whether gay or somber, would find echo from the "eternal passion" of the poets--"Rosemary for remembrance, or pray you love, remember there's pansies, they're for thoughts." Growing next to these in my own garden is the fragrant Carolina allspice, because it was the best loved of flowers by Henry Bradshaw.

I sometimes question if a book is truly a friendly book unless I possess it, and yet this in a way would cut off both Thackeray and the friend whom he loved best of all, "dear old Fitz," for I gave away my "Fitzgerald's Letters" to a friend with whom I exchange many friendly books. A man of leisure and literary tastes, and in easy circumstances, Fitzgerald avoided fame as earnestly as most men seek it. Living in a country cottage with a garden, books, pictures and music, he cherished his many lifelong friendships, which he says were more like loves, by writing letters which have a touch of gentle humor and of tender and unaffected charm, as in a letter to Frederick Tennyson: "I have been through three influenzas; but this is no wonder, for I live in a hut with walls as thin as a sixpence, windows that don't shut, a clay soil safe beneath my feet and a thatch perforated by lascivious sparrows over my head. Here I sit, read, smoke and become wise, and am already quite beyond earthly things. I must say to you as Basil Montague once said in perfect charity to his friends: 'You see my dear fellows, I like you very much, but I continue to advance, and you remain where you are, you see, and so I am obliged to leave you behind. It is no fault of mine.' You must begin to read Seneca, whose letters I have been reading, else you will be no companion to a man who despises wealth, death, etc. I wish you were here to smoke a pipe with me. I play of evenings some of Handel's grand choruses which are the bravest music after all."

And again, to William Bodham Donne, when puzzled over his Agamemnon and the line of signal fires from Troy to Mycenæ, he writes, "I am ignorant of geography, modern and ancient, and do not know the points of the Beacons, and Lemprière, the only classic at hand, doesn't help me. Pray turn to the passage and tell me (quotes three lines of Greek) what, where and why. The rest I know or can find in dictionary or map, but for these:

Lemprière Is no-where: Liddell and Scott Don't help me a jot, When I'm off, Donnegan Don't help me on again.

So I'm obliged to resort to old Donne again."

A postscript in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton reads--"Only a word, to add that yesterday came Squire Carlyle from you, and a kind long letter from Mr. Lowell; and the first nightingale, who sang in my garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days."

And finally, to Lawrence the portrait painter: "Have we exchanged a word about Thackeray since his death? I am quite surprised to see how I sit moping about him, so little have I seen him the last ten years, and not once for the last five. To be sure I keep reading his 'Newcomes' of nights and now I have got hold of 'Pendennis.' I keep hearing him say so much of it; I really think I shall hear his step coming up the stairs to this lodging, and about to come (singing) into my room as in old Charlotte Street thirty years ago." And ten years later he writes, "A night or two ago I was reading old Thackeray's 'Roundabouts,' and (a sign of a good book) heard him talking to me."

I am sorry that so many people know Fitzgerald only because of the "Rubaiyat." I confess myself to be rather like-minded with

"That certain old person of Ham, Who grew weary of Omar Khayyam, Fitzgerald, said he, Is as right as can be, But this cult, and these versions, O, Damn!"

And Thackeray, there is no one book which stands for him, save, perhaps, the dear little old brown volume of letters to the Brookfields. It is here that we learn much of "Pendennis." In one letter he writes, "I am going to kill Mrs. Pendennis presently, and have her ill in this number. Minnie says, 'O Papa, do make her well again! She can have a regular doctor and be =almost= dead, and there will come a nice homeopathic physician who will make her well again.'" We who truly know and love him find him ever in his own pages as he smiles kindly at us through his spectacles, or we feel the difficulty with which he is keeping his spectacles dry, and we too say, "Dear old Thackeray," as in the lines at the end of the White Squall, where with pages of nonsense, he writes how the Captain

"Beat the storm to laughter For well he knew his vessel With that wind would wrestle; And when a wreck we thought her, And doomed ourselves to slaughter, How gaily he fought her, And through the hubbub brought her, And when the tempest caught her, Cried, George some brandy and water. And when its force expended, The harmless storm was ended, And as the sunrise splendid Came blushing o'er the sea, I thought, as day was breaking, My little girls were waking, And smiling and making A prayer at home for me."

One of these little girls, Minnie Thackeray, became the wife of Leslie Stephen, of whom Mr. Lowell speaks as "that most lovable of men," whose Life and Letters, so full of rich and wondrous friendships, and of deep and subtle charm, is always a midnight companion if taken up in the evening. While our serious-minded librarian may find its chief value in the chapter on "The Struggle with the Dictionary," where as editor, I presume many of us first met with Stephen, (and which would prove invaluable to Lamb's old gentleman) she will find there only a small part of the Real Leslie Stephen, who wrote one day to Edmund Gosse, "No, R. L. S. is not the Real Leslie Stephen, but a young Scotchman whom Colvin has found--Robert Louis Stevenson."

It is a temptation to linger over Stephen's letters to John Morley and Charles Eliot Norton (perhaps his closest lifelong friends), and to the rich list of literary men whom he knew so well through his long years of literary and editorial work. Like those of Lowell and Stevenson, his letters lead one constantly to the reading of his books, wherein again one always finds himself. It were difficult to imagine more felicitous titles of self-revelation than "Hours in a library," "The amateur emigrant," and "My study window." I cannot leave Stephen without a word from the "Letters to John Richard Green" (little Johnny Green) which he edited. As Macaulay used to love to prove the goods he praised by samples of quotation, I will content myself with Green's questioning Freeman, in a long letter full of Early English history: "By the way, have you seen Stubb's Hymn on Froude and Kingsley?

'Froude informs the Scottish youth That parsons do not care for truth. The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries: History is a pack of lies.

What cause for judgments so malign? A brief reflection solves the mystery, Froude believes Kingsley's a divine, And Kingsley goes to Froude for history.'"

Long years ago my eye caught the title, "From Shakespeare to Pope," Gosse, and as I took down the book, I asked, "Well, what was there from Shakespeare to Pope?"--a question which the book answered so delightfully that I read it straight through twice, while the Critical Kit Kats is my particular joy in introducing to friendly books my young student readers, whom I send off armed with it, together with a volume of Fitzgerald, or Stevenson, or the Browning sonnets. Mr. Gosse has such a comfortable and intimate way of saying things that makes one feel it is one's own expression of one's own thoughts. I suppose most of us own to a pocket copy of Shakespeare's sonnets, wherein we have marked many a line, and then Mr. Gosse writes for us, as he sends the sonnets to a friend:

"This is the holy missal Shakespeare wrote, Then, on sad evenings when you think of me, Or when the morn seems blyth, yet I not near, Open this book, and read, and I shall be The meter murmuring at your bended ear; I cannot write my love with Shakespeare's art, But the same burden weighs upon my heart."

Do your friendly books ever find each other out upon the shelves? After reading in Mary Cowden Clarke's "My long life," of her childish, reverent awe towards Keats and Shelley, who were often guests in her father's house, the book found its place next to those poets, and was it Keats who was sitting on the sofa when the same little girl crept up behind and kissed his hand just because she had heard he was a poet? Gilbert White's "Natural history of Selborne," much in the same way stands beside Lowell, in whose "Garden acquaintance," I first learned its "delightful charm of absolute leisure," and here too, when it leaves my study table, stands that dear big book which still claims my leisure hours, "Charles Eliot, landscape architect," one of those rare books with a subtle and unconscious autobiographic touch, when one chances upon the fact that the writer was Harvard's president, telling the story as the brief fore-note says,

"For the dear son, Who died in the bright prime-- From the father."

But this is all very personal and my only hope is that while I am reading, you are following the example of my sometime youthful nephew, who, on being asked about the sermon one Sunday after church, answered, "Why really, Mamma, I don't know what it was about. I got tired listening, and withdrew my attention and went fishing."

Finally, although we are admonished not to put new wine into old bottles, there fortunately is no admonition against old wine in new bottles, and friendliness is certainly the richest of wine both in men and in books. Nor am I at all certain that in the last analysis it is not the supreme grace which makes possible that joy in life, without which we are of necessity cast into a limbo of outer darkness, and so I commend to you the best of old wine which ever lingers in The Friendly Book.

THE PRESIDENT: Our good old friend, Dr. Canfield, once told a story about a critic who after a life devoted to the gentle art of making enemies was gathered to his fathers. Those who had known him, and who had for the most part been recipients of his buffetings gathered about his bier, and compared notes and estimates of the special qualities which the late departed had possessed. Yes, said one, "he loved us so well that he chastised us frequently." True, said another, "he could never catch sight of one of us without administering a vigorous kick." At this the eyelids of the deceased were seen to flutter a bit, and he sat bolt upright and his sepulchral voice made this response: "Yes, but I always kicked towards the goal."

Now perhaps this introduction may not seem to be a very happy preliminary to the paper about to be announced, and in some respects its application may not be evident, for certainly the speaker who is about to talk to us, on "How to discourage reading" is by no means a dead one. He has, however, been somewhat active in the kicking process--though always towards the goal. I present to you Mr. EDMUND L. PEARSON, of the Boston Transcript.

Mr. PEARSON: The president has very kindly referred to the fact that while I do not practice the profession of librarian, I tell other people how they ought to do it. He might have made use of a quotation or a sentence or two at the beginning of Mark Twain's "Puddin'head Wilson," only I fear that Mr. Legler was too courteous to use it. I have no hesitation in speaking of it myself. Mark Twain says of the Puddin'head Wilson maxims: "These maxims are for the instruction and moral elevation of youth. To be good is noble, but to tell others how to be good is nobler and much less trouble."

Mr. Pearson read the following paper:

HOW TO DISCOURAGE READING

When the "Five Foot Shelf" of books were published, three of my friends bought the set. One of them did so without any pretence that he was going to read them. He is a somewhat naïve young man, able to indulge his whims, and he said he thought that buying the books "would help out President Eliot." That is a very meritorious sentiment to hold toward the compilers or authors of books--I wish that there were more persons who felt that way. I have no fault to find with him, at all.

Nor have I any complaint to make against the other two men. Blame is not what they deserve, but commiseration. Like the girl in the song, they are "more to be pitied than censured." The price was a consideration with them, and they gave up their money for the sake of being forever cut off from all those tremendous "classics." For that is what it amounted to. One of these men has a very pretty office, with some nice bookshelves, painted white. He added to the books of his profession and some other works of general literature, this "Five Foot Shelf"--which occupies, I believe, about eighteen feet of shelf room. He tried to read one of the books--I know he did that, because he admitted it--and he confided to me that he thought it was silly.

The third man bought the "Five Foot Shelf," and announced his determination "to read the whole thing right through." He did this with set teeth, as if he might have said: "I'll read 'em if they kill me!" Well, he started one of them. He read a little in Franklin's "Autobiography." I know he did, because he told me about it. He and I belong to that irritating class of persons who get up early and take long walks before breakfast, and then take care to mention it later in the day, as if to cast discredit on other people. We have to go early, too, because we intersperse the walks with runs, and he has dignity to maintain, and it wouldn't do for him to dash about the streets after other people are up. While we walked, or dog-trotted, about the country roads he told me about the "Autobiography." But I have noticed that he has left the "Five Foot Shelf." I doubt if he even finished that first one of its volumes which he attempted. When he talks about books now, it is about the "History of the American people." He is a Democrat, and like many Democrats he has discovered that our history has been truly written only according to Mr. Woodrow Wilson.

Will any one of those three men ever read =two whole= volumes from that set? It is doubtful--very doubtful. And their cases are, I believe, typical of thousands of others. And what is true of the "Five Foot Shelf" is true of a score of other collections--the Hundred Best Books, the Greatest Books of the Universe, the Most Ponderous Volumes of the Ages, the Selected and Highly Recommended Classics of All Nations. There are dozens of them--you all know them--these "standard" sets and collections, in which learned and well-intentioned men have innocently conspired with publishers to discourage reading.

The "Five Foot Shelf" is not picked out for especial disapprobation. As a matter of fact, I suppose it is far better, far more human in its selections, far more readable in some of its titles than most of these sets of "great" books. But there is something about every one of these collections of classics that acts like a palsy upon the reading faculty. It is a little mysterious, rather hard to define, but that it exists I have no manner of doubt. It would be impossible to doubt, after seeing it demonstrated so many times.

Take, at random, the titles of five famous books--books which are apt to turn up in these sets or collections. Plato's "Republic," the "Odyssey," the "Morte D'Arthur," the "Anatomy of melancholy," and "Don Quixote." Take the average man, the man usually known as the "business" man. Suppose that he has not read any of these books in his school days--that he has reached the age of forty without reading them. Now, the chances are at least a hundred to one that he =never= reads them. But let him buy one of the sets of thirty or forty volumes, in which these five books are included, and the chances against his reading any one of the five, instead of being diminished, are enormously increased. It is now certainly three hundred to one that he never reads any of the five books. There is something benumbing, something deadening, something stupefying, to the average man to take into his house six yards of solid "culture." And this I believe to be true as a general statement, in spite of instances which may be adduced here and there.

But, mind you, if this same man happens to have his attention called to one of the books--especially to either of the last two, as they are a little nearer the temper of our time--and if he gets one of them, =by itself=, there is now a fair probability that he may read at least part of it. He =may= even finish it.

If he really wishes to read the so-called great books let him forever beware of acquiring one of those overwhelming lumps of literature--the publisher's delight and the book-agent's darling--known by some such name as the Colossal Classics of the World. They breed hypocrites and foster humbugs. He buys them and =thinks= he is going to read them. They look ponderous and weighty and erudite upon his shelves--to the innocent. People exclaim: "My! What fine books you have!" He tries to smile a wise smile--to give the impression that they are the companions of his solitude, the consolation of his wakeful hours. He knows that these people won't ask if he has ever read any of them. They are afraid he might come back at them with: "Oh, yes, of course. Now, how do =you= like Milton's 'Areopagitica'?" After a time he begins to think he =has= read them--because he has looked at the backs, and started to cut one or two of them. Then it is all up with him. He never even tries to read them again. They just stand there and occasionally make him a little uncomfortable.

Making friends with books, and especially with those famous books which require some concentration, is like making friends with people. You can not do it in a wholesale, yardstick manner. If they come into our lives at all, they come subtly, slowly, one at a time. If a man should walk into this room saying: "All my life I have been without friends, I have decided that I wish to have friends--I am going to adopt all of you, every one of you, as a friend, here and now!"--you know how an experiment like that would succeed. It is the same with books.

In the competition for the best method to discourage reading, the second prize should be awarded to that pestilential invention--the Complete Works of an author. There was a publisher--he still lives--who told one of his agents: "Books are not made to read; they are made to sell." He was probably the inventor of that discourager of reading, the Complete Works.

If one of you wishes to keep a friend in total ignorance of any writer, there is an almost certain method--give him one of the sets of the Complete Works of that writer. It is a sure method to kill interest.

As in the case of the collections of classics, there is something wholesale and overpowering about such a set. It is thrown at your head, so to speak, in a chunk, and you never get over the blow. Imagine the case of a man who had never read Dickens. If he is wise, he goes at him one book at a time, he tests and he tries, and at the end of a few years he owns eight or ten books--well-thumbed books, that have been read, and that represent pleasure. But if he listens to the book-agent he contracts for a yard and a half of Dickens, and when it comes he gazes in despair at that rigid row of books--as unassailable as a regiment of Prussian grenadiers. That is the end of all intercourse between him and Charles Dickens.

"Oh, you might as well have them all," says the agent, "you needn't read the ones you don't like." That is what the waiter told the man when he brought him a breakfast-cup full of coffee, after dinner, instead of a demi-tasse: "You ain't got to drink all of it."

Miles upon miles of these sets of Complete Works are sold every year, and from one end of the land to the other, heads of families are sinking back comfortably upon their Morris chairs, and gazing in fatuous self-satisfaction at their bookcases, which they have just filled, at one swoop, with nine yards of the Complete Works of Scott, Cooper, Dumas, Dickens, and Thackeray.

"Look, Mother, we've got the bookcase filled up at last!" "Well, I am glad to see it! It was distressin' to see all those shelves so empty like."

Will they ever look at them? Never a look! It is even odds they do not cut the pages. Now that the noble art of pressing autumn leaves has gone out--you know how it was done, with wax and a hot flatiron, and then you put them between the pages of a book--now that pastime is forgotten, there isn't one remaining cause why those pages should ever be opened. The insides of those books will be the most secret place in that house henceforth. Talk about sliding panels and secret drawers in old writing-desks--they are open and conspicuous in comparison. They will be great for hiding places--I think I will write a melodrama and have the missing will turn up in the fifth act, sixty years later, hidden between page 1 and page 2 of one of the volumes in somebody's Complete Works.

For the third place in the list of best methods to discourage reading there are two competitors. They are so nearly tied that it is hard to choose between them. I am inclined to think that the honor should be awarded to the custom of setting up counsels of perfection in the matter of recommending the so-called "classics" to possible readers, of saying by word of mouth, or by printed page: "These are the great classics, the great books of the world" and adding, by implication, "If you don't like them, after making heroic attempts, then you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting."

This word "classics" covers a multitude of nuisances and perplexities. The "classics" include books which are still alive with humanity, which are delightful today to any person who is at all bookish, and they include books which are so utterly alien, so far removed from our time, place and habit of mind, that it is absolutely absurd to pretend that anyone in this year and land, except a few, a very few, specialists, can read them with any pleasure, or can read them at all, in fact, except under compulsion.

These lists of the great classics are too frequently compiled with a cowardly obedience to tradition. It matters a little what some great person of a hundred or a thousand years ago thought about a book--but it does not matter much. Recently, I saw in a book a list of great persons who had been influenced by this or that book. Some book or other influenced Madame de Maintenon--what of it? Doubtless other books, far less desirable, influenced her, too, so what does it prove? The value of books, as a recent writer has pointed out, shifts and changes with the changing years. What may have been truly a great book a thousand years ago is not necessarily great today--no matter how many famous personages have embalmed it in their praise, and no matter how many other personages have praised it, not because they enjoyed it themselves, but because the earlier ones did. Such a book is interesting--to specialists--as a milestone in the history of literature, but it is not to be forced, however gently, upon the general reader as a book he "ought" to read.

Museums of art, like the Louvre, contain paintings which ignoramuses like myself look upon with astonishment. Mediæval pictures of the most hideous description--how came they in the same building with these other beautiful works of art? Is it possible that anyone is so silly as to pretend to admire them? And then the explanation dawns upon the ignoramus: they are here to illustrate the development of the art of painting. This is a museum, as well as a collection of beautiful things. No one who is honest pretends to enjoy their beauty. It is thus with books. A great collection of books may well contain those writings which seemed full of meaning to people two thousand years ago, but they are not to be held up--not all of them, at any rate--as books which anybody "ought" to read today. The significance of any work of literature, however noble, is a thing to ebb and flow, and finally to vanish altogether. Professor Barrett Wendell reminded me once that Shakespeare's plays and my daily themes would alike, one day, be dust and atoms in the void of the centuries--but I do not think that he meant unduly to compliment Shakespeare by this association.

Since it is always better to come down to tacks in speaking of books, I will mention some of the classics which have little significance today. It is always dangerous to do this--somebody is sure to hold up his hand and exclaim: "Why, I like =them=, very much," or "I know an old gentleman who reads =that=, every night before going to bed." But I will take the risk, and say that the Greek and French dramas of the classic periods are works of literature almost certain to appear on most of these lists of Best Books, and that it is almost sheer humbug to put them there. So few people can read them, there is so little reason--especially in the case of the French plays--why anyone =should= read them, today, that their inclusion is a pitiful example of lack of courage. In the matter of the French drama I speak especially of Racine and Corneille--names almost certain to appear on these lists of the classics. Someone will relate the story about Napoleon saying that if Racine (or was it Corneille?) had lived in his time, he would have made him a marshal. Then some of his plays are smugly entered upon the list. With their stiff, set speeches, their ridiculous unbosomings of the leading characters of their "confidantes," they are as out of place in our life as were their Caesars, Alexanders, and Pompeys, teetering about the stage in high-heeled shoes, ruffles, wigs, and all the rest of the costume of Louis XIV.

It is good to recommend the classics, but it must not be forgotten that there are classics, and classics. There should be independence, and an ability to look things in the face, to realize that a change has come, when it is already here. Why should the people who deal with books let the politicians get ahead of them? There is a bright, clean air blowing through the nation, and those who worship fusty precedent are correspondingly unhappy. We have a president who cares not a rap for mouldy and senseless traditions--he has learned well the lesson taught him by one of his predecessors. If President Wilson has the courage to point out that the final authority on matters of factory legislation and mine inspection in the year 1913 is not necessarily Thomas Jefferson, is it not possible for the critics and choosers of books to understand that Dr. Johnson and Madame de Maintenon have not uttered the last word about literature? There might and should be a "new freedom" of literary criticism--not yesterday, nor today, nor tomorrow, but all the time.

Here is another way to discourage reading. You can do it by giving a man one of these over-annotated editions of a book. I mean a book which has so many footnotes that the text is crowded right out of bed; a book in which the editor is so pleased with himself for discovering that the father of Lady Hester Somebody (who is mentioned in the text) was born in 1718 and died in 1789 that he simply has not the decent manners to keep his useless knowledge to himself. No; he must tell it to you, even though he elbows the author--a better man than himself--out of the way to do it.

One of the best books of its kind--I speak under correction--is George Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell's "Johnson." It is, I believe, correct, and scholarly; it certainly represents a vast amount of labor, and it is "very valuable for reference." Also it is admirably arranged for driving a reader away from Boswell forever. It is positively exasperating to see page after page on which Boswell occupies two lines at the top, and Dr. Hill takes up all the rest of the room. Sometimes he takes up the whole page! Yet that edition is recommended to readers by persons who ought to know better.

Other excellent examples--I am speaking only of much-praised books--are found in the Furness Variorum editions of Shakespeare. When one of these volumes appears it is usually greeted by a chorus of "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" as when a particularly gorgeous skyrocket goes up on Fourth of July night. Such scholarship! Such a boon to earnest Shakespeareans! Such labor! Such erudition! Well, a great deal of that praise is deserved--each volume is certainly a tour de force. But I wish to read you from a review of the latest of them--a review written for the Boston Herald, by Mr. John Macy, the author of that vigorous and sensible book, "The spirit of American literature." It deals with "The tragedie of Julius Caesar" edited by Horace Howard Furness, Jr. "This," writes Mr. Macy, "is the latest volume in 'A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare,' and is the first under the sole editorship of the late Dr. Furness' son. From an enormous mass of commentary, criticism, word-worrying, text-marring and learned guesswork, Mr. Furness has chosen what seem to him the best notes. The sanity of his introduction and the good sense of some of his own notes lead one to suppose that he has selected with discrimination from the notes of others. His work is a model of patience, industry and judgment. He plays well in this game of scholarship. But what is the game worth? What is the result?

"Here is a volume of nearly 500 large pages. The text is a literal reprint of the folio. The clear stream of poetry runs along the tops of the pages. Under that is a deposit of textual emendations full of clam-shells and lost anchors and tin cans. Under that is a mud bottom two centuries deep. It consists of (a) what scholars said Shakespeare said; (b) what scholars said Shakespeare meant; (c) what scholars said about what other scholars said; (d) what scholars said about the morality and character of the personages, as (1) they are in Shakespeare's play, and as (2) they are in other historical and fictitious writings; (e) what scholars said about how other people used the words that Shakespeare used; (f) what scholars said could be done to Shakespeare's text to make him a better poet. I have not read all those notes and I never shall read them. Life is too short and too interesting. All the time that I was trying to read the notes, so that I could know enough about them to write this article, my mind kept swimming up out of the mud into that clear river of text. It is a perfectly clear river. Some of the obscurities that scholars say are there are simply not obscure, except as poetry ought to have a kind of obscurity in some turbulent passages. Some of the obscurities the scholars put there in their innocence and stupidity, and those obscurities you can eliminate by blandly ignoring them."

These learned and over-annotated editions--they are not intended, you say, for the casual reader. Yet they get into his hand--they are, sometimes recommended to him. And, as Mr. Macy asks, are they worth the labor they have cost--are they worth it to =anybody=? Looking at them reminds me of the ideal ascetic of the Middle Ages, St. Simeon Stylites. St. Simeon was considered the most religious man of his time because for twenty years he lived upon a pillar that "numbered forty cubits from the soil," and because he would

"'Tween the spring and downfall of the light, Bow down one thousand and two hundred times, To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints."

In spite of that, St. Simeon is not the ideal religious man today. Will these fact-collectors be the ideal scholars a century hence?

Are we sometimes acclaiming as great scholars men who are really doing nothing but a tremendous amount of grubbing? Are some of the so-called scholarly editions really scholarly, or are they simply gigantic "stunts?" Whatever may be their value for reference, and that is vastly over-rated, they discourage reading.

It is also possible to drive people away from books, or make it difficult for them to get near books, by printing confusing things about them. It is possible to catalog a book--according to the best rules--in such a fashion as to make it an exceedingly unattractive, not to say repellant object. This is bad enough when it is done in the formal catalog, but when it is done in little leaflets, and book-lists--things which ought to be informal and inviting--the case is very sad. The other day I saw an entry in a book-list which read like this: "Dickens. Whipple, E. P. Charles Dickens." The expert is in no doubt; the uninitiated may well be confused to know which is the author and which the subject. When someone defends such practices by saying: "But the rules!" someone else, whose voice is a voice of authority ought to say: "Fudge! And also Fiddle-de-dee!"

The general subject today is "the World of Books." It is a delightful world--one so different from that into which we emerge every morning that it seems hard, sometimes, to realize that the one exists inside the other. It is a place of entertainment within the reach of any of us. There are a few obstructions around the entrance--some of which I have tried to describe. People have built up walls of impossible "classics"; publishers have tried to string a barbed-wire fence of Complete Works around it. Pedants stand outside, calling upon you to swallow a couple of gallons of facts before you go into the great tent. You can walk by them all. Inside, everything is pleasant. Over in one corner are the folk who like to play with first editions, unique copies, unopened copies, and all the rest of those expensive toys. Some of these gentlemen have about as much to do with the world of books as have the collectors of four-post beds and old blue china, but many of them are very good fellows. Most of them do not belong in here at all, but, like boys who have crawled in under the tent, now they are inside they think they have as much right as anybody. Some of them, indeed, are quite uppish and superior, and inclined to look down on the rest of us who have a vulgar notion that books are made to =read=.

Here is all you require--a comfortable chair, and a pipe. And the company! Well, look around:

Dear Lamb and excellent Montaigne, Sterne and the credible Defoe, Borrow, DeQuincey, the great Dean, The sturdy leisurist Thoreau;

The furtive soul whose dark romance, By ghostly door and haunted stair, Explored the dusty human heart, And the forgotten garrets there;

The moralist it could not spoil, To hold an empire in his hands; Sir Walter, and the brood who sprang, From Homer through a hundred lands,

Singers of songs on all men's lips, Tellers of tales in all men's ears, Movers of hearts that still must beat, To sorrows feigned and fabled tears.

At the conclusion of Mr. Pearson's paper a book symposium was conducted in which the following members of the Association briefly discussed the respective books here indicated:

Hine. Modern organization. Reviewed by Paul Blackwelder.

Crispi's Memoirs and the recent literature of the Risorgimento. Reviewed by Bernard C. Steiner.

Goldmark. Fatigue and efficiency. Reviewed by Katherine T. Wootten.

Tarbell. The business of being a woman. Reviewed by Pearl I. Field.

Antin. The promised land. Reviewed by Althea H. Warren.

Brieux. La femme seule. Reviewed by Corinne Bacon.

The great analysis. Reviewed by Josephine A. Rathbone.

Weyl. The great democracy. Reviewed by Frank K. Walter.

The PRESIDENT: Before inducting into office the president-elect I shall ask the secretary whether there are any announcements to be made or if any new business is to come up at this time? Is there any business for the Council to consider?

Dr. ANDREWS: There are some resolutions from the Documents Round Table to come before the Council and perhaps other routine work.

The PRESIDENT: They will be referred to the Council. We will receive the report of the tellers concerning the election.

The SECRETARY: The report of the tellers states that you have elected as your officers for the coming year the following persons:

REPORT OF THE TELLERS OF ELECTION

No. of Votes

President E. H. Anderson, Director New York Public Library 144

First Vice-President H. C. Wellman, Librarian City Library, Springfield, Mass. 141

Second Vice-President Gratia A. Countryman, Librarian Minneapolis Public Library 144

Members of Executive Board (for 3 years) Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, Washington 146

Harrison W. Craver, Librarian Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh 137

Members of Council (for 5 years) Mary Eileen Ahern, Editor "Public Libraries," Chicago 140

Cornelia Marvin, Librarian Oregon State Library 145

Alice S. Tyler, Director Western Reserve Library School 146

R. R. Bowker, Editor "Library Journal," New York 144

A. L. Bailey, Librarian Wilmington (Del.) Institute Free Library 142

Trustee of Endowment Fund (for 3 years) E. W. Sheldon, President U. S. Trust Co., New York 143

FORREST B. SPAULDING, JOHN F. PHELAN, Tellers of Election.

The PRESIDENT: You have heard the result of the election. I shall ask Mr. Gardner M. Jones and Mr. Harrison W. Craver to show the president-elect the way to the platform.

(The committee escorted Mr. Anderson to the platform.)

Mr. President-elect, it is with special personal satisfaction that I have announced to you the result unanimously made by this conference in choosing you to the honorable position of president. I am personally gratified in that you represent, I think, so splendidly many of the elements which have been talked about during this meeting. You are yourself a graduate of a library school, yet you have sympathy with those who have not attained to that distinction. You have been associated with a great scientific library, you have been in charge of a medium-sized library and are now at the head of the largest public library in the world; and yet many of us have had evidences that you have the deepest and warmest sympathy for the small and struggling library, no matter where it may be.

Mr. President-elect, the retiring board of officers received this gavel not as an emblem of authority, but as a symbol of service. As such we commit it to your care for the next year.

For the retiring board of officers I may say, in the words of Wynken DeWorde in one of his colophons, "And now we make an end. If we have done well, we have done that which we would have desired; and if but meanly and slenderly, we yet have done that which we could attain unto."

The wish goes from the ex-president to the president that the most successful administration in the history of the Association may be the one which is about to begin.

(Mr. Legler then handed the gavel to Mr. Anderson and retired from the platform.)

PRESIDENT ANDERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow members of the Association: In the first place, I want to express my heartfelt thanks for the gracious things the retiring president has just been pleased to say concerning my humble self. Furthermore, I have to thank him for giving me an opportunity to correct a mistake which has been current in this Association for some twenty years, namely, that I am the graduate of a library school. I was at the Albany library school--more years ago than I care to tell--between seven and eight months. My money ran out and I had to get a job. I did not even complete the first year. That is a reflection on me, not upon the library school.

The exigencies of trains and luncheons would make it unfair if not cruel for me to detain you here this morning with a speech and I shall make none. But I want to beg you on this occasion to forget and forgive the disagreeable things said or done by the officers-elect in the heat of a bitter partisan campaign. (Laughter--There was no opposition ticket.)

Seriously, I want to express to you all, not merely for myself but for every member of the incoming executive board and the incoming members of the Council, our appreciation of the honor you have conferred upon us and of the responsibilities you have placed upon our shoulders. We can only hope to maintain--and it will require a struggle and great and arduous work on our part to maintain--the high standard set by our predecessors. I thank you.

If there is nothing further to come before us the Conference will stand adjourned.

ADJOURNED SINE DIE.

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Meeting of June 23, 1913

Meeting called to order by President Legler. Other members present were Miss Eastman, Messrs. Anderson, Andrews, Putnam and Wellman.

Several matters of routine business were transacted, including the reception and adoption of the report of the Committee on Nominations.

Upon motion of Mr. Anderson, seconded by Dr. Putnam, Mrs. H. L. Elmendorf was elected member of the Publishing Board to succeed herself for a term of three years.

In behalf of the Committee on International Relations, Dr. Putnam reported that with such information as it had been able to gather the committee felt unable to make any affirmative recommendation as to participation by the American Library Association in the proposed Exposition of the Book and Graphic Arts at Leipzig in 1914.

Adjourned.

Meeting of June 28th

Present: President Anderson, Miss Eastman, Messrs. Andrews, Wellman and Craver.

Mr. Wellman presented his resignation as non-official member in view of his election to the office of first vice-president, which, upon motion of Dr. Andrews, was accepted.

Upon motion of Mr. Craver, it was unanimously voted that W. N. C. Carlton be elected to the Executive Board to fill the unexpired term of Mr. Wellman. Mr. Carlton was called to the meeting and took his place as a member of the Board.

A meeting place for 1914 was next considered. Miss Edith A. Phelps, librarian of the Carnegie library of Oklahoma City, appeared before the board and invited the Association to meet in Oklahoma City, her invitation being seconded by the Oklahoma Library Association and other organizations of the State. Invitations were received also by letter from the convention bureaus of New Orleans, Nashville, Wilmington, Del., Milwaukee, and other places. After informal discussion it was voted that the Secretary be instructed to investigate facilities for holding the conference at Madison, Wis., and if, in the opinion of the president and secretary, conditions at Madison are not favorable for a meeting, that Mackinac and Ottawa Beach be investigated in the order here named.

Invitations from the authorities of the Panama-Pacific Exposition to hold the conference at San Francisco in 1915 were read and from the California Library Association to the same effect, Mr. Everett R. Perry, of Los Angeles, bearing the invitation from the latter association. Invitations were also received from the library authorities of Seattle, seconded by the business organizations of that city and by the convention bureaus of other cities of the Pacific Northwest. It was voted to refer this information to the next Executive Board.

Mr. William Stetson Merrill presented the following report in behalf of the Committee on code for classifiers, which, upon motion, was accepted as a report of progress, and the request for an appropriation of $20 referred to the meeting of the Executive Board in January.

The Committee on code for classifiers begs to present a report of progress.

During the past year no general meeting of the Committee has been held, but the chairman has been in correspondence with several members of the Committee and considerable data have been collected for the proposed Manual for classifiers. Messrs. Bay and Merrill are more immediately concerned with this section of the work and over three hundred points have been assembled for future consideration.

An appropriation of twenty dollars ($20.00) to cover typewriting, postage and stationery is requested.

Respectfully submitted, (Signed) WM. STETSON MERRILL, Chairman.

At the request of the secretary a transfer of funds was authorized as follows: From the contingency fund to conference fund, $75, and to miscellaneous fund $75, leaving a balance in the contingency fund of $95.

Upon motion of Dr. Andrews, it was voted that members joining the Association after the annual conference shall only be required to pay one-half year's dues together with the usual initiation fee of $1.

Consideration of the question of issuing the annual handbook in biographical section form was postponed until the next meeting of the Executive Board.

A letter was read from Dr. Frank P. Hill, suggesting that a special committee be appointed to consider the matter of participating in the proposed Leipzig Exposition and to ascertain the cost of such participation as well as the possibility of securing a creditable exhibit from American libraries. It was voted that a special committee of three on this subject be appointed by the president, which committee shall make the report to the Committee on international relations. The president appointed as this committee Dr. Hill with power to add the other two members.

It was unanimously voted that an appropriation of $30 from the contingency fund be made to each of the three members of the Travel Committee as partial compensation for expenses incurred in the performance of association duties, and that the thanks of the Executive Board be expressed with regret that the finances of the Association did not permit a complete reimbursement of expenses.

A report was submitted from the Committee on cost and method of cataloging, but owing to the lack of time for proper consideration the secretary was instructed to have the report typewritten and copies sent to the respective members of the Executive Board. At the request of the Committee that two other members be added to the Committee, one of them to be located in Chicago, the other to be the head cataloger of one of the public libraries taking part in the investigation, the president appointed the following persons: J. C. M. Hanson and Margaret Mann.

The request of the Committee for an appropriation of not to exceed $50 was referred to the January meeting of the Executive Board.

The report is as follows:

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON COST AND METHOD OF CATALOGING

The present report is preliminary only. Before a final report can be made a more detailed inquiry must be undertaken of the way in which the work is handled in libraries of various types. The methods used in the libraries that have taken part in the present investigation vary to a considerable degree, and do not always seem to lend themselves to an accurate classification by character or size of library; in some cases this is possible, for instance when we find that the receipt of much duplicate material in the large public libraries having extensive systems of branch libraries has developed a method of handling these that is almost uniform for all. One element which disturbs the cataloging work in these libraries is that the withdrawal and cancellation of the records of lost and worn-out books is done by the cataloging departments. Five of the twenty libraries do not at present readily lend themselves to comparison in all respects with the others, the Library of Congress and the New York public library on account of their size and complicated organization, the libraries of Harvard University and the University of Chicago because of the disturbances caused by present work of reorganization and recataloging, and the New York state library on account of its rapid growth since the fire two years ago. In other libraries recataloging goes on simultaneously with the current work, but it does not cause the same disturbances as in the cases mentioned.

While most libraries count classification and shelf-listing as parts of the cataloging, only four include accessioning, and three do not include either of the four processes mentioned under point 2 in the questionnaire sent out by the committee. Three libraries state expressly that the assignment of subject headings is done by the cataloging force, but this is probably also the case with some who do not mention the fact. In one case the reference and cataloging work are combined in one department; in general, reference work seems to be the catalogers' favorite side line.

In some libraries the determination of headings and the form of entry is determined by the heads of the department, in others all the original work is done by the assistants and afterwards revised, while in at least one case such work as classification and the assignment of subject headings is done by specialists, each handling his particular subject. Two or three libraries employ a special assistant for the cataloging of serial publications. Two libraries have all statistical recording done by a special assistant or clerk.

Whether a library prints its cards or has them written or typewritten in several copies, does not seem to influence the method of work except at the final point, but the growing use of cards printed by some other library has introduced an element that did not exist when any of the libraries taking part in the investigation were organized.

The cost of cataloging can not be determined until a definite unit has been agreed upon. The way to reach such agreement might be in line with the method employed by the Boston public library, where a considerable number of volumes were set aside for this investigation and the time and money spent on each work carefully computed. By employing a similar way of investigating not only the cost, but also the routine gone through with a book in a number of libraries on its way from the unpacking room to the shelves, some definite unit might be found.

The work of the committee has only begun; it should be planned to go much more into details than the present questionnaire indicates. The purpose of the committee should be twofold; to find out whether a method of handling the routine with a minimum expenditure of time could be worked out that could be recommended as standard, and to study how the work might be so arranged as to be made in some degree less mechanical to those who are capable of more or less independent handling of literary material for the purpose of preparing it for use by readers in libraries.

AKSEL G. S. JOSEPHSON, EMMA V. BALDWIN, AGNES VAN VALKENBURGH.

Questionnaire

1. Give a short sketch of your catalog department indicating the processes into which the work is divided.

2. How many of the following items do you include as part of cataloging?:

(a) Accessioning. (b) Classification. (c) Shelf-listing. (d) Preparation for the shelves.

3. Of how many persons does your cataloging force consist and how is it graded?

4. What are the minimum and maximum salaries in each grade and division of your cataloging force?

5. What was the total amount expended for salaries for the catalog department in 1912?

6. a. How many of the assistants in the catalog department spend full time on the cataloging work?

b. What other work are these engaged in in other departments of the library?

7. a. How many volumes did you add to your library during 1912?

b. How many of these were added as new titles to your catalog?