Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1895 — Compulsory Free Public Libraries. [ARTICLE]

Compulsory Free Public Libraries.

The Legislature of New Hampshire lias just passed, and the Governor has signed, a bill which marks an epoch in the history of public libraries. It was a New Hampshire town (Peterborough) that first (in 1833) appropriated public money, raised by taxation, to the purchase of books for a free library. It was New Hampshire that, in 1849, passed the first law ever known authorizing the raising of money by taxation by separate towns and cities to be used for libraries. And now New Hampshire is again in the lead in enacting a requirement that every town shall raise a certain'amount annually aud apply it for that purpose. The tiine is coming State will require tills of every town as much as it requires schools to be kept. And in that good t ime, perhaps a century hence, this enactment of New Hampshire will stand forth as one of the landmarks of human progress. Massachusetts was the second State to adopt (in 1851) permissive library legislation. If she Is not so quick to follow New Hampshire in this new movement it may be because nearly every town in the State has alrleady voluntarily established a free library.— The Critic. Every man must do a certain amount of whining to some woman.