Present-day conditions in a branch library in a crowded district
of a large city are pictured in the last paper to be included in
this compilation, with special emphasis on the necessity of
understanding the traditions and customs of foreign peoples in
order to know how to appeal to them. It was read by Miss
Josephine M. McPike before the meeting of the Missouri Library
Association at Joplin, Missouri, in October, 1915.
Josephine Mary McPike was born in Alton, Illinois, and studied in
Shurtleff College, Upper Alton, and in the University of
Illinois. She became a member of the staff of the St. Louis
Public Library in 1909. In February, 1917, she resigned from the
position of First Assistant at the Crunden Branch to become the
librarian of the Seven Corners Branch of the Minneapolis Public
Library.
Crunden branch is the kind of place, the thought of which makes
you glad to get up in the morning. It is an institution a state
of mind. And as we workers there feel, so do the people in the
neighborhood. We have heard over and over again the almost
worn-out appellation "The people's university"; Crunden has a
different place in the thoughts of its users. It is really the
living-room of our neighborhood--the place where, the dishes
having been washed and the apron hung up, we naturally retire to
read and to muse.
True, it is a large family foregathered in this living-room of
ours, much greater in number than the chairs for them to sit
upon, but, as in all large families, there is much giving and
taking. In the children's room, crowded to overflowing, the
Jewish child sits next to the Irish, and the Italian and the
Polish child read from the same book. Children of all ages; babes
from two and a half years to boys of twenty who spend their days
in the factory, and are still reading "Robinson Crusoe" and the
"Merry adventures of Robin Hood." There too, sometimes comes the
mother but lately arrived from the "Old Country," wearing her
brightly colored native costume. Unable to read or to write, she
feels more at home here with the children whom she understands,
and beams proudly to see her little "Izzey" reading "Child life"
or "Summers' reader."
Some social workers report that their greatest difficulty in
dealing with the children of the tenement district is absolute
lack of the play spirit. Our observations have been quite to the
contrary; in all of the children there is a fresh and healthy
play- fulness--indeed, we feel at times that it is much too
healthy. Our constant attendance is needed to satisfy them all,
insatiable little readers that they are.
But the question of discipline becomes a real problem only in
dealing with the mass spirit of the gang. There is one more or
less notorious gang in the neighborhood which is known as the
"Forty Thieves." To gain admittance into this friendly crowd it
is necessary for the applicant to prove to the full satisfaction
of the leaders that he has stolen something. En masse they storm
into the children's room, in a spirit of bravado. We gradually
come to realize that at such a time as this the library
smile--that much used and abused smile--touches some of the boys
not at all, and the voice of authority and often the arm of
strength are the only effective methods. We believe that we have
found a most satisfactory way of meeting this situation. The
children's librarian induces all of the older boys to come down
stairs to a separate room and for a half hour tells them tales of
adventure and chivalry, thus quieting the children's room and
directing the energy of the boys into more peaceful channels.
This story in the evening takes the place of the story hour for
older children during the daytime, which on account of the
scarcity of boys and girls of suitable age has been discontinued.
The younger children still have their fairy stories told them,
and there, ever and anon, the frank spirit of the family
manifests itself. That child who all through one story hour sat
weaving back and forth muttering to herself, and when pressed for
an explanation, remarked that she "was counting 'til you're
done"--is a happy and independent contrast to the usually
emotional type that embraces and bids its indescribably dirty and
garlic tainted little brothers--"Kiss teacher for the nice
story."
The young library assistant comes to Crunden branch graciously to
teach--she stays humbly to learn. Full of new theories and with a
desire to uplift--a really sincere desire--she finds in a short
time much to uplift her own spirit. Since ours is a polygot
neighborhood consisting mostly of Russians, Jews, Poles, and
Italians, with a light sprinkling of Irish, it brings us into
contact with such different temperaments that before we can
attempt to satisfy them we must needs go to school to them. We
know to some extent the life of our American child and with a
little thought we can usually find the way best to appeal to him.
But the peoples who have come from across the water have brought
with them their traditions and their customs, and have each their
own point of view; and it is with these traditions and customs
that we must become familiar and sympathetic in order to
understand the little strangers. There is the eager, often
fearful Jewish child; the slower, stolid Pole; the impulsive
Italian; each must be approached from a different angle and each
with a different inducement. At first this task is rather
appalling, but gradually it becomes so interesting that from
trying to learn from the child in the library we listen to the
mother in the home, and often to the father from the factory; and
from these gleanings of their life in the home and their habits
of thought we try to understand the nature of the strange child
and grope about for what he most needs and how to make the
greatest appeal to him.
In the last two or three years the children's librarian has
herself gone after each book long overdue, and with each visit
she has seized the opportunity not only to recover the book, but
to become acquainted with the mother and to gain her often
reluctant confidence. Most of the readers live in tenements, many
of which open into one common yard. The appearance of the library
assistant usually causes much commotion, and she is received
often not only by the mother of the negligent child but also the
mothers of several other children as well--and, the center of a
friendly group, she holds conversation with them. By this time
the library assistant is well known in the neighborhood, and
unlike the collector and the curious social uplifter who are
often treated with sullenness and defiance, she receives every
consideration and assistance. Now at Yom Kipper, Rosh Hashana,
Pasach and other holidays, we are invited to break matzos and eat
rare native dishes with the families of the children. We find the
home visit invaluable. The Jewish, the Italian, and even the
Polish mother gains confidence in us, tells us all the family
details--and feels finally that we are fit persons to whom she
may entrust her children.
Probably our most attractive-looking child is the Italian, a
swarthy-skinned little creature, with softly curved cheeks,
liquid brown eyes and seraphic expression--that seraphic
expression which is so convincing and withal so misleading. Child
of the sun that he is, his greatest ambition in life is to lie
undisturbed in the heat of the day and so be content. He has
learned to take nothing seriously, the word "responsibility" has
no meaning for him. Nor has the word "truth." With his vivid
imagination he handles it with the lightest manner in the world,
he adds, he expands, he takes away in the most sincere fashion,
looking at you all the while with babyish innocence. He is
bewildering! His large brown eyes are veritable symbols of truth;
to doubt him fills you with shame. I say he is bewildering; never
so much so as when, for no apparent reason, he changes his
tactics, and with the same sweet confidence absolutely reverses
his former statements. What can we do with him? There seems to be
no appeal we can make. He swears by the Madonna! He raises his
eyes to Heaven, and when he finally makes his near- true
statement, he is filled with such confessional fervor that to
reward him seems to be the only logical course left. He is
certainly a child of nature, but of a nature so quixotic that we
are non-plussed.
To many of our dark-skinned little friends "Home" originally was
the little island across from the toe of Italy. These are, I
fear, somewhat scorned by the ones whose homes nestled within the
confines of the boot itself. We know how many refugees fled to
that little spot in the water, and that dark indeed have been the
careers of some of them. Whether the hunted feeling of their
fathers of generations back still lurks in these young Sicilians,
I do not know, but certainly their first impulse is one of
defense. At the simplest question there appears suddenly, even in
the smallest child, the defiant flash of the dark eyes and the
sullen setting of the mouth. The question--what does your father
do?--or, what is your mother's name?--arouses their
ever-smoldering suspicion, and more than likely their quick
rejoinder will be--"What's it to you?" When we explain
impersonally that it is very much to us if they are to read our
books, and that after all to reveal their mother's name will be
no very damaging admission, the cloud blows over and there is no
more trace of the little storm when they indifferently give us
all the details we wish. So sudden are their changes and moods,
so violent their little outbursts, that we must needs be on the
qui vive in our dealings with them. But yet they are so lovable
that we can never be vexed with them for long.
It cannot be far amiss to put into this paper a picturesque
Sicilian woman who has grown old in years but is still a child in
spirit. She loves a fairy story as much as she did sixty years
ago, and listens with the same breathless credulity. One night
about twilight as I sat on the front steps with her and several
little Italian children, listening to her tales of the old home
country, there came a silence in our little group. Suddenly Angel
Licavoli asked, "Teacher, what is God like?" With a feeling that
our friend of riper experience could give us more satisfaction, I
repeated the question to her. Her sweet old face surrounded by
the white curls was a study in simple faith as she assured us,
"Maybe She is like the holy pictures."
When I approach the subject of the Russian Jew, I do it with a
great humbleness and fear lest I do not do it justice. So much
have they had to overcome, and such tenacity and perseverance
have they shown in overcoming it! Straight from the Pales of
Kief, Ketchinoff, and Odessa they come to settle in the nearest
to a pale we have to offer. Great has been their poverty; a
long-standing terror with them, and along with it in many cases,
persecution, starvation, and social ostracism. Poverty in all
but spirit and mind. The great leveler to them is education, and
it is no uncommon thing for the Jewish father to sacrifice
himself in order to better his son, to take upon himself that
greatest of sacrifices, daily grind and deprivation. Not only
this generation, but the one before and the one before that. They
cannot keep up such a white-hot search for learning without
sooner or later finding out what is wisdom--real wisdom. Stripped
of all but bare necessities, they come to possess a sense of
value that is remarkably true. We come into contact then with the
offspring of such conditions, simple and direct in manner and
having a passionate impersonal curiosity. Always asking,
searching for the real things, eager for that which will render
them impervious to their sordid surroundings, they have thrown
aside all superfluous mannerisms and get easily to the heart of
things. Accustomed to the greatest repression, and exclusion from
all schools and institutions of the sort, the free access to so
many books is an endless joy to them. They browse among the
shelves lovingly, and instinctively read the best we have to
offer. Tales from the ancient Hebrews, history, travel --these
are the books they take. But what they read most gladly is
biography. It is just as difficult to find a life of Lincoln on
the shelves as it is to find an Altsheler--and of comparisons is
that not the strongest? Heroes of all sorts attract the Jewish
child, heroes in battles, statesmen and leaders in adventure,
conquest, business. If a hero is also a martyr, their delight
knows no bounds.
We know now that we need be surprised at nothing; extreme cases
have come at Crunden to be the average, if I may be permitted to
be paradoxical. We were interested but not surprised when Sophie
Polopinsk, a little girl but a short time from Russia, wheeled up
the truck, climbed with great difficulty upon it and promptly
lost herself in a volume of Tolstoi's "Resurrection," a volume
almost as large as the small person herself, and formidable with
its Russian characters. In telling you of Sol Flotkin I may be
giving you the history of a dozen or so small Russian Jews who
have come to Crunden. At the age of ten, Sol had read all of
Gorki, Tolstoi, Turgenev and Dostoievski in the original and then
devoured Hugo and Dumas in the language of his adoption. The
library with Sol became an obsession. He was there waiting for
the doors to open in the morning, and at nine o'clock at night we
would find him on the adult side, probably behind the radiator,
lost to us, but almost feverishly alive in his world of
imagination that some great man had made so real for him. It was
to Crunden branch that the truant officer came when the school
authorities reported him absent from his place. It was there,
too, his father came, imploring, "Could we not refuse Sol
entrance?" The Door man demanded, did we know that at twelve and
one o'clock at night he was often compelled to go out and find
the boy, only to discover him crouched under the street light
with a copy of "War and peace" lovingly upon his young knees? And
there are many others like Sol. Is it not inspiring to the
librarian to work with children who must be coaxed, not to read
good books, but to desist from reading them?
Among the Jewish people the word "radical" is in high favor --it
is the open sesame to their sympathy. For the ordinary layman,
radicalism, for some unexplained reason, is associated with the
words Socialism, Anarchism, etc. The deep dyed conservative, to
whom comes the picture of flaunting red at the mention of the
word, would be surprised to learn in what simple cases it is
often used. We have, for instance, an organization meeting once a
week under the head of the "Radical Jewish School." When the
secretary came to us for the first time we asked him what new
theory they intended to work out. Their radical departure from
custom consisted only in teaching to the children a working
Yiddish in order that the Jewish mother might understand her
amazingly American child, in order to lessen the tragedy of
misunderstanding which looms large in a family of this sort. They
are setting at defiance the old Jewish School which taught its
children only a Hebrew taken from the Talmud, a more perfect but
seldom used language. Not so terrifying that.
Children who are forced to forage for themselves from a very
early age, as most of our youngsters are, develop while yet very
young a sense of responsibility and a certain initiative seldom
found in more tenderly nurtured children. It is the normal thing
in the life of a girl in our neighborhood when she reaches the
age of eight or nine years to have solely in her charge a younger
brother or sister. When she jumps rope or plays jacks or tag she
does it with as much joy as her sister of happier
circumstances--but with a deftness foreign to the sheltered child
she tucks away under her arm the baby, which after six weeks
becomes almost a part of herself. Often we will fearfully exhort
her to hold the baby's back, etc. Invariably the child will smile
indulgently at us, as at a likeable but irresponsible person, and
change the position of the infant not one whit. She is really
the mother, she feels, with a mother's knowledge of what the baby
needs; we are only nice library teachers. Their pride in the baby
and their love for it sometimes even exceeds that of the mother
who is forced to be so much away from the little ones. From five
years of age the boys are expected to manage for themselves--to
fight their own battles, literally--and to look out for
themselves in general. Naturally they possess a self-reliance
greater than other children of their age. We come into contact
with this in the library in the child's more or less independent
choice of books and his free criticism--often remarkably keen--
of the contents. Another place where the children show
initiative is in the formation of clubs, which is a great
diversion of theirs. Seldom does a week pass without a crowd of
children coming to us petitioning for the use of one of the club
rooms. Often these clubs are of short duration, but some of them
have been in existence for years. Sometimes they are literary,
sometimes purely social--but more often dramatic. In the dramatic
club the children, starved for the brighter things of life--can
pretend to their hearts' content, and their keen imagination can
make it all vividly realistic for them. They choose their own
plays, draw the parts, make their costumes and carry out their
own conception of the different roles. Astonishingly well they do
it too. Is it any wonder that with their drab unhappy lives in
mind, fairies and beautiful princesses figure largely? It seems
to me that a singularly pathetic touch is the fact that yearly
the "Merry Making Girls Club" spends weeks and weeks of
preparation for an entertainment given for the benefit of the
Pure Milk and Ice Fund for the poor babies of St. Louis, they
themselves being the most liable to become beneficiaries of the
fund.
A very small thing is sufficient to fire their imagination. The
most trivial incident will suggest to them the formation of a
club --a gilt crown, an attractive name, etc. An amusing instance
has lately come up in this connection. Several boys of about
thirteen or fourteen asked the use of one of the club rooms for
the "Three C's." Very reticent they were about the nature of this
organization. Finally amid rather embarrassed giggles the truth
came out--a picture show in the neighborhood had distributed
buttons bearing the picture and name of the popular favorite,
which buttons were sufficient reason to form the "Charlie Chaplin
Club."
When we think of many foreigners of different nationality
together, there comes to most of us from habit the idea first
suggested by Mr. Zangwill of amalgamation. I think most of us at
Crunden do not like to feel that our branch and others like it
are melting pots; at any rate of a heat so fierce that it will
melt away the national characteristics of each little
stranger--so fierce that it will level all picturesqueness into
deadly sameness. Rather, just of a glow so warm that it melts
almost imperceptibly the racial hate and antagonism.