The Library and Society Part 12

It is well to hold up high ideals, but it would be a sad mistake to underrate the services of the n.o.ble men and women who in some, perhaps many, respects fall far short of the standards we lay down, and yet who have done, and are doing well, much of the world's best work. Let us dwell on what has been well done, not on what has been omitted or on what might have been done by other men in other circ.u.mstances.

I remember, some twenty-five years ago, reading in George Eliot's _Romola_ these words, which we should remember when thinking of any great librarian who of necessity fails in some respects to meet all our ideals: "It was the fas.h.i.+on of old, when an ox was led out for sacrifice to Jupiter, to chalk the dark spots and give the offering a false show of unblemished whiteness. Let us fling away the chalk, and boldly say the victim was spotted; but it was not therefore in vain that his mighty heart was laid on the altar of men's highest hopes."

METHODS OF SECURING THE INTEREST OF A COMMUNITY

This paper by Wm. E. Foster, Librarian of the Providence Library, appears in the double number of _The Library Journal_ for September-October, 1880. Written forty years ago it is more advanced from the standpoint of socialization, especially as regards group-action, than some p.r.o.nouncements that one might hear to-day. A sketch of Mr.

Foster appears in Vol. I. of this series.

This mainly resolves itself into a consideration of direct and indirect methods. The one attempts only to supply the public with what it wants; the other, striving after the truest improvement of the readers, in time secures, with the growth of intelligent appreciation, an interest even more active, and vastly more permanent, than the other. No library may safely disregard either cla.s.s of methods, and their proper adjustment is a point which may very profitably engage much of the librarian's attention.

It is true that the first of these is not likely to escape his attention. "What the public wants" is a consideration which will meet him frequently, from one end of the year to the other. No one needs to be told, for instance, that the public wants to be amused. Doubtless the cla.s.s of books described as "humorous" would const.i.tute, to a large body of readers in any one of our cities, the true ideal of a collection of books. The taste for imaginative literature begins early and lasts long, with a large number of readers. "Something new" is a phrase whose attractiveness is not far from universal. Still further, if it is a question between a "true account," which deals with stirring adventures, and another "true account," whose pages are devoted to an impa.s.sive statement of scientific facts, there is not much question which will find the most readers among the general public. "What the public wants,"

then, as regards the choice of books, while it certainly does not indicate a high degree of enlightenment, has perhaps the merit of being true to nature.

There are certain points of administration, also, in which the interest of the public is concerned. It is in favor of having the library as near its place of residence as possible; and here, unfortunately, "the public" is a plural personage which cannot all be suited at once. It is in favor of that method of obtaining the privileges of the library which requires the least trouble and inconvenience on its part, and seldom sees the need of a careful verification of the applicant's ident.i.ty. It is in favor of the fewest restrictions on access to the books, and on the time for keeping them. It is in favor, decidedly, of that "charging system" which will deliver the book soonest. It is in favor of finding the library open on all days and at all hours, sometimes even not regarding the specified hours announced as worthy of consideration. In short, while it is by no means difficult to persuade the public of the reasonableness of a particular restriction, yet its first thought is undeniably largely influenced by selfish considerations.

Nor is the larger part of the public any more fond of bestowing deep and painstaking thought upon the books which it reads, and of carrying the mind systematically through a complicated mental process. It is not improbable that some readers would be glad of some method of using books which should save them the trouble of any mental process. And, while these readers are so much averse to any troublesome efforts toward improvement on their own part, it would be scarcely reasonable to look for any very intelligent supervision by them of the reading of their children, or of the pupils in the schools. Here, again, what the public wants is "the royal road"--some "short and easy method."

That library, then, which would awaken and develop a lively interest among its readers in the miscellaneous public, cannot certainly complain of a lack of methods by which to secure such interest. It may include in its selection of books a suitable percentage of fiction, and humorous works. It may infuse "new blood" into the library by frequent and regular purchase of the latest publications. It may add largely to the department of voyages and travels, of books copiously ill.u.s.trated,--of popular literature, in short. It may place its main building in the center of population, and establish branches for the accommodation of outlying localities. It may recognize the desirableness of "the least red tape" in registering readers, of open book-shelves, of expeditious serving of readers, and long periods of time for the use of the library and the retention of books. It may furnish its readers with explanations and directions for obtaining and using the books which shall require the least difficulty in understanding and applying them. It may, and it should, recognize the value of all these principles, and the library which fails to act on them does so at its peril. Yet these points do not comprise all that demand attention; and the effectiveness of even these is due to the limits which are set to them. A certain amount of fiction is well enough, but to enlarge this department at the expense of all others would clearly defeat the library's purpose. Diminution of restrictions in the use of books is certainly agreeable to the public, but the removal of all restrictions would result in such a loss of books as would soon work its own cure.

The question, "What does the public want?" is not the only, nor, in fact, the chief question to be borne in mind in the conduct of a library. One has only to keep his eyes open to see how suggestive as to methods is this other question: "Of what service may the library be?"

And it is safe to say that one who has not given the subject attention will be surprised to find at how many points a collection of books, and the thought there contained, touch human life. Here is a machine-shop with its hundred or more workmen, many of whom are anxious to study some mechanical work. The library has such works, and is glad to supply them.

Here again is a society of natural history, whose members are systematically studying some department of natural science. To them, also, the library willingly offers its resources in that department.

With no less willingness it offers its cooperation to those who are following a course of public lectures on some topic of political science or of art, to a college cla.s.s studying topically some epoch of history or period of literature; or to a public-school teacher, with a cla.s.s in geography; or a parent desiring some suitable reading for a child. Or, with no specified cla.s.s of persons in view, it seeks to make its collection generally available, by regular references to its resources on matters of current and universal interest.

Much more effective, however, than the best of such attempts at reaching cla.s.ses of readers will be the aid rendered to individual readers. Not general and indefinite, but specific and direct a.s.sistance, is here given, and, although at first this kind of work might seem to be impracticable in a large library, yet one who tries it will be interested to see how far such individual methods may be introduced. The librarian almost mechanically learns "to pigeon-hole" in his mind the peculiar tastes and lines of reading of single readers, and, when the occasion presents itself, can bring to their notice books and articles which they are glad to obtain. More than one librarian makes it a regular practice, in adding new books to the library or in collecting material bearing upon some one topic, to drop a postal to this and that reader who, he knows, will be glad of just this information. The more the conducting of a library can be made an individual matter, bringing particular books to the notice of particular readers, the more effective it becomes.

It remains to consider what may be called the "general effect" of such individual efforts, continued from one year to another. They will certainly result in giving the public a large amount of a.s.sistance.

Being exerted in connection with the whole community, they cannot fail to leave an influence, like the school, the church, or the newspaper,--an influence moreover, which, if wisely directed, and intelligently shaped, will make the public library idea appreciably felt in the civilization of the country.

Nor can it fail to have a reflex influence in securing the interest of the public. If methods of the former cla.s.s were able, by their direct agency, to accomplish practical results, even more significant and more permanent are those reached indirectly by this method. No cla.s.s of people will be so truly attached to the inst.i.tution, by active interest, as those who feel that they have been personally aided and improved through its agency. The former methods are directly adapted to secure popularity, the latter to win grat.i.tude; and if it should ever become necessary to choose one of these, at the expense of the other, there can be little room for hesitation. The growth of public sentiment in communities like Boston and Worcester, where public libraries have been administered on these principles, and with these ends in view, for a series of years, is very instructive. Public sentiment, like confidence, is "a plant of slow growth"; but experience shows that when the conviction has once thoroughly penetrated a community that an inst.i.tution like this is sincerely aiming to serve the public, a hold on its sympathy and interest has been acquired not easily to be shaken. It should be the aim of each librarian to make the usefulness of his inst.i.tution so manifest that the public will as soon think of dispensing with the post-office as with the library.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT

The justification for taxing the members of a community to support a Public Library, although rarely questioned to-day was argued with heat in former times. Earlier, there was the same difference of opinion with regard to the public schools. In order to obtain the argument in opposition, in its best form, we have had to draw from a British source, which we consider it proper to quote here because it elicited a reply from an American librarian which will immediately follow:

FREE LIBRARIES

(AN ARGUMENT AGAINST PUBLIC SUPPORT)

This paper, by M.D. O'Brien, forms Chapter IX of the compilation of essays ent.i.tled "A Plea for Liberty" edited by Thomas Mackay (3rd ed. London, 1894). The sub-t.i.tle of the book, "an argument against socialism and socialistic legislation," gives its viewpoint. There is a formidable introduction by Herbert Spencer in which he condemns even the extremely limited state support given at that time to general education in England as a "tyrannical system tamely submitted to by people who fancy themselves free." Mr.

Spencer ends by a.s.serting that the end, if this sort of thing is to go on, "must be a society like that of ancient Peru, dreadful to contemplate, in which the ma.s.s of the people, elaborately regimented in groups, ... were superintended in their private lives as well as in their industries and toiled hopelessly for the support of the governmental organization."

A Free Library may be defined as the socialists' continuation school.

While State education is manufacturing readers for books, State-supported libraries are providing books for readers. The two functions are logically related. If you may take your education out of your neighbour's earnings, surely you may get your literature in the same manner. Literary dependency has the same justification as educational dependency; and, no doubt, habituation to the one helps to develop a strong desire for the other. A portion of our population has by legislation acquired the right to supply itself with necessaries and luxuries at the cost of the rates. The art of earning such things for themselves has been rendered superfluous. Progress therefore halts because this all-important instinct has fallen into disuse. At a point the rates will bear no more, and those who depend on them for their pleasures are doomed to disappointment. The ident.i.ty of principle exemplified alike by compulsory education and compulsory libraries, logically involves the justification or condemnation of both; and, let us disguise the unpleasant truth in as many sounding phrases as we please, the fact remains that the carrying out of this socialistic principle means pauperism pure and simple. Have we forgotten the evils that resulted from the application of this principle under the old poor law? or do we imagine that when an evil changes its outward appearance it changes its inner essence also? The harm done to the national character by a policy of this nature varies in intensity in proportion to the necessity of the want supplied. If the thing supplied at public cost is really necessary and eagerly accepted by the people, it becomes more readily a potent cause of dependency, and a heavy and at length an insupportable charge on the ratepayers. This was the experience of the old poor law. The cost of national education is fast approaching to the same state of things, and the problem will one day have to be faced: 'How is the burden of the cost of education to be returned to the shoulders of those who are responsible for it?' In this paper we are concerned with a smaller question. A very inconsiderable section of the people really want the Free Library; the question at the polls is generally treated with apathy, and only a very small proportion of the ratepayers record their votes one way or the other. As a matter of fact the Free Library is forced upon the public by a number of doctrinaire believers in the superhuman value of a mere literary education. It is not a popular want. The vast majority of people have still a greater faith in the training which results from practical contact with the real facts of life, and still only regard book-learning as a useful supplement, easily obtainable by those who really desire it and are likely to profit by it.

The history of the Education Acts is very a.n.a.logous. The literary cla.s.ses became alarmed at the ignorance of the poor, and instead of allowing the efforts of philanthropists, aided by the growing appreciation of education amongst the labouring cla.s.s--already giving great promise of providing a true and voluntary remedy for the supposed evil--to work out a system of education on natural and healthy lines of spontaneous evolution, a course which would have added dignity and stability to the domestic life of the parents and given a real and technical system of education to the children--instead of this, the hasty politician rushed forward crying. 'The people do not want education, so we must compel them.' The compulsory and demoralizing character of the means reacts on the otherwise advantageous nature of the end, and the result is a mind-destroying system of cram for the children; summons, fines, and police for the parents. This is how the politician makes education a lovely and desirable thing. It is almost impossible to over-estimate the evils resulting from the State not allowing teachers and parents to adjust the educational arrangements so as to meet the felt requirements of the case. This communal despotism strikes at the very foundation of personal virtue, viz. the home, the instrument by which nature lifts human character above the non-moral sensuousness of the animal world. Let us never forget that the human mind is made up of lower and higher elements, and that the removal of personal duties--the practice-ground of the virtues--favours the development of the lower factors of character at the expense of the higher, of weeds at the expense of flowers.

What else can possibly result from the carrying out of a principle which means the public feeding, clothing, and lodging of children under official superintendence and control? Will it be contended that State officers can know better than parents what is really needed for children? Yet this is what our Free Educationalists are leading us to.

The system which robs the parent of one of the n.o.blest motives to effort--the desire to give a good education to his children--which weakens the sense of duty and takes away a wholesome stimulus to the mental and moral faculties, is only the beginning of an evil that menaces civilization and threatens to swallow up all natural distinctions and relations.h.i.+ps in a low and promiscuous communism. This bribe of parental irresponsibility--this patent method of s.h.i.+rking duties--which the politician offers us in exchange for our manhood, is a scheme for encouraging the race to cast itself forth into the moral darkness of a world where the parents are all childless and the children all orphans.

The Free Library, however, has not yet reached the same degree of compulsion as the Free School. A majority of the local public must vote for it before it can be established; or rather, we should say, there must be a majority favourable to it amongst _those who do take the trouble to record their votes_: usually only a very small proportion of the electorate think it worth while to cross the street in order to pay a visit to the poll. When the Library is established, its real popularity is to be measured by the fact that its books are borrowed by only about one per cent. of the population. We make bold to say that if it ever becomes popular, it will be an extremely mischievous inst.i.tution. As yet it is merely a plaything for a number of well-meaning busybodies, and an occasional convenience to a few middle-cla.s.s readers. The limited amount generally spent upon it prevents it from doing anything more than minister to the sensational indulgences of a very limited section of the reading public. If the working cla.s.ses of the country ever really become students, it will be impossible to supply them with adequate store of books from the rates: if this is attempted, it can only be at a time when books will be but a small item in the expenditure which a dominant State Socialism seeks to lay on the public purse. On the one hand will stand a cla.s.s whose only plan for satisfying their wants is the imposition of a new tax, and on the other a harried remnant of ratepayers, both soon to be overwhelmed by the near approach of national bankruptcy.

Want is the spring of human effort. Self-discipline, self-control, self-reliance, are the habits which grow in men who are allowed to act for themselves. The meddlesome forestalling of individual effort, which is being carried into mischievous excess, is going far to bind our poorer cla.s.ses for another century of dependence.

Let us run, as rapidly as possible, through a few of the pleas set up by the advocates of this form of munic.i.p.al socialism. Good books, it is said, are out of the reach of the working man. Whether this is true as regards books we shall see, but obviously it would be easy to make out a much stronger case for many other forms of amus.e.m.e.nt which are far more popular with the million than books; yet no one seriously proposes that the amus.e.m.e.nts of the poorer cla.s.ses can _all_ be supported by the rates. But a glance down the lists of some of our publishers will show any one that the statement is not true--is the very reverse of truth.

When books like 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,'

'Ra.s.selas,' 'Paul and Virginia,' Byron's 'Childe Harold,' 'Lady of the Lake,' 'Marmion,' and others, can be purchased from Messrs. d.i.c.ks at twopence each; when all Scott's novels can be obtained from the same publishers for threepence per story; when, from the same source, any of Shakespere's plays can be got for a penny each, it will not do to say that the best kind of literature is unpurchasable by a cla.s.s that spends millions a year on alcohol, as well as thousands on tobacco and other luxuries. Three or four pence, which even comparatively poor people think nothing now-a-days of spending on an ounce of tobacco or a pipe, will buy enough of the best literature to last an ordinary reader at least a week or a fortnight. And when the book is read, there is the pleasure to be derived from lending or giving it to a friend, and of accepting the loan or gift of his in return; a custom that largely obtains in country districts where no socialistic collection of unjustly gotten books exists to hinder the development of personal thrift or poison the springs of spontaneous generosity. Lying on the table where this is written is a list of the works published in Ca.s.sell's National Library. How some of the old book-lovers who are gone--who lived in the days when the purchase of a good book involved some personal sacrifice--would have appreciated this valuable library! Here are 208 of the world's best books, each one of which contains some 200 pages of clear readable type. The published price is threepence each; but a discount of twenty-five per cent. is allowed when four or five or more are purchased. It would be a waste of s.p.a.ce to give the entire list; but a few typical examples may be taken. Here are the Essays of Lord Macaulay; here are works by Plutarch, Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Lucian, Fenelon, Voltaire, Boccaccio, Gothe, and Lessing--in English, of course. Here is Walton's 'Complete Angler,' Goldsmith's 'Plays,' Bacon's 'Wisdom of the Ancients' and 'Essays.' Here are works by Burke, Swift, Steele and Addison, Milton, Johnson, Pope, Sydney Smith, Coleridge, d.i.c.kens, Landor, Fielding, Keats, Sh.e.l.ley, Defoe, Dryden, Carlyle, Locke, Bolingbroke, Shakespere, and many others. All Shakespere's plays are here complete, and each play is accompanied by the poem, story, or previous play on which it is founded. Here, for example, is the last of the series as yet published, 'All's Well that Ends Well'; it contains a translation of the story of Giletta of Narbona from Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure'; it is worth threepence to a student, if only for showing the difference between raw material and finished product. Hundreds of new novels, including some of those of Thackeray, Kingsley, d.i.c.kens, Lytton, and other well-known authors, are to be obtained in most places for 4-1/2_d._, and their secondhand price is less still. Considering the marvellous cheapness of good books, it is difficult to understand how any one can either blackmail his neighbour for them, or encourage working-men to do so. If a man will not deduct a few coppers now and then from his outlay in other luxuries to purchase literature, he cannot want literature very badly; if he does not value books sufficiently well to buy them with his own earnings he does not deserve to have them bought for him with other people's earnings. That poor women and others, who are often the sole support of a large family of children, should have their hard earnings confiscated to maintain readers--many of them well-to-do--in gratuitous literature, is an injustice not to be palliated by all the hollow cant about culture and education so freely indulged in at the present time. Some time ago there was a discussion on 'the sacrifice of education to examination.' There is another question quite as serious--the sacrifice of justice to so-called education.

Let us next consider the educational value of this inst.i.tution.

It is hardly necessary for us to say that we have no objection, either for ourselves or for our neighbours, to novel-reading. On the contrary, we regard it as a legitimate form of recreation. All we argue is that it is not a luxury which should be paid for out of the rates. Now, to listen to the advocates of Free Libraries one would imagine that these inst.i.tutions were only frequented by students, and that the books borrowed were for the most part of a profound and scholarly character.

But the very reverse of this is the case. The committee of the Blackpool Free Library, in their Report for the year 1887-8, say:--'Works of fiction and light literature enjoy the greatest degree of popularity, each book circulating eleven times in the year, while _the more instructive books in the other cla.s.ses circulate only once during the same period_.' According to this Report, out of a total average daily issue of 150 volumes, 137 are works of fiction and light literature. The average issue of history, which is the next largest item, is only 9 per diem.

No wonder is it, after such results as this, that the Committee should express the opinion 'that the rich stores of biography, history, travels, and works of science and art which have been added in recent years are deserving of greater attention than has. .h.i.therto been given to them.'

Although the nominal and frequently exceeded limit is now one penny in the pound, there is no knowing how soon it may be raised. Already one of the members of the Library a.s.sociation of the United Kingdom, a body composed to a considerable extent of librarians whose bureaucratic instincts naturally impel them to push their business by all possible means, has awarded a prize of ten guineas for a draft Library Bill, which, among other things, permits a twopenny instead of a penny rate.

'But,' says the _Daily News_ of Oct. 4th, 1889, 'the feeling appeared to be unanimous that it would be _unwise_ to put this forward as a part of the a.s.sociation's programme, as it would enormously increase the opposition to the adoption of the Act in new localities.' No regard for the ratepayers' pockets holds them back; but only a fear of injuring business by frightening the bird whose feathers are to be plucked. Were it not for this the Bill would be pushed forward, and those ratepayers who have voted for the adoption of the Act in the belief that no more than one penny can be levied, would have the rate suddenly doubled over their heads without knowing it. Perhaps, after all, it would serve them right.

The intervention of this a.s.sociation in the conduct of the agitation for Free Libraries is instructive, and points to the fact that if we admit the principle that the wants of the poorer cla.s.ses generally are to be supplied from the rates, it is not the poorer cla.s.ses themselves who are allowed to say what form the gift shall take. On the contrary the law is manipulated by a number of amiable enthusiasts who succeed in foisting their own fad on the public charges. If the working cla.s.ses were allowed to choose the application of _1d._ or _2d._ in the pound it would not go to Free Libraries.

The enormous amount of light reading indulged in by the frequenters of Free Libraries leads us to expect that these places are largely used by well-to-do and other idlers. And this is exactly what we find. Free Libraries are perfect 'G.o.d-sends' to the town loafer, who finds himself housed and amused at the public expense, and may lounge away his time among the intellectual luxuries which his neighbours are taxed to provide for him. Says Mr. Mullins, the Birmingham librarian, 'No delicacy seemed to deter the poor tramp from using, not only the news-room, but the best seats in the reference library _for a snooze_.

Already the Committee had to complain of the use of the room for _betting_, and for the transaction of various businesses, and the exhibition of samples, writing out of orders, and other pursuits more suited to the commercial room of an hotel.' And referring to another Free Library, the same authority continues:--'In the Picton Room of the Liverpool Library, alcoves were once provided with small tables, on which were pens, ink, &c., but it was found that pupils were received in them by tutors, and much private letter-writing was done therein; so that when a respectable thief took away 20 worth of books they were closed.

After the nonsense usually indulged in by the officials of literary pauperism such candour as this is positively refres.h.i.+ng. It is seldom the high priest allows us to look behind the curtain in this fas.h.i.+on. As a rule, the admission is much less direct, and can only be gathered from a careful a.n.a.lysis of the statistics. According to the Bristol Report for last year, there were 416,418 borrowers during the twelve months preceding December 31, 1889: of these 148,992 are described as having 'no occupation.' The Report of the Atkinson Free Library of Southport informs us that out of the 1283 new borrowers who joined the library last year, 536 are written down as of 'no occupation.' At the same town, in the years 1887-8, there were 641 who, according to the report, were without any occupation, out of a total of 1481. According to the annual Report of the Leamington Free Public Library for 1888-9, 187 made a return 'no occupation,' out of a total of 282 applicants. In the Yarmouth Report for the same year, out of a total of 3085 new borrowers, 1044 are described as of 'no occupation'; the report for the previous year states the proportion as follows:--Total of borrowers, 2813; 'no occupation,' 1078; in the year before that the total was--3401; 'no occupation,' 1368.

Some reports give a fuller a.n.a.lysis of the different cla.s.ses of people who use the libraries to which they refer. In the Wigan Report for last year we are told that 13,336 people made use of the reference library in that town during 1888-9. The largest items of this amount are given as follows:--Solicitors, 1214; clergy, 903; clerks and book-keepers, 1521; colliers, 961; schoolmasters and teachers, 801; architects and surveyors, 418; engineers, 490; enginemen, 438. At Newcastle-on-Tyne, last year, there were 11,620 persons used the reference library, and only 3949 of these were of 'no occupation.' Yet, notwithstanding the numerical weakness of the latter, they managed to consult nearly half the books that were consulted during that year. The total number consulted was 36,100; and 16,800 were used by people who had 'no occupation.' And this is legislation for the Working Cla.s.ses!

There is little doubt that at least forty-nine out of every fifty working-men have no interest whatever in these inst.i.tutions. For one penny they can buy their favourite newspaper, which can be carried in the pocket and read at any time; whereas if they wanted to see a paper at a Free Library they would generally have to wait half an hour or an hour in a stuffy room, without being allowed to speak during the time.

The following sensible remarks are from the pen of one who has risen to an honourable position from a very humble beginning without the aid of either Free Libraries or Free Schools:--

Not long ago a conference of working men was held at Salford to consider the question of rational amus.e.m.e.nt, when, in reply to a series of questions, it was stated that Free Libraries were not the places for poor, hard-working men, who had social wants which such libraries could not gratify.

It was argued that people who went to work from six in the morning till six at night did not want to travel a mile or so to a Free Library. Music, gymnastics, smoking and conversation rooms, and other things were suggested, but in summing up the majority of replies, it appeared that amus.e.m.e.nt rather than intellectual improvement, or even reading, was what was most wanted by men after a hard day's toil. This appears to have been realised in the erection, according to Mr. Besant's conception, of the Palace of Delight in the east end of London.

The truth is that a Free Library favours one special section of the community--the book-readers--at the expense of all the rest. The injustice of such an inst.i.tution is conspicuously apparent when it is remembered that temperaments and tastes are as various as faces. If one man may have his hobby paid for by his neighbours, why not all? Are theatre-goers, lovers of cricket, bicyclists, amateurs of music, and others to have their earnings confiscated, and their capacities for indulging in their own special hobbies curtailed, merely to satisfy gluttons of gratuitous novel-reading? A love of books is a great source of pleasure to many, but it is a crazy fancy to suppose that it should be so to all. If logic had anything to do with the matter we might expect to hear proposals for compelling the attendance of working men at the Free Library. But surely in this nineteenth century men might be trusted to choose their own amus.e.m.e.nts, and might mutually refrain from charging the cost thereof to their neighbours' account. This pandering to selfishness is bad for all parties, and doubly so to the cla.s.s it is specially intended to benefit.

The following imaginary dialogue will perhaps serve to show the inherent injustice of literary socialism.