essay hard tasks; it is noble enough to attract him who loves his
fellow-man; success in it is rare enough and glorious enough to stimulate
him who likes to succeed where others have failed. Advertising may be good
or bad, noble or ignoble, right or wrong, according to what is advertised
and our methods of advertising it. He who would scorn to announce the
curative powers of bottled spring-water and pink aniline dye; he who
regards it as a commonplace task to urge upon the spendthrift public the
purchase of unnecessary gloves and neckties, may well feel a thrill of
satisfaction and of anticipation in the task of advertising ideas and of
persuading the unheeding citizen to appropriate what he has been
accustomed to view with indifference.

To get at the root of the matter, let us inquire why it is that so many
persons do not care for books. We may divide them, I think, into two
classes--those who do not care, or appear not to care for ideas at all,
whether stored in books or not; and those who do care for ideas but who
either do not easily get them out of storage or do not realize that they
can be and are stored in books. Absolute carelessness of ideas is, it
seems to me, rather apparent than real. It exists only in the idiot. There
are those to be sure that care about a very limited range of ideas; but
about some ideas they always care.

We must, in our advertisement of ideas, bear this in mind--the necessity
of offering to each that which he considers it worth his while to take. If
I were asked what is the most fundamentally interesting subject to all
classes, I should unhesitatingly reply "philosophy." Not, perhaps, the
philosophy of the schools, but the individual philosophy that every man
and woman has, and that is precisely alike in no two of us. I have heard a
tiny boy, looking up suddenly from his play, ask "Why do we live?" This
and its correlative "Why do we die?" Whence come we and whither do we go?
What is the universe and what are our relations to it--these questions in
some form have occurred to everyone who thinks at all. They are discussed
around the stove at the corner grocery, in the logging camp, on the ranch,
in clubs and at boarding-house tables. Sometimes they take a theological
turn--free will, the origin and purpose of evil, and so on. I do not
purpose to give here a catalogue of the things in which an ordinary man is
interested, and I have said this only to remind you that his interest may
be vivid even in connection with subjects usually considered abstruse.
This interest in ideas we may call the library's raw material; anything
that tends to create it, to broaden it, to extend it to new fields and to
direct it into paths that are worth while is making it possible for the
library to do better and wider work--is helping on its campaign of
publicity. This establishes a web of connecting fibers between the library
and all human activity. The man who is getting interested in his work,
debaters at a labor union, students at school and college, the worker for
civic reform, the poetic dreamer--all are creating a demand for ideas that
makes it easier for the library to advertise them. Those who object to
some of the outside work done by modern libraries should try to look at
the whole matter from this standpoint. The library is taking its place as
a public utility with other public utilities. Its relations with them are
becoming more evident; the ties between them are growing stronger. As in
all cases of such growth it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify
the boundaries between them, so fast and so thoroughly do the activities
of each reach over these lines and interpenetrate those of the others. And
unless there is actual wasteful duplication of work, we need not bother
about our respective spheres. These activities are all human; they are
mutually interesting and valuable. A library need be afraid of doing
nothing that makes for the spread of interest in ideas, so long as it is
not neglecting its own particular work of the collection, preservation and
distribution of ideas as stored in books, and is not duplicating other's
work wastefully.

When we observe those who are already interested in ideas, however, we
find that not all are interested in them as they are stored up in books.
Some of these cannot read; their number is small with us and growing
smaller; we may safely leave the schools to deal with them. Others can
read, but they do not easily apprehend ideas through print. Some of these
must read aloud so that they may get the sound of the words, before these
really mean anything to them. These persons need practice in reading. They
get it now largely through the newspapers, but their number is still
large. A person in this condition may be intellectually somewhat advanced.
He may be able to discuss single-tax with some acumen, for instance. It is
a mistake to suppose that because a person understands a subject or likes
a thing and is able to talk well about it, he will enjoy and appreciate a
book on that subject or thing. It may be as difficult for him to get at
the meat of it as if it were a half-understood foreign tongue. You who
know enough French to buy a pair of gloves or sufficient German to inquire
the way to the station, may tackle a novel in the original and realize at
once the hazy degree of such a persons' apprehension. He may stick to it
and become an easy reader, but on the other hand your well-meant publicity
efforts may place in his hands a book that will simply discourage and
ultimately repel him, sending him to join the army of those to whom no
books appeal.

Next we find those who understand how to read and to read with ease, but
to whom books--at any rate certain classes of books--are not interesting.
Now interest in a subject may be so great that one will wade through the
driest literature about it, but such interest belongs to the few--not to
the many. I have come to the conclusion that more readers have had their
interest killed or lessened by books than have had it aroused or
stimulated. This is a proportion that it is our business as librarians to
reverse. More of this unfortunate and heart-breaking, interest-killing
work than I like to think of goes on in school. Not necessarily; for the
name of those is legion who have had their eyes opened to the beauties of
literature by good teachers. This makes it all the more maddening when we
think how many poor teachers, or good teachers with mistaken methods, or
indifferent teachers, have succeeded in associating with books in the
minds of their pupils simply burdensome tasks--the gloom and heaviness of
life rather than its joy and lightness. Such boys and girls will no more
touch a book after leaving school than you or I would touch a scorpion
after one had stung us.

Perhaps it is useless to try to change this; possibly it is none of our
business, though we have already seen that there are reasons to the
contrary. But we can better matters, and we are daily bettering them, by
our work with children. If a child has once learned to love books and to
associate them powerfully with something else than a burdensome task, then
the labors of the unskillful teachers will create no dislike of the book
but only of the teacher and his methods; while those of the good teacher
will be a thousand times more fruitful than otherwise.

So much for the ways in which interesting books are sometimes made
uninteresting. Now for the books that are uninteresting _per se_--and how
many there are! When a man has something to distribute commercially for
personal gain, the thing that he tries above all to do is to interest his
public--to make them want what he has to sell. His success or failure in
doing this, means the success or failure of his whole enterprise. He does
not decide what kind of an entertainment his clients ought to attend and
then try to make them go to it, or what kind of neckties they ought to
wear and then try to make them wear them. Of ten promoters, if nine
proceeded on this principle and one on the plan of offering something
attractive and interesting, who would succeed? It is one of the marvels of
all time that this never seems to have occurred to writers of books. We
are almost forced to conclude that they do not care whether their volumes
are read or not. In only one class of books, as a rule, do the writers
endeavor to interest the reader first and foremost; you all know that I
refer to fiction. What is the result? The writers of fiction are the ones
read by the public. More fiction is read, as you very well know, than all
the other classes of literature put together. The library that is able to
show a fiction percentage of 60, points to it with pride, while there are
plenty with percentages between 70 and 80. Now this is all to the credit
of the fiction writers. I refuse to believe that their readers are any
more fundamentally interested in the subjects of which they treat than in
others. They simply follow the line of least resistance. They want
something interesting to read and they know from experience where to go
for it. Of course this brings on abuses. Writers use illegitimate methods
to arouse interest--appeals perhaps, to unworthy instincts. We need not
discuss that here, but simply focus our attention on the fact that writers
of fiction always try to be interesting because they must; while writers
of history, travel, biography and philosophy do not usually try, because
they think it unnecessary. This is simply a survival. It used to be true
that readers of these subjects read them because of their great antecedent
interest in them--an interest so great that interesting methods of
presentation became unnecessary. No one cared about the masses, still less
about what they might or might not read. Things are changed now; we are
trying to advertise stored ideas to persons unfamiliar with them and we
are suddenly awakening to the fact that our stock is not all that it
should be. We need history, science and travel fascinatingly presented--at
least as interestingly as the fiction-writer presents his subjects. This
is by no means impossible, because it has been done, in a few instances.
We are by no means in the position of the Irishman who didn't know whether
or not he could play the piano, because he had never tried. Some of our
authors have tried--and succeeded. No one after William James can say that
philosophy cannot be made interesting to the ordinary reader. Tyndall
showed us long ago that physics could interest the unlearned, and there
are similarly interesting writers on history and travel--more perhaps in
these two classes than any other. But it remains true that the vast
majority of non-fiction books do not attract, and were not written with
the aim of attracting, the ordinary reader such as the libraries are now
trying to reach. The result is that the fiction writers are usurping the
functions of these uninteresting scribes and are putting history, science,
economics, biology, medicine--all sorts of subjects, into fictional
form--a sufficient answer to any who may think that the subjects
themselves, as distinguished from the manner in which they are presented,
are calculated to repel the ordinary reader. Fiction is thus becoming, if
it has not already become, the sole form of literary expression, so far as
the ordinary reader is concerned. This is interesting; it justifies the
large stock of fiction in public libraries and the large circulation of
that stock. It does not follow that it is commendable or desirable. For
one thing it places truth and falsehood precisely on the same plane. The
science or the economics in a good novel may be bad and that in a poor
novel may be good. Then again, it dilutes the interesting matter with
triviality. It is right that those who want to know how and when and under
what circumstances Edwin and Angelina concluded to get married should have
an opportunity of doing so, but it is obviously unfair that the man who
likes the political discussions put into the mouth of Edwin's uncle, or
the clever descriptions of country-life incident to the courtship, should
be burdened with information of this sort, in which he has little
interest.

To those who are interested in the increase of non-fiction percentages I
would therefore say: devise some means of working upon the authors. These
gentry are yet ignorant of the existence of a special library public. Some
day they will wake up, and then fiction will be relieved from the burden
that oppresses it at present--of carrying most of the interesting
philosophy, religion, history and social science, in addition to doing its
own proper work.

Meanwhile the librarian, who is interested in advertising ideas, must do
what he can with his material. There is still a saving remnant of
interesting non-fiction, and there is a goodly body of readers whose
antecedent interest in certain subjects is great enough to attract them to
almost any book on those subjects. I have purposely avoided the discussion
here of the details of library publicity, which has been well done
elsewhere; but I cannot refrain from expressing my opinion that the
ordinary work of the library and its stock of books if properly displayed,
are more effective than any other means that can be used for the purpose.
From a series of articles entitled "How to Start Libraries in Small Towns"
by A.M. Pendleton, I quote the following, which appears in The Library
Journal for May 13, 1877:

"Plant it [the library] among the people, where its presence will be seen
and felt,... Other things being equal, it is better to have it upon the
first floor, so that passers-by will see its goodly array of books and be
tempted to inspect them."

Excellent advice; we might take it if we had not built our libraries as
far away from the street as possible and lifted them up on as high a
pedestal as our money would buy. Who, passing by a modern library
building, branch or central, can by any possibility see through the
windows enough of the interior to tell whether it is a library rather than
a postoffice, a bank, or an office?

Before moving into its new home the St. Louis Public Library occupied
temporarily a business building having a row of six large plate-glass
windows on one side, directly on the sidewalk, enabling passers-by to see
clearly all that went on in the adult lending-delivery room. The effect on
the circulation was noteworthy. During the last months of our occupancy we
went further and utilized each of the windows for a book display. This was
in charge of a special committee of the staff, and its results were beyond
expectation. In one window we had a shelfful of current books, open to
attractive pictures, with a sign reminding wayfarers that they might be
taken out by cardholders and that cards were free. In another we had
standard works, without pictures, but open at attractive pages. In another
we had children's books; in another, open reference or art books in a
dust-proof case--and so on. Each of these windows was seldom without its
contingent of gazers, and the direct effect on library circulation was
noticed by all. At the end of the year we moved into our great
million-and-a-half-dollar building; and beautiful as it is--satisfactory
as are its arrangements--we have had--alas--to give up our show windows.
We can, it is true, have show cases in the great entrance hall, but we
want to attract outsiders, not insiders. Some of our enthusiastic staff
want to build permanent show cases on the sidewalk. What we may possibly
do is to rent real show windows opposite. What we do not desire, is to
abandon our publicity plan altogether. But when, oh when, shall we have
libraries (branches at any rate, if our main buildings must be monumental)
that will throw themselves open to the public eye, luring in the wayfarer
to the joys of reading, as the commercial window does to the delights of
gumdrops or neckties?

One of the greatest steps ever taken toward the advertisement of ideas was
the adoption, on a large scale, of the open shelf. This throws the books
of a library, or many of them, open to public inspection and handling; it
encourages "browsing"--the somewhat aimless rambling about and dipping
here and there into a volume.

If we are to present ideas to our would-be readers in great variety,
hoping that among them there may be toothsome bait, surely there could be
no better way than this. The only trouble is that it appeals only to those
who are already sufficiently interested in stored ideas to enter the
library.

We must remember, however, that by our method of sending out books for
home use we are making a great open-shelf of the whole city. While the
number of volumes in any one place may be small, the books are constantly
changing so that the non-reader has a good chance of seeing in his
friend's house something that may attract him. That this may affect the
use of the library it is essential that he who sees a library book on the
table or in the hands of a fellow passenger on a car must be able to
recognize its source at once, so that, if attracted, he may be led thither
by the suggestion. Nothing is better for this purpose than the library
seal, placed on the book where all may see it; and that all may recognize
it, it should also be used wherever possible, in connection with the
library--on letter heads, posters, lists, pockets and cards, so that the
public association between its display and the work of the library shall
become strong.

This making the whole outstanding supply of circulating books an agency in
our publicity scheme for ideas is evidently more effective as the books
better fit and satisfy their users; for in that case we have an unpaid
agent with each book. The adaptation of book to user helps our
advertisement of ideas, and that in turn aids us in adapting book to user.
When a dynamo starts, the newly arisen current makes the field stronger
and that in turn increases the current. Only here we must have just a
little residual magnetism in the field magnet to start the whole process.
In the library's work the residual magnetism is represented by the latent
interest in ideas that is present in every community. And I can do no
better, in closing, than to emphasize the fact that everything that
advertises ideas, even if totally unconnected with their recorded form in
books, helps the library and pushes forward its work.

Itself a product of the great extension of intellectual activity to
classes in which it was formerly bounded by narrow limits, the library is
bound to widen those limits wherever they can be stretched, and every
movement of them reacts to help it. Surely advertisement on its part is an
evangel--a bearing of good intellectual tidings into the darkness. We are
spiritualistic mediums in the best sense--the bearers of authentic
messages from all the good and great of past or present time; only with
us, no turning on of the light, no publicity however glaring, will break
the spell or do otherwise than aid, for whether we succeed or fail,
whether we live or die, those messages, recorded as they are in books,
will stand while humanity remains.




THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, THE PUBLIC SCHOOL, AND THE SOCIAL CENTER MOVEMENT[7]

[7] Read before the National Education Association.


The center of a geometrical figure is important, not for its size and
content, but for its position--not for what it is in itself, but for its
relations to the other elements of the figure. And words used with derived
meanings are used best when their original significations are kept in
mind. The business center of a city does not contain all of that city's
commercial activity; when we speak of the church as a religious center, we
do not mean that there is to be no religious activity in the home or in
other walks of life; as for the center of population of a large and
populous country, it may be out in the prairie where neither man nor his
dwellings are to be seen. All these centers are what they are because of
certain relationships. It is so with a social center. But social
relationships cover a wide field. The relationships of business, of
religion, even of mere co-existence, are all social. May we have a center
for so wide a range of activities? Even the narrower relations of business
or of religion tend to form subsidiary groups and to multiply subsidiary
centers. In a large city we may have not only a general business center
but centers of the real estate business, of the hardware or textile
trades, and so on. Our religious affiliations condense into denominational
centers.

In the district of a large city where newly arrived foreign immigrants
gather, you will be shown the group of blocks where the Poles or the
Hungarians have segregated themselves from the rest, and even within
these, the houses where dwell families from a particular province or even
from one definite city or village. Man is social but he is socially
clannish, and the broadest is not so much he who refuses to recognize
these clan or caste relationships as he who enters into the largest number
of them--he who keeps in touch with his childhood home, has a wide
acquaintance among those of his own religious faith and of his chosen
business or profession, keeps up his old college friendships, is
interested in collecting coins or paintings and knows all the other
collectors, is active in civic and charitable societies, takes an interest
in education and educators, and so on. The social democracy that should
succeed in abolishing all these groups or leveling them--that should
recognize no relationships but the broader ones that underly all human
effort and feeling--the touches of nature that make the whole world
kin--would be barren indeed.

We cannot spare these fundamentals; we could not get rid of them if we
would; but civilization advances by building upon them, and to do away
with these additions would be like destroying a city to get at its
foundation, in the vain hope of securing some wide-reaching result in
economics or aesthetics. Occupying a foremost place among these groupings
is the large division embracing our educational activities. And these are
social not only in the broad sense, but also in the narrower. The
intercourse of student with student in the school and even of reader with
reader in the library, especially in such departments as the children's
room, is so obviously that of society that we need dwell on it no further.

This intercourse, while a necessary incident of education in the mass, is
only an incident. It is sufficiently obtrusive, however, to make it
evident that any use of school or library building for social purposes is
fit and proper. There is absolutely nothing new nor strange about such
use. In places that cannot afford separate buildings for these purposes,
the same edifice has often served for church, schoolhouse, public library,
and as assembly room for political meetings, amateur theatricals, and
juvenile debating societies. The propriety of all this has never been
questioned and it is difficult to see why it should not be as proper in a
town of 500,000 inhabitants as in one of 500. The incidence of the cost is
a matter of detail. Why should such purely social use of these educational
buildings--always common in small towns--have been allowed to fall into
abeyance in the larger ones? It is hard to say; but with the recent great
improvements in construction, the building of schools and libraries that
are models of beauty, comfort, and convenience, there has arisen a not
unnatural feeling in the public that all this public property should be
put to fuller use. Why should children be forced to dance on the street or
in some place of sordid association when comfortable and convenient halls
in library or school are closed and unoccupied? Why should the local
debating club, the mothers' meeting--nay, why should the political ward
meeting be barred out? Side by side with this trend of public opinion
there has been an awakening realization on the part of many connected with
these institutions that they themselves might benefit by such extended
use.

Probably this realization has come earlier and more fully to the library,
because its educational function is directed so much more upon adults. The
library is coming to be our great continuation school--an institution of
learning with an infinity of purely optional courses. It may open its
doors to any form of adult social activity.

There are forms of activity proper to a social center that require special
apparatus or equipment. These may be furnished in a building erected for
the purpose, as are the Chicago fieldhouses. Here we have swimming-pools,
gymnasiums for men and for women, and all the rest of it. A branch library
is included and some would house the school also under the same roof. We
may have to wait long for the general adoption of such a composite social
center. Our immediate problem is to supply an immediate need by using
means directly at our disposal. And it is remarkable how many kinds of
neighborhood activity may take place in a room unprovided with any special
equipment. A brief glance over our own records for only a few months past
enables me to classify them roughly as athletic or outdoor, purely social,
educational, debating, political, labor, musical, religious, charitable or
civic, and expository, besides many that defy or elude classification.

The athletic or outdoor organizations include the various turning or
gymnastic clubs and the Boy and Girl Scouts; the social organizations
embrace dancing-classes, "welfare" associations, alumni and graduate clubs
of schools and colleges, and dramatic clubs; the educational, which are
very numerous, reading circles, literary clubs galore, free classes in
chemistry, French, psychology, philosophy, etc., and all such
organizations as the Jewish Culture Club, the Young People's Ethical
Society, the Longan Parliamentary Class, and the Industrial and Business
Women's Educational leagues. Religious bodies are parish meetings,
committees of mission boards, and such organizations as the Theosophical
Society; charitable or civic activities include the National Conference of
Day Nurseries, the Central Council of Civic Agencies, the W.C.T.U.,
playground rehearsals for the Child Welfare Exhibit, and the Business
Men's Association; and the Advertising Men's League; musical organizations
embrace St. Paul's Musical Assembly, the Tuesday Choral Club, etc. Among
exhibitions are local affairs such as wild flower shows, an exhibit of
bird-houses, collections from the Educational Museum, the Civil League's
Municipal Exhibit, selected screens from the Child Welfare Exhibit, and
the prize-winners from the St. Louis Art Exhibit held in the art room of
our central library. Then we have the Queen Hedwig Branch, the Clay School
Picnic Association, the Aero Club, the Lithuanian Club, the Philotechne
Club, the Fathers' Club, and the United Spanish War Veterans.

I trust you will not call upon me to explain the objects of some of these,
as such a demand might cause me embarrassment--not because their aims are
unworthy, but because these are skilfully obscured by their names. If
anyone believes that there is a limit to the capacity of the human race
for forming groups and subgroups on a moment's notice, for any reason or
for no reason at all, I would refer him to our assembly room and clubroom
records; and he would find, I think, that these are typical of every large
library offering the use of such rooms somewhat freely.

It will be noted that the library takes no part in organizing or operating
any of these activities; it does not have to do so.

The successful leader is he who repairs to a hill and raises his standard,
knowing that at sight of it followers will flock around him. When you drop
a tiny crystal into a solution, the atoms all rush to it naturally: there
is no effort or compulsion except that of the aptitudes that their Creator
has implanted in them. So it is with all centers, business or religious or
social. No one instituted a campaign to locate the business center of a
city at precisely such a square or corner. Things aggregate, and the point
to which they tend is their center; they make it, it does not make them.
The leader on a hill is a leader because he has followers; without them he
would be but a lone warrior. The school or the library that says proudly
to itself, "Go to; I will be a social center," may find itself in the same
lonely position. It can offer an opportunity: that is all. It can offer
houseroom to clubs, organizations, and groups of all kinds, whether
permanent or temporary, large or small, but its usefulness as a social
center depends largely on the existence of these and on their desire for a
meeting place. We have in St. Louis six branch libraries with assembly
rooms and clubrooms--in all a dozen or so. I have before me the calendar
for a single week and I find 55 engagements, running from 24 at one branch
down thru 13, 8, 6, and 3 to one. If I had before me only the largest
number I should conclude that branch libraries as social centers were a
howling success; if only the smallest, I should say that they were dismal
failures. Why the difference? For the same reason that the leader who
displays his standard may or may not be surrounded with eager "flocking"
followers. There may be no one within earshot, or they may have no stomach
for the war, or they may not be interested in the cause that he
represents. Or again, he may not shout loud or persuasively enough, or his
standard may not be attractive enough in form or color, or mounted on a
sufficiently high staff.

I have said that all we can offer is opportunity; to change our figure, we
can furnish the drinking-fountain--thirst must bring the horse to it. But
we must not forget that we offer our opportunity in vain unless we are
sure that everyone who might grasp it realizes our offer and what it
means.

Here is the chance for personal endeavor. If the young people in a
neighborhood continue to hold their social meetings over a saloon when the
branch library or the school is perfectly willing to offer its assembly
room, it is pretty certain that they do not understand that offer, or that
they mistrust its sincerity, or that there is something wrong that might
be remedied by personal effort. In the one of our branches that is most
used by organizations there is this personal touch. But I should hesitate
to say that the others do not have it too. There are plenty of
organizations near this busiest library and there are no other good places
for them to meet. In the neighborhood of some other branches there are
other meeting-places, and elsewhere, perhaps, the social instinct is not
so strong, or at any rate the effort to organize is lacking. Should the
librarian step out and attempt to stimulate this social instinct and to
guide this organizing effort? There is room for difference of opinion
here.

Personally I think that he should not do it directly and officially as a
librarian. He may do it quietly and unobtrusively like any other private
citizen, but he needs all his efforts, all his influence, to bring the
book and the reader together in his community. Sometimes by doing this he
can be doing the other too, and he can always do it vicariously. He should
bear in mind that the successful man is not he who does everything
himself, but he who can induce others to do things--to do them in his way
and to direct them toward his ends. Even in the most sluggish, the most
indifferent community there are these potential workers with enthusiasms
that need only to be awakened to be let loose for good. The magic key is
often in the librarian's girdle, and his free offer of house room and
sympathy, with good literature thrown in, will always be of powerful
assistance in this kind of effort. He will seldom need to do more than to
make clear the existence and the nature of the opportunity that he offers.
I know that there are some librarians and many more teachers who hesitate
to open their doors in any such way as this; who are afraid that the
opportunities offered will be misused or that the activities so sheltered
will be misjudged by the public. It has shocked some persons that a young
people's dancing-class has been held, under irreproachable auspices, in
one of our branch libraries; others have been grieved to see that
political ward meetings have taken place in them, and that some rather
radical political theories have been debated there. These persons forget
that a library never takes sides. It places on its shelves books on the
Civil War from the standpoint of both North and South, histories of the
great religious controversies by both Catholics and Protestants, ideas and
theories in science and philosophy from all sides and at all angles. It
may give room at one time to a young people's dancing-class and at another
to a meeting of persons who condemn dancing. Its walls may echo one day to
the praises of our tariff system and on another to fierce denunciations of
it.

These things are all legitimate and it is better that they should take
place in a library or a school building than in a saloon or even in a
grocery store. The influence of environment is gently pervasive. I may be
wrong, but I cannot help thinking that it is easier to be a gentleman in a
library, whether in social meeting or in political debate, than it is in
some other places. In one of our branches there meets a club of men who
would be termed anarchists by some people. The branch librarian assures me
that the brand of anarchism that they profess has grown perceptibly milder
since they have met in the library. It is getting to be literary,
academic, philosophic. Nourished in a saloon, with a little injudicious
repression, it might perhaps have borne fruit of bombs and dynamite.

In this catholicity I cannot help thinking that the library as an
educational institution is a step ahead of the school. Most teachers would
resent the imputation of partisanship on the part of the school, and yet
it is surely partisan--in some ways rightly and inevitably so. One cannot
well explain both sides of any question to a child of six and leave its
decision to his judgment. This is obvious; and yet I cannot help thinking
that there is one-sided teaching of children who are at least old enough
to know that there is another side, and that the one-sided teaching of
two-sided subjects might be postponed in some cases until two-sided
information would be possible and proper. Where a child is taught one side
and finds out later that there is another, his resentment is apt to be
bitter; it spoils the educational effect of much that he was taught and
injures the influence of the institution that taught him. My resentment is
still strong against the teaching that hid from me the southern viewpoint
concerning slavery and secession, the Catholic viewpoint of what we
Protestants call the Reformation--dozens of things omitted from textbooks
on dozens of subjects because they did not happen to meet the approval of
the textbook compiler. I am no less an opponent of slavery--I am no less a
Protestant--because I know the other side, but I think I am a better man
for knowing it, and I think it a thousand pities that there are thousands
of our fellow citizens, on all sides of all possible lines, from whom our
educative processes have hid even the fact that there is another side.
This question, as I have said, does not affect the library, and
fortunately need not affect it. And as we are necessarily two-sided in our
book material so we can open our doors to free social or neighborhood use
without bothering our heads about whether the users are Catholics,
Protestants, or Jews; Democrats, Republicans, or Socialists; Christian
Scientists or suffragists. The library hands our suffrage and
anti-suffrage literature to its users with the same smile, and if it hands
the anti-suffrage books to the suffragist, and vice versa, both sides are
certainly the better for it.

I have tried to make it clear in what I have said that in this matter of
social activity, public institutions should go as far as they can in
furnishing facilities without taking upon themselves the burden of
administration. I believe fully in municipal ownership of all kinds of
utilities, but rarely in municipal operation. Municipal ownership
safeguards the city, and private or corporate operation avoids the
numerous objections to close municipal control of detail. So the library
authorities may retain sufficient control of these social activities by
the power that they have of admitting them to the parts of the buildings
provided for them, or of excluding them at any time. These activities
themselves are better managed by voluntary bodies, and, as I have said,
there is no indication that the formation of such bodies is on the wane.
The establishment and operation of a musical or athletic club, a debating
society, or a Boy Scouts company, are surely quite as educational as the
activities themselves in which their members engage. Do not let us
arrogate to ourselves such opportunities as these. I should be inclined to
take this attitude also with regard to the public playgrounds, were they
not somewhat without the province of this paper; and I take it very
strongly with regard to the public school. Throw open the school buildings
as soon as you can, and as freely as you can to every legitimate form of
social activity, but let your relationship to this activity be like that
of the center to the circle--in it and of it, but embracing no part of its
areal content. So, I am convinced, will it be best for all of us--for
ourselves, the administrators of public property, and for the public, the
owning body which is now demanding that it should not be barred out by its
servants from that property's freest and fullest use.




THE SYSTEMATIZATION OF VIOLENCE


The peace propaganda has suffered much from the popular impression that
many of those engaged in it are impractical enthusiasts who are assuming
the possibility of doing away with passions and prejudices incident to our
very humanity, and of bringing about an ideal reign of love and good will.
Whether this impression is or is not justified we need not now inquire. It
is the impression itself that is injuring the cause of peace, and will
continue to injure it until it is removed.

It may at least be lessened by allowing the mind to dwell for a time on
another aspect of the subject in which the regime of peace that would
follow the discontinuance of all settlement of disputes by violence will
appear to consist not so much in the total disappearance of violence from
the earth as in the use of it for a different purpose, namely, the
preservation of the peaceful status quo, by a systematic and lawful use of
force, or at any rate, the readiness to employ it.

A state of peace, whether between individuals or nations, whether without
or within a regime of law, always partakes of the nature of an armed
truce: under one regime, however, the arms are borne by the possible
contestants themselves; under the other, by the community whose members
they are. If there is a resort to arms, violence ensues under both
regimes; in both cases it tends ultimately to restore peace, but the
action is more certain and more systematic when the violence is exerted by
the community.

These laws may apply indifferently to a community of individuals or to one
of nations. The most cogent and the most valid argument at the disposal of
the peace advocate is the fact that we no longer allow the individual to
take the law into his own hand, and that logically we should equally
prohibit the nation from doing so. This is unanswerable, but its force has
been greatly weakened by the assumption, which it requires no great
astuteness to find unwarranted, that the settlement of individual quarrels
by individual force has resulted from--or at least resulted in--the
discontinuance of violence altogether, or in the dawn of a general era of
good-will, man to man. On the contrary, it is very doubtful whether there
is less violence to-day than there would be if the operation of law were
suspended altogether; the difference, is that the violence has shifted its
incidence and altered its aim--it is civic and social and no longer
individual.

If we are to introduce the regime of law among nations as among
individuals, our first step must be similarly to shift the incidence of
violence. In so doing we may not decrease it, we may, indeed, increase
it--but we shall none the less be taking that step in the only possible
direction to achieve our purpose.

Among individuals, custom, crystallizing into law, generally precedes the
enforcement of that law by the community. Hence, a somewhat elaborate code
may exist side by side with the settlement of disputes, under that code,
by personal combat. We have among nations such a code, and we yet admit
the settlement of disputes by war, because the incidence of violence has
not yet completely shifted. We have established a tribunal to act, in
certain cases, on behalf of the community of nations, but we have not yet
given that tribunal complete jurisdiction and we have given it no power
whatever to enforce its decrees. It is on this latter point that I desire
to dwell. In a community of individuals, there are two ways of using
violence to enforce law--by the professional police force and by the posse
of citizens. The former is more effective, but the latter is often readier
and more certain in particular instances, especially in primitive
communities. To give it force we must have readiness on the part of every
citizen to respond to a call from the proper officer, and ability to do
effective service, especially by the possession of arms and skill in their
use. These requisites are not generally found in more advanced
communities.

In like manner, the decrees of an international tribunal might be enforced
either by the creation of an international army or by calling upon as many
of the nations as necessary to aid in coercing the non-law-abiding member
of the international community. Each nation is already armed and ready.

Whatever may be thought of the ultimate possibility of an international
army, it must be evident that the principle of the posse must serve us at
the outset. An international army would always consist in part of members
of the nation to be coerced, whereas, in selecting a posse those furthest
in race and in sympathy from the offender might always be chosen, just as
members of a hostile clan would make up the best posse to arrest a
Highlander for sheep-stealing.

Moreover, the posse has been used internationally more than once, as when
decrees have been pronounced by a general European Congress and some
particular nation or nations have been charged with their execution.

When a frontier community that has been a law unto itself gets its first
sheriff, the earliest visible result is not impossibly a sudden increase,
instead of a decrease, of violence. There is a war of the community,
represented by the sheriff and the good citizens, against all the bad
ones. Even so it may be expected that among the first results of an
effective agreement to enforce the decrees of an international tribunal,
would be an exceptionally great and violent war. Sooner or later some
nation would be sure to take issue with an unpopular decree and refuse to
obey it. This would probably be one of the larger and more powerful
nations, for a weaker power would not proceed to such lengths in protest.

Not improbably other nations might join the protesting power. The result
would be a war; it might even be the world war that we have been fearing
for a generation. It might conceivably be the greatest and the bloodiest
war that the world has yet seen. Yet it would be far the most glorious war
of history, for it would be a struggle on behalf of law and order in the
community of nations--a fight to uphold that authority by whose exercise
alone may peace be assured to the world. The man who shudders at the
prospect of such a war, who wants peace, but is unwilling to fight for it,
should cease his efforts on behalf of a universal agreement among nations,
for there is no general agreement without power to quell dissension.

This is not the place to discuss the details of an international agreement
to enforce the decrees of an international tribunal. It may merely be said
that if the most powerful and intelligent communities of men that have
ever existed cannot devise machinery to do what puny individuals have long
been successfully accomplishing, they had better disband and coalesce in
universal anarchy.

My object here is neither to propose plans nor to discuss details, but
merely to point out that not the abandonment, but the systematization of
violence is the goal of a rational peace propaganda, and that when this is
once acknowledged and universally realized, an important step will have
been taken toward winning over a class of persons who now oppose a
world-peace as impractical and impossible.

These persons disapprove of disarmament: and from the point of view here
advocated, a general disarmament would be the last thing to be desired.
The possible member of a posse must bear arms to be effective. Armaments
may have to be limited and controlled by international decree, but to
disarm a nation would be as criminal and foolish as it would be to take
away all weapons from the law-abiding citizens of a mining town as a
preliminary to calling upon them to assist in the arrest of a notorious
band of outlaws.

Again: a common objection to the peace propaganda is that without war we
shall have none of the heroic virtues that war calls into being. This
objection fails utterly when we consider that what we shall get under a
proper international agreement is not the abolition of war, but simply an
assurance that when there is a war it will be one in which every good
citizen can take at once the part of international law and order--a
contest between the law and the law-breaker, and not one in which both
contestants are equally lawless. Thus the profession of arms will still be
an honorable one--it will, in fact, be much more honorable than it is
to-day, when it may at any moment be prostituted to the service of greed
or commercialism.




THE ART OF RE-READING


"I have nothing to read," said a man to me once. "But your house seems to
be filled with books." "O, yes; but I've read them already." What should