Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-06


q canvas. was this but a Scholar and a. dreamer
who had chosen the world of books for his
own rather than the clamor Of the law court
Laced over by a certain eXquisiteneSS of taste
and manner there exists in Herbert Putnam q
steel frame of hard nractioability., Some years
after the Minneapolis City Council had sent
its bouquets at his going, the board Of trustees
in Boston was commencing him; among other
things, for his remarkable administrative
qualities" as he departed to begin in Washing
ton the work he is so eminently performing
today.
That was 81 years and few weeks ago.
Minneapolis and Boston had been but a sort Of
training school for the life work in which life
and work, have been so intertwined that the one
is indistinguishable from the other. ,..
=. Mckinley was President when he first. took
over, and the post. hitherto had been recognized
as q political perquisite, -. 49, -. -.
Founded. through the acquisitions of the
library of Thomas jefferson, the Library Of
Congress was created, and still in theory exists,
for the primary purpose OF being a place OF
reference and information for our National leg
iSators. Politics almost necessarily had played
its part in its management. ,
Though not without political packers (for
Henry Cabot Lodge urged his appointment it
was because such men as r. r. Bowker, editor
of the Library Journal, and William Coolidge
Lane Of Harvard, then president OF the Ameri-
can Library Association, were able to convince
Mckinley that trained technician was needed
and that Putnam first in his field that he
was summoned
DUTNAN4S coming, if Putnam had been like
other men. might have marked little
change in that political relationship with Con-
1gresS. But Putnam was not like other men.
Through the years that followed he so gradu-
ally and quietly made his personal influence
felt that while you can in no sense say that he
. dictates TO Congress, you can safely say that
Congress does as. he. wishes it to. Politics
have not controlled Putnam, for Putnam Is
larger than politics. ~
On Putnam's side, when the appointment
, was offered there some hesitation. There
was q family council, with his brothers and bis
father encouraging him to accept and there
was, finally, the reminder that an appointment
unsought upon his part amounted to presi-
Dental command. which he could not well
refuse. ..
:. cannot wonder that he hesitated He was
to leave a Boston circle harmonious with his
taste for music and the arts, board of trustees
personally sympathetic, to embark upon life in
an oVergrown village showing little taste Tor
music scarcely any. for art, none whatever Tor
literature and, nc preoccupation in anything but
politics. ,,t ,.
He was 70 take over the administration of an
understaffed institution, library, as We I'M
derstand the word, in little except in that 1t
was a collection of books-but of books incoher-
emily housed in building whose monumental
ton might also prove for the time adequately
practical. And he was to take over a library
that up to that time had been politically and
not educationally controlled.
Year by year thereafter he was to see Wash
ington grow toward becoming place in which
the artist the musician the writer, might find
life hvable, but pre-eminently toward being
place where the scientist and scholar might find
1t worth while to dwell. And in that develop
mer1t as though his capacity to work with
Congress it was able to do, his constructive
imagination in developing the Library of Con-
greSs played most important part. ''r
BY act of Congress vested with the right TO
"make rules and regulations for the govern
ment of the library" he organized a staff for
the first time upon an efficiency basis. 1t was
he who introduced special system of catalogu-
ing which has been studied by great European
libraries, It was he who developed the inter-
:. esting COLLECTION of prints; the department Of
snauSic. which owns collection surpassed by
few; the Chinese library, now the greatest col
lection outside. the Orient; the division OF
manuscripts; especially rich. in American
sources; the division of MAPS now numbering
nearly . million and containing many rarities;
the department of Semetic and Slavic, litera-
Yet these might exist and prove only part
of the creative. imagination which has so
gently been working through these years to
make this library into a mecca for scholars,
into a. true library university. .- 49,.
That new and singular development. has been
brought about through Putnam's combination
of sympathetic interest. both in .,art and In
scholarship with marked executive capacities
- Like the greater of our university presidents,
he can interest, private persons in public
opportunity =. -.....
80. In spite of the fact that Congress- in the
matter Of funds in everything else, is pGacti-
Ca1ly his to command he. is able to get from
private means considerable sums of money TO
carry out projects for which he apparently
thinks it is either unnecessary unwise to ask
congressional appropriation -. ..ss..,.