Part 44

Lowell, Mass., admits children during the day, and supplies them with juvenile magazines. Manchester, N.H., admits children to the reading-room; but unfortunately, from various causes, they are unable to offer the necessary attractions, and few visit it.

Newport, R.I., can only furnish St. Nicholas for want of money, but children may come and go at their pleasure.

Olneyville, R.I., is offering every inducement that their means will allow to draw children to their reading-room; and to interest and instruct them seems to be the object of those in charge.

Willimantic, Conn., admits children at the age of 12 years.

Somerville, Mass., supplies juvenile magazines, and has no limit to age.

Springfield, Mass., also admits children at all ages.

The Boston Public Library, the parent of the public libraries of New England, true to its paternal instinct, begins to exert its influence over the children at the earliest years.

There are doubtless others from whom we would be glad to hear, but I confess that, after visiting and inquiring among public libraries concerning this work, I became disheartened and ceased investigation, for the popular verdict seems to be "Children and Dogs not allowed."

With our experience in this work with the children since the opening of our library in 1876, and knowing the possibilities only waiting for development, I am emboldened to speak earnestly.

Let us gather the children in; give "milk for babies," in the illustrated books which they may understand though they cannot read; juvenile magazines and literature of a healthy nature to counteract the pernicious trash that is flooding our communities.

It is only necessary to refer you to the specimens of flash literature which our boys have relinquished to us, with pale faces and trembling hands, after reading from the scrapbook here on exhibition the cuttings from the newspapers of the day showing the bad influence of the dime novel. It tells its own story far better than I can tell it, and the one in whose mind this great remedial agent originated is daily blest in seeing the good results of his experiment.

Help the children to begin early to understand that even they are of use in a community; awaken their pride and ambition in the right direction, and their future is assured.

If there are those who doubt the practicability of this work, and, like Hosea Bigelow, would

"Give more for one live bobolink Than a square mile of larks in printer's ink,"

come and see our "Flower Band," numbering 200 children, gathered from the little girls and boys who frequent our library and reading-room, from five years of age to fourteen; from the little fellow who brings three wilted daisies, or a rose without a stem, to the dainty miss with a bouquet from the greenhouse.

Their badges signify a pledge to bring flowers once a week (if possible), and to respond to a call to distribute them in any place where they will add a bit of brightness to a shadowed household; also to seek out such homes and report them. Several names have been already stricken from our list, of those who have died leaving a blessing for these little missionaries.

The influence of this work upon the children and the community cannot be told. It must be seen to be appreciated.

I have endeavored to show that upon the influence of the public library working in harmony with the spirit of the churches and the schools, with the single object of the highest welfare of the people, depends much of the prosperity, morality, and culture of our industrial communities--I might also say of our country; but when we consider that there are less than 6,000 public libraries in the United States, are we not tempted to say in the words of old, "What are they among so many?"

But let us remember that the same spirit that gave power to feed the multitude from the "five loaves and fishes" still lives in the hearts of men to animate them to good works, as shown by Messrs. Ames, Hail, Pratt, Carnegie, Osterhout, Newberry, and a host of others whose names are yet to be engraved as public benefactors on the tablets of public libraries.

May God speed the work!

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS OF JOSEPH N. LARNED

The need of stronger forces in popular education--the failure of the press--the library's opportunity, as it appeared to a scholarly librarian of the so-called "old school" in 1894.

Joseph Nelson Larned was born in Chatham, Ontario, May 11, 1836, and was educated in the public schools of Buffalo, N.Y. He served on the editorial staff of the Buffalo Express in 1859-72, was superintendent of education in Buffalo in 1872-73 and superintendent of the Buffalo Library from 1877 until it became the Public Library in 1897, after which he devoted himself to literature until his death in 1913. His best known work is his History for Ready Reference and Topical Reading. He was president of the A.L.A. in 1893-94.

It was my misfortune to be absent from the meeting at which you did me the honor to elect me to this place, and I had no opportunity, either to give my advice against that action, or to thank you for the distinction with which it clothes me. The advice I would have given is now belated; but my thanks have lost no warmth by the delay, and I pray you to accept them with belief in their sincerity. At the same time I shall venture to draw from the circumstances a certain claim upon your generosity. If it happens to me to be tripped in some of these tangles of procedure which, in such meetings as this, await the stumbling feet of an untrained presiding officer, be good enough to remember the warning I would have given you if I had had the opportunity.

We are gathered for the sixteenth meeting of the American Library Association, in the eighteenth year of its existence. Our league of the libraries is young; its history is unpretentious; but it is the history of a movement of higher importance to the world that many others that have marched with trumpets, and drums. Eighteen years ago, the conception of the Library militant, of the Library as a moving force in the world, of the Librarian as a missionary of literature, was one which a few men only had grasped; but with which those few had already begun the doing of a revolutionary work. To-day such ideals are being realized in most corners of the American republic. The last generation, and the generations before the last, were satisfied with the school as an agent of popular education. In our time we have brought the library to the help of the school, and the world is just opening its eyes to perceive the enormous value of the reinforcement that is gained from this new power.

And the discovery has come none too soon; for a desperate need of more and stronger forces in the work of popular education is pressing on us. If we reflect on the social conditions of the present day, and review a little the working of the ferments in civilized society during a few years last past, we shall marvel, I think, at the timeliness of the movement which brings the public library, just now, to the front of action among the instruments and agencies of popular education. It is our fortune, good or ill as we may regard it, to be unmistakably passing through one of the greater crisies of human history. In the last century, modern democracy got its political footing in the world. Its birth was older, and it had been cradled in divers nursing places, Swiss, Dutch, English, and New English; but last century it stepped into political history as the actor of the leading part; as the sovereign of the future, mounting his throne. From the moment it came on the stage, all wise men knew that its need above every other need was education. They made haste, in our country, to build school-houses and to set the school-master at work; seeing plainly that all they might hope for and strive for in the future would depend on the intelligence that could be put into the brain of this omnipotent sovereign who had risen to rule the world.

Well, the schools and the school-masters served their purpose reasonably well for a reason. Democracy was fairly equipped with a spelling-book and a quill-pen for the duties and responsibilities of a simple, slowly-moving time. The mass of its members, the every-day people of the farm and the shop, read the pamphlets and the weekly gazettes of their day, and were gently drawn, with unconfused minds, into one or the other of two straightly opposed political parties which sought their votes. If they lacked knowledge, there was a certain ingenuousness in their character which paid respect to the opinions of men who had more. If blundering in politics occurred, it was blundering leadership, for the most part, and more easily corrected than perversity in the ranks. So the reign of democracy was successful enough while society kept the simpler state.

But that simpler state is gone. We who are beyond middle age may say that we have seen it disappear. We have witnessed a miraculous transformation of the earth and of the people who dwell on it. We have seen the passing of Aladdin, who rubbed his magical electric lamp as he went calling Afreets from the air to be the common servants of man. A change has been wrought within fifty years that is measureless, not only in itself, but in its effects on the human race. The people who whisper in each other's ears across a continent; who know at noon-time in Nebraska what happened in the morning at Samarcand; the people to whom a hundred leagues are neighborhood, and a thousand but easy distance; for whom there is little mystery left on the face of the earth, nor anything hidden from their eyes; these people of our day are not in the likeness of the men and women who ambled horseback or rode in coaches from town to town, and who were content with a weekly mail. The fitting and furniture of mind that would make a safe member of society and a good citizen out of the man of small horizons, who lived the narrower life of a generation or two ago, are perilously scant for these times.