CONFERENCE OF LIBRARIANS.

ST. LOUIS, MAY 8-11, 1889.

COMMON SENSE IN LIBRARIES.

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, C: A. CUTTER, LIBRARIAN OF THE BOSTON ATHENÆUM.

In obedience to an unbroken precedent, I must open this convention with some general remarks. They shall be on Common Sense.

Common Sense-what is it? I hope no one will insist on a definition. Logicians order us to define our terms before engaging in discussion, but I find it much more convenient to leave this one a little vague, trusting to your knowledge of its general meaning and to your willingness to allow a certain latitude in its use. But if I must be explicit, I will say common sense is my sense; other people's sense, when it differs from mine, is little better than nonsense.

ment, the same content with small begin-
nings, the same ingenuity to contrive and
quickness to seize upon every improvement-
the same common sense, in short, have been
shown in the spread of our libraries, as in the
settlement of our country, to a degree not seen
in older lands. Our libraries have been like
our railroads. When we were poor and popu-
lation was scanty, we built railways in the
cheapest manner: two planks with a flat iron
rail spiked along them, turning up every now
and then to run through the bottom of the car,
-a tramway rather than a railroad. The Eng-
lish traveler, seeing it, wondered and sneered;
but it was the only way in which we could
build them, and so we opened up the country.
Now that we have got riches from the terri-
tory then reached, we have carried our railway
system far ahead of any; we run palace
cars across the desert. So our libraries, be-
gun modestly a century ago, by making the
most of a little and by the use of mother wit,
have, with the schools, opened up a great
country of intellect, have extended themselves
more than anywhere else on the globe, have
become a necessity-at least wherever the
New Englander goes and, the era of luxury
having come, one finds them on the frontier,
or what was lately the frontier, at Minneap-
olis, at Denver, with all the perfections of
material and personnel that the Library Bu-
reau and the Library School can furnish. A
century ago western libraries were founded
with coon skins; now they cross the prairies

One definition I must protest against, however; I cannot agree with the man who declared that common sense is thus named because it is so uncommon. We could not conduct the affairs of life if this were true. In our own field common sense is the very characteristic of American libraries. We must not blow our own trumpet too loudly. We must not overlook the magnificent accumulation of books in German and French libraries, the good fight made by our English brothers against prejudice and ignorance, the zeal and the complete organization of the Italians. Yet I believe that the same qualities that have made our nation (with certain glaring exceptions) the best of pioneers-the same fitting of means to ends, the same suiting of the man and the thing to the environ