The sun., 1919-04-27

CONDUCTED BY
FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE.
BUSINESS MEN AND BOOKS.

one hundred sales managers on the psychology Of
business, and have been impressed by their desire
for books More than this, they do not like to use
libraries, they want TO own their books.
Business men do like to use libraries, according
to Charles +. Rush, librarian Of the Indianapolis
Public Library, whose business branch in the down.
town section of the city is extensively and ncreas-
ingly patronized by precisely that sort of people
Doth gentlemen are right, as nearly as disintcr-
ested outsider judge. They are both right be-
cause they are talking about two different kinds OF
books
There is very great and growing class of lltcra-
ture written by and for business men about bust
ness practice and methods books of this sort
the kind that business men, if they are interested
in them at all, like to own, to keep on their office
desks or their shelves at home They not books
to be read once and returned whence they came but
to be studied and kept at hand as one keeps his
dictionary and Britannica. But there is ample evil
dence of the usefulness Of the public library to
business who know how to use it, though the
books they find most useful seldom among those
most of us would select for the shelves of 'Busi
ness Man s Library"
unsupported Uses.
The purchase by public library Of an clab-
orately illustrated volume or Egyptian art might
seem, as it did to some library trustees like I'M
necessary concession to art faddists. But the
library chershes letter from big advertising
agency telling how they obtained the suggestions
cigarettes from this book.
From, tho shelves of the children room came
illustrated fairy tales that furnished ideas for the
scenery for a motion picture play. The New York
Public Library reports that Fifth avenue depart
ment store sent for old files of fashion magazines
illustrating women s costumes of 1897 and was
thus enabled to satisfy and retain the good will of
valued customer by furnishing exact duplicate
of the clothes worn in that year. From the same
library comes the report of medical student who
was helped to decision as between the practice of
medicine and surgery by the aid Of books on char
acter analysis which he found in the library.
1t is incidents like these in the experience of
every librarian that justify and encourage them IN
their effort to extend the practical he pfUl service
of their institutions. Here is the way able libra
rian sums it up. He is Purd b. Wright of the Kan
sas City Public Library:
Bearing in mind,' he writes, that only six or
seven out of every possible one hundred children
who enter the grade schools, taking the country
over, finish the high school course that many
acquire the book habit-not even the reading habit
is it worth while to appeal to the business side Of
the majority to attract of the worthy
ambitious kind to use the libraryi
You know, it is this large majority that pays the
freight'-that makes it possible to provide the
purely cultural things for the elect. 1t may be the
butcher money that pays for the last book Of uers
libre."
Drawing the Line.
The real difficulty, of course is TO know where to
draw the line between what the library actually
can do for those whom Mr.. Wright terms the "com-
ambitious" and what they may be led
into thinking it can do for them. The world is still
thickly populated with men and women suffering
from the delusion that there is magic power in the
nrinted narn which &c thew only nraSn ho lou