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HOW THE TRAVELING LIBRARIES BRING BOOKS TO WORKERS

A SELECTION OF VOLUMES FROM THE PUBLIC LIBRARY INSTALLED IN A MACHINE SHOP FOR DISTRIBUTION

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ANOTHER SERVICE OF THE TRAVELING LIBRARIES RECREATION FOR FIREMEN IN A CASE OF BOOKS THAT IS CHANGED WHEN THE MEN HAVE FINISHED ONE SUPPLY

first thing that struck him was the personal note, the home atmosphere, in contradistinction to an institutional air. (He would have found the same atmosphere in every one of the other forty buildings.) His eyes roved over the warm, light room with its substantial tables and chairs; the inexpensive but good copies of precious pictures on the walls; the growing plants in sunny windows; the decorative brasses containing autumn leaves. "It looks like a home library, not a machine to dole out volumes," he observed.

The librarian's face lighted. "Do you feel it?" she said." That's just what we're all after!"

That particular librarian had pocketed the modest sum appropriated for decoration, had carried it to the Russian brass shops in the Ghetto, bargained shrewdly, and returned with three splendid old metal pots, originally used for serving stews. Next she had tramped the Palisades for bittersweet and red leaves to fill the pots.

So, by every available means, the branch libraries are made attractive so that the stranger once entering may enter again. The attitude of most of the librarians is that of a host toward guests. People who do not know the system sometimes say, "You can't get what you want at the public libraries." There are 343,641 persons who know better. They are the persons who own library cards and who take full advantage of their privileges.

Gradually Mr. John Newcomer Irwin became one of the regular patrons of that branch, and he can tell you what it did for him. The librarian in the first place asked him to fill out an application blank and get a sponsor to guarantee him. "But I don't know anybody!" was his first anxiety. "Anybody whose name appears in the city directory will do," he was told. He thought of the grocer; the grocer gladly signed the slip, for John Irwin always paid cash for his cereal and sugar and tea.

He found that the card permitted him to take from the library any of its fiction and non-fiction books, also current periodicals in stout binders. Except for a three-day limitation upon the use of maga

zines of the current month, and a week limit upon the newest novels, he had two weeks' use of every volume with the privilege of renewing for another two weeks. Other periodicals, not for home use, were spread about for readers in the cozy reading room which he soon learned to frequent. The daily papers, too, were there, so his pennies accumulated.

At first he felt the restrictions of a not very large collection of books in that branch. He had not learned the system of interbranch loans. Difficulties cleared up when he found out. He wanted "The Changing Chinese," and it was not catalogued.

"We'll get it for you," the librarian. said. Immediately she investigated to find which branch had the book, and the large and expensive messenger system did the rest. Last year interbranch loans amounted to 59,697 volumes, which was 82 per cent. of the number requested. The 18 per cent. of vain requests were, for the most part, for the thrillingest tales still smelling of printer's ink, which everybody else wanted at the same moment.

"I don't know how to kill time on Sundays and holidays," John Newcomer Irwin complained one day.

"Come here," said the librarian.
"You don't mean you keep open?"

"Every Carnegie branch in the city is open for circulation full hours on all legal holidays. So is the central circulation branch. And we are of the six that open Sunday afternoons for reading, though not for circulation."

So John Irwin became one of the people who spend the idle, lonesome days in the genial company of books.

The librarians found that many a wouldbe reader fell away because he could not make his wants known in English. Baffled librarians, willing but impotent, stood silent before untranslatable requests from long-bearded old men of the Ghetto, from old women with shawls upon their heads. One such old woman wept when the librarians gave up in dispair, after she had pleaded for a quarter of an hour. A youngster, a Pole, called in to interpret at last, reported, "Aw, she wants a cook book so she kin make some good grub f

her boy wot was sent up. She says she kin keep him straight if she kin give him a good time to home." And the librarian put in time after hours finding a girl who was willing to translate to the old woman from an American cook book, the only one that was available.

The number of such instances led the library authorities to give attention to the stranger tongues. Little by little foreign books were installed in the districts where they were especially needed, until now the circulation department contains, in languages other than English, 92,241 volumes with a circulation for 1912 of 499,350 in 26 foreign languages. The largest circulation was of books in German, 207,906. Other languages going past the fivethousand mark were Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, French, and Bohemian. Besides these, small collections have been made of books in such unfamiliar tongues as Chinese, Flemish, Slovak, and modern Greek, and a collection of Ruthenian volumes is under way. Merely possessing the books was not enough, however. The readers are of the sort who need help. Therefore it has been customary to install, in every branch in a distinctly foreign district, one librarian who can use the language of that district. For example, a speaker of Hungarian can solve many problems at Tompkins Square and a Bohemian simplifies matters at the Webster Branch.

So eager has been the response of homesick foreigners to these efforts that the library finds it cannot stop its work of extending this service. The branches are opening their assembly rooms to foreign educational societies. That "OswiataBialy Orzel" meets regularly at the Tompkins Square Branch may not mean much to most readers, but it means a great deal to the earnest Poles who comprise the society. Six Hungarian societies met in three libraries last year; there was Hungarian music, discussion of "The Protection and Education of Immigrants," "The Great White Plague," and so on. Such meetings serve to draw the ties of the old land and the new very close. They also serve to prove to our aliens that the library is their friend, and thus their

interest in it is aroused. interest in it is aroused. The number of readers steadily increases.

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The assembly rooms of twenty-two branches are used by educational and welfare societies, including such organizations as the Little Mothers' League, a debating society, boys' and girls' clubs, classes in English for foreigners, boy scouts, city history clubs, dramatic clubs - a mendous list. The city board of education gave last year 158 of its free evening lectures in library buildings, bringing forth 22,686 people to listen. They traveled over Cuba, Mexico, and the Canadian Rockies at the tip of the lec-. turer's pointer. They learned “first aid to the injured." They were initiated into the musical mysteries of the Ring series of grand opera. And all the time that this work was going on, the library was being "discovered." By the force of habit, feet once following the path to these buildings are going that way again.

One simmering summer the libraries observed that readers grew unusually languid. They dropped in for a book, found reading rooms like Turkish baths, and wandered forth again. The librarians racked their brains. Perfectly good readers must not be lost this way. "Let's try a roof reading room," room," somebody suggested.

The plan was an instant success. Awnings were spread to screen off the glare from flat roofs plenty of space left for high, clean breezes to sweep across. Tables and chairs and books were carried up, up flocked the crowd, and the roof reading room became a regularly established institution of three branches on the lower East Side. The attendance at these three roofs last summer was 48,462, which was about one half the total reading room attendance of the three buildings during that period.

Of all the picturesque phases which this zealous work takes on, not one is as picturesque as the work with children. It has been under active supervision only a half-dozen years, since Miss Annie Carroll Moore took charge of it; but it grows at a gallop. More than one third of the total circulation goes forth from the children's rooms.

"Say Mikey, dat place is all right! Let's go again!"

That was what a telegraph messenger boy said to a boy who was delivering orchids for a Fifth Avenue florist. It was the day that the children's room opened in the new building. Mikey did go again. So did many another boy and girl. Those at work have learned to snatch a few minutes from their noon hour; school children arrive as soon as school is dismissed every afternoon.

All over the city, the children's rooms are crowded. In some libraries the crowd is so heavy that it has to be handled as in the public schools - admitted in a file. at three o'clock. Youngsters of every nationality, fat and cared-for youngsters, thin and under-nourished youngsters, the well-clad and the ragged, little girls leading still littler ones whom they must tend; it is the terrible, beautiful panorama of New York's childhood, to watch that line waiting at the desk while cards are given out! Proudly they show two scrubbed palms, as per requirement before handling books.

There are gangs. Young toughs have driven many a librarian to distraction. What was to be done with boys who threw cans and bottles in at windows, and mobbed reading rooms? Such boys can't be fought.

"Don't fight 'em, utilize 'em!" was suggested. "Utilize the gang!" is a watchword now. It is being drawn in, little by little, to hear the story-telling which goes on in many branches under the professional supervision of Miss Anna C.Tyler. She understands boys. She knows how to band them into clubs, to give them adventure stories, ghost stories, stereopticon talks. They like it. After all, it's a lot better than staying on the outside and throwing stones at windows!

The total attendance, boys and girls, little and big, from fairy story babies up to the big ones who want "Captains Courageous" and "The Taming of the Shrew,' was 38,147 at last year's story hours.

More and more tightly the public library, working through Mr. E. W. Gaillard, tries to draw the public schools into coöperation. Sometimes it gives an

hour's lesson in the use of reference books, to a whole class; again, it invites a class to hear a story. It provides instructive and interesting exhibitions, such as the Philippine collection, a loan from the American Museum of Natural History. So go on the various forms of luring-in. to those forty-one delightful traps in which it is such a pleasure to be caught. But for those who either cannot or will not come, the traveling library is provided. From its headquarters by way of a little backdoor near Fortieth Street, where Miss A. E. Brown holds sway, 894 stations are served.

Who are the patrons? That's the interesting part of the traveling library's story. Policemen, for instance. To the police department of New York City, 3,440 volumes were supplied last year in 47 precinct stations. This work was begun in the latter part of 1911. It is not likely to lapse for want of appreciation. It was probably suggested by the fire department work, begun a year earlier. Four times during 1912 every one of 144 engine houses received a fresh collection of books in all, 12,800 volumes being supplied. Even a fireboat came in once. for its turn at literature. The chief demands are for "live stories," and for technical works on fireproof construction and the like.

The list of places where cases of books. are carried by the expressman, or by one of the great motor vans, marked "New York Public Library," that constantly trundle literature over the city, is a list which includes every sort of human gathering from a Chinese mission to a biscuit factory. Scores of schools take advantage of the privilege of having collections of books delivered at their door. Several factories, such as the biscuit factory, an envelope factory, and a cloak shop, keep the books in their rest rooms for workers. Several department stores do likewise, and the saleswomen haunt the book shelf at noon.

When an embossed copy of "Little Women" found its way to a blind child who lived ten miles from a post office, it told very concretely the tale of the library's work with the blind. This is, on the

surface, a most unimportant item in human history; as unimportant as the sending of a box of embossed books in her own language to a Dutch woman in the Middle West. But both items are immensely significant. The "blind library" is one of the tentacles of the great system; it, in turn, has tentacles that reach from Massachusetts to California. With its 5,875 books and 4,197 music scores, in American Braille, New York Point, Moon type, European Braille, and several other embossings, it hunted out lonesome blind folks in almost every state, for most of the states are not so fortunate in their own collections. The circulation went up to almost 22,000 during the year, being more than 8,000 in Greater New York. On Blackwell's Island the sightless ones among the city's poor count six

days waiting for the seventh, on which the teacher will come again. She is a teacher of fingers, leading them over embossed pages until wonderful light dawns. The city library sends her with its books. By means of her teachings these dreary old people are enabled to use the embossed books which the library liberally furnishes. Nor does her work stop with the great institution. She goes to little homes as well, in tenements and in prosperous apartments, teaching, encouraging encouraging she paid 584 visits last year, giving 287 lessons and exchanging 559 books.

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Thus, through many channels which the librarians themselves establish, the books go out to solace and instruct and give pleasure to all who can be persuaded to read of 3 million people.

ADDISON BROADHURST, MASTER MERCHANT

CHAPTER V

A SHORT NOVEL OF BUSINESS SUCCESS

BY

EDWARD MOTT. WOOLLEY

WENT down into the Wall Street district one day, when my store at Junction Square was two years old, and climbed the granite steps of a bank building. There is something about a bank that makes one feel solemn - perhaps a bit gloomy. I did feel gloomy that day.

I was received in the private office of the president, Mr. Ashton Fillmore. He was a tall, portly old man, well-fed, and groomed like a Chesterfield.

"I am Addison Broadhurst, the Junction Square merchant," I said, introducing myself without preamble. I had never met Banker Fillmore.

"Be seated, sir," said he.

I sat down in a cavernous leather chair. "Mr. Fillmore," I began, with a direct

ness that I had acquired from repeated practice during the last two days - "Mr. Fillmore, I need money. I wish to borrow twenty thousand dollars for sixty days."

Fillmore sat tapping on the polished surface of his great mahogany desk.

"You are not the only merchant from Junction Square who has been here on the same errand, Mr. Broadhurst," he returned. "To all of them I have given the same answer. Money is not to be had at any price. In all my experience as a banker, I have never before-seen a time when money was practically a retired commodity, so far as loans are concerned."

"I have a rapidly growing business," said I. "Up to the time the panic set in my sales were increasing 50 per cent. or

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