USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 27
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One must note here that in all the other county court houses of Massachusetts the law library is free to the public. It is only in Suffolk County that the old system, in effect before the days of public libraries, still continues. But a free law li- brary in the Suffolk County Court House is not regarded as necessary, since the law collection of the State Library-only a short distance away-is accessible to everybody. The Social Law Library has today some twelve hundred members and over 80,000 volumes.
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARIES
Unique in its kind, not only in America but possibly in the world, is the General Theological Library, on Mount Vernon Street, Boston. It is a nonsectarian institution, founded in 1820. A Social Theological Library existed in Boston since 1807; but that library, united in 1823 with the Boston Athen- æum, was in a state of stagnation. Besides, the founders of the General Theological Library, trying to include all denomi- nations, had new aims in view. Since 1900 the books of this library have been free to all the clergy in New England. At present over two thousand of the five thousand clergymen in New England are using them; about five hundred person- ally, and the others through the mail. The board of directors consists of twenty-one laymen representing different denomi- nations. The library contains about 45,000 volumes. The 14,000 printed sermons are catalogued by their scripture texts.
The Congregational Library, with its 75,000 volumes; the library of the Episcopal Theological School, in Cambridge, with 28,000 volumes; and the library of the Newton Theo-
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logical Institution, with 41,000 volumes, should also be men- tioned. A number of other larger or smaller theological collections of less importance are to be found in the Common- wealth.
LIBRARIES OF CLUBS, SOCIETIES AND MUSEUMS
The Town Room Library is small, yet in a different way is almost as typical of Boston as the Athenæum. It contains the most important new books necessary for the information of social and civic workers. The Town Room is a department of the Massachusetts Civic League, an organization which devotes itself to promoting needed social legislation. Besides the books of the league, the library houses also the book col- lections of the Twentieth Century Club, the Monday Evening Club, and of the Massachusetts Society for Mental Hygiene. The whole library comprises about 5,000 volumes and pamphlets.
For lack of space, several libraries of worth and note can- not be included in this account. Yet mention must be made of the Library of the Museum of Fine Arts, with 40,000 vol- umes, many of which are particularly expensive; the Social Service Library, which, with 66,000 books and pamphlets, offers excellent opportunity for the study of social hygiene, child welfare, public health, penology, and all related subjects; the Boston Medical Library, which with over 125,000 volumes covers every branch of medical science; the Boston Society of Natural History, which contains some 52,000 volumes, besides 47,000 pamphlets; and the Massachusetts Horticultural So- ciety, which has 27,000 volumes.
SPECIAL LIBRARIES OF BUSINESS FIRMS
An increasing number of large business firms-banks, manufacturing companies, big department stores, etc .- have established in recent years their own special libraries. In many instances the collections are quite considerable, reaching five or six thousand volumes; and what is more important, usually all books in these collections are "live" books. In Boston alone there are several scores of such special libraries.
In contrast to these specialized collections, there are the cir- culating libraries, about four hundred in Boston alone. These
Courtesy of Harvard University
JUSTIN WINSOR
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EMINENT LIBRARIANS
libraries carry chiefly recent fiction and books of biography and travel.
EMINENT LIBRARIANS
In conclusion it is proper to say a few words of the men who helped the libraries of Massachusetts to become what they are today.
The library of Harvard University has the longest uninter- rupted history. During the seventeenth century nine grad- uates of the College served as librarians ; during the eighteenth century there were forty-two librarians. Many of these men served only for the love of their work; they gave more in books and money than they received in salary. Among the names of the librarians of the nineteenth century are Charles Folsom, John Langdon Sibley, and Ezra Abbot. The pres- ent librarian emeritus of the university, William Coolidge Lane, may also be claimed by the Boston Athenæum.
Justin Winsor may be properly claimed by the Boston Pub- lic Library, which he served as superintendent from 1868 until 1877, following Charles C. Jewett. Winsor's accomplish- ments as a scholar, particularly as an historian, are elsewhere noted. As librarian, he was nationally regarded as a leader in the profession. Mellen Chamberlain was his worthy suc- cessor. The library is also proud to remember four fruitful years of service of Dr. Herbert Putnam, the present chief of the Library of Congress.
In the history of the Boston Atheneum the names of two librarians, those of William Frederick Poole and Charles Ammi Cutter are outstanding. The former, as editor of the Index to Periodical Literature, was a forerunner in large- scale bibliographical work in this country; and the latter was instrumental in the general acceptance of the modern meth- ods of cataloguing.
To select a few where there are so many, seems always unjust. For not only Boston, but other towns and cities of Massachusetts were fortunate to have librarians who, real zealots in their profession, regarded the upbuilding of their li- braries as their veritable lifework. The present era has many new requirements, but nothing can supplant the force which
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the personality of these earlier librarians gave to their institu- tions. Nevertheless, the librarians of the new generation, educated in the scientific methods of modern librarianship, are equally mindful of the highest ideals of service.
PUBLIC SERVICE OF LIBRARIES TO MASSACHUSETTS
The foregoing study of the mass of library material, the creation and expansion of libraries throughout the State, and the training of experts in library economy are a large element in the perpetuation of learning and the advancement of edu- cation. Through the facilities described above, the oppor- tunity is given to young minds to begin that enlargement, which is in itself an education. Nothing is more potent in Massachusetts libraries than its arousing influence on the chil- dren of the community early to form the library habit.
The libraries have become very closely connected with the increasing use of books and periodicals all the way from the grades to the professional schools. The enrichment of li- braries, which has been such a striking factor in the growth of the Commonwealth, makes possible a modern type of edu- cation which involves the use of first-hand materials in litera- ture, in science, in languages, and in many other fields of human interest. The elective system in education would have been impossible without free access to collections of books organized for such use. The library system has been particu- larly useful in making it possible to assign individual topics for study and report.
Another great service of the libraries is the preservation, classification and cataloging of the sources of the history of the State, of the nation, and of mankind. The library demand for books of permanent value is a great encouragement to investigators and writers. This service has been especially valuable to the lawgivers of the State, through the rich col- lections in the State House and in Boston and other Massa- chusetts cities. The Commonwealth, the cities and the towns have made a large investment in libraries, which is returning a rich interest in the happiness, the knowledge and the powers of judgment of the people of Massachusetts.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY .- Handbook of Information .(Worcester, 1909).
AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY .- A Survey of the Library of the Amer- ican Antiquarian Society (Worcester, 1928).
BELDEN, CHARLES F. D .- "Library Commission Work in Massachusetts" (Library Journal, Vol. XLII, N. Y., 1917, pp. 5-10).
BOLTON, CHARLES K .- "Circulating Libraries in Boston, 1765-1865" (Colo- nial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, Vol. XI, pp. 196-208, Boston, 1910).
BOLTON, CHARLES K .- The Harvard University Library. A Sketch of its History and its Benefactors (Cambridge, Graves & Henry, 1894). BOLTON, CHARLES K .- The Influence and History of the Boston Athenaum (Boston, The Boston Athenæum, 1907).
BOLTON, CHARLES K .- "Social Libraries in Boston" (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, Vol. XII, pp. 332-338, Boston, 1911). BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, TRUSTEES .- Annual Reports (Boston, 1853- 1929).
CANAVAN, MICHAEL J .- "The Old Boston Public Library" (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, Vol. XII, pp. 116-33, Boston, 1911).
DAVIS, ANDREW MCFARLAND .- Report on the Public Archives of Massa- chusetts (Washington, 1901).
DEWEY, MELVIL .- [Address] (Library Journal, Vol. XIV, 1889, pp. 95-96). DEXTER, HENRY M .- Elder Brewster's Library (Cambridge, University Press, 1890).
EDMONDS, JOHN H .- The Massachusetts Archives (Worcester, Davis Press, 1922).
EDWARDS, EDWARD .- Free Town Libraries (London, Trubner & Co., 1869). ESSEX INSTITUTE .- Constitution and By-Laws (Salem, 1855) .
FARLOW, JOHN W .- The History of the Boston Medical Library (Nor- wood, Mass., 1918).
FARNHAM, LUTHER .- A Glance at Private Libraries (Boston, Choker and Brewster, 1855).
FLETCHER, WILLIAM I .- "The Public Library Movement" (Cosmopolitan, 1895, Vol. XVIII, pp. 99-106).
FLINT, WESTON .- Statistics of Public Libraries in the United States and Canada (Washington, 1893).
FOOTE, HENRY W .- "The King's Library" (Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. XVIII, pp. 423-430, Boston, 1881).
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY COMMISSION OF MASSACHUSETTS .- Annual Reports (Boston, 1891-1928)-A mine of information relating to the public libraries of the Commonwealth.
GREEN, SAMUEL ABBOTT .- Origin and Growth of the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Cambridge, University Press, 1893). GREEN, SAMUEL SWETT .- The Public Library Movement in the United States, 1853-1893 (Boston, Boston Book Co., 1913).
GREENWOOD, F. W. P .- History of King's Chapel (Boston, Carter, Hen- dee & Co., 1833).
294 LIBRARIES PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
HARRISON, JOSEPH LEROY .- "The Public Library Movement In the United States" (New England Magazine, 1894, Vol. XVI, pp. 709-722).
MANN, HORACE .- Lectures and Annual Reports (5 vols. Boston, Lee and Shepard, 1891)-See Vol. II, pp. 297-337, "On District-School Libraries."
MASSACHUSETTS-STATE LIBRARY .- Annual Report (Boston, 1851 and later years).
POTTER, ALFRED C .- The Library of Harvard University. Descriptive and Historical Notes (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1915). POWER, RALPH L .- Boston's Special Libraries (N. Y., Hall, 1917).
PUTNAM, HERBERT .- "The Great Libraries of the United States" (Forum, 1895, Vol. XIX, pp. 484-494).
RHEES, WILLIAM J .- Manual of Public Libraries (Boston, Adams, Samp- son, 1859).
SCUDDER, HORACE E .- Justin Winsor, a Memoir (Cambridge, University Press, 1899).
SCUDDER, HORACE E .- "Life in Boston in the Colonial Period" (JUSTIN WINDSOR, editor, Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols., Boston, Os- good, 1882-1886)-See Vol. I, pp. 481-520.
SCUDDER, HORACE E .- "Public Libraries a Hundred Years Ago" (UNITED STATES : BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Public Libraries in the United States, Washington, 1876)-See pp. 1-37.
SHAW, SAMUEL S .- The Boston Library Society (Boston, George H. Ellis, 1895).
SPECIAL LIBRARIES ASSOCIATION .- Directory of Special Libraries in Bos- ton and Vicinity (Privately printed, Boston, 1928).
TUTTLE, JULIUS HERBERT .- The Libraries of the Mathers (Worcester, Davis Press, 1910).
WADLIN, HORACE G .- The Public Library of the City of Boston: . A History (Privately printed, Boston, 1911).
WINSOR, JUSTIN .- Memorial History of Boston (4 vols., Boston, Os- good, 1882-1886)-See Vol. IV, pp. 279-294, "Libraries in Boston."
Much valuable material may be found in the files of Libraries and The Library Journal; also, in the annual reports of the public, private, and institutional libraries of the Commonwealth.
CHAPTER X
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, EDUCATOR OF THE COMMUNITY (1834-1927)
BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Professor Emeritus of Harvard University
THE FIVE PROTAGONISTS
In each of the volumes of the Commonwealth History, one great citizen has been selected as typifying in himself the human forces which have produced the State of Massachusetts, during the period in which he lived. This protagonist in Volume I was John Winthrop, the pioneer statesman who guided in laying the foundations of the political and social systems of the infant state. For the Province of Massachu- setts in Volume II, Cotton Mather typifies the intellectual and religious forces which helped to shape the growing colony. Out of the group of Massachusetts men who joined in laying the foundation of the American Union, as set forth in Volume III, John Adams stands out as the constitution builder of the State. No Massachusetts man in the nineteenth century, as set forth in Volume IV, better than Daniel Webster could represent the forces that made for a great and expanding member of a federal union that would last. For the fifth and final period of the series, the most outstanding individual was Charles William Eliot, for half a century the largest personal force in the expansion of the Massachusetts mind. Twentieth century Massachusetts has abounded in statesmen and soldiers, literary men, artists, and men of affairs. Among them Eliot stands out as the strongest intellectual character. He stood for education, for organization, for utilization of the human forces of his state.
THE BOY ELIOT (1834-1849)
No Massachusetts character ever better illustrated the apo- thegm that "the boy is father to the man." Charles William
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Eliot was born March 20, 1834, on the site diagonally opposite the Parker House, at the corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets, Boston, son of Samuel A. Eliot and Mary (Lyman) Eliot. He was descended from Andrew Eliot, an emigrant from England to the town of Beverly in 1665. His grand- father Samuel A. Eliot and his grandfather Theodore Lyman were both successful business men, from whom he doubtless derived some of his extraordinary sagacity in business matters. His father, a graduate of Harvard and for a time its treasurer, served his city as mayor and his state as a member of Congress.
Charles Eliot loved in later life to recall his experiences, at home and at school. He has recorded that his great-grand- father Peabody was a blacksmith; and that "his father and mother, were carefully educated persons; and among his pro- genitors were several men who had been rich in their genera- tion, able to support considerable establishments, and to give their children every accessible advantage." Down to 1900, twenty-nine of the family were graduates of Harvard College.
The interest that Charles Eliot to the end of his life felt in the education of children and youth is traceable to his lifelong discontent with the Boston private schools, through which he passed on the way to college. He never got over their inefficiency, their rigidity, and their lack of connection with practical life. Fortunately his father and mother encouraged him to enjoy an active outdoor life, including excursions in what was then the country round about Boston, and the use of boats at the family summer home at Nahant. These outdoor habits, in which he persisted all his life, without doubt con- tributed to his remarkable physical vigor. His intellectual as- sociations were with Blue Boston in its most lively intellectual period. He was the friend and associate of George Bancroft, of Ralph Waldo Emerson, of Francis Parkman and the physi- cist Wolcott Gibbs, and the famous lawyers and judges and public men of his period.
THE HARVARD STUDENT AND TEACHER (1849-1858)
For such a boy there could be no difficulty in entering Har- vard College when he presented himself in the fall of 1849- "in a green roundabout," as a classmate remembered-and
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joined the student body of 350 young men. The College, after a brief trial of a weak and clumsy elective system under President Josiah Quincy, had gone back under President Walker to a hard and fast required course; in which every student studied Latin, Greek and mathematics every year of his course, with driblets of history and science and a few hazy electives. Eliot, however, struck his own road so far as pos- sible. He was allowed to drop Greek at the beginning of his junior year, and throughout his life maintained a hostility to compulsory ancient languages in colleges.
Graduating in 1853, the next year he began his career as a teacher, an educator, a vitalizing force. He was appointed tutor in mathematics, and put his class in trigonometry to the novel practical experience of surveying the college grounds. Then he was tutor in chemistry, which became his professional subject. He established an innovation at Harvard by insisting on written examinations in his course, in a period when an analytic chemist was as rare as an Einstein nowadays.
The experience of his college life was thus described in his Harvard Memories: "In 1850-1853, I illustrated the same condition of things in Harvard College. From the middle of my freshman year till the end of my senior year I had, by favor of Professor Josiah P. Cooke, opportunities to study chemistry and mineralogy which no other undergraduate had; for I was made free of Professor Cooke's private laboratory and of the Mineral Cabinet of which he had charge. I also accompanied him on his visits to mineral localities and mining and metallurgical works. As I enjoyed very much these laboratory and field studies, I naturally gave a large part of my time to them. Nevertheless I stood well [second in his class] in my regular college work in all four years, there being time enough for both the compulsory and the chosen tasks, if one were diligent." Later he gave a brief course of lectures in the Harvard Medical School.
APPROACH TO THE PRESIDENCY OF HARVARD (1858-1869)
In the twenty years from 1849 to 1869, Harvard University underwent the presidencies of four men, none of them eminent
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except Jared Sparks. In that period, however, young Eliot was steadily coming to the front. As a tutor, along with Alexander Agassiz who was a kind of graduate student, Eliot rowed twice in a Harvard crew (not in an intercollegiate event) ; and his choice of red handkerchiefs to protect the heads of the athletes subsequently became the Harvard crim- son. To the end of his life he preserved a lively interest in physical training for college students. In 1857 he was made assistant professor of chemistry.
In 1858 Eliot married Ellen Derby Peabody, and settled down to live in Cambridge. Presently the Civil War came on -but failed to disturb Harvard University. None of his colleagues except one (a former West Pointer) felt a call to seek service in the Union Army. In 1863 he declined the offer by Governor Andrew of a commission as lieutenant-colo- nel in a cavalry regiment in the Civil War. Nor was he attracted by the offer in 1865 of a large salary ($5,000 and a house) as superintendent of a textile mill. He once said to the writer of this chapter that his success in life was due to the fact that when he came home from Europe in 1865 they needed a professor of chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and he was appointed.
Meanwhile Nathaniel Thayer, a man of power, became a member of the Harvard Corporation in 1868, and sized up both the sterility of Harvard College and the potentiality of this aggressive, experimenting professor of chemistry. Pre- sumably he was aware that vast ideas of possible reform of college institutions were forming in Eliot's mind. That mind was working out in its own way the general principles of education, of which he was to be apostle for nearly sixty years. Early in 1869 the thirty-five-years-old professor of science published two momentous articles on education in the Atlantic Monthly, which embodied the educational principles that underlie his subsequent practise and influence in education. Thayer's energy and confidence in his man carried his point. March 9, 1869, Eliot was informed that the Corporation was ready to make him president of Harvard College, then the most conspicuous post in Massachusetts.
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HARVARD APATHY
HARVARD APATHY (1869)
The new president found himself enveloped in an atmos- phere of difficulty and distrust. Harvard College numbered about 350 students ;- the whole University about 1,088. The class of 1869 in Harvard College graduated only 111 A.Bs. The traditional college instruction there, as everywhere else in the country, was based on almost completely fixed courses, obligatory on all students, taught by recitation from textbooks. Scanty use of the library by students ; no labora- tory facilities for classes; the teaching force indifferent to science; no required reading; a schoolboy teaching of English composition. Such was Harvard education sixty years ago.
The President and Fellows of Harvard College (usually called the Corporation), the governing and deciding authority in Harvard, was made up of five fellows plus the president and treasurer. The Board of Overseers, which then included the members of the State senate, felt little interest in Harvard and less in educational reform. Some of the professors were eminent, but as scholars, writers or textbook magnates rather than as constructive teachers. Few of the graduates of Har- vard dreamed of a radical reform of the whole teaching system in their own university. Still less were they aroused to a sense of the great changes in the social conditions of their State and of the whole United States, which required a radical departure in the methods of education at every stage. That conservative, poorly taught institution did not realize that in- tellectual dynamite was about to break down the apathy of a century.
The "young president" had several advantages. First of all was his fearless and confident youth; then his perfectly clear conception of an academic education based on a choice of studies instead of duress; his previous success in teaching based upon his own research and admission of students to re- search; and the confidence which he inspired in the conserva- tive, practical men of affairs as an administrator, a leader, a discoverer of new methods of education, and a prophet of educational reform. He could foresee; and he could make others see with him.
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EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS IN MASSACHUSETTS (1869)
Nevertheless, this born reformer in the conservative com- munity of Massachusetts, which was quite satisfied with its intellectual situation and was perfectly aware of the literary distinction of Massachusetts under the traditional educational system, experienced great difficulties in the progress of educa- tional reform. The educational system of the State is else- where described : common schools, very poor in many small communities, graded schools in larger places and cities, routine textbooks, some academies for boarding pupils, half a dozen colleges, mostly headed by ex-clergymen, scanty libra- ries and collections. Fifty years later Eliot said: "There have been doubts, in times yet recent, whether culture were not selfish; whether men of refined tastes and manners could really love Liberty, and be ready to endure hardness for her sake." His inaugural address, delivered in 1869, contained almost every idea which he carried out in his forty years of service as president, particularly the elective system, of which he was the prophet and the champion. Then and throughout his life he was looking far beyond the borders of the university into the education best fitted to advance his State and his nation.
STATUS OF HARVARD (1869)
Before he could put his new ideas into effect, it was neces- sary for him to reorganize the administration of the whole university, and to bring about great changes in the personnel. "The University" he found subdivided into Harvard College, the Law School, the Divinity School, the Medical School, and the Lawrence Scientific School. These were practically sepa- rate institutions,-each with its own faculty and its own system. Each was carried on as a kind of private corporation, laying its own tuition and collecting the students' fees, with little interchange of students. Each established its own cur- riculum, its own conditions of entrance and graduation. As was the case in all the similar professional schools throughout the country, standards were incredibly low. A law degree was attained by attending two winter courses of lectures without examination. In the Medical School, one of the professors
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