The Washington critic., 1888-06-20
WASHINGTON, JUNE 20, 1888
THE LInRARY nUILDING

We would like to inquire of Mr..
Sawyer or any other member of Con
gress who disbelieves in large and
costly public buildings in Washing
ton,-and considers their erection as
tending to n mischievous concentra-
tion of wealth at the National Capt.
tai, whether any workingman,
mechanic, carpenter, bricklayer, hod-
carrier or any other kind of wage
Garner, was ever known to raise
similar objections to such expendi-
lures?
Is there a workingman in the Dis
trict who does not know and feel that
great works of improvement are
mainstays and benefactions to labor,
and that upon the energy and liberal
ity with which such works are prose-
cuted all branches of business
depend more or less for their pros
perity
1t is strange that any member Of
Congress should take q different
view, and one so entirely out of
sympathy with the working classes.
Is 1t any Course" to the city, So
cially, morally or otherwise, that
costly edifices have been erected here
for the accommodation of the various
departments of the Government
Had it not been better if they had all
been built originally with reference
to future demands rather than pres
ent needs?
The General PostofIice building
will have to be enlarged; the Interior
Department is notoriously inadequate
for the uses required of it; the Ma
tional Museum has outgrown its
limits and requires additional room,
and even the Capitol-that splendid
pile of architecture in which every
citizen of the country, from highest
t1lowest, takes a patriotic pride-has
a. ed of insufficient size for the
proper transaction of the business
concentrating there.
The lowest estimates of the cost OF
this magnificent structure amount to
nearly S20,000,000; yet since the orig.
inal cornerstone was laid several
times that sum has been expended on
or about it in various ways.
Does anybody regret the money
thus spent? Does not everybody
grant that as rule it has been well
and wisely spent? Would it not have
been equally as well and wise if when
the building of the new wings was de
cided upon, the plans had been upon
much larger and more commodious
scale2
So with the new Library Building
II is not for to-day or tomorrow; moi
for next year or the year after, but
generations to come; not for the
half million books now packed away
like merchandise in warehouse to
mildew and decay, but for twice ant
thrice that number; and it should be
built with that comprehensive regarC
for the future.
Suppose it does cost S7,000,000 OF
S10,000,0 900 in the long run. Who il
hurt by it? Who suffers from it? II
will be a structure honorable to the
Congress that authorized it, the boast
of an intelligent people, the admira
lion of the civilized world; and il
would be in the nature of q grea
public calamity and disgrace were the
work which has already been done tc
be abandoned and new plans adopted
to do in a niggardly, inglorious way
that which, not even meeting an i'm
mediate need, would have to be done
over in few years to keep up witt
its growing necessities.
The House should have done will
its foolishness on this subject.
If there $s fraud, or corruption, O
needless extravaganza anywhere il
the work of construction, let it b.
ferreted out and stopped, but let tn,
work itself 90 on as provided for il
the pending bill.