atch the
children, they say, in school, when they cannot get away, and indeed are
glad of relief from lessons; but the men--can you reach them and affect
their lives? In reply we must say at once and frankly that no such large
volume of success with men is possible as has been the case with women.
The public library came to women at the precise moment when increased
education disposed them to use it, and increased leisure gave them the
opportunity. It fills a space in their lives which would be otherwise
void. But the present time is one of decreased leisure and increased
intensity of work for all classes of men. Perhaps I ought to except from
this statement the wage-earner, who as eight hour laws and customs come
into force will have more time for reading than the man of almost any
other class in the community. This movement toward lessened hours of
labor is more effective where libraries are best organized and therefore
presents an opportunity for the extension of library influence, both
general and special. The opportunity must be improved, yet neither the
wage-earner nor the business man will be easy to reach; neither has been
among the active patrons of the library in the past. Their lives are
already full, both with business and pleasure, and if the library is to
reach them, it must attract them on lines which appeal to them more
strongly than business or present pleasure. It must reach needs which
they know and feel to be real.

I do not believe that men of the present generation will come to
libraries in great numbers for the purposes that attract women. We might
as well admit that they will not substitute the novel for the cigar, the
printed story for the companionship of the club. They will not read good
books because they ought to do so, and the number who will read them
because they like to do so is unfortunately not great. Men have not thus
acted since the world began, and man-like, they will not do so now, even
though such conduct on their part would help our library statistics very
greatly. Nor will any great number of them read in order to enlarge the
basis of life, for, in spite of the greatness of the movement toward
books, it affects at first hand only a few people in the community. The
mass of workmen, now and always, will get their knowledge from tradition
or at second hand. It will be the unusual man who will get his ideas
from books at first hand and thus improve his work and that of his
fellows.