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 vii

Contents

Preface xi
Symbols and Abbreviations xv

1 Introduction 1

2 Mathematical Foundations 13
2.1 Matrix Algebra 13
2.2 Vector Algebra 20
2.3 Simultaneous Linear Equation Systems 22
2.4 Linear Dependence 26
2.5 Convex Sets and n-Dimensional Geometry 29

3 Introduction to Linear Programming 35

3.1 Canonical and Standard Forms 35
3.2 A Graphical Solution to the Linear Programming Problem 37
3.3 Properties of the Feasible Region 38
3.4 Existence and Location of Optimal Solutions 38
3.5 Basic Feasible and Extreme Point Solutions 39
3.6 Solutions and Requirement Spaces 41

4 Computational Aspects of Linear Programming 43

4.1 The Simplex Method 43
4.2 Improving a Basic Feasible Solution 48
4.3 Degenerate Basic Feasible Solutions 66
4.4 Summary of the Simplex Method 69

5 Variations of the Standard Simplex Routine 71

5.1 The M-Penalty Method 71
5.2 Inconsistency and Redundancy 78
5.3 Minimization of the Objective Function 85
viii Contents

5.4 Unrestricted Variables 86

5.5 The Two-Phase Method 87

6 Duality Theory 95
6.1 The Symmetric Dual 95
6.2 Unsymmetric Duals 97
6.3 Duality Theorems 100
6.4 Constructing the Dual Solution 106
6.5 Dual Simplex Method 113
6.6 Computational Aspects of the Dual Simplex Method 114
6.7 Summary of the Dual Simplex Method 121

7 Linear Programming and the Theory of the Firm 123

7.1 The Technology of the Firm 123
7.2 The Single-Process Production Function 125
7.3 The Multiactivity Production Function 129
7.4 The Single-Activity Profit Maximization Model 139
7.5 The Multiactivity Profit Maximization Model 143
7.6 Profit Indifference Curves 146
7.7 Activity Levels Interpreted as Individual Product Levels 148
7.8 The Simplex Method as an Internal Resource Allocation Process 155
7.9 The Dual Simplex Method as an Internalized Resource Allocation
Process 157
7.10 A Generalized Multiactivity Profit-Maximization Model 157
7.11 Factor Learning and the Optimum Product-Mix Model 161
7.12 Joint Production Processes 165
7.13 The Single-Process Product Transformation Function 167
7.14 The Multiactivity Joint-Production Model 171
7.15 Joint Production and Cost Minimization 180
7.16 Cost Indifference Curves 184
7.17 Activity Levels Interpreted as Individual Resource Levels 186

8 Sensitivity Analysis 195

8.1 Introduction 195
8.2 Sensitivity Analysis 195
8.2.1 Changing an Objective Function Coefficient 196
8.2.2 Changing a Component of the Requirements Vector 200
8.2.3 Changing a Component of the Coefficient Matrix 202
8.3 Summary of Sensitivity Effects 209

9 Analyzing Structural Changes 217

9.1 Introduction 217
9.2 Addition of a New Variable 217
 Contents ix

9.3 Addition of a New Structural Constraint 219

9.4 Deletion of a Variable 223
9.5 Deletion of a Structural Constraint 223

10 Parametric Programming 227

10.1 Introduction 227
10.2 Parametric Analysis 227
10.2.1 Parametrizing the Objective Function 228
10.2.2 Parametrizing the Requirements Vector 236
10.2.3 Parametrizing an Activity Vector 245
10.A Updating the Basis Inverse 256

11 Parametric Programming and the Theory of the Firm 257

11.1 The Supply Function for the Output of an Activity (or for
an Individual Product) 257
11.2 The Demand Function for a Variable Input 262
11.3 The Marginal (Net) Revenue Productivity Function for an Input 269
11.4 The Marginal Cost Function for an Activity (or Individual
Product) 276
11.5 Minimizing the Cost of Producing a Given Output 284
11.6 Determination of Marginal Productivity, Average Productivity,
Marginal Cost, and Average Cost Functions 286

12 Duality Revisited 297

12.1 Introduction 297
12.2 A Reformulation of the Primal and Dual Problems 297
12.3 Lagrangian Saddle Points 311
12.4 Duality and Complementary Slackness Theorems 315

13 Simplex-Based Methods of Optimization 321

13.1 Introduction 321
13.2 Quadratic Programming 321
13.3 Dual Quadratic Programs 325
13.4 Complementary Pivot Method 329
13.5 Quadratic Programming and Activity Analysis 335
13.6 Linear Fractional Functional Programming 338
13.7 Duality in Linear Fractional Functional Programming 347
13.8 Resource Allocation with a Fractional Objective 353
13.9 Game Theory and Linear Programming 356
13.9.1 Introduction 356
13.9.2 Matrix Games 357
13.9.3 Transformation of a Matrix Game to a Linear Program 361
13.A Quadratic Forms 363
x Contents

13.A.1 General Structure 363

13.A.2 Symmetric Quadratic Forms 366
13.A.3 Classification of Quadratic Forms 367
13.A.4 Necessary Conditions for the Definiteness and Semi-Definiteness of
Quadratic Forms 368
13.A.5 Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for the Definiteness and
Semi-Definiteness of Quadratic Forms 369

14 Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) 373

14.1 Introduction 373
14.2 Set Theoretic Representation of a Production Technology 374
14.3 Output and Input Distance Functions 377
14.4 Technical and Allocative Efficiency 379
14.4.1 Measuring Technical Efficiency 379
14.4.2 Allocative, Cost, and Revenue Efficiency 382
14.5 Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Modeling 385
14.6 The Production Correspondence 386
14.7 Input-Oriented DEA Model under CRS 387
14.8 Input and Output Slack Variables 390
14.9 Modeling VRS 398
14.9.1 The Basic BCC (1984) DEA Model 398
14.9.2 Solving the BCC (1984) Model 400
14.9.3 BCC (1984) Returns to Scale 401
14.10 Output-Oriented DEA Models 402

References and Suggested Reading 405

Index 411
 xi

Preface

Economists, engineers, and management scientists have long known and

employed the power and versatility of linear programming as a tool for solving
resource allocation problems. Such problems have ranged from formulating a
simple model geared to determining an optimal product mix (e.g. a producing
unit seeks to allocate its limited inputs to a set of production activities under a
given linear technology in order to determine the quantities of the various
products that will maximize profit) to the application of an input analytical tech-
nique called data envelopment analysis (DEA) – a procedure used to estimate
multiple-input, multiple-output production correspondences so that the pro-
ductive efficiency of decision making units (DMUs) can be compared. Indeed,
DEA has now become the subject of virtually innumerable articles in profes-
sional journals, textbooks, and research monographs.
One of the drawbacks of many of the books pertaining to linear programming
applications, and especially those addressing DEA modeling, is that their cov-
erage of linear programming fundamentals is woefully deficient – especially in
the treatment of duality. In fact, this latter area is of paramount importance and
represents the “bulk of the action,” so to speak, when resource allocation
decisions are to be made.
That said, this book addresses the aforementioned shortcomings involving
the inadequate offering of linear programming theory and provides the founda-
tion for the development of DEA. This book will appeal to those wishing to solve
linear optimization problems in areas such as economics (including banking
and finance), business administration and management, agriculture and energy,
strategic planning, public decision-making, health care, and so on. The material
is presented at the advanced undergraduate to beginning graduate level and
moves at an unhurried pace. The text is replete with many detailed example
problems, and the theoretical material is offered only after the reader has been
introduced to the requisite mathematical foundations. The only prerequisites
are a beginning calculus course and some familiarity with linear algebra and
matrices.
xii Preface

Looking to specifics, Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the primal and

dual problems via an optimum product mix problem, while Chapter 2 reviews
the rudiments of vector and matrix operations and then considers topics such as
simultaneous linear equation systems, linear dependence, convex sets, and
some n-dimensional geometry. Specialized mathematical topics are offered in
chapter appendices.
Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the canonical and standard forms of a
linear programming problem. It covers the properties of the feasible region, the
existence and location of optimal solutions, and the correspondence between
basic feasible solutions and extreme point solutions.
The material in Chapter 4 addresses the computational aspects of linear
programming. Here the simplex method is developed and the detection of
degeneracy is presented.
Chapter 5 considers variations of the standard simplex theme. Topics such as
the M-penalty and two-phase methods are developed, along with the detection
of inconsistency and redundancy.
Duality theory is presented in Chapter 6. Here symmetric, as well as unsym-
metric, duals are covered, along with an assortment of duality theorems. The
construction of the dual solution and the dual simplex method round out this
key chapter.
Chapter 7 begins with a basic introduction to the technology of a firm via
activity analysis and then moves into single- and multiple-process production
functions, as well as single- and multiple-activity profit maximization models.
Both the primal and dual simplex methods are then presented as internal
resource allocation mechanisms. Factor learning is next introduced in the con-
text of an optimal product mix. All this is followed by a discussion of joint pro-
duction processes and production transformation functions, along with the
treatment of cost minimization in a joint production setting.
The discussion in Chapter 8 deals with the sensitivity analysis of the optimal
solution (e.g. changing an objective function coefficient or changing a compo-
nent of the requirements vector) while Chapter 9 analyzes structural changes
(e.g. addition of a new variable or structural constraint). Chapter 10 focuses
on parametric programming and consequently sets the stage for the material
presented in the next chapter. To this end, Chapter 11 employs parametric pro-
gramming to develop concepts such as the demand function for a variable input
and the supply function for the output of an activity. Notions such as the mar-
ginal and average productivity functions along with marginal and average cost
functions are also developed.
In Chapter 12, the concept of duality is revisited; the primal and dual pro-
blems are reformulated and re-examined in the context of Lagrangian saddle
points, and a host of duality and complementary slackness theorems are offered.
This treatment affords the reader an alternative view of duality theory and,
 Preface xiii

depending on the level of mathematical sophistication of the reader, can be con-

sidered as optional or can be omitted on a first reading.
Chapter 13 deals with primal and dual quadratic programs, the complemen-
tary pivot method, primal and dual linear fractional functional programs, and
(matrix) game theory solutions via linear programming.
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is the subject of Chapter 14. Topics such as
the set theoretic representation of a production technology, input and output
distance functions, technical and allocative efficiency, cost and revenue effi-
ciency, the production correspondence, input-oriented models under constant
and variable returns to scale, and output-oriented models are presented. DEA
model solutions are also discussed.
A note of thanks is extended to Bharat Kolluri, Rao Singamsetti, and Jim Peta.
I have benefited considerably from conversations held with these colleagues
over a great many years. Additionally, Alice Schoenrock accurately and
promptly typed the entire manuscript. Her efforts are greatly appreciated.
I would also like to thank Mindy Okura-Marszycki, editor, Mathematics and
Statistics, and Kathleen Pagliaro, assistant editor, at John Wiley & Sons, for their
professionalism and encouragement.
 xv

Symbols and Abbreviations

■ Denotes end of example

n
n-dimensional Euclidean space
n
+ {x n
|x ≥ O}
(xo) Tangent support cone
Region of admissible solutions
(xo)+ Polar support cone
(xo)∗ Dual support cone
A Transpose of a matrix A
Index set of binding constraints
∇ Del operator
O Null matrix (vector)
In Identity matrix of order n
(m × n) Order of a matrix (with m rows and n columns)
A B Matrix A is transformed into matrix B
|A| Determinant of a square matrix A
Set of all square matrices
A−1 Inverse of matrix A
n Vector space
x Norm of x
ei ith unit column vector
ρ(A) Rank of a matrix A
dim Dimension of a vector space
δ(xo) Spherical δ-neighborhood of xo
xc Convex combination
Hyperplane
+ −
( ), ( ) Open half-planes
+ −
[ ], [ ] Closed half-planes
Cone
Ray or half-line
lim Lower limit
xvi Symbols and Abbreviations

lim Upper limit

AE Allocative efficiency
BCC Banker, Charnes, and Cooper
CCR Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes
CE Cost efficiency
CRS Constant returns to scale
DBLP Dual of PBLP (multiplier form of (primal) linear program)
DEA Data envelopment analysis
DLP Dual of PLP
DMU Decision making unit
EDLP Extension of DLP
Eff Efficient
IPF Input distance function
Isoq Isoquant
LCP Linear complementarity problem
ODF Output distance function
P1 Phase 1
P2 Phase 2
PBLP Envelopment form of the (primal) linear program
PLP Primal linear program
RE Revenue efficiency
TE Technical efficiency
VRS Variable returns to scale
 1

Introduction

This book deals with the application of linear programming to firm decision
making. In particular, an important resource allocation problem that often
arises in actual practice is when a set of inputs, some of which are limited in
supply over a particular production period, is to be utilized to produce, using
a given technology, a mix of products that will maximize total profit. While a
model such as this can be constructed in a variety of ways and under different
sets of assumptions, the discussion that follows shall be limited to the linear
case, i.e. we will consider the short-run static profit-maximizing behavior of
the multiproduct, multifactor competitive firm that employs a fixed-coefficients
technology under certainty (Dorfman 1951, 1953; Naylor 1966).
How may we interpret the assumptions underlying this profit maximiza-
tion model?

1) All-around perfect competition – the prices of the firm’s product and

variable inputs are given.
2) The firm employs a static model – all prices, the technology, and the
supplies of the fixed factors remain constant over the production period.
3) The firm operates under conditions of certainty – the model is deterministic
in that all prices and the technology behave in a completely systematic (non-
random) fashion.
4) All factors and products are perfectly divisible – fractional (noninteger) quan-
tities of factors and products are admissible at an optimal feasible solution.
5) The character of the firm’s production activities, which represent specific
ways of combining fixed and variable factors in order to produce a unit of
output (in the case where the firm produces a single product) or a unit of
an individual product (when the number of activities equals or exceeds
the number of products), is determined by a set of technical decisions inter-
nal to the firm. These input activities are:
a) independent in that no interaction effects exist between activities;
b) linear, i.e. the input/output ratios for each activity are constant along
with returns to scale (if the use of all inputs in an activity increases by

Linear Programming and Resource Allocation Modeling, First Edition. Michael J. Panik.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2 1 Introduction

a fixed amount, the output produced by that activity increases by the

same amount);
c) additive, e.g. if two activities are used simultaneously, the final quantities
of inputs and outputs will be the arithmetic sums of the quantities that
would result if these activities were operated separately. In addition, total
profit generated from all activities equals the sum of the profits from each
individual activity; and
d) finite – the number of input activities or processes available for use dur-
ing any production period is limited.
6) All structural relations exhibit direct proportionality – the objective func-
tion and all constraints are linear; unit profit and the fixed-factor inputs per
unit of output for each activity are directly proportional to the level of oper-
ation of the activity (thus, marginal profit equals average profit).
7) The firm’s objective is to maximize total profit subject to a set of structural
activities, fixed-factor availabilities, and nonnegativity restrictions on the
activity levels. Actually, this objective is accomplished in two distinct stages.
First, a technical optimization problem is solved in that the firm chooses a set
of production activities that requires the minimum amount of the fixed and
variable inputs per unit of output. Second, the firm solves the aforemen-
tioned constrained maximum problem.
8) The firm operates in the short run in that a certain number of its inputs are
fixed in quantity.

Why is this linear model for the firm important? It is intuitively clear that the
more sophisticated the type of capital equipment employed in a production proc-
ess, the more inflexible it is likely to be relative to the other factors of production
with which it is combined. That is, the machinery in question must be used in
fixed proportions with regard to certain other factors of production (Dorfman
1953, p. 143). For the type of process just described, no factor substitution is pos-
sible; a given output level can be produced by one and only one input combina-
tion, i.e. the inputs are perfectly complementary. For example, it is widely
recognized that certain types of chemical processes exhibit this characteristic
in that, to induce a particular type of chemical reaction, the input proportions
(coefficient) must be (approximately) fixed. Moreover, mechanical processes such
as those encountered in cotton textile manufacturing and machine-tool produc-
tion are characterized by the presence of this limitationality, i.e. in the latter case,
constant production times are logged on a fixed set of machines by a given num-
ber of operators working with specific grades of raw materials.
For example, suppose that a firm produces three types of precision tools
(denoted x1, x2, and x3) made from high-grade steel. Four separate production
operations are used: casting, grinding, sharpening, and polishing. The set of
input–output coefficients (expressed in minutes per unit of output), which
describe the firm’s technology (the firm’s stage one problem, as alluded to
 1 Introduction 3

above, has been solved) is presented in Table 1.1. (Note that each of the three
columns represents a separate input activity or process.)
Additionally, capacity limitations exist with respect to each of the four pro-
duction operations in that upper limits on their availability are in force. That
is, per production run, the firm has at its disposal 5000 minutes of casting time,
3000 minutes of grinding time, 3700 minutes of sharpening time, and 2000 min-
utes of polishing time. Finally, the unit profit values for tools x1, x2, and x3 are
$22.50, $19.75, and $26.86, respectively. (Here these figures each depict unit
revenue less unit variable cost and are computed before deducting fixed costs.
Moreover, we are tacitly assuming that what is produced is sold.) Given this
information, it is easily shown that the optimization problem the firm must
solve (i.e. the stage-two problem mentioned above) will look like (1.1):
max f = 22 50x1 + 19 75x2 + 26 86x3 s t subject to
13x1 + 10x2 + 16x3 ≤ 5000
12x1 + 8x2 + 20x3 ≤ 3000
11
8x1 + 4x2 + 9x3 ≤ 3700
5x1 + 4x2 + 6x3 ≤ 2000
x1 , x2 ,x3 ≥ 0
How may we rationalize the structure of this problem? First, the objective func-
tion f represents total profit, which is the sum of the individual (gross) profit
contributions of the three products, i.e.
3
total profit = total profit from xj sales
j=1

3
= unit profit from xj sales number of units of xj sold
j=1

Table 1.1 Input–output coefficients.

Tools

x1 x2 x3 Operations

13 10 16 Casting
12 8 20 Grinding
8 4 9 Sharpening
5 4 6 Polishing
4 1 Introduction

Next, if we consider the first structural constraint inequality (the others can be
interpreted in a similar fashion), we see that total casting time used per produc-
tion run cannot exceed the total amount available, i.e.
3
total casting time used = total casting time used by xj
j=1

3
= casting time used per unit of xj
j=1
number of units of xj produced ≤ 5000
Finally, the activity levels (product quantities) x1, x2, and x3 are nonnegative,
thus indicating that the production activities are nonreversible, i.e. the fixed
inputs cannot be created from the outputs.
To solve (1.1) we shall employ a specialized computational technique called the
simplex method. The details of the simplex routine, as well as its mathematical
foundations and embellishments, will be presented in Chapters 2–5. Putting com-
putational considerations aside for the time being, the types of information sets
that the firm obtains from an optimal solution to (1.1) can be characterized as
follows. The optimal product mix is determined (from this result management
can specify which product to produce in positive amounts and which ones to omit
from the production plan) as well as the optimal activity levels (which indicate
the exact number of units of each product produced). In addition, optimal
resource utilization information is also generated (the solution reveals the
amounts of the fixed or scarce resources employed in support of the optimal
activity levels) along with the excess (slack) capacity figures (if the total amount
available of some fixed resource is not fully utilized, the optimal solution indicates
the amount left idle). Finally, the optimal dollar value of total profit is revealed.
Associated with (1.1) (hereafter called the primal problem) is a symmetric
problem called its dual. While Chapter 6 presents duality theory in considerable
detail, let us simply note without further elaboration here that the dual problem
deals with the internal valuation (pricing) of the firm’s fixed or scarce resources.
These (nonmarket) prices or, as they are commonly called, shadow prices serve
to signal the firm when it would be beneficial, in terms of recouping forgone
profit (since the capacity limitations restrict the firm’s production and thus
profit opportunities) to acquire additional units of the fixed factors. Relative
to (1.1), the dual problem appears as
min g = 5000u1 + 3000u2 + 3700u3 + 2000u4 s t
13u1 + 12u2 + 8u3 + 5u4 ≥ 22 50
10u1 + 8u2 + 4u3 + 4u4 ≥ 19 75 12
16u1 + 20u2 + 9u3 + 6u4 ≥ 26 86
u1 ,u2 ,u3 ,u4 ≥ 0,
 1 Introduction 5

where the dual variables u1, …, u4 are the shadow prices associated with the pri-
mal capacity constraints.
What is the interpretation of the form of this dual problem? First, the objec-
tive g depicts the total imputed (accounting) value of the firm’s fixed
resources, i.e.
total imputed value of all fixed resources
4
= total imputed value of the ith resource
i=1
4
= number of units of the ith resource available
i=1
shadow price of the ith resource
Clearly, the firm must make the value of this figure as small as possible. That is,
it must minimize forgone profit. Next, looking to the first structural constraint
inequality in (1.2) (the rationalization of the others follows suit), we see that the
total imputed value of all resources going into the production of a unit of x1
cannot fall short of the profit per unit of x1, i.e.
total imputed value of all resources per unit of x1
4
= imputed value of the ith resource per unit of x1
i=1
4
= number of units of the ith resource per unit of x1
i=1
shadow price of the ith resource ≥ 22 50
Finally, as is the case for any set of prices, the shadow prices u1, …, u4 are all
nonnegative.
As will become evident in Chapter 6, the dual problem does not have to be
solved explicitly; its optimal solution is obtained as a byproduct of the optimal
solution to the primal problem (and vice versa). What sort of information is pro-
vided by the optimal dual solution? The optimal (internal) valuation of the
firm’s fixed resources is exhibited (from this data the firm can discern which
resources are in excess supply and which ones are “scarce” in the sense that total
profit could possibly be increased if the supply of the latter were augmented)
along with the optimal shadow price configuration (each such price indicates
the increase in total profit resulting from a one unit increase in the associated
fixed input). Moreover, the optimal (imputed) value of inputs for each prod-
uct is provided (the solution indicates the imputed value of all fixed resources
entering into the production of a unit of each of the firm’s outputs) as well as the
optimal accounting loss figures (here, management is provided with informa-
tion pertaining to the amount by which the imputed value of all resources used
6 1 Introduction

to produce a unit of some product exceeds the unit profit level for the same).
Finally, the optimal imputed value of all fixed resources is determined. Inter-
estingly enough, this quantity equals the optimal dollar value of total profit
obtained from the primal problem, as it must at an optimal feasible solution
to the primal-dual pair of problems.
In the preceding model we made the assumption that the various production
activities were technologically independent. However, if we now assume that they
are technologically interdependent in that each product can be produced by
employing more than one process, then we may revise the firm’s objective to
one where a set of production quotas are to be fulfilled at minimum cost. By invok-
ing this assumption we may construct what is called a joint production model.
As far as a full description of this type of production program is concerned, let
us frame it in terms of the short-run static cost-minimizing behavior of a multi-
product, multifactor competitive firm that employs a fixed-coefficients technol-
ogy. How can we interpret the assumptions given in support of this model?

1) Perfect competition in the factor markets – the prices of the firm’s primary
and shadow inputs are given.
2) The firm employs a static model – all prices, the technology, and the output
quotas remain constant over the production period.
3) The firm operates under conditions of certainty – the model is deterministic
in that all prices and the technology behave in a completely systematic (non-
random) fashion.
4) All factors and products are perfectly divisible – fractional quantities of fac-
tors and products are admissible at an optimal feasible solution.
5) The character of the firm’s production activities, which now represent ways
of producing a set of outputs from the application of one unit of a primary
input, is determined by a set of technical decisions internal to the firm. These
output activities are:
a) independent in that no interaction effects exist among activities;
b) linear, i.e. the output/input ratios for each activity are constant along
with the input response to an increase in outputs (if the production of
all outputs in an activity increases by a fixed amount, then the input level
required by the process must increase by the same amount);
c) additive, e.g. if two activities are used simultaneously, the final quantities
of inputs and outputs will be the arithmetic sums of the quantities which
would result if these activities were operated separately. Moreover, the
total cost figure resulting from all output activities equals the sum of
the costs from each individual activity; and
d) finite – the number of output activities or processes available for use dur-
ing any production period is limited.
6) All structural relations exhibit direct proportionality – the objective func-
tion and all constraints are linear; unit cost and the fixed-output per unit of
 1 Introduction 7

input values for each activity are directly proportional to the level of oper-
ation of the activity. (Thus marginal cost equals average cost.)
7) The firm’s objective is to minimize total cost subject to a set of structural
activities, fixed output quotas, and nonnegativity restrictions on the activity
levels. This objective is also accomplished in two stages, i.e. in stage one a
technical optimization problem is solved in that the firm chooses a set of out-
put activities which yield the maximum amounts of the various outputs per
unit of the primary factors. Second, the firm solves the indicated constrained
minimization problem.
8) The short-run prevails in that the firm’s minimum output requirements are
fixed in quantity.

For the type of output activities just described, no output substitution is possi-
ble; producing more of one output and less of another is not technologically
feasible, i.e. the outputs are perfectly complementary or limitational in that
they must all change together.
As an example of the type of model just described, let us assume that a firm
employs three grades of the primary input labor (denoted x1, x2, and x3) to pro-
duce four separate products: chairs, benches, tables, and stools. The set of out-
put–input coefficients (expressed in units of output per man-hour) which
describe the firm’s technology appears in Table 1.2. (Here each of the three col-
umns depicts a separate output activity.) Additionally, output quotas exist with
respect to each of the four products in that lower limits on the number of units
produced must not be violated, i.e. per production run, the firm must produce at
least eight chairs, four benches, two tables, and eight stools. Finally, the unit cost
coefficients for the labor grades x1, x2, and x3 are $8.50, $9.75, and $9.08, respec-
tively. (Each of these latter figures depicts unit primary resource cost plus unit

Table 1.2 Output–input coefficients.

Grades of Labor

x1 x2 x3 Outputs

1 1 1
Chairs
16 14 18
1 1 1
Benches
4 4 6
1 1 1
Tables
20 25 30
1 1 1
Stools
4 3 6
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 POPULARIZING MUSIC THROUGH THE
LIBRARY[18]
The purchase of music by a public library is justified by the assumption
that its use is to be somewhat analogous to that of printed speech. The
analogy is, in fact, somewhat closer than most persons realize, and its
consideration reveals some mistaken ideas about the use of music in a
library and may give rise to suggestions for the improvement of that use. A
page of music, like a page of written language, is a record of something
whose primary expression is obtained through sound. Anyone who
understands the notation in either case may reproduce the sounds. In one
case this is “reading aloud”; in the other it is a performance of the music. In
the case of the music the sounds may be made with the voice, or with an
instrument or with one or several of both at once, but this is only an
apparent complication and does not affect the principle. The reader, of
course, may learn the language, or the music, by heart and then dispense
with the written record. In practise there are important differences between
the treatment of records of speech and music. As sound is readily imagined
as well as actually produced, both speech and music may be enjoyed by a
reader without making a sound. If the reader of a book cannot do this, he is
not regarded as at all skilled. Most of us, I think, do not consider that a
person knows completely how to read when he is not able to read “to
himself”, but finds it necessary to make the actual sounds of speech,
whether loudly, or only under his breath. In the case of music, however,
only the skilled musician, as a general thing, is able to read a page of music
“to himself”, as he would read a page of written language. This is especially
the case with instrumental music and with music where there are several
parts. An accomplished musician, however, may run over an orchestral
score and hear the performance “in his mind”, with the quality of each
instrument brought out, the harmonies and the shading of intensity.
We may go a step further as a matter of curious interest. Language is not
necessarily connected with sounds at all. A deaf mute, who has never heard
a sound, and is incapable of understanding what sound is, may nevertheless
learn to read. He is, however unable to appreciate a page of written music,
and I do not know how it would be possible to explain to him what it is like,
except the rhythm of it, which may be made to appeal to the senses of sight
and touch, as well as to that of sound. In general, however, the reader of
music must at least imagine the sounds represented by the notation before
him. This is not the case with the reader of speech. Anyone who can read
fast and well enough may, like the deaf mute, understand what he reads
without even imaging the sound of the words. One may even read so fast
that the mere speed forbids any thought of the corresponding oral language.
Skilled readers may take in a sentence, a paragraph, almost a page, at a
glance. This is the sole point of difference between reading language and
reading music; and it does not greatly concern us here because all that it
practically affects is speed of appreciation.
Something that is of greater importance is the difference of purpose
usually found between those who read words and those who read musical
notes. When we say of a child that he is studying music we usually mean
that he is learning how to sing or to play on some instrument with the
special view of being able to perform before some kind of audience. A
music-teacher in like manner is one who teaches his pupils how to play on
the piano or the violin, or how to sing.
But when we teach a child to read we are not primarily concerned with
his future ability to read aloud or to recite so as to give pleasure to an
audience, what we are thinking of is his ability to read rapidly to himself so
as to understand what is in books. Looked at in the same way the main
thing in musical instruction would be to teach rapid sight-reading so that the
reader should get the ability to become acquainted with as large a number
of musical masterpieces as possible. One learns to talk by talking; one
learns to read by reading; and the same is true of reading music. And as the
omnivorous reader of books always wants to express his own thoughts in
writing, so the omnivorous reader of music will want to compose. Neither
the one nor the other may produce anything great, but the effort will aid in
mental development. As a matter of fact, the child begins to put his thoughts
into words before he knows how to read. He is encouraged to do so. No
mother ever tried to stop her baby from learning to talk because its first
efforts were feeble, halting and unintelligible. How differently we treat the
child’s attempts at musical expression—for that is the explanation of many
of the crude baby noises that we hear. As the child grows, its expression in
this direction is discouraged, and seldom is any effort made at
encouragement or development. Is it not a wonder that anyone succeeds in
composing original music? How many great poets or novelists should we
have if every baby were discouraged in its efforts to express itself in words;
if it were never taught to talk and never to read?
By the time we librarians are able to exert an influence on the reader, this
period is past, but it is still possible to do something. Our first job is to
disabuse the public of the idea that enjoyment of music has necessarily
something to do with mastering the technique of some musical instrument.
The phonograph has done good work in removing this impression, but we
should never be content with the phonograph any more than we should
consent to do away with all printed books and rely wholly on works “read
aloud” on the victrola. There will always be pleasure and profit in doing
one’s own reading, whether in speech or in music. One must understand
musical notation of course, just as one must know the notation of written
speech before he can read books. He must also understand a little of some
instrument, preferably the piano; though only enough for sight-reading, his
object being to understand and appreciate the music himself, not necessarily
to bring understanding and appreciation to others.
I think I have gone far enough along this train of thought to show the
principle on which I should select the music for a public library collection. I
should form such a collection in precisely the same way as my collection of
books. A very large proportion of the books in a public library are properly
intended for those who will read them for their own delectation, enjoying
and appreciating and profiting personally by what they read. A much
smaller proportion are books for study and research. A still smaller number
are dramatic or other selections intended principally for recitation or
declamation. So, in selecting my music I would acquire chiefly selections
for reading. I do not mean elementary reading—one does not limit his
language books to primers. I should buy works of all grades of difficulty,
but I should have always in mind the primary use of these for sight reading.
Comparatively few would be pieces written solely for display—to dazzle
the hearer or to show off technique. Few would be pieces whose interest is
chiefly historical or academic. I do not say that I should exclude either of
these kinds, but I certainly should not include them in greater degree than I
should include analogous material in buying ordinary books. Bear in mind
also that I am speaking of an ordinary public library, of average size, not of
a university library nor that of a music school; nor a public library so large
that it may properly have some of the functions of both of these.
Just as it is a conspicuous duty of the library to raise and maintain the
level of literary taste in its community and to keep this fact in mind in the
selection of its books, so it is the business of its musical collection to raise
and maintain the level of musical taste.
My own opinion, which some may regard as heretical, is that taste can
not be cultivated, in literature, or art, or music, to any considerable extent
by study. The study of these things must have to do largely with history and
technique, and while a knowledge of these is desirable it can not affect
taste, although we may imagine that it does. We may reduce this matter to
its lowest terms by thinking for a moment of something that depends on the
uncomplicated action of an elementary sense—physical taste. If one does
not like an olive when he eats one for the first time, that judgment can not
be reversed by studying the history of olive culture. If he dislikes cheese, it
will be useless to take him into a cheese factory and explain to him, or teach
him the technical processes of manufacture. The only way to make him
change his mind is to induce him to keep on eating olives, when one of two
things will take place—either his dislike of olives will be confirmed, or it
will disappear. As most people like olives when they become accustomed to
the taste, the latter result is to be expected. Now suppose that someone does
not care for Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. My contention is that he
cannot be made to like it by studying the history of music, or that of this
particular selection, nor by analyzing its structure, but that he may be led to
do it by listening to it repeatedly. As persons familiar with good music do
generally enjoy this piece, it is probable that this result will follow.
I know that I must now justify this comparison. When I make it I am
accustomed to indignant protest on the part of some of my students. Is it not
unworthy to compare the music of the Moonlight Sonata to a mere physical
sensation like the taste of an olive? Only as it may be considered unworthy
to compare the great and the small; the complex and the simple. Both the
taste of the olive and the sound of the sonata, have a physical origin and
impress the brain through the agency of the sense organs. And as a matter of
fact I doubt whether the sensation of the music is much more complicated
than that of the taste. We know that an acoustic sensation is a unit. When a
chorus is singing with orchestral accompaniment the result is not a hundred
sound waves, but one; it strikes the ear drum as a unit, and that vibrates as a
unit, so that the impression on the brain, about whose mechanism we are
ignorant, must also be a unit. The popularity of the phonograph enables us
to illustrate this familiarly. Examine with a microscope a record of a
complicated musical performance, with many voices and many different
kinds of instruments, and you will find a single wavy line. When the needle
causes the disk to vibrate by following this line, it vibrates as a unit, just as
the ear-drum does. There is but one disk, yet its vibration enables us to pick
out separately the different voice parts, and to recognize the separate quality
of the stringed instruments, the woodwinds and the brasses, with the drums,
bells, and what not. When we taste the olive, we get a sort of chemical
effect. We do not know what happens as definitely as we do in the case of a
musical sound, but the various atoms, each vibrating in its own way, act
upon the taste-buds of the tongue so that a sensation is transmitted to the
brain—transmitted as a unit, just as the sound is. I want to be fair, so I will
acknowledge that instead of comparing a single sensation of taste to a
sequence of sounds, I should have likened it to a musical chord. To get a
taste analogy with a sonata we should have to use a sequence of taste
sensations, possibly that presented by a course dinner. I submit, however,
that this does not affect my argument.
Let me repeat my conviction, then, that art is primarily a matter of the
heart and not of the head—of the feelings and not of the intellect, and that
the feelings are trained by personal experience, not by study. One cannot
learn to appreciate a poem, or a picture or a piece of music by examining it
historically or structurally, only by experiencing it and others like it again
and again, and also by experiencing in life the emotions that the art is
intended to arouse. Of course I do not mean to say that knowledge of
history and technique is not interesting and valuable. It is highly interesting
to know the recipe for the pie and to watch the cook make it; but this does
not affect the taste.
Knowledge obtained by study does affect ability to reproduce or create.
One must know how the pie is made before he can make one himself. One
can not write a poem or paint a picture or compose a song, without
preliminary study. This should be understood, but it is outside the pale of
our present discussion, which relates to the chief purpose of the music
collection in a library and of its chief uses. My contention, to repeat, is that
it is related to musical art precisely as the purpose of the book-collection is
related to the art of literature.
 Now the present status of the music collection is precisely what that of
the book collection would be in a community where the percentage of
literacy was small, where a considerable number of persons did not
understand the language of the books, even when spoken or read aloud,
where those who knew the language understood it only when spoken or
read and where readers were obliged to read aloud before they could
appreciate what they were reading. A community, moreover, where teaching
generally meant solely teaching how to recite or read aloud acceptably to
others, with only enough ability to read to get the sense of an extract and
enable the reader to commit it to memory. A librarian set down with a
collection of books in such a community would not be true to his vocation
if he did not attempt to better this state of things, while admitting the
elements of good that it contained. For instance, the imaginary situation that
I have described would be quite comparable with a real appreciation and
love of good literature.
In the first place, the librarian would wish to see that all the members of
his community were able to understand the language of his books, if not to
read it. To remember our analogy for a moment, he would practically fit his
books to his people. If they were predominantly French, for instance, he
would buy many French books. But one can not do this with music, for
music is a language by itself, for the most part untranslatable into any other.
We must assume that in the world to which our imaginary community
belongs there is but one language, and that to understand the books those
who do not know that language must be taught it. School instruction in
language is largely limited to reading. Children who go to school
understand and talk their language already, having been taught it at home. It
is to the homes, therefore, that the librarian would have to look for this
instruction and he would have to bring to bear on parents whatever
influence might be at his disposal to make them see its value and uses.
Secondly, he would have to see that as many as possible were taught to
read the language. This would be the function of the schools.
Thirdly, it would be necessary to see that facility in reading proceeded so
far that readers would not find it necessary to read aloud, but could when
they desired, read rapidly “to themselves”. It would be necessary, of course,
to show many of the teachers and almost all of their pupils, that reading is
primarily not to enable the reader to recite to others, but to make an
impression on his own mental equipment. It is quite possible for one to
learn to read out loud after a fashion, in a foreign tongue, without
understanding a word of it, but so that listeners may get a fair idea of it. The
effect on the reader in this case is absolutely zero.
Musically, this kind of community is precisely the one that public
libraries have to deal with. Many of our clients do not like or understand
music at all, or they care for only the most elementary melodies, harmonies
and rythms—comparable to the literature that one gets in a child’s primer.
Of those whose range of appreciation and love is fairly wide, comparatively
few are familiar with musical notation, and can not read music. Of those
who can read, few can read rapidly and with assurance, and fewer still can
read without audible utterance; that is, they can not read to themselves. It is
common to hear persons who can sing or play on some instrument with a
fair degree of success and taste say “Oh, I can’t read; I have to pick out the
notes and get my teacher to help me.” This is exactly as if someone who
had just recited an oration or a poem with some feeling should proclaim
complacently: “Oh, I can’t really read. I had to pick out that piece word for
word, with my teacher at my elbow to help me out.”
In the face of such a situation the librarian should feel and act precisely
as he would feel and act if the situation existed with regard to books, as it
has already been imagined and described.
First, he should try to influence the growth of musical appreciation
through the home, so that all the children in a family shall come to
understand and use musical language as they do the language of the spoken
word.
Secondly, he should try to influence the schools so that they shall teach
the reading of musical notation as thoroughly as they do the reading of the
printed word, and to persuade teachers of music to teach music really and
not simply the art of performing on some musical instrument.
Thirdly, he should point out to his musical clients that music may be
read “to oneself”, just as language can, and encourage them to try it,
beginning with easy examples. Note that reading to oneself can be done
only by those who already know how to read aloud, and only by practise.
There is no way in which it can be taught.
Fourthly, he should have in his library a selection of music picked out to
a great extent to further the ends outlined above. Much of it should be for
readers, not for performers. His lists should be made for readers and the
comments on individual titles should be for readers. Moreover, they should
at present be such as will help the beginner; for a very large proportion of
our musical readers are beginners although they may be in the anomalous
position of the reader who knows and appreciates his subject matter very
thoroughly, while he can read about it only hesitatingly and haltingly.
Imagine a well-informed and intelligent student of history who has
completely forgotten to read, owing to some concussion of the brain which
has not impaired his knowledge in any other way, and you have the
situation of many music-lovers.
There were doubtless poets before the invention of alphabets, and one
may appreciate a symphony concert without knowing his musical alphabet
or being able to use it; but we are accustomed now to considering thorough
ability to read as a prerequisite to the requirement of a general education;
and I do not see why as complete an ability to read music should not be a
prerequisite for such a musical education as all persons ought to possess.
The analogy between the reading of music and that of language is very
close, as we have seen, and we may be guided by it largely; but there is one
respect in which it fails. Music and poetry may both be bad in the sense that
they are ugly, of faulty construction, or trivial. But poetry may also be bad
because it conveys a bad moral lesson or causes one to accept what is false.
I can not see that it is possible for music to do this, except by association. A
tune that has always been associated with improper words may in time
come to be considered as itself improper, but there can be nothing
objectionable about the music in itself. Again, music may be improperly
used. Anyone would say that a largo in a minor key was out of place at a
wedding, or a jig at a funeral. Association may have, but does not
necessarily have anything to do with this; but here again the music in itself
is not objectionable. This simplifies the selection of music for a library; for
it excludes at the outset almost all the problems of censorship. Music is
rejected usually for negative reasons—because it is not worth buying; not
for any active evil influence that it is likely to exert.
This question comes up especially in connection with certain adjuncts to
a music collection—pianola rolls and phonograph records. These are both
of great aid in assisting the public to understand the language of music,
which they must do before they learn to read it. They may be profitably
used, of course in connection with reading, and yet the pleasure of
following a piano player or a phonograph with the printed score seems to be
known to few. Every library must judge for itself whether it can afford to
put money into these adjuncts but in most cases it is unnecessary to do so, it
being easy to get the rolls and records by donation. In doing this at my own
library I have been struck with the trivial or so-called “popular” character of
most of the rolls received. I am told, also that those who borrow them (and
they have gone out “like hot cakes”) are largely persons who have not
visited the library before. I believe that this sort of music is popular not
because it is trivial or “trashy”, but because it is easy to understand. There is
some music that is both good and easy—easy to understand and easy to
read. Schumann’s Album for the young will occur to anyone. The
compositions of Ludwig Schytte are modern examples. But the general
impression that good music is difficult both to read and appreciate—is
“high-brow”, in fact; and that easy music is always trivial and poor, is a
deduction, I am afraid from experience. It is certainly not in the nature of
things. However, so long as we want easy music, both to hear and to read,
and a good deal of it is trashy, I can see nothing to do but to use the trashy
music. With the music rolls triviality is all we have to object to—the
ceaseless repetition of the same phrases and harmonies. We must remember,
however, that these are not boresome to the beginner. It takes a good deal of
repetition to make one tired of a musical phrase. And there is absolutely no
question of active badness here—only of worthlessness.
When we come to phonograph records, however, we encounter
something different. So far as these are purely musical, what has been said
of the music rolls applies to them also, but many of them are vocal, and the
words are often far below library standard. When a record is rejected for its
words, the music, of course, must go with it, although as music it may be
quite unexceptionable.
The location of the music collection is affected by the purpose for which
it is maintained. A collection for scholars alone should certainly be in a
separate room, with an expert custodian. But when we regard the collection
as a means of popularizing music and of improving popular musical taste,
the matter takes on another aspect. A person who comes to the library for
the purpose of visiting the music room will find it, no matter where it may
be, but the reader who needs to have his attention called to it or in whose
case it must compete for use with other books, will never do so. Going back
to our analogy with general literature we may note that when a librarian
wishes to promote the circulation of some special class of literature or call
attention to some particular book or books, the last thing he would think of
doing would be to set them apart in a special room. What he does do is to
place them conspicuously in the most frequented spot in his library.
This is, of course, only one side of the question. No one can browse in a
collection of books unless he knows how to read; and so long as music
readers can not read “to themselves”, the reading of instrumental pieces can
not be done without the aid of the actual instrument. Even when one can
read music to himself well enough to pick out what he wants it may aid him
to be able to perform the piece on the instrument for which it was written.
Now the most frequented spot in the library, where I recommend that the
music collection shall be displayed, is not the place for a piano or for its
use. This must necessarily be in a separate room.
These are not, however, absolutely irreconcilable requirements. It is not
necessary that the music and the instrument should be in the same room. A
sound-proof or a distantly-located room, for the instruments, may be used
by those who wish to perform pieces before selecting them, even if no
music at all is shelved in the room. This room should preferably be as near
as possible to the music shelves, and if it is it must of course be sound
proof.
Going back again for a moment to our analogy, the provision of a sound
proof music room corresponds to the creation of a similar room for the
ordinary reader, where he may take his books and read them aloud to see
how they sound. The mere statement shows us how far behind our ability to
read language is our ability to read music.
When I first began to present these ideas, which seemed to me to be
absurdly self-evident, it was gradually borne in upon me that most people
considered them new and strange, both those who agreed with me and those
who disagreed. But without going into the question of what music can and
can not convey to the human mind, it seems clear to me that both music and
language succeed in conveying something to the human organism, and do it
principally by sound-waves. In the case of both, there is a way of writing
down what is to be conveyed, so that the record may be used by another
person who wishes to convey it by sound, or so that a person, sufficiently
skilled, may convey it to himself, without making an audible sound. These
facts seem to me to establish so complete an analogy that we may treat
music in a library precisely as we treat ordinary books, both in selection,
distribution and use. If to complete the analogy we must insist on certain
changes in the attitude toward music of both educators and readers, this
kind of missionary work is after all no more and no other than that which
the modern librarian, especially in America, is often called upon to do.
I am a believer in the mission of music. The public library can do no
more helpful thing to our modern life than to assist the public to understand
and love it. The fact that it is not a representative art makes it all the more
valuable as a means of detaching the mind from the things of this earth and
transporting it to a separate world. A beautiful picture or statue or poem is
anchored to the ground by the necessary associations of its subject matter.
Music has no such anchor. It is free to soar, and soar it does, bearing with it
the listening soul into regions that have no relations with the things of every
day life. It may rest or it may stimulate; it may gladden or depress; but it
does so by means of its own, not by reminding us of the stimulating or
depressing things of our own past experience.
In the multifarious mission of the Public Library, as we Americans see it,
surely the popularization of good music is to assume no unimportant place.
 TWO CARDINAL SINS
The sins of which I purpose to speak are Duplication and Omission.
They are peculiar to no one class of persons, to no one business, profession
or institution. They are ubiquitous and omnipresent. Those who use the
Book of Common Prayer acknowledge them when they confess that they
have done those things that they ought not to have done and have left
undone those things that they ought to have done. This statement covers
other sins, both of commission and omission, than those that I have
specified above, but it includes both of them. The peculiarity of Duplication
and Omission is that they are complementary so far as the labor and
expense involved in them is concerned. Their existence is like that of a
surplus and a debt in the same purse. To bewail them is like complaining
because you have a thousand dollars that you know not how to invest and at
the same time because you owe a thousand that you can not pay. The whole
world is out of joint because it is doing twice things that need to be done
only once, and at the same time is not doing at all things that ought to be
done. The man with the thousand-dollar surplus and the debt of the same
amount may obtain quick relief by paying his indebtedness with his
balance. The world will be relieved when it takes the energy and the money
now expended in wasteful duplication and puts it into the doing of those
things that are now left undone because the energy and money necessary to
do them are expended wastefully. It is very easy, is it not? As easy as adding
plus 10 to minus 10 and getting zero. The surplus and the debt, the
duplications and the omissions, extinguish each other and neither of them
bothers us any more. Unfortunately there are practical obstacles that do not
present themselves in the case of the algebraic sum. These difficulties might
occur in the case of the man with the surplus who owed money, if he could
be supposed ignorant both of his balance and of his debt, while suffering the
inconveniences due to both. This ignorance is the rule, rather than the
exception, in the case of ordinary duplications and omissions. Either the
duplication is not noticed, because at first sight it does not appear to be a
duplication, or when recognized as such, its existence does not seem to be
of any consequence. Besides this, both duplications and omissions seem to
some to be part of the natural order of things ordained for us and not to be
disturbed by the hand of impiety.
One hardly knows when to begin with illustrations where there is such a
wealth of material, whether we seek it in civics, or history, or science, or
business or in domestic economy. As you have doubtless surmised I intend
to take the Public Library as my chief field of research, but I must maintain
or at least justify my thesis of universality by a preliminary trip through a
much broader field.
First let us take the age-old universal grievance, the unequal distribution
of wealth, which from our present standpoint we may simplify by saying
that one man has two dollars where he needs only one and another has no
dollars at all—omission in his case where there is duplication in the other. I
know there are some people who fail to see two sins in these simple and
well-known facts, but most of us nowadays are recognizing that it is at least
an unsatisfactory state of affairs. Where we disagree is that some feel that
however unsatisfactory it may be there is nothing to be done about it; that
others who agree that it is unsatisfactory are unable to agree on what they
would consider satisfactory; and that even those who think they know this
are unable to get together on a method of attaining what they desire. These
various kinds and degrees of disagreement constitute the reason why these
two particular sins of duplication and omission continue to be committed.
Now let us take a very big jump, from the general theory of socialism
down to the golf-clubs of Middlefield, Mass.—a real place, though I have
taken the liberty to change its name. With a population of about a thousand,
this model village supported until recently two of these institutions for no
other reason than the general tendency to wasteful duplication, already
noted. The links on the West Side and those on the East Side had both their
ardent partisans. Each club considered the existence of the other a shame
and an outrage and each was only too willing to abolish duplication by
consolidation, always provided its own particular links should be the ones
to survive.
For years this small place supported these two clubs, each with its club-
house, grounds, dues and assessments. Those who were not partisans had to
belong to both, to keep the peace. Meanwhile, the town greatly needed a
small social club where the retired city merchants, professional men and
artists who largely made up its population could assemble occasionally,
have a game of pool or bridge and drink a cup of tea. But their incomes
were not large and they had to keep up those two golf clubs. The situation is
so typical that I am enlarging on it a little. I wish that the outcome were
typical too. That outcome was that after years of discussion the clubs were
merged, one of the links was discontinued, and the village now enjoys the
little social club that it needed. An omission has been filled by doing away
with a duplication.
The church history of many a small place is very much to the point. We
see three or four denominational bodies struggling with small
congregations, inadequate buildings and general poverty when by uniting
they might fill all these lacks simply by saving what they are now spending
on duplication. Doctrinal differences are said to keep them apart; but to the
non-theological mind these differences are not greater than these that must
always exist between thoughtful men in the same religious body. It is
pleasant to see an occasional lapse into sanity, shown by the union of such
churches and the consequent strengthening and growth of a town’s religious
life. Probably it is not too much to say that the whole problem of Christian
Unity is but a phase of this general question of duplication and omission.
In the business world our two sins flourish like green bay trees. Small
villages have two groceries and no hardware store; large cities may be
overrun with one trade while there is lack of another. These things ought to
adjust themselves, but they do not. One can pick out duplication and
omission in the stock of a single institution. On asking for something at a
department store recently I was met with the remark, “Isn’t that funny? You
are the fifteenth person who has asked for that in the last three days!” The
fact was noted as merely curious and interesting and there was apparently
no intention of remedying the omission, even by cutting out some of the
superfluous styles of neckties.
The most flagrant example I know of duplication in the business and
industrial world is the duplicate telephone company. A telephone company
is a good example of a mutual enterprise; its value to any subscriber
depends on the existence of all the other subscribers. If a man could afford
to buy up the company and discontinue all the telephones but his own, the
value would disappear. Two companies are simply a nuisance, involving
duplication of plant with no resulting convenience. The same is not true of
gas or water companies, because here one user does not depend on the
others. You would get just as good service if the electric company
concluded to serve you, and you alone. There is, to be sure, wasteful
duplication in these cases also, but in the instance of the telephone it is
accompanied with necessary deterioration of service.
I suppose I need say little about the existence of our two sins in the
household. We are honeycombed with them from the rural dinner table
where there are no soup and three kinds of pie, to the housewife who yields
to the temptation to buy another evening dress and “can not afford” an
outing costume. What we need everywhere is some kind of a Board of
Equalization, with autocratic powers, that will rigourously suppress all our
duplication and with the money saved supply our omissions for us.
We may learn something from the efforts that have recently been made
to minimize these two sins in charitable work and social service. Every city
contains numerous charitable bodies, all trying to relieve want and alleviate
suffering. They are frequently the prey of unscrupulous persons who
manage to get their wants alleviated by three or four societies at once—by
each, of course, without the knowledge of the others. The result is that there
are no funds to relieve many worthy persons who accordingly suffer. The
two sins in this case are being avoided by the simple establishment of a
card-index at a central point. When an application is made for relief the
index-office is informed by telephone, the index is consulted, and if it is
found that the applicant is already receiving aid from some other source his
request is politely but firmly refused.
The present production of books gives us an instructive example of the
existence of duplications and omissions on a large scale; and the elucidation
of these will bring us a little nearer to the application of our principles to the
library, toward which we are tending. I know not which is the more striking
fact in connection with the publishing business—the continual issue of
useless books—fiction and non-fiction, or the non-existence of works on
vital subjects regarding which we need information. Of course this is due
partly to the fact that the men who know things are also the men who do
things. They are too busy to write them down. It is also due to the abnormal
appetites of the semi-educated, which create a demand for the trivial and
fatuous. The semi-educated person is intellectually young; he has the
peculiarities of the child. Foremost among these is the love of repetition.
The little one would rather hear his favorite fairy tale for the hundredth time
than risk an adventure into stranger fields of narrative. There is something
admirable about this when it leads to the adult’s love of re-reading great
literature. But in the semi-educated it appears as an unlimited capacity for
assimilating unreal fiction with the same plots, the same characters, the
same adventures and the same emotions, depicted time after time with
slight changes in names and attendant circumstances.
An African explorer told me recently that the events attending the
southward progress of the French through the Sahara and down into Central
Africa were the most thrilling and the most important, from the standpoint
of world history, among those of recent times. The story of them remains
unwritten, except for a few episodes in French that have not been thought
worthy of translation into other tongues. Yet in this period how much trivial
incident, how much banal reminiscence, has been thought worthy of
enshrinement in bulky octavos, selling at four dollars each! The money
spent in putting forth the same idle stuff that has oppressed the world for
centuries would have supplied great gaps in our catalogues of history, travel
and science and have given us vital literature that we may now have lost
forever.
In fiction, the sin of repetition is largely due to the substitution of
imagination for observation. No two actual things are alike and no two
events happen in the same way. Observation and accurate description will
never result in duplication. But the semi-educated imagination sees always
the same things and sees them in the same way; and its use in the writing of
fiction results as we have seen.
Would that we had, to-day and here, realism like that of Turgenief in his
“Memoirs of a Sportsman”—the detailed account of every-day happenings;
the hardest thing in the world to write interestingly. When we try it, which
we seldom do, we seem to revert at once to the dreary side of life, which
doubtless exists but surely not to the exclusion of other things. Turgenief’s
book helped toward the emancipation of the serfs. I will not dwell on that,
for Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin—a very different sort of book,
performed a like office for us. I will rather insist that Turgenief wrote
simple, vital descriptive literature; something that you will look far to find
in our modern fiction.
Our books of reference are full of duplications and omissions. Search the
commoner dictionaries and cyclopedias on the library shelves and you will
find countless instances of items of information given twice or thrice and
others left out altogether—of words entered under more than one form and
completely defined under each, while cross-references lead the seeker to
nothing at all. After working a good many years on books of this kind I am
convinced that the art of making a perfect dictionary or cyclopedia is the art
of avoiding duplication and omission. This can not be done until publishers
are willing to allow sufficient time to elaborate a plan before beginning
work on one of these books. This, so far, has never been done, and the two
sins continue to be committed, here as elsewhere.
It is doubtless time for our application of these principles to the library.
We have not to look far to begin.
Take any city of average size and inquire how many libraries it supports.
Is there any necessity in a town for more than one library? I am open to
conviction, but I doubt. There are excellent reasons for the duplication in
each case, I know, just as there were for the two golf clubs in our little
town. The duplication in buildings, staff and books is very costly, and the
service, no matter how good it may be, is not bettered by this duplication.
The trouble may be minimized by co-operation, but it still exists. Take, if
you please, the one item of book-purchase. I shall not speak here of private
owners, though they must bear their share of blame and of punishment for
our two sins; but add together the book funds of the two or three large
libraries—public or subscription—and of the dozen small ones—special,
denominational, associational—in a community, and see to what a
considerable sum it amounts. If it could be administered and expended as a
unit, is there any one who will maintain that the precise books would be
bought that actually are bought? We find all these libraries buying copies of
the same book when one copy is all that the community needs, each
ignoring the others and each lamenting the insufficiency of its funds. I have
not forgotten such conspicuous instances of co-operation in book-purchase
as that of the three large libraries in Chicago, but I also do not forget that it
is rare, and that even in Chicago it has been found difficult to carry it out in
the perfection in which it is to be found on paper. If we add private
purchasers to the libraries I have little hesitation in saying that the money
spent on books in any community is quite enough to buy all that the
community needs. The lacks are due to the fact that the sum needed to
supply them is spent on useless duplicates.
I am not proposing plans, here or elsewhere, to perform the addition of
plus and minus quantities that is so easy in pure algebra; I am merely
pointing out their existence. From my point of view the ideal situation in a
community is the administration by a single body of all its library activities,
even private owners co-operating to a certain extent. Let us refresh our
memories with a bit of library history. There are at present a great many
separate libraries in greater New York. That is, from my point of view, a bad
thing. But there were once a great many more. New York and Brooklyn
were full of small circulating libraries—denominational, charitable and
associational; and many of them had succeeded in obtaining small subsidies
from the city. The sum of these was considerable—or would have been
considerable had it been administered as a sum, instead of in separate
driblets. All the considerations noted above applied in this case, but the
Board of Equalization for which we have been sighing actually existed
here. It was the city government, which bestowed and controlled a large
part of these institutional incomes. A city comptroller with a business-like
mind saw all this and proceeded to act upon it. The small libraries became
branches of the public libraries of New York and Brooklyn. The city
subsidy, in a lump sum went to those institutions. If there is any one who
now wishes to return to the old system of separate control and duplication
of effort, I am unacquainted with him; notwithstanding the fact that I know
many trustees of the consolidated institutions who were filled with rage at
the summary action of the city. That action was in the nature of both a threat
and a bribe—a threat to discontinue the appropriation of city funds for a
library that should refuse to consolidate and a bribe in the shape of a hint of
additional favors to come if it should not refuse. Mr. Andrew Carnegie’s
offer to build branch libraries, coming at about this time, made it possible to
reinforce this hint very effectively.
Our federal government is being held up as the model for a future world
federation, and its successful operation confutes the fears of those who
doubt the workability of any such plan. In like manner I beg to point to the
library consolidations in New York and Brooklyn as an evidence that such
removal of duplication elsewhere would enable us to supply omissions in
library service. All we need is a motive—if not the threats and bribes that
forced the New York consolidation, then something of equal effect. But as I
have said I am not proposing plans.
The abolition of this kind of duplication requires pressure from an
outside body or agreement among those concerned; no one of us, acting
alone, can do away with it. But there are duplications and omissions in the
work of every library that it is in the power of the librarian to remedy. Many
of these are the result of growth. I know of no profession whose members
are more continually and consistently looking for more work to do than that
of librarianship. This quest is rarely carried on cooperatively in a library.
The head of each department grasps every opportunity to enlarge her sphere
of influence, with the result that her sphere first touches that of another
department and then intersects it, so that they possess certain parts of the
field of service in common. The departments concerned may not know of
this duplication, or they may realize that it is going on and be unwilling to
stop it for various reasons. Each department-head, like the golf-clubs
mentioned above, may be willing to abolish duplication by driving her
fellow-worker out of the field, but not otherwise; and her fear lest she
herself may have to be the one to retire may induce her to keep silence.
Sometimes the librarian himself, observing the interference, contents
himself with seeing that individual items of service are not duplicated,
leaving the two departments to do, in part, the same kind of work, though
not in precisely the same items. This is but a partial atonement for our two
sins. Although there is, perhaps, no longer actual duplication of work, there
is duplication of administration, duplication of thought and planning. All
this is waste of effort that should be devoted to doing some of the things
that every library leaves undone. I have elsewhere treated of what I call
“conflicts of jurisdiction” in libraries. This comes under the same head,
though there may be no actual clash of authorities.
Sometimes we have cases resembling those of the applicants for
charitable aid from various sources. Members of the public entitled to
library service, the amount of which has been limited by the rules to ensure
proper distribution and to prevent monopoly, manage to get two or three
times as much as they should get, by applying to different departments, or
to the same department under different names. There has been much
removal of restrictions of late, in libraries, with the intent to give fuller and
freer service to the public. There should be no restriction that interferes with
such service. But many restrictions are intended merely to check those
whose tendency is to hamper service; and removal of these will evidently
injure the public, not benefit it. Traffic regulations are a great bother, but
their removal would not be in the public interest. Neither would the removal
of necessary regulation of library traffic—the free distribution of books
through the appointed public agencies. I sympathize with our modern desire
to let Mr. A have as many books as he wants and to keep them as long as he
wants; but this sympathy changes to indignation when Mr. A proves to be a
library hog, taking advantage of his privileges simply to keep away from
Mr. B and Miss C the books that they want. Now and again we find a reader
who understands increase of library privileges to mean taking a book away
from someone else and giving it to him. There could be no more flagrant
example of the double sin of duplication and omission—giving A more than
he can use and thereby depriving B of what he needs.
The expenditure of time is a domain in which our two sins become
especially noticeable. If one has plenty of money he may waste a good deal
without serious effects; but waste of time is different. The total extent of
time is doubtless infinite, but not its extent as available to the individual. He
has only his three-score years and ten, and astronomical happenings have
chopped this up for him into years, months, weeks and days, any one of
which is largely a repetition of those that have gone before. So many of our
duties, for instance, are daily that the average man has only a few hours out
of the twenty-four to deal with emergency work, “hurry calls” and all sorts
of exceptional demands on his time. If he gives ten minutes to something
that requires but five, he must often neglect a duty, and this constitutes
duplication and omission of time, to be remedied by taking the unnecessary
five minutes from one task and bestowing it on another. Here again,
however, our algebraic addition is simple only on paper. We are hindered
not only by our own propensity to waste time but by those whose own is of
no value and who therefore insist on wasting ours for us.
This is a subject on which most executive officers can speak feelingly.
Such officers are troubled with two kinds of lieutenants—those who keep
them in ignorance of what is going on and those who insist on putting them
in continual possession of trivial details—more omission and duplication,
you see. One special kind of time-waster is the assistant who comes to her
chief with a request. Foreseeing refusal she has primed herself with all sorts
of arguments and is ready to smash all opposition in a logical presentation
of the subject calculated to occupy thirty minutes or so. But the request, as
stated, appeals to her chief as reasonable, and he grants it at once without
hearing the argument. Do you think the petitioner is going to waste all that
valuable logic? Not she! She stands her ground and pours it all out, the
whole half hour of it; and when the victim has granted a second time what
he had already granted without argument, she retires flushed with triumph
at her success. And while this duplicator was duplicating, the other sinner,
the “omittor”, was performing some innocent and valuable administrative
act without her chief’s knowledge, causing him to give wrong information
to a caller and convict himself of ignorance of what is going on in his own
institution.
Time-wasting, of course, is by no means confined to the library staff.
Much of every one’s time, in a library, is consumed in fruitless
conversations with the public—the answering of trivial questions, the
search for data that can do no one any good, efforts to appease the wrath of
someone who ought never to have been angry at all, attempts to explain
things verbally when adequate explanations in print are at hand. All these
things consume valuable time and thereby force the omission of public
services that would otherwise be performed. Some of them are unavoidable.
We must always change up a little time to the account of courtesy, the
avoidance of brusqueness, the maintenance in the community of that
tradition of library helpfulness that is perhaps the library’s chief asset. This
we can not afford to lose. But without sacrificing it, can we not eliminate
some of the bores, cut down our useless services for the sake of performing
a few more useful ones, and increase the amount of library energy usefully
employed without enlarging the total sum expended? This is one of our
most vital problems, did we but realize it.
We have gone far enough, perhaps, to realize that our two sins are indeed
cardinal and fundamental. The authors of the Prayer Book were right. We
have done those things that we ought not to have done and we have left
undone those things that we ought to have done; and we are all miserable
sinners.
If I had nerve enough to add a new society to the thousand and one that
carry on their multifarious activities about us, I should found a League to
Suppress Duplications and Supply Omissions.
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS
History may be described as an account of the conflict between the
tendency of things to move and efforts to fasten them down so that they will
keep still. Where they have been moving in the wrong direction these
efforts have been praiseworthy; but in too many instances motion has been
resisted simply because it is motion, quiescence being looked upon as the
supreme good. In his interesting “History of Fiji”, Dr. Alfred Goldsborough
Mayer notes that the difference between the savage and the civilized man is
not one of content of knowledge, for the savage often knows far more than
we do, but is due to the fact that the savage is bound hand and foot by
tradition—he is a slave to his imagination, and to that of his forefathers.
The conflict in his case has ended definitely with the triumph of the
fastening down process. There is no more motion. He can not fall back, but
neither can he move forward. He is locked in one position—that of the
particular generation, five, fifty or five hundred years ago, when his fight
for progress was lost.
With the civilized man the fight still goes on. It is not yet won nor lost
and the story of it, as I have said, is history. Read it in this light and it will
assume for you new significance. Wars, revolutions, changes of dynasty,
racial migrations, linguistic changes, the achievements of art, the triumphs
of science, the evolution of social systems, the development of justice, the
rise of literature and the drama—everything that marks the story of what
has been going on in the world—is but a phase of this age-long struggle
between forces and obstacles of whose origins, at bottom, we know little.
So far as the obstacles have won, there are still savage elements lurking in
us; so far as we have thrust them aside, we are advancing further toward
civilization. The one title that we have to call ourselves civilized is the fact
that no set of traditions or customs—no institution—has yet become
crystallized into the fixity that obtains with the savage races;—not the
Church, not government, not science, nor art nor literature. All these are
changing, despite efforts to pin them down. Our language, our social
customs are altering; our fashions of dress change from year to year. Our
old people, for a man often reverts to savagery in his old age, pass away
with words of regret on their lips for the good old days of their youth, when
things were different. A savage has never to do this, for the days of his
youth and his age are precisely the same—custom, speech, habit,
observance, tradition, all are locked up into fixity.
The education of the savage is directed toward perpetuating this fixity;
that of the civilized man should be a force in the opposite direction.
Recognizing that change is the life-blood of civilization, it should be
devoted to controlling and directing that change, leading the mind of the
pupil to anticipating and welcoming it and bracing that mind against all
feeling of shock due to the mere starting of the machinery of progress. I say
this is what education should be. I believe that it is tending in this way. But
a large part of it is still savage—an effort to keep our customs, thoughts and
actions to standards set up by our ancestors.
The Public Library, we are fond of saying, is an educational institution;
which kind of education shall it dispense? Shall it be a motor or a brake?
Shall it look back into the past or forward into the future?
To many persons, the idea of a forward-looking library seems absurd. It
is essentially a repository of records, and records are of the past. You will
find somewhere, unless oblivion has overtaken it, an address by your
lecturer on “The Public Library as a Conservative Force”. Such it doubtless
is and such it should be—but its conservatism is that of control, not of
stagnation. It is the skilled driver who keeps the car in the road—not the
ignoramus who stalls it in the ditch. Records are assuredly of the past; but
the past and its records may be looked upon in either of two ways—as
standards for all time, or as foundations on which to build for the future.
The civilized man rejoices in foundations—he builds them deep and strong,
and erects upon them some noble superstructure. The savage puts up his
great stone circle, mighty and wonderful perhaps, but complete in itself and
of no manner of use.
So I ask you, what is our collection of records to be—a stone circle or a
foundation?
Now the records themselves—the books—can never determine this any
more than the great monolith can determine whether it is going into a
Stonehenge or into the foundation of a Parthenon. It is what we do to the
books—to and with them—that matters.
The world would never move on without records of the progress that had
already been made. Just as surely, it would never move on by reliance on
those records alone. What we have accomplished brings us merely to a mile
stone in the path of progress. To reach a given point, one must pass the mile
stones on the way; but they must be passed and left behind. We shall never
get anywhere merely by sitting down upon any of them. To make a personal
application to yourselves, you will never make good librarians unless you
master what good librarians before you have learned and taught. But just as
certainly, you will never be good librarians if you regard this as a definite
stopping point. The trouble with most of our education is that it is static and
not dynamic; it looks backward, not forward; it teaches what has already
been accomplished and fails to equip the student for devising and
accomplishing something further, on his own account.
I am warning you in the midst of a course intended to fit you for
librarianship that the course alone will not so fit you. But it will start you—
and a start in the right direction is of great value—nay, it is indispensable.
When the fielder throws the ball directly into the baseman’s hands there is a
preliminary motion of his arm. At the end of that motion the ball begins its
flight; its start has enabled it to go straight. Your library course will be the
throw that enables you to go straight to the mark, but you must not forget
that the whole flight remains to be made. My metaphor is a bad one. The
ball has no power to adjust or alter its course. You have that power; you can
better a good start, or you can nullify it. You may even hit the mark after
you have been started in the wrong direction; but to say this is by no means
to recommend a wrong start.
All this is a series of platitudes; but to insist on the obvious is often
useful. There are so many obvious things that we are apt to neglect some of
the most necessary, just as we may fail to see a sign on a building because it
is all plastered with signs. Nothing is more common than to assume that a
period of formal education, general or special, makes its subject “fit”, either
for life or for a vocation. Some never get over this idea and fail in
consequence; some discover their mistake and blame their training because
it does not do what it can not do and was not intended to do. Formal
training trains one to start; it makes one fit to run the race. The race is not
won when the training has ended; it has not even begun. The man with a
B.A. degree is not ready to tackle the problems of life and vanquish them.
The graduate in law or medicine is not a trained lawyer or physician, and
when you have completed your library course you will not be trained
librarians. You will have been started right, the rest of your training will
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