s of labor have been shortened, his wages are higher, and
labor-saving machinery has made his work lighter. He lives in a better
home, his family is better provided for and, best of all, his children
are better educated. What has wrought those great changes in the
conditions of the workingman? What has enabled him to keep up with the
swift march of progress during these many years? I will answer in one
word, Education. Just such institutions as the public library have made
this possible, and the public library has given the largest share.

JOHN P. BUCKLEY.

A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS

What if there were no letters and no books? Think what your state would
be in a situation like that! Think what it would be to know nothing, for
example, of the way in which American independence had been won, and the
federal republic of the United States constructed; nothing of Bunker
Hill; nothing of George Washington; except the little, half true and
half mistaken, that your fathers could remember, of what their fathers
had repeated, of what their fathers had told to them. Think what it
would be to have nothing but shadowy traditions of the voyage of
Columbus, of the coming of the Mayflower pilgrims, and of all the
planting of life in the New World from Old World stocks, like Greek
legends of the Argonauts and of the Heraclidae! Think what it would be
to know no more of the origins of the English people, their rise and
their growth in greatness, than the Romans knew of their Latin
beginnings; and to know no more of Rome herself than we might guess from
the ruins she has left! Think what it would be to have the whole story
of Athens and Greece dropped out of our knowledge, and to be unaware
that Marathon was ever fought, or that one like Socrates had ever lived!
Think what it would be to have no line from Homer, no thought from
Plato, no message from Isaiah, no Sermon on the Mount, nor any parable
from the lips of Jesus!

Can you imagine a world intellectually famine-smitten like that--a
bookless world--and not shrink with horror from the thought of being
condemned to it?

Yet the men and women who take nothing from letters and books are
choosing to live as though mankind did actually wallow in the awful
darkness of that state from which writing and books have rescued us. For
them, it is as if no ship had ever come from the far shores of old Time
where their ancestry dwelt; and the interest of existence to them is
huddled in the petty