Celebrate libraries! April 3 is National Library Giving Day and April 6 is National Library Day. Consider making a donation to the Chicago Public Library or another of your choice.

Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, President of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Public Library, spoke with pride about his institution at the 1893 World’s Fair. He addressed the Congress of Librarians—which merged with the annual meeting of the American Library Association as part of the Congress on Literature, which was part of the World’s Congress Auxiliary (These people were organized!)—on July 14, 1893. World’s Fair historian Rossiter Johnson records that Hirsch’s remarks “were listened to with the greatest attention.” An excerpt of his speech “The Public Library in Its Relation to Education” is reprinted below:

“The Public Library has a character of its own which differentiates it from the library of scholars. Public libraries are designed to meet an existing want. Mistakes have been made in stocking libraries with ephemeral literature, but they have not been made in the case of the Chicago Public Library. While our public library has always been ready to meet existing wants it is not lost sight of the desirability of creating a want for the better class of books.

We have considered the Public Library as an educational factor. Men should know themselves. The public library may be able to give the key to their own minds and open to them the hidden territory of self-consciousness. the literature on the roof of a public library must be extensive. In a country where the government is an expression of the will of the governed the public library must furnish the voter material whereon to inform his own opinion. It must and can do much to chasten the tastes of the public. It can and must instruct in aesthetics, ethics, and sociology.

The board of directors of the Chicago Public library has tried to build up a great public library and they have succeeded. The Chicago library has a greater circulation than any other library in the world. It is more a library for the people than the scholar, yet the scholar has not been forgotten. Posterity has not been forgotten. Books which are not allowed to circulate and are ever denied the privileges of the reference room have been purchased for the sake of coming generations, for even they are necessary for the student of future centuries to form correct ideas of our ages.”

Before moving into the new Central Library building (now the Chicago Cultural Center) on Michigan Avenue between Washington and Randolph streets in 1897, the Chicago Public Library was housed on the fourth floor of Chicago City Hall. [Image from Butterworth, Hezekiah Zigzag Journeys in the White City (Estes and Lauriat, 1894).]

Dr. Emil G. Hirsch (1851–1923) was a Jewish biblical scholar, Reform rabbi, and founding member of the NAACP. At the 1893 World’s Fair, he participated in several other sessions of the World’s Congress Auxiliary, presenting papers on “Methods of University Instruction” for the Congress on Higher Education, and “The Ethical Value of Manual Training” for the Congresses on Manual Education. For the Parliament of Religions, Rabbi Hirsch served as Chairman of the Committee of Organization for the Jewish Congress, read his paper on “The Evolution of the Old Testament Religion,” and closed the Parliament with a universal prayer.

Dr. Emil Hirsch c.1899 [Image from Wikipedia.]

SOURCES

Johnson, Rossiter A History of the World’s Columbian Exposition Held in Chicago in 1893, Volume 4: Congresses. D. Appleton and Co., 1898.

“Value of Chicago Public Library” Chicago Tribune Jul. 15, 1893, p. 8.