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WOMEN'S CLUBS
AND
PUBLIC LIBRARIES

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WOMEN'S CLUBS
AND
PUBLIC LIBRARIES.
Paper read before the State Federation of Women's Clubs
by Mrs. M. C. Spencer, Secretary of the Board of Library Com-
missioners; printed by instruction of the Board.
WOMEN'S CLUBS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES.
The great question of education has ever been uppermost
in the minds of the American people. It came with the
Pilgrims in the Mayflower and grew and thrived on the barren
and hostile soil of Plymouth Rock; it appears everywhere in
the writings of the statesmen whose wisdom laid the founda-
tion of this republic and whose stern and uncompromising
principles established the greatest government with which the
world has ever been blessed. Universal education was the
dream of Washington, it was a favorite theme of Hamilton.
Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, whose great minds realized that
the downfall of nations has not been the result of outside foes,
but of the ignorance of the people, with all the train of evil
which ignorance implies. *
When the course of empire turned westward, and the great
northwest was peopled with the best brawn and brain of the
east, the question of education was ever before them and
went hand in hand with plow and ax, and to-day the problem
still confronts us, and the answer is yet evasive and lacks
the ring of positive certainty. ...' - +
It is because education is the corner-stone of all national
life that I believe in the club as the great factor in self culture
and as the center of home education in whatever community
it may be located. A club is a union of home makers, and
every action of the club should be with a view to the better-
Iment of family life, and the larger education of woman as
the center of that life. There may be debatable ground as to
the advisability of changing the political status of women,
there never can be any question as to the uniqueness of her
position as the builder of the home, the conservatrix of
individual and national life; for this if for no other reason,
should woman’s clubs be valued as one of the great systems
of education existing today; it is upon these principles the
club should be founded, upon these lines should be its
development.
The Woman’s club then is pledged by its very organization
to stand for whatever is helpful and uplifting within the
circle of its influence. It cannot limit, itself to the narrow
boundaries of its own membership, but must in honor to itself
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go out into the life around it and make it purer better nobler
for its presence. Studies of history art science and all
kindred subjects are good, but the study of the world around
us and the grappling with present day questions and problems
are infinitely better and more worthy of the club's best
effort. It is after all the common things of every day ex-
perience which build up the great sum of human happiness
or misery, and the club may demonstrate its reason of being
by giving its best efforts to solving twentieth century
problems relating to the betterment of the world in which we
must live and with whose weal or woe We are perforce indis-
solubly connected.
This thought has already taken root in the minds of club
Women and is bearing fruit in great activity along practical
lines. In many large and influential clubs there are depart-
ments of domestic economy; the improvement of cities and
villages, municipal reform, questions of lighting heating
plumbing sewerage pure water and healthful conditions are
being discussed, and practical demonstrations are being given
as to the earnestness of their Work.
From other states comes the report of women superintend-
ing the cleaning of streets the purification of alleys the bet-
terment of the police force the establishment of parks and
public gardens drinking fountains for man and beast socie-
ties for the prevention of cruelty, in fact there is hardly a
line of work for the help of humanity that the persistent
courageous aggressive club has not attempted, and in the
majority of cases has been successful. With the club as the
center and the home as the ultimate object of its devotion
there is little reason to fear failure in any philanthropic or
educational work which Women may undertake.
A small boy said of his sister, whom he loved, that when
she came in it seemed as if all the lights Were turned up. If
one young woman can create the atmosphere of sweetness and
light in a home how clear and strong should be the influence
radiating from that aggregation of women termed a women’s
club, helping and strengthening every life with which it comes
in contact; without that your club is but the sounding brass
and the tinkling cymbal. You may fill your minds with all that
is noblest and best in literature art and science but if you for-
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get the cup of cold water and the crumb of every day colm-
fort you are “dropping buckets into empty well and
growing weary with drawing nothing up.” Are you an art
club, have you applied the great principles of your study
to the beautifying of your homes to village improvements, to the
betterment of your locality? Are you students of history, are
you studying carefully all sides of your subject and in the rise
and fall of nations tracing the lesson learned from other epochs
and peoples, the correlation between yesterday and to-day,
cycles and centuries bearing their gifts to lay at the feet of this
impetuous strenuous aggressive twentieth century the heir of
the ages, the culmination of eighteen hundred years of divine
purpose; and with the wisdom which grows out of this study
are you applying these lessons to the vital active needs of
today?
I believe the club woman realizes the greatness of this re-
sponsibility, the largeness of her opportunity, and never
has her influence been so potent as now. Never have her
wishes met with more respectful consideration than they do
in this golden age; and never have women been able to act
so intelligently as they are acting in the present hour.
Rinowing this I come before you today to plead for your
help in establishing free public libraries in the cities and vil-
lages of Michigan. Not a ladies’ library nor an association
library, but a free public library open to all and free to all.
--- Helpfulness is the basic idea of all plans for the better-
ment of the world; service the noblest gift which love can
lay upon the altar of life. The generous outpouring of the
human heart from which self has been eliminated, into chan-
nels of philanthropy and christian benevolence all come from
the helpful spirit. And this spirit should not be confined to
narrow environment, but should only be limited by ability
and Opportunity. Allowing this point you can readily see
that an association library is not the plan upon which a club
should concentrate its energies. It is too limited in its influ-
ence, too undemocratic in its tendency. The free library like
the public school is a leveler of barriers and an exponent of
true democracy, where the barefooted boy elbows the son
of luxury, and poverty is for the moment the peer of wealth.
I admit the pleasure given by a choice collection of books
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carefully selected and often representing much earnest effort
and faithful work, where congenial friends meet and earnest
study is pursued; but may I ask, what of those outside your
charmed circle, those who need the consolation the training the
new birth which comes to the soul by contact with good books?
Believe me this is not a matter of your pleasure, but of your
solemn duty.
You need the free public library for your club. There
is nothing that appeals more to sympathy than a group
of earnest thoughtful women struggling with the problem of
self education, with little or no material with which to work.
A text book or two an encyclopaedia and dictionary are poor
foundations upon which to construct thoughtful carefully
prepared papers which will really aid in the matter of self
education. A subject even of the simplest form is complex
and should be studied from different views. Nothing can be
studied by itself alone, but in relation to other allied topics.
You cannot study history without biography and geography,
nor indeed without literature art and science, and the same
is true of all lines of work. It is a question whether the ad-
Vantage of superficial work of this kind is commensurate with
the time and energy spent in the struggle for knowledge. I
would not speak so plainly of this condition were it not for the
fact that if nothing else can be done a partial remedy may be
found in the resources of the State Library which are now at
the service of any club in the State. {
The free public library will furnish your club to a greater or
less extent with the books necessary for its work. If the
appropriation is Small a supplementary collection may be bor-
rowed from the State to be placed with the public library
books and used as the club may direct. This would in most
cases give sufficient resources and would result in better
club work and a broader mental development. Two thousand
books belonging to the State are now being used by women’s
clubs; this number could easily be doubled if they could
be placed in the public libraries which should be the center
of club work, with intelligent and interested librarians ready
to use their knowledge of the books for the benefit of their
patrOns.
You need the free public library for your children. The
greatest problem with which the educators of the present day
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are wrestling is that of providing a system of education which
will help the great army of young people, who receive in the
schools only a rudimentary training. Ninety per cent of
our youth leave school before they enter the ninth grade,
turned out to enter into an unequal struggle for existence
under adverse conditions. Thoughtful minds see a menace to
the perpetuity of free institutions under circumstances where
ignorance holds the balance of power, and educators are striv-
ing to devise ways and means by which the evil of illiteracy
may be averted. A child spends from two to five hours a day
in the school room then where? In the home or in the Street;
in homes too often destitute of any attraction, and untouched
by the sweet influence of good books. “As all roads lead to
Rome” so do all lines of thought regarding the library lead
directly to the home. Give a child the education of good
books in the home. Put him in touch with the public library
be it large or small, place his mind, plastic and eagerly recep-
tive, under the influence of good books, and you have put that
child in the way of getting a liberal education. The broaden-
ing and strengthening of the mind, the formation of character
which we call education it must be remembered is a mental
process, and entirely subjective. It matters not how com-
plete a college course may be, men or women who stop there
without the higher development which daily contact with
books gives will find that they will remain uneducated in the
… broadest and fullest sense of the word; instructed they may
have been, but not educated.
Give books then freely and generously to your boys and
girls, to your young men and women. Reep the library open
and fill it with clean, sweet, wholesome reading. A free pub-
lic library of two or three hundred carefully selected books
intelligently managed, in a small town or village is an educa-
tional institution whose value cannot be overestimated.
Finally you need the free public library for the general im-
provement of all sorts and conditions of men and women who
aggregate the bread winners and home makers of a city or
village. You need it for the purification and sweetening of
the mental and moral atmosphere which is so easily vitiated
by contact with ignorance and vice, for the general uplifting
of your homes and the reputation of your citizens as intel-
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lectual cultivated reading people. You need it to aid in the
settlement of the sociological and political present day
problems that are pressing upon us on every side. Many of
these questions involving the great principles of christian
sociology may be settled by careful legislation, but legislation
will not come until driven by the moral force of persistent
intelligent positive public opinion, and there is no possible
way in which that opinion can be formed and crystallized into
activity but through that great popular educator the free
public library, where the best thought on all these subjects
may be found and from which men and women may draw in-
spiration and incentive for higher and better work and for the
development of a stronger and more vigorous intellectual life.
Now with regard to the attitude of the State towards the
establishment of free public libraries, I wish to say that Michi-
gan stands ready to help to the utmost limit by counsel and
substantial aid in furnishing books. Under the law any town
or village organizing a free public library and showing
that they have a safe depository for the books and that they
own 100 books other than documents, may borrow from the
State of Michigan 100 volumes to be kept for six months, and
upon the further purchase of books another loan will be made.
In this way help will be given until the library is self support-
ing. The above is only one of the many ways planned by the
State for the aid of libraries. The Board has issued a pam-
phlet entitled “How to start a free public library,” copies of
which will be sent on application to the secretary; further
information will be gladly furnished by the same officer.
From every standpoint from which this great subject can
be viewed the club women of the State have everything to
gain by making the establishment of free public libraries part
of their activity. We would like to see the woman’s club the
center of a free public library movement in every locality
where one does not already exist. We would like to have a
committee appointed in every club for the furtherance of this
object, and have each member of this committee in close per-
sonal touch with the State Board of Library Commissioners,
from whom she will receive advice encouragement and prac-
tical help to the fullest extent. We are not asking as in other
states that the club women furnish traveling libraries; in that
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line Michigan is a pioneer, being the second state to establish
the system, and this work is now being done in a large and
generous way.
We do ask you to turn your attention to the establish-
ment of free public libraries, a mission noble philanthropic
and in every way worthy of the club's best efforts. The es-
tablishment of a library is a monument which will endure
long after the brains that planned and the hands that exe-
cuted are dust and ashes. Every motive exists which should
inspire a club to earnest aggressive untiring effort in this
direction.
It is confidently believed that the club women of the State
will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Board of Library
Commissioners in carrying out this great plan of library ex-
tension. Active aggressive work on the part of individuals
is the great need at present, for this we are asking, and this
we are confident that we shall receive, not only from the club
as a unit, but from the members of the clubs in the way of
individual Work.
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