ng of a revolutionary work. To-day such ideals are being realized
in most corners of the American republic. The last generation, and the
generations before the last, were satisfied with the school as an agent
of popular education. In our time we have brought the library to the
help of the school, and the world is just opening its eyes to perceive
the enormous value of the reinforcement that is gained from this new
power.

And the discovery has come none too soon; for a desperate need of more
and stronger forces in the work of popular education is pressing on us.
If we reflect on the social conditions of the present day, and review a
little the working of the ferments in civilized society during a few
years last past, we shall marvel, I think, at the timeliness of the
movement which brings the public library, just now, to the front of
action among the instruments and agencies of popular education. It is
our fortune, good or ill as we may regard it, to be unmistakably passing
through one of the greater crisies of human history. In the last
century, modern democracy got its political footing in the world. Its
birth was older, and it had been cradled in divers nursing places,
Swiss, Dutch, English, and New English; but last century it stepped into
political history as the actor of the leading part; as the sovereign of
the future, mounting his throne. From the moment it came on the stage,
all wise men knew that its need above every other need was education.
They made haste, in our country, to build school-houses and to set the
school-master at work; seeing plainly that all they might hope for and
strive for in the future would depend on the intelligence that could be
put into the brain of this omnipotent sovereign who had risen to rule
the world.

Well, the schools and the school-masters served their purpose
reasonably well for a reason. Democracy was fairly equipped with a
spelling-book and a quill-pen for the duties and responsibilities of a
simple, slowly-moving time. The mass of its members, the every-day
people of the farm and the shop, read the pamphlets and the weekly
gazettes of their day, and were gently drawn, with unconfused minds,
into one or the other of two straightly opposed political parties which
sought their votes. If they lacked knowledge, there was a certain
ingenuousness in their character which paid respect to the opinions of
men who had more. If blundering in politics occurred, it was blundering
lead