Extracts from a special report on the social work of the St.
Louis Public Library made in 1917 by Margery Quigley, then
librarian of its Divoll Branch.
Margery Closey Quigley was born in Los Angeles, Cal., Sept.
16, 1886, and graduated from Vassar College. She entered the
service of the St. Louis Public Library in February, 1909,
studied at the New York State Library School in 1914-15, and
in August, 1918, became librarian of the Free Library in
Endicott, N.Y.
The experience of the St. Louis Public Library goes to prove that no
matter what the neighborhood may be, and however well-supplied it
already is with meeting places, there is always room for the library
auditorium and club rooms without subtracting in any way from the
business of the other agencies. In fact, they seem to increase each
other's use.
Of our six branch buildings, one is located in the heart of the older
ghetto, one in Carondelet, two in purely residential neighborhoods, one
at the Soulard civic center, where nine or ten European languages are
represented, and the sixth in the older German section of the north
side, near the river.
About each branch is the full quota of meeting places required by any
given neighborhood--moving-picture houses, community halls to let for
dances and entertainments, churches, saloons, Turnvereins, settlements,
club houses, running the gamut from "lid clubs" to the Artists' Guild,
Masonic temples and public schools, which are now managed on the
community-center plan. Several of the branches have all these within a
radius of five or six blocks, and still they must show the
"standing-room-only" sign to many of the clubs that apply for the use of
the library halls.
The remarkable feature of this wider use of the library is that in
spite of the increase of meetings, there has been no spirit of
competition. Between the community halls and the library, for example,
there has been no rivalry for statistics of use. Cabanne branch, in the
heart of perfectly equipped institutions which foster all sorts of
clubs, shows more than 52 meetings a month during the last nine months,
while our report of 1907 said of this branch: "There has been an average
of nearly six meetings a month in the building."
Neighborhood clubs meet in the halls which best suit their purposes, and
no agency seeks to move any one of them to a different roof. In the
Crunden Branch neighborhood, the Socialists meet in a synagogue and a
Yiddish church meets in the library.
The city recreation department reports that the library's work and the
department's community work at the Patrick Henry School and on the
playgrounds, far from duplicating one another are supplementary.
In giving the free use of its meeting-rooms to any reputable group of
persons, the St. Louis Public Library acts upon two principles which it
cannot emphasize strongly enough. They are the same on which it buys its
books; first, that the library stands for no propaganda but seeks to
house all opinions, and second, that it makes no obvious attempt to
reform or "uplift."
Although the books it buys must meet a certain standard in style and
content, the day is past when library assistants seek to force down
readers' throats books which "will be good" for them. In the same way,
the meeting which it shelters must meet the standards of the community;
but the Library has ceased to initiate or direct clubs and meetings,
cultural or otherwise.
Community work can be successful only when it embodies the spontaneous
expression of the neighborhood's own demand, whether it is from
children, or women, or men. A chain of suffrage groups was successful,
if numbers were an indication, in one neighborhood and a failure in
another--from the same cause. In a neighborhood of illiterate foreign
women with large families, one suffragist lecturer on the common law of
England was greeted by an audience consisting of one deaf old lady and
fifty Jewish children under twelve, who had heard that candy was to be
given away.
Many of the meetings that wither and die are conceived in the finest
spirit of service. If they aim to interest the whole neighborhood,
irrespective of cliques and prejudices, they almost always fail--if, as
we Americans are supposed to do, we figure failure and success in terms
of quantity. Utopian schemes cannot long survive to-day, housed or not
in the scholarly and friendly surroundings of the library. A united
Ukraine cannot absorb the attention of its supporters half as
continuously as the possibility of a new job in Ford's factory, and a
"decent dancing club" cannot always endure in the face of profits to be
made from a river excursion.
Probably of all municipal institutions, the library, while maintaining
its dignified and quiet atmosphere, may become the least formal and most
neighborly. It is a library truism that a librarian can tell from
repeated experiences just when a borrower is calling at the library to
announce her engagement or to proclaim that his new job has been
secured. Countless other bits of everyday news are exchanged over the
desk with real profit to the library and to the visitor. We feel in St.
Louis that the so-called wider use of the plant is only a tangible
expression of this same friendly relationship, justified on the one hand
by its economy and on the other, and to a far larger extent, by its
contribution to the community's legitimate social life.
Very fortunately for the tax-payer, and for the average reader, the
public library does not look upon its branches as intellectual clinics
for the poor. Like the public schools, its problem is to serve "all the
children of all the people," and consequently in localities other than
those where foreigners live, the same sort of branch building is
erected, with an auditorium open under the same regulations and used to
meet the needs of the particular neighborhood. The so-called "middle
class" has as fair a chance and as "good a time" in the library
auditoriums as the foreign poor.
When there are public meetings at the Carondelet library, speakers from
other parts of the city invariably come late. They begin their addresses
with long apologies, saying that they have never been in the
neighborhood before, and did not know where to find the library. They
always seem amazed at the size and beauty of the building, and comment
particularly on the pleasant club-rooms. One West End woman could not
say enough in praise of everything, repeating continually, "and all this
down here!"
Practically this same comment is made again and again in the main
library, and in the other branches throughout the city. "All this down
here," is equally true of seven auditoriums, each with a seating
capacity of 200, and of club rooms and offices to the number of fifteen.
In these halls were held, during the past year, practically as large a
number of meetings as our equipment will permit. Omitting the meetings
at Crunden and Soulard, practically all are held by the average sort of
person--average financially, socially and intellectually. The very
absence of the feeling that the club must make money, or must at least
pay expenses, probably accounts for the long list of small clubs and
board meetings which could almost as easily meet in the homes of
members.
There are those who think that no one uses the auditoriums except very
wealthy club-women, who set up Christmas trees for the poor. There is no
more truth in this than there would be in saying that all the
inhabitants of St. Louis are either immigrants or millionaires. In the
total number of meetings at the library, what Ida Tarbell has termed
"the shirtwaist crowd," is far in the majority. At practically every
branch, the Simon-pure woman's clubs form at least fifteen per cent. of
all the meetings. At the Cabanne branch, about fifty per cent. are made
up of women. The Barr Branch Mothers' Circle, The Queen Hedwig Polish
Women, and the Carondelet Women's Club are three names out of a list
running almost to a hundred.
The masculine of "shirtwaist crowd" is "shirtsleeves crowd"; and this is
equally well represented upon the schedules of all the branches. Miss
Griggs, of the Barr Branch, writes:
"We seem now to have a number of new meetings that are held for
discussion--but not many for study--casual, one-meeting-only affairs.
For instance, the Royal Arcanum met to discuss what could be done about
the increased rates. All the premiums were raised and those for older
men raised far out of reason, so all the older members had a meeting
down here, to discuss what action they could take. I am glad people come
casually that way--and feel that we are open for something beside the
regular study meetings. They sit around very informally, smoke, come in
and out down stairs and do not have any very formal session.
"In common with the other branches, Barr has had political meetings.
Some have been held just before elections and have been quite warm. On
one occasion, the library was made a buzzing community center by a
series of bombs that were set off in the street. Other and quieter
meetings have been held by party committees, judges of elections and the
like. The State Socialist party has twice held its conventions here, and
each time the session lasted for four days. The meetings were opened
with hymns, and the delegates had all-day sessions, from 9:00 a.m. to
9:00 p.m. I think most of the partisan leaders feel that they are a
little handicapped when they meet in the library--still, they come back
occasionally.
"There are coming to be more purely social meetings of younger grade
pupils. In some cases, these children are not organized, but merely
claim to be in order to get the halls. In other cases, relatives who
come with them to make application are frank to confess that they want
the hall to avoid inconvenience at home, especially the protracted
house-cleanings which are the pre-requisite at most home parties. One
mother said that the last time there was a birthday party in her house,
the man who lived upstairs, after rapping repeatedly on the floor to
stop the children's noise, came down and said, that 'the party would
simply have to bust up.' She wanted to hold this party in the library,
because her husband had such a bad temper, that she was sure he would
murder the man if such a thing happened again, and, of course, it
_would_ happen again, for no children's party would ever be quiet enough
to suit the man upstairs.
"Adult clubs as a whole ask very little of us beyond the occasional use
of the telephone, and they often come and go without our being conscious
of them. This is especially true of day-time meetings. It must be
admitted, that in addition to those who are very friendly and those who
do not make either criticism or appreciation articulate, there are some
who break the monotony of the librarian's existence by thinking 'they
owns the place,' to quote the janitor. The younger social meetings need
considerable attention, too. They overflow upstairs, are always noisy
and sometimes not as agreeable as they should be. A member of a new club
of girls said, 'I guess we rented this building for the evening--we can
make as much noise as we please.'"
Within certain limits, particularly the powder-cans and lead pencils of
the staff, we want the clubs to think that they do own the place. The
surest proof that the St. Louis plan works, is to have the scions of our
democracy feel that they are getting their money's worth from the
institution that their taxes support.
A group of young socialists was formed too late in the season to secure
a regular meeting night. They finally decided that they would have to be
satisfied with meeting, for the winter, at K----'s--a delicatessen store
a few blocks away. K----'s has an advertisement every week in the Jewish
Record, inviting men to come and read the papers there and make use of
the free meeting-room. Like all Jewish delicatessens, this shop contains
everything that any patron is willing to buy, and in addition,
elaborates the coffee-house idea into any shape that circumstances may
suggest. When the young men said individually on later occasions that
they were not contented at the delicatessen, they always added, "It's
because we feel so at home at the library; because we've always gotten
books out there." The next winter their application was handed in
several months in advance.
In a neighborhood where conditions are the exact antithesis of
Crunden's, the same feeling exists. Miss Pretlow was talking one evening
to a young man who belonged to a group giving a dancing party at Cabanne
Library. She said that she could not but remark how well-dressed and
well bred and altogether prosperous the dancers were. They very
evidently could have met in any one of a number of large homes or could
have paid for one of the best halls in the city; so she said to the
young man, "How is it you do not rent Blank's Hall, but use the Library
instead? I know it can't be the difference in cost that influences you."
The young man answered in very evident astonishment: "Why, we like this
place; we all grew up in this Library."
When adolescents of both sexes meet together, their meetings are purely
for a good time. Their behavior is extremely immature from the social
side; either very wooden or very uncontrolled. This is the period when
the librarian must insist upon strict chaperonage, and it is also the
period when resentment of discipline, or even of suggestion, runs high.
They would no more follow the advice of the Librarian in the matter of
invitations, introduction of wall-flowers and how a dance is to be "run
off" generally, than they would copy her taste in dress, which they
invariably consider very "old-maidy." The standards to which social
clubs adhere rigidly are those observed in places of commercialized
amusement. One group of boys met to teach each other dancing, where the
girls would not see them. As it was a case of the blind leading the
blind, a volunteer who had been teaching folk-dancing to the girls all
winter, offered her services. After one trial she was _persona non
grata_, because she wouldn't let them "rag."
Some of the dances are quite grim. One will not hear a note of laughter
all the evening. Five or six girls will often come together. Those who
know boys will dance with them, and between dances will not make the
slightest effort to introduce their friends to possible partners. The
friends, instead of resenting this inactivity, often sit all the evening
on the side lines watching and chewing gum, apparently perfectly
satisfied.
At the opposite pole is the wild desire for "rough house." In the early
stages of auditorium work and before these days of H.C.L., pieces of
cake have occasionally gone flying across the hall.
As soon as branch libraries recognized these facts, and it was very
soon, the application for dances became fewer and of better quality.
Leavings from other club rooms no longer apply, and disgruntled alumni
associations in schools have ceased to contemplate a move to the nearest
branch library.
No effort has been made to advertise the club rooms, beyond these
statements of the branch librarians in passing, except the exhibiting of
the rooms themselves to visitors who "stop in to show our library to
cousin Sarah, from Davenport," or Illinois, or Oklahoma, as the case may
be. Word-of-mouth publicity accounts for the gradual steady growth in
the use of the rooms. One of the many examples began with a stenographer
who sewed, "in secret," as she said, at noon in the club room. She was
embroidering an engagement present for one of the girls in her office.
Needless to say, she scattered information about the rooms, and the
rules governing them, wherever any one would listen. Eventually a Sunday
School class, to which her cousin belonged, gave a St. Patrick's Day
party in the library. As an indirect result, a School Patron's
Association now holds five or six meetings each Spring, to make
preparations for its annual picnic. So the ball of publicity rolls along
of its own momentum.
At branch libraries, the auditorium and study rooms are as a rule
closely connected architecturally with the reading rooms, and club
members usually pass through the main part of the library to reach the
meetings. One or two at least from each group stop to chat with the
workers, or to read. At Crunden the assistants say that whenever a
Yiddish meeting is to begin at nine, the men come at eight and read.
Then there are the isolated individuals from the club who stumble on the
resources of the library quite by accident, and later grow
communicative. Occasionally some one rushes up stairs to borrow the
telephone book, and when, after an unsuccessful quest, he is offered the
city directory by the librarian, he finds it hard to realize that any
library can contain a book as useful as that. One man who saw a magazine
lying on the desk while he was asking to be directed to the auditorium,
said, "I had no idea the library handled magazines."
Libraries try as faithfully to reach every one as if they were
commercial enterprises, but there will always be a certain number of
persons who have never been in a library building, not to speak of
knowing the location of the nearest branch and realizing its resources.
A Harvard graduate said he had walked past a branch every day for a year
and had thought it was a branch post-office. If there were no other
arguments in favor of adding auditoriums to the library's list of
activities, there is this: that they introduce to the library large
groups of people who have had no connection with it before. The horse at
least has been led to the water.
If clubs meet regularly, there is always a small proportion who make
meeting-night their library night. They consequently read and want to
calculate all fines with reference to the night of the last meeting. I
once heard one young woman telling another how she finally had her
reading "doped out into a system," by beginning on her seven-day book
just as soon as she reached home after the meeting, and using the
fourteen-day book only on the street cars.
With the establishment of libraries in small towns and rural
communities, there is at present a tendency to make social centers out
of library buildings, even at the sacrifice of the books, rather than to
establish libraries in connection with social activities. This is also
true in those cities where "field-houses" in parks are well developed.
Without holding a brief for either school, we may properly emphasize
three principles. The first is that a librarian holds her position by
virtue of being a librarian, and that her duty and training require her
full time for the purpose for which she is employed--the fitting of the
proper book to the individual. The second is that if the community needs
to have the social center stressed more than the books, a social worker
must direct the center and the librarian must contribute in a
subordinate capacity to make the center a success. For example, the St.
Louis Public Library has equipped a room with books and is furnishing an
attendant at a colored social center in a church building at Garrison
and Lucas Avenues, but it does not thereby put forward any claim to
control and stimulate the social activities of the neighborhood. The
third principle is that if the library plant is already in operation, it
is a waste to exclude neighborhood groups from rooms not being used
directly for the reading and circulation of books, inasmuch as overhead
expenses continue.