y the church adorned
with the meek and unaffected grace of the rural pastor, but the loaded
shelves, the catalogs and reference lists, the chairs and tables, and
the zeal unaffected, though not always meek, of the modern librarian.

These libraries have sprung into being throughout the land without
specific legislation and without deliberate propaganda. The church
missionary societies of the country have adopted the avowed policy of
planting a church in every community, and appointing superintendents of
missions to see that this is done. Every state in the Union has its laws
for the establishment and maintenance of schools. But these multiplying
libraries have come into being without enactment of law or the preaching
of the crusade. They have spread from sea to sea by a happy contagion,
they have become a noble American epidemic. The great inarticulate
thirst for knowledge has demanded satisfaction, and created its own
supply. Our wisest directors of public sentiment and philanthropic
endeavor have realized that through the library may come a charity that
does not pauperize, a help that induces self-help, light to irradiate
the dark places of civilization, inspiration for every calling, and
access and power to every worthy institution and noble cause. What then
is the specific function of this new and powerful institution in modern
life? What is the contribution of the library to modern civilization?

The library makes to the nation three gifts: the gift of knowledge, the
gift of perspective, the gift of ideals. Putting the matter in another
way, we may say it gives us facts, relations, values.

The library is primarily to conserve and disseminate knowledge. Indeed,
the old conception of the library was purely that of a place of storage
for written or printed material. No one thought of taking out a book
from a mediaeval library any more than of removing a statue or painting
from an art gallery. And still to-day the function of the library as a
storehouse is most important. Modern democracy holds that knowledge is
not for a few bright minds of each generation, not for an intellectual
elite; but all that is knowable is to be made accessible to all that
desire to know. If we allow knowledge to come only to a chosen few of
each generation, how can we know that we have chosen the right ones to
receive it? The genius that might turn the stream of history may be born
in the lowliest cabin on the prairie, or in the darkest te