Bread and the Circus

...There is no need to make a prolonged examination of the figures which the Staff Association of the New York Public Library, composed of a thousand employees, has issued, with the aim of securing more generous treatment, especially as they have not substantially been denied...

...Mencken watches the advancing tide of "agronomes" with the fearful pride of a citizen of Antonine Rome—the centre which stamps "Broadway" on its dramatic successes as a guarantee of worth before launching them across the continent, actually spends on the upkeep of its library system one-seventh per head of the sum allotted by Cleveland, Ohio, and one-quarter as much as Chicago, Illinois...

...Wisdom is always the poor relation of common sense...

...The metropolis which admits that it is the headquarters of whatever culture and "civilization" rotarianism and rule-of-thumb pragmatism is sparing us—the city from whose ramparts Mr...

...Libraries, art galleries, museums, and culture generally are part of a big overhead that civilization, for its own good name, must be content to carry without looking for any balance-sheet or show of profit...

...The chapter on salaries makes still more painful reading...

...As a matter of fact the city that boasts Carrere's vision in stone is a very mean one indeed...

...Branch libraries possess a single copy of such books as The Life and Letters of Walter Hines Page, Bryce's American Commonwealth, and Papini's Life of Christ, with a waiting list of thirty to fifty waiting upon their return...

...They only need to be mentioned for their cumulative effect to be realized...

...Trained librarians, men and women, are repaid for services which require an alert brain and constant mental strain by a pittance which would drive a garment worker to revolt, and rouse satiric laughter if suggested to a plasterer or printer...

...That it will ever be more than approximate is a good deal to hope...

...The tendency to "cut down" on the sums allotted to the things of the spirit, sadly evident all over Europe since the great war, has been so often the theme of regretful notice in America that it would be little less than shameful to see it reproduced in a country which has not the economic excuse of the impoverished nations across the Atlantic...

...It is impossible for the New Yorker to enter its portals, behind which most of the world's wit and wisdom is to be sought—it is hard for him even to pass it on his daily journeys up and down town—without a sense of uplift taking possession of the jaded spirit—without a consciousness that he is, after all, a citizen of no mean city...

...about one-fifth give up the struggle annually as a bad job and transfer their talents and training to more generous masters than the New York aediles have the heart or inclination to be...

...BREAD AND THE CIRCUS NE of the most beautiful buildings in New York —indeed one of the most beautiful modern buildings in the world—is the Public Library, which for some twenty years has stood upon the site of the old Croton reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street...

...Classic architecture, a stately flight of marble steps, couchant lions, statuary groups surmounted with noble texts, all combine to make it one of the worthiest shrines that any great city has built for the reception of the printed word...

...To man their ranks it is only too evident that the civic authorities in New York have been depending upon a spirit of sacrifice that they have no right to take as a matter of course —or, at all events, to reward with less than a decent living wage...

...It is not too much to say that the gratitude and generosity with which it is met is no bad index of the state of civilization a community has attained...

...Recent facts and figures issued by a committee of the staff who are launching a campaign for a more adequate grant, are calculated to make the New Yorker blush—more especially when they are compared with similar assessments in the newer cities of the Middle-West...

...Not only is New York, in its treatment of library and librarians, falling behind more public-spirited cities, but it is actually failing to keep pace with its own growth...

...at all events when it comes to putting its hand in its pocket for the maintenance of the library or the men and women who devote their days to its service...

...and those who serve her, serve a mistress whose wages are scant and whose commons are short...

...The mere stock of books is decreasing at the rate of 11,000 volumes a year, and thousands of books still on the shelves are too soiled and worn to be fit for circulation...

...And the Letter Carriers' Association of New York (all honor to their public-spirited action) are as yet the most prominent advocates that the men and women who serve the poor man's university have found to speak a word for them in the ranks of union labor...

...It is impossible to believe that at least approximate justice will not be done in the near future to a cause so temperately stated as this appeal for an adequate appropriation made to a city which is never niggardly when its imagination and pride have been touched...

...In all ages of civilization, what are sometimes called the vocational employments, have too generally been the starved ones...

...Many supplement their earnings by working at something else "out of hours...