CentenniAL

"I think anyone would agree with me that the head of the Public Relations Division and the editor of the Bulletin must be in sympathy with A.L.A. policies if she is rightly to hold that position. I am not in sympathy with A.L.A. policies.... The Association is inert where it should be active, and active where I think it should steadfastly refuse to act."

With those words, Beatrice Sawyer Rossell resigned as editor of the ALA Bulletin.

Her letter to the Executive Board, published in the September 1, 1940, issue (p. 477–478), cited only one issue that induced her to resign: the board's stance on the impending war.

"Compulsory military training in peace time will rob millions of these young people of their freedom and violate both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence," Rossell wrote. "But the A.L.A. Executive Board accepts conscription even before it has been passed by Congress, and urges libraries, both public and college, to help with military training."

Rossell argued that the ALA had failed the nation's youth in peacetime, noting that while the board and Council had passed resolutions on federal aid to improve rural libraries and done some work in the area(at the prompting of the Library Extension Board), they had failed to mobilize libraries to truly address the issue. Conversely, she added, "Now when plans for American defense, in the opinion of some of our people, are chiefly destructive in emphasis, the Executive Board is taking action."

At issue seemed to have been a book list titled Industrial Training for National Defense, published by the ALA and publicized in the September 15 issue (p. 498). Rossell wrote: "The A.L.A. is to prepare reading lists for young people on democracy, not to help them live in accordance with its great traditions, but, like nazi youth, to die for those traditions, when they are called upon to do so."

There's little printed evidence that directly supports Rossell's concerns of an ALA leadership beating the drums for war. Minutes for the four Executive Board meetings prior to her resignation (December 27 and 30, 1939, and May 26 and June 1, 1940), yield but one potentially hawkish act, a letter to FDR explaining that another letter, sent by the Progressive Librarians Council and urging the president to keep the country out of war, was not affiliated with the ALA.

Likewise, the Bulletin published only a few articles on national defense issues in 1940, and those focused on the importance of protecting speech and the need to provide service to military personnel.

On the other hand, it's difficult to doubt Rossell's sincerity in her belief. "My religion, my experience, and my knowledge of history convince me that wrong means never achieve right ends," she wrote. "I did not realize that in the last war. I do realize it now, and I am therefore resigning from the A.L.A. staff rather than have any connection with its program of preparation for war service."

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant

Part of my job with American Libraries is to help compile the list of annual ALA award-winners, published each September. If you've perused the list, you've seen that many of the 200 or so are named in honor of librarians from the Association's early years.

Not surprisingly, these librarians also appear in early years of the Bulletin. Throughout this year, I'd like to review some of them.

My first subject is John Cotton Dana. Today, a Library Administration and Management Association award for public relations bears his name. And certainly, the Bulletin does contain several examples of Dana's work in library promotion, such as coverage of his chairmanship of a committee to produce a library exhibit at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

But it's Dana's fiery final appearances in the Bulletin that initially attracted my attention. His obituary in the September 1929 issue noted that "He was like a gadfly to stodgy conservatism. He was always calling for a reassessment of old traditions and standards in library work."

In his last years, ALA activities were frequent targets. A lengthy letter read to Council at the Midwinter Meeting December 29–31, 1927, and published in the January 1928 issue, expressed his opposition to a number of ALA activities:

• The appointment of a board of examiners of library schools. ("My charge is that they did not use their brains; but dumbly submitted to the dictates of current fashion in attempting to introduce the goose-step into a flourishing private enterprise.");
• The then-new term "Adult Education." ("Our Adult Education Committee has inflated this new name for an activity half a century old, at a cost of $50,000; and has so pleased us with the notion that we are doing something new and grand as to make us forget that we have always been busy at that same thing.");
• ALA Library Extension efforts. ("If intelligent and alert adults in large numbers could be persuaded to read the publications on which the Library Extension Committee has spent about $16,000, the steady growth of libraries would perhaps have been quite notably increased.... We await proof that any access of growth has been due to the expenditure by the A. L. A. in the last four years of a quarter of a million dollars.");
• A survey of members. ("I insisted that its thousands of questions on thousands of questionnaires would bring no results of value; that we already had ample information on our administrative methods; and that, if we had money for a survey, we should spend it not on a survey of a dead past, but on an inquiry into the relation of recent vast economic and educational changes to library methods."); and
• A Curriculum Study, which produced two textbooks "that [the authors'] native talents and forms of experience and education would have impelled and permitted them to write had they never heard of $30,000 worth of questions and answers acquired via a curriculum study."

Council did formally consider Dana's concerns, appointing the "Special Committee to Consider Communication of Mr. John Cotton Dana," which made its report at Annual in 1928 and generally defended the value of the projects that Dana had attacked. A couple of proposals related to Dana's concerns (one to publish full financial statements in the Bulletin; the other to require a report of the estimated cost and detailed description of any policy proposal brought before Council) were introduced, but Council voted both down.

Dana wrote a couple more letters to the Bulletin, which were covered but not published. I get a sense that by that time, receiving a communication from Mr. Dana was not an occasion for celebration at ALA headquarters.

For example, a January 1929 treatment: "Mr. Dana criticized in his usual vigorous manner three activities of the Association.... We are unable to publish the whole letter, and, as it does not lend itself to abstracting, we shall be glad to send a mimeographed copy of it to any member of the Association who cares to write to Headquarters for it." (Emphasis added.)

Earlier Years
Dana was an active member of the association and made numerous appearances in the Bulletin's pages. I don't want to give the impression that all of his work was controversial or confrontational. But he did have his rabble-rousing moments in his earlier years. For example, at the Midwinter meeting January 1-2, 1914, he argued via a letter to Council that "It is a great mistake for a quasi-literary institution of 2,500 members, like our association, to devote a good slice of its income to the preparation and issuance of [Booklist] that would probably be welcomed by the reading public of this country, and then, in effect, to conceal it from that public"; that papers presented at Annual should be directed more towards the public, and that the association should "extract it from the Almighty Library Aggregation of piffle and technique which we must annually produce... and let our friends see it and even dare them to read it"; that Headquarters should move from Chicago to New York City; and that conferences should be held in major cities rather than on "distant prairies and mountain fastnesses."

All of this came after excoriating attendees for feeling the need to meet in person rather than communicating by print. (His exact words: "No, you must feel your own reading limitations; that you are unable to get out of print what the writer of print wishes to convey; that you are all grievously ear-minded, and have never so devoted yourselves to acquiring skill in that use of print, to the promotion of which you devote your lives, that you can understand it clearly when you see it.")

The letter went over poorly.

Councilor F.P. Hill said "The only objection I have to Mr. Dana's letter is that he does not make any plans for building up the structure which he is always so ready to tear down." Henry Legler, chair of the publishing board, reported that he had often heard from Dana about Booklist: "Often before he has wanted to have the Booklist changed; to have the matter changed; the form changed and the character changed, in fact everything about the Booklist changed except perhaps the quality of the paper. In other words that Mr. Dana did not want an A. L. A. Booklist published; what he wants is a library journal for the public."

—Greg Landgraf, Editorial Assistant, American Libraries