The Man Who Pioneered Libraries and Sexual Harassment

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right, all right, Sophie, is that do we need
to do anything else? All right? Well, this is Behind
the Bastards podcast about the worst people in all of history.
This is our first recording session of what years. To Jamie,

(00:26):
how was the New Year treating you? I mean, it's
it's already been a roller coaster, the ups, the downs.
I wish I was kidding. We just talked about it
off my talk about wild catch up session, and I
guess we're just going to have to let the listeners
fill in the blanks for themselves. Yeah, this is Behind
the Bastards. This is Behind the Bastards. I just I

(00:49):
just I missed you guys. So your brain, Jamie, is
like a library of of different screenwriters. Je. Speaking of that,
how do you feel about libraries? Understand the gift I
say yesterday your librries big fan of libraries. I like libraries.
I used to have. I used to scare my little

(01:09):
brother with. Okay, this is the reason my little brother
is not very well read. Sorry for calling him out.
But when I I loved libraries when I was a kid.
And then I told me I made up a weird
lie that I'm very proud of because I was very
young when I made it up. I told my brother. Yeah,
I told me a little brother that there's one book
in every library and you don't know what book it is,

(01:30):
but if you pull it off the shelf, the whole
library blows up. Oh good, that's a good one. And
then he didn't go to the library and didn't read books. Yeah,
that's that's a good one that I was very proud,
very ambitious. My favorite lie I've told a loved one
is I convinced someone I cared about very much that
the band Hanson had died in a terrible bus crash.

(01:53):
And then like a year later, at a party, somebody
brought up Hanson or I think that's one of their
songs started playing and the person I had told this
lie to was like, Oh, it's so sad that they
died in that bus crash. And it was the funniest
moment the world. To me, that is an incredible live
because it is believable. Yeah, because where did hands go? Right? Yeah? Right?

(02:15):
I kind of fella, Wow, I would believe that. I
think that there would have been And then I because
I know better because I keep up with hands, and
I'd be like, that's not true, but most people would
believe that most people would be the only way to
really make yourself immune from those kind of lies to
spend a lot of time at the library. Now, Jamie, Yeah,

(02:35):
have you ever heard of Melville Dewey? Is that of
the Dewey decibel system? Ye, yep, I've heard of nothing
about him. He's a tremendous piece of shit. Um. This
episode is titled Melville Dewey Library asshole, um, and it's
about Melville Dewey. And this is this is going to
be interesting. This is we're taking a little bit of

(02:57):
a different sort of task when we do. Most of
our episodes are about bad people who do bad things, right,
but sometimes like there are bad people who make broadly
good things, and the opposite is true too, right, Like
you look into the atomic bomb project and a lot
of the dudes who were like responsible for that, We're
basically decent men who were either like the war was

(03:18):
so bad they thought it was you know, necessary, or
they were just overwhelmed by scientific fascination. They weren't like monsters.
They were just like guys who because of you know,
wound up contributing despite the fact that they were basically
decent to something that wound up being terrible. That ship happens,
and the opposite happens. Like people who are shitty can
make good things, I'm sure, like Big Bush's art, George W.

(03:41):
Bush's art, um beautiful artes. Yeah. Um, so this is
a story about a terrible man whose influence was not
entirely but like probably broadly positive. Although we'll talk about
some ways in which the Dewey decimal system reinforces um racism,
which I did not know and I found fascinating. Um.

(04:02):
But he was an extremely influential man and his achievements
were significant parts of the foundation of like the global
library systems. Right, so, like nations around the world that
have national and public libraries, almost all of them, pretty
much all of them owe some sort of a debt
to the way Melville Dewey, not just the Dewey decimal system,
but other kind of library infrastructure. He was one of

(04:24):
the people who helped to come up with I feel
like bookstores as well, like don't don't use it, probably
but definitely influenced. Yeah, there's probably a couple of billion
people who have been alive that could credit some degree
of their education or at least their love of reading
to the work of Melville Dewey. That's like a significant
legacy for anybody. Melville was also a real, real unpleasant motherfucker.

(04:46):
Um So. Melville Louis Cossack Dewey was born on December tenth,
eighteen fifty one, and Adam Center, Upstate New York. At
the time, this was known as the Burned Over District
to the fact that successive waves of evangelical Christian movements
had swept the area repeatedly during the half century before
Melville's birth. The Burned Over District gave us Mormonism, Millerism,

(05:10):
the Oneida Colony a huge influential chunks of the suffrage
and abolitionist movement as well as the Temperance movement. So
it was like, this is a place where a lot
of these like major social movements in the US kind
of repeatedly. If it's not the only place where they start,
it's one of the places where they really get their start.
Um It was also not an easy place to live.

(05:31):
This is not like comfortable country. It's it's a heart
like if you think about like Upstate New York and
like what the weather is like there and how difficult
it can be to subsist in like the winter there.
With modern technology, it's like a rough motherfucking place to
be a human being with modern technology, it fucking sucks.
There's there's there's difficulties. Yeah. Um. One Wilson Library bulletin

(05:55):
right up that I found refers to it as hard
bitten country quote where survival was the ole, and adherence
to the basic codes of industry, frugality, and self reliance
were the guide posts. In other words, Melville was born
to a part of the world where influential people regularly
set out to fundamentally change major aspects of the world
around them. And it was also a place where working

(06:16):
people had thin margins for success or failure, and precision
and efficiency were crucial. So this is kind of what
is molding him as a person. Is this place where like,
not only is this place where people set out to
change everything on a pretty regular basis, um, but also
it's a place where you learn as a kid, you've
got to be ship's got to be on point. You know,
there's not that margins here. You have to you have

(06:38):
to be a high achieving person in order to continue living,
to keep your housewarm, you have to be industrious and
ship on your ship to not die. Right, Okay, that
makes that makes sense then for the region, Yeah, it
really does. Um Melville's parents were bootmakers and bootsellers. Now,
some sources will claim that they were the hardest working

(06:58):
people in town, although it's quite likely this has its
origin in the various hagiographies of Dewey rather than an
objective reality like that. I mean, that just sounds like
an American origin story. Yeah, they were the best, that
they were the hardest workers in the town. And you know,
maybe it's because he said that, and that's just he
was the only person from his town who lived long
enough that people cared about what he said about the best.

(07:20):
I don't know. Well, as we all know, in this era,
the best and the most shoes were coming out of
my hometown, Brockton, Massachusetts, ak shoe city. So it's kind
of hard to say that they were because it sho shoes.
It's Roberto like my assum So, his parents were not

(07:41):
very affectionate or emotionally engaged, and do we inherited from
them a maniacal work ethic and what some might call
a romotic attitude towards productivity. And efficiency. Um right here, Yeah,
he's one of these people who's just like he's like
a machine the way that he works. Um now it
age five, he took it upon himself to take an

(08:02):
inventory of his mother's spice cabinet. He decided that she
was basically a messy motherfucker and like, this isn't efficient
at all. You've done a terrible job of organizing your
spice cabinet, mom, And it's a five year old He
rearranges everything without asking her. This is the first story
you'll hear about what will become a lifelong predilection for
what he called self improvement activities. He's obsessed with organizing things,

(08:23):
making them more efficient. And I wonder if that is
actually true, because that does it just sounds like something
you would make up about the guy who would go
on to invent the Dewey decimal system so he couldn't
stop organizing things. It's like when you find out Chucky
Cheese was an orphan and you're like, yeah, well that's
an interesting Charles Alexander, Charles Entertainment Chess. Yes, he was annoyed,

(08:49):
and then he became a rat who smoked a cigar.
You know, classic American origin story. Yeah, really really evidence
of yes, sorry, do you think he was organizing spy
says or do you think that that's kind of like
a sythology. So I have to think back to our
Jeff Bezos episodes, which kind of start with very similar
stories about him when he's like seven or eight years

(09:11):
old doing this stuff like, um, like grading his teachers
and his his parents and like this very analytical like
and you know, it's the same question I have with Bezos.
I think it's a little more likely that the stories
are real just because you hear them from like they
come from people who were like his adults around him
when he was a kid. Um. But so I don't know,

(09:32):
like maybe do we made them up? But also like
maybe he and Bezos are just kind of similar people
and there's kids who have that kind of mind. Um.
But I think the fact that Dewey and Bezos that
like the there's elements of their childhood of like their
behind their childhood isn't similar because do we grows up
in a very difficult part of the world and Bezos
does not. But they both kind of have this organization

(09:55):
brain where they're they're kind of obsessed with efficiency. Um,
that does sound kind similar to me, and I kind
of am inclined to think that there might be some
truth to the spice cabinet story, just because yeah, there's
there's there's people like that, you know. Um maybe um. Now,
his parents were successful enough that they could afford to
pay him for doing his chores. The first product he

(10:16):
remembered saving up to buy with his money was an
unabridged dictionary, which he had to walk ten miles in
order to purchase. Now, a weird kid, That part of
the story maybe apocryphal, the ten miles part, because Dewey
was obsessed with the number ten, and he may have
retroactively inserted it into his past and later recollections because
he was just like absolutely obsessed with the number ten

(10:37):
um and with like decimals with based to like all
this kind of stuffy fucking loves ten, big, big huge
ten nerd Um. Yeah. As a teenager, Melville extended his
organizational mind to the family business. From a nineteen eighty
one right up in the Wilson Library bulletin quote, he
made a thorough analysis of his father's store, proved its

(10:58):
business of inefficiencies, and made arrangements for the transfer of
its inventory to its competitor down the street. Apparently, Joel
Dewey accepted his son's criticism. He closed the store. So
his dad both made shoes and stole them. And Dewey's like,
this isn't deficient. You should just be making shoes. You're
not good at selling them. Like, let's have a competitor
on the streets sell the shoes, and Folcus entirely on

(11:18):
manufacturing and for whatever whatever else is going on. His
dad is like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. For
some reason, I do believe that over the Sun story,
because I feel like there are some parents that I
don't know. I'd like did My parents were asking me
for a marriage advice way too young, and like they
were just like, do you how do you feel about
how this is? And I'm like, well, I'm six and

(11:39):
I'm not having a good time, you know. Yeah, yeah,
I mean my parents asked me if they should cash
their four one case out to buy beanie babies, and
I said absolutely. He said yes, this bubble never gonna burst, baby,
And that's why you're the world's most famous economists. That's
why I got them putting all their money into n
F t s now, you know, stop it. So high

(12:00):
school is when Dewey grew first grew obsessed with the
number ten um, and it was he learned about So
he's in high school and he learns about the metric
system and he's just like, oh, this is so much
better than the way that we count things in America.
I fucking love the metric system. Um. The thing that
was particularly striking to him was that his birthday was
December one, which was exactly fifty two years after the

(12:21):
French Assembly adopted the meter bar as a standard unit
of measurement. I don't know why he found that meaningful,
but he found that intensely meaningful. Whatever, go figure out how, Like,
I don't know, I mean, that's an important moment in
the development of the metric system, like deciding what a
meter is. Like that that is meaningful. I feel like

(12:42):
that's like his version of astrology. Though some people have
moments with astrology where they're like, yes, this means this,
means this means this and and this is just like
his weirdo version of that. Yeah, he just he fucking
loves the metric system. He loves decimate ship, he loves
the number ten he's just that's he's a it's a
thing for him. Uh, that's his father's son. Holy ghost. Yeah,

(13:02):
it's fine. Um. When he was sixteen, Melville started attending
the Hungerford Collegiate Institute, which is a college prep school. Now,
this is a period kind of the mid to late
eighteen hundreds. This is when college starts to become vastly
more common. Right, for a long time, it had just
a bit like you had if you were very rich
and powerful, if you were in the aristocracy, you would
go to college and like a man obviously, Um, the

(13:25):
eighteen hundreds is when that starts to change and college
become something that like the middle class and like people
who are rich but not of the aristocracy can reasonably
expect to experience. The number of colleges a second week.
We extorted every class for this semi useful thing. I
don't know if they're even extorting because right like it
is I think more reasonably. I don't know how it

(13:45):
is at this point. I know when my parents went
to college, it was the kind of thing you could
accidentally pay for if you had a decent job bart it.
My parents went to school. Yeah, the number I think
it is. I don't think it's quite I think it
is still pretty ex at that point. Obviously there's not
as many colleges. The number of colleges actually doubles in
the first half of the eighteen hundreds, um And so

(14:08):
by the time Melville starts prep school, it's become much
more common to go to college, but it was still
not the norm for teen boys to prepare for higher learning.
In fact, the fact that he goes to high school
means that he's gotten more in education than most kids
probably could expect to get in the United States. My
fucking grandfather never made it past the fourth grade because
the Great Depression happened right like that wasn't abnormal in

(14:28):
that period. Um. So the fact the fact that he
makes it to this is both the mark of the
fact that his family has some money. They're certainly not rich,
but like they're comfortable enough that they can afford the sacrifice.
And also he's obviously brilliant. You do not, in this
period of time just for bragging rights put your kid
in this kind of program. You do it if they're like, well,

(14:49):
this this kid has a mind that everyone around us
has noted, and we have to get him into a college.
This kid's doing ship with spices since he was spic
get in a program. Yeah. So during his first year
of prep school there's a terrible fire in the building,
and do he risks his life to rescue not other classmates,

(15:09):
but as many armloads of books as he could manage. Um.
And he almost dies doing this. Like that's how dedicated
this kid is to books, which I do find admirable. Honestly,
I wouldn't rescue people first, but I don't know that
I was going to say, I mean, there is an
asterisk but that. But you know, at its core they
may have all gotten out. I didn't hear that anyone
died in the fire. I don't know that he was

(15:30):
running past people who are I'm kicking people to get
we got to get these R. L Stein's out of here.
He was an author the right Yeah absolutely, Um. But yeah,
he inhales enough smokes, saving as much of the library
as he could that he gets bedridden for like six months. Um.
And his doctor actually warns his parents that he's probably
going to die. Obviously he does not. Are you're really

(15:52):
going to be like a great person one day quote
unquote if you don't have a long childhood illness that
is such a common thing. You just got in bed
and be like, Wow, life really is fragile, isn't it,
And then you go on to do the most horrific
ship you can think of. Yeah, I think it, Like,
I think it's worth noting that. Like I think probably
most kids have a near death experience in the in

(16:13):
the midstruments, you know, would I would have such um,
I would have such a failure complex if I had
a long childhood illness and then went on to be
a regular person, because it just seems like you have
to be like Proust after that. I don't. Yeah, that's
the only way. That's why we have so many proofts.
So for do Wey, this experience drives home the almighty
importance of efficiency. He believes that death could come at

(16:35):
any time, which obviously it can um, and you needed
to get as much done as possible before you die.
Before he graduates from high school, do he gives a
speech to his classmates about how wasting time is immoral.
As a graduation present, he buys himself projects No, it's

(16:55):
not um. As a graduation present, he buys himself cuff
links inscribed with the letter are, which meant reformer. Um
so there you go. Okay, I'm gonna teach her that
says I'm going to get a buncho as. I'm like,
because I'm Sam, that's what a what a weird man?
All right, he's he's he's a weird man. Um also like, whatever,

(17:17):
nothing bad yet, Yeah, I'm just I'm just hearing a
weird teenagers on weird He's he's definitely a little bit
of a weird dnager. Right, Yeah, a weird virgin is
on the loose, which does not usually lead to good things.
I will say, oh, read it's gonna get angry at
that one. Jamie cut it out, Chris cut it out,
cut it out it out. I don't want them to

(17:38):
get mad and read it gets angry about Jamie. The
products and services this podcast. They do probably mean. Please
don't yell at me read it. I'm sorry I called
weird virgins. Jamie loves virgins. I know. I don't say
do whatever you want, do whatever, don't do whatever you want,

(18:02):
or don't do whatever you want. Sure, and now I'm
flashing my r cuff links so you know that I'm serious.
There you go, all right, here's some ads. Oh, man,
we are are some products. Those those were some products,

(18:24):
and it might have been a service or service or two.
To be honest, I can't can't can't say it. There's
certain I can't say it wasn't a service or two.
You know that that I certainly wouldn't argue. We've got
a teen on the loose. We got a teen on
the loose. Melville Dewey is out in the motherfucking wild,
and by the wild, I mean Alfred University. UM. That's

(18:44):
where he gets accepted after high school. Before he leaves home,
he changes his name from Melville m E l v
I l l E. You know the way that people
spell Melville to M E l v I l, which
he considered more efficient. No, oh, this goes real far, Jamie. Yeah,

(19:05):
trimmed off the letters. He trimmed off two letters. Do
you have to make it more efficient? You don't need
that last. You can pronounce Melville fine without them. It's synetically,
it still works. It's just wasted time and space. I'm
kind of loving him. It's very funny at this phase
in his life. I feel like we would have been

(19:26):
friends in high school. I feel like I would have
been exhausted by him, but I am exhausted by him
just reading about him. So as a university student, he
continues his old habits. He was offended by the fact
that many of his classmates smoked cigars, which he thought
was financially inefficient, and he calculated that their smoking habits
would cost them each in average of fifteen thousand dollars

(19:47):
over the course of a lifetime. He tried to tell
people this, but I don't think it actually made anyone
stop smoking. Um No, it just got his as beat.
It's where Bezos did kind of the same thing with
his fucking grandma. U right, yeah, yeah, Jesus, it's just this,
like just let people do It's it's the eighteen fucking
what's like sixties? Like life is terrible. Smoke cigars, yeah, top,

(20:12):
and it's gonna suck for most of that m They're
not going to live long enough to get throat cancer.
Come on, they're gonna die because they touched a nail wrong.
So at any rate do we quickly transferred to Amherst College.
Um he was inspired by their physical education program, which
was one of the best in the world. But once

(20:32):
he gets there, he doesn't actually enroll in any sports classes.
The only athletic course he took was horseback riding because
it was more efficient, because it would get him to
class fester, Oh my god, which is like a weird
series of decisions to make. I mean, I I love
a singular goal. This one is gonna you can already

(20:54):
tell the goal of efficiency is gonna is gonna slide
at some point and get very scary, but right now
it's still fun. I would also argue that horseback riding
isn't a sport. Look, there are two sports. One of
them is that that game they play in Afghanistan with
goat heads on horseback where they kill each other sometimes,
and the other is I don't know, hot dog eating.

(21:16):
Hot dog eating. Those are the nothing else is a sport,
and fuck you if you disagree. You know, That's what
I gotta say. So the official stance pe does not
wind up appealing to him in practice. But Amherst had
another boom, another boon for him. It had a kind
of shitty library that didn't have enough employees to keep
it organized. And this is sort of this thing that
you've seen a lot of really successful people where they

(21:37):
find like a system they're interested in and they find
like it's not being it's like they find it neglected.
I think if he'd gone to a college with a
better library, his life might have been totally different. But
the best thing that happens is that Amherst Library kind
of sucks um and it's kind of underfunded because they're
so into PE. So he's able to apply for a
job there and he gets one and immediately sets to

(22:00):
forming the way the library is organized. This is like
a hugely influential part of his life that Amherst hadn't
much time to do it. So he started this as
a teenager. Yeah, I mean I think, yeah, he's got
to be like nineteen or twenty, you know, um when
when he gets into this. And I'm going to read
a quote from that right up in the Wilson Library bulletin,
and that era library books often were housed according to

(22:21):
a numbering system that indicated the floor, aisle, section, and
shelf on which they were stored. Whenever rearrangement was necessary,
all of the books had to be reclassified, perceiving the
amount of time wasted not only in finding books when
they were needed, but in theirs necessary and frequently reclassification.
Dewey was determined to devise a simple, workable, and permanent
classification system. While attending a chapel service at Amherst, he

(22:44):
suddenly conceived of the idea of using a system of
Arabic numerals with decimals for book classification. The scope of
the plan put all printed human knowledge into the tin
classifications of a numerical system ranging from zero zero zero
to nine hundred, and made use of his decimals with
within each group as we're needed to define adequately the
content of the book being classified. I mean, I'm guessing

(23:08):
with the way like Bible versus or number that that
started this, Like that would be my guest as to
why it happens in the chapel. But this is like
it makes sense. You know, he's the guy. It makes
sense based on what we know of his path his childhood,
that like this is the thing he decides to do.
It literally sounds like the culmination of everything he's given
a shit about his entire life. Yeah, yeah, Now. Dewey
was twenty one years old when he invented the Dewey

(23:31):
decimal system. Um. He was very quickly people very immediately recognized, oh,
this is a way better way to have a library
to be organized, and he's given a job was organized before.
Um yeah, I just said that, like it's like the
kind of the previous way. Okay, Yeah. The previous way
was like books, Like books had a numbering system that
like tells you where in the library, in that specific
library they were stored, which meant that like when you

(23:53):
you have to reclassify everything regularly when you change the library,
or like if you get a bunch of new stuff,
and like every library he has a different system, so
you never know where to find things if you go
from one library or the other. It's a totally different system. Um. Okay,
so this it's just like standardized it than anything could
use it. Yeah, standardizes it. It makes it much simpler, um,
and easier for anyone to find books. If you know,

(24:15):
you don't have to know the library. If you know
the system, you can find the books right. Um. And
every people at Amherst like are immediately like, oh, this
is a great idea. Um. So he he's given a job,
he's like promoted and is now like helping to run
the entire library, and he spends the next couple of
years refining his idea until he was ready to patent
it in eighteen seventy six. Dewey's innovation was immediately appreciated,

(24:38):
and his forty page manifesto spread rapidly among institutes of
higher learning, who adopted it one by one. Um, so,
so far, so good, right, Like, he comes up with
a better way to make libraries be organized. Everybody is
pretty much instantly like, well, this is great, and they
I mean, yeah, it's it's we still have, you know,
efficiency manifesto there, but yes, yeah, I'm not saying he

(24:58):
would have been a fun dude at a party, but like,
it's so far pretty reasonable in terms of the work.
It seems like he's doing good. Yeah, nobody has any
qualms with Dewey at this point. Here's the problem though, Um,
and this is a problem with the system he devises.
I don't know how much you want to categorize it
as a moral problem, because a lot of this is
the result of where the culture he's raised in. Where

(25:19):
do moral problems go in the Dewey decimal system. We're
about to talk about that a lot. So no, do
we didn't just see himself as creating a way to
organize knowledge. Um, the system he devised was deeply tied
in with his beliefs about hierarchy. And I'm gonna quote
from the website book Riot here. It's important to remember
the reasons that Dewey wanted public libraries to be a

(25:41):
thing in the first place. He was no altruist. He
believed that people in concepts belonged in certain places in society,
and that in those places they must stay. Poor people,
for example, needed to be content with non unionized factory work.
Christianity was the only real religion. As for non white people,
was there really a need to address them at all? Now?
These are not radical beliefs at the time, um, but

(26:03):
do we status as an innovator allowed him to codify
them into the structure of libraries. And we can see
this today and how the Dewey decimal system treats religions.
Book Riot continues quote. The two hundreds encompass all religion nominally,
although the problems with this premise are obvious. Each Dewey
heading encompasses ten major subjects, dividing each up by sub
topics that add digits to the end of the number.

(26:25):
Six of the ten subjects, and the two hundreds are
explicitly for Christianity related subjects. Three of those remaining are
either explicitly or implicitly Judeo Christian. Finally, at the bottom
of the heap, the two nineties cover other religions. Islam, Bahi,
and bobb is Um all get to share Tweeven Germanic
religions get two nine three. All religions of Indic origins.

(26:47):
In other words, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism get to share
tune ninety four. Hinduism gets all of tune ninety four
point five to itself. How generous tune covers everything else.
And we're going to focus on this a bit because
it's the most glaring example of racism in the Dewey
decimal system. You see where I'm going with this. Religions
do we associated with people of color ended up with

(27:07):
way less space than the real faith? Not convinced, Fine,
there's a section in the two just for black people.
The entire point six subdivision is for religions originating among
Black Africans and people of Black African descent. In fact,
everything about African religion of Haitians in Haiti can be
fit into two ninety nine six point six o nine

(27:29):
seven two nine four according to the dds, because at
some point someone for some reason decided that Haitian religions
originating from black people were not as important as Germanic
religions originating from white ones. Well, it's like we know
who decided that. Correct parts of it where I don't
even think he thought about Haitian religions, right, So, like
he devises the system, aspects of it are kind of

(27:51):
like hotified by other people, but he does kind of
start this trend. This assassinating because it's like we've we've
both walked past this problem a million times and never
considered it. This is like, yeah, the biases are so
so glaring. Wow, Okay, sorry, continue. This is why. And
I've heard it argue that this is less of an
issue now um for a variety of reasons, largely due
to computers in the way that's kind of changed how

(28:12):
how libraries work. But for decades, book catalogers would have
to print or write the actual numbers of the Dewey
numbers on the spine of a book. It was rarely
practical to write a cutter number as long as say
point six o nine seven to nine four. Right, you
just don't have the room, so catalogers would shop that
number down to three or four digits. So a book

(28:32):
about Haitian religion would get sliced down to two dots
six O nine or two nine nine dot six, which
would mean it gets lumped in with all black religions.
Now this is gross, but it also has really practical concerns. Quote.
Once local cataloging conventions reduce it to two nine nine
dot six O nine or two dot six, it's author's

(28:53):
last name will determine where it goes on the shelf.
At that point, it won't be with other books about
Haitian religion, so people who look for it will need
to comb through every book about black non Abrahamic religions
alphabetically by author. Instead of using the system as a
discovery tool, they'll need to know exactly what they're looking for,
right down to the correct spelling of the author's last name. Thus,

(29:14):
do people of color get lost in the Dewey system?
The problem with the two hundreds occurs again and the
three hundreds, where almost everything about people of color can
be classified under three oh five dot eight ethnic and
national groups within this subheading Germanic peoples again get a
relatively clean cutter three oh five dot eight two to
be exact. Meanwhile, three oh five dot eight nine five

(29:34):
covers all East and South Asian people's You can probably
extrapolate the problems with stuff in close to people one
little with literally hundreds of yeah. Yeah, this is truly fascinating.
I mean it's like, if you think about it for
a minute, you're like, oh, of course colonialism and like
all of this person's like deeply held prejudices are naturally

(29:58):
filtering into this system. But it's just not one I've
ever thought about for more than a minute. I guess
it's the kind of thing. It is the kind of
thing when we talk about, like what makes someone a
bastard does His goal was not to exclude people of color.
His goal was not to reinforce racism. He was just
trying to organize books. And he was also a guy

(30:18):
who because like just did not think about this kind
of thing. And it was because he was very much
in the biases of the system. He was not I
believe he was not in this. He was not being
actively racist. It's more a matter of like because of
who he is and the culture he comes from, and
the fact that he's very much bought into that culture.
He doesn't think about any of these things, and his
racism winds up getting in like like winds up being

(30:42):
part of structurally the system that organizes libraries. I mean,
it's like a different kind of insidious because yeah, I
I agree with that. It's like it doesn't sound like
anything at least anything he's not like. This is not
the result of him being hateful. It's a result of
like he just doesn't think about these people, you know.
And yeah, and it's I feel like it's a strong
case for why systems like this. And obviously it's like it's, uh,

(31:06):
we talked about systemic racism. This is like what we're
talking about one of the systems like this. It can't
be just one guy making them, because then it's just
going to reflect the worldview of one guy. Like yeah,
and this is this is and it's I'm kind of
making this. I'm not trying to like we need to
be fair to do it. I'm trying to say, like
this alone, I wouldn't have a behind the bastards on Dewey.

(31:28):
Even though this is a really signal probably some of
the bastards we've done have done have contributed less evil
to the world than this kind of structural racism and
the system, intentionally or not. But there was no, There
was no There needs to be some sort of intent,
some sort of actual evil for me to like really
want to dig into someone in this way, and that's coming.

(31:48):
That is not this part of it, because again this
is more the result of just he's a racist like
everyone else, but not hateful. I will say that I
did read the first paragraph of his Wikipedia page, and
I feel like I have a little sharkutie board of
what's to come, some fun stuff. Jamie, Wow, Wow, Wow,
does the Does that paragraph end? Not like I was expecting.

(32:11):
It's It's quite a tale, the story of Melville Dewey.
So obviously this is when we talk about the harms.
Do we perpetuated? This is the big one, right, and
this is really a really significant harm um. But we
haven't got to the part yet where he is choosing
actively to hurt people. That's a coming. So in eighteen
seventy six, do we left Amherst for Boston. By this point,

(32:32):
his interest and efficiency had expanded to developing an entirely new,
more efficient system of spelling, which he claimed could cut
three years off from the time necessary to educate a child.
He wrote in one paper, and I'm going to I'm
going to read what he's saying first, and then I'm
going to read how it's spelled. Okay, he wrote, just
think of what else you could learn in those years,

(32:55):
and he spelled it J S T think is spelled normally,
of has spelled U V and stead of O F,
which I don't understand how that's more efficient. What is
spelled w A T. Else is spelled E L S.
You is of course spelled with just the letter you
could have spelled C U, D learn and in this

(33:17):
are spelled normally, and then those have spelled th H
O Z years is y R. So like a lot
of it is him like texting basically, I think that's
sound duller. It's really funny. So like the library guy
like spells like a sixteen year old texting in two

(33:37):
thousand four, it's very funny here in a Littlita fashion block.
It's extremely funny, funny. All of his personal letters are
like this. They all read like he's a high school
student when like Hannah Montana is on TV, like it's
very funny what's up Melville here? Um, Actually, that's so,

(34:04):
it's extremely funny. Um, it's extremely funny that, like the
father of libraries, hated spelling with a passion. Um. I
think that's see, that's the kind of edge lord attitude
I can get behind. And you'll notice here again he's
spelled of O f UV, which isn't more efficient. But
that's the reason he hated the original spelling of because

(34:25):
his issue with English isn't just that it's an efficient.
He also doesn't like the way a lot of words
are spelled. He doesn't think it makes any sense that
that's a reasonable argument, though, yeah, I mean sure, yeah.
In eight six he creates a group called the Spelling
Reform Association out of a desire to regularize Americans spell
the line. That's the line right, that's a bit much

(34:46):
the spelling reformer. I mean, it was spelled normally where
I found it. But I'm sure he had his ideas
that there are emojis. Yeah, very funny. He would have
loved emojis. This is so efficient. He would have loved
He's like an entire emotion for Italians. In this quest,

(35:13):
he was less successful. People do not jump on the
spell like Melville Dewey train. At one point, Dewey shortens
his surname to d u I, which he has to
give up I think because his bank won't recognize his
checks um. But it's funny, like, theoretically, if people had
agreed to let him do this, we would we would
all be talking about the d U I decimal system,

(35:33):
which I find funny. That is funny, and it also
is I mean, I feel like again it's like he's
just so wildly ahead of his time in naming conventions
and spelling specifically because he's you're describing like internet talk
and like how he would have been on the internet. Yeah,
he would have been a great SoundCloud rapper for sure.
I think that that's safe to say. Yes, for sure. Yeah,

(35:54):
he and x x X Tentation whatever that guy's name was,
would have been best. No, they wouldn't. He very racist? Um,
so she the story please? Yeah. Melville launches a company
to sell library supplies, including the hanging vertical file. Is
when he moves to Boston. Um, and he innvinced the

(36:16):
hanging vertical file, which is a big part of the
kind of I think. Yeah. Um, in his first year
in the city, he organized a librarian convention that led
directly to the founding of the American Library Association which exists,
which exists to this day. He helps to found the
a l a UM. The convention is where he meets
his wife, Annie Godfrey, who is a librarian from Wells

(36:38):
Wellesley University. Now, the fact that he meets his wife
at a professional convention as a co worker, and then,
like hits On Aaron, marries her was not seen as
problematic at the time. UM, But I did find an
excerpt from a glowing right up in nine of Melville
Dewey that talks about this and has what you might

(36:59):
notice some red flag egs in it. O do we
attended the event, as did Annie Godfrey, the librarian at
Wellesley College. The single purposed business like Mr Dewey did
not surprise those of his acquaintance who recognized him as
a ladies man when he later married this young woman.
Now one, none of the bad stuff about Dewey is
really popularly talked about. He's still kind of louded as

(37:20):
the hero of library world, but as a general rule
not always because to talk about Jeff Bezos met his
wife at work. She insists she was the one who
started things. I've never heard any evidence of him being
creepy to people at work. Bill Gates, on the other hand,
also meets his wife at work. A ton of woman
found him very creepy at work. There is no shortage there,

(37:40):
so just the fact that he meets his wife at
a library convintion not inherently creepy, but spoilers. He's a
creepy sex best Um Yeah, yeah, yeah, he is not
a ladies man. He is a sexual harasser. But but
I do I do hear you? I mean, I think
that ladies man was code for sexual harass, probably fair
to say very recently, maybe the past five years even. Yeah,

(38:04):
now I get ahead of myself a little bit, though,
so do we founds the American Library Journal around the
same time, which he edits and his ideas through this
journal kind of sweep through the field. He continues after
starting the decimal system to have a huge influence on
the because this is the period in which libraries are
really becoming like a thing in public and not just
in the United States, and he is maybe the most

(38:26):
influential person in this period is gen Z. But he's
gonna get canceled. He's boys, he gonna get canceled, Jamie,
what happened? Well, well, we'll get into the way to
the way he gets canceled. It's pretty remarkable. Um So,
pretty soon though, his ideas sweep the field, and in

(38:48):
quick order, his decimal system and his other innovations are standard,
not just nationwide, but all over the world. It starts
to happen in three He gets a job at Columbia
University and he moves his family to New York so
he could own to the Columbia School of Library Economy. Now,
this was probably Dewey's great feminist icon moment because he
encourages women to apply to Columbia to become librarians, even

(39:10):
though women are banned from attending the school That eight night. Yeah,
this nineteen eighty one article, the Wilson Library Bolton article,
which is very positive towards him. UM notes Dewey was
firmly convinced that women were destined to become librarians, and
that his goal was to help them achieve this destiny.
He simply ignored the rules, and he seemed oblivious to
the fact that his endeavor was further frowned upon because

(39:31):
his enrollment questionnaire which obviously had not been screened by
higher authorities, required at information as to the applicants weight, height,
and color of hair and eyes, as well as the
suggestion that a photograph be included, you know, right. I
was like, that's like, oh, he's fighting for women to
be able to have a career. That's oh no, no,
no no. And so god, he's as fastening too, because

(39:54):
it's like, I mean, it's just it just takes one
pervert to change an industry, doesn't it, Because you do
like associate I feel like almost, I mean, I oh,
I at least associate librarian as a traditionally feminine job,
a highly skilled job and requires a lot of training
and degrees. And it's because he was horny. It's because

(40:17):
he's horny. One could argue it's broadly speaking positive that
he's this horny weirdo and thus does this likery for
good represented. I wouldn't say he's I would say that accidentally,
the outcome of this is more positive than negative. And

(40:37):
this is stating the obvious. But systemically, someone shouldn't have
some weird guys shouldn't have to get horny for women
to get a college, and of course not of course not,
but I see what you're saying. Yeah, And when he's
asked to explain why he requires photographs for applicants to
the library program, his explanation is, you cannot polish a pumpkin.

(40:57):
Can you unpack that for me? Yeah, if they're ugly,
he doesn't want to. That's means uh. There. That reminds
me of when I was working on a Cathy podcast.
There there was like this whole and this is like
talk from like the seventies and eighties, like this whatever,
This attitude existed until very recently of like secretaries, also

(41:18):
like front facing skilled jobs that are underpaid and traditionally
by women, and like, yeah, this whole concept of like
you have to have a front desk, look like you
have to, like you looking good makes the whole business
more appealing, even though it's like, well, you're just you're
doing a skilled job. You shouldn't have to also worry
about making some weird guy horny and dealing. But it

(41:41):
sounds like that's going to be a big problem, right, Yeah,
nobody nobody asks me to look nice to do my job.
I do, but you ignore it. I definitely do. I
keep sending you emails. I should be fired. I'm like
rumbling piece of ship most days. So the fact that
Melville do we decided that women were destined to be

(42:01):
librarians had a number of reverberating positive impacts for generations.
The field was a way for independent women to find
work in a way to support themselves independent of a
father or a husband. The career field provided opportunities for
single women and mothers, like a lot of I think
a lot of women who are like, um, not straight
are able to find ways to be more independent because
this is a career path that are open to them.

(42:23):
And to this day, about seventy of librarians or women
like right, it's very positive that there is a professional,
reasonably well paid way job that is seen as like
a job a woman can get. That. Isn't that like
that's good in this time higher education? Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah.

(42:44):
And he does get fired from Columbia for accepting women
because that's not their policy. Um, Like, so he's horny,
he got fired. He was so horny he got fired
for equality. Um and he's also like a suffrage advocate
later in life. Like that's not he's not I know,
I know he's not. Again, he's not all horny, but
he's largely horny. Um, and he was. He was definitely

(43:05):
not a believer in basic mental equality between men and women. Um.
In an eighteen eighties six speech titled librarian ship as
a profession for college bred women and we'll talk about
that term in a second, do we noted that while
women who had been bred well enough to get a
college education, we're intelligence there could be librarians. They were
not reliable employees. He warned that they were likelier to

(43:27):
get sick or to quit the job to pursue a
home life. This wasn't a reason not to hire them,
he argued, but it was reason to pay them less
than men for the same work. He added that men
deserved more money because they were better able to quote
lift a heavy, heavy calace or climate ladder. There were
many uses for which a stout corduroy is really worth
more than the finest soak. Oh and also always says

(43:49):
his like bigoted statement in the creepiest way, stout corduroy,
the finest silk corduroy and the finest silk. I'm like, God,
I mean, I'm going to stop calling him a virgin,
but like you know, he's married. I just, yeah, that's gross,
that's cool. It is it is. It is definitely a

(44:12):
way to describe your sexism that seems unique to me.
I'm sure other dudes in the time we're doing it.
It's fascinating. I mean, speaking of Reddit, men on Reddit
are describing genders like that as we speak, there their hands.
I would have killed it. This guy would have killed
it on the internet in all the worst ways. My
question is, my question is how did like, how did

(44:35):
that pay breakdown work? Do you have any information on that,
like how much less were I I don't know someone
specific breakdowns on this, And I don't think he was
advocating in numbers. He was just saying like, of course
you're not going to pay women as much. He was like, well,
obviously women shouldn't be paid equal for equal work, but
that don't because they can't lift She's now. Starting in

(45:02):
the eighteen eighties and continuing for nearly half a century,
do we also engaged in a pattern of behavior against
his female colleagues that his biographer Wayne Wygand described as
quote unwelcome hugging, unwelcome touching, and certainly unwelcome kissing in
a two eighteen interview with the American Libraries magazine, Wygand said,
this was there an element of power in his behavior.

(45:24):
There was, to my knowledge, he never squeezed a woman
who was his equal. It was usually subordinates. And when
Wygan says equal, he's not being sexist. He's talking about
like within the structures of the institutions. Right, So, not
only is he sexually harassing women, but he's only sexually
harassing women who are lower positioned than him in the
organizations that they work in. I mean, and not that

(45:46):
it's like that's obviously not because it's like you shouldn't
sexually harass anyway, but that strategy to women who cannot retaliate,
that makes it more predatory, right, Like, it's more predatory
if you are going if you are thinking about the
position of the women that you are sexually harassing, you know. Yeah,
And I mean, and he's a very like I mean,

(46:06):
just based on what we know about him and how
his brain works, he's a very deliberate and strategic person.
And I think it stands to reason that he would
have thought absolutely, yeah, this is further we don't have,
as you know, the kind of granular detail obviously you
get about a guy like Harvey Weinstein and what he
was doing, because this is happening in the eighteen eighties,
you know, like you just don't have most of these reports.

(46:28):
But the information we do get, I think makes it
clear that he is predatory in his behavior towards It
feels like he feels like you should have his reports
because he writes like he's I am ng people, but
you don't. We do have a lot like it is.
It is a mark of what a sexual harasser he
was that we have quite a bit of detail of
a guy sexually harassing women in the late eighteen hundreds
in earlier. This kind of unusual to year of sexual

(46:52):
harassis with detail from this era specific. And this is
another important thing worth noting, the racism that kind of
gets baked into the Dewey decimal system that's in this
It is not exceptional for his time. The level to
which he sexually harasses women is seen by his peers
as exceptional and unsettling. That in in the in the
late eighteen andreds yeah when they can't vote, yeah, and

(47:16):
and other dudes are being like this guy is really
not this is not okay, Like when their arms around
their wives they forced to marry them, being like maybe
I'd never do that to you, Oh my god. Like
that is the kind of sexual harasser that he is.
Like it is noted at the time as being exceptional. Um.
In nine Yeah, in nineteen oh five, Millville takes a

(47:37):
cruise to Alaska with a number of his colleagues at
the American Library Association. This is after a big convention. Um.
The cruise was meant as a place for them to like,
they had this big convention. Now we're going to kind
of start laying at our plans for next year. Um.
And over the course of a few days, Um, Dewey,
who is I should note six ft tall, which is
very tall for the time, sexually harasses and like physically

(47:57):
goes after four different female a LA members on a
cruise ship. Um. But now I do feel comforted by
the fact that I'm the same high as him, because
I'm looking at a picture of him, So you could
kick his ass. No, not not even an issue, um,
because again, motherfucker didn't lift. Um. So over the course

(48:19):
of the fact that he was a stout corduroy, the
impact of Dewey's sexual harassment is perhaps best illustrated by
the story of Adelaide Hassum, who is to this like
now a very influential fit like helps I think to
a similar extent to do we build the concept of
like how libraries function, what a librarian should do. There's

(48:39):
like books about him. She's like a very influential female librarian. Um, yeah,
I mean librarians, right, Like how much do you hear
about influential librarians? But yeah, but we I think I
think people might want to look into Adelaide hauss if
you're interested in this history. Um. And she when early
on in her career she crossed his pass with Melville,

(49:01):
also in nineteen o five, and I'm going to read
a quote from history dot com about what happens next.
As a young woman, she struggled to be taken seriously
by mostly male executive boards. She created a groundbreaking new
way to classify government documents and was disappointed when a
male colleague claimed the credit. But armed with a new
job at the New York Public Library, a better salary,
and an ambitious new project, she finally felt optimistic about

(49:23):
her career. To pull off her newest plan, she'd need support,
so she approached the leading voice in the field Melville Dewey,
a man whose innovations made him a household name. He
suggested they meet privately about her new project. Encouraged, she
made her way to Albany, New York, only to find
that he had arranged what amounted to a weekend long date.
It's unclear what happened next, but has departed hastily after

(49:44):
being taken for a long drive by Dewey, and later
spoke to colleagues about how offensive his behavior had been.
Now all I think that that's I mean, I know
that that's not specific. Oh god. Yeah. Again, we don't
know exactly what happened, but I found in our article
from American Libraries Magazine that does go into more detail
its sites from a letter do we wrote two hass later,

(50:07):
in which he complained that she had ran away so suddenly,
but also stated, I am very glad that I know
you better. Sometimes I think of you as Shakespeare's Cordelia,
for your voice is hers, sometimes as bru Hilda fair,
blue eyed Saxon. So he does not get the message. No,
this is Oh god, that this is like I mean,

(50:29):
it's it's it's chilling and bad. And also I'm like,
I just I am stuck on, like I am shocked
that records from this era exists of this kind of behavior,
and it it does so closely mirror stories from It's
exactly the same ship. It's exactly the same ship. Like
this is Harvey Weinstein, this is exactly the same ship. Yeah,

(50:51):
it's just like creepy misspelled letters instead of emails. Like
it's just I mean, it's like, you know, this is
all but this is like kind of an interesting example
of like and we have every receipt for some reason,
I mean obviously not although I'm sure there are probably
a couple probably I mean dozens to hundreds of women
who we don't have the stories of that that do

(51:12):
we in some way mistreated, um, But but we know
we have some of Hass's story, um, partly because she
became a very significant figure in her own right and
her biographer noted in it. Oh. I was just I
was want to say that that that always makes a
difference to if she's a person of note, then she'll
always you know, like and that's not a slight against her.
It's just like when when women and or like victims

(51:36):
in general, like if they're not someone that we're talking
about people don't talk about them. Yeah, it's one of
the value. It's one of the ways in which a
woman who has been through that experience, like a positive
to being famous is that you can help make it
clear by your experience how many people who are not
famous have gone through something similar, And that's positive. Um.
Her biographer noted in two thousand eighteen UM that the

(51:58):
way do we refer to her there, with the lurid, romantic,
mythical descriptions, was not at all the normal style for
co ed communication between librarians. He's like, this is not
even men who are probably guilty of a lot of
gross behavior themselves, they don't write to their female colleagues
this way. Like this is weird. This stands out within
I'm a dude, I'm a biographer who reads a lot

(52:18):
of letters from librarians to librarians. I ain't seen anything
else like this, Like this is egregious, this is um.
Adelaide decides, though, not to take any action against him,
and she explains to one colleague in a letter, we
are a professional body, the members of which encountering obnoxious
personal traits and fellow members must content ourselves to employ
those defenses which reason, training and character dictate. So she's like,

(52:43):
we need to defend against this guy, we need to
warn women about him, stop them from but we we
we can't like make a big thing about it, right,
that's I mean, it's like a classic whispered obvious. Yeah,
it's like you can't. It's the system in which it's like, well,
we don't have any faith that anyone in an authoritative
position is going to advocate for us, so we have

(53:04):
to protect ourselves. And just like or, we're gonna or.
And it's like that's especially in this era, that's a
reasonable concern for her of like if I'm speaking up,
I'm gonna lose my job. That's a reasonable concern like
this nine five, you know, yeah, like that makes total sense,
And it's also still so depressing. God God, well there's

(53:26):
actually it's about to get a little less depressing briefly,
because it would be wrong to say that knowledge of
Dewey's improprieties was an open secret, because that would imply
it was secretive in any kind of way, Like it
was well known to everybody that he was this kind
of dude. On one occasion, his son and daughter in
law Godfrey and Marjorie Dewey move out of the family

(53:46):
house because Dewey's own son felt the need to get
his wife away from his father because the sexual advance
as his father was making towards his daughter in law
were so constant and uncomfortable. Like that is the level
of like that's another level, right of like that is yeah, yeah,
that's another level of sex. I mean it's like that

(54:07):
your daughter in law who you live with, and you're
that's yeah, that's that's very very sick. It would be
hard to exaggerate the degree to which this guy is
a creep, like like he's a Weinstein level offender. If
we don't have that amount of detail he's he's has
to be like yeah, I mean, if there's this much
information from so long ago. Yeah, and I think the

(54:28):
fact that he's like sexually harassing his own daughter in
la that also makes the case that like it's compulsive
for him, like he's he's doing it too, like every
chance he gets. Pretty much, I mean there's a degree
I think of calculation, but like, I mean, it just
does seem like any anyone that he thinks he can
get away with this behavior from he will pray on. Yeah. Now,
do We was fairly open about his behavior. He didn't

(54:49):
see it as problematic, and he wasn't sure why anyone
else would either. From American Libraries Magazine quote. In general,
do We himself did not deny his actions, only their impropriety.
I been very unconventional, as men always are who frankly
show and speak of their liking for women, he wrote,
But he insisted it was not his fault if the
targets of his unconventional actions took offense. That's like ladies

(55:12):
man rhetoric. That's something that still mostly exists. Yeah, there's
literally equivalment. That's like they I think women know to
take it as a compliment, like he's yeah, it's like, oh,
oh they can't like if they don't like it, they
can't fucking bang, you know, Like, yeah, that's now. The
times being what they were back then, few of the
of his victims ever said anything publicly about his behavior.

(55:35):
That we have, as much documentation as we do suggest
that again, he was a sex pest on a pretty
staggering scale. Nothing makes this point so well as the
fact that, in nineteen o six, after harassing hass and
then several colleagues on a cruise, the other members of
the A l A united to push Dewey out of
the organization he had helped to found. Wigan notes quote.
In exchange for a quiet departure, he was spared an

(55:56):
ugly and public expose of one of his major flaws.
He was never again a power player in A L
A politics. And this is I think they actually get
I give the A l A five camps. He got
canceled in nineteen o six for sexuals. Do you know
how bad you have to be to be canceled in
nineteen o six for this? Like that is like this

(56:19):
is kind of blowing my mom. It's intense, and it's
one of those things like the people who are not
getting canceled, like we're using canceled facetiously, but like in
nineteen o six, in nine, some ship going on wow,
And it's the kind of thing where two you tell

(56:41):
me that like an organization, a big company or whatever
quietly forces its founder route so that sexual the fact
that he's been sexually harassing and even assaulted women doesn't
become public. That's damning of that organization. That's damning. In
nineteen oh six, you get a lot of credit for
doing that because that's something, you know, like that is
thing and there's a whole lot of nothing going on,

(57:02):
and yeah, it's a difference, is morally, I think different
to quietly forced the founder of your organization out in
nineteen o six for sexual harassment than it is in two.
And I'm sure that there's other examples of it, but
like this is the first. This is the earliest example
I've heard. I have not heard of an earlier one
for sure, like for this specific thing like they get

(57:23):
and I think it's a lot of the people who
are doing this are women because it's it's you know,
the a l a um and this is the most
they could do too, So I don't think this is
an example today. You hear about this, like he gets
a chance to leave quietly, and I think it's kind
of cowardice on part of the organization. I don't feel
that way here, Like I'm sure maybe some of them
feel that way, but I think a lot of it
is just people doing what can be done. You know.

(57:44):
I agree, I think that the implications of this decision
in nineteen o six versus two are very very very different.
I would agree, Yeah, yeah, you know what else the
implications of are different? Oh no, the is it a
product Earth service? Yeah, that's not a great pivot. You know,
they can all be good. Look what do you what
do you want for me? Look? Okay, you're being defensive.

(58:08):
No one's yelling at you. Thank you. I just I
get so angry at the far, so high for yourself,
and then you lash out at people who love you.
Yeah that is what I do, all right? Well, you
know also who does love these acts? That was a

(58:28):
good one. Yeah, ah, we're back, my goodness. You know.
Well that was a that was a brutal segment. That
was rough, right, that's that's a rough one. I'm sure

(58:48):
it's not going to get worse. Yeah. Now. Of course,
the quiet nature of his resignation after decades of lauded
work for the l A meant that for a very
long time there was almost no discussion of his improprieties.
The first biography published after his death, written in nineteen
thirty two, was titled Melville Dewey Seer inspirer Doer, and

(59:09):
it leaves out all of the references to his behavior
except for one sentence. So this is the one sentence.
This is this is the one reference made in the thirties,
Dewey's consciousness of his own strength and freedom from evil
purpose led to a serene indifference in his everyday public
relations with women. What do you read that again? And

(59:32):
a little Dewey's consciousness of his own strength and freedom
from evil purpose led to a serene indifference in his
everyday public relations with women. He knew he was a
good guy, so it was fine for him to sexually
harass them. Like, that's kind of what they're saying. I
think that's exactly what they're saying. Because he knew he
was such a good man, it was okay for him
to treat them this way. Yeah, it's legitimately a fucking

(59:56):
insane sentence. Was evil? What's he's He was so conscious
of his own strength and his freedom from evil purpose
that he was indifferent to how he treated women evil
purpose to serene and difference. Yeah, that does sound like
that's out of its mind, that sentence, That sentence really

(01:00:18):
goes that. I could spend days with that. Yeah, yeah,
there's there's there's books that can be written about what
that sentence is saying. Oh God, yeah, that is gnarly. Okay,
thank you for that. I will note, because this is
the period that it is, I found a whole less
scholarly paper that makes what seems to be a pretty
thorough case that Dewey was not a eugenicist. He wasn't

(01:00:40):
really an opponent of eugenics either. He just didn't seem
to agree with a lot of the arguments being made. Um,
he doesn't seem to have been a eugenicist. And this
is also worth noting. He was not a eugenicist. He
was for sure a racist. And this is where I
get beyond the racism the Dewey decimal system is this
is a guy who grows up in a racist system,
never questions it. So he built some of that racism

(01:01:00):
into this thing he built. Now we're going to talk
about Dewey being aggressively and like exceptionally for the time racist. Um.
And to talk about that, we're going to talk about
the Lake Placid club early you were so I just
wanted to be. So he's at this point because he
invents the Dewey decimal system in his early twenties. Now
he's in his fifties, right, and it's like well into

(01:01:21):
his life. Okay, So this is like a totally different
era of this man. Yeah, this is the early Dreds.
He buys a private club in the Adirondacks. From the beginning,
Jews and black people were forbidden to be members of
the club, which is not unusual for clubs at the time. UM.
The club rules noted, no one shall be received as
a member or guest against whom there is physical, moral, moral, social,

(01:01:42):
or race objection. It is found impracticable to make exceptions
to Jews or others excluded, even when of unusual personal qualifications. UM. Again,
this is not uncommon with like fancy clubs at the time,
but they usually don't write it down. That's what makes
it weird is that he like they just mask yeah, races. Yeah,

(01:02:03):
and do we knew that these rules were offensive enough
that so obviously when he's still with the a l
A UM, and when he's with it, there's a New
York Library Association that he's a member of for a
later period UM, when they have he'll do gatherings for
these organizations that he'll host at the club that he
owns UM, and he'll hide the rule book because he'll
let like there's Jews that he lets in for these

(01:02:26):
library events. You know, so he wants to hide, so
he knows that what he's doing is fucked up, right,
like he hides. Yeah. Now this came to an end
in a rather spectacular fashion in nineteen o three, And
I want to quote now from a write up by
Book Riot. This swanky party happened every year at the
Lake Placid Club. However nineteen o three was special that year.
Do we hadn't hidden the club's rule book? This lead

(01:02:48):
being a librarian shindig. Someone found the thing on a
side table and decided to read it. That person turned
out to be a friend of Henry Leipzigger, a Jewish
member of the n y l A, the New York
Library Association Circulation Committee. Together they read the pamphlet and
discovered the language forbidding racial and ethnic minorities, but especially
and specifically Jews. Coincidentally, Leipziger had been trying to become

(01:03:09):
a member of the Placid Club for years. Now he
knew why his application was on permanent hold. That's right,
Do we hadn't even told him about the no Jews rule?
Jesus Christ. Leipziger did the opposite of shutting up about
Dewey's racist social club. Do He was in the State
Librarian of New York, a publicly funded position. New York
City was a major center of Jewish culture, and Leipziger

(01:03:31):
felt that Jewish tax dollars were going to waste on
an unapologetic anti Semite. He hired lawyer Lewis Marshall, who
lodged a petition with the Board of Regents to get
do We fired. In nineteen oh five. Oh boy, this
is why we don't record on Friday night. Do We
was forced to quit his state library position, even though

(01:03:51):
he mounted a spirited defense by saying he had Jewish friends,
um and again to talk about how racist and said
he gets canceled for sexual harassment and racism in nineteen
o six, like his story took place last spring. As
far as I'm concerned, Yeah, yeah, um and again. You'll

(01:04:12):
you'll also note that this Jewish guy who gets offended
at the Lake Plastic Club, I don't think he's arguing
on behalf of black people. Um. I don't think he's
offended that black people are so like what you know,
it's nineteen o six, right, like everything's terrible, um or
nineteen o five. But um, yeah, so do we quits
the State Library position. This is I think a little

(01:04:33):
after he got kicked out of the a l a
Um and right around the time that this controversy breaks out.
Part of why he has to quit is it comes
out that not only was he not allowing Jewish people
to enter his club, he had bought a bunch of
the land around the Lake uh Placid club so that
Jews couldn't buy it, so there wouldn't even be Jews
who would like look at his club like that. That's again,
he keeps going the extra mile on this ship. You know,

(01:04:55):
this is like yeah, like it's, oh my god, that's
so much anti semitism. And then he's just like going
into regular spaces like this is not a thing that
he's spending a lot of time and money to do this. Yeah,
And again, the thing worth noting is that he is
not getting canceled for his racism against black people, which
is not at all exceptional for the time, and it's

(01:05:15):
kind of gets lost in sort of the everyone's that racist.
He's not getting canceled because he's racist towards Southeast Asians.
He's really race specifically racist towards Jewish people, and in
New York probably wouldn't happen if he lives somewhere else,
But in New York he gets canceled as a result
of that. You know, it's worth it being specifically about
the racism that is considered a problem in this period.

(01:05:36):
You know, she's okay. Yeah, yeah. So his history of
sexual harassment and racism had created his public career by
nineteen o six. But do we continue to run the
Lake Placid Club, which, among other things, was a place
where he could indulge in his language revision fantasies without pushback.
One ninety seven menu listed haddock h A d okay,

(01:05:57):
potted beef pot e D with new in O O
d L S parsley p A R s l I
or mashed m A s h T potato butter b
U t R steamed rice s t e e A
M d R y s lettuce l e t I
S and wise cream. I don't know what y S

(01:06:18):
cream is supposed to be? Is that how he thinks
ice cream? Is that maybe ice cream? I think that
might be ice cream cream cream. See, I think this
is a good This is a good yardstick for like
how I feel about him, Because it was hilarious the
first time, and when he's doing it in the nineties,
I'm not laughing. There's nothing funny. Now, you're just a sad,

(01:06:43):
weird man in Lake Placid making typos on purpose. Do
We hired a stenographer who he described in his unique
spelling way as a dainty little l I T L
flapper and better looking than I expected b E t R.
After he hugged and kissed her in public, she threatened
to file charges and ended up settling with Dewey for

(01:07:05):
two thousand, one forty seven dollars in sixty six cents.
And again like that's not nothing that and also like
it's again, this is egregious enough that he doesn't think
he can win in court despite being a rich dude
against this woman like pro like you know, like people
being sexually harassed, just taking the rich person's money because

(01:07:27):
the justice system is so fucking broken. It's like, go
as far as you can in the justice system and
take all their money where while you're what you can,
you know um. According to Wayne wigand author of Irrepressible Reformer,
a biography of Melville Dewey, Dewey was upset with the
settlement not because he had been reprimanded for anything improper,
but because he worried the stenographer might got might spread

(01:07:50):
rumors that she got two thousand dollars for no work.
Similarly unrepentant after he yeah, I know, right, like what
the fun still efficiency minded even when he is in
court for being a sex pest, Similarly unrepentant after he
was centured by the A L A. Do we insisted
he hadn't done anything wrong. Peer women would understand my ways,

(01:08:10):
he said, I have no comment. He's just like sucks.
It sucks pretty bad. There's there's just like this impulse
in people that I don't understand too um double down
on the worst parts of themselves, to the point where

(01:08:31):
like anything remotely useful that they had done in their
entire lives are rendered upsetting to even think about, Like
what is that element of human nature? It is so
ugly and dark and I'm and I'm upset. Robert, Well,
here's a here's a good thing. He even dies soon
he does. He dies on December of a stroke like clacid.

(01:08:55):
D you please say there's no more information. No, he's
fucking dead as ship now now for decades he is,
as we've talked about a bit, largely lionized and applauded
for his achievements, but in recent years the tide has
begun to turn, not because of new evidence brought up
against the man, but because his behavior started being recognized
by broader culture as problematic. Again. In two thousand nineteen,

(01:09:15):
the American Library Association dropped his name from an award
as the result of his racism and sexual harassment. Sherry Harrington,
part of the task force that drafted the resolution to
do this, explained it wasn't like he's being judged by
twenty first century standards. He was called out repeatedly for
his sexual harassment behavior during his time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh,

(01:09:35):
I'm I that's I mean, that's crumbs. But I'm glad
that it happened. Very good. It does. It does happen.
And it is like when I heard there was a
man who got canceled for sexual harassment in nineteen o six,
I was like, well, we've got to talk about this.
Would have that will have had to have been pretty
fucking bad. Yeah, and it's got to be a tale. Yeah,

(01:09:57):
And it sure was. Wow, Robert, this had I simply
didn't know. I didn't this was all. Was this all
information that you learned about relatively recently. I had known
Dewey was like a sexist asshole, I didn't know most
of it. I certainly did not know that, like the
racism in the Dewey decimal, I had no idea about
any of that, which is probably just right there. I'm

(01:10:19):
sure there's a lot that has I mean, I know
there's a lot that has I'm sure there's more to
be written about the impact that has had, which is
certainly like the most toxic thing he did in terms
of its impact on society. Yeah, it's um, pretty bad,
pretty pretty shitty, dude, Melville Dewey. Wow, I'm not a fan,

(01:10:39):
gonna sorry takeaways. I'm going to go burn down a library,
burned out a library. Um. You know, um, all librarians
are your enemy now, and I think that's clear. Um yeah,
hunt them down in there in their places, um wherever
they hied. You know, if if someone makes a perks
and Recreation joke, I will kill myself, So don't I

(01:11:02):
don't even know. Are there librarians in that show? There's
there's librarians in that show. And that's see and that's
what I love about you. Um there, No, it's fine.
I I do I I do love a library. I
do feel that it's still so wild to me that

(01:11:24):
libraries are so underfunded and also like are the only
place where so many things are able to happen in
a socially acceptable like it's the only socially acceptable place
to get free WiFi or go to the bathroom or read. Like.
The two coolest things our government does is the post
office and libraries. Um that government in general does like yeah,

(01:11:49):
um um. So it sucks that there was a deeply unsettling,
bigoted person who has such a large effect on libraries,
but I'm glad that libraries are grappling with Yeah, it
seems like this is a thing because it is like
a very like the library biz. Like, the people who
are in libraries tend to be well educated and pretty progressive.

(01:12:12):
I think the somewhat progressive as an organism. I'm sure
librarians there are progressive librarians might disagree with aspects of that,
but I think broadly speaking, um, it seems like there
are there are ongoing attempts to address the impact of
these problems. Can I can I plug a quick library
related thing? For sure? Okay, if you're currently and if there,

(01:12:35):
if it's one of the products and services in the episode,
I'm sorry. But if you're currently an audible subscriber, stop
giving your money to Jeff Bezos and there are so
I get all of my audio books from the library
on an app. Absolutely, And so if you are, if
you're not tapped into your local libraries like audiobook system

(01:12:56):
or e book system, stop giving money to billionaires and
start giving money to nobody. It's your right, it's your
into Sharon Stone's biography. Speaking as a guy who's written
multiple books that are in libraries. Every now and then
you get some fucking ship head writer on Twitter who
is like, well, you're you're taking money from me by
like getting my books from a library. If if you

(01:13:18):
find a writer who has that attitude, stop reading their
books and start hitting them with a give him a brick.
You know that's a brick. Free books are dope. Free
books are amazing. Uh and and um make sure that you're, yeah,
you're using your library for all it's work, because that's
why it's there. Yeah, good times and all right, what Dewey, Jamie,

(01:13:42):
you've got any other plug doubles you want? To drop
in the p zone in the zone, in the zone.
Do you guys remember when pozones were a thing? Of
course it was like pizza hut, Right, Joey Chestnut competed
in pozzone competition. Who the fund is Joey Chestnut? You
talk about Joey Chestnut of the time, and I have
no idea who you're talking about. Is that that sounds

(01:14:03):
like a fake guy. Not a fake It's a real
guy guy, Joey Chestnut. Don't like he's not. Although actually
there is a behind the bastards in the hot dog
eating world that I will talk to you about off
Mike because it's fascinating. Oh um, I'll do I'll lead
the episode for Christ's sake. I just wrote twelve words

(01:14:24):
about it. Absolutely. Jamie greenwell, any time you come here
and we'll do a reverse Bastards. That sounds incredible. That
would be really fun. I know way too much. Joey
Chestnut is the the the champion, I mean hot dogs,
but also everything. He's the He's the champion. Okay, that

(01:14:45):
makes sense of the world. His name sounds like a
fake person. It's a real name. Joseph Chestnut of sand Chesnut.
Come on Joseph chessnunt San Jose, California is Indiana. Now
it's I really it. Look he's one po Zone Contests.
There's a whole I would high. Okay. The other thing

(01:15:05):
I'll plug besides library cards is the thirty for thirty
episode about two Kara Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut. It is
one of the most fascinating stories ever told. Or don't
watch it and I will recap it for you on
a future episode of Behind the Bastards because it is
just wild. I think I'm about to learn a lot
about the competitive eating industry, which I have devoted about

(01:15:28):
a third of a second thinking too in my life
up to this point. Um, I would say of my
knowledge of competitive eating comes from that one King of
the Hill episode that's pretty good and that that is
a pretty well informed episode. Um. I will plug. I'll
plug two things I'll plug. Um. I have a solo
podcasts that have come out in the last year, Act Cast,

(01:15:50):
which is about Kathy podcast or the Kathy Comic not
podcast UM and Lolita podcast which is about Lolita and
its cultural impact. And I'll also plug uh TV show
I wrote on last year that just got released on
HBO Max called Teenage Euthanasia. Um, it's a very fun
show about tea. Yeah, it's about a family that owns

(01:16:15):
a funeral home and zombies in Florida. So it's it's
very fun and it's on HBO Max. Finally, it was
really hard to watch for a while, so you can
watch it now. And you can catch my show, Mrs
Joseph Chestnut America USA in l A at the Allegian
Theater on February seventeen at nine o'clock PM. I'm really

(01:16:41):
excited for it. I play Joey chestnuts widow because I
murdered him. So if you live in the l A area,
it's mandatory you have to come watch Jamie's Sweet Ash show. Um,
and uh, that's it. Go you know five a librarian.
Just challenge a librarian to a duel. You know, they

(01:17:03):
have to accept. That's one of the rules about being
a librarian. If you challenge them to a formal duel,
they can't say no. They cannot turn you down. And
it's not you can report them. No. They get to
pick the weapon, so be careful there. Um, but you
they will fight you. Everyone, Katana, I've encountered a Katana
librarian or two. In my day, I've never won. Let's

(01:17:24):
how you lost those fingers? Um? Well, that's the episode
of Behind the Bastards. Go um go with God. Wow, God,
Bless Jesus Christ. Five

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Man Who Pioneered Libraries and Sexual Harassment