Melvil Dewey

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[[File:Melvil_Dewey.jpg|right|165px|thumb|Melvil Dewey, pioneering sexual harassment since the [[Gilded Age]].]]
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{{cquote|For many years women librarians have been the special prey of Mr. Dewey in a series of outrages against decency.|||Tessa Kelso, the head librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, in a letter dated to ''1924''.<ref name="history">{{cws|https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-libraries-was-a-serial-sexual-harasser|The Father of Modern Libraries Was a Serial Sexual Harasser|History}}</ref>}}
'''Melvil Dewey''' {{lived|December 10th, 1851|December 26th, 1931}}<ref>{{cws|https://www.oclc.org/en/dewey/resources/biography.html|Melvil Dewey biography|OCLC}}</ref> was the [[American]] inventor of the {{wpl|Dewey Decimal Classification|Dewey Decimal System}} (DDS). Dewey also revolutionized the public library system. Dewey is almost singlehandedly responsible for feminizing the job of librarian, contrary to the attitudes of the time. This enabled many women to achieve a form of economic independence previously inaccessible to them. However, Dewey was also a notorious sex pest whose conduct was so egregious he was [[cancel culture|cancelled]] for it in 1905! Dewey was also a notorious [[racist]] even by the standards of his day. A club Dewey owned explicitly forbade [[Jewish]], [[Catholic]], and [[African American]] membership in the club in its bylaws, which, because Dewey was a [[New York]]er, got him cancelled, again, for [[antisemitism]] (no one in a position of power gave a shit about the anti-black racism) in 1905. Such "restricted clubs" were common into the 1960s,<ref>[https://www.jta.org/archive/numerous-sport-clubs-in-new-york-are-closed-to-jews-and-negroes Numerous Sport Clubs in New York Are Closed to Jews and Negroes] (July 14, 1959) ''Jewish Telegraphic Agency''.</ref> so his cancellation was more due to the fact that he was a public employee who owned such a club.

==Early life and general oddities==
Starting in his childhood, Dewey took on a deep, almost compulsive, attraction to organization. Dewey promoted efficiency in all walks of life, up to chopping off the two additional letters of his own first name ("''Melville''" becomes "''Melvil''"), and generally removing any extraneous letters that Dewey perceived as getting in the way of proper pronunciation.<ref name="efficient">[https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2020/11/melvil-dewey-efficient-inventive-annoying-racist-sexist/ "Melvil Dewey: Efficient, Inventive, Annoyingly Bigoted"] - ''New York Almanack''. Published Nov. 2020.</ref> He was so committed to spelling reform that, for a time, he even changed the spelling of his last name to "Dui."<ref>[https://daily.jstor.org/melvil-deweys-attempt-at-a-spelling-revolution/ Melvil Dewey’s Attempt at a Spelling Revolution] Wills, Matthew. ''JSTOR Daily'' (15 November 2016).</ref> Dewey claimed that this practice could remove three years off of a student's education.<ref name="efficient"/>

Amusingly, a friend of Dewey once clocked him speaking exactly 180 words per minute during a lecture.<ref name="efficient"/>

==Pioneering sexual harassment==
[[File:1887-1888_class_School_of_Library_Economy_at_Columbia_College.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Dewey's unwitting and unwilling harem, or put more politely: the graduating class of the 1887-1888 School of Library Economy at Columbia University. Dewey is the ugly bastard highlighted in red.]] 
One prominent librarian, a woman named Adelaide Hasse, approached Dewey, seeking support for an ambitious new project of hers. Dewey agreed, ostensibly because he recognized her talent. Hasse had invented a new way to organize government archival systems, but was "disappointed" when a male colleague took the credit.<ref name="history"/> Hasse had since transferred to a position as librarian at the New York Public Library, which came with a "better salary."<ref name="history"/>  

Hasse had then set up a correspondence with Dewey, who suggested they meet privately to discuss Hasse' project. Hasse, encouraged by this, agreed, and so met up with Dewey in {{wpl|Albany, New York||.}} Dewey, however, had no intention of ''actually'' supporting Hasse' project. He instead intended for the meetup with Hasse to be little more than a "weekend-long date." Hasse, incensed by this, fled almost immediately after Dewey took her on a private car trip.<ref name="history"/> We don't know exactly what transpired, but it can be readily inferred that Dewey's conduct was incredibly "offensive": (as Hasse later described it to her colleagues) even by the standards of the time.<ref name="history"/>

Just to place this in proper context, while this story sounds like it could have involved [[Harvey Weinstein]], this took place over a century and a decade before the Weinstein allegations came to light. Dewey's conduct was so intolerable that he got cancelled for it in 1905.<ref name="efficient"/><ref name="history"/> This was during an era when [[sexism]] was openly normalized (women would be "judged harshly" for reporting sexual harassment), but Dewey's conduct was so egregious that many women like Adelaide Hasse felt that they had a strong enough case to present to the public.<ref name="history"/>

Dewey was for decades one of the world's most influential librarians, but was also ''hated'' by the librarian community for his misconduct. [[Ironically]] enough, many women owed their status as librarians to Dewey. Dewey insisted on "admitting women" to the then male-only librarianship program at {{wpl|Columbia University||.}}<ref>[https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/maack/Values.htm "Women's Values, Vision And Culture In The Transformation of American Librarianship, 1890 -- 1920"] - ''Libraries and Reading in Times of Cultural Change''. Written by Mary Miles Maack (1996).</ref><ref name="history"/> 

Dewey was well aware that the system of public libraries he envisioned required cheap labor, and he saw women as the source of that cheap labor. Although Dewey championed female employment in the library sphere, he also thought that harassment came with the territory, and acted accordingly.<ref name="history"/> He was so obsessed that he would require potential employees to get "bust measurements" as part of the application process.<ref name="history"/> Dewey would also insist on "entertaining" female librarians in private, and observers once saw Dewey casually groping two live-in assistants of his, both of whom were women.<ref>{{cws|https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2014/03/24/melvil-dewey-compulsive-innovator/|Melvil Dewey: Compulsive Innovator|American Libraries Magazine}}</ref>

The incident that ended up getting Dewey cancelled was a cruise that Dewey took in [[Alaska]]. The purpose of which was to "unwind" after a "long ALA conference" and ostensibly "plan the future of the newly envisioned American Library Institute."<ref name="history"/> For the women onboard, however, it was no vacation, but more like a slog through [[hell]].<ref name="history"/> Four women would come forward separately accusing Dewey of sexual harassment. The ALA, an organization Dewey co-founded, forced him out in response. Many female librarians, including Hasse, were given the chance to testify, but many refused, perhaps fearing for the careers they had fought so hard to build.<ref name="history"/>

As for Dewey himself, he recognized his behavior was "[[understatement|unconventional]]," but stopped short of outright calling it harassment.<ref name="history"/> It remains unclear as to what Dewey's conduct exactly looked like, and this isn't exactly surprising either considering the social [[more]]s of the time, but we can know for certain that his behavior was especially bad even by the standards of the time. In Dewey's own words, he was characterized as a "a hopeless scamp that no self-respecting librarian [would] dare be in the same county with."<ref name="history"/> 

Fifteen years after Dewey was expelled from the American Library Association, he was subject to another investigation, this time headed by the then head of the Los Angeles Public Library Tessa Kelso.<ref name="history"/> Kelso would find that Dewey allegedly harassed his own daughter-in-law, prompting her to move out of his house.<ref name="history"/> Dewey, of course, denied the allegations and called Kelso and the other investigators "old maids" who wanted to "[[persecution complex|ruin his career]]."<ref name="history"/> The investigation was eventually dropped.<ref name="history"/>

In 1930, yet more allegations came out. This time Dewey's former stenographer accused him of sexually assaulting her, including forcibly "kissing" her in a black taxi. Dewey dismissed the allegations as "[[bullshit|blackmail]]", but eventually paid $2,147{{efn|The equivalent of $30k in 2017.}} to [[coverup|"hush"]] the allegations.<ref name="history"/>

Like many powerful men of the time, Dewey's history of sexual harassment was treated by biographers as a footnote to his career.<ref name="history"/> Biographers would call Dewey "strange" or "compulsive,"<ref>[http://www.ibiblio.org/msmckoy/summer2004/dewey.pdf "If you knew Dewey..."] by Sarah Prescott (2004).</ref> but never actually prioritize his history of sexual harassment, instead focusing on his contributions to the library system.<ref name="history"/>

Dewey made the system of female librarianship possible, but we will probably never know just how many women's careers he ended or hindered in his "quest for sexual power." It is important to keep this in mind when remembering this man's life and deed.<ref name="history"/>

==Classism==
{{main|Classism}}
Dewey was a [[Social class|classist]]. He believed that libraries should only stock what he thought of as "quality literature." This meant literature that [[indoctrination|taught]] people to be "good and obedient [[Christian]]s", like the [[Bible]].<ref name="bookriot1">{{cws|https://bookriot.com/life-of-melvil-dewey/|Classism, Sexual Misconduct, and Racism... The Life of Melvil Dewey|Book Riot}}</ref> His recommended content for the masses included [[morality]] tales and "intellectually gentle personal guidance." Works of [[humor]] and entertainment would not "improve" the moral "quality" of the people and so Dewey recommended they be removed from collections. To quote Book Riot:

{{quotebox|Entertainment might poke fun at authority. Worse still, politically subversive material might make people want something better out of life than a 12-hour shift in a coal mine every day.<ref name="bookriot1"/>}}

Fortunately Dewey's classist beliefs did not make it into general academia, as "once trained librarians cycled out of his Albany-based School of Library Economy, they went right ahead and started stocking fiction."<ref name="bookriot1"/>

==Racism==
===Inherent to the system===
[[File:Porter.webp|200px|right|thumb|Dorothy Porter, the woman who helped to decolonize Howard University's archival system.]]
[[File:1885_Decimal_LibraryBureau.png|200px|right|thumb|Second edition of the Dewey decimal system.]]
{{cquote|…religions Dewey associated with people of color ended up with way less space than the “real” faith.|||Anna Gooding-Call<ref name="bookriot2">{{cws|https://bookriot.com/racism-in-the-dewey-decimal-system/|Racism in the Dewey Decimal System|Book Riot}}</ref>}}
Racism can unfortunately be found in the DDS itself. The way this manifests is through how the DDS categorizes subjects, and how it places importance ''on'' those subjects. It is important to remember the reasons Dewey wanted a public library system. He was most definitely ''not'' an [[altruist]]. He believed the [[poor]] should be "content with non-[[union]]ized factory work," and that [[Christianity]] was the "only [[No True Scotsman|real]] [[religion]]." As for people of color, Dewey did not address them at all.<ref name="bookriot2"/>

The extent of Dewey's racism can be seen in how he classifies [[religions]]. Each Dewey heading contains within itself with ten subjects, divided each into sub-topics that "add digits" to the end of each numeral.<ref name="bookriot2"/> Six out of ten major subjects in the 200s deal with Christianity, which to emphasize the point again, Dewey considered the "only real religion."<ref name="bookriot2"/> Three of the remaining subjects deal with topics either "explicitly or implicitly" related to Judeo-Christianity.<ref name="bookriot2"/> All non-Christian religions get the whole of the 290s, one single division, to themselves. [[Islam]], the [[Bahá'í|Bahá'í Faith]], and {{wpl|Bábism}} all share 297. Religions of "[[Indic]] origin," including [[Buddhism]], [[Jainism]], and [[Hinduism]], get 294. Hinduism in particular gets all of 294.5 to itself.<ref name="bookriot2"/>{{efn|How generous of you, Mister Dewey!}} Meanwhile, Germanic mythology gets the entirety of 293 to itself, evidently indicating what the organizers of the DDS considered to be more important a subject.<ref name="bookriot2"/>

299 covers "everything else," and this division is probably the most obvious example of racism in the DDS. To give an example of this, religions of black [[African]] descent get the entire whopping division of 299.6 to themselves. Even more egregiously, the entire rich religious traditions of [[Haiti]] get relegated to, and bear with us here, ''299.6097294''.<ref name="bookriot2"/> The rich religious traditions of Haitian origin get much less space dedicated to them than the [[Germanic mythology]] of [[European]] origin, because someone decided that Haitian religions were less important than religions of [[white]], European origin.<ref name="bookriot2"/>

Now one may think this isn't that big of a problem, but the crux of the issue lies in that gigantic {{wpl|Cutter Expansive Classification|cutter number}} itself.<ref name="bookriot2"/> Anna Gooding-Call puts it bluntly:

{{quotebox|Now think about the last nonfiction library book you borrowed. If you have one handy, grab it. If you happen to be reading in the library, amble on over to those shelves and take a gander at the spines of those books. Do you see any that bear a cutter number longer than four digits?

Of course not! Book spines aren’t that big and catalogers have better things to do than manage seven-digit cutter numbers. What that means is that catalogers boil down long cutters out of necessity. In the case of 299.6097294, our call number for Haitian religions of Black people, it’s likely to end up as 299.609, or even just 299.6. That would lump it in with all faiths with origins associated with Black people, both in and out of Africa, aside from Black Muslims. (They get to go in 297.8, “Islamic Sect and Reform Movements.”)<ref name="bookriot2"/>}}

So it's incredibly insidious that, because book cutters are going to get shortened as a matter of practicality, that books on Haitian religion are going to be much harder to find than books on Germanic mythology.<ref name="bookriot2"/> Local cataloguing conventions will make this worse, as often times books will get organized by authorial name rather than the cutting number. This means that anyone interested in finding a book on Haitian religion will have to slog through the entire shelf of non-Haitian religions of black African origin "alphabetically by author."<ref name="bookriot2"/>

The ethnicity and nationality category (305.8) isn't immune to this either, as the {{wpl|Germanic peoples}} get a nice, clean cutter of 305.82, whereas 305.895 covers everyone of East and Southeast [[Asian]] origin.<ref name="bookriot2"/> The [[Greeks]] get 305.88 to themselves.<ref name="bookriot2"/> It doesn't take a genius to realize the problems with shoving two billion people with incredibly diverse [[languages]], [[culture]]s, [[religions]], and "collective priorities" into what Gooding-Call sardonically calls the "cataloguing equivalent of a studio apartment" while singular European ethnic groups get the cataloguing equivalent of entire continents unto themselves.<ref name="bookriot2"/>

Now while advances in [[computer]] technology have to some extent helped to mitigate this issue, it is not a complete fix. After all, not everyone has access to computer search engines where they can easily search for whatever book they want without having to slog through the DDS.<ref name="bookriot2"/> There have been attempts to {{wpl|Decolonization|"decolonize"}} the library catalogue system, with one scholar in particular, Dorothy Porter, placing the names and works of black scholars alongside white scholars,<ref name="porter">{{cws|https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/remembering-howard-university-librarian-who-decolonized-way-books-were-catalogued-180970890/|Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued|Smithsonian Magazine}}</ref>{{efn|Porter specifically organized works by genre and topic rather than by the Dewey system.<ref name="porter"/>}} but no particular system has been widely adopted to replace the DDS, so the systemic problems built into the DDS remain.<ref name="bookriot2"/>

===Antisemitism===
[[File:Lake_Placid.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Lake 
Flaccid
 Placid, home of the Lake Placid Club.]]
Dewey was the owner of the Lake Placid Club, and he helped to write the policies banning Jewish, [[Catholic]] and African-American membership.<ref name="efficient"/><ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1905/02/15/archives/state-librarian-dewey-the-real-issue-involved-in-the-demand-for-his.html State Librarian Dewey: The Real Issue Involved in the Demand for His Removal.] (Feb 15, 1905) ''The New York Times''.</ref> Dewey was so virulently antisemitic that he went as far as to buy land adjacent to the Club to prevent Jews from so much as ''looking'' at it.<ref name="efficient"/> One can imagine Dewey broke out in hives whenever a Jewish person entered a ten mile radius of his club's location.

Dewey's exclusionist policies went so far as to refuse to hire minority workers. Even other Club members were discomforted by the egregiousness of Dewey's racism, although that did not stop them from joining the Club.<ref name="bookriot1"/> Apparently Dewey had stupidly left the antisemitic rulebook that he and his wife had written out, available for others to read (since this was a "librarian shindig" people were going to read it). The person who read it was a friend of {{wpl|Henry Leipziger||,}} a Jewish member of the New York Library Association's circulation committee.<ref name="bookriot1"/> Together Leipziger and his friend read the rulebook that ''explicitly'' forbade Jewish membership. Leipziger had tried for years to join the Lake Placid Club, to no avail. Now he knew why.<ref name="bookriot1"/>

Leipziger did the "opposite" of shutting up about Dewey's racism, and went public. Leipziger specifically felt that, as Dewey was the "state librarian" of New York, that Jewish [[tax]]-dollars were being wasted on an unashamed antisemite.<ref name="bookriot1"/> Leipziger hired a lawyer to boot Dewey from his job, but because of Dewey's prominence he managed to keep his employment following a brutal review, albeit only through the "skin of his teeth." Following public outrage, however, Dewey lost his state employment.<ref name="bookriot1"/>

No one bothered to comment about Dewey's racism against [[Native Americans]], black people, [[Hispanic]]s, or [[Asians]]. These people were not "woke" by any measure of the term. Dewey managed to be such a racist [[asshole]] that even the racist assholes surrounding him were disgusted.<ref name="bookriot1"/>{{efn|That's quite the accomplishment there, Mel. One can really see how this man became so celebrated, breaking so many glass-ceilings like that. Truly [[inspiration porn|inspirational]].}}

==See also==
*[[Jeffrey Epstein]], a prominent sexual predator much like ol' Mel here
*[[Harvey Weinstein]], ditto
*[[James Buchanan]], another guy who was so racist even the racists in his day hated him

==Notes==
{{notelist|2|80%}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dewey, Melvil}}
[[Category:Antisemites]]
[[Category:Anti-Catholicism]]
[[Category:Christians]]
[[Category:New York]]
[[Category:Racists]]
[[Category:Rape]]
[[Category:Sexists]]

Categories: Antisemites, Anti-Catholicism, Christians, New York, Racists, Rape, Sexists