I LLINO I S
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LIBRARY WORK WITH THE
FOREIGN BORN
EDITED BY

JOHN FOSTER CARR

BRIDGING THE GULF
WORK WITH THE RUSSIAN JEWS
AND OTHER NEWCOMERS
BY

ERNESTINE ROSE
SEWARD PARK BRANCH NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

3immigrant

ublhlirttiun
Jnrnrpnratur

241

FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
1917

uridet

Copyright 1917
by
JOHN FOSTER CARR

2

FOREWORD
If you should hear some of them talk
-- these friends .of ours from over-seasabout the help and comfort they have had
from the public library, you would think
they were describing the Palace Beautiul. For they often echo, gratefully, the
words of Bunyan's Porter: "This house
was built for the relief and security of
pilgrims."
And so, indeed, in many a city the liis the staunch, welcoming friend
r a of the wandering or bewildered immigrant.
Library work for the foreign born started
a.wears ago; yet it is still new in most of
our libraries, is still, seeking efficiency.
With the constant drift and change of
Spopulations, the libraries of. city after
- city are continually finding great probSlems suddenly thrust upon them -often
jvery elemental problems of helping to
"the English" and to an American educat3~ion peoples widely differing. Now, the
e war shows startlingly the need--greater
Sthan ever--of gathering these foreign born
4 strongly into the family of the nation.
Even librarians, who have long been
busied befriending these strangers of
queer tongue and queer apparel, find their
problem ever varying, and are anxious to
exchange their experiences with others.
USome six hundred American public libraries
now interested in the work and multi-tudes
of questions are asked, and advice
I.sought. To answer the most pressing of

0

brary

v

ware

these questions that come not only from
librarians, but from many others; to give
help where it is needed, this little booklet
has been printed, the first of a series
prepared chiefly by librarians, who are
expert and successful in this new field.
Librarians are very modest folk. They
believe in doing rather than talking. They
have the sincere conviction that the benefits they are able to confer are slight in
comparison with those they receive from
the people they serve. And they fear
that too large inferences may be drawn
from a description of this work of theirs.
They wish to emphasize that it is still in
the experimental stage and not organized
to the level of their ambitions. But very
many details of it are impressive enough
to be taken as heartening models of
method. Best of all, every word they
have to say about it rings warmly with
the message of their experience with these
new Americans, that the first step toward
any valid effort of help is a sympathetic
realization of the life of the ancient lands
of their birth, the beauty of their national
,traditions and customs and the always
thrilling history of the part their native
country has played in the age long struggle for human liberty.
How swiftly,
breathlessly their expressive lips will give
you the story as soon as the baffling lack
of a common language is overcome! Only
through such knowledge, respect, sympathy
can we help them to the American brotherhood and democracy-for which they
ventured all.-J. F. .

BRIDGING THE GULF

N

BY ERNESTINE ROSE*

EW YORK has always been a foreign

city. From the days of our ancestors to those of the older immigration, when the Irishman and the German
seemed as alien as the Arab and the
Slovak today, it has stood as the beacon
of a new life to the East.
Yet only ten years ago many persons
were asking, "Why should public libraries
issue books in foreign languages?"

To-

day thirty-nine branch libraries in New
York City have books in languages other
than French and German, and the foreign
circulation averages 56,000 each month.
This physical change is symbolic of a
change in thought no less great.
Is New York foreign? One needs not
to look far afield for the answer, and many
curious contrasts strike you. My tailor is
a Russian Jew. My bootblack is Greek;
so is my paper-boy.
My grocer is a
Hollander. I work in a library patronized
by Russian and Oriental Jews, and I step
out of the Ghetto to lunch at Chinese and
Italian restaurants. Among my Jewish
pages is a little girl whose name is Emily
MacKenzie. She says, "Oh no! I'm not
Scotch," and as an after-thought, "though
father and mother are."
*Since writing this account of the work of
the New York Public Library, Miss Rose has
become Assistant Principal of the Carnegie
Library School of Pittsburgh.

Creeds and cults are as varied as
nationalities and callings. Priest, pastor,
rabbi, missionary, bahaist in most of the
languages of the globe preach New York
into varying salvations. Meanwhile Fifth
Avenue dines and dances, the City. Club,
Sorosis, and the D. A. R. go their serene
ways; American enterprise builds skyscrapers, digs subways, and transforms
the city's face in the rapid course of its
swift changing years.
This very variety, incoherency, incongruity spell our growing Americanism.
They make New York the most bewildering, soul-subduing, challenging place in
the world, because they are of the very
essence of a new and struggling civilization.
New York, we see, for all its honest
patriotism, is not national. It is truly,
and beyond all comparison, international,
-- not with the picturesque artificiality of
a Constantinople, but with the naivet6 of
a pioneer town. We are struggling to
build America out of diverse elements.
The struggle is Americanization.
Our
rising structure of a new national life we
look to as an ideal. I like to think of it
as a bridge, connecting the old with the
new, wisdom with daring, tradition with
promise. For this building all nations
offer us their gifts.
By the ravage of death, the census tells
us that our Irish and German populations
are rapidly dwindling. Yet New York's
Irish, parents and children, could re-

people Dublin and then almost found a
new Belfast. The Germans outnumber by
more than a hundred thousand the inhabitants of Munich. We have a greater
Russian city than Odessa, and Yiddish
extras, with blazing scarlet headlines, are
cried in the sacred purlieus of Madison
Square. Our Italian city! Greater than
Venice, Turin, Palermo, or Rome! When
immigration was at its flood before the
war, for several months and during two
or three years, we probably housed more
Italians than Naples itself. The Greeks
have multiplied until the KAFFENEION
-our printer lacks a Greek font-is a
familiar institution, refreshing classical
memories with such names as OLYMPOS,
PARTHENON, APOLLO, PARADEISOS, HOMER.
Syrian and Armenian
restaurants have brought us all the toothsome delicacies of the Orient. The old
Spanish colony, new recruited by swarthy
Latins of South America, is prospering as
never before. The Lithuanians are founding new papers preaching liberty for the
Motherland and devotion to their adopted
country-what quiet and earnest volunteers they make for Uncle Sam! There's
no room here to tell the story of our
knightly Poland, thrilling with interest
these days. And so it is with a score of
other nationalities-Hungarian, Swedish,
Norwegian, Syrian, Roumanian, Dutch,
Belgian, Danish, and Jews of the Orient,
too, speaking Arabic, Ladino or Greek.

To deal with this unassimilated gathering of beings from all the races of Europe
from the most highly developed
-some
and sophisticated civilizations, some from
lands of ignorance and feudalism, we have
our schools, our churches, our courts and
our libraries.
What may a library do to meet the situation? What is its proper share in this
staggering work ?
In the first place, our minds are calmed
and our visions clarified by the knowledge
that we who work in a particular library
are not dealing with the whole city but
only with our own special locality. One
of the most fascinating and hopeful
features of crowded New York is its
neighborhood life. I disagree with those
who maintain that the colony groups of
our foreign friends should be broken up
and distributed throughout the city. Not
only does this localization of national life
exhibit beauty and picturesqueness, but it
offers peculiar opportunity for helpful and
neighborly living. Whoever heard of a
community spirit in the brownstone stretch
of the West Seventies? And social relations on Riverside Drive and the Avenue
are a cold and formal thing. But go down
on Delancey Street on a pleasant summer.
night. There are lights, laughter, even
music and dancing,-all the elements of
a beautiful neighborhood life on the
friendly street. Then, not before, go to
Rivington Street or to Hester or Suffolk
Street, just above Seward Park. Your

heart may be wrung, but it will also be
warmed. A hundred communities, foreigntinged, more or less like these,-small
It is
cities,--exist in our metropolis.
within them that the library's opportunity
lies.

One of these communities is the Bohemian section surrounding the Webster Branch
at 78th Street and Avenue A. About
50,000 Bohemians live in this neighborhood. The people of this race are artistic
and bookloving, well educated, very intelligent. They have a strong national sense.
It was inevitable that they should find
It is
for themselves a social center.
significant that they found this center in
the library. At present in the Webster
Branch there is a' complete department,
occupying one floor, devoted to work with
There is a collection of
Bohemians.
8,000 Bohemian books, with a native
Bohemian woman in charge. There are
Bohemian pictures, music and embroidery,
forming a permanent exhibit of the creative
The books
work of the neighborhood.
comprise an important collection of Bohemian literature, the best in this country, and
a Bohemian scholar tells us, more
accessible to the public than any that exists
in Bohemia itself. "Everything for the
public in America!" This department of
the Webster Branch has been in existence
for eleven years and has developed form
and continuity. It has become, in a fashion, the national center, not only of this

neighborhood, but of all devoted and
cultivated Bohemians in the city. It has
also, during all these years, been constantly carrying the message and the ideals of
America to New York's Bohemia.
I have given, in this instance, an illus-%
tration of a most important phase of
foreign work in libraries, that is to say,
the formation and development of foreign
departments. This means, in most cases,
a collection of books and a library assistant with a native knowledge of the
language and literature.
The "foreign
assistant," as she is misnamed, may make
all the difference between success and
failure.
The Tompkins Square Branch,
on East 10th Street, made the first large
collection of Hungarian literature at a
time when the neighborhood swarmed with
Hungarians. A young Hungarian woman,
of cultivation and devoted interest in her
people, was placed in charge. So far as
possible, she met every Hungarian man,
woman and child who entered the library.
The success of the work is marked by the
fact that for two years after the center of
Hungarian population had shifted from
that neighborhood, the circulation of
Hungarian books steadily increased at
the Tompkins Square Branch.
Again, there are neighborhoods which
present many of the characteristics of
small, self-contained American cities. The
Bronx communities in which several of
our branch libraries are located are admirable examples of this, as are most of
10

In fact, these
our Harlem branches.
communities have usually developed from
almost independent town centers. They
in
exhibit all the variety of small
race, occupation and religion, while in
many of them there is a proud and struggling civic sense, quite independent of
that in lower Manhattan. A library in
such a locality may disregard the rest of
the city, except so far as business connections are concerned, and enjoy all the
delights of separate town life. The social
contacts with the different types of foreign
born in such places must be varied, welladjusted and impartial.
Then, we have those fascinating cosmopolitan neighborhoods, where many
races meet but do not mingle. The Chatham Square Branch is located in such a
one. This library has special departments
for Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Greek,
Italian, Chinese. So, too, with the Tompkins Square Branch in its work to-day.
It boasts of books in Russian, Yiddish,
Polish, Italian, Lithuanian, as well as
Hungarian. Such a library has a very
definite and absorbing task in furnishing
a common ground, where all races may
receive equal service and learn incidentally to mingle as brothers of a common
humanity.
We try not to forget the practical and
human significance of the fact that all
our work with the foreign born in the
branch libraries of New York originated
in casual and friendly contacts. In many

'cities

11

cosmopolitan neighborhoods it still exists
in this delightful stage. It will not suffer
an organization which would rob it of a
spontaneity flowing out to all races and
classes.
The Washington Heights Branch is
located near the Hispanic Museum, and the
women of the neighborhood, when organizing a Spanish Club, chose the library
as their natural meeting place. There is
not a branch library in the city, by the
way, which does not afford a meeting
place for at least one neighborhood organization. In several, three or four meetings
are often being held at the same time,
while library work "goes on as usual."
There is one very important reason for
this popularity of the library as a meeting
place. It is the one institution, neutral,
unbiased, without dogma, where all beliefs, creeds, ages and races may meet.
You are free as air; you may come, you
may go; you will not be proselyted if you
stay, you will not be fined or chased by
a probation officer, if you stay away.
Tremendous recommendations!
I ,often
think we do not realize how tremendous
or how full of opportunity.
Perhaps the freedom and helpfulness of
the libraries result in more natural social
contacts than any conscious activity. A
working woman, a Hungarian, had a
sister detained at Ellis Island for some
obscure technical reason. The public library was her refuge, for it is the most
friendly agency with authority that her
12

advisors could think of. It happened to be
a simple matter; the proper advice was
obtained and given; and the distracted
immigrant was released. It was an ordinary case, simple and natural enough to all
librarians. But a surprised visitor exclaimed: "My, that's social work." "It
seems to me just friendly service," said
It was
the librarian. "Just friendly!"
friendliness which led a children's librarian
to spend time and energy in the effort to
find the right kind of a job for one of
her club boys. It was friendliness which
prompted a tired library girl, at the end
of her long day, to give up a half hour of
her time to a bewildered Polish Jew, who
wished to write a "correct" letter to his
Irish-American sweetheart. It was friendliness, which led one of our librarians to
give a large part of her busy day to the
agonized mother of a lost child. Do not
tell me that she should have been sent to
the police station.
A Russian Jewish
woman, with bitter memories of the old
Russian police, does not turn easily to the
official uniform as to a friend in need!
Little things? Certainly, but of such
are our lives made if we are human beings
rather than officials. And so new demands,
coming daily, formulate new purposes and
methods !
In the effort to preserve friendliness--and order as well !-we make it a rule to
appeal to the manly instincts and latent
sense of responsibility in the hearts of
the young men, who throng the-reference
13

room at Seward Park. To call in police
or official aid is the obvious, easy step, but
it is also the one best calculated to stir
up antagonism and to separate us from
the hearts of our neighbors.
Perhaps the most delightful and valuable contacts are made in the course of
"home visiting." This term, in the New
York Public Library, means visiting on
library business or oi invitation, not just
visiting unsolicited, or without excuse. It
started when ,the library decided to use
the name of father or mother as reference
for the children instead of teacher. To
explain this order of things numerous
home visits became necessary, and many
fathers and mothers became acquainted
with the "library teachers." The door of
one tenement was opened just a crack to
let the librarian call through: "I have
come from the public-," and slam went
the door in her face. It was the home of
a Russian Jew, and to such a one, in spite
of the Russian Revolution, "public" still
means just one thing-persecution. But
the librarian persisted, and so persuasive
was she, that at last the door opened, and
she was invited to partake of the hospitality
so freely offered in these poor homes.
Before she left she said: "Won't you come
to the library, Mrs. Shapiro?" Up went
the shoulders and out spread the hands.
"Vell, hon can I? Mine babies, dey keeps
me alvays here, not ?" "Oh, bring the
babies, bring the whole family," says the
librarian, cheerfully. She does not fully
14

expect acceptance, but a few days later
there is a commotion at the desk, and
there is Mrs. Shapiro, bareheaded, smiling, a baby on each arm, all scrubbed and
shining for the occasion. Jaky, the original cause of the visit, stands aside, a little
proud, a little sheepish, but wholly neutral.
You see, this is not merely a picturesque
or amusing incident.
It is an event
fraught with all kinds of issues, not only
to that family, but to the whole tenement
house in which it lives, and to the library
as well.
These incidents interest me as being
results of legitimate library activities,
rather than of an attempt to conduct social
work. A library is not a social settlement.
It is, primarily, an agency for the free
distribution of books,-a process not so
dry as it sounds. We need more imagination in the use of ordinary library facilities.
Practical work gives the vision.
And, by gradual and natural steps, we see
the casual contacts of friendliness become
organized efforts to develop activities,
which make the library an intellectual
social center for the whole community, old
as well as young. Let me tell more in
detail of some of these organized activities.
Our first task, obviously, is to secure
adequate collections of books in foreign
languages.
Nor is this as easy as it
sounds. We need a wider acquaintance
with the continental literatures, just as
much as we need larger book funds. And

there is still the hampering fear of those
who think that books in foreign languages
may tend to perpetuate the use of foreign
languages at the expense of English. But
it is a fear dispelled by the facts. Definitely and emphatically it is our experience
that increases in the circulation of foreign
books are always accompanied by increases
in English book circulation, particularly
in books on learning English, on citizenship and American history and biography.
This may imply a common cause, or it
may, and usually does, indicate that those
who come to the library first at the call of
a Yiddish or Hungarian book, are attracted by the "easy English" shelf, and later
become regular readers of English. Russian Jewish immigrant women of mature
age are not ready readers of English, or
any other language. Yet nearly one-third
of the women in the Seward Park Mothers' Club have already taken out their own
cards, and many of them are now attempting books in easy English, in a devouring
desire to "get the English," which is
winning away their children. So are they
won to the library and the gulf is bridged.
We are constantly developing the exhibition facilities of our libraries. At the
Seward Park Branch, as at the Webster
Branch, there are frequent exhibits of the
work of local artists, many of them young
men and women of exceptional talent. We
have exhibited some of the work of young
Phillips, the illustrator of Miss Wald's
book, "The House on Henry Street," and
16

our branch is one of the exhibit centers
used by the People's Art Guild. We have,
of course, our "Exhibit Committee," which
passes on all applications for exhibition
privileges.
One or two libraries have held "old
home" exhibits, to which the women of
the neighborhood were asked to contribute
anything of value or interest which they
had brought from the old country. Native music, art, embroidery, craftmanship
of many kinds find expression in library
rooms open to the public. Embroideries
and pottery of exceptional beauty or rarity have thus been brought to light. We
see in this an opportunity not only to
preserve the people's art, which we Americans lack so sorely, but to teach our
children beauty. We should be very tender
of that fine appreciation of the rare and
lovely, so inherent in many of our foreign
people. Moreover, this preservation of
our immigrants' culture is a most effective
method of "bridging the gulf," for such
exhibits make the older people prominent
and through the expressed admiration of
Americans, often lead to an added respect
for them in the minds of their "superior"
children.
A similar effect upon the children is attained by story hours in foreign languages,
which preserve for them the culture of
their own people. One little girl took
home a Bohemian book containing the story
which had just been read. When she
brought it back, she proudly announced:
17

"Gran'ma knew every story in that book."
In the triumph and surprise of this exclamation, we may read a miracle of new
sympathy. Next time that child will probably take home, if not to Gran'ma, then to
father or mother a book in easy English.
We have found that an excellent method
of introducing the library's educational
opportunities, especially in English, is to
send home in the foreign books a circular
in the same language calling attention to
the large privileges so freely offered.
Clubs, forums and discussion centers are
increasing rapidly. Many of them are
purely library organizations, but some are
independent, only calling on the library
for help in the matter of advertising and
extension reading. They vary from such
a dignified organization as the "CLUB
SLAVIA" at the Webster Branch and the
"OSWIATA BIALY" at the Tompkins
Square Branch, to the Mothers' Club in
Yiddish at Seward Park; from the drama
discussion centers in many branches, in
which all degrees of cultivation mingle, to
the classes in citizenship and English for
new-come foreigners.
Take the developing work as it goes on
at our Seward Park Branch. We are in
the very heart of the Jewish Ghetto. Our
foreign department is a large and important one, yet in no library is it less
possible to limit the foreign work within a
special division. This neighborhood is that
which most new Jewish immigrants learn
to know first. The population in the ten
18

blocks immediately surrounding the library is between 16,000 and 17,000. You
could walk from one end of it to the other
within five minutes. The people are nearly
all of the one race, but the population
shifts constantly, as the newer immigrants
come in and the older ones, having made
a little money, move out and up. Most of
these Jews from Russia are orthodox believers, conservative, devout, law-abiding.
In their midst, however, is a radical group
of eager, tumultuous young thinkers,
speakers, and writers. They are, in great
part, socialists, atheists, anarchists-the
"intellectuals" of the East Side. They
are striving, by every means in their power, to undermine the conservatism of their
race. Radical and conservative newspapers exist side by side. Orthodox and
radical schools compete with one another.
Settlements there are, but their work is
largely physical, and hardly touches the
life of the adult first generation. The
inner life of the older folk, mostly newcomers, is often intensely foreign. To talk
of "foreign work" as a phase or department in such a neighborhood is surely
folly. All the work of the library must
be foreign, if it is to be effective. Yet the
library is and must remain an aggressively American institution, or fail in its patriotic and educational function. Its books,
,in large part, must be in English. It is
the clear teaching of my experience that
the majority of its assistants should be
American. By what means shall such a
19

library become an integral part of the
community and yet carry efficiently its
vital message of Americanism?
Accurate knowledge of the people, their
backgrounds, social and human, is the first
essential. By this I mean an intimate acquaintance on the part of every member
of the library staff with the history, traditions and literature of each nationality
that the library expects to serve. The results of such a knowledge must always be
a sympathetic understanding, untouched
by sentimentality.
The artificial "missionary spirit" so lauded in the past, will
die, as it should, a natural death in the
vigorous atmosphere of wholesome friendliness. One cannot patronize and still
hope to be accepted as a friend. But
there is a deep chasm between the mere
desire to be friendly and real understanding. When, for instance, the boys of the
Jewish Talmud Torah school, the elementary religious school, which sends visiting
classes to the library one evening a week,
enter without removing their hats, it must
not seem a gross and challenging insult to
be instantly corrected. It must not even
seem unnatural. It should be understood
in the light of the religious Jewish tradition, shared by other oriental faiths and
nations, which looks upon the covering of
the head as a sign of reverence. And, if
you are a club leader, you must be prepared upon occasion to walk with your
boys three miles to the central library
building, as one of my assistants did,
20

because their visit had to be made on the
Sabbath when her boys may not ride or
pay out money. One must be as familiar
with Jewish holidays as with Christian.
Nothing must be alien to you, "peculiar,"
or even picturesque, in the sense of a
curiosity. In a friendly world, you must
not only seem, but be friendly, natural,
spontaneous.
This is the opportunity of the "foreign
assistant."
Her work lies not only
among her own people but among her
fellow librarians. She must not keep the
"foreign work" to herself in her own department. She should be content with no
less than the co-operation of every library
assistant in the branch. She must be
patient with their lack of knowledge and
show them how to enlarge it. Our nonJewish library assistants at Seward Park
are studying Yiddish and Russian literature; and at the Rivington Street Library
near by, there is a class in the Yiddish
language for members of the staff. Yet
these studies would have little value, if
they were not guided by those who are intimate with the traditions, sentiments,
prejudices of the people.
My foreign assistant works closely in
co-operation with the head of the adult
qirculation room.
Together they plan
bulletin exhibits and special collections on
topics of local appeal. A most important
means of stimulating interest in the different departments of work and of extending
our knowledge by sharing experiences is
21

the staff meeting held regularly. We have
meetings of an hour or an hour and a half
every week. It is through them that the
reading and study of our assistants are
planned and carried out. Besides our
book discussions we hear lectures from
rabbis, educators-including public school
teachers-Jewish newspaper men, workers in our neighborhood, and receive reports from the assistants themselves of
their home and social visits. These meetings have become so useful and effective,
that they have led to the organization of
monthly meetings, which now include the
assistants from all the branches in the
city, having foreign departments. In these
we discuss our common problems and are
able to form more systematic and efficient
programmes of work. In all these ways,
at a time when the need of Americanization is felt as never before, our library is
discovering its proper place in carrying
on this work. Again and again we come
back to that first essential thing, that our
most immediate need is more intimate
knowledge of our foreign neighbors. The
"get-together" methods of our staff meetings, with their interchange of views and
opportunity for gaining instruction have
taken us a long step in this direction.
They have made possible effective cooperation, as well as a more careful and
thoughtful programme. Of course, it
means hard work, but we have our rewards. One of our Jewish friends from
the neighborhood said one day: "You
22

have the Jewish spirit in this room. We
And yet, you are
feel it, we Jews!
Christians !"
One of the most important results of our
growing knowledge is the avoidance of
mistakes in approach which would nullify
future work. We have patriots of the
ardent Jewish type, prompt to enlist and
face any hazard for their country's sake.
But we are also among pacifists of a dozen
sorts. Our work is not to refute, but to
persuade. We do not urge war or even
patriotism, but we show, if we can, what
patriotism really is, what our nation
stands for, and what it demands from patriots in order that the ideals of America
may be realized. We may, and should,
give all possible access to books which
describe military training; to those which
give a historical background to the bare
facts of war; to those which discuss the
whole question of war and peace with
clarity and judgment. At Seward Park,
as well as at several other branches, a
table is set aside for a special collection of
such books, with a small display of pictures, pamphlets on military training,
farmers' bulletins. We have many requests
for information on agriculture, and we feel
that effort may well be given toward supplying such facts to those opposed to
actually handling a gun, but not to other
methods of serving their country.
For a model garden, a small plot of
ground at the rear of the library at Seward
Park-only twenty by twenty-five-was
23

planted this last summer by Jewish boys
under the supervision of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, near by. This little
gardening experiment serves several purposes. It stimulates the interest of the
boys in country life and in agriculture.
It teaches them the nation's vital need of
the work of farming. And it makes the
library theirs in very truth, for whatever
they produce is their own. One of the
children's organizations is a "Garden
Club," called by one boy the "Carrot
Club !" The boys and girls plant flowers
and small vegetables in a tiny garden of
boxes on the roof. The vegetables they
take home, but the flowers are the library's
share of the joint enterprise, because the
floral products go to enrich the whole
neighborhood which uses the library. The
children's interest in this small venture
extends to their parents. The father of
one boy cut up some potatoes, and the lad
came with his pockets full of the pieces,
each with its eye, ready to plant. In one
box we started a pumpkin vine!
The existing clubs all are now interesting themselves with public and patriotic
concerns. This offers a fertile field for
Americanization. Forever the East Side
is a hot-bed of discussion and argument.
In no other part of the city is there more
danger involved in furnishing opportunity
for footless and half-baked discussion.
But in no other is there so imperative a
need for correct information and sober
and enlightened expression of opinion.
24

The East Side Debating Club, an organization of young men, is a very lively
forum for the discussion of public questions. The members of this club are real
friends to the library and treat it as their
own institution. They serve as a leaven
among the rough, autocratic, unlicensed
young fellows who make library discipline
our hardest problem.
Nor do we fear the organization which
seems wholly devoted to Jewish interests.
Even the Literary Forum, conducted in
Yiddish, and addressed by the young and
prominent literary men of Jewish New
York, an organization which offers to all
Jews an opportunity of hearing the best
of Yiddish literature read in the original,
is yet doing a service to what we call
Americanization. It is teaching what is
true and beautiful, and such qualities,
wherever found, will contribute to the
coming America.
During the summer we have held meetings twice a week in the roof reading
room at Seward Park. These have been
addressed by speakers of power and sympathy on subjects vital to the American
Jew. Some of the subjects were "American Government"; "The United States and
Its Laws"; "Naturalization, Its Responsibilities"; "The Jewish Congress"; "The
Jew in America"; "The Russian Revolution"; "The Help That the Public Library is Giving the Immigrant Throughout the Country." And there were several
lectures dealing with the call of the land
25

to the Jew. This subject was pointed by
the library's own garden plot, planted by
Jewish boys of the neighborhood. Most
of these lectures were illustrated by lantern
slides.
The Young Women's Literary Club has
recently turned its attention to national
matters. For the coming year we are
planning an historical programme which
shall include the great national movements leading towards democracy, like the
French Revolution, Garibaldi in Italy, our
own Revolution and the Revolution in
Russia. This club is made up of working
girls, averaging perhaps twenty years of
age, most of them foreign born, and was
recruited from the night schools, to which
we took the message of the library.
Even the Mothers' Club, conducted in
Yiddish, has its current topics discussion.
The origin of this club is an example of
those natural contacts whose importance
I have emphasized. During a visit to the
Educational Alliance, across the street
from the library, an institution famous for
its practical work among the Jews, and
successfully reaching both young and old,
I was invited to speak at a mothers' meeting. As I did not know Yiddish, I sent
the head of my foreign department. Being an enthusiastic librarian and eagerly
interested in the intellectual progress of
her own people, she invited the mothers
to visit the library on their only free afternoon-Saturday. At first, very few came
to this unknown American institution, but
26

soon others joined them, and a club was
formed to discuss current topics and to
read Yiddish literature. The first subject
discussed, and it was suggested by one of
the mothers, was the Gary system of eduWe soon made these Jewish
cation.
mothers feel at home by giving them the
opportunity to cultivate their Yiddish folk
songs-incidentally, for our personal
gain, we heard for the first time a new
and beautiful form of music. This did
more than anything else to assure the success of the club. Topics connected with
health and the home are most popular, but
these East Side mothers are keenly interested also in political and economic
matters, as, for example, the high cost of
living, and food values. Unexpected results of this work with the mothers have
been free and unsolicited publicity in the
Yiddish press, and a request for the
organization of a men's club along similar
lines.
As a matter of fact, the neighborhood
friends of the library give it its only real
place in the community. It is made a living
force by the boys and girls, with their
clubs; by the mothers, who find their only
intellectual center at the library; by the
newspaper men, who find us doing work
of which they wish to tell their readers;
by the teachers who bring their classes to
us; by the professional men, who ask us to
join their welfare organizations; by the
artists, who offer us their pictures to be
exhibited; and by the policemen, too, who
27

help us in many friendly ways. They are
a very mine of useful and out-of-the-way
information. One of them furnishes us
with precinct maps of our district and
takes no end of trouble explaining them.
Another with the best of good humor,
plays the part of "big brother" in plain
clothes. One of our troublesome boys,
who had been given up by school, by
settlement, by every organization in the
neighborhood, now has a "big brother"
on the force, from whom he regularly
brings us a good conduct card. And how
proud he is of it!
Discipline is increasingly easy, as we
learn two things-to trust and to be firm.
Time has been, when the books, in these
libraries of our crowded districts, were
roped off against the mob assaults of unruly children. Now the small boys and
girls stand in lines, taking care of themselves with marvelous patience and selfcontrol.
Physical discipline did not
accomplish this result. It was attained
by taking down the ropes and meeting
the children with understanding, selfcontrol and firmness. In Jewish neighborhoods the "gang" is not a common
thing. That we do find it occasionally in
the midst of a neighborhood like this one,
in its changing but inheriting generations,
is one of those problems which appear as
we penetrate more deeply into foreign life.
Here for us, however, it is distinctly a
minor problem.
28

The most serious problem with which
we are grappling is that of the gulf between the older and the younger generations. As one of our foreign assistants
said to me: "It is not a problem, it is a
tragedy." Moreover, it has issues which
are far-reaching and evil, twisting and
distorting our growing American civilization. Of this menace the librarian is
forced to ask two questions: How is the
library affected, if at all? What can the
library do about it? Without doubt the
library is affected. In the first place, it
is a grievous fact that the library is generally avoided by the foreign born adult.
In some very foreign neighborhoods it is
still rare to see a person over forty within
the library doors, while the place swarms
with children, and is welcomed by the
youth at once as a social center and a
graduate school. When I first went to the
Seward Park Library I had a distinct
sensation of living on the surface of the
neighborhood. I saw the child life, the
school life, much of the political and intellectual life. Yet I saw nothing of those
realities of heart, home and religion from
which these children came to view with
eager, half comprehending eyes the new
civilization existing side by side with that
of their fathers and mothers. I felt that
our library, like our civilization, was failing to meet the difficulty in a way which
could bridge the gulf. Yet, we have now
fully proved the library's possibilities in
work with the adult foreign born, and we
29

only need power to extend the work to
accomplish a large success.
It is only evading a plain duty to say
that our public libraries should be content
to deal with the young, because, as it is
said, chiefly in their education and civic
training can we hope for constructive
work in Americanizing our immigrants.
How marvelous an opportunity this affords
none knows better than I, but it is only
a partial opportunity.
Furthermore, is this Americanizing
process through which our foreign children
are passing as they troop in and out of
school and library a success? We know
that it is not, though we also surely know
that we are "on the right track." In too
many cases, the younger generation are
cruder, less responsible, less fine in their
tastes than their parents, whom in our
ignorance we often scorn. Manifestations
of this undesirable change affect the library seriously in book losses, in mutilations, in rowdyism. How natural these
things are! The solid ground of the past
has been left, and these pioneers are
floundering in that quagmire between the
two civilizations which we are taking so
little trouble to bridge. To abandon the
metaphor, we may say that all these things
are simply examples of American liberty
misinterpreted, going wrong. The good
of the past is abandoned with the bad.
Traditions, beliefs and authority have been
tossed away. And the American flag has
not yet taught responsibility!
30

How could it be otherwise? In the last
report of the city superintendent of schools,
it is stated that only 7.4 per cent. of the
children go beyond the public school!
Yet we call the schools the great Americanizing agency.
The library, however, need not lose its
children when theyT reach the maturity of
14! They do not graduate from the public library when they graduate from the
public school! So that the remedy does
not lie in abandoning work with children,
but in specializing more effectively upon
it. The library may furnish a common
ground for all ages, and in doing so, it may
promote the meeting and fusing of the
older and the newer ideals of political,
economic and personal life. In this way
only can it promote the continuity of the
whole Americanizing process.
Two years ago, when dwindling funds
made it necessary for us to change the
closing hour of our reference room from
ten to nine P. M., the Young Men's Club
prepared a remonstrance and petition. For
this they secured the support of more than
fifty organizations of the neighborhood.
They carried the matter to City Hall.
They forced us to change back; and happy
we were to do it, for they helped secure
the money to make the longer hours possible. The incident showed the widening
possibilities of public support, if we could
only make our service understanding, sympathetic and efficient.
31

We look back into the past and see the
library as a mausoleum of dead books.
Then purposes and processes change, and
emerging from the disorder of transition,
we see it as a great businesslike institution, managed with the technical detail of
a department store, zealously laboring to
get the greatest number of books to the
greatest number of people, undertaking
ambitious, educational works, fundamental
and constructive.
"Where is the democracy of America ?"
we are asked by disappointed multitudes
of immigrants. If we are honest, we shall
admit that the answer is yet to find. In
that quest and discovery the library should
bear a splendid part, for it has now become a great civic institution, devoted to
the free intercourse of minds, linking
civilizations, interpreting our ideals, bridging the differences that separate men.

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