machinery of reaction is not the same.  In St. Louis, for instance, the library receives the proceeds of a tax voted directly by the people; in New York City it receives an appropriation voted by the Board of Apportionment, whose members are elected by the people.  The St. Louis Public Library is therefore one step nearer the control of the people than the New York Public Library.  If we could imagine the management of either library to become so objectionable as to make its abolition desirable, a petition for a special election could remove public support in St. Louis very soon.  In New York the matter might have to become an issue in a general election, at which members of a Board of Apportionment should be elected under pledge to vote against the library’s appropriation.  Nevertheless, in both cases there is ultimate popular control.  Owing to this dual relation, the public can promote the efficiency of the library in two ways—­by controlling it properly and by its attitude toward the service that is rendered.  Every member of the public, in fact, is related to the library somewhat as a railway stockholder, riding on a train, is related to the company.  He is at once boss and beneficiary.  Let us see first what the public can do for its library through its relation of control.  Besides the purse-strings, which we have seen are sometimes held directly by the public and sometimes by its elected representatives, we must consider the governing board of the institution—­its trustees or directors.  These may be elected by the people or appointed by an elected officer, such as the mayor, or chosen by an elected body, such as the city council or the board of education.

Let us take the purse-strings first.  Does your public library get enough public money to enable it to do the work that it ought to do?  What is the general impression about this in the community?  What does the library board think?  What does the librarian think?  What do the members of his staff say?  What has the library’s annual report to say about it?  It is not at all a difficult matter for the citizen to get information on this subject and to form his own opinion regarding it.  Yet it is an unusual thing to find a citizen who has either the information or a well-considered opinion.  The general impression always seems to be that the library has plenty of money—­rather more, in fact, than it can legitimately use.  It is probably well for the library, under these circumstances, that the public control of its purse-strings is indirect.  If the citizens of an average American city had to go to the polls annually and vote their public library an appropriation, I am sure that most libraries would have to face a very material reduction of their income.

The trouble about this impression is that it is gained without knowledge of the facts.  If a majority of the citizens, understanding how much work a modern public library is expected to do and how their own library does it, should deliberately conclude that its management was extravagant, and that its expenditure should be cut down, the minority would have nothing to do, as good citizens, but submit.  The citizens have nothing to say as directly as this, but the idea, so generally held, that libraries are well off, does operate in the long run to limit library appropriations and to prevent the library from doing much useful work that it might do and ought to do.