thless periodicals and books
can be counteracted only by gratuitous supplies from the public library.

Whether these counteracting books be fiction or not, they may be pure
and harmless, and often of intellectual merit and moral excellence. The
question is not whether people shall read fiction--for read it they
will--but whether they are to have good fiction instead of worthless and
harmful trash.

The tendency to read inferior books can soon be checked by a good
library. If the attention of the children in school is directed to good
books, and the free library contains such books, there will be no
thought of the news-stand as the place for finding reading matter.

The economical reason for establishing free public libraries is the fact
that public officers and public taxation manage and support them
efficiently and make them available to the largest number of readers. By
means of a free library there is the best utilization of effort and of
resources at a small cost to individuals.

While a private library may greatly delight and improve the owner and
his immediate circle of friends, it is a luxury to which he and they
only can resort.

A library charging a fee may bring comfort to a respectable board of
directors by ministering to a small and financially independent circle
of book-takers, by its freedom from the rush of numerous and eager
readers, and by strict conformity to the notions and vagaries of the
managers. But such a library never realizes the highest utility. The
greater part of the books lie untouched upon the shelves, and compared
with the free library it is a lame and impotent affair.

The books of a public library actively pervade the community; they reach
and are influential with very large numbers and the utility of the
common possession--books--is multiplied without limit. Before several of
our towns lies the question of opening to all what is now limited to
those who pay a fee. This is not merely a limitation--it is practically
a prohibition.

Whether right or wrong, human beings as at present constituted will not
frequent in large numbers libraries that charge a fee. The spirit of the
age and the tendency of liberal communities are entirely in favor of
furnishing this means of education and amusement without charge.
Certainly towns which can maintain by taxation, paupers, parks, highways
and schools have no reasonable ground for denying free reading to their
inhabitants.

These towns spen