One of the first clear statements of the Public Library as a business enterprise, involving certain amounts invested by a city with the expectation of certain definite returns. The paper refers particularly to the San Francisco Public Library, of which the author, Frederic Beecher Perkins, was then librarian but its conclusions are general, and hold good to-day. It was read at the Lake George Conference of the American Library Association, in September, 1885.
Frederic Beecher Perkins was born in Hartford, Conn., Sept. 27, 1828, a grandson of Lyman Beecher. He left Yale in sophomore year to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1851, but graduated at the State Normal School in 1852 and devoted himself to literary and educational work. In 1880-87 he was librarian of the San Francisco Public Library. He died in Morristown, N.J., Jan. 27, 1899. He was the father of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
There are in the United States about 5,000 public libraries of 300 volumes or more. Returns of their present conditions are very imperfect, and must therefore be summed in the following crude way:--
Annual cost much more than $1,500,000 The books in them are many more than 13,000,000 Books added yearly are many more than 500,000 Books used yearly are many more than 10,000,000
These institutions, therefore, represent a large money investment, and a very extensive and active educational agency. Not all of them by any means are "free public libraries,"--_i.e._, libraries supported by taxes or endowments for the use of all. But a considerable portion of them are. It may now be justly said that no town of importance is respectably complete without a free public library any more than any town whatever without a school.
The San Francisco Free Public Library was founded in 1879, and was advancing with creditable speed towards a size and usefulness corresponding to the position of San Francisco, among American cities, until the present city government suddenly cut down its annual appropriation to bare running expenses, leaving no allowance for buying new books, or even for replacing old ones worn out.
This library is not a collection of mummies of deceased learning, which will be no drier in a thousand years than they are now. It has thus far consisted of live books for live people. But a library of this practically useful kind, if it stops buying new books, quickly becomes dead stock,--unattractive, obsolete, useless. In _belles-lettres_, literature, history, mechanic arts, engineering, applied science, all alike, it is equally indispensable to have the new books. The photographer, the druggist, the electrician, the machinist, the manufacturing chemist, as much as or more than the reader of novels, poetry, travels, or history, want this year's discoveries, for last year's are already obsolete. Next year it will not be Mr. Blaine's book that will be most called for,--that will be a year old,--but General Grant's book. But a thousand examples would not make the case clearer. This prohibition of new books, perhaps on pretence of economy, would be the natural first step of shrewd opponents intending to close the library entirely as soon as the books are dead enough. It is girdling the tree now, so as to destroy it more early next year. It is understood that at least two prominent members of the present city government (Supervisor Pond and Auditor Strother) are distinctly opposed to the library, and to free public libraries, on principle. It is not known that any member of it is a particularly energetic friend of the institution. The library staff is small in number (seven boys and eight adults); the salaries (omitting the librarian's) exceptionally scanty, and even this small patronage and expenditure is wholly controlled by the Board of Trustees, and wholly out of reach of the Board of Supervisors. When this is remembered it is easy to understand both the probable firmness of any opposition, and the probable lukewarmness of any friendship to the library in the latter body. This is perfectly natural. All governing bodies try to keep and increase their authority over persons and payments. They never let go of them when they can help it. And, accordingly, the Supervisors insisted on controlling all the expenditure and management of the library, until a decision of the Supreme Court of the State forced the control out of their hands.