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Wresting Money from the Canny Scotsman: Melvil Dewey's Designs on Carnegie's Millions,1902-1906Author(s): Wayne A. WiegandSource: Libraries & Culture, Vol. 31, No. 2, Libraries & Philanthropy II (Spring, 1996), pp. 380-393Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25548442 .
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Wresting Money from the Canny Scotsman: Melvil
Dewey's Designs on Carnegie's Millions, 1902-1906
Wayne A. Wiegand
Beginning in 1889, Melvil Dewey repeatedly tried to tap Carnegie for
money to fund causes to which Dewey had dedicated his life. Between
1902 and 1906, however, these efforts accelerated and focused on two spe cific areas?spelling reform and an endowment for the American Library
Association of either a "library academy" or a national headquarters.
Dewey saw potential employment in both areas that would allow him to
leave his increasingly tenuous position as New York State Librarian. Ulti
mately, however, Dewey failed to attract Carnegie money for himself be
cause accusations of anti-Semitism by prominent New York City Jews in
1905, and charges of sexual improprieties by prominent ALA women in 1906 made him persona non grata with the philanthropist.
All his life Melvil Dewey's ambitions gready outraced his financial abil
ity to carry them out. As a result, he constantly pursued other people's money. In January 1887, for example, shortiy after he opened the
world's first library school at Columbia College, he asked the United
States Commissioner of Education to supply his students with free copies of all bureau publications on libraries. Three years later Dewey was at
Carnegie's doorstep. By that time Carnegie had published his famous
"Gospel of Wealth" essay and had donated nearly five hundred thou
sand dollars to build a library in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. As it became
apparent libraries would continue to draw Carnegie's philanthropic in
terests, Dewey could not resist. In the spring of 1890, he told Carnegie about his library school (which he had moved to the New York State Li
brary at Albany), and asked the steel magnate "to consider an endow
ment of $100,000 which the School needs & deserves." Carnegie politely refused. "I have taken occasion to inquire of several parties about the
supply of proper persons for libraries," he wrote, "and find that there is
no difficulty in getting persons naturally adopted for this work."1
A decade later Dewey was back. By that time Carnegie had retired, sold his interests to J. P. Morgan for $480 million, and begun living the
"Gospel of Wealth" by dispensing $225 million to various causes, includ
Wayne A. Wiegand is Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Libraries & Culture, Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 1996 ?1996 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819
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381
ing grants to local communities for constructing library buildings. For
Dewey, Carnegie's millions were an especially tempting source of funds
to advance his causes?and his own self-interest. Two in particular
showed promise?spelling reform and the American Library Association
(ALA). And within the realm of possibilities for the ALA, Dewey saw two
opportunities as especially promising: the endowment of a headquarters and an endowment of a think tank to support one hundred of the pro fession's most important members. In all three of these scenarios, Dewey saw himself at the center. This paper is an attempt to recount Dewey's behind-the-scenes efforts to create for himself a permanent paid posi tion by tapping Carnegie's millions either for a funded spelling reform
movement or for an endowed ALA headquarters or library academy. As the public library movement spread west, many people hired to
staff these new libraries joined the ALA. Naturally they swelled the mem
bership; inevitably they pushed their interests at ALA conferences. By 1902 two camps had emerged. One represented large public and re
search library interests in the East, the other small public library inter ests in the Midwest, where most of Carnegie's millions were being sent to
construct library buildings. On the one hand, Dewey liked what he saw.
Many of the new public libraries were hiring graduates of library schools
cloned from his own Albany school. On the other hand, Dewey was con
cerned. The ALA was growing too big, he thought, and the agenda he
had set for it in 1876 was being challenged by a group of strong-minded midwesterners unwilling to follow his direction. To counter this trend
Dewey decided what the ALA needed was a smaller body to exercise con
trol and to give the association appropriate guidance. For Dewey it was not a new idea. As early as May 1892 he had unsuccessfully tried to con
vince the ALA to turn its "Council"?a body Dewey himself had earlier
pushed on the association to prevent western librarians from starting
a
rival organization?into "a kind of Senate" like "the French Academy," which had been established in 1634 to purify the French language and maintain French literary standards. At a conference six years later he ar
gued that the council should consist of one hundred of "the most
prominent and efficient American librarians."2 Again he failed to con
vince his colleagues. Then, in 1901, when the ALA elected New York Public Library direc
tor John Shaw Billings its president, it took one step closer to Carnegie's money. Billings had just landed a million-dollar Carnegie donation to build sixty-five branch libraries. He was also on the Board of Directors of the recently established Institute for Scientific Research that Carnegie
had endowed in Washington, D.C. When Library Journal editor R. R. Bowker asked Billings to contact Carnegie on behalf of the ALA Publish
ing Section shortly thereafter, Billings did not disappoint. At the ALA
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382 L&C/Melvil Dewey and Carnegie's Millions
1902 conference Billings announced that Carnegie had agreed to do nate one hundred thousand dollars to endow the section.3
Dewey rushed to take advantage and pressed on three fronts. First, be
cause the Publishing Section would soon have use of about five thou
sand dollars from interest generated by the endowment, Dewey argued that "a part of Mr. Carnegie's gift" should be used for the second edi
tion of the ALA Cataloghis staff was preparing in Albany. The publishing board agreed and decided to allocate one hundred dollars per month to
employ a full-time assistant. Second, if Billings was able to tap Carnegie once, perhaps someone else close to him would be able to wrest a much
larger sum to endow the association so that it could hire a full-time ex
ecutive secretary to run its affairs. In 1903 the ALA elected as its presi dent librarian of congress Herbert Putnam who, like Billings, served on
the board for the new Carnegie Institute. In July Putnam appointed a
committee to explore the possibility of establishing a permanent ALA
headquarters and asked Billings to chair it.4
In anticipation of the gift, Bowker, who also served on the committee, offered ten pages of the Library Journal's November issue for a sympo sium on "A National Headquarters for the Library Association." Char
acteristically, Dewey led the response. "Our thoughtful members have
for a dozen years realized the need of a paid secretary to give his whole
time and thought to our interests," he began, and then suggested that
"other factors of home education?museums, study clubs, extension
teaching in its manifold phases?should all find their home in the great
library center." And the best place to locate this headquarters, Dewey said, was in New York, where it could work with a library school and de
velop close connections to the Library Bureau.
The hint was unmistakable; as New York State Librarian Dewey al
ready had the experience of coordinating the interests of librarianship with museums, study clubs, and extension teaching; he had been run
ning the nation's first (and best) library school since 1887; he had orga nized and, until recently, had been president of the Library Bureau.
Brooklyn Public Library director Frank Hill took the bait. "You lay your self open to attack . . . that if such a thing is to be, you have got to start
and run it," he wrote on 27 November. "I wish that you were so situated
that you could take hold of it." Dewey answered him three days later: "I
know of no work in all the world that would appeal to me so strongly and
to which it would be so hard to say no if a call came to do it."5
In his Library Journal article, Dewey had also concluded that, unlike
the Carnegie Institution, whose "field is for elaborate scholarly re
search," the new ALA headquarters had to promote "popular educa
tion." Here he hinted at what he perceived to be his third opportunity in librarianship?to tap Carnegie's money. In January 1904 Public Librar
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383
ies ran an article he wrote entided "National Library Institute." "A na
tional A.L.A. headquarters seems . . . near at hand," he began, then
added: "there must be in close cooperation with it, yet as an indepen dent corporation, another center." Like the ALA headquarters, he pro
posed to locate this center in New York; unlike the ALA headquarters, he proposed to call it an "Institute" where librarians, trustees, benefac
tors, and laymen "specially interested in libraries and home education
may turn with confidence to seek information and advice." The institute
would house a professional library and museum, run a "distinctly na
tional library school," and function both as a clearinghouse for ex
changing duplicates and as the profession's social headquarters. More
importandy, however, it would provide necessary information to practi tioners, identify and investigate relevant professional problems, and
publish the results of this research. In short, it would largely do for li
brarianship what the Carnegie Institution proposed to do for science.6 In preparation for a meeting he had scheduled with Carnegie in New
York for 13 March to discuss another matter, Dewey sent the philanthro
pist a condensed version of his Public Libraries article and embellished it
with characteristic hyperbole. "All of our best men are agreed" that the
institute "is the greatest library need in the world," he said, but prom ised "I am not going to take your time to discuss [it] unless you ask me
some questions." Because Carnegie asked him no questions about the
institute at the meeting, however, Dewey chose not to press the issue.
Instead, he continued to prod the ALA. At the summer conference he
pushed to establish an "A.L.A. Academy" that would consist of "100 of
the men and women most efficient in promoting public library inter ests" who would be selected by the council to meet independently of
ALA meetings and discuss the profession's most important and pressing problems. The ALA delayed action by appointing another committee of five to report at the next
meeting.7 The primary reason Dewey met with Carnegie on 13 March was to dis
cuss spelling reform, and here Dewey's efforts to wrest money from him were already more than two years old. They began shortly after E. O.
Vaile, a Chicago educator much interested in the subject, wrote Dewey on 30 January 1902, that he had recently contacted Carnegie?a known advocate of simplified spelling?to underwrite the cost of a study com
mission Vaile was proposing for the National Education Association
(NEA). Vaile included a copy of his letter to Carnegie. Dewey picked up on Vaile's idea immediately and without first contacting Vaile simply usurped the initiative. First, he complimented Vaile on his letter to Car
negie, then added, "I have written Mr. Carnegie and shall see him at
dinner on Mar. 13 . . . but we very likely can't enlist him."
Dewey's letter belied his real purpose; he wanted to find out for him
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384 L&C/Melvil Dewey and Carnegie's Millions
self if Carnegie had any interest in a national commission on simplified
spelling, and at the same time he wanted to eliminate Vaile from nego
tiating with Carnegie over the matter. That same
day he wrote to Carn
egie. He praised Carnegie's commitment to public libraries, but
argued?again with characteristic hyperbole?that "the greatest service
that can be rendered the race today at moderate cost" would be "sup
port for a few years of an office where a first class man with needed cleri
cal assistance" could "answer questions and conduct a wise, conservative
campaign for the simplification of English spelling."8
Although there was later some confusion about what was agreed to at
their meeting, Dewey came away convinced he had obtained Carnegie's
promise to fund a central office in New York, an executive secretary, and
clerical staff for ten thousand dollars a year for ten years if Dewey could
put together a governing commission of twenty prominent academics
who would "keep in the background the overzealous reformers." In re
laying news of this surprising development, Dewey asked Vaile on 24
March to identify thirty people for such a commission. Dewey also sug
gested that he and Vaile stay in the background until the commission
was funded. He ended his letter on a different note, however. "The
greatest problem is to get the right man for the secretary," he said. He
suggested no names.9
When Vaile volunteered himself for the position, Dewey counseled pa tience. "We must not scare our
capitalist," he warned. In the meantime,
he worked quietly to set up a meeting of people he thought acceptable to Carnegie for a commission on simplified spelling. Included were Co
lumbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia faculty member C. P. G. Scott, Lafayette College's Frederic March, I. K. Funk of
the Standard Dictionary, and Ben F. Smith of the Century Dictionary. Butler
recommended adding Columbia faculty members Brander Matthews
and Thomas H. Lounsbury, and March suggested adding publisher
Henry Holt and George Plimpton of Ginn & Company. Dewey did not
seek advice from Vaile while setting up the commission; in fact, Dewey wanted the whole process kept quiet.10
The meeting was scheduled for New York on 21 February and in
cluded representatives of four dictionaries (G. C. Merriam, Funk and
Wagnalls, the Century Company, and Macmillan), March, Lounsbury,
Butler, Matthews, Calvin Thomas in his capacity as president of the Mod
ern Language Association, and, of course, Dewey, who had organized
the whole event. By means of a 19 February circular, Dewey established
the agenda. He suggested that the group avoid use of the word "re
form" in its title, avoid "entangling alliances" with publishers, open of
fices in New York, elect a board of nine to guide the commission, and
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385
find "if possible for secretary a strong young man who can give his whole
time to the work."
Dewey presided at the meeting. All expressed agreement with the
agenda established by his circular, which subsequently provided the
framework for a series of resolutions passed during the afternoon ses
sion. Attendees then elected Butler chairman and Dewey secretary. By this tack he had thus maneuvered himself into a position to influence a
pet reform. He had exercised his organizational skills, and because he
showed a characteristic willingness to do the grunt work most people wished to avoid, he added to his own options for the future. If the com
mission was going to have a paid secretary to direct a national spelling reform campaign, he was properly positioned to entertain an offer. On
31 March he crowed to a friend, "Mr. Carnegie has just given me
$10,000 for expenses for ten years of an office for a vigorous campaign in favor of a simplification of English."11
After the meeting, Dewey forwarded copies of the minutes to Carn
egie and reminded him of his oral commitment to spelling reform. Car
negie's reply, however, took Dewey by surprise. "The vital point appears never to have been mentioned," Carnegie argued. Dewey had been so
intent on organizing that he had neglected what Carnegie thought the
central?yet simple?issue. "You said you could get the signatures of the
leading principals and professors of universities and the highest authori
ties to agree to use improved spelling of at least ten or twelve words," he
said. "The money I agreed to give as needed was to be spent in circulat
ing the knowledge of this fact." Where Carnegie wanted individual com
mitment and practical results, Dewey wanted an academic bureaucracy
organized from a central office that would legitimize educational
change in public. Dewey quickly responded that it would be difficult to
accomplish the results without a central office and that the existence of the latter would amplify the impact of the former.
But Carnegie would not yield. "You stated that you could get the sig natures of the leading educationalists," he wrote on 7 April. "Until that is done, I have nothing to do in the promises." By that time, however, a
story was circulating to national newspapers that Carnegie had estab lished an institute to facilitate "easy acquisition and worldwide use of
English" and that he had put one hundred thousand dollars in Dewey's hands "as expenses for ten years of an office for a vigorous campaign for
simplification of spelling." Dewey was caught in a dilemma; Carnegie would not release the money until his conditions were met, and when interested parties asked when the "institute" would get underway,
Dewey could not answer. The situation stalemated, and despite Dewey's
pleas about "the awkward position in which it placed me" Carnegie left
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386 L&C/Melvil Dewey and Carnegie's Millions
for Europe in May without authorizing the funds. The "institute" would
remain in limbo until he returned in the fall.12
Dewey was embarrassed. He tried to explain the situation in a 25 May circular that because "we have to humor his peculiarities," Carnegie's
gift would probably not be forthcoming until the end of the year. On 19
June he appealed to Carnegie again. How many names did Carnegie need, he asked; twenty of "the best men" would be better than "200
weaker ones." "Get the twenty names," Carnegie replied. "All depends
upon who they are. I cannot be hurried into this. I do not see how an
office is to be of much use." Carnegie wanted names; Dewey wanted an
office. Carnegie wanted a limited campaign; Dewey wanted a broad cam
paign. "He is a canny Scotsman who will have his own head," Dewey wrote to Funk. "We must get what we can and have a central office bang
ing away at [spelling reform]," he wrote to Vaile.13 In March, however, Dewey's luck appeared to change. Vaile had been
working closely with the NEA Department of Superintendence to en
dorse association use of twelve words, and at a conference in Adanta he
got it to recommend consideration of a commission for more active
work. Dewey, who had access to the NEA power brokers through Board
and Appropriations Committee member Nicholas Murray Butler, sensed
an opportunity. Vaile's move gave him a legitimate excuse to press Car
negie for another interview, to which the philanthropist agreed. The
night before his scheduled interview, Dewey wrote to Ben Smith. "Car
negie is shy of anything but pushing the 12 words for a beginning. He
will grow into the larger work later."
On 18 March Carnegie met with Dewey for over an hour. He again insisted he would authorize no money for a simplified spelling cam
paign until Dewey found twenty "prominent leaders in any field" to
pledge "to use habitually at least 10 of the 12 NEA words." Dewey ma
neuvered. If he came up with a draft pledge Carnegie approved, would
Carnegie authorize an expenditure of five hundred dollars to circulate
the pledge from a central office? Carnegie agreed. Dewey quickly put his
own spin on the agreement in a circular to spelling reform colleagues.
Carnegie "only asks as a condition of his first substantial check that 20
strong names be added to his as really using these words," he wrote but
added: "He is willing to pay all expenses of a first class man with needed
assistants to push the work." Butler was wary. "I do not like Mr. Carn
egie's way of doing business. He will have to be definite before I will
agree to be."14
Buder's response was the opening Dewey needed. He approached Buder with a plan and the draft of the pledge Carnegie still needed to
approve. Together they worked on strategy, but only Buder took the
draft pledge to Carnegie for approval in late April. The stalemate finally
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387
broke and the plan Dewey and Buder hatched became evident at the
beginning of May when Butler attended the NEA conference. In re
sponse to Vaile's proposals concerning the creation of an NEA simpli fied spelling commission, Butler countered that the NEA establish "an
English Language Board ... to do for the English language, spoken and
written, what the French academy does for the French language." He
also identified ten people willing to serve on it. Dewey then wrote to
Vaile on 7 May that he thought that the NEA would vote for it and that
Carnegie would approve it as a vehicle for the campaign he offered to
fund. He did not tell Vaile that Carnegie had preapproved his initiative
at their late-April meeting and that Dewey had been in on it from the
start.15
Vaile sensed the ruse but miscalculated its origin. "It is an under
handed piece of business," he complained to Dewey. "The only thing for me to do is to crawl right down and get into a hole. I am amazed at
the readiness with which you fall in with Butler's plan." He was even
more harsh with Butler. "At this juncture you suddenly find time to
come out of your tent, to take advantage of the situation which I have
developed." His complaints were in vain, however; Buder had Carn
egie's approval of a pledge which?if signed by ten men named to an
NEA commission?would be followed by the release of five hundred
dollars for its organizational setup. And because Butler also held a seat on the NEA Board of Directors and on the Appropriations Committee, he had much more influence in the NEA than Vaile.16
It took Vaile some time to reconcile himself to this power play. He never did find out that Dewey had been behind the move within the NEA to work the compromise between Carnegie's wishes and his own
concerning the dispensation of Carnegie's money for simplified spell ing. And to make sure Vaile did not sabotage negotiations, Dewey slowed them for the remainder of 1904, awaiting a more propitious moment
when he felt secure enough to launch the new venture, perhaps in early 1905. And because Dewey
was willing
to wait, so were Butler and Carn
egie.
In January 1905, however, Dewey's position in Albany became unten
able. That month a group of prominent Jews in New York City peti tioned Dewey's superiors to remove him from office for disseminating anti-Semitic literature from a private Lake Placid Club he had organized in upstate New York in 1893. Petitioners quoted from its promotional literature that, from its origins, the club had denied membership to all
"consumptives and Jews." But Dewey's superiors were unsure of their
power to act, and because Dewey promised to withdraw from leadership in the club and stop issuing inflammatory literature, they decided only
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388 L&C/Melvil Dewey and Carnegie's Millions
to censure him. Later, however, they let it be known privately that they would have preferred his resignation.17
Dewey was politically prudent enough to know he would not last much
longer as state librarian, and as a result he continued to look for ways to
maximize his options for the future. Among them, he tried very hard to
keep alive his connections to Carnegie concerning simplified spelling.
Carnegie had never been specific about how his grant would be imple mented. That Dewey had something in mind was evident from a motion
he presented at a 3 May meeting of the group that he had originally con
vened two and one-half years earlier. "In the opinion of the conference,
the plan should include an office in New York, a paid secretary, a ste
nographer and such other assistance as may be needed," the motion
read, "and that the first work of the office should be to secure the adop tion of the Twelve Words by individual periodicals and publishers, and
publication of articles in promotion of the same line of simplification." Circulars from the 3 May meeting were sent out on the 18th, accompa nied by a preprinted "Promise as to Twelve Words." Correspondence listed Matthews as chair, Scott secretary.
' 'With the fund supplied by Mr.
Carnegie," the circular explained, "it is proposed
to organize
a board,
to engage a secretary, and to enter on an active campaign
to win wider
acceptance for these simplifications."18
While Dewey pursued simplified spelling as one way to rescue himself
from his situation at Albany, he did not abandon efforts to do the same
thing with the ALA. He continued to push his "library academy" scheme and admonished peers to sell the idea to colleagues because "it
can do no harm and may do a large good." At a council meeting on 1
April he argued that the ALA had to grow but that it needed a "man
ageable body" like an academy to discuss library problems. He then con
vinced the council to have him report at the July conference in Portland,
Oregon. The Library Journal objected to the project. An editorial said it
would create a separate body independent of the association that would
eventually usurp some of its powers. In addition, it would tend to main
tain older members in power and retard the recruitment of new ones,
countering the welcome trend which the ALA constitution had recently
inaugurated by making council members ineligible to succeed them
selves.19
Dewey was undeterred. In Portland he convinced the membership to
authorize an institute to consist of "100 persons chosen from English
speaking America" and stipulated that "the ex-Presidents of the A.L.A.
be the first members . . . with power to add to their numbers, to organize
and adopt needed rules." Its purpose was vague?"to provide
for study
and discussion of library problems"?but its existence was a
compli
ment to Dewey's persistence in the face of some opposition and much
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389
indifference. "I should like an opportunity to prove to any millionaire that he cannot put a million dollars into any university or hospital that
will be so far-reaching in its influence," Dewey said later in the confer
ence, "as it would be if given
to the A.L.A. or its representation to orga nize a permanent headquarters that shall undertake the work that
belongs to librarianship." By this time Dewey probably considered him self properly positioned to become the paid executive secretary of a Car
negie-endowed American Library Association or (more likely) of an
endowed American Library Institute (ALI) run something like the Car
negie Institute in Washington. At its first conference meeting, the ALA executive board directed ALA ex-presidents to draft a constitution and define an organization for the ALL20 Dewey later became the ALI's first
president. With his conference goal won, Dewey joined friends and as
sociates on a post-conference cruise to Alaska.
On the cruise, however, he openly and persistently violated Victorian standards of public conduct towards women. For years Dewey had been
making many ALA women uncomfortable by becoming excessively fa miliar with them?mainly uninvited touching and kissing?in public. Some ALA women simply avoided him, and some endured it; some (like
loyal subordinates May Seymour, Florence Woodworth, and Katharine
Sharp) seemed to enjoy it. On the boat, however, Dewey exceeded even his own loose standards by squeezing and kissing women?several
against their wishes. ALA veterans Mary Plummer and Isabel Ely Lord?both graduates of Dewey's library school?decided they had had
enough and resolved to do something about it before the next annual conference. They became even more incensed that fall (by that time
Dewey had decided to resign as state librarian in December) when they learned Dewey was unilaterally and without authority or permission try ing to move "his" library school from Albany.21
If Dewey was aware of their plans, he seemed unaffected, but as he continued efforts to move the library school, he did not neglect simpli fied spelling. On 23 November he complimented Brander Matthews for
obtaining 550 signatures pledging to use simplified spelling of the twelve NEA words. At the same time, however, he asked "Have you not
yet found an angel from heaven for whom we are looking and praying to take care of the office?" In a 8 December letter to Ben Smith he was
more explicit. "After Jan 11 shall be my own master, thank the Lord, and
ready to do my full share for the good cause." Because "I cannot find
anyone we can get that I should feel like trusting without considerable
steering at the first," he added, he was quite willing "to give a good deal of time to helping" launch the office. By this time, however, the effort to obtain Carnegie's money for simplified spelling was proceeding along nicely without Dewey.22
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390 L&C/Melvil Dewey and Carnegie's Millions
Control of the movement had obviously shifted from Dewey's grasp.
Although he had successfully negotiated a promise from Carnegie to
fund a campaign for simplified spelling, as negotiations proceeded he
was gradually pushed from the center of action. It is possible that part of
the reason was Dewey's undeserved reputation for radical spelling re
form. More likely, however, Carnegie and other members of the spelling reform campaign wanted to distance themselves from Dewey after the
Lake Placid incident. Dewey was not at an 18 December meeting in New
York, at which Matthews, Smith, and C. P. G. Scott discussed the grant for a simplified spelling effort.23 Nor was he present on 12 January when
a committee of eleven voted to establish a "simplified spelling board,"
electing Matthews chairman, Scott secretary, and Charles Sprague trea
surer.
Still, Dewey was not ready to give up entirely. On 15 January he told
Carnegie,
I am at liberty now since my resignation Jan. 1 to say to you that
intense hostility [at Albany] made it impossible for me to take any
public part in the work and I had to get my friends to do it from
New York. They will take charge of your splendid gift.
Dewey obviously wanted to leave the impression he was the true leader
here, but that he had to make sacrifices in the greater interest of advanc
ing the cause. To Scott he wrote: "I will come to New York any time
when I can be of substantial service to Spelling Reform. I shall not shirk
any work that will help on the movement at this very promising time."24
But by that time he had obviously squandered his chances to lead a sim
plified spelling board supported with Carnegie dollars.
A series of incidents that same winter and spring also forced Dewey's withdrawal from librarianship and eliminated any further chance to ex
ploit Carnegie money for either the ALA or the ALL In early June?as he was preparing for the forthcoming ALA meeting?Dewey received an
ominous note from Florence Woodworth. "My advice is to keep per
fectly quiet," she wrote. "It is thought you will be 'cowardly' and force
the women to give their names which they say they are perfectly willing to do but which would of course be very unpleasant." The same day she
also wrote to Columbia University Library director James H. Canfield
and told him that stories about Dewey's behavior on the postconference ALA excursion were circulating within the state library community. She
was referring to rumors that Mary Plummer and Isabel Ely Lord (both of
whom were also irritated at the cavalier and arbitrary way in which
Dewey had attempted to move "their" library school the previous fall) intended to bring Dewey's offensive behavior towards women to the
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391
ALA executive board and to request it to censure him. Woodworth ad
vised Canfield to see Lord concerning the rumor.25
The threat of a censure vote against him at the forthcoming ALA con
ference had the desired effect on Dewey. On 12 June he wrote to Can
field a lengthy letter. "I would not accept any library position in the
country," he said. "I prefer to drop out of all offices, committees, etc. as
rapidly as can be done without its looking like losing interest." That of
fer, he continued, also included resigning as President of the American
Library Institute. He recommended to ALA ex-president H. J. Carr sev
eral weeks later that Canfield ought to be his successor.26 Although he
did not attend the conference, he was naturally a primary subject of dis
cussion. Because of his absence, however, and because he had with
drawn from the ALA, Plummer and Lord did not push for his censure.
The end of the 1906 conference signaled the end of Dewey's active par
ticipation in ALA matters; it also signaled the end of his efforts to inter est Carnegie in the ALA or the ALI.
Dewey's efforts to wrest money from the canny Scotsman between
1902 and 1906 met with mixed results. On the one hand, he was largely responsible for getting Carnegie to commit more than one hundred thousand dollars for a ten-year simplified spelling campaign. Probably because he was such an unpopular figure in New York in 1905, however
(a situation he brought on himself), he was not part of the campaign. On the other hand, he met no success tapping Carnegie's millions to endow a national headquarters for the ALA (and thus fund a paid ex
ecutive secretary) or an American Library Institute. Because certain ALA members drove him out of the organization (largely because of circum stances he brought upon himself), he lost control of a constituency nec
essary to position and maneuver himself for a Carnegie grant. Probably the grant would never have come anyway, but had Dewey been allowed to stay in the ALA and at the helm of ALI, it would not have been for lack of trying. The American Library Institute, which Dewey had started and for which he hoped to get Carnegie funds for an endowment and by this means continue his influence in
library matters, survived for an
other thirty-five years. Because it lacked the kind of vision Dewey pro posed for it, however, it largely settled into an organization in search of
function, a club where ALA leaders traded nostalgic stories rather than framed policy.27
Notes
1. Dewey to Carnegie, 14 May 1890; Carnegie to Dewey, 15 May 1890, Box 91, Melvil Dewey Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Reading Room, Columbia
University, New York (hereafter cited as Dewey MSS). The standard biography
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392 L&C/Melvil Dewey and Carnegie's Millions
on Carnegie is still Joseph F. Wall, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), but see also Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The
Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy and Public Policy (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).
2. Library Journal 17 (September, 1892): 386; Proceedings of the American Li
brary Association Conference, 1898 (hereafter cited as Proceedings [year]), 154. For a
recent discussion of the French Academy, see Maurice Crosland, Science Under
Control: The French Academy of Sciences, 1795-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1992). The political landscape of the American Library Association in the first decade of the twentieth century is covered in Wayne A. Wiegand, The
Politics of an Emerging Profession: The American Library Association, 1876-1917
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986), Chapter 4.
3. Bowker to Carnegie, 2 March 1900, R. R. Bowker Papers, Special Collec
tions, New York Public Library (hereafter cited as Bowker MSS); Bowker to Bill
ings, 29 July 1901, Box 17, John Shaw Billings Papers, Special Collections, New York Public Library (hereafter cited as Billings MSS); Proceedings, 1902, 9.
4. Billings to Putnam, 1 July 1903, Bowker to Putnam, 13 July 1903, as
quoted in memorandum from A. R. Boyd to Putnam, 21 July 1903, Herbert Put nam
Papers, Central Services Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
(hereafter cited as Putnam MSS); Putnam to Bowker, 15 July 1903, Bowker MSS;
Library Journal 28 (August, 1903): 592; (November, 1903): 757-764. 5. Library Journal 28 (November, 1903): 757-758; Hill to Dewey, 27 Novem
ber 1903; Dewey to Hill, 30 November 1903, Box 8, Dewey MSS. 6. Melvil Dewey, "National Library Institute," Public Libraries 9 (January,
1904): 16-19. 7. Dewey to Carnegie, 17 March 1904, Letterbook 103, Andrew Carnegie Pa
pers, Manuscripts Reading Room, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (here after cited as Carnegie MSS); Public Libraries 9 (May, 1904): 238; (June, 1904): 274-275; Library Journal 29 (June, 1904): 300; Proceedings, 1904, 257. See also
Dewey to Putnam, 3 February 1904, Putnam MSS.
8. Dewey to Vaile, 22 January 1902; Vaile to Dewey, 15 February 1902; Dewey to Vaile, 18 February 1902; and Dewey to Carnegie, 18 February 1902, Box 84,
Dewey MSS.
9. Dewey to Vaile, 24 March 1902; Dewey to Vaile, 24 April 1902, Box 84,
Dewey MSS.
10. Vaile to Dewey, 17 May 1902; Dewey to Vaile, 23 May 1902; Dewey to
March, 31 July 1902; March to Dewey, 22 August 1902, Box 84, Dewey MSS; But ler to Dewey, 29 November 1902; Butler to Dewey, 8 December 1902, Butler
MSS; Carnegie to Funk, 5 January 1903, Letterbook 93, Carnegie MSS. 11. Circulars, Dewey to "Language Board," 10 and 19 February 1903; Min
utes, "Language Board Conference," 21 February 1903, Box 87, Dewey MSS.
See also Dewey to Harris, 16 February 1903; Harris to Dewey, 19 February 1903; and Dewey to Passy, 3 March 1903, Box 85, Dewey MSS.
12. Dewey to Carnegie, 26 March 1903; Carnegie to Dewey, 1 April 1903;
Dewey to Carnegie, 2 April 1903; Carnegie to Dewey, 7 April 1903; Dewey to Car
negie, 8 April 1903, Letterbook 95; Carnegie to Dewey, 18 May 1903; and Carn
egie to Dewey, 4 June 1903, Letterbook 96, Carnegie MSS. See also Philadelphia North American, 5 April 1903.
13. Dewey to "Members of the Conference on Language Commission," 25
May 1903, Box 87, Dewey MSS; Dewey to Carnegie, 19 June 1903; Carnegie to
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393
Dewey, 30 June 1903, Letterbook 97, Carnegie MSS; Dewey to Funk, 16 July 1903, Box 87; and Dewey to Vaile, 27 November 1903, Box 84, Dewey MSS.
14. Dewey to Carnegie, 14 March 1904; Bertram to Dewey, 16 March 1904, Letterbook 103, Carnegie MSS; Dewey to B. F. Smith, 17 March 1904, Box 85, Dewey MSS; Dewey to Carnegie, 17 March 1904, Letterbook 103, Carnegie MSS; Circular, Dewey to "Carnegie Spelling Conference," 24 March 1904, Box 85,
Dewey MSS; Butler to Dewey, 14 April 1904, Buder MSS. See also Dewey to But
ler, 23 March 1904, Box 87, Dewey MSS. 15. Dewey to Vaile, 7 May 1904, Box 85, Dewey MSS. See also Charles C. Wal
cott (Secretary, Carnegie Institute) to Dewey, 26 April 1904, Box 85, Dewey MSS. 16. Vaile to Dewey, 13 and 16 May 1904, Box 85, Dewey MSS; and Vaile to
Butler, 18 May 1904, copy found in Box 85, Dewey MSS. 17. This entire incident is explored in much greater depth in the author's
" Jew Attack': The Story Behind Melvil Dewey's Resignation
as New York State
Librarian in 1905," American Jewish History 83 .(September, 1995): 359-379. 18. "Minutes of a Conference on Simplified Spelling," 3 May 1905, Box 85,
Dewey MSS; Dewey to Carnegie, 8 May 1905, Letterbook 124, Carnegie MSS; Cir cular (marked "Confidential") from Matthews' Committee to "Dear Sir," 18
May 1905, copy found in Box 88, Dewey MSS; Dewey to Butler, 5 May 1905, But ler MSS; and C. P. G. Scott to Dewey, 25 May 1905, Box 85, Dewey MSS. See also
E. O. Vaile to Dewey, 20 March 1905; and Dewey to R. G Woodward, 23 March
1905, Box 85, Dewey MSS. 19. Dewey to "Committee on the Library Academy," 4 February and 2 March
1905, Box 7, Dewey MSS; Dewey to "Committee on the Library Academy," 28
March 1905, Reuben Gold Thwaites Papers, Manuscripts Reading Room, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin; Library Journal, 30 (May, 1905): 268, 289-291; Public Libraries 10 (March, 1905): 140-143.
20. Proceedings, 1905, 181.
21. Dewey to Matthews, 23 November 1905; Dewey to Smith, 8 December
1905; Dewey to Carnegie, 20 December 1905, Letterbook 123, Carnegie MSS.
See also Scott to Funk, 27 December 1905, copy found in Box 85, Dewey MSS. 22. These events are covered in much more
depth in the author's Irrepressible
Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (Chicago: American Library Association,
1996). 23. Those present also agreed to call the new group a
"Simplified Spelling Board" because "we did not wish to be confounded with the more radical ad
vocates of fonetic reform." Brander Matthews, These Many Years: Recollections of a
New Yorker (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1917), 441, 443-444.
24. Scott to Carnegie, 3 January 1906; 15 January 1906; Dewey to Carnegie, 15
January 1906, Letterbook 124, Carnegie MSS; Dewey to Scott, 16 January 1906, Box 85, Dewey MSS.
25. Woodworth to Dewey, 10 June 1906, Box 7; Canfield to Seymour, 12 June 1906, Box 81, Dewey MSS.
26. Dewey to Canfield, 12 June 1906, Box 7, Dewey MSS. See also Dewey to H.
J. Carr, 28 June 1906, Box 7, Dewey MSS. 27. George B. Utley, "American Library Institute: A Historical Sketch," Li
brary Quarterly 16 (April, 1946): 152-159.
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