In making this characterization I am aware that the sale of additional facilities and privileges by a free library is regarded as proper by a large number of librarians, and that the extension of systems of which it is a feature is widely urged. It is found in the St Louis plan for fiction, which has been so successful, and still more in Mr. Dewey’s proposed library bookstore. That all these plans are admirable in many ways may be freely acknowledged. In so far as they may be adopted by endowed libraries they are certainly unobjectionable. But in spite of their advantages, it seems to me that their use in an institution supported from the public funds is a mistake. The direct payment of money to any institution so supported, even if such payment is logically justifiable, is open to so much misconstruction and is so commonly misunderstood or misinterpreted, that I would hold up as an ideal the total abolition of all money transactions between the individual members of a public and institutions supported by that public as a whole. The present subject evidently does not justify further discussion of this point, but its mention here is proper because if library fines have become in many cases payments for a privilege, that very fact should lead those who agree with what has been said above to strive for their abolition. Another objection to the fine, which is, curiously enough, also the chief reason why it is almost hopeless to look for its abolition, is the fact that wherever fines have been applied they have become a source of revenue that cannot well be neglected. In a village not far from New York the receipts from bicycle fines at one time nearly paid the running expenses of the place. Agitation in favor of substituting other methods of punishing the cyclists who ride on the sidewalks and fail to light their lamps at sundown would evidently be hopeless here. In the same way receipts from fines have become a very considerable source of income in large libraries, and are not to be neglected even in small ones. This is apparent in the following table[2]: Income Fines Boston $309,417.52 $4,621.45 Chicago 285,951.22 7,131.19 Philadelphia 141,954.45 2,385.52 Brooklyn 105,081.19 4,013.26 N. Y. C. F. L 91,613.12 4,648.98 Buffalo 87,946.85 2,951.21 Milwaukee 71,328.80 1,295.99 San Francisco 64,966.31 2,250.85 Newark 43,706.36 1,905.17 Evidently the abolition of fines in these cases would mean a reduction of income that would make itself felt at once.