









              Alternatives to Public Libraries

                    by J. Brian Phillips



Proponents of government programs often contend that the
services provided by government could not be furnished by
the private sector.  It is in the public interest, they
argue, that the government compel individuals to support
these programs with their tax dollars.  Among the most
sacred of these programs are public schools and public
libraries, supposedly the bastions of democracy.
   However, such arguments ignore the lessons of history,
for America's past is replete with examples of voluntary,
cooperative association which provided for the many needs of
the citizenry.  One of the most striking examples is the
evolution of libraries is pre-Civil War America.  Even
today, alternatives to tax-supported libraries exist.
   
                        Early Libraries
   
   The first settlers in America had little time for
reading.  Their lives were spent in a near-constant struggle
for survival.  Because many of the first colonists had fled
religious persecution in Europe, the Bible was often the
only book in the home.  The first ministers and theologians
to arrive in the New World brought larger collections of
religious works with them.
   The first private library in America probably belonged to
Elder William Brewster, who brought his large private
collection to Plymouth.  The 400 books in his collection at
the time of his death were primarily religious.  The
Massachusetts Bay Company sent 54 religious works to Salem
to aid in the conversion of Indians.  One of the most
impressive early libraries belonged to the first governor of
Connecticut, John Winthrop, Jr. who brought his collection
of over 1,000 titles to Boston in 1631.  Winthrop was a
major figure in the birth of science in America, and his
collection was one of the largest and most influential
scientific libraries in 17th-century America.
   As life in America became more secure and education
improved, the range of reading interests quickly expanded. 
Philosophy, political science, natural science, and modern
literature became popular topics.  By the 1650s most estates
contained at least several books.  The first bookseller
appeared in Boston in 1641, and booksellers thrived in that
city in the last quarter of the 17th century.  But in the
other colonies, citizens had to resort to ordering books
from Great Britain.  Indeed, when Benjamin Franklin arrived
in Philadelphia in 1723, he lamented the city's lack of
booksellers.
   Many of the large collections were bequeathed to towns
and schools.  But a lack of funds, proper storage
facilities, and often a lack of interest, caused many of
these collections to deteriorate.  One notable exception was
the collection of John Harvard, which became the foundation
of Harvard College's library in 1638.  As early as 1665, the
use of taxes was proposed as a means of providing library
services for the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts.
   In the 1720s, Benjamin Franklin formed a group in
Philadelphia called the Junto.  The primary purpose of the
Junto was to meet for intellectual discussion, with members
presenting papers on various topics.  Because of the nature
of this group, references were made to a wide variety of
books.  However, the members were not always familiar with
these books.  In time, Franklin suggested that the members
pool their collections, storing them at the Junto's meeting
place.  Franklin believed that "by thus clubbing our books
to a common library, we should, while we lik'd to keep them
together, have each of us the advantage of using the books
of all the other members, which would be nearly as
beneficial as if each owned the whole." [1]  However, a year
later, due to a lack of care, the books were separated and
returned to their owners.  But this experiment gave Franklin
another idea.
   
              The Rise of the Subscription Library
   
   On July 1, 1731, Franklin drew up a proposal for what
became the Library Company of Philadelphia.  The Library
Company soon attracted fifty subscribers paying a forty-
shilling initiation fee and ten shillings per year. 
Chartered in 1742, the Library Company of Philadelphia
became America's first subscription library, and was the
model for numerous similar libraries throughout the
colonies.
   But the cost of joining the Library Company prohibited
many from doing so.  As always happens in a free market,
competition arose.  In 1747 the Union Library Company was
formed.  By the 1760s, the Amicable Company and the
Association Library were also in operation.  When the
Library Company reduced its prices in response to the
competition, the Union Library merged with the Amicable
Company.  In early 1769, the Association Library also merged
into the Union Library.  Shortly thereafter, the Union
Library Company joined the Library Company, once again
leaving Philadelphia with one library.  However, the
competition made membership more affordable and improved the
library's range of works.
   The subscription library concept quickly spread through
the colonies.  In 1733 the Book Company of Durham,
Connecticut, was established.  In the spirit of these
libraries, the Articles of Subscription stated that:
   
   being desirous to improve our leisure hours, in enriching
   our minds in useful and profitable knowledge by reading,
   [we] do find ourselves unable so to do for the want of
   suitable and proper books.  Therefore that we may be the
   better able to furnish ourselves with a suitable and
   proper collection of books..... do each of us unite
   together, and agree to be copartners in company
   together..... to buy books. [2]
   
   Because of the voluntary nature of these associations,
each library varied in the conditions of subscription.  Most
had a yearly fee of less than one dollar.  The more
expensive libraries often resembled social clubs.  While
most libraries contained fewer than 1,000 titles, and
consisted mainly of books of general interest,, many were
suited to particular interests, e. g., mechanics, theology,
history, agriculture, science, law, medicine, or music. 
Essentially, the subscription library offered its materials
to those who paid a fee, i. e., subscribed to the service.
   In Charleston, South Carolina, a group of young men
pooled their funds so that they might purchase materials
printed in England.  Within two years, there were 160
members, as well as an endowment.  In New York City, 140
well-to-do citizens pledged five pounds each, plus ten
shillings per year, to form the New York Society Library. 
Within twenty years the library had collected nearly 1,300
titles.
   When a fire destroyed the Providence Library Company in
1758, a lottery was held to replace the burned books. 
Similarly, the social library of Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
used a lottery to provide supplemental income.
   One of the most amazing success stories is that of the
Young Men's Association, founded in Chicago in 1841.  Within
a month nearly 10 percent of all males in the city between
the ages of 15 and 35 had joined.  Subscribers were offered
a choice of memberships, ranging from a one-time life
membership fee of $25 to a regular membership costing $1.50
initiation fee and $2 per year.  Nonmembers could use the
reading room for 50 cents per month.
   To satisfy the public's appetite for romance and popular
fiction, many printshops and booksellers rented books for a
small fee.  One of the first of these rental "libraries" was
established in Annapolis in 1762.  That venture soon failed,
but the idea caught on and spread to the larger cities in
the colonies.  This form of library, often called a
circulating library, had its greatest popularity in the 50
years after the Revolution.
   One of the more interesting examples of the circulating
library was the "Book Boat" which traveled along the Eerie
Canal from about 1830 to 1850.  Traveling between Albany and
Buffalo, the boat would dock at towns along the way, renting
its literature for two cents per hour or ten cents per day. 
While the circulating library certainly catered to the less
serious readers, it did provide an important service. [3]
   
                Demise of Voluntary Association
   
   The voluntary nature of commercial libraries made them
susceptible to economic downturns, during which many
citizens had to withdraw support.  In turn, libraries closed
their doors, leaving communities without library services.
   By the mid-19th century, amid growing clamor for
tax-supported schools, the idea of tax-supported libraries
gained increasing support.  "If a man has the right to an
education," the statists argued, "then why doesn't he also
have a right to the books which make that education
meaningful?"  It wasn't long before they had their way.
   The advocates of public libraries presented, and continue
to offer, a variety of arguments supporting their cause.  In
an attempt to gain Constitutional legitimacy, statists
assert that public libraries protect our rights and
liberties, as well as promote happiness.  Because of the
number of books purchased by libraries, they argue, more
books can be published, thus insuring freedom of speech. 
Libraries also provide information on hobbies, travel, and
the arts, which encourages knowledge of culture, and
therefore promotes happiness.
   However, freedom of speech is possible only in a free
society, in which the initiation of force has been
abolished.  Freedom of speech results in ideological
competition -- a marketplace of ideas, in which individuals
are free to support those ideas they voluntarily choose. 
Extorting funds from individuals to purchase books
effectively makes them supporters of ideas to which they may
be diametrically opposed.  The result is the publication of
many books of dubious quality, at taxpayer expense, which
few read.
   The assertion that public libraries promote happiness is,
at best, ludicrous.  Whose happiness?  And at whose
expense?  And even if this claim were true, it is
irrelevant.  A thief could argue that robbing my house would
promote his happiness, but his action is still theft and
still immoral.  The principle does not change if government
is doing the taking.
   The avowed purpose of the public library is "to serve the
public.  Not SOME of the public.  ALL of the public." [4] 
This, of course, is impossible.  It would require volumes of
information on every imaginable topic, regardless of how
small the number of potential users.  Libraries, like
restaurants, must specialize in order to appeal to the
particular tastes of their clientele.  Those who try to be
everything to everyone eventually are nothing to anyone.
   In his later years, industrialist Andrew Carnegie became
one of America's most prolific philanthropists.  From 1897
to 1919, Carnegie donated nearly $50 million to communities
across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. 
Carnegie once remarked:
   
   I choose free libraries as the best agencies for
   improving the masses of the people, because they give
   nothing for nothing.  They only help those who help
   themselves.  They never pauperize.  They reach the
   aspiring, and open to those the chief treasures of the
   world -- those stored up in books. [5]
   
This spirit of self-improvement is the same spirit which led
the early colonists to establish libraries voluntarily.
   An unfortunate aspect of Carnegie's philanthropy was his
insistence that communities tax themselves to support the
libraries he established.  Rather ironically, Carnegie was
promoting self-help, while insisting on compulsory
taxation.  But the essential point here is that Carnegie's
voluntary donations were used to provide library services to
millions of people.
   Enoch Pratt, who founded the public library in Baltimore
with his donation, established an endowment of over $800,000
to provide funds for upkeep of the library.  Carnegie also
established endowments for four Pennsylvania libraries,
before he turned to the use of tax dollars.
   Even without philanthropic efforts of the wealthy, the
poor need not be without library services.  The elimination
of public libraries would create a vacuum which the free
market would quickly fill.  This was demonstrated throughout
the 18th and 19th centuries.
   
                     New Age of Information
   
   With the proliferation of home and office computers, the
market has developed an electronic alternative to the
traditional library.  Data bases are available for nearly
every topic, from business and health to philosophy and
sociology.  Undoubtedly, more will develop as a need
presents itself.
   One of the advantages of data bases is that they provide
the user with round the clock access, enabling information
to be gathered when it is needed.  And of course, the user
-- not the taxpayer -- pays for the service.  Just as the
first libraries evolved out of mutual needs and voluntary
associations among individuals, these electronic libraries
are providing non-coercive means of resolving common
problems. [6]  As technology improves, and competition
increases, the cost, availability, and range of these
services will also improve.
   We live in an age of information.  As our economy moves
away from manufacturing, the needs for information will
continue to grow.  Because the public library is essentially
divorced from market factors, it is unable to keep pace with
an ever-changing world.  This gap will continue to expand as
private businesses assume a greater role in the distribution
of information.

------------------------------------------------------------

                          (Sidebar)

In 1812 Isaiah Thomas established the American Antiquarian
Society.  Thomas gave 8,000 books, $2,000, an acre of land,
and 150,000 bricks to build a library for "collecting and
preserving every variety of book, pamphlet, and manuscript
that might be valuable in illustrating any and all parts of
American history."  Today, its library collections (still in
Worcester) include more than 600,000 volumes, 3,000,000
issues of American newspapers, and more than 1,000,000
manuscripts and broadsides.  It remains a privately endowed,
independent research library.

(caption of picture)  Antiquarian Hall, Worcester,
Massachusetts, c. 1834.  Original home of the American
Antiquarian Society.

------------------------------------------------------------

                          Footnotes
     Represented in the text by numbers in brackets [2]
    (Footnotes 3 and 6 were added by the present editor.)

1. Benjamin Franklin, _The Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin_ (New York: Collier Books, 1962), pp. 71-2

2. Elizabeth W. Stone, _American Library Development,
1600-1899_ (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1977), p.
131 

3. William B. Irvine, "The Rise (and Fall?) of the Video
Store", _The Freeman_, July 1988.

4. Whitney North Seymour, Jr. and Elizabeth N. Layne, _For
the People, Fighting for Public Libraries_ (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1979), p. 153

5. Elmer D. Johnson and Michael H. Harris, _History of
Libraries in the Western World_ (Mentuchen, N. J.: The
Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1976), p. 271

6. Not too surprisingly, we now have some folks asking for a
government-funded electronic library.  David H. Rothman,
"Teleread: How Electronic Books Could Cost Less and be
Easier to Read Than Paper Ones."  Rothman's Internet
addresses is:  73577.3271@compuserve.com

------------------------------------------------------------

This article originally appeared in the April 1987 issue of
_The Freeman_, the journal of the Foundation for Economic
Education, and is reprinted with permission.

Mr. Phillips is a free-lance writer based in Houston,
Texas.  You can contact him in care of the Foundation for
Economic Education:

   The Foundation for Economic Education
   30 South Broadway
   Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533

It is a nonpolitical educational champion of private
property, the free market, and limited government.  Copies
of The Freeman are available on request (outside the United
States, a donation of $15 per year is needed for extra
mailing costs).  The Foundation is a 26 USC 501 (c) (3)
tax-exempt organization.

The editor of this etext:
 
   Jim Henry III
   405 Gardner Road
   Stockbridge, GA  30281-1515

   Internet: jim.henry@ftl.atl.ga.us

or, in the Atlanta area, JIM HENRY on the Faster-than-Light
main board conference: (404) 292-8761.
