(By Mrs. W.F. Kellogg)

The members of the various woman’s clubs in this city have ever been great patrons of the library. Since the first club began its study program up to the present time, club women have been constantly drawing from the library shelves books that taught them history, painting, literature, music, architecture, domestic arts, and travel. Finding in the library the needed help and inspiration to make their course of study interesting and valuable soon brought to the minds of these women the fact that they ought to strive in every way to support the efforts of the Librarian and Library Board in making a bigger and better library.

According, when the Woman’s Federation of this city was organized in 1906, one of its first standing committees was a Library Committee. This body has tried faithfully during all the years that have followed to be real assistance in carrying out library plans. Its first great effort was to increase the circulation of books. For the test of the real value of a library is in the circulation of its books. They should be drawn in certain proportion to the population of the area in which the books are loaded; and truly of a library, whatever it is good or poor, we might say "By their circulation we should know them."

The club women tried by means of special entertainments socials, teas, and exhibits to bring the people into the library and to stimulate their interest in better books.

They urged the enlarging of the space for library work, the establishing of a children’s room. They helped to make these quarters more attractive by the donation of furniture, pictures, books and curios. They worked with the librarian to establish story hours and special exhibits from the schools which would help to create interest in children. At the time of the founding of the Women’s Federation the grounds about the library building were most unsightly. A great waste of sand covered with piles of rock, the rock, crushing machine, and old tumble down red barn, and a dilapidated latering through where the objects which met the eye on every side. Under the able leadership of Mrs. Earle Pease and the Woman’s Federation this as charged. Land, dirt, work and teams were solicited and in a little time the trough, barn and rocks were moved; the grounds filled level and seeded; and the women finished the work by donating hundreds of shrubs and hiring a landscape gardener to properly plant them.

The library was as we all recall housed in the upper rooms of the city hall. The club women felt that a separate building given over entirely to library work would be more satisfactory. To this end they petitioned the Carnegie Foundation Fund and tried to secure for this city a donation from this organization for a library building. An extended correspondence was carried on for some time with these people, but owing to the fact that the library had already received some donations from other sources only a small amount ($4,000.00) was offered toward the erection of a new building. It was decided that the city was not able at that time to take on the large amount of money that would be needed to complete a new building matter and the matter was dropped until a more auspicious moment.

During the war period the women of the Council of Defense had rooms in the Library building and in their patriotic effort did not forget to hold their exhibits of war breads, cakes, preserves, and foods in this place. We also organized here this display of posters from all over the country in the Liberty loan contests, and held several county conventions of women in the library rooms.

For the past two years the Travel Class has been the library committee of the Women’s Federation. During this time the usual help, donations of books, etc. has been carried on; but perhaps the most noteworthy help to the library was the renting of rooms on the West Side which enabled the library board to open there a branch library for the convenience of the West side readers. When we learn that an average of 75 books have been drawn daily from the branch and that just as many books as before it was opened have been drawn daily from the East side building we realize somewhat the value of this step, for we must not forget that "by their circulation we shall know them." Some one has said that he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one has grown before is a benefactor of the entire human race. If this is so, then those who have helped to make a circulation of 200 books daly (sic) where only 130 were drawn before, also have done their bit to help the old world wag on a bit more intellectually and may therefore feel that the work they are trying to help with is one well worth while.

Taken from the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune dated Tuesday, February 8, 1921.