purified democracy will arise from the
wreckage. May our American civilization never have to run the gantlet of
such a terrible trial! Meanwhile, there can be no doubt that the hope for
the future efficiency of all our public institutions, including the
library, lies in the success of democracy, and that depends on the
existence and improvement of the conditions in whose absence democracy
necessarily fails. Foremost among these is the homogeneity of the
population. The people among whom democracy succeeds must have similar
standards, ideas, aims and abilities. Democracy may exist in a pack of
wolves, but not in a group that is half wolves and half men. Either the
wolves will kill the men or the men the wolves. This is an extreme case,
but it is true in general that in a community made up of irreconcilable
elements there can be no true democracy. And the same oneness of vision
and purpose that conduces to the success of democracy will also bring to
perfection such great democratic institutions as the library, which have
already borne such noteworthy fruit among us just because we are
homogeneous beyond all other nations on the earth. And here progress is by
action and reaction, as we see it so often in the world. The unity of aims
and abilities that makes democracy and democratic institutions possible is
itself facilitated and increased by the work of those institutions. The
more work the library does, the more its ramifications multiply, and the
further they extend, the more those conditions are favored that make the
continuance of the library possible. In working for others, it is working
for itself, and every additional bit of strength and sanity that it takes
on does but enable it to work for others the more. And if the democracy
whose servant it is will but realize that it has grown up as a part of
that American system to which we are all committed--to which we owe all
that we are and in which we must place all our hopes for the future--then
neither democracy nor library will have aught to fear. Democracy will have
its "true and laudable" service from the library, and the library in its
turn will have adequate sympathy, aid and support from the people.

It is no accident that I make this appeal for sympathy and aid to a club
composed of women. The bonds between the modern public library and the
modern woman's club have been particularly strong in this country. The two
institutions have grown up together, making their