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happiness of the family circle in furnishing a tangible incentive to their common life, and for leading them easily and naturally into the things they need to know and do, but also for the sake of the unity and integrity of society itself.

A common purse, ledger, and property might be a good thing for the independent and self-sufficient father too, and for his business. This needs no higher sanction than that it is in line with the policy of the President in dealing with trusts. If a half-dozen pairs of innocent eyes are to look into the man's accounts, and as many hearts not yet hardened to the tricks of trade are to adjudge his deals, it would sometimes influence the character of his transactions. It would often affect the nature of his purchases. He would hardly enter so freely items for drinks, knick-knacks, clubs, and other forms of selfishness.

Along with the common purse and ledger should go, of course, the separate ones of each. Children should be paid for special services; should have their separate tasks, rooms, and occupations; should have their own patch of ground, or little enterprises, and learn to produce and see the fruit of their own skill and ingenuity. It is a mistake to suppose that a social sense can grow up apart from a fair recognition of personal worth and personal rights. In the highest ethics there is a fine equilibrium, or rather a perfect blending of the self, on the one hand, and all the rest, on the other. The self is the measure of love in the golden rule and in the second commandment. The two things must develop together.

In many ways the lines of responsiveness should extend beyond the family group. A family that exists for itself alone is as selfish as a person with the same ideals. The final center of interest is in the social group, and not in the family. As children come along in years, the parents may encourage the cliques, teams, games, societies, and social events that bring the children into larger social groups. With books, magazines, newspapers, discussions in the family of the movements of the times in politics, industry, religion, and art, the interests should be rapidly forming which lead children to feel themselves a part of a larger social order; so that when the days come for them to drift away from the home circle into the social group, they may be in it and of it as naturally as they came into the mother's arms who first received them.

PLANS FOR THE WORK OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT

FOR THE COMING YEAR

MRS. ANDREW MACLEISH
GLENCOE, ILLINOIS

The plan of this department contemplates work which will stimulate and encourage religious home life and training. It proposes, first, to reduce to a simple and easily intelligible form the principles that underlie the kindergarten. Froebel's insight into child-nature, and his philosophy of life are most helpful to parents, but his style is so obscure that he cannot be apprehended without earnest study. The committee of the Home Department, therefore, purpose enlisting the services of students of Froebel in the cause of simplifying and widely extending his teachings.

Their second line of work will be in the direction of opening to parents, and stimulating them to use, opportunities for studying the Bible from what may be called, for want of a better term, the modern point of view. The Executive Committee of the Home Department feel it to be very important that the work of religious training and instruction should not be taken from the home and delegated entirely to other organizations, as the church and Sunday school. Parents are the rightful religious instructors of their children, but, in view of the great changes that are taking place just now in the outer forms of religious faith, and in the understanding of the Bible, they need to familiarize themselves with the results of modern scholarship, that they may be able to present a rational conception of religious truth, and one that will meet the needs of the coming generation.

As their third line of effort, the department propose to undertake a study of the present status of family worship. By means of a questionnaire widely distributed, they will gather together all the facts possible, with suggestions as to method and character of the service, and ways of adapting it to the conditions of modern life. It is hoped that a helpful and suggestive report may be possible, as a result of this investigation.

XIII. LIBRARIES

ANNUAL SURVEY OF THE RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL WORK OF LIBRARIES

DREW B. HALL

LIBRARIAN MILLICENT LIBRARY, FAIRHAVEN, MASSACHUSETTS

The public library is an educational institution. If it is to provide religious literature and to succor the religious worker, three conditions must be met: 1. The library must have the disposition, and the ability on the part of its staff, to look after the religious needs of its community; for this work it will find groups and organizations already formed in the church societies and Sunday schools. 2. These societies must be alive and ready to seek and to receive the library's a'd. 3. The library must contain, and keep up to date, a collection of religious literature, suitable for the use of both laymen and clergymen, and of all divisions and sects of the church.

Last year the annual survey took the form of an inquiry into the first and second conditions and it revealed, in general, a greater readiness on the part of the libraries to give aid, than on the part of church organizations to receive it.

This year the survey is concerned with the third condition-that of material equipment. To discover what resources public libraries have to offer the student of the Bible and of general religious questions, and more definitely than has heretofore been done, what use is made of them, the following questions as to volumes and circulation were addressed to a considerable number of large town and city public libraries:

1. Do church societies habitually notify you of their topics of study, and use special reserved lists on them?

2. The total number of volumes in your library?

3. Among these, how many are classed as religious?

4. How many of these "religious volumes" are less than twentyfive years old?

5. Total volumes of all classes added in your last fiscal year.

6. The number of these classed as religious.

7. The total circulation last year.

8. The circulation of religious books.

9. Additional facts and figures of interest in this connection?

An almost unqualified negative, in answer to the first query, supports last year's report.

From the next two questions, as to total volumes and those classed as religious, the percentage of religious works varies from 2.23 per cent in a town of 12,000 inhabitants within twelve miles of Boston, and 2.4 per cent in a city of 23,000 in central New York, to 13 per cent for a district library in Maryland. The average, however, is 4.2 per cent, to which nine-tenths of the libraries closely approximate. Further, the average of careful estimates (not entirely reliable as statistics, but the best figures obtainable) of the volumes less than twentyfive years old is only 2.5 per cent.

Comparisons with three careful and inclusive bibliographical statements, the A. L. A. catalogue, Sonnenschein's best books and its supplement, and the Publishers' Weekly tables, of the annual book-production of the United States and England, are interesting.

The percentage of religious entries in the A. L. A. catalogue, of 1893 is 4, and in last year's edition, 4.2 per cent. This coincidence, with the actual percentage in working libraries, seems to indicate either that the editors of the catalogues kept remarkably close to present conditions, or that 4 per cent is the natural, predestined proportion of re'igious to non-rel gious works. On the other hand, Mr. Sonnenschein considers that of publications worthy of note and entry in his bibliographies, theology, including all religious topics, comprises about 12 per cent; three times the number in our collections.

The third means of comparison is the annual report of publications in this country and England. These reports are especially of interest in connection with the returns from my fifth and sixth inquiries as to total accessions and the number classed as religious. These returns give 2.8 as the average percentage of religious works added in the last fiscal year. Among individual libraries, 9 per cent in a city of central New York is at one extreme, and .6 (s x-tenths) of one per cent in a town not ten miles from Boston at the other, neither institution being one of those previously instanced, and each reporting as religious 3.5 per cent of their total collection. That is, libraries containing 4.2 per cent religion are at present adding 2.8 per cent yearly, presumably mostly new publications. In 1902, the Publishers' Weekly recorded 7,833 volumes, and of these, 639, or 8 per cent, were religious; in 1903, out of 7,865, 513 volumes, or 6.5 per cent, were religious, and in 1904, out of 8,300, 717 volumes, or 8.7 per cent. If these figures seem small, it should be noted that fiction, heading the list with 22 per cent, is followed next by re'igion with its 8 per cent.

From these new religious publications, averaging 700 volumes, and from the thousands of past years, libraries are annually obtaining 2.8 per cent of their accessions, which, among one thousand, means only 28. This argues either that all the churches and all the townspeople are satisfied with 28 new volumes yearly on spiritual matters, or that too often the pen of the religious author is that of the ready writer, and his mind that of the sectarian and weakling, or that the libraries are missing a great opportunity.

Replies to the seventh and eighth questions, concerning the home use of these books, furnish additional information. In the libraries, already considered, the circulation of religious books is .98 per cent of the whole, ranging from .3 per cent to 2.4 per cent.

To recapitulate, public libraries contain about one volume classed in religion to every twenty-five in other classes, and one to forty less than twenty-five years old; each year, out of every thousand volumes of accessions, twenty-eight are religious, and the home use is less than one hundredth; on an average, one sixty-fifth the circulation of fiction and one-fourth that of literature.

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For our encouragement, and especially for the encouragement of those who feel that the time is ripe for a "general revival of religious and moral education," and for a general return from these allied subjects to the fundamental truths set forth in the Bible, there is, finally, this report from a busy, prosperous city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, a city whose moral character is commonly regarded today much as of old was that of Sodom and Gomorrah: We have been purchasing more fully of religious works directly in response to a larger call for these books on the part of readers. Much of this literature has been in some way connected with, or the result of, modern Biblical criticism. I am glad to say that there are several church societies, etc., engaged in studying the Old or New Testaments in a scientific manner."

I have come, during the preparation of this paper, to feel that church societies and the clergy are not calling upon and using public libraries as they well might, and especially that libraries, while meeting gladly all who come for aid, have not the best possible equipment for fostering "personal study on the part of parents and teachers," and that they are not giving as much attention to the work of the church universal, buying eagerly the best, most popularly useful literature, as they are warranted in doing by the ends to be gained and the supreme importance of the subjects to be considered,

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