as every stimulus from within and
without, every reward intrinsic and extrinsic; while progress in the
social and political sciences must carry the dead weight of the inertia
of conservatism and also meet the active and intense opposition of
vested interests, which have ever the single purpose of preserving the
status quo, no matter how unjust or maleficent.

The solution of these all-important problems cannot be found in the
school, where immature minds are taught merely how to use the tools of
knowledge; these questions cannot be settled by the small number of
university students; they must be solved by the education of the masses,
by instilling in them in their early school years a desire for knowledge
and a love for good reading, which will lead them to continue their
education by means of the library. The education of the mass of the
voters who determine the character of a democratic government, must not
be left to the party organ or the stump speaker. The great social and
political questions should be studied and pondered in the quiet of the
closet and not decided, without previous thought, amid the hurrahs of
the hustings.

To make the public library realize fully its possibilities as the
People's University calls for more than the opportunity which every
public library now offers; it requires active effort to reach out and
bring the people to the library by the fullest co-operation with the
school and by means of attractive lecture courses, which shall stimulate
reading and guide it in profitable channels. But the beginning of this
work--the inculcation of a taste for good reading--lies with the school,
with the library's co-operation, especially during the years from six to
ten or twelve, those years when nearly all the children come under the
school's influence and when the habit of reading can be most easily
formed.

If charged with placing undue stress upon the value of the library, I
might urge its comparative newness and its consequent lack of
recognition; and, as an evidence of the latter, I might point to the
fact that in this great educational exposition, while one vast palace is
given up to exhibits of the school, the library has with difficulty
secured a part of a room in the Missouri State Building for an exhibit
of its activities in the great work of education, in which, as I am
trying to show, its potentialities are as great as those of the school.
As our Board of Directors said, in its appeal t