ocial centers out
of library buildings, even at the sacrifice of the books, rather than to
establish libraries in connection with social activities. This is also
true in those cities where "field-houses" in parks are well developed.
Without holding a brief for either school, we may properly emphasize
three principles. The first is that a librarian holds her position by
virtue of being a librarian, and that her duty and training require her
full time for the purpose for which she is employed--the fitting of the
proper book to the individual. The second is that if the community needs
to have the social center stressed more than the books, a social worker
must direct the center and the librarian must contribute in a
subordinate capacity to make the center a success. For example, the St.
Louis Public Library has equipped a room with books and is furnishing an
attendant at a colored social center in a church building at Garrison
and Lucas Avenues, but it does not thereby put forward any claim to
control and stimulate the social activities of the neighborhood. The
third principle is that if the library plant is already in operation, it
is a waste to exclude neighborhood groups from rooms not being used
directly for the reading and circulation of books, inasmuch as overhead
expenses continue.

WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

A forecast, not of library progress alone, but of
civilization itself, by one who declares himself "a
simple-minded visionary optimist." It is of the warp and
woof of visions like this that the fabric of a better world
is woven. Frederick Morgan Crunden, who delivered this
address at the public session of the Philadelphia Conference
of the American Library Association, 1897, was not, it is
true, the technical founder of the St. Louis Public Library,
but in his thirty-year administration of it, he originated
and kept in motion the forces that have given it the
position that it now holds in the community. These forces
and their results were both social, and his address forms a
fitting conclusion to this compilation of material on "The
Library and Society." A sketch of Mr. Crunden appears in
Vol. I of this series.

The present Victorian jubilee has naturally brought out a fresh group of
reminiscences comparing conditions at the beginning of the reign with
those now existing. The most striking contrast between the two periods
lies in the advances ma