HE foregoing article describes the work now

ries, with a view to encouraging and guiding the reading of children. The methods described by Miss Smith have been adopted, to a greater or less extent, by the public library administration of nearly every one of our larger cities, and of more than one of the smaller towns and villages. In most instances the initiative has been taken by the libraries; but the factor of active coöperation between the public library and the public school has been an important element in much of this work. For nearly twenty years, Mr. Samuel S. Green, librarian of the Free Public Library at Worcester, Mass., has been an untiring advocate of such coöperation; and in other cities, east and west, the intelligent effort of school superintendents, principals, and teachers to direct the reading of the children under their care has not been lacking. So important has this question become, in the discussions of educators, that a special committee to report on the relations of public libraries to public schools was appointed at the meeting of the National Educational Association held in Washington in 1898. The full report of this committee has recently been published,* and its suggestions are worthy of the closest attention from all officers of schools and libraries, as well as from others concerned in any way with the administration of these important educational agencies.

From that portion of the report which deals. with the special function of the school in introducing children to the proper use of books, prepared by Mr. Charles A. McMurry, we gather that a great advance has recently been made in the matter of intelligent discrimination as to suitable reading for young children. Mr. McMurry says:

To teach children how to read so that they could make use of books, newspapers, etc., was once looked upon as a chief object of school-work. We now go far beyond this, and ask that teachers lead the children into the fields of choice reading matter, and cultivate in them such a taste and appreciation for a considerable number of the best books ever written that all their lives will be enriched by what they read. This is one of the grand but simple ideals of the schoolroom, and

Copies of this report, at 15 cents each, may be procured from the secretary of the association, Prof. Irwin Shepard, Winona, Minn.

lends great dignity to every teacher's work in the common schools. The most solid and satisfactory reasons can be given why this should be done in every schoolroom. These substantial materials of culture belong to every child without exception. They are an indispensable part of that general cultivation which is the birthright of every boy and girl. The child that by the age of fourteen has not read "Robinson Crusoe," "Hiawatha," "Pilgrim's Progress," "The Stories of Greek Heroes," by Kingsley and Hawthorne, "The Lays of Ancient Rome," "Paul Revere's Ride," "Gulliver's Travels," "The Arabian Nights," "Sleepy Hollow," "Rip Van Winkle," "The Tales of the White Hills,” "The Courtship of Miles Standish," Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather, "Marmion," and "Lady of the Lake," the story of Ulysses and the Trojan War, of Siegfried, William Tell, Alfred, and John Smith, of Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln-the boy or girl who has grown up to the age of fourteen without a chance to read and thoroughly enjoy these books has been robbed of a great fundamental right; a right which can never be made good by any subsequent privileges or grants. It is not a question of learning how to read-all children who go to school learn that; it is the vastly greater question of appreciating and enjoying the best things which are worth reading.

TRAVELING LIBRARIES.

An application of the traveling-library system, in connection with the public schools, has been successfully operated in several cities. In Milwaukee, for example, library cards are issued to pupils of the public schools by the teachers, under the general supervision of the librarian and his assistants. Teachers go to the library and select enough books for their pupils, lists of books for young people and for special purposes having been published by the library. The books thus selected are placed in boxes and sent by the library to the school. They are changed after eight weeks. In the year 1897 twentythree thousand books were thus issued nearly ninety thousand times.

The Public Library of St. Louis has one hundred and twenty-five sets of books, carefully selected with a view to the needs of the first four grades of the public schools, each set consisting of thirty copies of an attractive book, so that all the children in the class may be reading the book at the same time; thus adding to the interest of it, and enabling the teacher to conduct class exercises. The librarian, Mr. Frederick M. Crunden, to whom we are indebted

for these facts, states that this work would have been quintupled if the library had possessed

the means.

Thus far we have been unable to supply even the first four grades, while we have done very little work in the higher grades. This has reversed the usual order, but I believe that the sooner you begin in attempts to give children a love for reading the better. In the public schools it is all the more essential to reach the lowest grades first, because so many children leave without going beyond the fourth or fifth grade. Moreover, it is easier to inculcate a love for reading in young children than it is in older ones; and the supplementary reading more directly aids the regular school-work in lower grades. Indeed, since the chief thing taught in the earlier grades is reading, the more practice they get the more rapid will be their progress. The way to learn to read is to read; and if reading is made interesting, by giving children attractive books, the teacher will be relieved of all further care. In the school in this city where the greatest amount of this reading is done, the principal tells me that they do not have to give any thought to discipline; that the school

takes care of itself; that the children are so interested in their work and their books that they are perfectly orderly. He tells me, also, that they let the children do all the reading of books in school that they may want to do.

This striking success reported from the St. Louis schools has been essentially duplicated in two Philadelphia schools which have recently hẩd the use of traveling libraries supplied by the efficient free-library system of that city. This has led the Public Ledger, in its issue of April 5, to advocate the general adoption of the plan by the city-school system.

Experience seems to have shown that the prac tical coöperation of the library and the school not only adds greatly to the direct value of the former as an educational agency,-the only function of the free library that justifies its maintenance by taxation, but at the same time it actually increases the efficiency of the school itself. The librarian makes the teacher's task easier.

IT

T seems rather strange, when one considers the broad scope of American philanthropy,which includes the founding of libraries, museums, and art galleries, the care of the poor, the sick, and the fallen, the endowment of insti tutions to meet every conceivable need, the millions spent annually on ineffectual attempts to save the souls of the heathen,-that it has almost wholly ignored a most promising field of operation. It has failed to respond to the urgent needs of healthy, able-bodied youth in rural dis tricts. It has overlooked the undeveloped and unused labor of young men and women who, for lack of steady and remunerative employment, leave their homes and add to the increasing throngs that seek the large cities, thereby rendering the problems of overpopulation and the unemployed more and more complicated.

Without this increase the situation is difficult enough, for there ever arises the seemingly unanswerable question, Where shall those already living in cities find employment? Where, for example, shall the trained art student, the designer, and the artist-artisan find a suitable and profitable market for their talents?

Few open

ings for them are to be found in the great cities, and fewer still in the smaller towns; yet what is

to be done with the energies of multitudes having talent, skill, and training who are graduated yearly from the various schools of design?

An answer to this lies in the rural districts. Once emancipated from the idea that he is dependent upon the city manufacturer and upon satisfying the capricious taste of the general public as reflected through the manufacturer, the prospect of the art-worker is infinitely enlarged. He sees that he may become a manufacturer himself, and may mold public taste and not servilely follow it. The true art student represents a certain bent of original talent, and it is for him to ascertain what his gift is. Presuming that it lies in the direction of furniture, he may find in almost any country community in America men who, under careful supervision, could be trained to do fine cabinet-work, who could again produce the beautiful hand-made furniture of colo

nial and later periods. Such work is well-nigh impossible in cities, where living is high and work is crowded and slighted because of fierce competition; but in country districts where the laborer owns his home and raises his fruit and vegetables on his own bit of land he can afford to put honest, painstaking handwork into a table, a chair, or a chest of drawers. For lack of in

telligent direction in this single craft an incalculable amount of undeveloped skill has been wasted in America, and this waste has reacted more disastrously upon the general public than upon the unhired worker. The latter, for want

Courtesy of the Pratt Institute Monthly.

A NORTH CAROLINA HOUSEWIFE WEAVING COVERLETS.

of regular employment even as a common carpenter, grows accustomed to a precarious living, and drifts into a careless indifference whether he works or not. He lapses into the negligent improvidence so characteristic of the small American farmer when he is not urged to industry.

But, on the other hand, the public has grown so used to machine-made goods that it has lost nearly all sense of beauty and even of utility in furniture. The enormous quantity ground out and the cutting of prices which machinery makes possible have resulted in cheapening the product, which has degenerated into little else than veneer and varnish, in half seasoned wood and glued joinings, in simulated carvings-in everything which vitiates and debases public taste and lowers the standard of public integrity. The rising generation has no standard of value save cheapness and show. It buys an article to-day with the confessed intention of throwing it away to-morrow. This begets an ex

travagance and wastefulness that threaten to sap more than our purses. There is no article of household furnishing or supplies that is not invaded by the tawdriness, the sham and adulteration of unscrupulous but canny manufacturers who have striven to meet the demand for cheap and cheaper imitations of beauty and luxury. If any one questions the truth of this statement, let him study the bargain advertisements in the daily papers.

This severe indictment cannot be universally applied, for there are multitudes of untainted Americans who value honest workmanship and are willing to pay a living wage for it, and it is to this class the trained designer with his rural workers could appeal with confidence of gaining patronage. In many country districts where selected wood can be obtained at a minimum cost, and in a scattered population of only a few hundred inhabitants, there are at least a dozen men of average intelligence eking out a niggardly living at semi-farming and odd jobs, who if trained would be capable of reproducing Chippendale, Sheraton, or Hepplewhite furniture. They would gladly work for the most moderate wages; and this is but a pin's point on the industrial field of America.

Furniture is merely one department that invites the art worker. Miss Sibyl Carter has demonstrated that lace can be manufactured

How

profitably in Minnesota by Indian women. much more by clever Yankee girls! That American women are industrious is witnessed by the indefatigable way they crochet, embroider, and daub paint over all sorts of ridiculous things during their idle moments. Should competent women undertake to turn this misdirected energy into some original and profitable channels of lacemaking, embroidery, beadwork, woven splint or rush-work that have intrinsic value, there would be added wealth and comfort to the community. Two women have established a successful village industry at Deerfield, Mass., where orders for embroidery are executed from designs derived from old colonial examples. This furnishes prof. itable employment to many villagers

In North Carolina, an effort has been made to restore the hand weaving which once prevailed among the mountain communi

ties.

The chief product at present is a coverlet material which is sold for portières, couch-covers, and table-cloths, and a coarse gray linen especially adapted for embroidery purposes. Investigation of such an enterprise shows how far-reaching the benefits are, as it enlists the labors of those who grow the flax and wool, of those who spin and dye the thread and yarn, as well as of those who actually weave the patterns.

Two other designers, one in California and one in Minnesota, have found profitable fields in leather-work, creating a market for the one thing they were best fitted to do.

Still another outlet has been

A JEWELED WALL-RUG.

self the task of elevating the hooked rug, for she saw possibilities of artistic results that their rude methods had not developed. She bought new all-wool materials, furnished original designs, dyed the goods in the warm, neutral tones seen in Oriental rugs, and trained her workers after a method of her own. The result was a complete metamorphosis of the hooked rugs, constituting a distinct departure

AN ABNAKEE RUG. (German Renaissance.)

in American industry, as they are unlike any product before offered. In texture they are thick and soft as the heaviest velvet carpets, and have considerable sheen; and as they are handmade they can be varied in color, pattern, or size to meet any requirement. The work speedily grew beyond the original plan of making rugs for floors. Crests and coats-of-arms upon wall-rugs are executed as well; also wallrugs with jeweled effects in the borders, portières, couch covers, and chair-covers are made to order. Their beauty and excellence are such that, though the enterprise is carried out in the mountains of New Hampshire, the fame of the Abnakee rug has gone abroad, and without solicitation well-known houses, one in Boston and another in Philadelphia, asked for the agency of them. This example serves to show what can be done when an experienced designer undertakes to place a primitive handicraft upon an artistic basis.

found for unemployed energy through the efforts of a young woman at Pequaket, N. H., in establishing the Abnakee rug industry. Urged by a desire to give employ ment to the women of that remote mountainous district, and finding they could do nothing except make the common hooked rug, which as usually executed is ugly of pattern, crude in color and unpleasant under foot, she set her

In almost every community lie germs of profitable crafts if directed by taste. That America needs cultivation in perception of both form and color is painfully evident to those who endeavor to foster these ideas among the lower classes. They not only lack artistic feeling, but they give no evidence of that creative instinct which has furnished beautiful examples of pattern and coloring found among savage and primitive races. However, many of this same class are ingenious and imitative; they are quick and intelligent to learn, and usually eager for self-cultivation. main thing to be guarded against is imitation on

The