EDITOR'S TABLE. 



125 



No ; and we are sorry that some peo- 

 ple of more or less scientific com- 

 petence, who, as we think, might 

 be better employed, are devoting 

 their efforts toward promoting this 

 general condition of mental unsettle- 

 ment. It is a comfort to learn that 

 the assembled psychologists at Ge- 

 neva were not disposed to give much 

 countenance to the telepathic Will- 

 o'-the-wisp. 



TEE ABUSE OF FREE LIBB ARIES. 



At its recent annual meeting in 

 Cleveland, the American Library 

 Association heard some candid criti- 

 cism from its president, Mr. John 

 Cotton Dana, Librarian of the Public 

 Library of Denver. He feared that 

 his enthusiasm for the free public 

 library was born more of contagion 

 than of conviction. In the public 

 library, he said, you have stored a 

 few thousand volumes, including, of 

 course, the best books of all time 

 which no one reads and a generous 

 percentage of fiction of the cheaper 

 sort. To this place come in good 

 proportion the idle and the lazy, and 

 also the people who can not endure 

 the burden of a thought, and who 

 fancy they are improving their 

 minds, while, in fact, they are simply 

 letting the cool water of knowledge 

 trickle through the sieve of an idle 

 curiosity. The more persistent visit- 

 ors are largely men who have either 

 failed in a career, or never had a 

 career, or do not wish a career. 



Mr. Dana charged the free public 

 library with relieving the idle, the 

 incompetent, and the indifferent 

 reader from the necessity would he 

 have books of going to work to 

 earn them. It checks, he continued, 



the serious reader in collecting a 

 library of his own adapted to the 

 wants and tastes of himself and his 

 family. It leads parents to regard 

 with indifference the general read- 

 ing of their children, just as the free 

 public school may lead them to be 

 indifferent to their formal educa- 

 tion. 



This and much more in the same 

 strain was loudly applauded by Mr. 

 Dana's large and representative audi- 

 ence of librarians. It is evident that 

 the abuses of free public libraries 

 have led to much searching of heart 

 among their chief officers. They are 

 feeling, as the teachers of the public 

 schools also feel, that they can not 

 take the place of the parent who ab- 

 dicates from one of the primary re- 

 sponsibilities of parenthood. A child 

 whose father and mother hand over 

 its mental and moral culture to the 

 teacher and the librarian virtually be- 

 comes an orphan. Neither public 

 school nor public library can do its 

 duty toward its pupils and readers 

 without the hearty and intelligent 

 co-operation of parents. Mr. Dana's 

 address was clearly intended to 

 traverse the easy optimism and self- 

 gratulatory vein usual in presiden- 

 tial utterances. His criticisms will 

 bear fruit in pointing to the abuses 

 and losses inevitable when the form 

 of gratuity is impressed upon a com- 

 fort or a luxury which each should 

 buy for himself. The form of gra- 

 tuity is a form only; at great and 

 increasing cost a service is proffered 

 which should be rendered, not in 

 the free public library but in the 

 home ; or, if a compromise must 

 be made, then by the free public 

 library watchfully directed from the 

 home. 



