Part 30 (2/2)
Margery Closey Quigley was born in Los Angeles, Cal., Sept.
16, 1886, and graduated from Va.s.sar 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 compet.i.tion. 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sistants 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 quant.i.ty. 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 munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, 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 relations.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.s” 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 s.h.i.+rtwaist 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 ”s.h.i.+rtwaist crowd” is ”s.h.i.+rtsleeves 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.'”
<script>