e
stop put to the progress of the San Francisco Free Public Library. One
hypothesis is, that, instead of any unfriendly intention against the
library itself, the step was taken to help in persuading the public that
the "dollar limit" to the rate of city taxation is too low, and that our
citizens must submit to a higher rate. As the money saved is only
$6,000, the economy is not great in itself, being about one
four-hundredth part of the city tax levy. If the proposed effect was
expected to be produced by continuously annoying and dissatisfying the
citizens there is more reason in the scheme; for the library is
frequented by more than a thousand persons daily; between 26,000 and
27,000 cards have been issued to authorize the home use of books; and
there are always at any given moment from 5,900 to 6,000 volumes from
the library in use in as many homes all over the city. To inconvenience
and disoblige so large a constituency as this may naturally produce some
effect. This paper need not attempt to decide whether that effect would
naturally be approval or disapproval of the treatment of the library,
enthusiasm in favor of, or against, the proposed increase of taxation,
unpopularity or popularity of the institution itself, or of those whose
action so effectually cripples its usefulness. Nor will it discuss the
still larger question of the "dollar limit" itself,[4] however
decisively important all these inquiries are for the future of the
library, and however interesting and clear the arguments and conclusions
on those subjects may be. But what it may properly do is, to state,
without any pretence of novelty, but simply in order to refresh the
public memory, the chief heads of a doctrine of her public libraries
from a practical point of view.

First (to limit the discussion). What a free public library is _not_
for.

It is not for a nursery; a lunch-room; a bed-room; a place for meeting a
girl in a corner and talking to her; a conversation-room of any kind; a
free dispensary of stationery, envelopes, and letter-writing; a free
range for loiterers; a campaigning field for mendicants, or for
displaying advertisements; a haunt for loafers and criminals. Indeed,
not to specify with inelegant distinctness, a free public library, like
any other similarly commodious place of free public resort, would, if
permitted, be used for any purpose whatever, no matter how private or
how vicious, which could be served there more convenientl