Messrs. DIMMOCK, MEYSENBURG, PREETORIUS and O'REILLY.

THOMAS DIMMOCK, President.

T. A. MEYSENBURG, Vice-President.

FREDERICK M. CRUNDEN, Secretary and Librarian.

OF THE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

OF THE

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC (FREE) LIBRARY.

To Hon. Henry Ziegenhein, Mayor of St. Louis:

SIR-The Board of Directors of the St. Louis Public (Free) Library beg leave to submit to you, as chief magistrate of the city, the following report for the year ending April 30, 1898. A large and valuable portion thereof is the annual official report of our Librarian, to whose energy, intelligence and long experience the present and prospective growth of the Library is so largely due. The accurate and exhaustive details given by him leave practically nothing of real value to be added by us in the way of information. We may, therefore, confine our remarks mainly to such comment and suggestion as the facts he presents seem to demand.

The Free Public Library has now been in existence only a little over four years. In this short period it has more than fulfilled the most sanguine expectations of those who were instrumental in its establishment. From the very outset it demonstrated its right to live and its capacity for indefinite growth. It is no longer an experiment, involving possible failure in a near or remote future. It is an assured success, and this assurance is deepening and strengthening with every passing week. It is pre-eminently a popular institution; an institution "of, for, and by the people;" an institution which, as an agency for the diffusion of popular knowledge and the general education and intellectual development and advancement of the community, has no equal-hardly, so far as its work is concerned, a respectable rival. The only question now is-and it is a most urgent and pressing one-whether this great and constantly enlarging

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usefulness shall be checked and crippled for the lack of proper facilities; whether St. Louis, with its population of 600,000, shall be content to be passed and distanced by cities much inferior in size, wealth and commercial enterprise.

The pivotal and vital point of this question, to which all others are of comparatively minor consequence, is the need of a new building; a building not only in every way worthy of a city of which we are all so justly proud, but a building entirely fit and adequate not merely for the immediate wants of a People's Library, nor for its wants ten or twenty years hence, but for a period of indefinite duration; a building which shall be a permanent home, and not simply a temporary camp, so to speak.

Our 130,000 volumes are now lodged in the sixth and seventh stories of a building constructed for purely business purposes. It is crowded now; and the pressure upon the limited space naturally and inevitably becomes greater as a constantly increasing number of books demand admittance. It is difficult of access, deficient in indispensable conveniences, and notoriously unsafe as a depository of the literary and scientific treasures it now contains,-to say nothing of those that must come hereafter.

The Board of Directors, from their first organization, have fully recognized the absolute necessity of a new and suitable building at the earliest possible moment, if the Library is ever to be what it certainly ought to be. They have done, are doing, and will continue to do, their best under most unfavorable conditions; but they realize. more and more every day that if the Library, and all that it stands for, are not to suffer serious, if not irreparable, injury, these conditions must be radically changed for the better-and that delay, to say the least, is dangerous. In these few years, by closest economy and constant watchfulness, they have, after paying the fixed charges upon the annual fund for maintenance, saved $123,000. This sum has been invested in desirable real estate with a view to the erection of a new building. The remainder of the money required for the purchase of what is now known as the Library Lot on Olive Street was furnished by a loan, the particulars of which are sufficiently given in the Librarian's Report. The meeting of the interest on this loan and payment of a portion of the principal have necessarily cramped the financial resources of the Board to a very considerable extent; and, in the hope of providing ways and means to relieve them of this burden, the question of levying a small building tax for the limited period of five years was submitted to popular election in April, 1897,

and again in November, 1898. On both occasions it was defeated,not because a majority of the people were opposed to it, as the returns showed decidedly the contrary,-but because of the needlessly stringent conditions of the state law under which the election was held. Consequently the financial burden remains, with all that it implies in the shape of embarrassment to the Board and restricted usefulness to the Library. It must be lifted; and we have faith to believe that it will be. An institution which already has 45,000 enrolled members, and which circulates nearly a million of books every year among the people "without money and without price," should not and can not be allowed to suffer from a depleted treasury. The Library will not and can not die; but it may and will languish if not liberally supported by the public for which it is working and to which it belongs.

Until the conditions imposed by the state law are materially changed, it will be exceedingly difficult to obtain a verdict at the ballot box in favor of the building tax; and, until such verdict is obtained, the Library will be heavily handicapped by lack of money. Our hands are tied, or so nearly so, as to almost disable them for the great and ever-growing effort imperatively required if the Library is to be kept up to the high standard of the mission it has assumed, and so far worthily filled. Something must be done, and it remains to be seen what St. Louis will do. A noble example has recently been set in the case of Washington University. A few public-spirited gentlemen, who know how to use their wealth, have contributed enough of it to place the University fairly upon its feet and open for it a noble future. Are there not others in our city who will do as much or more for an institution certainly not inferior, and in some respects superior, in usefulness to any University? How can our rich men make better investment of a part of their riches than in this way? How can they buy for themselves a more generous and graceful immortality? How can they win from present and future generations a larger or more enduring gratitude? How can they more surely accomplish what will make posterity" rise up and call them blessed?"

Meanwhile the Library waits.

Respectfully submitted,

THOMAS DIMMOCK,

President

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