Bogy Threats to Reading Available to Purchase

Time was when we librarians were howling at “twopenny” libraries. Not having the enterprise to display what should be our better and more enduring books in street windows, to give our libraries the impact of a good bookshop, we grew pale before the garish shows of tuck publications in cheap‐jacks' twopenny corner booths. Our dumps then, the slur on librarianship, infuriated me. I protested. The shivering stopped. Soon we saw, we now see, these no‐longer twopenny booths as dingy shops hinting at furtive merchandise. We did not understand, we do not yet understand, that whoever grovels to the mob, will die by the mob; a fact librarians, as well as cheap‐jacks, should remember, for no library has ever won credit or got thanks for its tuck.