Observations on Financing Libraries

T HE present economic depression has created serious financial problems for the public library, as well as for many other governmental agencies. The curtailment of public functions and the reduction of public expenditures have been demanded by many taxpayers, as individuals as well as members of various groups, not alone because of high tax bills, but because of fancied encroachments by the government upon preserves of private profit. The increase in tax delinquency, creating many unanticipated deficits in public treasuries, has, in many instances, made fiscal retrenchment imperative. Perhaps to the municipal official, who under such circumstances is trying to balance the local budget, the library appears to be the activity which can be curtailed with least damage, unless it is the zoo or the art institute. Any retrenchment in public services arouses the opposition of individuals or groups especially benefiting from the maintenance of these services. It is doubtful, however, whether any activity of government has a vested claim to a given proportion of public funds, or even whether certain activities of government are so imperative that they cannot be dispensed with, at least for a short time. The sole purpose of government is to sate collective wants in the order of their intensity. These wants are constantly changing as social evaluations of governmental processes and services change, as standards of living and standards of civic obligation vary, as the mode of satisfying individual wants shifts, and as custom gives way to invention and innovation. Functions which are required of government today may be dispensed with in the future. The first problem of government, therefore, is to evaluate collective social wants and create means for sating them. The techniques employed in making these valuations have to date been very crude, consisting largely in the political appraisal of voters' demands rather than in the