put the work in charge of some one teacher who can unite rooms if necessary, or better arrange the grading of the work; or who perhaps is better prepared to undertake part work so desirable in the upper grades. In the smaller schools there will arise no difficulty, as the teacher so assigned will be in no danger of overburdening herself, but in the larger schools there is a serious danger that the one thought most competent may undertake too much if she attempts to do all of the departmental music work. A teacher meeting the same faces every day, using the same material, and encountering the same experiences, will find the work of a so highly emotionalized a subject as music, wearing on her, if she undertakes too many classes. The special teacher visits a new school every day, sees new faces, hears new songs, and receives new inspiration. The nervous force is not severely taxed in this peripatetic sort of work, at least not appreciably, but, experience shows that teachers, highly gifted, have broken down under the strain of too many music classes in the same school. A departmental teacher in music should not attempt over half a dozen classes per day, and they should not succeed each other, but alternate with one of the regular subjects. Possibly some phlegmatic or unemotional teacher can stand more work of this sort, but as a rule the successful teacher of music is more or less emotional and nervous. She is very much needed and should receive special care at the hands of the principal. Department of Music, Chicago Normal School. H. W. FAIRBANK. The Municipal Library 'HE Municipal Library of Chicago was established early in 1900, through the efforts of Circuit Judge Charles M. Walker, then Córporation Counsel of the city. Mr. Walker, as head of the legal department of the city, realized the value of a bureau where he and his assistants could go and find the ordinances, charters, reports, and comparative data from other cities, useful as aids in preparing such legislation as the City Council from time to time enacted. The sum of $1,500.00 was appropriated the first year for its maintenance. It had been long felt by city officials that the city's printed records and reports were not adequately preserved and guarded, each department and bureau supposedly possessing a complete set of its respective reports and publications. Nowhere in the city could these reports be found together in one room. If the Corporation Counsel desired the proceedings of the Board of Education, he was compelled to send to the offices of the Board of Education for the copy. Likewise for the reports of the Library Board, the Park Boards, the House of Correction, the Board of County Commissioners and such other public bodies not having offices in the city hall. It was also a not unusual feature to go to a certain department to consult its file of reports, only to find that a document much wanted had been borrowed by some stranger, no receipt taken, no effort made to recover the book or books, and the entire matter then forgotten. Being brought face to face with these conditions, the head of the new library set about to establish what is now known as the Municipal Library and Bureau of Statistics of the City of Chicago. As a means of bringing all the city's municipal reports together he procured such reports as the departments could readily furnish, and then gained permission to ransack the vaults and storerooms of the various offices in his endeavor to make this gathering of printed reports and publications complete. As a result, it is now the custom of the various departments themselves to consult our files when they desire to refer to their reports. The library can now claim to have the most complete collection of documents, reports, and other publications bearing the imprint and seal of official Chicago and of the various other corporate governing bodies within the city limits, such as the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the Sanitary District, and Park Boards. The matter relating to the city of Chicago embraces the various departmental reports from the date of the organization of such departments until the present, the City Council proceedings since 1866, the Council Committee proceedings on the gas, telephone, traction, electric lighting, and other problems; the proceedings of the Chicago Charter Convention and its related documents and reports, various special reports, such as the numerous Arnold reports on traction matters, the Burgess and Jackson-Crumb-Wilder reports to the City Council Committee on Gas, Oil, and Electric Light, on telephone service and rate regulation, the expert testimony on the fixing of a proper rate for gas in this city given before the same committee by A. C. Humphreys, MarwickMitchell & Co., and Professor Bemis, and the statistics gathered and tabulated by our Bureau on these problems. Not only has the library the various codes of ordinances published since 1851, being in all eleven distinct publications, but it also has the ordinances and proceedings of the old town and village boards as constituted before annexation to the city and the ordinances of the separate park boards and of the sanitary district. The elaborate study of the accounting system of Chicago made by Haskins and Sells is contained in our collection of reports on Municipal Accounting. Among the large number of documents bearing on street railway affairs the Harlan, Civic Federation, and the now rare Sikes report may be instanced. The library can boast of having the most complete collection of city charters and ordinances in the city, if not in the United States, some 100 cities being represented in our collection of city charters and 80 cities among the ordinances. Furthermore, the current proceedings of the boards of aldermen of other cities, where such are published in printed form, are received regularly. A large and valuable amount of matter clipped from newspapers and periodicals is on file on the defeated Chicago Charter, Municipal Courts, pure food, milk inspection, transportation problems, subways, telephones, and harbors. The library contains the annual reports of city officials of nearly all of the 42 cities in the United States having a population of 100,000 and over, and of one-half of the 90 cities having a population between 50,000 and 100,000. Of the reports on hand from cities outside of the Union may be. mentioned Birmingham, Manchester, and London in England, Edinburg and Glasgow in Scotland, Dublin and Belfast in Ireland, the cities of Berlin, Breslau, Dresden, Frankfort on the Main, Munich, and Hamburg in Germany, Paris and Havre in France, the Flemish cities of Amsterdam, Antwerp, the Hague, Rotterdam, and Brussels; Basel, Geneva, and Zürich in Switzerland; Florence, Geneva, Milan, and Rome in Italy; Vienna, Budapest, and Prague in Austria; the Scandinavian municipalities of Christiania, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Gothenburg; Moscow and Odessa in Russia; Tokio and Yokohama in Japan; Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney in Australia; Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa; and the larger cities of Canada and South America. For the use of our aldermen,. department heads, and other city officials we have collected and compiled data on grade crossings, public comfort stations, public baths, deep waterways, elections, municipal finance, taxation, and accounting, city planning, public health, the housing problem, immigration, workingmen's insurance, the liquor problem, parks, playgrounds and bathing beaches, probation of offenders, sewerage and garbage disposal, the smoke nuisance, street traffic, city tree planting, truancy, municipal art, the pasteurization of milk, automobiles, licenses, billboards, the commission system of municipal government, dogs and vivisection, postal savings banks, juvenile courts, meter inspection, fireworks, wide tires on vehicles, electrolysis, electrification of steam roads, harbors, high pressure water systems, accidents, street paving, and municipal slaughtering-houses. This data is filed and is readily accessible to investigators, students, and the general public. In addition to this we serve as an exchange bureau to other cities for all our local reports and documents, having sent recently a large number of Chicago departmental reports to Professor Garner to aid him in establishing a municipal reference bureau in connection with the University of Illinois. We are also in correspondence with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, the Baltimore Department of Legislative Reference, the Milwaukee Municipal Library, the New York Public Service Commission, and a number of other libraries whose work is of a character allied to ours. A 150 page catalogue of the contents of the Library has been issued recently, which is free for distribution to those applying for it. The quarters of the Library are located in the temporary City Hall, Room 501, 200 Randolph street. Assistant City Statistician, FREDERIC REX. |