incidental one of considerable importance for doing at the common
expense that which is for the common good.

But the maintenance of the public library is not based on the
communistic idea. A former president of this association, speaking at
the Lake George Conference, said: "The socialists and communists are all
friends of the library, for we give them the books they want, and they
hold that it is not only the duty of the government to educate the
people, but to furnish them with reading. If the library ever shall have
enemies they will be the rich, who do not enjoy being taxed for the
benefit of the public, and have libraries of their own. Its defenders
will be men of broad views, scholarly people, and behind them, with
votes, the middle and poorer classes."

While it may be true, in a certain sense, that socialists and
communists approve the public library because it appears to give them
something which they desire at the public cost, that scheme, on its true
ground, is as far removed as possible from any such theory of
maintenance by the state. The essential principle of communism is that
the members of the community shall hold their property in common for the
common use and benefit. This principle flourished in the village
community in which each individual was allotted his certain proportion
of the lands owned in common. There are at this day a sporadic few who
advocate government ownership of railroads, and some would even include
all the great instrumentalities of commerce and production. But the
rational majority hold that the state of society is best which makes the
individual a free and independent member of the community. His ambitions
and energies are best stimulated by his opportunities to prosper for
himself. Civilization and enlightenment are advanced by the efforts of
the master spirits of the race. The only demand which the individual can
justly make on the community, with its government as the common agent of
all, is that it shall not merely protect him in his rights as a free and
independent citizen, but that it shall assure him the opportunities for
the fullest exercise of his talents, and shall also, as a measure of
common interest, provide the facilities for his very highest mental
equipment. In this latter service of the state there is nothing whatever
of the communistic idea.

The public library is not a public charity. There may be some who regard
it as in the nature of a free soup-house wh