blic (22). Eleven thousand nine hundred volumes
were thus made accessible to the public, with a total circulation of not
far from 25,000 volumes and 9,000 readers. This system, which seems even
more economical than the Massachusetts one, has greatly promoted
interest in good reading, and led to the establishment of several local
public libraries. The system is very elastic and is easily adapted to
the rapidly growing demands for its privileges. As a pioneer method, or
as auxiliary to municipal libraries, it promises excellent results.

After this historical survey it would hardly seem necessary to dwell
upon the arguments in behalf of the free public library. "There is
probably no mode of expending public money," says Stanley Jevons, "which
gives a more extraordinary and immediate return in utility and innocent
enjoyment." He affirms that in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and
some other great towns in England, as in similar communities in this
country, where such libraries have existed for years, there is but one
opinion about them. "They are classed with town-halls, police courts,
prisons, and poorhouses as necessary adjuncts of our stage of
civilization." A more natural, and certainly more cheerful, collocation
would class them with free schools, museums, and public parks, as Jevons
himself afterwards suggests. "The main _raison d'etre_ of free public
libraries, as indeed of public museums, art galleries, parks, halls,
public clocks, and many other kinds of public works, is the enormous
increase of utility which is thereby acquired for the community at a
trifling cost." He proceeds to illustrate by several instances what he
calls "the remarkable multiplication of utility" in the case of free
lending libraries by several instances. Every book, in the first year of
the Birmingham Free Library, was issued on an average seventeen times,
and the periodical literature turned over fifty times. In Leeds, every
book was used eighteen times. In larger libraries and in later use, of
course, the figures are less, averaging from three to ten times, the
whole cost of each issue averaging only from two to five cents. Similar
statistics may be found in the _Forum_ article already referred to in
regard to the manifold use of books furnished in New York.

The comfort and moral economy of a cheerful, well-lighted reading-room,
too, is overwhelmingly illustrated. Mr. Jevons found that in Manchester
all persons of suitable age visited