to the nation. I understand that in Rochester the citizens give a dinner to the newly-naturalized citizens, and that there are addresses and responses, and a sort of welcome into the community of citizens. Something of this sort is greatly needed in every city.

With the immigrant properly initiated into citizenship, we should be able to trust our good government organization to see that a non-partisan statement of the issues reaches him before an election. But the attitude of the reform organization is very much like that of the political party after all. "If the German vote is all that is necessary in order to swing this election, we won't spend any money on anybody but the Germans." Consequently all the information which is regarded as necessary for the American voter if he is going to cast an intelligent ballot is given to the German, but not to the Italian, the Greek, the Bohemian and the Pole.

When he does attempt to do anything for the foreigner the "good citizen" is often easily discouraged. He is much disappointed and even grieved to find that the foreign press cannot be relied upon to further the principles for which he stands. From his experience with American papers, he was led to believe that newspaper men have been uninfluenced by our prevailing commercialism and stand for the highest idealism! When the suggestion is made that if the newspapers cannot be relied upon, pamphlets explaining the situation be mailed the foreign born as well as the native American voter he wonders about the expense. So these new voters are left to the same old influences and the ward bosses do not find that it does not pay to keep them in line. If this is going to continue to be our policy in the future we cannot expect these neighborhoods to improve and the community will continue to suffer in the future, as it has done in the past. And because the community is the real loser, the careful training which is necessary to change the situation should be undertaken by the community in its public schools. It may not matter whether the Italian or Polish vote is for or against a particular proposition in this election, but it is important in the long run whether these thousands of Italians, Poles, Bohemians and others are given a chance to ally themselves with the best element in the community.

In these days when we are learning through our study of public expenditure the cost to the city of the things we are leaving undone as well as those we are doing, we may hope that some one will be able to estimate the cost to the community of spending neither time, thought nor money on the question of making Americans out of the million people who are coming to us every year.

The Public Library as a Factor in Civic

Development.

By SAMUEL H. RANCK,

Librarian Grand Rapids Free Library.

A definition or two may help to put the speaker and his hearers on common ground-to the advantage of both. By public library we should understand a library that belongs to the people

and is managed by them through their chosen Definitions representatives. It is more than a free library or a charitable institution. The first business of a public library is to make its constituency realize that the library belongs to them; and this is the first and the most important step in making it a factor in its community. Let me illustrate the feeling many people have on this matter of ownership. For a number of years a branch library in Grand Rapids was maintained in a settlement house, but many people in the neighborhood would not come to it, simply because it was in a settlement house, which was associated in their minds with charity. A year ago this branch was moved to a public school building in the same neighborhood, and at once the use of the library more than doubled, many persons coming to it who would not come before.

We need to re-define our conception of a library, especially a public library. The newer conception is more than an institution for the circulation of books, or in which books and periodicals may be read. It is rather an institution for the dissemination of ideas, a municipal bureau of information, and therefore it must use other agencies than books and periodicals in carrying on its work.

The word civic is one toward which I have always had a feeling of prejudice, for it suggests the man from whom I first heard it, a former Congressman from the state of Pennsylvania. This most excellent gentleman in my early boyhood was constantly talking about "civic" and "civics," and somehow I asso

ciate the word with his habit of using words more or less high sounding. For example, referring to a question he had just asked, he put it in this wise: "And I propound the interrogatory with supereminent disquietude." In this paper I shall use "civic" in its largest sense, that is, relating to man as a member of society rather than limiting it to city or municipal.

The next most important work of the public library is to get hold of children and to develop in them a taste for the reading of good books and the ability to get ideas from the printed pagean ability which comes only through extended practice. The child of to-day is the citizen of to-morrow, and when we think of development we have in mind to-morrow rather than to-day. The library in dealing with the child is therefore preparing the way for future civic growth. Now it is a fact that the average school child does not get enough reading in his regular school work, or in his home, to develop in him the ability to get ideas with ease from the printed page. He often gets only the ability to say words. To the extent that a child fails in his ability to get ideas from print, he is handicapped in much of his work for life.

In recent years it has been my privilege to interview personally a good many boys and girls who have left school permanently by the time they have reached the eighth grade or before, with reference to reading that would enable them to fit themselves better for the work that they were doing; and the thing that has impressed itself most in these interviews has been the fact that so many of them have so little reading power, with the result that they cannot readily get the ideas of others as they are to be found in print. Every one here will realize that this is a

serious handicap.

Another point in this connection is that some people read the same matter six times as fast as others, as was demonstrated some years ago in a number of experiments by the department of psychology at Wellesley College; and, furthermore, that those who read six times as fast get more out of their reading, as a rule, than those who read only one-sixth as fast. The boy or girl who has acquired the ability to get ideas in one-sixth the time of others, and at the same time get them better, has in many

ways the same advantage that the modern express train has over the means of travel that was used by our great grandparents.

Work With
Children

Another phase of the library's work with children is the relation between reading and retardation. There are, of course, many elements that enter into retardation-physical or mental deficiency, poor teaching, overcrowding in the schools, etc. The school systems of some of our cities are spending as much as thirty per cent of their time and effort in repeating work, through the fact that so many of the children cannot make their grades, and consequently are obliged to take the work over-spend two years on the work that should be done in one. It is significant in this connection that, with few exceptions, the cities that have the highest percentage of retardation are the cities where the public library is reaching the lowest number of children; in other words, a highly developed system of work with children in our libraries helps greatly to reduce the number of repeaters in the schools. It may be said in passing that some of the very best work of the library with school children may be seen right here in Buffalo.

What retardation means in taxation was shown most clearly in a recent article in the "Boston Globe," discussing the school expenditures in Boston, by Dr. Albert E. WinRetardation ship, editor of the "Journal of Education." In the last ten years fuel and light for the Boston schools increased 37 per cent; in recent years the size of the classes has been reduced about 20 per cent, thereby tending to increase to that extent the salary account and cost for the additional schoolrooms and their maintenance; the number of high schools, where the cost is about twice that in the first six grades, has increased about 25 per cent in recent years, the number of pupils entering in 1910 being more than three times the number entering in 1890; kindergarten, sloyd, physical training, medical inspection, school nurses, pensions for teachers, all require wholly new expenditures in Boston as compared with thirty-five or forty years ago; and other items increasing the cost of schools might be mentioned. But the significant thing in Boston, in spite of the increases just enumerated, is the fact that the expenditures per