would be a pessimistic view which would say that modern society is coming to depend on the mothers for the accumulation and transmission of culture, while retaining in the male line the function of accumulating and transmitting wealth, though much could be said for the thesis and a very plausible argument could be constructed for it. If all this is true, it is inevitable that women should use libraries far more than men. It is equally inevitable that in this large use much should be trivial, much customary, much misdirected and unwise. Nature has no means of reaching success except by the rule of natural selection--the old-fashioned plan of "cut-and-try," and this means much failure along the road of advance. We who see the work of the library from our daily experience know how much it is contributing of culture, how much of happiness, to the life of women, and through them to that of the community. But men--why do they not use the library, say the critics, and what shall the library do to increase its use by men? You have all read the vigorous article that the _Independent_ published on this subject last summer, which, with much of error, contains a good deal of truth in a stimulating form. It presents a subject which must have a somewhat larger treatment. It ought first to be said that in this and other articles on the topic the terms _women_ and _men_ are by no means similarly used. The writers are not concerned about men at large--the husbands and brothers of the women who are said to visit the library--the women of comparative leisure, who are seeking information on art, literature, or ancestry, who are trying to get up a paper for the club, or who visit the library for recreation. It is the plumber, the machinist, the grocer, whose absence they deplore, and to whom they think the library ought to give help. Not only so, but it is the plumber, rather than as a man, whose presence is desired and who is to be aided. The library, says the _Independent_ in effect, ought to teach the plumber how to "plumb"; ought to furnish him with information which his boss is unable to give. But this is a new function for libraries, however useful it may be, and a function which libraries do not attempt for women. Dressmakers do not (I speak under correction, but I think I am right) expect to secure at a library a knowledge of how to fit a difficult customer, any more than do tailors. Yet this sort of thing, we are told, the library ought to do for men; and we are told in a tone which implies that here is an obvious duty which only wilful ignorance can overlook.