service can be rightfully performed. Adjourned at 12.45 p.m. _SIXTH SESSION._ (FOUNTAIN SPRING HOUSE, TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 9.) The meeting was called to order at 2.15 p.m. by President CARR, who announced that the discussion would be continued from the morning session, on the subject THE RELATIONSHIP OF PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS AND LIBRARIANS. MELVIL DEWEY: There seems to be an impression on the part of some that the attitude I have taken in regard to this question is for the sake of starting up discussion. I am quite sincere in what I say and in what I believe in regard to it. In the first place, I think nothing could be more unfortunate than for any of us to get into an attitude of antagonism with the publishers and booksellers. There was something like that twenty-five years ago; their organization and ours began at the same time. There were some who wanted to fight with the booksellers and publishers. I think that is all wrong. I am heartily in sympathy with nearly everything that Mr. Bowker said this morning, and with what has appeared in the columns of the _Publishers' Weekly_. I read every page of it. I believe so profoundly in the value of the bookman's work that, when formulating definitions of our university studies, as to what a full-fledged university should be, I insisted it should include publishing research and publication, not only the preservation of learning. It is because I have so profound a respect for what may be done by the book trade, as we call it, that I believe in these things. But the discussion this morning seemed to be very much on the line of Ruskin's attack on railroads, which he said always were devices of the devil, and he said it very eloquently. You heard the same talk about the trolley lines--about the whitening bones of the young innocents that had been killed by them. We were assured that bicycles were to destroy the horse trade entirely, yet horses now bring double what they did before. Twenty-five years ago, I remember a very prominent man most earnestly pointing out just what was pointed out this morning--that the A. L. A. and the public libraries were simply devices to injure the interests of publishers and booksellers. And the attitude of men on these things is based on what Mr. Bowker called "an economic and social fallacy." I like the phrase; only he was fitting it to me, and I fit it to him, and it is for you to decide which is right. The question hinges on what we understand the library to be. If the library is like a blacksmith shop, or shoe store, or something of that kind, then he is right. If the library is an essential part in our system of education and a necessity for our civilization, then I am right. In New York we still have the plank road and the toll-gate, and we are just taking them over for public use--buying them and abolishing the tolls, so that the public's right to use the roads has come back to them. All the arguments we heard