March 1941 — The university of the working man

In the last week of March the argument left the council chamber and went into the Public Debate column, where the Tribune printed letters from anyone willing to sign one.

Thursday, March 27 — Anna M. Mashek

The first was headed VOTE YES. Anna M. Mashek made the case the way a person makes it to a neighbor, in questions.

Did they know that the south branch on West Avenue and Johnson Street was a shed, through whose wooden walls snow sifted in winter and dust in summer, that had to close some afternoons in the heat, and that held half the books its patrons needed and no reference material at all? Did they know the north branch on upper Caledonia Street was somewhat better and no better equipped? Had they noticed which way the population of the city was moving?

Then she gave them the numbers. The north branch had circulated 59,874 books in 1940 — 37,002 to adults and 22,872 to children. The south branch had circulated 66,181. Between them the two cramped branches lent out more than the main library downtown. Forty-two percent of La Crosse held a reading card, against an average of thirty-five percent in cities of its size. In the worst years of the Depression the city's circulation had climbed from 271,103 to 355,846.

"The library is the university of the working man and his family."

— Anna M. Mashek, The La Crosse Tribune, March 27, 1941

She told them what it would cost them: of every dollar of 1941 tax, one and one-tenth cents went to the library fund, so on an eighty-dollar tax bill the contribution was eighty-eight cents. She reminded them, as Van Steenwyk had in 1937 and Sanford that September, that the city had never spent one cent on land or buildings for library purposes — the main library was Governor Washburn's gift and other citizens', the north branch was a rented store, and the south branch had spent fifteen years in a shack that had been put up as temporary school barracks.

And then she produced the comparison that settles the whole question.

$110,000 was $55,000 a building. The new fire station on the north side had cost about $29,000. Was a library worth less than twice a fire station?

Sunday, March 30 — A Taxpayer

The second letter was unsigned, as the column allowed. It came from the middle of the city, and it made the opposite argument from the opposite direction.

Its author worried about turnout. There were few contests for city office that year, and a voter with nothing else to decide might simply stay home. The present buildings, the letter said, were a disgrace to the city, and nobody disputed it: the north branch an overcrowded, poorly lighted, poorly ventilated ex-store that gave the north side scarcely half the library it needed; the south branch worse, a frame shed, badly heated, beside the noise of a playground.

La Crosse was spending about sixty cents a head on its libraries. A normal system, the authorities held, cost a dollar. Madison spent $1.28, Green Bay $1.15, Superior ninety-four cents, Racine eighty-eight. Nobody could call La Crosse extravagant.

"For years the citizens of both the north and south sides have paid their taxes to provide us in the center of the city with a decent library while they themselves have gone without. It is no more than fair."

— "A Taxpayer," The La Crosse Tribune, March 30, 1941

Let us go to the polls on Tuesday, the letter ended, and give the north and south sides the libraries they have needed for years and which they have helped provide for us in the center of the city.

Monday, March 31 — the paper, the night before

On the eve of the vote the Tribune wrote its own editorial, and it was not a rousing one. It was tired, and affectionate, and it told the truth about how the thing had been done.

The appeal of the branch libraries, it said, came out of the sheer reasonableness of the people who had really cared about them — those who with candor, but without high pressure, had nursed the project along until some decision had to be made. Most of what they had achieved over the years had consisted of stepping aside: waiting for a moment when the coast was clear of some other community improvement with a better claim on the city's attention.

"those who with candor but without high pressure have nursed the project along"

— The La Crosse Tribune, March 31, 1941

Such a moment had come once before, the editorial recalled, and the citizens of La Crosse had granted the branch libraries clear sailing by referendum. Then something happened. The work was to be done with federal assistance; either a misunderstanding arose in the Chicago office or the money was momentarily short. Whatever the cause, the vote the people had given lapsed — it had applied only to that project at that particular time, and when the project died the mandate died with it.

The referendum went by default.

And such, the paper wrote, had been the fortune of the library proposal all along. The people had been for it the whole time. If they would bear their patience a little while longer and carry their convictions to the polls, the branch libraries might yet see the light of day.

It made two practical points. The $110,000 was not a sum the city had to spend, but a ceiling beyond which the council could not go. And if the project passed, it would be the first original expenditure on libraries in La Crosse in thirty years — the main library having been remodeled in 1909 and given to the city before that, and the two branches having a history that revealed no expenditure on the city's part at all.

The question, it concluded, had been before the public so long and discussed so thoroughly that its presence in people's minds had become commonplace. To give voice to a conviction so many held was the only duty left. Not to do so might be to inherit yet another quirk in the long series by which the demonstrated will of the majority had been upset.

"The answer tomorrow is 'yes'!"

— The La Crosse Tribune, March 31, 1941