Take any city of average size and inquire how many libraries it supports. Is there any necessity in a town for more than one library? I am open to conviction, but I doubt. There are excellent reasons for the duplication in each case, I know, just as there were for the two golf clubs in our little town. The duplication in buildings, staff and books is very costly, and the service, no matter how good it may be, is not bettered by this duplication. The trouble may be minimized by co-operation, but it still exists. Take, if you please, the one item of book-purchase. I shall not speak here of private owners, though they must bear their share of blame and of punishment for our two sins; but add together the book funds of the two or three large libraries--public or subscription--and of the dozen small ones--special, denominational, associational--in a community, and see to what a considerable sum it amounts. If it could be administered and expended as a unit, is there any one who will maintain that the precise books would be bought that actually are bought? We find all these libraries buying copies of the same book when one copy is all that the community needs, each ignoring the others and each lamenting the insufficiency of its funds. I have not forgotten such conspicuous instances of co-operation in book-purchase as that of the three large libraries in Chicago, but I also do not forget that it is rare, and that even in Chicago it has been found difficult to carry it out in the perfection in which it is to be found on paper. If we add private purchasers to the libraries I have little hesitation in saying that the money spent on books in any community is quite enough to buy all that the community needs. The lacks are due to the fact that the sum needed to supply them is spent on useless duplicates.