Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) not only created public libraries in his home state of New York but he also developed the entire concept of a free public library system in the United States. He founded the American Library Association, the Library Journal (1876), and the Library Bureau (1881); launched the first school for Library Science (at Columbia University); and introduced the traveling library, the library for the blind, the children’s library, and the interlibrary loan. He also created the Board of Regents in New York, which became a template for public education across the country; founded the Spelling Reform Association (more on this below); established the American Metric Bureau; invented the “vertical file,” the standardized catalog card, and the perforating library stamp; and, before his death, he organized the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid.
However, he is best known as “The Father of Modern Librarianship” and for originating the Dewey Decimal Classification, better known as the Dewey Decimal System, a hierarchical library classification system that he first published in 1876 while working in the library of Amherst College. Rather than following the common practice of assigning books to library shelves based on the date of acquisition, Dewey devised a system where new books would be added to a library in a set location based on their subject matter. The Dewey classification makes use of three-digit numbers for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail, and the numbers are flexible so that they may be expanded linearly to cover particular features of general subjects.
Dewey described his system in A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library, a 44-page pamphlet with 2,000 index entries, which has grown monumentally since. By popular request, the Library of Congress began to print Dewey Classification numbers on nearly all its cards in 1930.
The Dewey Decimal System, which is currently used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries, was first introduced in Eretz Yisrael by noted Jewish philosopher Gershom Sholem who, after making aliyah in 1923, worked as a librarian for a few years at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Although the system was a logical choice for the large library, it proved problematic because Dewey, whose belief that Christianity was the only true faith, had marginalized non-Christian religions and, in particular, he had assigned only one number (296) to Judaism. The problem was further exacerbated by the fact that the scope of the Jerusalem library, which was far broader than merely Judaism as a religion, included comprehensive materials on the Jewish people, the land of Eretz Yisrael, Jewish history, and much more. As such, Sholem adapted and expanded the Dewey system to meet the specific needs of the Judaica Department.
In 1893, Dewey began to acquire land for the development of a private club in Lake Placid, New York, originally for the purpose of providing an escape during hay fever season. Two years later, he founded the Lake Placid Club on the site as an affordable health resort for educators; as he explained “We wanted to devote our lives to the cause of education and one way of doing this was to help the educators. If we could give them an opportunity to find health, strength, and inspiration at moderate cost, we knew we would be helping them.” The club became an Adirondack mountain retreat for wealthy and privileged WASPs that encouraged healthy eating and good habits; drinking, smoking, and dancing were strictly prohibited.
The Lake Placid Club became a great success, as Dewey transformed it into a 10,000-acre complex with tennis courts, golf courses and concert halls, and there were 150 member families by 1904. Like other Adirondack resorts, Dewey’s Club excluded Jews; his promotional literature for the club stipulated that “no Jews or consumptives allowed” and he declared it “impracticable to make exceptions to Jews or others excluded, even when of unusual personal qualification.”
Dewey, who claimed that “personally, many of my choicest friends are Jews” and that “I have some Hebrew friends who are very charming,” was a Judeophobe who refused to eat with Jews and exhibited classic cognitive dissonance by believing in educational reform for the masses as a means to improve society on one hand and exhibiting extreme antisemitism, racism, and sexism on the other hand. Ironically, his strict adherence to his exclusionary policies ultimately led to his downfall.
In 1903, Henry Marcus Leipziger was barred from attending a New York Library Association meeting held at Dewey’s club because he was Jewish. Trained as a lawyer, Leipziger (1861-1934), who earned a reputation as an expert in the field of educational extension activities, founded and led the Hebrew Technical Institute, whose purpose was to give both academic and manual training to immigrant boys. He was later appointed assistant superintendent of New York City schools and placed in charge of the Free Lecture Series, an adult education program for working people which he called “the People’s University.” He built up the program to the point that by 1905, more than 1.25 million people had attended more than 3,000 lectures, and he also published The Education of the Jews (1890).
When Dewey laughed off Leipziger’s threat to have him fired as state librarian, Leipziger consulted with Lewis Marshall, a highly respected Jewish lawyer known as a champion of Jewish rights. Marshall in turn brought the matter to the attention of The Watchers, a group of prominent Jews, who agreed that Dewey’s exclusionary policies would entrench antisemitism within the hospitality industry and would give other clubs and hotels in the Adirondacks additional incentive to exclude Jews. Spearheaded by Marshall, the Watchers resolved to petition the Board of Regents to have Dewey – who, at the time, was the preeminent library scientist in the United States, if not the world – removed from office.
On January 3, 1905, Marshall delivered a petition to Whitelaw Reid, Regents Chancellor, that was co-signed by some of the most prominent American Jews of the time, including Isador Straus, businessman, politician, and co-owner of Macy’s; Cyrus Sulzberger, merchant and philanthropist; Adolph Ochs, the publisher and owner of the New York Times; Daniel Guggenheim, mining magnate and philanthropist; Jacob Schiff, banker, businessman, and philanthropist; Adolph Lewisohn, investment banker, mining magnate, and philanthropist; and Abraham Abraham, the founder of the Abraham & Straus department store. While detailing the antisemitic history of the club from its very founding, the petition made a point not to challenge the general right of private clubs to adopt exclusionary policies, one of Dewey’s principal arguments; rather, it argued that:
…when a higher public official can so far forget himself and the duties which he owes to the entire public as to spread broadcast through the land a publication which tends to make of the Hebrew an outcast and pariah of the State, you, as its right arm, cannot afford to trifle with the offender or allow an infamous precedent to be established. There is but one course to pursue, and that is to remove from the service of the State the official whose act undermines the very foundations of our governmental system.
When the press jumped on the story, the Regents and Andrew Sloan Draper, the New York State Commissioner of Education and Dewey’s direct supervisor, refused to speak to the press, but that did not stop Dewey from doing so. Before the scheduled hearing in the matter, he released to the press a copy of his response to Marshall’s petition in which he argued that Marshall’s allegations were “based upon misapprehensions of the facts” – while also admitting that Jews had been barred from his club from the time of his founding and alleging that he had merely sought to “clarify” the club’s rules to disabuse Jews of any notion that they could gain club admission if they were “cultivated and desirable.”
Public pressure against Dewey began to mount, with critical letters published in the papers, including notably a January 25, 1905, letter to the editor of the New York Times by Rabbi Bernard Drachman, a leader of American Orthodox Jewry who served as president of the Orthodox Union and as rav of the Park East Synagogue in New York for 55 years. He called Dewey’s statement “about as painful a bit of reading as it has ever been my misfortune to pursue” and another newspaper called Dewey’s response “racial tommyrot.”
On the other hand, not a single person in the library community came forward to publicly condemn Dewey’s antisemitism. Isaac Kauffman Funk (Jewish name, Lutheran minister) of the famous Funk & Wagnalls dictionary defended Dewey – while, ironically, he was simultaneously publishing the Jewish Encyclopedia and hoping to sell a copy to every library in the United States. Funk claimed that in all his years of dealing with Dewey, he never knew him to exhibit “the slightest trace of Jewish prejudice”; that most summer resort owners similarly excluded Jews and that it was therefore unfair to single out Dewey; and that if the petition succeeded, the net result would somehow be to increase intolerance and discrimination.
Funk clandestinely fed information to Dewey from Israel Singer, who was antagonistic toward wealthy “uptown Jews” whom he critically viewed as seeking entry to supercilious and pretentious exclusive clubs. Funk called Marshall “a bitter hater” and Singer characterized him as “the evil genius of New York Judaism,” and they and others convinced Dewey that Marshall and The Watchers did not speak for American Jews and that, as such, he had nothing to fear from them.
At the closed hearing in which Dewey represented himself, he alleged that it was “the Company,” and not he, who owned and ran the club; that he personally lacked the authority to admit Lauterbach or anyone else; that he was not an antisemite, but was obligated to uphold club rules; and, citing support from Singer, characterizing Lauterbach’s claim as “one Jew’s revenge.” Marshall responded that Dewy was the epitome of disingenuousness and that, in fact, the evidence proved that he was the club, “the whole institution,” with complete discretion to admit and reject club applicants.
Although he presented a supremely confident public face, Dewey was deeply concerned that the Regents would fire him. Accordingly, he and his two greatest supporters, Funk and Singer, commenced an ambitious campaign designed to skew the Regents’ decision in Dewey’s favor, focusing particularly on the Jewish community. Singer wrote to Leipziger alleging that Marshall was desperate to get out of the case while saving face and that the Jews would suffer if he persisted in pushing for Dewey’s removal. Dewey wrote a letter to all the petitioners urging them to remove their names from the petition and that they urge all their followers to write letters of support to the Regents. The Sun published a passionate letter in which Singer argued that twelve renegade Jews do not speak for 750,000 New York Jews. The Dewey controversy split the Jewish community to the point that many began to refer to the matter as “the American Dreyfus Affair.”
Having not yet reached a decision, the Regents summoned Dewey to appear before them on February 15, 1905, and the shaken and badly unsettled library scientist issued a quasi-apology that “I am profoundly sorry. I would be very glad to personally apologize to any Jew whose feelings were hurt by that [antisemitism] because I have never had that intention.” He advised the Regents that he had declined reelection as president of the Lake Placid Company and assured them that he would disassociate himself completely from anything to do with the Company to spare the Regents any further embarrassment.
The Regents ultimately ruled that the club’s rules could not be connected to Dewey’s public duties as state librarian, but they nonetheless issued a public censure against him and admonished him that further control of a private business was “incompatible” with a public position serving the State’s public interests. The Jewish press, including New York’s American Hebrew and the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, was infuriated by the result, and Rabbi Joseph Friedlander of Temple Emanuel in Beaumont, Texas, spoke for many when he wrote that the Funks and Singers of the world “had to be fought even more than the Melvil Deweys” and that self-respect had to be restored to the Jewish character. Marshall, however, saw it as a great victory.
On February 20, 1905, an obviously unrepentant Dewey sent a circular to the club assuring it that there was no danger that the club’s rules would need to be changed and that while club regulations could no longer use the word “Jew,” it could maintain its absolute right to exclude them. He disseminated an “updated” version of the original pamphlet in which he misrepresented the record of the hearing; included new material reflecting the split in the Jewish community that had never been a part of the hearings; portrayed the petitioners as “animated by petty spite;” and, characterizing the proceedings as “preposterous,” he urged the public to ignore the Regents’ public censure.
In response, Marshall brought new charges against Dewey to the Regents, arguing that Dewey had violated his explicit promise to withdraw from the Lake Placid Club and to cease his use of offensive language in discussing the Jews. Although the motion to force Dewey’s resignation failed to muster a majority of the Regents’ vote, they advised Dewey after a June 30 meeting that they expected him to resign “in the near future.” While Dewey claimed in a letter to a supporter that “the Jew story was a fake. I have neither [resigned] nor agreed to,” he did agree to resign, but he proceeded to stall for time to facilitate his ability to find a new location for the State Library and to retain control of it.
Again, Singer and Funk led the opposition to the “Jewish” attempt to separate Dewey from the library, but they failed; the Regents issued a public statement making clear that Dewey’s connection with the Library would be terminated at “no very remote date.” Finally, the Board accepted his resignation on January 1, 1906, and, by the end of the year, he had moved permanently to Lake Placid, where he ran the increasingly prosperous club without governmental interference – and under the same antisemitic exclusionary rules in effect from his founding of the club.
Adding insult to injury, the New York Library Association continued to hold its annual Library Week conferences at the Lake Placid Club; Dewey was invited to be the guest of honor at the ALA’s 50th-anniversary meeting in 1926; and librarians continued to frequent the club as members and guests. Despite its controversial exclusionary policies, the Lake Placid Club endured for 85 years, only shutting its doors in the 1980s, and it was destroyed by fire shortly thereafter.
At the end of the day, Marshall and his associates played an important role in promoting the principle that a public official should not be permitted to promote prejudice in his private affairs. Although “the American Dreyfus Affair” received broad coverage and publicity at the time, it has generally fallen into the dustbins of history; most of Dewey’s biographies still border on the hagiographic, and his history of antisemitism and racism have been almost entirely forgotten.
Fearing that Jews might purchase the land adjacent to his Lake Placid Club, Dewey bought up the land. In this very rare December 27, 1920, correspondence on his Lake Placid Company letterhead to “Juj” J. H. Booth of Plattsburg, Dewey makes clear that even in the aftermath of being forced to resign by the Regents, his antisemitism continued unabated.
Seeking to promote efficiency by practicing simplified spelling and dropping letters that interfered with logical pronunciation, Dewey had invented and promoted a new spelling system that, he claimed, could shave three years of a student’s time in school. He even implemented the new system with respect to his own name; thus, “Melville” became “Melvil,” and he even began to spell his last name as “Dui” until a follower convinced him that New York State would not retain him if he didn’t start to behave more normally.
As our entire letter is typed using his idiosyncratic “simplifyd speling” system, I have rendered the letter first in its original form and then in its “translated” form:
I send u all the paperz about Lylacs. Juj Smith’s dauter, Louise C Smith, Elizabethtown, for whom Frank Wicks of Tye iz lawyer, haz the deed to Lylacs from Malvina Mitchell. It looks az if Smith waz careles, but u may fynd sum way out. Dunlap thretend to sel the tytl to the first byer he cud fynd, and said he had a Jewish rabbi who wanted it. That waz of cours a blackmail thret and wil be useful in cort. I no nuthin of the legal syd; do the best u can. On the moral syd I want Dunlap to have pozitiv n¬otis either by letr I incloz which mail if u think wyz; if unwyz ryt me proper document so he can’t say he thet the tytl was good and sold it inosentli, and that byer can’t say we ar unjust to him becauz he nu all condisnz and supozd it all ryt. Twys I hav stopt a blackmail thret with this same hous by clozin all discusn and sayin we wud fens it in, and they gave up. Of cours we don’t want a fens; it wud disfigure the Club. A spyt fens iz ugli and we cud justify it only if a Jew bet it so to blackmail us. The public wud justify heroic mezurz…
I send you all the papers about Lilacs. Judge Smith’s daughter, Louise C. Smith, Elizabethtown, for whom Frank Wicks of Tye is lawyer, has the deed to Lilacs from Malvina Mitchell. It looks as if Smith was careless, but you may find some way out. Dunlap threatened to sell the title to the first buyer he could find, and said he had a Jewish rabbi who wanted it. That was of course a blackmail threat and will be useful in court. I know nothing of the legal side; do the best you can. On the moral side I want Dunlap to have positive notice either by letter I enclose which mail if you think wise; if unwise write me proper document so he can’t say he that the title was good and sold it innocently, and that buyer can’t say we are unjust to him because he knew all conditions and supposed it all right. Twice I have stopped a blackmail threat with this same house by closing all discussion and saying we would fence it in, and they gave up. Of course we don’t want a fence; it would disfigure the Club. A spite fence is ugly and we could justify it only if a Jew bid it so to blackmail us. The public would justify heroic measures.
(Emphasis added).
The American Library Association describes its Melvil Dewey Medal as “an annual award consisting of a bronzed medal and a 24k gold framed citation of achievement for recent creative leadership of high order, particularly in those fields in which Melvil Dewey was actively interested: library management, library training, cataloging and classification, and the tools and techniques of librarianship.” In June 2019, the ALA council voted unanimously to remove Dewey’s name from its creative leadership medal because of his history of antisemitism and racism. However, it also made clear that “no one we spoke with is calling for Dewey to be wiped from the history books, nor are they suggesting that his accomplishments be disregarded. Still, more than 20 years after Dewey’s misconduct was laid bare in Irrepressible Reformer, public acknowledgments of his racism and sexism remain rare.”
