October 21, 2024 • 46 mins
Margaret tells Samantha McVey some of the history of public libraries and how the first Puerto Rican librarian in the US changed everything.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Coolson Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
a podcast about libraries. Oh well just today.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy. And my guest today, who
I didn't know what the topic was but has probably
figured it out by now, is Samantha McVeigh, host of
Stuff Mom never told you.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm so excited to talk about libraries.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yay, Hi, how do you know it was about library anyway?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I can now read your mind. I know that's how
connected we are.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It's true. Samantha is one of the first guests we've
ever had on this show, and we'll continue to be
a regular guest on it. Yay, I dearly intend. Also
with us is Sophie. Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Sophie, Hi, who I got to see face to face
for like, yeah, half a day recently. Was such a
good time. It was fun.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I get to do that soon. It's been a mine. Jealous,
I mean, what are you talking about? We all record
this in the same room together time. Absolutely no one
does anything over the internet that would be wrong somehow.
But something people can do over the internet is tweet
at Sophie on Twitter about how Sophie should let us
(01:16):
run Cool Zone twenty fifty four report from the Dinoh War.
What Yeah, tweeted me because I haven't already said yes,
which I totally have, but still tweeted me. It's more
fun this way, Sophie said, I can do a really
strange thing on book Club that I'm planning on doing,
and I'm pretending that Sophie, by being the producer, gets
(01:39):
to be the person who's like positioned antagonistically, even though
she's not. And so that's why I'm it's always funnier
when you explain the bit to the audience. That's what
I've learned.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I think you explained that to me because I was
very behind already. I was like, what, okay, yes, Dinah Wars. Obviously, Magpie,
have I ever said no to you?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
My very first idea for a show, I pitched two
ideas and you picked this one and it was the
better idea. And I'm not going to tell the audience
what the other idea was, but I'll tell Samantha later.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh no, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, it wasn't as good.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I don't remember what it was.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, this week we're going to talk oh wait, first,
we're going to talk about the fact that our audio
engineer is named Rory Hi Rory Hi Rray and our
theme music was written for us by Unwoman. This week,
we're going to talk about one of the most formative
institutions in my life, one of the most dare I
say it, socialistic things that we have in this country.
(02:37):
This week we're going to talk about public libraries. You
ever spent much time at public libraries?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So I just let like, recently, I think like six
months ago, eight months ago, I got my library card
near my house. So I moved into my house two
years ago, and it's been a long time since I've
gotten a library card, and I was like, you know,
now that I've actually bought a home, I'm gonna do
the And the librarians were so nice. They were like
(03:04):
the most encouraging people I've ever met, and very excited
for me to get a library card. It was one
of the best experiences.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I wonder if there's like a more because the reputation
of the librarian is like the mean lady with her
hair pulled back into a bond who yells at you.
But like, yeah, I wonder if there's ever been a
sharper divide between the stereotype of a type of person,
and then that actual person. Librarians are like so nice,
they might still sometimes shush you. I don't know, but right.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
There's also that, you know, the sexy stereotype as well,
So that's true several things that come link to the
sexy librarian being also the quiet librarian versus also the
mean librarian, the strict rather. You know, that could work
in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I think that all librarians are equally sexy.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I love libraries. I also I haven't been going as
much as an adult. As a kid, they were I
come from a strange family. We would like go on vacation,
so we'd stop at the library first to make sure
we all had enough books to read for the weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Oh yeah, so I would be the one that I
would walk from my middle school to the local library,
which no longer exists, which made me very sad. We
would go to a local drug store and get snacks
and they would go hang out at the library all
day until my mom or dad were done with work
and then we would walk down that way. But I
used to hang out every day at the local library.
(04:31):
The libraries were really nice to us.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
See, I've never encountered a mean library, even my school librarians.
I remember Miss Dorothy like we would give her presents
during the summertime. Was I think like her birthday was
on the summertime or something. We would go and give
her presents because we loved her so much.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
That's a good grift. Be a teacher that always pays
really well, be a teacher librarian.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah, she was just in the working in the library
and just did her thing and make sure we got
all the study materials. When once upon a time, kids,
when we had reports, we would have to go to
the libraries to find resources.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
See Whereas in the sometime in the nineties, I learned
that you could cite websites as before Wikipedia. But I
knew how to make websites, so I would cheat. I
mean I would never cheat. I imagined writing websites and
then citing them. Imagine I would totally never have done that.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I pretended in my mind and never in real life. Yeah, never,
which may yet get me arrested.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah. So this year, I've been doing a bunch of
promotion for my book The Sapling Cage. This is more
promotion than I've ever done for any other book that
I've done in. One of the places my publisher sent
me was the Public Library Association's conference in Columbus, Ohio.
I wasn't at that for too long, just long enough
to meet some people and sit around and sign books
(05:51):
and talk to librarians. And I met a bunch of
really cool librarians who work at public schools and public
libraries and prison libraries. And one of these cool librarians
came up to me and handed me a list that
they'd written of cool librarians to check out. And so
I thought this week I'd cover the whole list, and
instead I'm only covering one of them, because Okay, it
(06:15):
turns out there's a lot to libraries. And I got
really excited about it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
You put me on a rollercoaster there. I was like,
we're gonna do all of them. How long is this episode?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Eventually, eventually.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I was excited. I was ready to hook her down
with you. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'm going to save some of these librarians for later.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Fine.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I had never really considered the origin of libraries. They'd
always just sort of been there somehow. I don't know
if you all have this experience. I just sort of
take them for granted, right, libraries are there. They're always there.
That'd be like wondering why sidewalks exist. You know, they're
just there, which is funny because now sidewalks are going away,
but that's because of car culture. But no, of course not.
(06:58):
This country was founded on press property, arguably more so
than any other country in the history of the world.
So public lending libraries were not part of the original plan.
And also, of course, most quick histories you'll find about
libraries will pick a couple recognizable, rich white men and
lay the credit for public libraries at their feet. And
(07:22):
some of the credit, I admit, is going to go
to some abysmal people. And no, Benjamin Franklin did not
invent the public library. Oh yeah, he's going to come
up in the story, but he did not invent them.
The concept of a public lending library as old as shit,
(07:42):
probably as old as writing it, which is to say,
as old as what gets called history. Rome had some
public libraries. Islam was setting up public libraries around one
thousand a d. More modern Europe like Italy figured them
out in like the fourteen hundreds. A lot of people
have done public libraries or very types of libraries, and
(08:02):
the US didn't start out much in the way of libraries,
including during ye oldie colonizing. Well, it's still a colony
colonizing country, but you know when they admitted they were
colonizing force. The first public library in the Americas was
in Mexico. It's actually still there. It's the Biblioteca Palafoxiana
(08:22):
and it was started in sixteen forty six by a
bishop who donated five thousand books on the condition that
they be available to quote any literate person and not
just academics. Oh nice, just pretty cool. Yeah, although a
lot of these early libraries are just going to be
religious libraries. I actually don't know what this bishop donated.
(08:43):
I'm like, how can there be five thousand religious books?
But there probably can be. There's probably a lot more
than that.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Right there probably is. They can like along the lines
of Mormons in the Bible in the hotels type of things, Like,
is that what we're getting into?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Oh no, it's not five thousand copies of the same thing, No,
that would okay, Yeah, now I think it's different volumes.
I hope that would be awful. The library of just
this book.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
The trickery of it all. I'm like, yeah that's not right.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, totally. It's all different covers, but then you open
it up and it's still just the same book. It's
just Catch twenty two over and over again.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
No oh no.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Some other libraries cropped up through the British colonies as well.
Probably the first is Harvard Library, which started about eight
years before the Mexican Library, but it wasn't public, so
it doesn't count. There's like, I found so many listicals
and academic articles all like being like, this is the
first such and such library, right, and they're all like
with lots of caveats and or lying or contradicting each other.
(09:42):
So whenever I say first on this show, take it
with a grain assault, but like extra, take it with
a grain of assault today. Okay, but Harvard got it
start with a library. The Harvard Library started when four
hundred books were donated by John Harvard to a new
school that was like, yeah, sure, we use your name.
(10:02):
And as at this point I must point out, dear listener,
if you are a university and you want to change
your name to the Kiljoy Library, I'll give you four
hundred books. That is a cheap price to pay for immortality.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I was gonna say, so he didn't do anything other
than don't get me wrong, at that point in time,
I'm sure books are very very expensive and very latest. Yeah,
so we know that, but that's what he did. He
didn't actually like build anything.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
I actually am not sure beyond that. The article that
I read was like, gave foreigner books and then in
exchange they took his name. But then I suspect he
had a lot more to do with Harvard than that,
because there was another guy who also donated books at
the beginning. But I didn't write his name down because
it was a name I'd never heard before, so I
didn't bother writing it in the script.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But yeah, so huh huh, Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
There are other first libraries. The Darby Free Library of Darby,
Pennsylvania claims to be the oldest public library, started in
seventeen forty three. Thomas Bray was an English abolitionist, and
he started the first lending libraries in the colony in
like sixteen ninety nine, and these were religious libraries. Harvard
Library also started off as a religious library, and actually
(11:07):
they pretty quickly moved to a more secular library. So
those four hundred books didn't even like last all that long,
I could write four hundred books of make belief. Well, actually,
you know, it's a lot of work to write make
belief books. I just did it, and it took a
long time.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Never mind, how about you take old make believe books
and then redo them repeatedly, which is kind of what
happens if you think about that, and in new versions.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You know, Okay, okay, find something older than Catch twenty
two that's in public doma.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, and then just taken rearrange it with like your traditions.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Mmm. No, that's a good idea. I'm going to call
it catch twenty one because it comes before Catch twenty two.
It'll be the same thing but said in World War One.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Catch two point zero. In that it just even way
beyond itself. How about that. Uh, we've got a good plan, Margaret.
I think you got this.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I believe in us. The usual origin story of the
modern library system starts with the first non religious lending
library idea that's spread across the country. And of course
this is America we're talking about. So it started with
a company, the Library Company of Philadelphia. Oh, there was
(12:17):
this discussion group of twelve white men called the Junto
from the Spanish Junta or Assembly. It's centered around a
charismatic slaver named Benjamin Franklin. Oh there, yeah, he was
gonna come up. He's actually like one of the least
bad of the I'll talk about is but whatever. At
the time, he is absolutely like buying people. Ye, this
(12:42):
Junto got together to sit around and feel smart and
talk about stuff. And one of the things that came
up when I was reading about libraries is that an
awful lot of like eighteenth to twentieth century history, especially
Enlightenment history, is people focused on like self and community improvement, right,
And so they're like, how do we make our culture
(13:02):
and ourselves and our race and our nation, how do
we make them better? You know? And I mean some
of those are like good ideas come out of that, right,
and also really bad ideas come out of this too.
They're specific downsides. This is what later will give us eugenics.
I'm not claiming that the Junto was doing anything proto eugenics, right,
It's just that there's a lot of like, don't drink alcohol,
(13:24):
that's bad, read books instead. Energy in the promotion of
libraries that is comparable to the energy that led to
the improvement of the race. Stuff that fueled race science.
But you know what doesn't fuel race science? Approximately forty
to one hundred percent of our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I was gonna say, are you sure.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I feel certain that no more than sixty percent of
our sponsors are currently engaged in promoting race science.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
But we love our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, we love all of them, at least zero to
sixty percent of them. And here they are and we're back.
I will say it's very likely that our sponsors were
not of the here's how to improve your self variety.
(14:17):
They were much more likely promoting vice like gambling, right,
which I'm honestly more on the improve yourself side of things,
but it should never be forced on people. That's how
I feel that's true. Anyway, I'm kind of talking shit
on the junto right because it's like run by a
slaver and they're all white and whatever. They're actually better
(14:37):
than you'd kind of expect them to be. This is
a debate club, Franklin wrote in his biography. Our debates
were to be under the direction of a president and
to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth,
without fondness for dispute. Or desire for victory, and so
it's like it's the opposite of the way that we
(14:57):
do debate now, right, It's not a life competitive debate.
It's actually just trying to explore ideas. And so Benjamin
Franklin took a really long time to get around to
becoming an abolitionist, but he he did, and he ended
his life a very fierce abolitionist or a very prominent
abolitionist at least. And so I think he meant it
(15:21):
when he came at things being like, Hey, if you
can prove me wrong, I'll change my mind. And he
among some of the other Founding Fathers, I like, historically
I just basically talked shit on the American Revolution constantly
on this show because I think it's a lateral move
and did not actually decolonize North America but Instaid cemented
whatever anyway. But I think that some of the Founding
(15:42):
Fathers were on some level influenced by like the things
they claimed to believe, you know, and wound up getting
actually into the spirit of freedom eventually. It just took
it took Benjamin Franklin until his seventies to become one
of the most prominent abolitionists in America. So whoever is
listening to this, you got a racist uncle. He's younger
(16:04):
in seventy five or something. He's he's still got a
chance to do a Ben Franklin.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Better late than never.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, I guess I haven't. Like one day I'll like
really deep dive some of the founding fathers. I just
like Thomas Pain is the only one I have any
hope for.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
You know, the entirety of the discourse in this conversation,
it just makes me wary and like motives. Sure, sure,
sure they may have said, okay, I'll believe you to
this point. And also why also who was able to
convince them because it couldn't have been Oh it wasn't
black people, a woman, it definitely wasn't going to be
a person of color and all these things like what
(16:43):
they wanted. And it was also after they established power,
so they had the power. Then that's as long as
it gave them or kept them power, they were fine.
And then they're like, yeah, I had enough power that
I can change my mind if I want to do,
like all of those would everything just sus And I'm like, mmm.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
This is the best analysis. This isn't amazing analysis. Because
it's also going to apply later to the second rich
white guy who's going to be involved in this. So
that's awesome. That is a really good way of looking
at it. Franklin and slavery, he personally bought at least
seven people, and he sold ads for enslaved people in
his newspaper, but he was equal opportunity. He also took
(17:20):
money from the Quakers who were running anti slavery ads
at the same time. Later in life, he went to
England and he was influenced by the abolitionists there, and
he started off by writing anonymous like screeds against slavery,
and then he slowly started growing a backbone and writing
stuff under his own name. And I think that your
(17:42):
analysis of like how cemented his power is is totally
a big part of this, Like whether he felt like
he was going to like lose his house if he
did it or whatever. You know, by the time he
was eighty one, in seventeen eighty seven, he was publicly
involved in anti slavery activism. So it took him a
while they got there, but while he was a young slaver.
(18:06):
I really love this framework. I really love how people
have started just basically being like a person who owns
people as a slaver, because people are all like hearing
that because it's like such a loaded and mean word,
and I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
No, it's quite ingenious, to be fair, I haven't heard
it that often. And this episode, being like the epitome
at the top of the episode is slavers, I'm like,
you know what, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
So when Benjamin Franklin was a young slaver of twenty
one years old, he and his debate bros started a
library for their debate club. But books were real dang
expensive in the colonies because most of them had to
come from England. So they pulled their money and they
started what's known as a subscription library. Basically, this is
(18:50):
a library with membership dues. Only white men were allowed
in this particular library company. Of course, this is explicit
that only white men are allowed, and working class white
men couldn't afford it either. The library was also sort
of a big deal because most of its books were
in English, not Latin. Unlike existing libraries in the US,
(19:11):
non members could borrow books if they offered collateral. I
don't want to think too hard about what that collateral
could have entailed it. During this period of time, the
subscription library spread across the colonies and later the United States,
and they were the main type of library in the
United States until after the Civil War. Apparently there's twenty
(19:31):
of the old ones left in the US right now.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Really, yeah, I don't say, do you know where.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I actually think that the Philly one is still around,
the one he started, And there's also this one in Burlington,
New Jersey that's still around. I actually don't know if
these are still subscription models, though. I just know that
those two those are two examples of subscription libraries that
are still around. I don't know whether they're still subscription.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, I love libraries. I just went to the one
in Seattle. When I went to Boston, I went to
the Aris. Beautiful. They're so beautiful, I know, Like I
love old libraries are so great.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I know, and then even some of the new ones are,
like the architecture is actually often really beautiful. Like I
really like how libraries are kind of they're like one
of our only public buildings that people really use and
are for the public. Like obviously our government buildings are
like for the public, but they're like kind of not
and there's like you got to go through a metal
detector and everyone stares at you eight and like or
you're there because you committed a crime or whatever, you know,
(20:26):
And yeah, I feel like people take a lot of
pride in their libraries.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Like the Seattle one, I know, it's got to be
a new one that, like the architecture in itself is amazing,
but like, like I said, but going to the Boston one,
it's just a good library. Man, Yeah, there's something about it.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
No, I agree. Old Ben sort of actually young Ben
at the time sort of accidentally started the first public
lending library in the US too. Well actually, okay, no,
it is Old Ben at this point. And I've read
a million different ones claiming to be the first, but
let's pretend this one's the first for now. There is
a town called Franklin, Massachusetts that was like basically, hey,
(21:04):
if we name ourselves after this guy, maybe whole night
by us a nice like bell for our town.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Oh really?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
And then instead he gave them books.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay, did they like this or no?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I know later they've taken a lot of pride in this. Okay, Okay,
you how many books it costs to get a town
named after you.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So I'm gonna say four hundred and one.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
One hundred and sixteen.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
What it tastes less than a school.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I know, if any towns are listening, you want to
change your name to Killjoy, I will give you one
hundred and sixteen books one seventeen. I think I have
that many on my shelf of it. So he gave
them these books, and then the year that Franklin died,
which is some number of years afterwards, in seventeen ninety,
he died, and they voted that they would lend the
(21:54):
books out for free to their residence. So this becomes
the first public lending library in the United States. But
then there's still another, like first, there's the first tax
payer supported whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Any will get to it, uh huh.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
But it took for there to be a bunch of
non waspy people in the United States for the idea
of free public libraries to really take off. The wave
of immigration in the nineteenth century brought more emphasis on
the idea of free public education, which I started to
go down a rabbit hole about and realize that's a
whole different topic. And also the idea of free public libraries.
(22:33):
There had been public schools in the US running way
back to be clear, But my best inference from the
sources is that once you had these like non wasps around,
they're like, hell yeah, public schools and libraries, that seems
like what we should do with our time and our money.
The first taxpayer supported public library in the United States
was in Petersborough, New Hampshire, in eighteen thirty three. Basically,
(22:56):
running the library takes money, and there wasn't a method
by which they could get that money until later. Subscription
model libraries are spreading all over and most are white
men only, right, So what do middle class white women,
free black people. What do other people do? Well, they
start their own libraries and they start spreading them. And
(23:17):
those are usually also subscription libraries or what gets called
literary societies, which are more like pooled books and stuff.
These are the groups that are actually going to make
public libraries a thing in the United States. You're going
to be shocked to know that the Phoenix Society of
New York City of the early eighteen hundreds helped create
circulating libraries for people of color. In eighteen thirty three,
(23:39):
folks started the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored People, which
is just literally the same idea of like, let's have
a library company only I guess you know we are
black people, so we'll let black people in.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
In eighteen thirty nine, The Colored American, a newspaper suggested
that folks should go to community libraries and have it
be there quote place of resorts. And thus, instead of
injuring their health, wasting their money, and acquiring immoral habits,
they might be storing their minds with useful knowledge and
might also establish for themselves a character which time itself
(24:14):
could not destroy. And so yeah, you get this, like
here's how to actually improve yourself as you go to
the library. Yeah, you know, right. And it's like I
didn't even disagree with that, but it still like rubs
me the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I was like wait what But yeah, a lot of
the middle class white women's societies were just as bigoted
as the men's societies.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
This is going to shock you, and they would prevent Jewish, black,
and working class white women from joining. So all those
groups of women started their own also, right, And libraries
were a particular importance to people who are kept out
of traditional educational environments. Right, You're like, well, I want
(24:57):
to go learn and that school won't let me in
because i I'm black or a woman or poor, whatever
the hell. You know, there were enough literary clubs for
black women specifically that by eighteen ninety six they formed
the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. And these women
were social reformers who pushed for literacy, anti lynching, and
(25:20):
spreading libraries in the South. And they also and I
can't tell if this is exactly who invented it, but
these are like the people who popularize it is these
women's clubs. And then also specifically this coalition of black
women's clubs the bookmobile.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Oh I was wondering for you.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Okay, Yeah, they like, we're like, well, we need books
to go places, and people can't get to the library,
so we'll bring the library to them and drive around
with books. And that is fucking cool.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yes, they still exist today. Yeah, some of the more
popular ones are ran by black women.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
That doesn't surprise me. A lot of the first ones
were too. Mutual aid societies built out of various trade
associations and shit also would do reading libraries, so like unions.
And then also the sort of kind of proto insurance
companies that were actually like instead of exploitative, were like
a mutual aid thing where people would get together and
(26:18):
pool their money so that if you die, your funeral
cost is taken care of her whatever rate. These folks
would also build libraries for the communities that they were serving.
The Mechanics Institute of San Francisco in eighteen fifty four
was open to all, regardless of race or gender, and
without public financing. It only lasts until eighteen fifty eight,
(26:38):
but a four year run of a library that doesn't
discriminate is pretty good thing to pull off. In the
eighteen fifties, the inventor of the cable car, andrew S. Hallidi,
was a veteran of it, and he later went on
to push for public libraries in San Francisco. So, lots
of good stuff coming out of it. But you know
(27:00):
what didn't come out of mutual aid societies? Well, actually,
I guess I just said insurance companies. Did clearly bad
things come out of good things? Yeah? No, Well, the
ads come out of this podcast much like what's that
word for? When people to parthenogenesis, When people used to
(27:21):
think that rather than like sexual reproduction, flies were just
like formed wholesale out of like rotting meat some word
for it. That's how ads come out of podcasts, just
like flies are formed out of rotting meat. Here's the ads,
(27:45):
and we're back, and I'm continuing to wonder how long
I'm be able to get away with this word.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
So far, we can't do this on our show, so
I'm loving.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Keep going.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Other libraries were started by paternalistic employers for their employees
instead of like paying them better. They're like, oh, look,
I'm going to take care of you. Here's a library.
You know, it's like the pizza party of the eighteen
seventies or whatever. You know, here's some books, which is
better that No, I just like pizza and books. Never mind,
I don't want to put them out against each other.
And there's this like this is for self improvement vibe
(28:22):
that comes from most of the promoters of these libraries, right,
whether it's the employers, whether it's the mutual aid societies,
whether it's the literary groups, whatever it is, right, they're like,
this is so we can all become better people and
read all this philosophy. But you want to know people
actually wanted out of libraries. What they wanted fiction, They
(28:44):
wanted entertainment, they wanted escapism, they wanted pulp.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
They wanted the naughty stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That's absolutely true too.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Oh, there's this whole thing. Oh, I don't have any
kind of notes about it in front of me. There's
this whole thing we're in order to get. It was
illegal to promote sex education for a very long time
across England and the United States, and so it was
also illegal to print smut. So if you're going to
do one, why not do the other. So there was
all this smut that had sex education written into it
because it was like already a crime. So and it
(29:16):
was like the same printer would be printing all of
the illegal books. So it was like, wow, we're all
using the same shit. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So I feel like we talked about not this specifically,
but something about smut before.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Have we wait, were you on the birth control episode?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I think so, Yeah, No, I probably talked about this
a lot.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yes, yes, I'm like, I know, I've been asleep since then,
have had many things happen, But I'm pretty sure this
was the conversation you and I had, because I love
these conversations anyway. When it's like it's a little bit naughty,
but it's also for your knowledge, and like everybody wants
more of it because it's the naughty that gets their attraction.
But they're getting educated, and I love everything about that.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, Like imagine like just teaching condoms through right smutes.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
It's amazing we did. They were on the street corners
right and getting arrested for indecent materials. See I remember, yeah, yeah,
you teach me things. I love this. Keep going.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Hell yeah. To quote an article by the Los Angeles
Public Library about this time, the founding of public libraries
hardly resolve the education slash recreation conflict. In eighteen ninety three,
the American Library Association issued a guide for small libraries.
Out of the five thousand titles they recommended, only eight
(30:30):
hundred and three were fiction. Yet in that period, public
libraries reported that between sixty five and ninety percent of
books borrowed were works of fiction. And so you just
have like five novels that everyone keeps checking out over
and over again.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Waldo, it's so bad.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You know how to rewire the electricity in your nineteen
twenties home book just stays there, which is why more
people should be writing the fiction with how to do
DIY electrical Nope, that's how people die. Never mind, I'm
just going to start writing in like how to do
DC because DC power isn't danger anyway.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Whatever, right, Okay, okay, you know this is what happens
with TikTok when they're like, you can drink bleach and
you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, what could go wrong? I can't imagine what could
go wrong?
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Anyway, don't do that, kids.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, libraries are put at the feet of Ben Franklin
and one other man, Andrew Carnegie. And I don't know
what towns you all live in, but almost every town
I've lived in has like a Carnegie building, like a
Carnegie library or whatever. Right something. Yeah, we'll get to
him in a second. But it is these first free
(31:37):
black libraries and then the women's groups that really do
the work to make libraries possible, especially the tax supported
part of the equation. It was the New York Secretary
of State John Adam Dix, which is a funny name
because I am an adult, who came up with the
library model in eighteen thirty four that led to modern libraries.
(31:59):
He wrote, if the inhabitants of school districts were authorized
to lay a tax upon their property for the purpose
of purchasing libraries for use in the district. Such a
power might become a most efficient instrument in diffusing useful
knowledge and elevating the intellectual character of people. So once again,
in order to let people read trashy romance novels, we
(32:20):
always have to be like, we swear there's going to
be philosophy books there.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
We're going to talk about Jesus in here somewhere as
fine as fine.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah. Yeah. The first large scale public library again first whatever.
It was actually the Boston Public Library, which you were
talking about earlier. It's beautiful. I know. I went to
two branches of it the other day. I was on
tour because I went to one and it was where
my book talk was and the fire department was clearing
it out because there was smoke in the building and
(32:49):
so they had to move it to the other one.
And I never quite got a straight answer about why
that happened, and it probably was the HVAC system going wrong.
But the same day, elsewhere in Boston, like drag Queen's
Story Hour was being attacked by the right wing. So
I put a like non zero chance and if you're
listening fascists who hypothetical fascist who tried to shit down
(33:12):
my event. Well, we had it in another branch of
the public library about a half mile down the street,
and it was still full and everyone got their steps in,
so fuck you. Yeah, jokes on you. Yeah, he did great.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I would just like to add one thing, haha and
fuck you.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
And if it was just the HVAC system going wrong,
well thanks librarians. You did a really good job of
handling all that. They were so on top of it.
At no point was I like, what's going to happen.
They were like, wait, anyway, whatever. I love librarians just
to say hahuh yeah and fuck you. Yeah. Some of
the people relate to the talker. They were like, sorry,
we were busy driving away fascist elsewhere in town. And
(33:52):
I was like, oh my god, that's amazing. And they
successfully had driven them away.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
That's amazing. Well done.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
You listeners are some of the best people. So the
Boston Public Library I opened in eighteen fifty four with
sixteen thousand books, which is more than I can afford
to donate. So I can't start a new Boston Public Library.
I'm sorry, but any Massachusetts resident could borrow any of
those sixteen thousand books. And all these private libraries are
(34:21):
still going at this point, right. A lot of them
are associated with bookstores. It's like Blockbuster for books. You
go in and you can rent a book. These started
to fall away as the price of books dropped after
the Civil War, and so the middle class started buying
books at that point. So it's after the Civil War,
and I have no idea why the Civil War made
books cheap. I couldn't find it quickly and easily. And
(34:44):
now whenever you type questions into Google, it gives you
lie answers from a hallucinating machine.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
So yeah, that's so annoying, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, Because then like anytime you do that and you
get like an answer, and you're like, well, now I
got to go fact check that this is slower than
if I just looked anyway with it.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah. I refuse to even look at acknowledge it exists.
I bypass it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, which even ties into the whole librarians thing. I
could probably get a library and to tell me why books? Yes, Okay,
Usually I do this thing where if I don't know
something on the show, I ask people to not tell
me afterwards. But if you, dear listener, know why books
got cheaper after the Civil War, you can tell me
on Twitter or Instagram, because I am curious. But libraries
(35:25):
started spreading around after the Civil War, and as best
as I can tell, this happened at the behest of
two groups, well, one individual and then one like group
of groups. The second half of the nineteenth century was
known as the Gilded Age, where wealth inequality reached such
drastic extremes that the modern labor movement was born and
(35:45):
there were constant riots and people would like throw dynamite
at business owners and shit, and it's way worse now.
Guilded Age is like the most famously fantastical. Look at
these robber barons sitting in their fancy palaces. It is
so much worse as of twenty twenty one. Yeah, twenty
seven hundred and fifty billionaires are wealthier than half the planet.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And people who are affected by them are defending them.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, that's true too, And that's one of the saddest parts.
I mean, it's funny because I think it's from this
era that you get the quote that I got. It
might have been Carnegie, but I don't know. Someone has
the quote I could hire one half of the working
class to kill the other half.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I would assume that was just Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I know, right, but it was the nineteenth century version
of Elon Musk is only fifty three years old. I
had to look it up today because I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
I just recently saw some like pictures from college.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
He just has always looked old and weird.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's I it's kind.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Of a nerving I genuinely thought that man was in
at least his mid sixties and just like had some
plastic surgery. I assumed he was close in age with Trump.
That's why he felt so kindred to him. Yeah, anyway,
before that man continues to invade my brain space further.
The other thing that is wildly different between the guilded
(37:04):
age again, the most famous time of wealth inequality in
our country's history and now is that the super rich.
Back then, we're known for extravagant shows of wealth, including charity,
in a way that they're not known for now. Are
you sure well the extravan shows of wealth, yes, But honestly,
even that charity today is definitely just to get more money,
(37:27):
is just to show off, right, but what I'm saying
is that like a lot of the people in the
Gilded Age genuinely gave away most of their money.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Oh so they were actually nice or that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, like they were doing a good despite being evil
people like who have exploited the working class, and so
they're like paternalistic to the working class. Right, they're like,
you don't get to decide what to do with money.
I want you to make all of this stuff so
I can extract the surplus value that you make for me,
and then I will decide what is best for society.
(38:00):
But they're still like trying to do that, some of
them in a way that you just like, I mean,
I guess you're like warm buffetter or whatever, but like
but like overall okay, and then even to like extravagant
shows of wealth in my mind, like I don't mind
them at gala as compared to like the billionaires who
just wear like frumpy clothes or whatever, because they're trying
(38:22):
to be all like proletarian and shit. Like no, you're
like a decadent god king, right, be a decadent god king?
What's wrong with you? Like if you're gonna be evil
have some class so.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
That we could at least like identify you properly.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, it's true. Oh that's probably why is that America
is very armed. Anyway, we're talking about the nineteenth century
and not anything actionable today. One of the most famously
corrupt capitalists in history is Andrew Carnegie. His legacy is
paternalistic union busting and being an industrialist. He once wrote,
(39:00):
the man who dies thus rich, dies in disgrace. In
the last eighteen years of his life he gave away
ninety percent of his fortune. This still left him like
living like a king, right. And he wouldn't let his
workers unionize. A lot of people died because of his
union busting. He wouldn't pay them decent wages. He had
(39:21):
to accumulate their money and then dictate where that money
would go. That was his whole thing. And so he
paid for libraries, and that's why his name is remembered
so well today. There are so so many towns and
cities that have Carnegie buildings. And what he would do
is he would buy the building itself, but not actually
(39:41):
do the financing, like the ongoing financing of the library.
He didn't buy books, and he didn't pay for operations
that had to come from the local budget. I'm like,
not even mad about this part. He honestly like, this
seems like a decent setup. He wanted it to be
self perpetuating. You know, that comes out of the local budget.
About ninety percent of any given public libraries funding comes
from local taxes rather than state or federal taxes. And
(40:04):
that's why you see such a wild disparity in financing
and quality of different libraries, which I'm sure doesn't play
along race lines. Class and race are totally unrelated. Everyone
knows that's not. Yeah, yeah, and it would be totally
fine if it was anyway, whatever, So and so, in
order to get these buildings, they had to change the
local tax codes. Carnegie did not change the local tax codes.
(40:27):
He basically offered, if you do, I'll get you a building.
And so, town by town, city by city, women's literary
societies pushed for the amendments necessary to tax law to
allow for public libraries, and over the decades, together Carnegie
and these women literary societies opened one six hundred and
(40:51):
eighty seven libraries, which is a lot of libraries. That's
more than the number of books that I have offered
to get a town named after myself. Women's clubs are
frequently credited as making seventy five to eighty percent of
them happen, although one source I read claims that this
number is disputed. But I didn't fold far enough down
(41:12):
the rabbit hole to though exactly the methodology or whatever.
Some of these libraries were segregated and some were integrated. Richmond,
Virginia nineteen oh one was like, no, that's good, we
don't want a Carnegie library because they were afraid that
black people would be allowed to use it.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
They couldn't get educated.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Oh no, yeah, and we'd have to be in the
same building as them too. You know, it's just it's
no good. Of the seventeen hundred libraries, twelve of them
were in specifically black communities as colored Carnegie Libraries, built
between nineteen oh eight and nineteen twenty four. That's it again.
Carnegie was while he was too young to be actively
(41:51):
an abolitionist, but he was not pro slavery to any
appreciable degree, and helped do a lot of the industrialization
necessary to make this happened. And he is a complicated man,
or rather he's not. He's a bastard, right, But it's
he's complicated because the US's history is so complicated that
like the industrialist who makes the Union be able to
(42:14):
defeat the South? Like looks good, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Right, it doesn't take much. Let's just be really honest.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah exactly. Libraries as public spaces were of course battlegrounds
for integration throughout the nineteen sixties, with so many people
getting arrested for being like, Hey, what if I'm allowed
to go to the library and like that my tax
dollars pay for Like, wouldn't it be wild? You know?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
But before all that, in the golden age of public libraries,
when they were just getting their start, you started getting
librarians as an actual job. The first librarians were like
rich white men doing it as a second job. But
by nineteen hundred, women began to dominate the field, at
least in terms of numbers of workers. They were more
(42:57):
of the employees, but they had less of the power.
This is common across almost every field that women are
predominantly hired in to this day, like publishing, mainstream publishing.
Most editors are women, most of the people who own
the places are men, and most of the people they
publish are men. It's cool. It's great that women do
(43:17):
all of the uncredited labor to make information available that's
written by men.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I mean, history repeats itself constantly, and it happens today
and we can't do anything about it. Apparently.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, well we can always try. And actually, the person
that we're going to talk about on Wednesday, this is
not my break, but eventually, when we talk about who
we're going to talk about Wednesday, it's gonna be someone
who's gonna be doing a lot of that work of
getting things to be different. But there are very few
jobs available for women in librarian was one of them.
The first school of Library Science was founded by veteran
(43:52):
of behind the Bastards, Melville Dewey, inventor of the Dewey
decimal system. The other pastimes included sexually her seeing women
in the workplace, and instituting racist and anti semitic policies
and libraries and codifying all kinds of racism into the
system that is still used to determine which books go where.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Nice, Yeah, sorry, first library School. There's a lot of
bastards in library history, and it is from this first
generation of librarians who went to librarian school that used
to start to see people who just start turns shit
around and make libraries what they can be. Often are
not always successful, but they can be amazing, anti racist
(44:34):
spaces for community organizing. And that is what we're going
to talk about on Wednesday. That's my cliffhanger. Do you
feel like you're on a cliff holding I am hanging
on That's great because if it was a cliff faller,
it wouldn't be any good because then the reader would
be dashed to the rocks, the narrative rocks.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah, we would have a whole different problem. Yeah, I'm
here hanging by the thread.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah, But what if the listener is like, I don't
want to wait till Wednesday. I want to hear more
of Samantha McVay between now and then. Do you have
any ideas what they could do?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
You could actually find me on stuff Mom never told you,
because we publish a lot of content within a week,
and you might even get tired of me. I think
most people have, but.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
I don't believe it. I'll believe it when I see it.
If you want to see me on tour and you
live in the US, then you might be able to
do that. I am currently about a third of the
way through a nationwide book tour with my book The
Sapling Cage. I'm recording this in Minneapolis. By the time
it comes out, I'll probably be in Nebraska or Colorado
(45:45):
or some shit, and I'll be in the Pacific Northwest.
Near the end of October, I will be the tour
days have not yet been announced for California and points
east across the South, but they will be at some
point and you can come hear me read folklore set
in the world of the Sapling Cage and Sophie. You
gutnything you want to plug uh At cool Zone Media,
(46:09):
That's where we are and I'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Yay.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Coolson Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
a podcast about libraries. Oh well just today.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy. And my guest today, who
I didn't know what the topic was but has probably
figured it out by now, is Samantha McVeigh, host of
Stuff Mom never told you.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm so excited to talk about libraries.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yay, Hi, how do you know it was about library anyway?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I can now read your mind. I know that's how
connected we are.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It's true. Samantha is one of the first guests we've
ever had on this show, and we'll continue to be
a regular guest on it. Yay, I dearly intend. Also
with us is Sophie. Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Sophie, Hi, who I got to see face to face
for like, yeah, half a day recently. Was such a
good time. It was fun.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I get to do that soon. It's been a mine. Jealous,
I mean, what are you talking about? We all record
this in the same room together time. Absolutely no one
does anything over the internet that would be wrong somehow.
But something people can do over the internet is tweet
at Sophie on Twitter about how Sophie should let us
(01:16):
run Cool Zone twenty fifty four report from the Dinoh War.
What Yeah, tweeted me because I haven't already said yes,
which I totally have, but still tweeted me. It's more
fun this way, Sophie said, I can do a really
strange thing on book Club that I'm planning on doing,
and I'm pretending that Sophie, by being the producer, gets
(01:39):
to be the person who's like positioned antagonistically, even though
she's not. And so that's why I'm it's always funnier
when you explain the bit to the audience. That's what
I've learned.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I think you explained that to me because I was
very behind already. I was like, what, okay, yes, Dinah Wars. Obviously, Magpie,
have I ever said no to you?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
My very first idea for a show, I pitched two
ideas and you picked this one and it was the
better idea. And I'm not going to tell the audience
what the other idea was, but I'll tell Samantha later.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh no, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, it wasn't as good.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I don't remember what it was.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, this week we're going to talk oh wait, first,
we're going to talk about the fact that our audio
engineer is named Rory Hi Rory Hi Rray and our
theme music was written for us by Unwoman. This week,
we're going to talk about one of the most formative
institutions in my life, one of the most dare I
say it, socialistic things that we have in this country.
(02:37):
This week we're going to talk about public libraries. You
ever spent much time at public libraries?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So I just let like, recently, I think like six
months ago, eight months ago, I got my library card
near my house. So I moved into my house two
years ago, and it's been a long time since I've
gotten a library card, and I was like, you know,
now that I've actually bought a home, I'm gonna do
the And the librarians were so nice. They were like
(03:04):
the most encouraging people I've ever met, and very excited
for me to get a library card. It was one
of the best experiences.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I wonder if there's like a more because the reputation
of the librarian is like the mean lady with her
hair pulled back into a bond who yells at you.
But like, yeah, I wonder if there's ever been a
sharper divide between the stereotype of a type of person,
and then that actual person. Librarians are like so nice,
they might still sometimes shush you. I don't know, but right.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
There's also that, you know, the sexy stereotype as well,
So that's true several things that come link to the
sexy librarian being also the quiet librarian versus also the
mean librarian, the strict rather. You know, that could work
in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I think that all librarians are equally sexy.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I love libraries. I also I haven't been going as
much as an adult. As a kid, they were I
come from a strange family. We would like go on vacation,
so we'd stop at the library first to make sure
we all had enough books to read for the weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Oh yeah, so I would be the one that I
would walk from my middle school to the local library,
which no longer exists, which made me very sad. We
would go to a local drug store and get snacks
and they would go hang out at the library all
day until my mom or dad were done with work
and then we would walk down that way. But I
used to hang out every day at the local library.
(04:31):
The libraries were really nice to us.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
See, I've never encountered a mean library, even my school librarians.
I remember Miss Dorothy like we would give her presents
during the summertime. Was I think like her birthday was
on the summertime or something. We would go and give
her presents because we loved her so much.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
That's a good grift. Be a teacher that always pays
really well, be a teacher librarian.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah, she was just in the working in the library
and just did her thing and make sure we got
all the study materials. When once upon a time, kids,
when we had reports, we would have to go to
the libraries to find resources.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
See Whereas in the sometime in the nineties, I learned
that you could cite websites as before Wikipedia. But I
knew how to make websites, so I would cheat. I
mean I would never cheat. I imagined writing websites and
then citing them. Imagine I would totally never have done that.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I pretended in my mind and never in real life. Yeah, never,
which may yet get me arrested.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah. So this year, I've been doing a bunch of
promotion for my book The Sapling Cage. This is more
promotion than I've ever done for any other book that
I've done in. One of the places my publisher sent
me was the Public Library Association's conference in Columbus, Ohio.
I wasn't at that for too long, just long enough
to meet some people and sit around and sign books
(05:51):
and talk to librarians. And I met a bunch of
really cool librarians who work at public schools and public
libraries and prison libraries. And one of these cool librarians
came up to me and handed me a list that
they'd written of cool librarians to check out. And so
I thought this week I'd cover the whole list, and
instead I'm only covering one of them, because Okay, it
(06:15):
turns out there's a lot to libraries. And I got
really excited about it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
You put me on a rollercoaster there. I was like,
we're gonna do all of them. How long is this episode?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Eventually, eventually.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I was excited. I was ready to hook her down
with you. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'm going to save some of these librarians for later.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Fine.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I had never really considered the origin of libraries. They'd
always just sort of been there somehow. I don't know
if you all have this experience. I just sort of
take them for granted, right, libraries are there. They're always there.
That'd be like wondering why sidewalks exist. You know, they're
just there, which is funny because now sidewalks are going away,
but that's because of car culture. But no, of course not.
(06:58):
This country was founded on press property, arguably more so
than any other country in the history of the world.
So public lending libraries were not part of the original plan.
And also, of course, most quick histories you'll find about
libraries will pick a couple recognizable, rich white men and
lay the credit for public libraries at their feet. And
(07:22):
some of the credit, I admit, is going to go
to some abysmal people. And no, Benjamin Franklin did not
invent the public library. Oh yeah, he's going to come
up in the story, but he did not invent them.
The concept of a public lending library as old as shit,
(07:42):
probably as old as writing it, which is to say,
as old as what gets called history. Rome had some
public libraries. Islam was setting up public libraries around one
thousand a d. More modern Europe like Italy figured them
out in like the fourteen hundreds. A lot of people
have done public libraries or very types of libraries, and
(08:02):
the US didn't start out much in the way of libraries,
including during ye oldie colonizing. Well, it's still a colony
colonizing country, but you know when they admitted they were
colonizing force. The first public library in the Americas was
in Mexico. It's actually still there. It's the Biblioteca Palafoxiana
(08:22):
and it was started in sixteen forty six by a
bishop who donated five thousand books on the condition that
they be available to quote any literate person and not
just academics. Oh nice, just pretty cool. Yeah, although a
lot of these early libraries are just going to be
religious libraries. I actually don't know what this bishop donated.
(08:43):
I'm like, how can there be five thousand religious books?
But there probably can be. There's probably a lot more
than that.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Right there probably is. They can like along the lines
of Mormons in the Bible in the hotels type of things, Like,
is that what we're getting into?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Oh no, it's not five thousand copies of the same thing, No,
that would okay, Yeah, now I think it's different volumes.
I hope that would be awful. The library of just
this book.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
The trickery of it all. I'm like, yeah that's not right.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, totally. It's all different covers, but then you open
it up and it's still just the same book. It's
just Catch twenty two over and over again.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
No oh no.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Some other libraries cropped up through the British colonies as well.
Probably the first is Harvard Library, which started about eight
years before the Mexican Library, but it wasn't public, so
it doesn't count. There's like, I found so many listicals
and academic articles all like being like, this is the
first such and such library, right, and they're all like
with lots of caveats and or lying or contradicting each other.
(09:42):
So whenever I say first on this show, take it
with a grain assault, but like extra, take it with
a grain of assault today. Okay, but Harvard got it
start with a library. The Harvard Library started when four
hundred books were donated by John Harvard to a new
school that was like, yeah, sure, we use your name.
(10:02):
And as at this point I must point out, dear listener,
if you are a university and you want to change
your name to the Kiljoy Library, I'll give you four
hundred books. That is a cheap price to pay for immortality.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I was gonna say, so he didn't do anything other
than don't get me wrong, at that point in time,
I'm sure books are very very expensive and very latest. Yeah,
so we know that, but that's what he did. He
didn't actually like build anything.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
I actually am not sure beyond that. The article that
I read was like, gave foreigner books and then in
exchange they took his name. But then I suspect he
had a lot more to do with Harvard than that,
because there was another guy who also donated books at
the beginning. But I didn't write his name down because
it was a name I'd never heard before, so I
didn't bother writing it in the script.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But yeah, so huh huh, Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
There are other first libraries. The Darby Free Library of Darby,
Pennsylvania claims to be the oldest public library, started in
seventeen forty three. Thomas Bray was an English abolitionist, and
he started the first lending libraries in the colony in
like sixteen ninety nine, and these were religious libraries. Harvard
Library also started off as a religious library, and actually
(11:07):
they pretty quickly moved to a more secular library. So
those four hundred books didn't even like last all that long,
I could write four hundred books of make belief. Well, actually,
you know, it's a lot of work to write make
belief books. I just did it, and it took a
long time.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Never mind, how about you take old make believe books
and then redo them repeatedly, which is kind of what
happens if you think about that, and in new versions.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You know, Okay, okay, find something older than Catch twenty
two that's in public doma.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, and then just taken rearrange it with like your traditions.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Mmm. No, that's a good idea. I'm going to call
it catch twenty one because it comes before Catch twenty two.
It'll be the same thing but said in World War One.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Catch two point zero. In that it just even way
beyond itself. How about that. Uh, we've got a good plan, Margaret.
I think you got this.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I believe in us. The usual origin story of the
modern library system starts with the first non religious lending
library idea that's spread across the country. And of course
this is America we're talking about. So it started with
a company, the Library Company of Philadelphia. Oh, there was
(12:17):
this discussion group of twelve white men called the Junto
from the Spanish Junta or Assembly. It's centered around a
charismatic slaver named Benjamin Franklin. Oh there, yeah, he was
gonna come up. He's actually like one of the least
bad of the I'll talk about is but whatever. At
the time, he is absolutely like buying people. Ye, this
(12:42):
Junto got together to sit around and feel smart and
talk about stuff. And one of the things that came
up when I was reading about libraries is that an
awful lot of like eighteenth to twentieth century history, especially
Enlightenment history, is people focused on like self and community improvement, right,
And so they're like, how do we make our culture
(13:02):
and ourselves and our race and our nation, how do
we make them better? You know? And I mean some
of those are like good ideas come out of that, right,
and also really bad ideas come out of this too.
They're specific downsides. This is what later will give us eugenics.
I'm not claiming that the Junto was doing anything proto eugenics, right,
It's just that there's a lot of like, don't drink alcohol,
(13:24):
that's bad, read books instead. Energy in the promotion of
libraries that is comparable to the energy that led to
the improvement of the race. Stuff that fueled race science.
But you know what doesn't fuel race science? Approximately forty
to one hundred percent of our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I was gonna say, are you sure.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I feel certain that no more than sixty percent of
our sponsors are currently engaged in promoting race science.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
But we love our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, we love all of them, at least zero to
sixty percent of them. And here they are and we're back.
I will say it's very likely that our sponsors were
not of the here's how to improve your self variety.
(14:17):
They were much more likely promoting vice like gambling, right,
which I'm honestly more on the improve yourself side of things,
but it should never be forced on people. That's how
I feel that's true. Anyway, I'm kind of talking shit
on the junto right because it's like run by a
slaver and they're all white and whatever. They're actually better
(14:37):
than you'd kind of expect them to be. This is
a debate club, Franklin wrote in his biography. Our debates
were to be under the direction of a president and
to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth,
without fondness for dispute. Or desire for victory, and so
it's like it's the opposite of the way that we
(14:57):
do debate now, right, It's not a life competitive debate.
It's actually just trying to explore ideas. And so Benjamin
Franklin took a really long time to get around to
becoming an abolitionist, but he he did, and he ended
his life a very fierce abolitionist or a very prominent
abolitionist at least. And so I think he meant it
(15:21):
when he came at things being like, Hey, if you
can prove me wrong, I'll change my mind. And he
among some of the other Founding Fathers, I like, historically
I just basically talked shit on the American Revolution constantly
on this show because I think it's a lateral move
and did not actually decolonize North America but Instaid cemented
whatever anyway. But I think that some of the Founding
(15:42):
Fathers were on some level influenced by like the things
they claimed to believe, you know, and wound up getting
actually into the spirit of freedom eventually. It just took
it took Benjamin Franklin until his seventies to become one
of the most prominent abolitionists in America. So whoever is
listening to this, you got a racist uncle. He's younger
(16:04):
in seventy five or something. He's he's still got a
chance to do a Ben Franklin.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Better late than never.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, I guess I haven't. Like one day I'll like
really deep dive some of the founding fathers. I just
like Thomas Pain is the only one I have any
hope for.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
You know, the entirety of the discourse in this conversation,
it just makes me wary and like motives. Sure, sure,
sure they may have said, okay, I'll believe you to
this point. And also why also who was able to
convince them because it couldn't have been Oh it wasn't
black people, a woman, it definitely wasn't going to be
a person of color and all these things like what
(16:43):
they wanted. And it was also after they established power,
so they had the power. Then that's as long as
it gave them or kept them power, they were fine.
And then they're like, yeah, I had enough power that
I can change my mind if I want to do,
like all of those would everything just sus And I'm like, mmm.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
This is the best analysis. This isn't amazing analysis. Because
it's also going to apply later to the second rich
white guy who's going to be involved in this. So
that's awesome. That is a really good way of looking
at it. Franklin and slavery, he personally bought at least
seven people, and he sold ads for enslaved people in
his newspaper, but he was equal opportunity. He also took
(17:20):
money from the Quakers who were running anti slavery ads
at the same time. Later in life, he went to
England and he was influenced by the abolitionists there, and
he started off by writing anonymous like screeds against slavery,
and then he slowly started growing a backbone and writing
stuff under his own name. And I think that your
(17:42):
analysis of like how cemented his power is is totally
a big part of this, Like whether he felt like
he was going to like lose his house if he
did it or whatever. You know, by the time he
was eighty one, in seventeen eighty seven, he was publicly
involved in anti slavery activism. So it took him a
while they got there, but while he was a young slaver.
(18:06):
I really love this framework. I really love how people
have started just basically being like a person who owns
people as a slaver, because people are all like hearing
that because it's like such a loaded and mean word,
and I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
No, it's quite ingenious, to be fair, I haven't heard
it that often. And this episode, being like the epitome
at the top of the episode is slavers, I'm like,
you know what, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
So when Benjamin Franklin was a young slaver of twenty
one years old, he and his debate bros started a
library for their debate club. But books were real dang
expensive in the colonies because most of them had to
come from England. So they pulled their money and they
started what's known as a subscription library. Basically, this is
(18:50):
a library with membership dues. Only white men were allowed
in this particular library company. Of course, this is explicit
that only white men are allowed, and working class white
men couldn't afford it either. The library was also sort
of a big deal because most of its books were
in English, not Latin. Unlike existing libraries in the US,
(19:11):
non members could borrow books if they offered collateral. I
don't want to think too hard about what that collateral
could have entailed it. During this period of time, the
subscription library spread across the colonies and later the United States,
and they were the main type of library in the
United States until after the Civil War. Apparently there's twenty
(19:31):
of the old ones left in the US right now.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Really, yeah, I don't say, do you know where.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I actually think that the Philly one is still around,
the one he started, And there's also this one in Burlington,
New Jersey that's still around. I actually don't know if
these are still subscription models, though. I just know that
those two those are two examples of subscription libraries that
are still around. I don't know whether they're still subscription.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, I love libraries. I just went to the one
in Seattle. When I went to Boston, I went to
the Aris. Beautiful. They're so beautiful, I know, Like I
love old libraries are so great.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I know, and then even some of the new ones are,
like the architecture is actually often really beautiful. Like I
really like how libraries are kind of they're like one
of our only public buildings that people really use and
are for the public. Like obviously our government buildings are
like for the public, but they're like kind of not
and there's like you got to go through a metal
detector and everyone stares at you eight and like or
you're there because you committed a crime or whatever, you know,
(20:26):
And yeah, I feel like people take a lot of
pride in their libraries.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Like the Seattle one, I know, it's got to be
a new one that, like the architecture in itself is amazing,
but like, like I said, but going to the Boston one,
it's just a good library. Man, Yeah, there's something about it.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
No, I agree. Old Ben sort of actually young Ben
at the time sort of accidentally started the first public
lending library in the US too. Well actually, okay, no,
it is Old Ben at this point. And I've read
a million different ones claiming to be the first, but
let's pretend this one's the first for now. There is
a town called Franklin, Massachusetts that was like basically, hey,
(21:04):
if we name ourselves after this guy, maybe whole night
by us a nice like bell for our town.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Oh really?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
And then instead he gave them books.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay, did they like this or no?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I know later they've taken a lot of pride in this. Okay, Okay,
you how many books it costs to get a town
named after you.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So I'm gonna say four hundred and one.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
One hundred and sixteen.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
What it tastes less than a school.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I know, if any towns are listening, you want to
change your name to Killjoy, I will give you one
hundred and sixteen books one seventeen. I think I have
that many on my shelf of it. So he gave
them these books, and then the year that Franklin died,
which is some number of years afterwards, in seventeen ninety,
he died, and they voted that they would lend the
(21:54):
books out for free to their residence. So this becomes
the first public lending library in the United States. But
then there's still another, like first, there's the first tax
payer supported whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Any will get to it, uh huh.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
But it took for there to be a bunch of
non waspy people in the United States for the idea
of free public libraries to really take off. The wave
of immigration in the nineteenth century brought more emphasis on
the idea of free public education, which I started to
go down a rabbit hole about and realize that's a
whole different topic. And also the idea of free public libraries.
(22:33):
There had been public schools in the US running way
back to be clear, But my best inference from the
sources is that once you had these like non wasps around,
they're like, hell yeah, public schools and libraries, that seems
like what we should do with our time and our money.
The first taxpayer supported public library in the United States
was in Petersborough, New Hampshire, in eighteen thirty three. Basically,
(22:56):
running the library takes money, and there wasn't a method
by which they could get that money until later. Subscription
model libraries are spreading all over and most are white
men only, right, So what do middle class white women,
free black people. What do other people do? Well, they
start their own libraries and they start spreading them. And
(23:17):
those are usually also subscription libraries or what gets called
literary societies, which are more like pooled books and stuff.
These are the groups that are actually going to make
public libraries a thing in the United States. You're going
to be shocked to know that the Phoenix Society of
New York City of the early eighteen hundreds helped create
circulating libraries for people of color. In eighteen thirty three,
(23:39):
folks started the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored People, which
is just literally the same idea of like, let's have
a library company only I guess you know we are
black people, so we'll let black people in.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
In eighteen thirty nine, The Colored American, a newspaper suggested
that folks should go to community libraries and have it
be there quote place of resorts. And thus, instead of
injuring their health, wasting their money, and acquiring immoral habits,
they might be storing their minds with useful knowledge and
might also establish for themselves a character which time itself
(24:14):
could not destroy. And so yeah, you get this, like
here's how to actually improve yourself as you go to
the library. Yeah, you know, right. And it's like I
didn't even disagree with that, but it still like rubs
me the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I was like wait what But yeah, a lot of
the middle class white women's societies were just as bigoted
as the men's societies.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
This is going to shock you, and they would prevent Jewish, black,
and working class white women from joining. So all those
groups of women started their own also, right, And libraries
were a particular importance to people who are kept out
of traditional educational environments. Right, You're like, well, I want
(24:57):
to go learn and that school won't let me in
because i I'm black or a woman or poor, whatever
the hell. You know, there were enough literary clubs for
black women specifically that by eighteen ninety six they formed
the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. And these women
were social reformers who pushed for literacy, anti lynching, and
(25:20):
spreading libraries in the South. And they also and I
can't tell if this is exactly who invented it, but
these are like the people who popularize it is these
women's clubs. And then also specifically this coalition of black
women's clubs the bookmobile.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Oh I was wondering for you.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Okay, Yeah, they like, we're like, well, we need books
to go places, and people can't get to the library,
so we'll bring the library to them and drive around
with books. And that is fucking cool.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yes, they still exist today. Yeah, some of the more
popular ones are ran by black women.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
That doesn't surprise me. A lot of the first ones
were too. Mutual aid societies built out of various trade
associations and shit also would do reading libraries, so like unions.
And then also the sort of kind of proto insurance
companies that were actually like instead of exploitative, were like
a mutual aid thing where people would get together and
(26:18):
pool their money so that if you die, your funeral
cost is taken care of her whatever rate. These folks
would also build libraries for the communities that they were serving.
The Mechanics Institute of San Francisco in eighteen fifty four
was open to all, regardless of race or gender, and
without public financing. It only lasts until eighteen fifty eight,
(26:38):
but a four year run of a library that doesn't
discriminate is pretty good thing to pull off. In the
eighteen fifties, the inventor of the cable car, andrew S. Hallidi,
was a veteran of it, and he later went on
to push for public libraries in San Francisco. So, lots
of good stuff coming out of it. But you know
(27:00):
what didn't come out of mutual aid societies? Well, actually,
I guess I just said insurance companies. Did clearly bad
things come out of good things? Yeah? No, Well, the
ads come out of this podcast much like what's that
word for? When people to parthenogenesis, When people used to
(27:21):
think that rather than like sexual reproduction, flies were just
like formed wholesale out of like rotting meat some word
for it. That's how ads come out of podcasts, just
like flies are formed out of rotting meat. Here's the ads,
(27:45):
and we're back, and I'm continuing to wonder how long
I'm be able to get away with this word.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
So far, we can't do this on our show, so
I'm loving.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Keep going.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Other libraries were started by paternalistic employers for their employees
instead of like paying them better. They're like, oh, look,
I'm going to take care of you. Here's a library.
You know, it's like the pizza party of the eighteen
seventies or whatever. You know, here's some books, which is
better that No, I just like pizza and books. Never mind,
I don't want to put them out against each other.
And there's this like this is for self improvement vibe
(28:22):
that comes from most of the promoters of these libraries, right,
whether it's the employers, whether it's the mutual aid societies,
whether it's the literary groups, whatever it is, right, they're like,
this is so we can all become better people and
read all this philosophy. But you want to know people
actually wanted out of libraries. What they wanted fiction, They
(28:44):
wanted entertainment, they wanted escapism, they wanted pulp.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
They wanted the naughty stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That's absolutely true too.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Oh, there's this whole thing. Oh, I don't have any
kind of notes about it in front of me. There's
this whole thing we're in order to get. It was
illegal to promote sex education for a very long time
across England and the United States, and so it was
also illegal to print smut. So if you're going to
do one, why not do the other. So there was
all this smut that had sex education written into it
because it was like already a crime. So and it
(29:16):
was like the same printer would be printing all of
the illegal books. So it was like, wow, we're all
using the same shit. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So I feel like we talked about not this specifically,
but something about smut before.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Have we wait, were you on the birth control episode?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I think so, Yeah, No, I probably talked about this
a lot.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yes, yes, I'm like, I know, I've been asleep since then,
have had many things happen, But I'm pretty sure this
was the conversation you and I had, because I love
these conversations anyway. When it's like it's a little bit naughty,
but it's also for your knowledge, and like everybody wants
more of it because it's the naughty that gets their attraction.
But they're getting educated, and I love everything about that.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, Like imagine like just teaching condoms through right smutes.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
It's amazing we did. They were on the street corners
right and getting arrested for indecent materials. See I remember, yeah, yeah,
you teach me things. I love this. Keep going.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Hell yeah. To quote an article by the Los Angeles
Public Library about this time, the founding of public libraries
hardly resolve the education slash recreation conflict. In eighteen ninety three,
the American Library Association issued a guide for small libraries.
Out of the five thousand titles they recommended, only eight
(30:30):
hundred and three were fiction. Yet in that period, public
libraries reported that between sixty five and ninety percent of
books borrowed were works of fiction. And so you just
have like five novels that everyone keeps checking out over
and over again.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Waldo, it's so bad.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You know how to rewire the electricity in your nineteen
twenties home book just stays there, which is why more
people should be writing the fiction with how to do
DIY electrical Nope, that's how people die. Never mind, I'm
just going to start writing in like how to do
DC because DC power isn't danger anyway.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Whatever, right, Okay, okay, you know this is what happens
with TikTok when they're like, you can drink bleach and
you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, what could go wrong? I can't imagine what could
go wrong?
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Anyway, don't do that, kids.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, libraries are put at the feet of Ben Franklin
and one other man, Andrew Carnegie. And I don't know
what towns you all live in, but almost every town
I've lived in has like a Carnegie building, like a
Carnegie library or whatever. Right something. Yeah, we'll get to
him in a second. But it is these first free
(31:37):
black libraries and then the women's groups that really do
the work to make libraries possible, especially the tax supported
part of the equation. It was the New York Secretary
of State John Adam Dix, which is a funny name
because I am an adult, who came up with the
library model in eighteen thirty four that led to modern libraries.
(31:59):
He wrote, if the inhabitants of school districts were authorized
to lay a tax upon their property for the purpose
of purchasing libraries for use in the district. Such a
power might become a most efficient instrument in diffusing useful
knowledge and elevating the intellectual character of people. So once again,
in order to let people read trashy romance novels, we
(32:20):
always have to be like, we swear there's going to
be philosophy books there.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
We're going to talk about Jesus in here somewhere as
fine as fine.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah. Yeah. The first large scale public library again first whatever.
It was actually the Boston Public Library, which you were
talking about earlier. It's beautiful. I know. I went to
two branches of it the other day. I was on
tour because I went to one and it was where
my book talk was and the fire department was clearing
it out because there was smoke in the building and
(32:49):
so they had to move it to the other one.
And I never quite got a straight answer about why
that happened, and it probably was the HVAC system going wrong.
But the same day, elsewhere in Boston, like drag Queen's
Story Hour was being attacked by the right wing. So
I put a like non zero chance and if you're
listening fascists who hypothetical fascist who tried to shit down
(33:12):
my event. Well, we had it in another branch of
the public library about a half mile down the street,
and it was still full and everyone got their steps in,
so fuck you. Yeah, jokes on you. Yeah, he did great.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I would just like to add one thing, haha and
fuck you.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
And if it was just the HVAC system going wrong,
well thanks librarians. You did a really good job of
handling all that. They were so on top of it.
At no point was I like, what's going to happen.
They were like, wait, anyway, whatever. I love librarians just
to say hahuh yeah and fuck you. Yeah. Some of
the people relate to the talker. They were like, sorry,
we were busy driving away fascist elsewhere in town. And
(33:52):
I was like, oh my god, that's amazing. And they
successfully had driven them away.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
That's amazing. Well done.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
You listeners are some of the best people. So the
Boston Public Library I opened in eighteen fifty four with
sixteen thousand books, which is more than I can afford
to donate. So I can't start a new Boston Public Library.
I'm sorry, but any Massachusetts resident could borrow any of
those sixteen thousand books. And all these private libraries are
(34:21):
still going at this point, right. A lot of them
are associated with bookstores. It's like Blockbuster for books. You
go in and you can rent a book. These started
to fall away as the price of books dropped after
the Civil War, and so the middle class started buying
books at that point. So it's after the Civil War,
and I have no idea why the Civil War made
books cheap. I couldn't find it quickly and easily. And
(34:44):
now whenever you type questions into Google, it gives you
lie answers from a hallucinating machine.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
So yeah, that's so annoying, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, Because then like anytime you do that and you
get like an answer, and you're like, well, now I
got to go fact check that this is slower than
if I just looked anyway with it.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah. I refuse to even look at acknowledge it exists.
I bypass it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, which even ties into the whole librarians thing. I
could probably get a library and to tell me why books? Yes, Okay,
Usually I do this thing where if I don't know
something on the show, I ask people to not tell
me afterwards. But if you, dear listener, know why books
got cheaper after the Civil War, you can tell me
on Twitter or Instagram, because I am curious. But libraries
(35:25):
started spreading around after the Civil War, and as best
as I can tell, this happened at the behest of
two groups, well, one individual and then one like group
of groups. The second half of the nineteenth century was
known as the Gilded Age, where wealth inequality reached such
drastic extremes that the modern labor movement was born and
(35:45):
there were constant riots and people would like throw dynamite
at business owners and shit, and it's way worse now.
Guilded Age is like the most famously fantastical. Look at
these robber barons sitting in their fancy palaces. It is
so much worse as of twenty twenty one. Yeah, twenty
seven hundred and fifty billionaires are wealthier than half the planet.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And people who are affected by them are defending them.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, that's true too, And that's one of the saddest parts.
I mean, it's funny because I think it's from this
era that you get the quote that I got. It
might have been Carnegie, but I don't know. Someone has
the quote I could hire one half of the working
class to kill the other half.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I would assume that was just Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I know, right, but it was the nineteenth century version
of Elon Musk is only fifty three years old. I
had to look it up today because I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
I just recently saw some like pictures from college.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
He just has always looked old and weird.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's I it's kind.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Of a nerving I genuinely thought that man was in
at least his mid sixties and just like had some
plastic surgery. I assumed he was close in age with Trump.
That's why he felt so kindred to him. Yeah, anyway,
before that man continues to invade my brain space further.
The other thing that is wildly different between the guilded
(37:04):
age again, the most famous time of wealth inequality in
our country's history and now is that the super rich.
Back then, we're known for extravagant shows of wealth, including charity,
in a way that they're not known for now. Are
you sure well the extravan shows of wealth, yes, But honestly,
even that charity today is definitely just to get more money,
(37:27):
is just to show off, right, but what I'm saying
is that like a lot of the people in the
Gilded Age genuinely gave away most of their money.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Oh so they were actually nice or that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, like they were doing a good despite being evil
people like who have exploited the working class, and so
they're like paternalistic to the working class. Right, they're like,
you don't get to decide what to do with money.
I want you to make all of this stuff so
I can extract the surplus value that you make for me,
and then I will decide what is best for society.
(38:00):
But they're still like trying to do that, some of
them in a way that you just like, I mean,
I guess you're like warm buffetter or whatever, but like
but like overall okay, and then even to like extravagant
shows of wealth in my mind, like I don't mind
them at gala as compared to like the billionaires who
just wear like frumpy clothes or whatever, because they're trying
(38:22):
to be all like proletarian and shit. Like no, you're
like a decadent god king, right, be a decadent god king?
What's wrong with you? Like if you're gonna be evil
have some class so.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
That we could at least like identify you properly.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, it's true. Oh that's probably why is that America
is very armed. Anyway, we're talking about the nineteenth century
and not anything actionable today. One of the most famously
corrupt capitalists in history is Andrew Carnegie. His legacy is
paternalistic union busting and being an industrialist. He once wrote,
(39:00):
the man who dies thus rich, dies in disgrace. In
the last eighteen years of his life he gave away
ninety percent of his fortune. This still left him like
living like a king, right. And he wouldn't let his
workers unionize. A lot of people died because of his
union busting. He wouldn't pay them decent wages. He had
(39:21):
to accumulate their money and then dictate where that money
would go. That was his whole thing. And so he
paid for libraries, and that's why his name is remembered
so well today. There are so so many towns and
cities that have Carnegie buildings. And what he would do
is he would buy the building itself, but not actually
(39:41):
do the financing, like the ongoing financing of the library.
He didn't buy books, and he didn't pay for operations
that had to come from the local budget. I'm like,
not even mad about this part. He honestly like, this
seems like a decent setup. He wanted it to be
self perpetuating. You know, that comes out of the local budget.
About ninety percent of any given public libraries funding comes
from local taxes rather than state or federal taxes. And
(40:04):
that's why you see such a wild disparity in financing
and quality of different libraries, which I'm sure doesn't play
along race lines. Class and race are totally unrelated. Everyone
knows that's not. Yeah, yeah, and it would be totally
fine if it was anyway, whatever, So and so, in
order to get these buildings, they had to change the
local tax codes. Carnegie did not change the local tax codes.
(40:27):
He basically offered, if you do, I'll get you a building.
And so, town by town, city by city, women's literary
societies pushed for the amendments necessary to tax law to
allow for public libraries, and over the decades, together Carnegie
and these women literary societies opened one six hundred and
(40:51):
eighty seven libraries, which is a lot of libraries. That's
more than the number of books that I have offered
to get a town named after myself. Women's clubs are
frequently credited as making seventy five to eighty percent of
them happen, although one source I read claims that this
number is disputed. But I didn't fold far enough down
(41:12):
the rabbit hole to though exactly the methodology or whatever.
Some of these libraries were segregated and some were integrated. Richmond,
Virginia nineteen oh one was like, no, that's good, we
don't want a Carnegie library because they were afraid that
black people would be allowed to use it.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
They couldn't get educated.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Oh no, yeah, and we'd have to be in the
same building as them too. You know, it's just it's
no good. Of the seventeen hundred libraries, twelve of them
were in specifically black communities as colored Carnegie Libraries, built
between nineteen oh eight and nineteen twenty four. That's it again.
Carnegie was while he was too young to be actively
(41:51):
an abolitionist, but he was not pro slavery to any
appreciable degree, and helped do a lot of the industrialization
necessary to make this happened. And he is a complicated man,
or rather he's not. He's a bastard, right, But it's
he's complicated because the US's history is so complicated that
like the industrialist who makes the Union be able to
(42:14):
defeat the South? Like looks good, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Right, it doesn't take much. Let's just be really honest.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah exactly. Libraries as public spaces were of course battlegrounds
for integration throughout the nineteen sixties, with so many people
getting arrested for being like, Hey, what if I'm allowed
to go to the library and like that my tax
dollars pay for Like, wouldn't it be wild? You know?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
But before all that, in the golden age of public libraries,
when they were just getting their start, you started getting
librarians as an actual job. The first librarians were like
rich white men doing it as a second job. But
by nineteen hundred, women began to dominate the field, at
least in terms of numbers of workers. They were more
(42:57):
of the employees, but they had less of the power.
This is common across almost every field that women are
predominantly hired in to this day, like publishing, mainstream publishing.
Most editors are women, most of the people who own
the places are men, and most of the people they
publish are men. It's cool. It's great that women do
(43:17):
all of the uncredited labor to make information available that's
written by men.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I mean, history repeats itself constantly, and it happens today
and we can't do anything about it. Apparently.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, well we can always try. And actually, the person
that we're going to talk about on Wednesday, this is
not my break, but eventually, when we talk about who
we're going to talk about Wednesday, it's gonna be someone
who's gonna be doing a lot of that work of
getting things to be different. But there are very few
jobs available for women in librarian was one of them.
The first school of Library Science was founded by veteran
(43:52):
of behind the Bastards, Melville Dewey, inventor of the Dewey
decimal system. The other pastimes included sexually her seeing women
in the workplace, and instituting racist and anti semitic policies
and libraries and codifying all kinds of racism into the
system that is still used to determine which books go where.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Nice, Yeah, sorry, first library School. There's a lot of
bastards in library history, and it is from this first
generation of librarians who went to librarian school that used
to start to see people who just start turns shit
around and make libraries what they can be. Often are
not always successful, but they can be amazing, anti racist
(44:34):
spaces for community organizing. And that is what we're going
to talk about on Wednesday. That's my cliffhanger. Do you
feel like you're on a cliff holding I am hanging
on That's great because if it was a cliff faller,
it wouldn't be any good because then the reader would
be dashed to the rocks, the narrative rocks.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah, we would have a whole different problem. Yeah, I'm
here hanging by the thread.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah, But what if the listener is like, I don't
want to wait till Wednesday. I want to hear more
of Samantha McVay between now and then. Do you have
any ideas what they could do?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
You could actually find me on stuff Mom never told you,
because we publish a lot of content within a week,
and you might even get tired of me. I think
most people have, but.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
I don't believe it. I'll believe it when I see it.
If you want to see me on tour and you
live in the US, then you might be able to
do that. I am currently about a third of the
way through a nationwide book tour with my book The
Sapling Cage. I'm recording this in Minneapolis. By the time
it comes out, I'll probably be in Nebraska or Colorado
(45:45):
or some shit, and I'll be in the Pacific Northwest.
Near the end of October, I will be the tour
days have not yet been announced for California and points
east across the South, but they will be at some
point and you can come hear me read folklore set
in the world of the Sapling Cage and Sophie. You
gutnything you want to plug uh At cool Zone Media,
(46:09):
That's where we are and I'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Yay.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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