[12] Read before the Chicago Woman’s Club.  January 6, 1915.

The change that has come over the library in the last half century may be described, briefly but comprehensively, by saying that it has become predominantly a social institution; that is, that its primary concern is now with the service that it may render to society—­to the people.  Books, of course, were always intended to be read, and a library would have no meaning were it never to be used; yet in the old libraries the collection and preservation of the books was primary and their use secondary, whereas the modern institution exists primarily for public service, the collection of the books, their preservation, and whatever is done to them being directed to this end.  To a social institution—­a family, a school, a club, a church or a municipality—­the persons constituting it, maintaining it, or served by it are all-important.  A family without parents and children, a school without pupils, a club without members, a church with no congregation, a city without citizens—­all are unthinkable.  We may better realize the change in our conception of the public library by noting that it has taken its place among bodies of this type.  A modern library with no readers is unthinkable; it is no library, as we now understand the word; though it be teeming with books, housed in a palace, well cataloged and properly manned.

It is no longer possible to question this view of the library as a social institution—­a means of rendering general service to the widest public.  We have to deal not with theories of what the library ought to be, but, with facts indicating what it actually is; and we have only to look about us to realize that the facts give the fullest measure of support to what I have just said.  The library is a great distributing agency, the commodities in which it deals being ideas and its customers the citizens at large, who pay, through the agency of taxation, for what they receive.  This democratic and civic view of the public library’s functions, however, does not commend itself to those who are not in sympathy with democratic ideals.  In a recent address, a representative librarian refers to it as “the commercial traveler theory” of the library.  The implication, of course, is that it is an ignoble or unworthy theory.  I have no objection to accepting the phrase, for in my mind it has no such connotation.  The commercial traveler has done the world service which the library should emulate rather than despise.  He is the advance guard of civilization.  To speak but of our own country and of its recent years, he is responsible for much of our improvement in transit facilities and hotel accommodations.  Personally, he is becoming more and more acceptable.  The best of our educated young men are going into commerce, and in commerce to-day no one can reach the top of the ladder who has not proved his efficiency “on the road.”  Would that we could place men of his type at the head of all our libraries!