San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1889-10-18
A GROWING NECESSITY.


Antonio are so poorly provided with
appliances for the intellectual i'm
proyement and pleasure of those who
are outside the pale of the school or
the convent as she is. There is not
in all this city we'll equipped libra
ry, or reading room furnished with
good books of reference in which the
leisure hours of the day or evening
may be spent; no lecture halls where
at stated times improving and enter
tanning lectures can be heard, or sci
entific knowledge communicated in
popular form. For those whose tastes
and inclinations lead them that way
there is the club room and the bill
lard parlor, and poker table, and the
saloon; there are also, it is true, the
church prayermeeting, and the YES
try lecture, and the sociable; but for
those who care little or nothing for
these things, their tastes and inclina-
tons leading them into libraries and
lecture halls, for these there is abso-
lutely nothing. San Antonio makes
grave mistake in neglecting to provide
for the intellectual development and
culture of her young people. No truer
saying than IAN empty mind is the
DEVILS workshop" The city, the
church, the community that provides
most wisely for its youth insures most
certainly against the corruption of
that youth. 1t is idle to expect results
without causes, and in order to deep
intellectual earnestness there must be
a vigorous intellectual stimulus. No
wonder that our billiard halls and
pool rooms and club houses are all so
we'll patronized. Our young men and
our unmarried men have no option
but these, or solitude, or places of
questionable resort. The churches
and the moralists have missed their
opportunity in not providing free
libraries and reading rooms and lee
ture rooms tor the evening hours of
our young men, who having no homes
must spend their earnings in such
places as open their doors for them.
Every winter the number of our
strangers will increase until thou
sands will find home among us dur
ing the frosts and cold of northern
seasons. These people, no small pro-
portion of them, have been &C
customed to library and lecture
privileges at home and will
be sadly lonesome without them
here. They cannot pack Ii
hrary for a whole winters reading
with them, and must depend on what
they find in the place in which they
make their temporary home. The al
fractions of a superior public library
would be no small factor in the ag-
gregate of our advantages as a winter
resort. 1t is principally, however, as
all instructor, educator and elevator
of the tastes and morals of our own
young people that public library
and reading room is so imperatively
demanded. Some atten ton has been
paid to military drill and musical
matters in this city, and their advant-
ages are apparent. These have be-
come in no small degree the safeguard
of those who have interested them
selves in these things. SO would it
be with the reading and lecture room.
The growing taste for these, develop
ing under the auvan tages of their I'M
restrained use, would gradually wean
from the love of other things against
which complaint is made and the
whole life of our people would be in
tellectually quickened. There are
gentlemen of means in this city, who
see and often speak Of the downward
tendency of much of our night life;
the field is ripe for their occupation.
Let the educators of this city-the
press, the pulpit, the teachers of
schools, public and private-and all
others who take interest in the
morals and intellectual growth of our
young people consider this matter
Out of it should come practical re-
suits. Other cities of no larger pop
ulatiOn, not so wealthy, with fewer
resources, have their free public libra
ries, with at least one volume for
every head of the enumerated popu-
lation. So should San Antonio. 1t
would prove the efficient means of
salvation to scores and hundreds of
our young men, who having no places
such as they would choose in which
to spend their evenings necessarily
spend them IN such places as offer,
until the taste Is corrupted, the love
of intellectual pleasures lost and the
whole life lowered. There is much
more involved in this thing than a
mere sentiment. There is the duty..and
obligation which the municipality the
state, the community owes to those
whose immaturity and inexperience
make them in some sense the wards
of such communities. Such a duty
and nhlinntinn San N 10 nruoo II,