Workplace Lending Libraries

Low-paid and poorly educated working men and women often lacked the leisure time to visit public libraries, even if such a facility had been established in their town. But increasingly employers, often Liberal in politics and Nonconformist in religion, wished for a better-educated and non-drinking workforce and so set up their own libraries of useful as well as entertaining books; serving the families of the workers was considered equally important. Some of these libraries were free, while others made a modest charge. Miners and railway workers often enjoyed substantial libraries, as did workmen in dockyards, factories of all kinds, mills, and shops, and not ignoring those employed in banks and post offices.