4) The highest and best influence of the library may be summed up
in the single word, culture. No other word so well describes the
influence of the diffusion of good reading among the people in giving
tone and character to their intellectual life.

5) The free reading room connected with most of our public libraries,
and the library proper as well, if it be rightly conducted, is a
powerful agent for counteracting the attractions of saloons and low
resorts. Especially useful is it to those boys and young men who have
a dormant fondness for reading and culture, but lack home and school
opportunities.

6) The library is the ever-ready helper of the school-teacher. It aids
the work of reading circles and other home-culture organizations, by
furnishing books required and giving hints as to their value and use;
it adds to the usefulness of courses of lectures by furnishing
lists of books on the subjects to be treated; it allies itself with
university extension work; in fact, the extension lecture given in
connection with the free use of a good library seems to be the ideal
university of the people.

The public library, then, is a means for elevating and refining the
taste, for giving greater efficiency to every worker, for diffusing
sound principles of social and political action, and for furnishing
intellectual culture to all.

The library of the immediate future for the American people is
unquestionably the free public library, brought under municipal
ownership, and, to some extent, municipal control, and treated as part
of the educational system of the state. The sense of ownership in it