Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-03-16
THE USE oF FREE LIBRARIES.

A special contributor elsewhere makes a
detailed statement of his grounds for oppo.
sition to the Carnegie Library project II
hardly need be said that the views expressed
there are directly opposed to those of THE
d ISPATCH; but as an example OF what can
be said in dissent, the comm unication is
interesting and may not be wholly witho ut
instructiveness.
The basis of our correspondents opposi-
tion is that the free libraries will not be
beneficial to the people, and therefore it is
unjust to levy the tax required to keep them
up. But this is not only begging the whole
question; 1t is ignoring the testimony of
experience that wherever free libraries are
kept up they are Of the widest benefit and
are universally used. This testimony comes
from Boston, New York, Baltimore, Cleve-
land, Detroit and Chicago, and score of
cities in foreign countries. Even in this
city where the example of the struggling
Mercantile Library is cited as a failure,
moderately careful study of what it
actually does, would prove the con-
trary. In proportion to the very few
thousand dollars of extraneous assistance
received by that institution during its thirty
years operation, its work in spreading the
benefit of general reading has been no slight
matter; and its usefulness is attested by the
$50 to 200 readers who visit it daily at the
very time when people who do not take the
trouble to investigate the matter are pro-
claiming Its failure.
The same tendency to prejudge the whole
matter, shown in the declaration of the use
lessness of free libraries when the testimony
OF experience shows their value, appears in
the assertion that a tax cannot be legally
levied for their support. This ignores the
fact that the authority to do so has been ex-
erted without question for years, not only in
cities of other States, such as Boston, Cleve-
land and Detroit, but in no more remote
locality than the city of Allegheny, where
public library has been maintained by taxa
tion for many years. The public usefulness
Of centers of general information, where the
right of the humblest and poorest citizen is
made by the very act of taxation as good as
that of the richest and most powerful, is un-
questionably a sufficient ground for the
public support.
1t is singular illustration of the incon-
sistencies which preconceived ideas can
produce, that while our correspondent crit
cises Mr.. Carnegie's gift because he does
not think its benefits will be widely dis
tributed, he thinks that the gift which
ought to have been made is the foundation
of polytechnical school, the benefits of
which would, by his own statement, be con-
fined to few hundred pupils. That
such an institution would be of value to
Pittsburg no one will deny: and perhaps
Mr.. Carnegie's example may stimulate other
wealthy citizens to found it. But to allege
that it will be more useful than the institu-
tions which will place the means of culture
derived from general reading within the
reach of hundreds of thousands, is to COM
nit the mathematical absurdity OF suppos-
ing the whole to be less important than one
of its parts.
One point, however, is worthy of atten-
tion. That is the intimation that such an
institution will become the especial property
of the wealthy and fashionable, and that
working people will find themselves unwel-
come there. The plan of the institution is
devised especially to prevent such mis-
fortune. 1t is to be believed that those in
charge of it will carry out that plan in good
faith. The appearance of such a criticism
at this early day should make them careful
to avoid any act which will look like
removing the benefits of the institution
from the common people.