PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND THE PUBLIC

One of the first clear statements of the Public Library as a business enterprise, involving certain amounts invested by a city with the expectation of certain definite returns. The paper refers particularly to the San Francisco Public Library, of which the author, Frederic Beecher Perkins, was then librarian but its conclusions are general, and hold good to-day. It was read at the Lake George Conference of the American Library a.s.sociation, in September, 1885.

Frederic Beecher Perkins was born in Hartford, Conn., Sept.

27, 1828, a grandson of Lyman Beecher. He left Yale in soph.o.m.ore year to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1851, but graduated at the State Normal School in 1852 and devoted himself to literary and educational work. In 1880-87 he was librarian of the San Francisco Public Library. He died in Morristown, N.J., Jan. 27, 1899. He was the father of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

There are in the United States about 5,000 public libraries of 300 volumes or more. Returns of their present conditions are very imperfect, and must therefore be summed in the following crude way:--

Annual cost much more than $1,500,000 The books in them are many more than 13,000,000 Books added yearly are many more than 500,000 Books used yearly are many more than 10,000,000

These inst.i.tutions, therefore, represent a large money investment, and a very extensive and active educational agency. Not all of them by any means are "free public libraries,"--_i.e._, libraries supported by taxes or endowments for the use of all. But a considerable portion of them are. It may now be justly said that no town of importance is respectably complete without a free public library any more than any town whatever without a school.

The San Francisco Free Public Library was founded in 1879, and was advancing with creditable speed towards a size and usefulness corresponding to the position of San Francisco, among American cities, until the present city government suddenly cut down its annual appropriation to bare running expenses, leaving no allowance for buying new books, or even for replacing old ones worn out.

This library is not a collection of mummies of deceased learning, which will be no drier in a thousand years than they are now. It has thus far consisted of live books for live people. But a library of this practically useful kind, if it stops buying new books, quickly becomes dead stock,--unattractive, obsolete, useless. In _belles-lettres_, literature, history, mechanic arts, engineering, applied science, all alike, it is equally indispensable to have the new books. The photographer, the druggist, the electrician, the machinist, the manufacturing chemist, as much as or more than the reader of novels, poetry, travels, or history, want this year's discoveries, for last year's are already obsolete. Next year it will not be Mr. Blaine's book that will be most called for,--that will be a year old,--but General Grant's book. But a thousand examples would not make the case clearer.

This prohibition of new books, perhaps on pretence of economy, would be the natural first step of shrewd opponents intending to close the library entirely as soon as the books are dead enough. It is girdling the tree now, so as to destroy it more early next year. It is understood that at least two prominent members of the present city government (Supervisor Pond and Auditor Strother) are distinctly opposed to the library, and to free public libraries, on principle. It is not known that any member of it is a particularly energetic friend of the inst.i.tution. The library staff is small in number (seven boys and eight adults); the salaries (omitting the librarian's) exceptionally scanty, and even this small patronage and expenditure is wholly controlled by the Board of Trustees, and wholly out of reach of the Board of Supervisors. When this is remembered it is easy to understand both the probable firmness of any opposition, and the probable lukewarmness of any friendship to the library in the latter body. This is perfectly natural. All governing bodies try to keep and increase their authority over persons and payments. They never let go of them when they can help it. And, accordingly, the Supervisors insisted on controlling all the expenditure and management of the library, until a decision of the Supreme Court of the State forced the control out of their hands.

Whether the actual closing of the library is intended or not, the obvious first step towards it has been taken, and its closing will follow in due season, if the policy is continued. If the voters of San Francisco choose to have it so, there is no more to be said, for it is their library. Probably they could lawfully divide up the books among themselves, and so close out the enterprise. The dividend, now, would be not far from one volume to each household in the city. But, if they wish the library to continue, this early notice is due them.

Further: the custom here, in respect to the contents of munic.i.p.al public doc.u.ments, prevents such discussions of library questions as are usual in the annual reports of other city libraries; so that, if a view of principles and practices in and about such inst.i.tutions as a cla.s.s, and of their application in this instance, is to be laid before the public at all, it must be submitted, as in this paper, unofficially.

The following table shows the financial, and some of the literary, relations between public libraries and cities in San Francisco, in four other large cities, and in six small cities. The cases were taken promiscuously as they came to hand, of the latest dates available, but all are within a few years. New York has no free public library; movements to establish one there have repeatedly been contemplated, but have been abandoned, because the men who could have set up the library would not encounter the practical certainty of its becoming one more corruptionist engine in the hands of the city rulers. Philadelphia has none, for reasons not known to the present writer, but, very likely, the same as in New York. St. Louis has none now, although its excellent Public School Library may, very likely, become one. New Orleans has none, apparently, because it doesn't want any. Louisville has none, because the devil cannot set up a true church; the enormous lottery swindle which was worked off there a few years ago was ostensibly to establish and endow one, but where did the money go?

a.s.sessed Being, Population Value in Whole Gives its of Cities (1880) Millions City Library whole (1880) Tax tax

Boston 362,000 $613 $7,261,741 $120,000 1/60 Chicago 503,000 118 3,776,451 54,330 1/75 Cincinnati 255,139 169 1/3 4,070,225 49,016 1/82 Lynn 38,274 22 1/2 332,481 5,730 1/58 Milwaukee 115,587 55 3/4 902,537 17,697 1/51 New Bedford 26,875 25 3/4 390,208 5,148 1/76 Newburyport 13,537 7 1/2 105,686 1,661 1/64 Springfield, Ma.s.s. 33,340 29 1/2 307,434 8,231 1/37 Taunton 21,213 15 3/4 213,912 5,195 1/41 Worcester 58,291 39 1/2 557,193 14,860 1/38 San Francisco 233,959 225 2,252,000 18,000 1/125

Vols. Being And per Vols. per Circulation per $1.00 Volumes Cities in soul per year soul of added Library (about) (about) salaries yearly

Boston 438,594 1 1/5 1,056,906 3 14 16,478 Chicago 111,621 1/5+ 664,867 1 1/3 23 1/4 5,280 Cincinnati 153,870 3/5+ 730,544 3 26 1/6 4,120 Lynn 32,006 4/5 90,330 2 1/3 36 1,264 Milwaukee 24,481 1/5 83,052 3/4 16 2,778 New Bedford 45,000 1 4/5 71,798 3 ... 2,448 Newburyport 17,828 1 1/3 ... ... ... 441 Springfield, Ma.s.s. 48,832 1 1/2 57,152 1 3/4 14 3/4 1,797 Taunton 21,197 1 58,920 2 9/10 31 1/2 1,971 Worcester 61,204 1+ 194,321 3 1/3 26 6/7 3,105 San Francisco 62,647 1/4+ 326,000 1 1/4 36 [3]3,883

[TN: Table split for text version]

[3] Next year NONE except gifts.

The six small cities tabulated are all in Ma.s.sachusetts, because the latest and fullest reports came to hand from them.

Of various comparisons which could be formulated from the above figures, the following are the most pertinent now:--

(1) Of the five large cities listed, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee give from one fifty-first part to one eighty-second part of their tax levies for their libraries; San Francisco, one one-hundred and twenty-fifth part.

(2) Of the actual sums so set apart by these cities, Boston, with half as many more people, gives nearly seven times as much; Chicago, with twice as many, gives three times as much; Cincinnati, with one-tenth more gives two and two-thirds times as much; Milwaukee, with one-half as many, gives nearly as much ($300 less).

(3) Accordingly, San Francisco would expend every year for its library, if it were as liberal as Boston, about $84,000; if as liberal as Chicago, $27,000; and so on.

(4) The actual comparative size of their libraries is: Boston seven times as large as San Francisco; Chicago nearly twice; Cincinnati twice and a half; Milwaukee only is smaller, being somewhat more than one-third as large.

(5) The rate of increase is: from 16,478 volumes a year at Boston, to 2,778 at Milwaukee; and in San Francisco, for the coming year none (for the loss in worn-out volumes will more than equal any probable total of gifts), none at all.

(6) The number of volumes circulated in a year for each dollar of salaries paid is in San Francisco more than twice as great as in Boston or Milwaukee, and decidedly larger than in Chicago or Cincinnati. It may be added, although the figures are not in this table, that a much more striking evidence of the stringent economy of the library administration here is the fact that there is paid at the Boston Public Library in salaries, in the cataloging department alone, without allowing anything for printing, nearly as much as the whole of this year's library appropriation by the city of San Francisco.

(7) Similar comparisons with the six smaller cities listed would give results generally similar, but showing a still more liberal rate per head and dollar of expenditure for libraries.

In addition to this exposition of comparative parsimony a feature of it should be remembered which might easily escape notice: that, while the money for running expenses is all gone at the end of the year, nearly all of the allowance above running expenses remains represented by valuable property. Thus, if the year's allowance for this library had been $28,000, instead of $18,000, it would not have cost a cent more to run the library and at the year's end about $10,000 worth of books would remain added to the permanent property of the city.

Another result of this policy is to prevent printing any catalogue of the recent additions to the library; so that there is practically no access, and there will, for the present, continue to be none, even for the public who own the books, to all additions to this library since June, 1884, being several thousand t.i.tles. It is needless to point out that if there were to be the hypothesis of an unfriendly purpose entertained against the library, that purpose would be served as directly by suppressing the names of books in the library as by preventing the addition of new ones, or by the replacing of those worn out.

These brief statements sufficiently show what our city is doing, and what other cities are doing, for or against public libraries. It is not within the scope of this paper to inquire after the real reason for the stop put to the progress of the San Francisco Free Public Library. One hypothesis is, that, instead of any unfriendly intention against the library itself, the step was taken to help in persuading the public that the "dollar limit" to the rate of city taxation is too low, and that our citizens must submit to a higher rate. As the money saved is only $6,000, the economy is not great in itself, being about one four-hundredth part of the city tax levy. If the proposed effect was expected to be produced by continuously annoying and dissatisfying the citizens there is more reason in the scheme; for the library is frequented by more than a thousand persons daily; between 26,000 and 27,000 cards have been issued to authorize the home use of books; and there are always at any given moment from 5,900 to 6,000 volumes from the library in use in as many homes all over the city. To inconvenience and disoblige so large a const.i.tuency as this may naturally produce some effect. This paper need not attempt to decide whether that effect would naturally be approval or disapproval of the treatment of the library, enthusiasm in favor of, or against, the proposed increase of taxation, unpopularity or popularity of the inst.i.tution itself, or of those whose action so effectually cripples its usefulness. Nor will it discuss the still larger question of the "dollar limit" itself,[4] however decisively important all these inquiries are for the future of the library, and however interesting and clear the arguments and conclusions on those subjects may be. But what it may properly do is, to state, without any pretence of novelty, but simply in order to refresh the public memory, the chief heads of a doctrine of her public libraries from a practical point of view.

First (to limit the discussion). What a free public library is _not_ for.

It is not for a nursery; a lunch-room; a bed-room; a place for meeting a girl in a corner and talking to her; a conversation-room of any kind; a free dispensary of stationery, envelopes, and letter-writing; a free range for loiterers; a campaigning field for mendicants, or for displaying advertis.e.m.e.nts; a haunt for loafers and criminals. Indeed, not to specify with inelegant distinctness, a free public library, like any other similarly commodious place of free public resort, would, if permitted, be used for any purpose whatever, no matter how private or how vicious, which could be served there more conveniently than by going to one's own home, or than by having any home at all. It would be so used systematically, constantly, and to a degree of intolerable nuisance; and its purification from such uses, if they have been set up, will be met with clamor, abuse, and with any degree and kind of even violent resistance which may be thought safe, or likely to succeed. Let it not be supposed that this is an imaginary picture. It is in every point taken from actual and numerous instances, and could be ill.u.s.trated by a sufficiently ridiculous series of single adventures, by any librarian of large experience. Open public premises for some of the purposes above specified might conceivably be properly supplied by the public. What is here affirmed is, that public libraries are not at present proper for them.

[4] San Francisco is at present taxed on a precise scale of one dollar to the hundred dollars of value, and on an annual total valuation of $200,000,000, which is, however, in practice somewhat, but not largely, exceeded.

Second. What such a library _is_ for.

Its first object is to supply books to persons wishing to improve their knowledge of their occupations. Such books as Nicholson's, Burns', Riddell's, Tredgold's, Dwyer's, Waring's, Holly's, and others, on practical architecture, building, or departments of them; the numerous collections of plans and details of domestic and other architecture; Masury's house-painting; Kittredge's metal-worker's pattern-book; Percy's, Phillips', and other books on metallurgy and mining; Dussance, Piesse, and others on soap-making, perfumery, and other branches of applied chemistry; Lock on sugar-refining; many manuals of brewing and distilling; Noad, Hospitalier, Preece, etc., on applications of electricity; Burgh's, Roper's, and other hand-books and more advanced works on steam engineering generally, locomotives, marine engines, etc.; Gaskell's, Hill's, and other business manuals; hand-books of correspondence, book-keeping, phonography; in short, text-books, both elementary and advanced, in all sorts of commercial and industrial occupations, are of the first importance in a free public library, and are constantly and eagerly used in this one. The study of such books puts money directly into the student's pocket, promotes his success in life, and the prosperity of the city. A good and active public library raises the value of every piece of real estate in the city, by thus making the city more profitable (in dollars) to live in; because it enables the intelligent and studious to earn more.

Second in importance is the supply of books to those who wish to acquire or pursue an education, or to complete or continue a knowledge of general literature; and, third, the accommodation of students working out special lines of research.

Fourth. Such is the more solid usefulness of a public library. The rest of its distributing work, whatever its intrinsic usefulness, is at least as indispensable, and is always numerically the most popular. This is the supply of light literature to readers for rest or amus.e.m.e.nt. Whether books of this cla.s.s const.i.tute one-half the library or (as in this one) one-tenth of it, it may be depended on that from one-half to four-fifths of all the reading done will be done from that part. The justification of the supply of such books by a free public library is, that it is important also, if not likewise, to afford mental relaxation, as it is to feed mental effort; that even light reading is a very important improvement over and safe-guard from street life and saloon life; that such books introduce to a more useful cla.s.s of books by forming the habit of reading; and that the public, who pay for the library, choose to have books of this sort as much as, if not even rather more than, the more useful sort.

Fifth. There is another department of usefulness for public libraries, quite unknown until within a few years, which makes them actual and vital members of the public-school system, and additionally justifies the term "People's Universities," which has often been applied to them.

This is the arrangement at the library of courses of ill.u.s.trative study and reading for teachers or pupils, or both. A series of such books as relate to one or another part of the school course is laid out at the library; the teachers, and perhaps sometimes one of the higher cla.s.ses, examine them along with the librarian, and such information as they afford is used to fill out and ill.u.s.trate the outline in the school-book for the fuller information of the pupils.

This practice is perhaps easiest in history and geography. It is easy to see how a capable teacher could intensify the interest and enrich the minds of a cla.s.s about the geography of the East Indian archipelago, by introducing them to the vivid narrative and abundant ill.u.s.trations of Wallace's most entertaining and instructive book on that region. How, for instance, Palgrave's "Year in Arabia," Palmer's "Desert of the Exodus," Lady Duff Gordon's "Letters from Egypt," O'Donovan's "Merv Oasis," Atkinson's and Kennan's books on Siberia, Huc's "Travels in Tartary and in China," and hundreds of other books, each for its locality, all over the world, could be used to give a child clear notions and strong impressions of savage or civilized landscapes and people. It is not too much to say that the study of geography in the public schools of San Francisco, ill.u.s.trated as it could easily be from books of travel now in the public library, could be made from beginning to end as fascinating as any romance, while it would store the children's minds with a kind and quant.i.ty of distinct knowledge about the earth and its people as much beyond the results of ordinary geographical study as gold is better than mud. It would be easy to furnish similar specifications for the study of history, of natural science, and other branches. This is no mere speculation. This system of instruction is regularly practised by Mr. Green, of the Worcester Free Library (the originator and pioneer in it); by Mr. Poole at Chicago, and elsewhere, and with complete success. Besides its immediate result in vivifying and enriching the pupil's minds, this method affords a training in habits of reading of the very best kind, by teaching research, the habit of selecting books, and the practice of comparative thinking.

To sum up: A free public library--

1. As to manners--is a parlor, not a bar-room; a place where not only working men and business men, but ladies and young girls can safely and conveniently come and abide. While not expressly a school of manners and morals, it is much and closely concerned in maintaining a high standard in both.

2. As to objects--is to furnish good books, not bad ones; to satisfy within this limit all demands on it as far as may be; and in particular to be progressive; that is, to supply for intelligent readers what they most require,--the _new_ good books.

3. As to method--should keep the books in the best possible condition for the longest possible term of use, and should not allow them to be scattered, lost, abused, mutilated, or stolen.

Lastly. It is needless to add, under these heads, any of the numerous technical details which crowd the work of an active library; but this exposition would be inexcusably imperfect without a reference to the absolute indispensableness of proper quarters in order to successful library administration. Only the merest reference need now be made to the professional immorality of notorious localities close around this library in its present place. Something more may be said of the unbusinesslike payment by the city of a heavy insurance on $50,000 worth of its property, which must be paid, because the library is in the same building with a theatre. Theatres burn down on an average once in seventeen years; and a theatre risk, although not absolutely uninsurable like a gunpowder mill, is what insurance men call "extra hazardous;" so that not only is the insurance rate high, but the destruction by fire of the library (in its present location) may be looked upon as certain, the only question being, How soon?

A difficulty less obvious and less dangerous, but still a source of constant friction and annoyance, is the present arrangement of the library as one collection, with but one place for delivering books. In a small library, with a small business, this difficulty becomes nothing; but in one as large and as energetically active as this it is a serious disadvantage. Such a library imperatively requires division into two libraries or sections, one to contain all books deliverable without discrimination; the other, all books calling for special care and precaution of any kind. The receipt and delivery desks of these two sections should be separate, and before and behind them there should be plenty of room. In the present library, which is in one large undivided hall, the s.p.a.ce is insufficient, both for the public and for the library staff; and books of the two cla.s.ses above described are intermingled all over the shelves. The result is, crowding, interruption, delay, error, confusion, and dissatisfaction. Very many books might be trusted with a studious mechanic or a literary student which it would be a folly to deliver into the hands of a small boy or girl. Many other extremely desirable objects would be gained by the occupancy of properly arranged library quarters; but of these only two need be mentioned here; separate quarters could be provided for students who need special facilities and a.s.sistance, and there could be such arrangements that ladies using the library need not crowd and struggle about among impatient children and miscellaneous masculine strangers.

THE LEVY OF LIBRARY TRIBUTE

The above t.i.tle was constructed by the editor from a sentence in the presidential address of Henry M. Utley before the American Library a.s.sociation at its Denver conference of 1895. President Utley himself gave it no t.i.tle, but it is an examination of the claims of the library to public support, with a conclusion that those claims are justified only by regarding the library as an educational inst.i.tution, using this term in its broadest sense.