proffers of assistance, that local communities have accepted and supplemented his aid, does not absolve the state from library responsibility. A people, to enjoy all the rights and benefits of ownership, must have earned and paid for what

it gets.

There are those still living who see America's free school in states that in their childhood had no free school unstigmatized as a charity institution— the while their fathers were rate-paying according to the number of their children. Since the state's assumption of public educational control, the system, by becoming what it now is, the best in the world, has gradually proved not only its right to an existence, but the value of central authority emanating direct from the people. If then the library is as educators, philanthropists and other public-spirited men of the day hold one of the greatest of our educational forces, if it is truly a university of the people, should not it have a chance to flourish under the same fostering care as the public school? In its present dependency upon sporadic endowment by private philanthropy or municipal pride, its benefits reach the individual as a charity, a gift, a privilege (however we may gild the pill), not as his right-his right as a freeborn American to lay hold upon its utilities and wrest them to his purpose of making for himself a livelihood and a life, at the same time that he is increasing his value in the citizenship of his country, his helpfulness in the brotherhood of the world.

One of the arguments used against state control of the library is that the influence of such paternalism would be debilitating. This might be the case were the state to purchase a number of libraries outright, and merely throw them to the people. But that is not the very successful course it has pursued with regard to its public schools. Its policy has been rather to reward welldirected effort by offering further opportunity for increase of effort on the part of those it seeks to assist.

In my own Minnesota the establishment and continued support of publicschool libraries has been by no means neglected. The state meets the district half-way, aiding to the extent of $20 on its first order for each schoolhouse, and $10 annually on subsequent orders, provided the district itself raises an equal amount. For last year there was a total expenditure of over $70,000 by public schools for books appearing on the approved list of the Public School Library Board, including state aid of about $20,000. This outlay represented the purchase of 105,000 volumes by over 3,000 districts. The reports of the county superintendents for the year showed that out of the 7,676 school districts in the state, 5,586 had libraries with a total of 795,000 volumes.

The work of the public library among us has been strongly reinforced by that of the State Library Commission, which, in addition to sending out its secretary wherever a new library is to be organized or local sentiment is to be created or stimulated in favor of establishment, has under its control a system of free traveling libraries. These, in wisely assorted groups, are sent to districts, upon requisition and proper guarantee, for a period of six months

and their influence is most satisfactorily evidenced by the increasing demand for more of the non-fiction literature. Under a law passed in 1905, library boards are authorized

to make contracts with boards of county commissioners in their own or adjacent counties to loan books of said library either singly or in traveling libraries to the residents upon such terms as shall be agreed upon in such contract.

Thinking that the smaller unit can better provide for its own patrons, three of our counties are following one of the two distinct plans authorized by this law, that of county extension, and are now supplying their entire area from their central library.

Besides these means of public education 74 per cent. of our districts are furnishing textbooks on the free plan; and thirteen years of experience has sufficed to convince us that this method is decidedly better than that of private purchase, one conspicuous advantage lying in the more adequate equipment of collateral and supplementary reading. Especially in rural communities, this system leads direct to the upbuilding of a school library. It is a most helpful ally of those interested in the library movement.

But we do not expect to stop here. We hope that even in the most isolated rural district where the small school library finds a humble home, and the traveling library pitches its tent for a season, these are but the pioneers, the precursors of a better day not far off. In some of the sparsely settled communities unable to support a church with a regularly ordained minister, it has been the custom of the people to assemble at intervals at the schoolhouse on the hill to hear the gospel from the lips of an itinerant priest; but presently, when the country round about has settled, there springs up the small white meeting-house, truly "of the people, by the people, for the people." They have come into their own. So shall it be with the library-"first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear."

Someone has wisely said, "No community is so poor that it can afford not to tax itself for public school education;" and certainly no community is so poor that it can afford not to tax itself to provide for its people a university of the best books—a legacy to us from the most inspiring men and women of all time. Let the state, by appropriation, meet any community half-way in the establishment and maintenance of a public library, and it will be found that this encouragement not only does not repress, but that it actually stimulates, private philanthropy and local spirit to fresh exertion. By having the authority vested in a state public library commission, that would have the power to refuse aid in the acquisition of any but the best books, the most skilful manipulations of the most artful book agent with the most plausible story and the most hypnotic eye, even when brought to bear upon the most sensitive subject, would be completely frustrated. In his own picturesque language, he would "see his finish."

During the first three quarters of the last century, library development was slow in purpose, method, and expenditure, but since 1875 the growth has been

marvelous. In 1800 there were in the United States but sixty-four libraries for public use, while in the last year of the 19th century there were over ten thousand with a total content of forty million volumes-and half of the libraries then in existence owned over one thousand volumes each. With state encouragement become general will come still greater life. So far it is the cities mainly that have been the objects of the book-loving philanthropists' interest. "To him that hath shall be given." It is in them that are daily springing up beautiful library buildings, educative in themselves, to say nothing of their contents.

And on the city, with its population, wealth, and facilities, its wider opportunities for improvement and culture, will naturally devolve the responsibility of hastening the new order of things. The remotest districts of the country have contributed their best to her upbuilding. What is to be her return? Only by sending out her best to the most isolated community can the debtinterest and principal-be paid. State superintendents, normal school and college presidents, and others vitally interested in humanity have here a field of service limited only by their willingness and ability to serve. You and I must carry the campaign from desk to legislature, from district to district," until the consolidated school, representing increase of numbers, wealth, and interest, can generate the energy and intelligence that will meet the newer demands of complex modern life by providing for its patrons concert and lecture, literary club, and library. The state needs new Horace Manns to awaken the public to an appreciation of the needs and possibilities of twentiethcentury culture.

One of the most encouraging signs of the life and growth of Christianity in our day is the effacement of denominational prejudice, the fusion of denominational charity in one great, common, helpful love, so that Anglican rector, Catholic priest and Methodist deacon may meet together for fellowship and stimulus, for interchange of ideas regarding the betterment of themselves and others. One of the most hopeful evidences of the life and growth of modern education is the programs of its state and national educational associationsfor the names on them are the names not of school men only, but of notable representatives of every educational movement, industrial, social, intellectual. It is thru these that we look for the realization of a realizable ideal-the unification of the work of the library and the school.

And this uniting of interests will eventually solve the problem of what we are to do with our leisure. In the last fifty-even the last twenty-years, the saving of time in travel and in service has been incalculable. The wizards of nineteenth-century invention, thru railroad, telegraph, and telephone, have conquered distance; the old twelve or fifteen hours of daily servitude have. been reduced to an eight-hour maximum. But how will all this saving of time advantage us if we are ignorant of its value, indifferent to its wasting, unable to spend it profitably? The school must, therefore, reveal to the child its worth and create in him the ambition to make the most of it; the library

must put in his hands the best tools for the furthering of this ambition and teach him how to use them.

The daily newspaper is considered-and justly-one of the necessities of our daily life. Its influence, whether it represent the best efforts of the modern press or is to be classed as yellow journalism, is powerful and widespread. But be it the most elevating in its editorials and general scope, too much time is given to the devouring of its details. Now, as it has become the practice of the public school to devote certain time to the discussion of current events, could not this discussion be so made to tell upon the newspaper-reading of our immediate future that a cursory survey of the sheet with an instant of pause at the headlines, a passing-over of the "irrelevant and immaterial" and worse, and a grasping of the editorials and real news of consequence—will occupy but a few minutes' time? And could not this plan, with some necessary modifications, be adopted in the reading of the lighter magazines? Interesting as they are in text, pleasing in illustration, and useful as they may be in their chatty condensation, they can no more take the place of the more purposeful, larger literature than can the malted milk tablet or peanut butter take the place of the staples of ordinary diet. It seems reasonable to hope that the school and the library, in training for world citizenship, will do much toward the relegation of these things to their proper place in life, to the seeing of them in their right perspective.

I would not have it inferred that this paper's failure to mention school boards in these various connections implies their freedom from any responsibility or duty in the wider-spreading and deepening of general education. As part of the school-which is partner of the library-it is theirs to co-operate toward these ends, theirs in placing new burdens upon the already tired shoulder of the teacher, to ease it of others less necessary to be borne by her; theirs to adjust the plan of local schooling to meet the growing requirements of the entire scheme.

But not with the rise and growth of public libraries in every village and hamlet of the nation does all responsibility for the individual terminate. As the school was the first to take the small boy by the hand in welcome when he came from the shelter of his home into an unknown world, so will the library be the last of his teachers to take him by the hand and bid him godspeed when he leaves that world for his last home. Tennyson died with Cymbeline in his hand; Wolfe went to his death chanting Gray's Elegy. He ought, then, in justice to himself, to make this acquaintance most intimate and personal. As one of his state and his community, he has an abiding interest in, and should seek to the full the benefits of the libraries he has helped to purchase and build up, especially those in his immediate neighborhood. But his own growth can be best promoted, his own tastes best met and developed, by individual ownership. In the public library he has made acquaintance and friendships, just as he has made them in the world outside, but among them is the gradually increasing group of these he would fain have gather at his own

fireside. And he should begin in his boyhood to send out his invitations, one or two at a time, as his natural bent, his eager curiosity, his ripening tastes demand. His developing individuality, quickened and fostered by contact with the school and the public library, is the best guide to variety. That his shelves will contain volumes enough that his matured judgment will repudiate is obvious-otherwise his boyhood must have gone through a process of unhealthy forcing; but as the gravest, soberest of men, take pleasure in going back over the years to the too short days of their happy boyhood, so will he be likely to have a warm paternal interest in those friends of his childhood, youth, and budding manhood. His collection should be his biography, marking in groups or in singles the paths he has pursued, his stopping-places, his defeats, his victories. It is by appreciative use of present opportunity that the individual opens for himself pathways to the larger opportunities of the future, highways to power, avenues to fulness of life. It is by training the readers of today that we prepare the writers of tomorrow and so insure for the race a literature ever progressive, presently helpful.

THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS ON PUBLIC

EDUCATION

HELEN L. GRENFELL, DEAN OF WOMEN'S DEPARTMENT, STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, FORT COLLINS, COLO.

Education is evolution. Education not only develops the mind but it marks out the lines along which it must move, along which it meets the least resistance. There are fixed laws which must be sought out and applied in any rational system of education. Psychology seeks to set the bounds of education and to discover and make known the laws within those boundaries. But ratiocination has ever been an uncertain pilot in the intellectual and moral seas of life and has often listened to the voice of desire and steered the ship into the dangerous whirlpools of the unknown. The compass of psychology points in as many directions for the north pole of education and produces as great astonishment in its amazing conclusions as did the compass of Columbus. The educator and philosopher is ever trying to box this compass of the human mind and ever finding unknown directions and drifting into unknown waters.

The philosophy of education is faulty today and it is questionable whether by pure philosophy it can ever be perfected. Reason has not furnished, and, may I say, cannot furnish us a complete system of education. The compass Columbus used was as correct as the compass we use, it turned to the magnet as readily as ours, but the fifteenth century navigator had not acquired a chart of the ocean. Such a chart must be furnished by experience.

In early ages man sought to withdraw from society in order to educate himself, but this seclusion had its reflex influence on him and left him unfit for practical life. Man has a twofold nature, individual and social. Each must be educated to make a full-minded man. If the individual only is educated, he becomes selfish and has no interest but in himself; if the social is altogether