machinery, as the United States has at Washington.  For legislative purposes our Washington is a shifting one.  It is wherever the Association may hold its annual meeting and wherever the Council may convene in the interim.  For such administrative and executive purposes as require a fixed location, our Washington is for the present in Boston.  Next year it may be elsewhere; but whether it shall remain there or move to some other place would seem to be a matter of small importance.  Wherever it may be, it will be inaccessible to a large majority of American librarians.  If immediate accessibility is a requisite, therefore, some of its functions may and should be divided.  It may not be too much to look forward to a sectional headquarters in every state in the Union, related perhaps to the general headquarters somewhat as branch libraries to a central library, or, perhaps, carried on under the auspices of the state associations.  At any rate, it is encouraging to reflect that we are not insensible to the obstacles in the way of making our own, or any other association truly American in scope, and are experimenting toward obviating them.

All these considerations appear to me to lead to one conclusion—­the duty of every librarian to become and remain a member of the American Library Association.  I do not desire to dwell on the direct advantages that membership offers—­these are not few, and they are sufficiently obvious.  Possibly most of those who are likely to be affected by them are already members of the Association.  I would recommend for consideration higher grounds than these.  Instead of asking the question, “What is there in it for me?” I should inquire, “What is there in it for other people?” How will it benefit the general status of library work, the general standing of librarians in the community, the influence of libraries on those who use or ought to use them—­these and a hundred other elements of progress that are closely bound up with the success of library effort, but that may not add to the welfare of any one individual.

There seems to be no doubt that the answers to these questions all point toward increased membership.  As we have chosen to work along the broader lines and by the energy of mass rather than that of velocity—­with the sledge-hammer rather than the rifle bullet—­it is surely our duty to make that mass as efficient and as impressive as possible, which means that it must be swelled to the largest possible proportions.  Large membership may be efficient in two ways, by united weight and by pervasiveness.  An army is powerful in the first way.  Ten thousand men concentrated in one spot may strike a sledge-hammer blow and carry all before them.  Yet the same ten thousand men may police a great city without even seeing one another.  Scattered about on different beats they are everywhere.  Every block or two one meets a patrol and the sense of security that they give is overwhelming.  It is in this way, it seems to me, that large membership