The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-16
BROWN COMMENDS
 PUBLIC LIBRARY Writes Letter of Encourage
 ment and Advice S0UTH'S DISADVANTAGES Recalls Some of the Difficulties of His Boyhood in Securing Educational
 Advantages for Which
 He Hungered.
S0UTH'S DISADVANTAGES

| The following letter from William Gar
 rott Brown, the distinguished authority
 on libraries and one of the best-knowr
 writers on historical subjects, was read
 Friday night at meeting of the ex-
 eeutive board of the Birmingham Free
 Public Library association:
 Asheville, N. C., June T. 1907.
 My Dear Mir. London:
 Thank you for your note, and you were
 quite right to suppose that I would feel
 a warm interest in the effort to establish
 d good public library in Birmingham.
 wish it were in my power to help more
 substantially than by mere expression
 of interest and sympathy.
 You are good enough to fancy that l
 may say something that will help; but l
 doubt if that is so. l doubt. that is to
 say, if I can find any words to quicken
 the sense which every southern man must
 have of the need Of more and better li-
 braries in our southern towns and cities.
 l doubt if any thoughtful citizens of Bir- | mingham, in particular, needs to be re-
 minded that the citys rapid growth and | prosperity may come to be a source of
 something like shame unless reasonable
 proportion of the wealth there accumu- lated shall be made to serve the ends of culture.
 learn, however, that you are trying
 to build library yourselves, without any shaking of the tree whence so many H. 1 braries have dropped, full grown an1 ready ripe, into the laps of other towns. Although not without some admiration for that extraordinary source of public benefactions. I have a still heartier sd- miration for the independent spirit which ! | ago. when I wrote editorials for the Youths Companion. commenting once on | the then new public library building of 1 Boston, l stated that Boston was the first ! town in the world to build a public li- brary by taxation; whereupon the little town of Peterboro, New Hampshire, of whose existence I had been unaware, in- dignantly challenged the statement and proudly claimed that distinction for It's own. l found the claim correct and have ever since felt a lively admiration for Peterboro. Probably the method of tax ation could not be used in Birmingham; but If Birmingham builds and pays for her library herself, however, the money may be raised, I shall be glad.
 Perhaps you will expect me to say something of New England, where hard ly village lacks it's well administered little library, public and free or of the great library of Harvard university, In which spent good many years. But If l should say anything concerning these 1t would not be, I fancy; quite what you might expect me to say Certainly, New England owes much of it's wealth. much of the merited distinction of it's public service, much of the success, in a word of it's fntire experiment. in democracy-to Its public schools and it's public li- braries. We cannot help feeling, here in the south as we build libraries and im- prove our school systems, that we are in way paying tribute to New England ideas. But l do not wish to see the south turned Into another New England and I do not believe the spread of these two institutions will have any such effect I will go farther: Nearly all my life a member of distinctly academic commit nities, I should hate to see my people public-schooled into such a uniformity of intellectual standards as already serious ly fmpairs the charm of New England civ llization. All my life a lover of books and worker among them, should nev- ertheless hate to see my people public libraried into the mere bookishness which Is also too common in New England.
 It may seem bad policy even to hint al the possibility of so dsagreeable an out come of an enterprise one Is anxious to promote. But 1t Is wise to face canddly any kind of opposition; and I think there are people who do feel this kind of an apprehension whenever there is talk of li- braries and schools. Were the apprehen- sion entirely reasonable, we should still do best to treat 1t respectfully. But am doubtless the more ready to take notice or It because there Is hardly another civ ] ilization in the world nearly so high as l that of our southern states, concerning which that particular apprehension is less | reasonable. It Is hard to believe that n nf ffhr ,t,,s. IL 1 libraries and of the number of illiterates in the southern states, will fall to shud- dering over the danger of a plague of bookworms and blue stockings And if this danger is too remote to be seriously considered, what other objection is there | to meet?
 But 1t is not matter. I take it. of meeting objections, of answering oppo- | nents of the enterprise. It is matter of arousing interest and enthusiasm, and | cvoking benevolence, in cause which l harly any seriously oppose Possibly a word or two of quite personal explanation 1 of my own strong feeling on the subject may serve to give a little more meaning and poignancy to the facts and figures | which your committee, I presume has | already amply displayed
 1 To put 1t simply. there are two reasons ] why am anxious to see the south freed of this reproach of compara tive dearth 1 of libraries. One reason is that I lived | there as boy; and the other is that 1t l has been practically impossible for me to l live there as a man.
 l As boy, in the period of the souths i greatest poverty, I had my full share of my peoples terrible humiliation To this i day there is no form of suffering which | so instantly commands my sympathy as the spectacle of pride and refinement in 1 the midst of poverty; of the hopeless 1 struggle to maintain the tradition of a vanished opulence. Particularly appealing Is that spectacle when little children. ! forced too early to look upon the seamy i side of things learn to suffer silently i deprivations which their elders would i spare them at any sacrifice, if they only could
 i And because, during those years, hap ! pened to be- striving after the intellectual | life, there is no kind of deprivation which i now seems to me more pitiful than the denial or stintng of the means of cul- | ture to ardent childhood and youth Many l times when in New England I have seen young people surrounded in their homes with every device to draw them toward the best that has been thought and said and done in the world-when I have seen the avenues to Knowledge made free even 10 the children of the poor-I have fairly ached with the remembrance of the nai . row and straitening conditions under ! which not l only. but countless other I children of the impoverished south. had
 to make our fight for culture and its fruits. Now that the south is no longer ! impoverished surely we will do what we can to spare the next generation that ex- perience. Such things as the true univer- | xvt m afr,