The Free Library and Other Histories
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THE FREE LIBRARY AND OTHER HISTORIES 1833 The first tax-supported public library was report in 1893 warned that “even the briefest of demand for lower costs to keep profits growing established in the town of Peterborough, New stimulating passages” in literature “could plunge had pushed his workers to the limits of endurance. Hampshire. the helpless reader into that state of excitement in In 1892, at Homestead Steel Works, contract nego- “The account of the establishment of a town li- which principle is overcome by passion and noth- tiations with the Amalgamated Association of Iron brary at Peterborough, New Hampshire, is unique in ing but opportunity is wanted for unbridled indul- and Steel Workers had come to a halt. In the at- that here we have an instance of what appears to gence.” tempt to break the union at Homestead, 800 union be the spontaneous generation of an entirely new members had been locked out; another 2,000 non- form. Here, without the stimulus of private do- Works that would be suppressed under state ob- union steelworkers followed, walking out in sympa- nation, without the permission of state legislation, scenity laws, banned from importation by U.S. thy, effectively closing the plant. In an attempt to without the semblance of a model in the mother Customs, or from the U.S. mails, included Giovanni bring in scab labor, 300 Pinkerton agents, a private country, a tax-supported town library was born. The Boccaccio’s Decameron, Leo Tolstoy’s Kreutzer So- police force with more men and guns than the U.S. circumstances surrounding the creation of this insti- nata, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, military, had been called in by Henry Clay Frick, fel- tution raise an interesting historical question involv- Honoré de Balzac’s Droll Stories, Theodore Dreiser’s low industrialist tasked by Carnegie to oversee the ing local circumstance and group motivation to An American Tragedy (the subject of a major cen- plant. Badly miscalculated, the standoff resulted in which no answer has yet been offered. In January sorship case in Massachusetts in 1927), Edmund Wil- the death of 9 steel workers and countless others a group of farmers and small manufacturers under son’s Memoirs of Hecate County, Andrew Lang’s sustained injuries. State militia were deployed to the leadership of the Rev. Abiel Abbot formed a The Arabian Nights, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatter- end the standoff, but ultimately Carnegie’s victory social library whose shares sold at two dollars and ley’s Lover, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, James signaled the weakening of organized labor in the whose annual membership fee was fifty cents. On Joyce’s Ulysses. steel industry for decades. April 9, the town, apparently under the inspira- tion of the same Rev. Abbot voted to set aside for 1873 Lysistrata, the controversial play written in “The most consciously political workers decried the purchase of books a portion of the state bank 411 BC by Aristophanes was banned in the U.S. by the library as a shameless bribe. Others who tax which was distributed among New Hampshire the Comstock Law. An anti-war drama, Lysistrata could look past Carnegie’s role in the strike re- towns for library purposes. This was the way the first is an account of one woman’s mission to end the garded the library as an impractical institution that American town library to be continuously support- Peloponnesian War; she convinces the women of was hardly set up around workers’ schedules. ed over a period of years was begun.” Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their hus- One Homestead steelworker noted the irony and bands and lovers as a means of forcing the men concluded that although Carnegie claimed to 1872 Anthony Comstock founded the New York to negotiate peace. The ban on Lysistrata was not build libraries for the “workingman,” “what good Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose slogans lifted until 1930. are libraries to me, working practically eighteen were: “Morals not Art and Literature!” and “Books hours a day?”” are feeders for brothels!” Comstock campaigned 1881 Walt Whitman’s collection of poetry Leaves tirelessly for the expansion of obscenity and censor- of Grass, was withdrawn from circulation in Boston, Similar sentiment characterized the library as “a ship laws, not only to stamp out erotic subject mat- after Oliver Stevens, the District Attorney, in coop- philanthropy which provides opportunities for intel- ter in art or literature, but to suppress information eration with the New England Society for the Sup- lectual and social advancement while it withholds about sexuality, reproduction, and birth control. pression of Vice, threatened criminal prosecution conditions which make it possible to take advantage for the use of explicit language in some poems. The of them.” March 3, 1873 The Comstock Act, was passed by publisher James Osgood demanded that certain the United States Congress under the Grant admin- poems with pronounced allusions to sex and sexual May 18, 1896 The U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy istration; an “Act for the Suppression of Trade in, preference, such as “Song of Myself,” be revised v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles and that certain poems such as “A Woman Waits law that legalized segregated libraries. of Immoral Use.” The Act criminalized usage of for Me” and “To a Common Prostitute” be removed the U.S. Postal Service to send any of the following from the collection. Whitman refused stating, “The items: erotica, contraceptive, abortifacients, sex list whole & several is rejected by me, & will not be “In the United States, attempts to curtail the read- toys, personal letters alluding to any sexual content thought of under any circumstances.” ing of the black population date from the earliest or information, or any information regarding the days of slavery. In order to prevent slaves from re- above items. In places such as Washington, D.C., 1896 The Carnegie Library of Homestead broke belling, it was essential that they remain illiterate. If where the federal government had direct jurisdic- ground. It was the sixth public library commissioned slaves learned to read, it was argued, they would tion, the act also made it a misdemeanor, punish- by Carnegie of the 1,689 that would be built in the become informed of political, philosophical and able by fine and imprisonment, to sell, give away, U.S. “Carnegie’s gift to Homestead was an exceed- religious arguments in favour of abolition, and rise or have in possession any “obscene” publication. ingly elaborate gesture. Through the auspices of against their masters. Therefore, slaves who learned Half of the states passed similar anti-obscenity the Carnegie Land Company, Carnegie reserved to read, even the Bible, were often punished with statutes that also banned possession and sale of prime hilltop real estate, only a few blocks above death; it was assumed that, while conversion of the obscene materials, including contraceptives. Vio- the Homestead Steel Works. The library itself occu- slaves was “convenient,” knowledge of the Scrip- lators of The Comstock Act faced steep fines and pied an entire city block; on all fours sides, company tures was to be acquired only through the eyes of even time in prison. controlled real estate insulated the library from pos- their white masters.” sible encroachment of either mill or working class Manguel, Alberto Comstock was appointed special agent of the U.S. housing from Homestead. Above the library to the “The Library as Oblivion,” The Library at Night Post Office and given the express power to en- east the grounds were surrounded by a string of su- force the statute. Over the next forty years Com- perintendent’s mansions. .” The plan exemplified stock prosecuted over 3,500 individuals (although the struggle between class and culture. April 3, 1902 W.E.B. DuBois, Professor of Econom- no more than 10% were found guilty) and claimed ics and History at Atlanta University, published “The to have destroyed over 160 tons of literature. The event was overshadowed by the recent bru- Opening of the Library” in the Atlanta Indepen- tality of the Homestead lock-out and the steel dent: Comstock’s counterpart in Boston, the Watch and industry labor struggle. Despite the staggering ““With simple and appropriate exercises the beau- Ward Society, was equally unrelenting: its annual expansion of Carnegie’s steel empire, his persistent tiful new Carnegie Library was thrown open to the public yesterday.” So says the morning paper of case and the birth control movement, the govern- Atlanta, Georgia . ment decided to avoid further publicity and with- The white marble building, the gift of Andrew Carn- drew charges. egie, is indeed fair to look upon. The site was given the city by a private library association, and the 1916 Mary Wright Plummer, President of the Ameri- City Council appropriates $5,000 annually of the can Library Association (ALA) and previous director city moneys for its support. If you will climb the hill of Pratt Institute Free Library, credited with originat- where the building sits, you may look down upon ing the idea of ethics for the library profession, ad- the rambling city. Northward and southward are dressed (in absentia) the 1916 ALA Ashbury Park 53,905 white people, eastward and westward are Conference with a powerful statement for democ- 35,912 African Americans. And so in behalf of these racy and intellectual freedom: “What has all this 36,000 people my companions and I called upon to do with LIBRARIES? This: that free-will to choose the trustees of the Library on this opening day, for must be based upon a knowledge of good and we had heard that black folk were to have no part evil; access to all the factors for making choices in this ‘free public library,’ and we thought it well to must be free to the people of a democracy which go ask why.” can flourish and develop and improve only as it A Project by Ann Messner Children looking at the window of the Colored Public Library once housed in the YMI (Young Men Institute) Cultural Center in Asheville, North Carolina.