blight over it. It is untrammeled.

How long is it to remain thus? That is for its owners, the public, to say.
I confess that I feel uneasy when I realize how little the influence of
the public library is understood by those who might try to wield that
influence, either for good or for evil. Occasionally an individual tries
to use it sporadically--the poet who tries to secure undying fame by
distributing free copies of his verses to the libraries, the manufacturer
who gives us an advertisement of his product in the guise of a book, the
enthusiast who runs over our shelf list to see whether the library is well
stocked with works on his fad--socialism or Swedenborgianism, or the "new
thought." But, so far, there has been no concerted, systematic effort on
the part of classes or bodies of men to capture the public library, to
dictate its policy, to utilize its great opportunities for influencing the
public mind. When this ever comes, as it may, we must look out!

So far as my observation goes, the situation--even the faintest glimmering
of it--is far from dawning on most of these bodies. Most individuals, when
the policy of the library suits them not, exhaust their efforts in an
angry kick or an epistolary curse; they never even think of trying to
change that policy, even by argument. Most of them would rather write a
letter to a newspaper, complaining of a book's absence, than to ask the
librarian to buy it. Organizations--civil, religious, scientific,
political, artistic--have usually let us severely alone, where their
influence, if they should come into touch with the library, would surely
be for good--would be exerted along the line of morality, of more careful
book selection, of judicial mindedness instead of one-sidedness.

Let us trust that influences along this line--if we are to have influences
at all--may gain a foothold before the opposite forces--those of sordid