Soup kitchens for the mind

Public libraries considered in the Manchester Guardian, January 19 1842

Our first plan should be to establish, at the outset, in every large district of the town, a not very extensive library, but consisting of books calculated to beget a love of reading, and to furnish materials for thinking. To be successful, one fundamental rule must be to exclude works of controversial theology or party politics. And, with these exclusions, the fields of science, art, and literature are still vast enough, without trenching on the debateable lands which have caused so many wars both of words and swords.

The external machinery of these free libraries and reading rooms should be simple and inexpensive. A lock-up cupboard for the books, a librarian's table, chair and slate; a few benches, and a good fire, or other means of warming the room, are all the requisites. As for the rooms, there should not be any real difficulty in a town having most of its hundreds of Sunday schools standing empty during the great part, if not the whole, of the week-days. All of them, too, are already provided with the few benches, tables, stoves &c. Surely some of these might be obtained at moderate rents, including the consumption of coal so many hours daily, and of gas in the evening?

As in the purchase of books, in these times, with a little judicious management on the part of one active, intelligent agent, a great store of really good works could be procured for very little money in the old book-shops and stalls. Or, if every family in Manchester, possessing a small collection of books, would but give one volume to the free library it would soon number thousands of volumes. These should then be collated, and, after disposing of unsuitable in exchange for suitable books, the whole should be divided into as many portions as there are district reading rooms, say 100 volumes to each. Let these 100 volumes be sent to district A for three months, and then be forwarded to district B, and be replaced by another 100 volumes, which have been three months in district B.

In this way the same 100 volumes would itinerate throughout the different districts; and, if there were only eight reading rooms, they would return to the same room every two years for a period of 13 weeks. In this way, duplicates would be made available in different districts; and a small box or closet would be sufficient to hold a library of considerable extent, in successive portions of 100 or 150 volumes.

We have already occupied as much space as we can devote to this subject; but we must remark, that an institution of this kind would be of no fleeting or temporary character; and its effects and benefits would endure and be felt in wide diffusion, when the well-meant, but often scarcely palliative relief of soup-kitchens, or other aid, shall have been forgotten.

· This article is drawn from the archive at the Newsroom
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/19/featuresreviews.guardianreview6
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