Take one little example. In a factory the raw material is followed statistically from its purchase to its sale as a finished product; and even after its sale its performances are watched. The owner can find out, when he wants to do so, whether that particular article made or lost money for the firm, and how much, and why; whether it gave satisfaction to the purchaser, and if not, why not; to what its excellence or deficiencies were due, whether to the qualities of the raw material or the methods of manufacture. How many librarians can similarly ascertain whether the purchase of a given invoice of books was profitable to the library or not, taking into account the number and duration of their issues, the time lost and the money spent in mending and re-binding them, and so on? How many can tell you whether those books gave satisfaction to the users, in their bindery, typography, and paper; whether the reader found them hard on his eyes, easily soiled, difficult to hold open--and whose fault it was, the publisher’s, the binder’s or the mender’s? This, too, is merely the material and physical side of the question--all that the manufacturer or the merchant needs to consider. We librarians say we are on a loftier plane; we purvey ideas. So we do. How many of us then can say what was the mental and moral effect on our community of the books added last year, as compared with those added the year before? How many of us know even whether the readers liked the books of one year better than those of another? Again; the individual worker in a good factory, the travelling salesman in a good mercantile house, is watched statistically. His employers can tell just how profitable his work is to them. If the failure of an operation, or the loss of custom in a town, is due to him, they know it, and if his service continues unprofitable, he is replaced. How many librarians watch the work of individual members of the staff with such detail? Suppose at the end of six months’ service, an assistant were confronted with statistical evidence that she had mischarged ten books, made eight bad mistakes in accessioning, written twenty catalog cards that had to be replaced and caused four complaints by her bearing at the desk? Suppose she were thereupon given notice that she must do better or go; what would she say? I think I know. She would say that the library was run just like a department store. And she would be quite right; only, instead of being derogatory to the library as it would be intended, her remark would be a compliment. It is time that we should carefully discriminate between what is commercial, in commercial institutions, and what simply makes for orderliness and efficiency.