Speaker 1: All right, all right, Sophie, is that do we need
Speaker 1: to do anything else? All right? Well, this is Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards podcast about the worst people in all of history.
Speaker 1: This is our first recording session of what years. To Jamie,
Speaker 1: how was the New Year treating you? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's already been a roller coaster, the ups, the downs.
Speaker 1: I wish I was kidding. We just talked about it
Speaker 1: off my talk about wild catch up session, and I
Speaker 1: guess we're just going to have to let the listeners
Speaker 1: fill in the blanks for themselves. Yeah, this is Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards. This is Behind the Bastards. I just I
Speaker 1: just I missed you guys. So your brain, Jamie, is
Speaker 1: like a library of of different screenwriters. Je. Speaking of that,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about libraries? Understand the gift I
Speaker 1: say yesterday your librries big fan of libraries. I like libraries.
Speaker 1: I used to have. I used to scare my little
Speaker 1: brother with. Okay, this is the reason my little brother
Speaker 1: is not very well read. Sorry for calling him out.
Speaker 1: But when I I loved libraries when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: And then I told me I made up a weird
Speaker 1: lie that I'm very proud of because I was very
Speaker 1: young when I made it up. I told my brother. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I told me a little brother that there's one book
Speaker 1: in every library and you don't know what book it is,
Speaker 1: but if you pull it off the shelf, the whole
Speaker 1: library blows up. Oh good, that's a good one. And
Speaker 1: then he didn't go to the library and didn't read books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a good one that I was very proud,
Speaker 1: very ambitious. My favorite lie I've told a loved one
Speaker 1: is I convinced someone I cared about very much that
Speaker 1: the band Hanson had died in a terrible bus crash.
Speaker 1: And then like a year later, at a party, somebody
Speaker 1: brought up Hanson or I think that's one of their
Speaker 1: songs started playing and the person I had told this
Speaker 1: lie to was like, Oh, it's so sad that they
Speaker 1: died in that bus crash. And it was the funniest
Speaker 1: moment the world. To me, that is an incredible live
Speaker 1: because it is believable. Yeah, because where did hands go? Right? Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1: I kind of fella, Wow, I would believe that. I
Speaker 1: think that there would have been And then I because
Speaker 1: I know better because I keep up with hands, and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, that's not true, but most people would
Speaker 1: believe that most people would be the only way to
Speaker 1: really make yourself immune from those kind of lies to
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time at the library. Now, Jamie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of Melville Dewey? Is that of
Speaker 1: the Dewey decibel system? Ye, yep, I've heard of nothing
Speaker 1: about him. He's a tremendous piece of shit. Um. This
Speaker 1: episode is titled Melville Dewey Library asshole, um, and it's
Speaker 1: about Melville Dewey. And this is this is going to
Speaker 1: be interesting. This is we're taking a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different sort of task when we do. Most of
Speaker 1: our episodes are about bad people who do bad things, right,
Speaker 1: but sometimes like there are bad people who make broadly
Speaker 1: good things, and the opposite is true too, right, Like
Speaker 1: you look into the atomic bomb project and a lot
Speaker 1: of the dudes who were like responsible for that, We're
Speaker 1: basically decent men who were either like the war was
Speaker 1: so bad they thought it was you know, necessary, or
Speaker 1: they were just overwhelmed by scientific fascination. They weren't like monsters.
Speaker 1: They were just like guys who because of you know,
Speaker 1: wound up contributing despite the fact that they were basically
Speaker 1: decent to something that wound up being terrible. That ship happens,
Speaker 1: and the opposite happens. Like people who are shitty can
Speaker 1: make good things, I'm sure, like Big Bush's art, George W.
Speaker 1: Bush's art, um beautiful artes. Yeah. Um, so this is
Speaker 1: a story about a terrible man whose influence was not
Speaker 1: entirely but like probably broadly positive. Although we'll talk about
Speaker 1: some ways in which the Dewey decimal system reinforces um racism,
Speaker 1: which I did not know and I found fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: But he was an extremely influential man and his achievements
Speaker 1: were significant parts of the foundation of like the global
Speaker 1: library systems. Right, so, like nations around the world that
Speaker 1: have national and public libraries, almost all of them, pretty
Speaker 1: much all of them owe some sort of a debt
Speaker 1: to the way Melville Dewey, not just the Dewey decimal system,
Speaker 1: but other kind of library infrastructure. He was one of
Speaker 1: the people who helped to come up with I feel
Speaker 1: like bookstores as well, like don't don't use it, probably
Speaker 1: but definitely influenced. Yeah, there's probably a couple of billion
Speaker 1: people who have been alive that could credit some degree
Speaker 1: of their education or at least their love of reading
Speaker 1: to the work of Melville Dewey. That's like a significant
Speaker 1: legacy for anybody. Melville was also a real, real unpleasant motherfucker.
Speaker 1: Um So. Melville Louis Cossack Dewey was born on December tenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, and Adam Center, Upstate New York. At
Speaker 1: the time, this was known as the Burned Over District
Speaker 1: to the fact that successive waves of evangelical Christian movements
Speaker 1: had swept the area repeatedly during the half century before
Speaker 1: Melville's birth. The Burned Over District gave us Mormonism, Millerism,
Speaker 1: the Oneida Colony a huge influential chunks of the suffrage
Speaker 1: and abolitionist movement as well as the Temperance movement. So
Speaker 1: it was like, this is a place where a lot
Speaker 1: of these like major social movements in the US kind
Speaker 1: of repeatedly. If it's not the only place where they start,
Speaker 1: it's one of the places where they really get their start.
Speaker 1: Um It was also not an easy place to live.
Speaker 1: This is not like comfortable country. It's it's a heart
Speaker 1: like if you think about like Upstate New York and
Speaker 1: like what the weather is like there and how difficult
Speaker 1: it can be to subsist in like the winter there.
Speaker 1: With modern technology, it's like a rough motherfucking place to
Speaker 1: be a human being with modern technology, it fucking sucks.
Speaker 1: There's there's there's difficulties. Yeah. Um. One Wilson Library bulletin
Speaker 1: right up that I found refers to it as hard
Speaker 1: bitten country quote where survival was the ole, and adherence
Speaker 1: to the basic codes of industry, frugality, and self reliance
Speaker 1: were the guide posts. In other words, Melville was born
Speaker 1: to a part of the world where influential people regularly
Speaker 1: set out to fundamentally change major aspects of the world
Speaker 1: around them. And it was also a place where working
Speaker 1: people had thin margins for success or failure, and precision
Speaker 1: and efficiency were crucial. So this is kind of what
Speaker 1: is molding him as a person. Is this place where like,
Speaker 1: not only is this place where people set out to
Speaker 1: change everything on a pretty regular basis, um, but also
Speaker 1: it's a place where you learn as a kid, you've
Speaker 1: got to be ship's got to be on point. You know,
Speaker 1: there's not that margins here. You have to you have
Speaker 1: to be a high achieving person in order to continue living,
Speaker 1: to keep your housewarm, you have to be industrious and
Speaker 1: ship on your ship to not die. Right, Okay, that
Speaker 1: makes that makes sense then for the region, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really does. Um Melville's parents were bootmakers and bootsellers. Now,
Speaker 1: some sources will claim that they were the hardest working
Speaker 1: people in town, although it's quite likely this has its
Speaker 1: origin in the various hagiographies of Dewey rather than an
Speaker 1: objective reality like that. I mean, that just sounds like
Speaker 1: an American origin story. Yeah, they were the best, that
Speaker 1: they were the hardest workers in the town. And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's because he said that, and that's just he
Speaker 1: was the only person from his town who lived long
Speaker 1: enough that people cared about what he said about the best.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, as we all know, in this era,
Speaker 1: the best and the most shoes were coming out of
Speaker 1: my hometown, Brockton, Massachusetts, ak shoe city. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to say that they were because it sho shoes.
Speaker 1: It's Roberto like my assum So, his parents were not
Speaker 1: very affectionate or emotionally engaged, and do we inherited from
Speaker 1: them a maniacal work ethic and what some might call
Speaker 1: a romotic attitude towards productivity. And efficiency. Um right here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's one of these people who's just like he's like
Speaker 1: a machine the way that he works. Um now it
Speaker 1: age five, he took it upon himself to take an
Speaker 1: inventory of his mother's spice cabinet. He decided that she
Speaker 1: was basically a messy motherfucker and like, this isn't efficient
Speaker 1: at all. You've done a terrible job of organizing your
Speaker 1: spice cabinet, mom, And it's a five year old He
Speaker 1: rearranges everything without asking her. This is the first story
Speaker 1: you'll hear about what will become a lifelong predilection for
Speaker 1: what he called self improvement activities. He's obsessed with organizing things,
Speaker 1: making them more efficient. And I wonder if that is
Speaker 1: actually true, because that does it just sounds like something
Speaker 1: you would make up about the guy who would go
Speaker 1: on to invent the Dewey decimal system so he couldn't
Speaker 1: stop organizing things. It's like when you find out Chucky
Speaker 1: Cheese was an orphan and you're like, yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: an interesting Charles Alexander, Charles Entertainment Chess. Yes, he was annoyed,
Speaker 1: and then he became a rat who smoked a cigar.
Speaker 1: You know, classic American origin story. Yeah, really really evidence
Speaker 1: of yes, sorry, do you think he was organizing spy
Speaker 1: says or do you think that that's kind of like
Speaker 1: a sythology. So I have to think back to our
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos episodes, which kind of start with very similar
Speaker 1: stories about him when he's like seven or eight years
Speaker 1: old doing this stuff like, um, like grading his teachers
Speaker 1: and his his parents and like this very analytical like
Speaker 1: and you know, it's the same question I have with Bezos.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little more likely that the stories
Speaker 1: are real just because you hear them from like they
Speaker 1: come from people who were like his adults around him
Speaker 1: when he was a kid. Um. But so I don't know,
Speaker 1: like maybe do we made them up? But also like
Speaker 1: maybe he and Bezos are just kind of similar people
Speaker 1: and there's kids who have that kind of mind. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think the fact that Dewey and Bezos that
Speaker 1: like the there's elements of their childhood of like their
Speaker 1: behind their childhood isn't similar because do we grows up
Speaker 1: in a very difficult part of the world and Bezos
Speaker 1: does not. But they both kind of have this organization
Speaker 1: brain where they're they're kind of obsessed with efficiency. Um,
Speaker 1: that does sound kind similar to me, and I kind
Speaker 1: of am inclined to think that there might be some
Speaker 1: truth to the spice cabinet story, just because yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's people like that, you know. Um maybe um. Now,
Speaker 1: his parents were successful enough that they could afford to
Speaker 1: pay him for doing his chores. The first product he
Speaker 1: remembered saving up to buy with his money was an
Speaker 1: unabridged dictionary, which he had to walk ten miles in
Speaker 1: order to purchase. Now, a weird kid, That part of
Speaker 1: the story maybe apocryphal, the ten miles part, because Dewey
Speaker 1: was obsessed with the number ten, and he may have
Speaker 1: retroactively inserted it into his past and later recollections because
Speaker 1: he was just like absolutely obsessed with the number ten
Speaker 1: um and with like decimals with based to like all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuffy fucking loves ten, big, big huge
Speaker 1: ten nerd Um. Yeah. As a teenager, Melville extended his
Speaker 1: organizational mind to the family business. From a nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: one right up in the Wilson Library bulletin quote, he
Speaker 1: made a thorough analysis of his father's store, proved its
Speaker 1: business of inefficiencies, and made arrangements for the transfer of
Speaker 1: its inventory to its competitor down the street. Apparently, Joel
Speaker 1: Dewey accepted his son's criticism. He closed the store. So
Speaker 1: his dad both made shoes and stole them. And Dewey's like,
Speaker 1: this isn't deficient. You should just be making shoes. You're
Speaker 1: not good at selling them. Like, let's have a competitor
Speaker 1: on the streets sell the shoes, and Folcus entirely on
Speaker 1: manufacturing and for whatever whatever else is going on. His
Speaker 1: dad is like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. For
Speaker 1: some reason, I do believe that over the Sun story,
Speaker 1: because I feel like there are some parents that I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'd like did My parents were asking me
Speaker 1: for a marriage advice way too young, and like they
Speaker 1: were just like, do you how do you feel about
Speaker 1: how this is? And I'm like, well, I'm six and
Speaker 1: I'm not having a good time, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean my parents asked me if they should cash
Speaker 1: their four one case out to buy beanie babies, and
Speaker 1: I said absolutely. He said yes, this bubble never gonna burst, baby,
Speaker 1: And that's why you're the world's most famous economists. That's
Speaker 1: why I got them putting all their money into n
Speaker 1: F t s now, you know, stop it. So high
Speaker 1: school is when Dewey grew first grew obsessed with the
Speaker 1: number ten um, and it was he learned about So
Speaker 1: he's in high school and he learns about the metric
Speaker 1: system and he's just like, oh, this is so much
Speaker 1: better than the way that we count things in America.
Speaker 1: I fucking love the metric system. Um. The thing that
Speaker 1: was particularly striking to him was that his birthday was
Speaker 1: December one, which was exactly fifty two years after the
Speaker 1: French Assembly adopted the meter bar as a standard unit
Speaker 1: of measurement. I don't know why he found that meaningful,
Speaker 1: but he found that intensely meaningful. Whatever, go figure out how, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, that's an important moment in
Speaker 1: the development of the metric system, like deciding what a
Speaker 1: meter is. Like that that is meaningful. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's like his version of astrology. Though some people have
Speaker 1: moments with astrology where they're like, yes, this means this,
Speaker 1: means this means this and and this is just like
Speaker 1: his weirdo version of that. Yeah, he just he fucking
Speaker 1: loves the metric system. He loves decimate ship, he loves
Speaker 1: the number ten he's just that's he's a it's a
Speaker 1: thing for him. Uh, that's his father's son. Holy ghost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fine. Um. When he was sixteen, Melville started attending
Speaker 1: the Hungerford Collegiate Institute, which is a college prep school. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a period kind of the mid to late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. This is when college starts to become vastly
Speaker 1: more common. Right, for a long time, it had just
Speaker 1: a bit like you had if you were very rich
Speaker 1: and powerful, if you were in the aristocracy, you would
Speaker 1: go to college and like a man obviously, Um, the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds is when that starts to change and college
Speaker 1: become something that like the middle class and like people
Speaker 1: who are rich but not of the aristocracy can reasonably
Speaker 1: expect to experience. The number of colleges a second week.
Speaker 1: We extorted every class for this semi useful thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they're even extorting because right like it
Speaker 1: is I think more reasonably. I don't know how it
Speaker 1: is at this point. I know when my parents went
Speaker 1: to college, it was the kind of thing you could
Speaker 1: accidentally pay for if you had a decent job bart it.
Speaker 1: My parents went to school. Yeah, the number I think
Speaker 1: it is. I don't think it's quite I think it
Speaker 1: is still pretty ex at that point. Obviously there's not
Speaker 1: as many colleges. The number of colleges actually doubles in
Speaker 1: the first half of the eighteen hundreds, um And so
Speaker 1: by the time Melville starts prep school, it's become much
Speaker 1: more common to go to college, but it was still
Speaker 1: not the norm for teen boys to prepare for higher learning.
Speaker 1: In fact, the fact that he goes to high school
Speaker 1: means that he's gotten more in education than most kids
Speaker 1: probably could expect to get in the United States. My
Speaker 1: fucking grandfather never made it past the fourth grade because
Speaker 1: the Great Depression happened right like that wasn't abnormal in
Speaker 1: that period. Um. So the fact the fact that he
Speaker 1: makes it to this is both the mark of the
Speaker 1: fact that his family has some money. They're certainly not rich,
Speaker 1: but like they're comfortable enough that they can afford the sacrifice.
Speaker 1: And also he's obviously brilliant. You do not, in this
Speaker 1: period of time just for bragging rights put your kid
Speaker 1: in this kind of program. You do it if they're like, well,
Speaker 1: this this kid has a mind that everyone around us
Speaker 1: has noted, and we have to get him into a college.
Speaker 1: This kid's doing ship with spices since he was spic
Speaker 1: get in a program. Yeah. So during his first year
Speaker 1: of prep school there's a terrible fire in the building,
Speaker 1: and do he risks his life to rescue not other classmates,
Speaker 1: but as many armloads of books as he could manage. Um.
Speaker 1: And he almost dies doing this. Like that's how dedicated
Speaker 1: this kid is to books, which I do find admirable. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't rescue people first, but I don't know that
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I mean, there is an
Speaker 1: asterisk but that. But you know, at its core they
Speaker 1: may have all gotten out. I didn't hear that anyone
Speaker 1: died in the fire. I don't know that he was
Speaker 1: running past people who are I'm kicking people to get
Speaker 1: we got to get these R. L Stein's out of here.
Speaker 1: He was an author the right Yeah absolutely, Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he inhales enough smokes, saving as much of the library
Speaker 1: as he could that he gets bedridden for like six months. Um.
Speaker 1: And his doctor actually warns his parents that he's probably
Speaker 1: going to die. Obviously he does not. Are you're really
Speaker 1: going to be like a great person one day quote
Speaker 1: unquote if you don't have a long childhood illness that
Speaker 1: is such a common thing. You just got in bed
Speaker 1: and be like, Wow, life really is fragile, isn't it,
Speaker 1: And then you go on to do the most horrific
Speaker 1: ship you can think of. Yeah, I think it, Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth noting that. Like I think probably
Speaker 1: most kids have a near death experience in the in
Speaker 1: the midstruments, you know, would I would have such um,
Speaker 1: I would have such a failure complex if I had
Speaker 1: a long childhood illness and then went on to be
Speaker 1: a regular person, because it just seems like you have
Speaker 1: to be like Proust after that. I don't. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the only way. That's why we have so many proofts.
Speaker 1: So for do Wey, this experience drives home the almighty
Speaker 1: importance of efficiency. He believes that death could come at
Speaker 1: any time, which obviously it can um, and you needed
Speaker 1: to get as much done as possible before you die.
Speaker 1: Before he graduates from high school, do he gives a
Speaker 1: speech to his classmates about how wasting time is immoral.
Speaker 1: As a graduation present, he buys himself projects No, it's
Speaker 1: not um. As a graduation present, he buys himself cuff
Speaker 1: links inscribed with the letter are, which meant reformer. Um
Speaker 1: so there you go. Okay, I'm gonna teach her that
Speaker 1: says I'm going to get a buncho as. I'm like,
Speaker 1: because I'm Sam, that's what a what a weird man?
Speaker 1: All right, he's he's he's a weird man. Um also like, whatever,
Speaker 1: nothing bad yet, Yeah, I'm just I'm just hearing a
Speaker 1: weird teenagers on weird He's he's definitely a little bit
Speaker 1: of a weird dnager. Right, Yeah, a weird virgin is
Speaker 1: on the loose, which does not usually lead to good things.
Speaker 1: I will say, oh, read it's gonna get angry at
Speaker 1: that one. Jamie cut it out, Chris cut it out,
Speaker 1: cut it out it out. I don't want them to
Speaker 1: get mad and read it gets angry about Jamie. The
Speaker 1: products and services this podcast. They do probably mean. Please
Speaker 1: don't yell at me read it. I'm sorry I called
Speaker 1: weird virgins. Jamie loves virgins. I know. I don't say
Speaker 1: do whatever you want, do whatever, don't do whatever you want,
Speaker 1: or don't do whatever you want. Sure, and now I'm
Speaker 1: flashing my r cuff links so you know that I'm serious.
Speaker 1: There you go, all right, here's some ads. Oh, man,
Speaker 1: we are are some products. Those those were some products,
Speaker 1: and it might have been a service or service or two.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I can't can't can't say it. There's
Speaker 1: certain I can't say it wasn't a service or two.
Speaker 1: You know that that I certainly wouldn't argue. We've got
Speaker 1: a teen on the loose. We got a teen on
Speaker 1: the loose. Melville Dewey is out in the motherfucking wild,
Speaker 1: and by the wild, I mean Alfred University. UM. That's
Speaker 1: where he gets accepted after high school. Before he leaves home,
Speaker 1: he changes his name from Melville m E l v
Speaker 1: I l l E. You know the way that people
Speaker 1: spell Melville to M E l v I l, which
Speaker 1: he considered more efficient. No, oh, this goes real far, Jamie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: trimmed off the letters. He trimmed off two letters. Do
Speaker 1: you have to make it more efficient? You don't need
Speaker 1: that last. You can pronounce Melville fine without them. It's synetically,
Speaker 1: it still works. It's just wasted time and space. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of loving him. It's very funny at this phase
Speaker 1: in his life. I feel like we would have been
Speaker 1: friends in high school. I feel like I would have
Speaker 1: been exhausted by him, but I am exhausted by him
Speaker 1: just reading about him. So as a university student, he
Speaker 1: continues his old habits. He was offended by the fact
Speaker 1: that many of his classmates smoked cigars, which he thought
Speaker 1: was financially inefficient, and he calculated that their smoking habits
Speaker 1: would cost them each in average of fifteen thousand dollars
Speaker 1: over the course of a lifetime. He tried to tell
Speaker 1: people this, but I don't think it actually made anyone
Speaker 1: stop smoking. Um No, it just got his as beat.
Speaker 1: It's where Bezos did kind of the same thing with
Speaker 1: his fucking grandma. U right, yeah, yeah, Jesus, it's just this,
Speaker 1: like just let people do It's it's the eighteen fucking
Speaker 1: what's like sixties? Like life is terrible. Smoke cigars, yeah, top,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna suck for most of that m They're
Speaker 1: not going to live long enough to get throat cancer.
Speaker 1: Come on, they're gonna die because they touched a nail wrong.
Speaker 1: So at any rate do we quickly transferred to Amherst College.
Speaker 1: Um he was inspired by their physical education program, which
Speaker 1: was one of the best in the world. But once
Speaker 1: he gets there, he doesn't actually enroll in any sports classes.
Speaker 1: The only athletic course he took was horseback riding because
Speaker 1: it was more efficient, because it would get him to
Speaker 1: class fester, Oh my god, which is like a weird
Speaker 1: series of decisions to make. I mean, I I love
Speaker 1: a singular goal. This one is gonna you can already
Speaker 1: tell the goal of efficiency is gonna is gonna slide
Speaker 1: at some point and get very scary, but right now
Speaker 1: it's still fun. I would also argue that horseback riding
Speaker 1: isn't a sport. Look, there are two sports. One of
Speaker 1: them is that that game they play in Afghanistan with
Speaker 1: goat heads on horseback where they kill each other sometimes,
Speaker 1: and the other is I don't know, hot dog eating.
Speaker 1: Hot dog eating. Those are the nothing else is a sport,
Speaker 1: and fuck you if you disagree. You know, That's what
Speaker 1: I gotta say. So the official stance pe does not
Speaker 1: wind up appealing to him in practice. But Amherst had
Speaker 1: another boom, another boon for him. It had a kind
Speaker 1: of shitty library that didn't have enough employees to keep
Speaker 1: it organized. And this is sort of this thing that
Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of really successful people where they
Speaker 1: find like a system they're interested in and they find
Speaker 1: like it's not being it's like they find it neglected.
Speaker 1: I think if he'd gone to a college with a
Speaker 1: better library, his life might have been totally different. But
Speaker 1: the best thing that happens is that Amherst Library kind
Speaker 1: of sucks um and it's kind of underfunded because they're
Speaker 1: so into PE. So he's able to apply for a
Speaker 1: job there and he gets one and immediately sets to
Speaker 1: forming the way the library is organized. This is like
Speaker 1: a hugely influential part of his life that Amherst hadn't
Speaker 1: much time to do it. So he started this as
Speaker 1: a teenager. Yeah, I mean I think, yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: to be like nineteen or twenty, you know, um when
Speaker 1: when he gets into this. And I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a quote from that right up in the Wilson Library bulletin,
Speaker 1: and that era library books often were housed according to
Speaker 1: a numbering system that indicated the floor, aisle, section, and
Speaker 1: shelf on which they were stored. Whenever rearrangement was necessary,
Speaker 1: all of the books had to be reclassified, perceiving the
Speaker 1: amount of time wasted not only in finding books when
Speaker 1: they were needed, but in theirs necessary and frequently reclassification.
Speaker 1: Dewey was determined to devise a simple, workable, and permanent
Speaker 1: classification system. While attending a chapel service at Amherst, he
Speaker 1: suddenly conceived of the idea of using a system of
Speaker 1: Arabic numerals with decimals for book classification. The scope of
Speaker 1: the plan put all printed human knowledge into the tin
Speaker 1: classifications of a numerical system ranging from zero zero zero
Speaker 1: to nine hundred, and made use of his decimals with
Speaker 1: within each group as we're needed to define adequately the
Speaker 1: content of the book being classified. I mean, I'm guessing
Speaker 1: with the way like Bible versus or number that that
Speaker 1: started this, Like that would be my guest as to
Speaker 1: why it happens in the chapel. But this is like
Speaker 1: it makes sense. You know, he's the guy. It makes
Speaker 1: sense based on what we know of his path his childhood,
Speaker 1: that like this is the thing he decides to do.
Speaker 1: It literally sounds like the culmination of everything he's given
Speaker 1: a shit about his entire life. Yeah, yeah, Now. Dewey
Speaker 1: was twenty one years old when he invented the Dewey
Speaker 1: decimal system. Um. He was very quickly people very immediately recognized, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a way better way to have a library
Speaker 1: to be organized, and he's given a job was organized before.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I just said that, like it's like the
Speaker 1: kind of the previous way. Okay, Yeah. The previous way
Speaker 1: was like books, Like books had a numbering system that
Speaker 1: like tells you where in the library, in that specific
Speaker 1: library they were stored, which meant that like when you
Speaker 1: you have to reclassify everything regularly when you change the library,
Speaker 1: or like if you get a bunch of new stuff,
Speaker 1: and like every library he has a different system, so
Speaker 1: you never know where to find things if you go
Speaker 1: from one library or the other. It's a totally different system. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this it's just like standardized it than anything could
Speaker 1: use it. Yeah, standardizes it. It makes it much simpler, um,
Speaker 1: and easier for anyone to find books. If you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to know the library. If you know
Speaker 1: the system, you can find the books right. Um. And
Speaker 1: every people at Amherst like are immediately like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a great idea. Um. So he he's given a job,
Speaker 1: he's like promoted and is now like helping to run
Speaker 1: the entire library, and he spends the next couple of
Speaker 1: years refining his idea until he was ready to patent
Speaker 1: it in eighteen seventy six. Dewey's innovation was immediately appreciated,
Speaker 1: and his forty page manifesto spread rapidly among institutes of
Speaker 1: higher learning, who adopted it one by one. Um, so,
Speaker 1: so far, so good, right, Like, he comes up with
Speaker 1: a better way to make libraries be organized. Everybody is
Speaker 1: pretty much instantly like, well, this is great, and they
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's it's we still have, you know,
Speaker 1: efficiency manifesto there, but yes, yeah, I'm not saying he
Speaker 1: would have been a fun dude at a party, but like,
Speaker 1: it's so far pretty reasonable in terms of the work.
Speaker 1: It seems like he's doing good. Yeah, nobody has any
Speaker 1: qualms with Dewey at this point. Here's the problem though, Um,
Speaker 1: and this is a problem with the system he devises.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much you want to categorize it
Speaker 1: as a moral problem, because a lot of this is
Speaker 1: the result of where the culture he's raised in. Where
Speaker 1: do moral problems go in the Dewey decimal system. We're
Speaker 1: about to talk about that a lot. So no, do
Speaker 1: we didn't just see himself as creating a way to
Speaker 1: organize knowledge. Um, the system he devised was deeply tied
Speaker 1: in with his beliefs about hierarchy. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the website book Riot here. It's important to remember
Speaker 1: the reasons that Dewey wanted public libraries to be a
Speaker 1: thing in the first place. He was no altruist. He
Speaker 1: believed that people in concepts belonged in certain places in society,
Speaker 1: and that in those places they must stay. Poor people,
Speaker 1: for example, needed to be content with non unionized factory work.
Speaker 1: Christianity was the only real religion. As for non white people,
Speaker 1: was there really a need to address them at all? Now?
Speaker 1: These are not radical beliefs at the time, um, but
Speaker 1: do we status as an innovator allowed him to codify
Speaker 1: them into the structure of libraries. And we can see
Speaker 1: this today and how the Dewey decimal system treats religions.
Speaker 1: Book Riot continues quote. The two hundreds encompass all religion nominally,
Speaker 1: although the problems with this premise are obvious. Each Dewey
Speaker 1: heading encompasses ten major subjects, dividing each up by sub
Speaker 1: topics that add digits to the end of the number.
Speaker 1: Six of the ten subjects, and the two hundreds are
Speaker 1: explicitly for Christianity related subjects. Three of those remaining are
Speaker 1: either explicitly or implicitly Judeo Christian. Finally, at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the heap, the two nineties cover other religions. Islam, Bahi,
Speaker 1: and bobb is Um all get to share Tweeven Germanic
Speaker 1: religions get two nine three. All religions of Indic origins.
Speaker 1: In other words, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism get to share
Speaker 1: tune ninety four. Hinduism gets all of tune ninety four
Speaker 1: point five to itself. How generous tune covers everything else.
Speaker 1: And we're going to focus on this a bit because
Speaker 1: it's the most glaring example of racism in the Dewey
Speaker 1: decimal system. You see where I'm going with this. Religions
Speaker 1: do we associated with people of color ended up with
Speaker 1: way less space than the real faith? Not convinced, Fine,
Speaker 1: there's a section in the two just for black people.
Speaker 1: The entire point six subdivision is for religions originating among
Speaker 1: Black Africans and people of Black African descent. In fact,
Speaker 1: everything about African religion of Haitians in Haiti can be
Speaker 1: fit into two ninety nine six point six o nine
Speaker 1: seven two nine four according to the dds, because at
Speaker 1: some point someone for some reason decided that Haitian religions
Speaker 1: originating from black people were not as important as Germanic
Speaker 1: religions originating from white ones. Well, it's like we know
Speaker 1: who decided that. Correct parts of it where I don't
Speaker 1: even think he thought about Haitian religions, right, So, like
Speaker 1: he devises the system, aspects of it are kind of
Speaker 1: like hotified by other people, but he does kind of
Speaker 1: start this trend. This assassinating because it's like we've we've
Speaker 1: both walked past this problem a million times and never
Speaker 1: considered it. This is like, yeah, the biases are so
Speaker 1: so glaring. Wow, Okay, sorry, continue. This is why. And
Speaker 1: I've heard it argue that this is less of an
Speaker 1: issue now um for a variety of reasons, largely due
Speaker 1: to computers in the way that's kind of changed how
Speaker 1: how libraries work. But for decades, book catalogers would have
Speaker 1: to print or write the actual numbers of the Dewey
Speaker 1: numbers on the spine of a book. It was rarely
Speaker 1: practical to write a cutter number as long as say
Speaker 1: point six o nine seven to nine four. Right, you
Speaker 1: just don't have the room, so catalogers would shop that
Speaker 1: number down to three or four digits. So a book
Speaker 1: about Haitian religion would get sliced down to two dots
Speaker 1: six O nine or two nine nine dot six, which
Speaker 1: would mean it gets lumped in with all black religions.
Speaker 1: Now this is gross, but it also has really practical concerns. Quote.
Speaker 1: Once local cataloging conventions reduce it to two nine nine
Speaker 1: dot six O nine or two dot six, it's author's
Speaker 1: last name will determine where it goes on the shelf.
Speaker 1: At that point, it won't be with other books about
Speaker 1: Haitian religion, so people who look for it will need
Speaker 1: to comb through every book about black non Abrahamic religions
Speaker 1: alphabetically by author. Instead of using the system as a
Speaker 1: discovery tool, they'll need to know exactly what they're looking for,
Speaker 1: right down to the correct spelling of the author's last name. Thus,
Speaker 1: do people of color get lost in the Dewey system?
Speaker 1: The problem with the two hundreds occurs again and the
Speaker 1: three hundreds, where almost everything about people of color can
Speaker 1: be classified under three oh five dot eight ethnic and
Speaker 1: national groups within this subheading Germanic peoples again get a
Speaker 1: relatively clean cutter three oh five dot eight two to
Speaker 1: be exact. Meanwhile, three oh five dot eight nine five
Speaker 1: covers all East and South Asian people's You can probably
Speaker 1: extrapolate the problems with stuff in close to people one
Speaker 1: little with literally hundreds of yeah. Yeah, this is truly fascinating.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, if you think about it for
Speaker 1: a minute, you're like, oh, of course colonialism and like
Speaker 1: all of this person's like deeply held prejudices are naturally
Speaker 1: filtering into this system. But it's just not one I've
Speaker 1: ever thought about for more than a minute. I guess
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing. It is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing when we talk about, like what makes someone a
Speaker 1: bastard does His goal was not to exclude people of color.
Speaker 1: His goal was not to reinforce racism. He was just
Speaker 1: trying to organize books. And he was also a guy
Speaker 1: who because like just did not think about this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And it was because he was very much
Speaker 1: in the biases of the system. He was not I
Speaker 1: believe he was not in this. He was not being
Speaker 1: actively racist. It's more a matter of like because of
Speaker 1: who he is and the culture he comes from, and
Speaker 1: the fact that he's very much bought into that culture.
Speaker 1: He doesn't think about any of these things, and his
Speaker 1: racism winds up getting in like like winds up being
Speaker 1: part of structurally the system that organizes libraries. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like a different kind of insidious because yeah, I
Speaker 1: I agree with that. It's like it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: anything at least anything he's not like. This is not
Speaker 1: the result of him being hateful. It's a result of
Speaker 1: like he just doesn't think about these people, you know.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and it's I feel like it's a strong
Speaker 1: case for why systems like this. And obviously it's like it's, uh,
Speaker 1: we talked about systemic racism. This is like what we're
Speaker 1: talking about one of the systems like this. It can't
Speaker 1: be just one guy making them, because then it's just
Speaker 1: going to reflect the worldview of one guy. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is and it's I'm kind of
Speaker 1: making this. I'm not trying to like we need to
Speaker 1: be fair to do it. I'm trying to say, like
Speaker 1: this alone, I wouldn't have a behind the bastards on Dewey.
Speaker 1: Even though this is a really signal probably some of
Speaker 1: the bastards we've done have done have contributed less evil
Speaker 1: to the world than this kind of structural racism and
Speaker 1: the system, intentionally or not. But there was no, There
Speaker 1: was no There needs to be some sort of intent,
Speaker 1: some sort of actual evil for me to like really
Speaker 1: want to dig into someone in this way, and that's coming.
Speaker 1: That is not this part of it, because again this
Speaker 1: is more the result of just he's a racist like
Speaker 1: everyone else, but not hateful. I will say that I
Speaker 1: did read the first paragraph of his Wikipedia page, and
Speaker 1: I feel like I have a little sharkutie board of
Speaker 1: what's to come, some fun stuff. Jamie, Wow, Wow, Wow,
Speaker 1: does the Does that paragraph end? Not like I was expecting.
Speaker 1: It's It's quite a tale, the story of Melville Dewey.
Speaker 1: So obviously this is when we talk about the harms.
Speaker 1: Do we perpetuated? This is the big one, right, and
Speaker 1: this is really a really significant harm um. But we
Speaker 1: haven't got to the part yet where he is choosing
Speaker 1: actively to hurt people. That's a coming. So in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, do we left Amherst for Boston. By this point,
Speaker 1: his interest and efficiency had expanded to developing an entirely new,
Speaker 1: more efficient system of spelling, which he claimed could cut
Speaker 1: three years off from the time necessary to educate a child.
Speaker 1: He wrote in one paper, and I'm going to I'm
Speaker 1: going to read what he's saying first, and then I'm
Speaker 1: going to read how it's spelled. Okay, he wrote, just
Speaker 1: think of what else you could learn in those years,
Speaker 1: and he spelled it J S T think is spelled normally,
Speaker 1: of has spelled U V and stead of O F,
Speaker 1: which I don't understand how that's more efficient. What is
Speaker 1: spelled w A T. Else is spelled E L S.
Speaker 1: You is of course spelled with just the letter you
Speaker 1: could have spelled C U, D learn and in this
Speaker 1: are spelled normally, and then those have spelled th H
Speaker 1: O Z years is y R. So like a lot
Speaker 1: of it is him like texting basically, I think that's
Speaker 1: sound duller. It's really funny. So like the library guy
Speaker 1: like spells like a sixteen year old texting in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, it's very funny here in a Littlita fashion block.
Speaker 1: It's extremely funny, funny. All of his personal letters are
Speaker 1: like this. They all read like he's a high school
Speaker 1: student when like Hannah Montana is on TV, like it's
Speaker 1: very funny what's up Melville here? Um, Actually, that's so,
Speaker 1: it's extremely funny. Um, it's extremely funny that, like the
Speaker 1: father of libraries, hated spelling with a passion. Um. I
Speaker 1: think that's see, that's the kind of edge lord attitude
Speaker 1: I can get behind. And you'll notice here again he's
Speaker 1: spelled of O f UV, which isn't more efficient. But
Speaker 1: that's the reason he hated the original spelling of because
Speaker 1: his issue with English isn't just that it's an efficient.
Speaker 1: He also doesn't like the way a lot of words
Speaker 1: are spelled. He doesn't think it makes any sense that
Speaker 1: that's a reasonable argument, though, yeah, I mean sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: In eight six he creates a group called the Spelling
Speaker 1: Reform Association out of a desire to regularize Americans spell
Speaker 1: the line. That's the line right, that's a bit much
Speaker 1: the spelling reformer. I mean, it was spelled normally where
Speaker 1: I found it. But I'm sure he had his ideas
Speaker 1: that there are emojis. Yeah, very funny. He would have
Speaker 1: loved emojis. This is so efficient. He would have loved
Speaker 1: He's like an entire emotion for Italians. In this quest,
Speaker 1: he was less successful. People do not jump on the
Speaker 1: spell like Melville Dewey train. At one point, Dewey shortens
Speaker 1: his surname to d u I, which he has to
Speaker 1: give up I think because his bank won't recognize his
Speaker 1: checks um. But it's funny, like, theoretically, if people had
Speaker 1: agreed to let him do this, we would we would
Speaker 1: all be talking about the d U I decimal system,
Speaker 1: which I find funny. That is funny, and it also
Speaker 1: is I mean, I feel like again it's like he's
Speaker 1: just so wildly ahead of his time in naming conventions
Speaker 1: and spelling specifically because he's you're describing like internet talk
Speaker 1: and like how he would have been on the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he would have been a great SoundCloud rapper for sure.
Speaker 1: I think that that's safe to say. Yes, for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he and x x X Tentation whatever that guy's name was,
Speaker 1: would have been best. No, they wouldn't. He very racist? Um,
Speaker 1: so she the story please? Yeah. Melville launches a company
Speaker 1: to sell library supplies, including the hanging vertical file. Is
Speaker 1: when he moves to Boston. Um, and he innvinced the
Speaker 1: hanging vertical file, which is a big part of the
Speaker 1: kind of I think. Yeah. Um, in his first year
Speaker 1: in the city, he organized a librarian convention that led
Speaker 1: directly to the founding of the American Library Association which exists,
Speaker 1: which exists to this day. He helps to found the
Speaker 1: a l a UM. The convention is where he meets
Speaker 1: his wife, Annie Godfrey, who is a librarian from Wells
Speaker 1: Wellesley University. Now, the fact that he meets his wife
Speaker 1: at a professional convention as a co worker, and then,
Speaker 1: like hits On Aaron, marries her was not seen as
Speaker 1: problematic at the time. UM, But I did find an
Speaker 1: excerpt from a glowing right up in nine of Melville
Speaker 1: Dewey that talks about this and has what you might
Speaker 1: notice some red flag egs in it. O do we
Speaker 1: attended the event, as did Annie Godfrey, the librarian at
Speaker 1: Wellesley College. The single purposed business like Mr Dewey did
Speaker 1: not surprise those of his acquaintance who recognized him as
Speaker 1: a ladies man when he later married this young woman.
Speaker 1: Now one, none of the bad stuff about Dewey is
Speaker 1: really popularly talked about. He's still kind of louded as
Speaker 1: the hero of library world, but as a general rule
Speaker 1: not always because to talk about Jeff Bezos met his
Speaker 1: wife at work. She insists she was the one who
Speaker 1: started things. I've never heard any evidence of him being
Speaker 1: creepy to people at work. Bill Gates, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: also meets his wife at work. A ton of woman
Speaker 1: found him very creepy at work. There is no shortage there,
Speaker 1: so just the fact that he meets his wife at
Speaker 1: a library convintion not inherently creepy, but spoilers. He's a
Speaker 1: creepy sex best Um Yeah, yeah, yeah, he is not
Speaker 1: a ladies man. He is a sexual harasser. But but
Speaker 1: I do I do hear you? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that ladies man was code for sexual harass, probably fair
Speaker 1: to say very recently, maybe the past five years even. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I get ahead of myself a little bit, though,
Speaker 1: so do we founds the American Library Journal around the
Speaker 1: same time, which he edits and his ideas through this
Speaker 1: journal kind of sweep through the field. He continues after
Speaker 1: starting the decimal system to have a huge influence on
Speaker 1: the because this is the period in which libraries are
Speaker 1: really becoming like a thing in public and not just
Speaker 1: in the United States, and he is maybe the most
Speaker 1: influential person in this period is gen Z. But he's
Speaker 1: gonna get canceled. He's boys, he gonna get canceled, Jamie,
Speaker 1: what happened? Well, well, we'll get into the way to
Speaker 1: the way he gets canceled. It's pretty remarkable. Um So,
Speaker 1: pretty soon though, his ideas sweep the field, and in
Speaker 1: quick order, his decimal system and his other innovations are standard,
Speaker 1: not just nationwide, but all over the world. It starts
Speaker 1: to happen in three He gets a job at Columbia
Speaker 1: University and he moves his family to New York so
Speaker 1: he could own to the Columbia School of Library Economy. Now,
Speaker 1: this was probably Dewey's great feminist icon moment because he
Speaker 1: encourages women to apply to Columbia to become librarians, even
Speaker 1: though women are banned from attending the school That eight night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this nineteen eighty one article, the Wilson Library Bolton article,
Speaker 1: which is very positive towards him. UM notes Dewey was
Speaker 1: firmly convinced that women were destined to become librarians, and
Speaker 1: that his goal was to help them achieve this destiny.
Speaker 1: He simply ignored the rules, and he seemed oblivious to
Speaker 1: the fact that his endeavor was further frowned upon because
Speaker 1: his enrollment questionnaire which obviously had not been screened by
Speaker 1: higher authorities, required at information as to the applicants weight, height,
Speaker 1: and color of hair and eyes, as well as the
Speaker 1: suggestion that a photograph be included, you know, right. I
Speaker 1: was like, that's like, oh, he's fighting for women to
Speaker 1: be able to have a career. That's oh no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. And so god, he's as fastening too, because
Speaker 1: it's like, I mean, it's just it just takes one
Speaker 1: pervert to change an industry, doesn't it, Because you do
Speaker 1: like associate I feel like almost, I mean, I oh,
Speaker 1: I at least associate librarian as a traditionally feminine job,
Speaker 1: a highly skilled job and requires a lot of training
Speaker 1: and degrees. And it's because he was horny. It's because
Speaker 1: he's horny. One could argue it's broadly speaking positive that
Speaker 1: he's this horny weirdo and thus does this likery for
Speaker 1: good represented. I wouldn't say he's I would say that accidentally,
Speaker 1: the outcome of this is more positive than negative. And
Speaker 1: this is stating the obvious. But systemically, someone shouldn't have
Speaker 1: some weird guys shouldn't have to get horny for women
Speaker 1: to get a college, and of course not of course not,
Speaker 1: but I see what you're saying. Yeah, And when he's
Speaker 1: asked to explain why he requires photographs for applicants to
Speaker 1: the library program, his explanation is, you cannot polish a pumpkin.
Speaker 1: Can you unpack that for me? Yeah, if they're ugly,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to. That's means uh. There. That reminds
Speaker 1: me of when I was working on a Cathy podcast.
Speaker 1: There there was like this whole and this is like
Speaker 1: talk from like the seventies and eighties, like this whatever,
Speaker 1: This attitude existed until very recently of like secretaries, also
Speaker 1: like front facing skilled jobs that are underpaid and traditionally
Speaker 1: by women, and like, yeah, this whole concept of like
Speaker 1: you have to have a front desk, look like you
Speaker 1: have to, like you looking good makes the whole business
Speaker 1: more appealing, even though it's like, well, you're just you're
Speaker 1: doing a skilled job. You shouldn't have to also worry
Speaker 1: about making some weird guy horny and dealing. But it
Speaker 1: sounds like that's going to be a big problem, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody nobody asks me to look nice to do my job.
Speaker 1: I do, but you ignore it. I definitely do. I
Speaker 1: keep sending you emails. I should be fired. I'm like
Speaker 1: rumbling piece of ship most days. So the fact that
Speaker 1: Melville do we decided that women were destined to be
Speaker 1: librarians had a number of reverberating positive impacts for generations.
Speaker 1: The field was a way for independent women to find
Speaker 1: work in a way to support themselves independent of a
Speaker 1: father or a husband. The career field provided opportunities for
Speaker 1: single women and mothers, like a lot of I think
Speaker 1: a lot of women who are like, um, not straight
Speaker 1: are able to find ways to be more independent because
Speaker 1: this is a career path that are open to them.
Speaker 1: And to this day, about seventy of librarians or women
Speaker 1: like right, it's very positive that there is a professional,
Speaker 1: reasonably well paid way job that is seen as like
Speaker 1: a job a woman can get. That. Isn't that like
Speaker 1: that's good in this time higher education? Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he does get fired from Columbia for accepting women
Speaker 1: because that's not their policy. Um, Like, so he's horny,
Speaker 1: he got fired. He was so horny he got fired
Speaker 1: for equality. Um and he's also like a suffrage advocate
Speaker 1: later in life. Like that's not he's not I know,
Speaker 1: I know he's not. Again, he's not all horny, but
Speaker 1: he's largely horny. Um, and he was. He was definitely
Speaker 1: not a believer in basic mental equality between men and women. Um.
Speaker 1: In an eighteen eighties six speech titled librarian ship as
Speaker 1: a profession for college bred women and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that term in a second, do we noted that while
Speaker 1: women who had been bred well enough to get a
Speaker 1: college education, we're intelligence there could be librarians. They were
Speaker 1: not reliable employees. He warned that they were likelier to
Speaker 1: get sick or to quit the job to pursue a
Speaker 1: home life. This wasn't a reason not to hire them,
Speaker 1: he argued, but it was reason to pay them less
Speaker 1: than men for the same work. He added that men
Speaker 1: deserved more money because they were better able to quote
Speaker 1: lift a heavy, heavy calace or climate ladder. There were
Speaker 1: many uses for which a stout corduroy is really worth
Speaker 1: more than the finest soak. Oh and also always says
Speaker 1: his like bigoted statement in the creepiest way, stout corduroy,
Speaker 1: the finest silk corduroy and the finest silk. I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm going to stop calling him a virgin,
Speaker 1: but like you know, he's married. I just, yeah, that's gross,
Speaker 1: that's cool. It is it is. It is definitely a
Speaker 1: way to describe your sexism that seems unique to me.
Speaker 1: I'm sure other dudes in the time we're doing it.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. I mean, speaking of Reddit, men on Reddit
Speaker 1: are describing genders like that as we speak, there their hands.
Speaker 1: I would have killed it. This guy would have killed
Speaker 1: it on the internet in all the worst ways. My
Speaker 1: question is, my question is how did like, how did
Speaker 1: that pay breakdown work? Do you have any information on that,
Speaker 1: like how much less were I I don't know someone
Speaker 1: specific breakdowns on this, And I don't think he was
Speaker 1: advocating in numbers. He was just saying like, of course
Speaker 1: you're not going to pay women as much. He was like, well,
Speaker 1: obviously women shouldn't be paid equal for equal work, but
Speaker 1: that don't because they can't lift She's now. Starting in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties and continuing for nearly half a century,
Speaker 1: do we also engaged in a pattern of behavior against
Speaker 1: his female colleagues that his biographer Wayne Wygand described as
Speaker 1: quote unwelcome hugging, unwelcome touching, and certainly unwelcome kissing in
Speaker 1: a two eighteen interview with the American Libraries magazine, Wygand said,
Speaker 1: this was there an element of power in his behavior.
Speaker 1: There was, to my knowledge, he never squeezed a woman
Speaker 1: who was his equal. It was usually subordinates. And when
Speaker 1: Wygan says equal, he's not being sexist. He's talking about
Speaker 1: like within the structures of the institutions. Right, So, not
Speaker 1: only is he sexually harassing women, but he's only sexually
Speaker 1: harassing women who are lower positioned than him in the
Speaker 1: organizations that they work in. I mean, and not that
Speaker 1: it's like that's obviously not because it's like you shouldn't
Speaker 1: sexually harass anyway, but that strategy to women who cannot retaliate,
Speaker 1: that makes it more predatory, right, Like, it's more predatory
Speaker 1: if you are going if you are thinking about the
Speaker 1: position of the women that you are sexually harassing, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean, and he's a very like I mean,
Speaker 1: just based on what we know about him and how
Speaker 1: his brain works, he's a very deliberate and strategic person.
Speaker 1: And I think it stands to reason that he would
Speaker 1: have thought absolutely, yeah, this is further we don't have,
Speaker 1: as you know, the kind of granular detail obviously you
Speaker 1: get about a guy like Harvey Weinstein and what he
Speaker 1: was doing, because this is happening in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, like you just don't have most of these reports.
Speaker 1: But the information we do get, I think makes it
Speaker 1: clear that he is predatory in his behavior towards It
Speaker 1: feels like he feels like you should have his reports
Speaker 1: because he writes like he's I am ng people, but
Speaker 1: you don't. We do have a lot like it is.
Speaker 1: It is a mark of what a sexual harasser he
Speaker 1: was that we have quite a bit of detail of
Speaker 1: a guy sexually harassing women in the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: in earlier. This kind of unusual to year of sexual
Speaker 1: harassis with detail from this era specific. And this is
Speaker 1: another important thing worth noting, the racism that kind of
Speaker 1: gets baked into the Dewey decimal system that's in this
Speaker 1: It is not exceptional for his time. The level to
Speaker 1: which he sexually harasses women is seen by his peers
Speaker 1: as exceptional and unsettling. That in in the in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen andreds yeah when they can't vote, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and other dudes are being like this guy is really
Speaker 1: not this is not okay, Like when their arms around
Speaker 1: their wives they forced to marry them, being like maybe
Speaker 1: I'd never do that to you, Oh my god. Like
Speaker 1: that is the kind of sexual harasser that he is.
Speaker 1: Like it is noted at the time as being exceptional. Um.
Speaker 1: In nine Yeah, in nineteen oh five, Millville takes a
Speaker 1: cruise to Alaska with a number of his colleagues at
Speaker 1: the American Library Association. This is after a big convention. Um.
Speaker 1: The cruise was meant as a place for them to like,
Speaker 1: they had this big convention. Now we're going to kind
Speaker 1: of start laying at our plans for next year. Um.
Speaker 1: And over the course of a few days, Um, Dewey,
Speaker 1: who is I should note six ft tall, which is
Speaker 1: very tall for the time, sexually harasses and like physically
Speaker 1: goes after four different female a LA members on a
Speaker 1: cruise ship. Um. But now I do feel comforted by
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm the same high as him, because
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a picture of him, So you could
Speaker 1: kick his ass. No, not not even an issue, um,
Speaker 1: because again, motherfucker didn't lift. Um. So over the course
Speaker 1: of the fact that he was a stout corduroy, the
Speaker 1: impact of Dewey's sexual harassment is perhaps best illustrated by
Speaker 1: the story of Adelaide Hassum, who is to this like
Speaker 1: now a very influential fit like helps I think to
Speaker 1: a similar extent to do we build the concept of
Speaker 1: like how libraries function, what a librarian should do. There's
Speaker 1: like books about him. She's like a very influential female librarian. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean librarians, right, Like how much do you hear
Speaker 1: about influential librarians? But yeah, but we I think I
Speaker 1: think people might want to look into Adelaide hauss if
Speaker 1: you're interested in this history. Um. And she when early
Speaker 1: on in her career she crossed his pass with Melville,
Speaker 1: also in nineteen o five, and I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a quote from history dot com about what happens next.
Speaker 1: As a young woman, she struggled to be taken seriously
Speaker 1: by mostly male executive boards. She created a groundbreaking new
Speaker 1: way to classify government documents and was disappointed when a
Speaker 1: male colleague claimed the credit. But armed with a new
Speaker 1: job at the New York Public Library, a better salary,
Speaker 1: and an ambitious new project, she finally felt optimistic about
Speaker 1: her career. To pull off her newest plan, she'd need support,
Speaker 1: so she approached the leading voice in the field Melville Dewey,
Speaker 1: a man whose innovations made him a household name. He
Speaker 1: suggested they meet privately about her new project. Encouraged, she
Speaker 1: made her way to Albany, New York, only to find
Speaker 1: that he had arranged what amounted to a weekend long date.
Speaker 1: It's unclear what happened next, but has departed hastily after
Speaker 1: being taken for a long drive by Dewey, and later
Speaker 1: spoke to colleagues about how offensive his behavior had been.
Speaker 1: Now all I think that that's I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that that's not specific. Oh god. Yeah. Again, we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what happened, but I found in our article
Speaker 1: from American Libraries Magazine that does go into more detail
Speaker 1: its sites from a letter do we wrote two hass later,
Speaker 1: in which he complained that she had ran away so suddenly,
Speaker 1: but also stated, I am very glad that I know
Speaker 1: you better. Sometimes I think of you as Shakespeare's Cordelia,
Speaker 1: for your voice is hers, sometimes as bru Hilda fair,
Speaker 1: blue eyed Saxon. So he does not get the message. No,
Speaker 1: this is Oh god, that this is like I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's chilling and bad. And also I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just I am stuck on, like I am shocked
Speaker 1: that records from this era exists of this kind of behavior,
Speaker 1: and it it does so closely mirror stories from It's
Speaker 1: exactly the same ship. It's exactly the same ship. Like
Speaker 1: this is Harvey Weinstein, this is exactly the same ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like creepy misspelled letters instead of emails. Like
Speaker 1: it's just I mean, it's like, you know, this is
Speaker 1: all but this is like kind of an interesting example
Speaker 1: of like and we have every receipt for some reason,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously not although I'm sure there are probably
Speaker 1: a couple probably I mean dozens to hundreds of women
Speaker 1: who we don't have the stories of that that do
Speaker 1: we in some way mistreated, um, But but we know
Speaker 1: we have some of Hass's story, um, partly because she
Speaker 1: became a very significant figure in her own right and
Speaker 1: her biographer noted in it. Oh. I was just I
Speaker 1: was want to say that that that always makes a
Speaker 1: difference to if she's a person of note, then she'll
Speaker 1: always you know, like and that's not a slight against her.
Speaker 1: It's just like when when women and or like victims
Speaker 1: in general, like if they're not someone that we're talking
Speaker 1: about people don't talk about them. Yeah, it's one of
Speaker 1: the value. It's one of the ways in which a
Speaker 1: woman who has been through that experience, like a positive
Speaker 1: to being famous is that you can help make it
Speaker 1: clear by your experience how many people who are not
Speaker 1: famous have gone through something similar, And that's positive. Um.
Speaker 1: Her biographer noted in two thousand eighteen UM that the
Speaker 1: way do we refer to her there, with the lurid, romantic,
Speaker 1: mythical descriptions, was not at all the normal style for
Speaker 1: co ed communication between librarians. He's like, this is not
Speaker 1: even men who are probably guilty of a lot of
Speaker 1: gross behavior themselves, they don't write to their female colleagues
Speaker 1: this way. Like this is weird. This stands out within
Speaker 1: I'm a dude, I'm a biographer who reads a lot
Speaker 1: of letters from librarians to librarians. I ain't seen anything
Speaker 1: else like this, Like this is egregious, this is um.
Speaker 1: Adelaide decides, though, not to take any action against him,
Speaker 1: and she explains to one colleague in a letter, we
Speaker 1: are a professional body, the members of which encountering obnoxious
Speaker 1: personal traits and fellow members must content ourselves to employ
Speaker 1: those defenses which reason, training and character dictate. So she's like,
Speaker 1: we need to defend against this guy, we need to
Speaker 1: warn women about him, stop them from but we we
Speaker 1: we can't like make a big thing about it, right,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, it's like a classic whispered obvious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you can't. It's the system in which it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have any faith that anyone in an authoritative
Speaker 1: position is going to advocate for us, so we have
Speaker 1: to protect ourselves. And just like or, we're gonna or.
Speaker 1: And it's like that's especially in this era, that's a
Speaker 1: reasonable concern for her of like if I'm speaking up,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lose my job. That's a reasonable concern like
Speaker 1: this nine five, you know, yeah, like that makes total sense,
Speaker 1: And it's also still so depressing. God God, well there's
Speaker 1: actually it's about to get a little less depressing briefly,
Speaker 1: because it would be wrong to say that knowledge of
Speaker 1: Dewey's improprieties was an open secret, because that would imply
Speaker 1: it was secretive in any kind of way, Like it
Speaker 1: was well known to everybody that he was this kind
Speaker 1: of dude. On one occasion, his son and daughter in
Speaker 1: law Godfrey and Marjorie Dewey move out of the family
Speaker 1: house because Dewey's own son felt the need to get
Speaker 1: his wife away from his father because the sexual advance
Speaker 1: as his father was making towards his daughter in law
Speaker 1: were so constant and uncomfortable. Like that is the level
Speaker 1: of like that's another level, right of like that is yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another level of sex. I mean it's like that
Speaker 1: your daughter in law who you live with, and you're
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's that's very very sick. It would be
Speaker 1: hard to exaggerate the degree to which this guy is
Speaker 1: a creep, like like he's a Weinstein level offender. If
Speaker 1: we don't have that amount of detail he's he's has
Speaker 1: to be like yeah, I mean, if there's this much
Speaker 1: information from so long ago. Yeah, and I think the
Speaker 1: fact that he's like sexually harassing his own daughter in
Speaker 1: la that also makes the case that like it's compulsive
Speaker 1: for him, like he's he's doing it too, like every
Speaker 1: chance he gets. Pretty much, I mean there's a degree
Speaker 1: I think of calculation, but like, I mean, it just
Speaker 1: does seem like any anyone that he thinks he can
Speaker 1: get away with this behavior from he will pray on. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: do We was fairly open about his behavior. He didn't
Speaker 1: see it as problematic, and he wasn't sure why anyone
Speaker 1: else would either. From American Libraries Magazine quote. In general,
Speaker 1: do We himself did not deny his actions, only their impropriety.
Speaker 1: I been very unconventional, as men always are who frankly
Speaker 1: show and speak of their liking for women, he wrote,
Speaker 1: But he insisted it was not his fault if the
Speaker 1: targets of his unconventional actions took offense. That's like ladies
Speaker 1: man rhetoric. That's something that still mostly exists. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: literally equivalment. That's like they I think women know to
Speaker 1: take it as a compliment, like he's yeah, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: oh they can't like if they don't like it, they
Speaker 1: can't fucking bang, you know, Like, yeah, that's now. The
Speaker 1: times being what they were back then, few of the
Speaker 1: of his victims ever said anything publicly about his behavior.
Speaker 1: That we have, as much documentation as we do suggest
Speaker 1: that again, he was a sex pest on a pretty
Speaker 1: staggering scale. Nothing makes this point so well as the
Speaker 1: fact that, in nineteen o six, after harassing hass and
Speaker 1: then several colleagues on a cruise, the other members of
Speaker 1: the A l A united to push Dewey out of
Speaker 1: the organization he had helped to found. Wigan notes quote.
Speaker 1: In exchange for a quiet departure, he was spared an
Speaker 1: ugly and public expose of one of his major flaws.
Speaker 1: He was never again a power player in A L
Speaker 1: A politics. And this is I think they actually get
Speaker 1: I give the A l A five camps. He got
Speaker 1: canceled in nineteen o six for sexuals. Do you know
Speaker 1: how bad you have to be to be canceled in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six for this? Like that is like this
Speaker 1: is kind of blowing my mom. It's intense, and it's
Speaker 1: one of those things like the people who are not
Speaker 1: getting canceled, like we're using canceled facetiously, but like in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six, in nine, some ship going on wow,
Speaker 1: And it's the kind of thing where two you tell
Speaker 1: me that like an organization, a big company or whatever
Speaker 1: quietly forces its founder route so that sexual the fact
Speaker 1: that he's been sexually harassing and even assaulted women doesn't
Speaker 1: become public. That's damning of that organization. That's damning. In
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, you get a lot of credit for
Speaker 1: doing that because that's something, you know, like that is
Speaker 1: thing and there's a whole lot of nothing going on,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's a difference, is morally, I think different
Speaker 1: to quietly forced the founder of your organization out in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six for sexual harassment than it is in two.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that there's other examples of it, but
Speaker 1: like this is the first. This is the earliest example
Speaker 1: I've heard. I have not heard of an earlier one
Speaker 1: for sure, like for this specific thing like they get
Speaker 1: and I think it's a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: are doing this are women because it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: the a l a um and this is the most
Speaker 1: they could do too, So I don't think this is
Speaker 1: an example today. You hear about this, like he gets
Speaker 1: a chance to leave quietly, and I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of cowardice on part of the organization. I don't feel
Speaker 1: that way here, Like I'm sure maybe some of them
Speaker 1: feel that way, but I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: is just people doing what can be done. You know.
Speaker 1: I agree, I think that the implications of this decision
Speaker 1: in nineteen o six versus two are very very very different.
Speaker 1: I would agree, Yeah, yeah, you know what else the
Speaker 1: implications of are different? Oh no, the is it a
Speaker 1: product Earth service? Yeah, that's not a great pivot. You know,
Speaker 1: they can all be good. Look what do you what
Speaker 1: do you want for me? Look? Okay, you're being defensive.
Speaker 1: No one's yelling at you. Thank you. I just I
Speaker 1: get so angry at the far, so high for yourself,
Speaker 1: and then you lash out at people who love you.
Speaker 1: Yeah that is what I do, all right? Well, you
Speaker 1: know also who does love these acts? That was a
Speaker 1: good one. Yeah, ah, we're back, my goodness. You know.
Speaker 1: Well that was a that was a brutal segment. That
Speaker 1: was rough, right, that's that's a rough one. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's not going to get worse. Yeah. Now. Of course,
Speaker 1: the quiet nature of his resignation after decades of lauded
Speaker 1: work for the l A meant that for a very
Speaker 1: long time there was almost no discussion of his improprieties.
Speaker 1: The first biography published after his death, written in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, was titled Melville Dewey Seer inspirer Doer, and
Speaker 1: it leaves out all of the references to his behavior
Speaker 1: except for one sentence. So this is the one sentence.
Speaker 1: This is this is the one reference made in the thirties,
Speaker 1: Dewey's consciousness of his own strength and freedom from evil
Speaker 1: purpose led to a serene indifference in his everyday public
Speaker 1: relations with women. What do you read that again? And
Speaker 1: a little Dewey's consciousness of his own strength and freedom
Speaker 1: from evil purpose led to a serene indifference in his
Speaker 1: everyday public relations with women. He knew he was a
Speaker 1: good guy, so it was fine for him to sexually
Speaker 1: harass them. Like, that's kind of what they're saying. I
Speaker 1: think that's exactly what they're saying. Because he knew he
Speaker 1: was such a good man, it was okay for him
Speaker 1: to treat them this way. Yeah, it's legitimately a fucking
Speaker 1: insane sentence. Was evil? What's he's He was so conscious
Speaker 1: of his own strength and his freedom from evil purpose
Speaker 1: that he was indifferent to how he treated women evil
Speaker 1: purpose to serene and difference. Yeah, that does sound like
Speaker 1: that's out of its mind, that sentence, That sentence really
Speaker 1: goes that. I could spend days with that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's books that can be written about what
Speaker 1: that sentence is saying. Oh God, yeah, that is gnarly. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you for that. I will note, because this is
Speaker 1: the period that it is, I found a whole less
Speaker 1: scholarly paper that makes what seems to be a pretty
Speaker 1: thorough case that Dewey was not a eugenicist. He wasn't
Speaker 1: really an opponent of eugenics either. He just didn't seem
Speaker 1: to agree with a lot of the arguments being made. Um,
Speaker 1: he doesn't seem to have been a eugenicist. And this
Speaker 1: is also worth noting. He was not a eugenicist. He
Speaker 1: was for sure a racist. And this is where I
Speaker 1: get beyond the racism the Dewey decimal system is this
Speaker 1: is a guy who grows up in a racist system,
Speaker 1: never questions it. So he built some of that racism
Speaker 1: into this thing he built. Now we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Dewey being aggressively and like exceptionally for the time racist. Um.
Speaker 1: And to talk about that, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the Lake Placid club early you were so I just
Speaker 1: wanted to be. So he's at this point because he
Speaker 1: invents the Dewey decimal system in his early twenties. Now
Speaker 1: he's in his fifties, right, and it's like well into
Speaker 1: his life. Okay, So this is like a totally different
Speaker 1: era of this man. Yeah, this is the early Dreds.
Speaker 1: He buys a private club in the Adirondacks. From the beginning,
Speaker 1: Jews and black people were forbidden to be members of
Speaker 1: the club, which is not unusual for clubs at the time. UM.
Speaker 1: The club rules noted, no one shall be received as
Speaker 1: a member or guest against whom there is physical, moral, moral, social,
Speaker 1: or race objection. It is found impracticable to make exceptions
Speaker 1: to Jews or others excluded, even when of unusual personal qualifications. UM. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not uncommon with like fancy clubs at the time,
Speaker 1: but they usually don't write it down. That's what makes
Speaker 1: it weird is that he like they just mask yeah, races. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and do we knew that these rules were offensive enough
Speaker 1: that so obviously when he's still with the a l
Speaker 1: A UM, and when he's with it, there's a New
Speaker 1: York Library Association that he's a member of for a
Speaker 1: later period UM, when they have he'll do gatherings for
Speaker 1: these organizations that he'll host at the club that he
Speaker 1: owns UM, and he'll hide the rule book because he'll
Speaker 1: let like there's Jews that he lets in for these
Speaker 1: library events. You know, so he wants to hide, so
Speaker 1: he knows that what he's doing is fucked up, right,
Speaker 1: like he hides. Yeah. Now this came to an end
Speaker 1: in a rather spectacular fashion in nineteen o three, And
Speaker 1: I want to quote now from a write up by
Speaker 1: Book Riot. This swanky party happened every year at the
Speaker 1: Lake Placid Club. However nineteen o three was special that year.
Speaker 1: Do we hadn't hidden the club's rule book? This lead
Speaker 1: being a librarian shindig. Someone found the thing on a
Speaker 1: side table and decided to read it. That person turned
Speaker 1: out to be a friend of Henry Leipzigger, a Jewish
Speaker 1: member of the n y l A, the New York
Speaker 1: Library Association Circulation Committee. Together they read the pamphlet and
Speaker 1: discovered the language forbidding racial and ethnic minorities, but especially
Speaker 1: and specifically Jews. Coincidentally, Leipziger had been trying to become
Speaker 1: a member of the Placid Club for years. Now he
Speaker 1: knew why his application was on permanent hold. That's right,
Speaker 1: Do we hadn't even told him about the no Jews rule?
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Leipziger did the opposite of shutting up about
Speaker 1: Dewey's racist social club. Do He was in the State
Speaker 1: Librarian of New York, a publicly funded position. New York
Speaker 1: City was a major center of Jewish culture, and Leipziger
Speaker 1: felt that Jewish tax dollars were going to waste on
Speaker 1: an unapologetic anti Semite. He hired lawyer Lewis Marshall, who
Speaker 1: lodged a petition with the Board of Regents to get
Speaker 1: do We fired. In nineteen oh five. Oh boy, this
Speaker 1: is why we don't record on Friday night. Do We
Speaker 1: was forced to quit his state library position, even though
Speaker 1: he mounted a spirited defense by saying he had Jewish friends,
Speaker 1: um and again to talk about how racist and said
Speaker 1: he gets canceled for sexual harassment and racism in nineteen
Speaker 1: o six, like his story took place last spring. As
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, Yeah, yeah, um and again. You'll
Speaker 1: you'll also note that this Jewish guy who gets offended
Speaker 1: at the Lake Plastic Club, I don't think he's arguing
Speaker 1: on behalf of black people. Um. I don't think he's
Speaker 1: offended that black people are so like what you know,
Speaker 1: it's nineteen o six, right, like everything's terrible, um or
Speaker 1: nineteen o five. But um, yeah, so do we quits
Speaker 1: the State Library position. This is I think a little
Speaker 1: after he got kicked out of the a l a
Speaker 1: Um and right around the time that this controversy breaks out.
Speaker 1: Part of why he has to quit is it comes
Speaker 1: out that not only was he not allowing Jewish people
Speaker 1: to enter his club, he had bought a bunch of
Speaker 1: the land around the Lake uh Placid club so that
Speaker 1: Jews couldn't buy it, so there wouldn't even be Jews
Speaker 1: who would like look at his club like that. That's again,
Speaker 1: he keeps going the extra mile on this ship. You know,
Speaker 1: this is like yeah, like it's, oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: so much anti semitism. And then he's just like going
Speaker 1: into regular spaces like this is not a thing that
Speaker 1: he's spending a lot of time and money to do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And again, the thing worth noting is that he is
Speaker 1: not getting canceled for his racism against black people, which
Speaker 1: is not at all exceptional for the time, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of gets lost in sort of the everyone's that racist.
Speaker 1: He's not getting canceled because he's racist towards Southeast Asians.
Speaker 1: He's really race specifically racist towards Jewish people, and in
Speaker 1: New York probably wouldn't happen if he lives somewhere else,
Speaker 1: But in New York he gets canceled as a result
Speaker 1: of that. You know, it's worth it being specifically about
Speaker 1: the racism that is considered a problem in this period.
Speaker 1: You know, she's okay. Yeah, yeah. So his history of
Speaker 1: sexual harassment and racism had created his public career by
Speaker 1: nineteen o six. But do we continue to run the
Speaker 1: Lake Placid Club, which, among other things, was a place
Speaker 1: where he could indulge in his language revision fantasies without pushback.
Speaker 1: One ninety seven menu listed haddock h A d okay,
Speaker 1: potted beef pot e D with new in O O
Speaker 1: d L S parsley p A R s l I
Speaker 1: or mashed m A s h T potato butter b
Speaker 1: U t R steamed rice s t e e A
Speaker 1: M d R y s lettuce l e t I
Speaker 1: S and wise cream. I don't know what y S
Speaker 1: cream is supposed to be? Is that how he thinks
Speaker 1: ice cream? Is that maybe ice cream? I think that
Speaker 1: might be ice cream cream cream. See, I think this
Speaker 1: is a good This is a good yardstick for like
Speaker 1: how I feel about him, Because it was hilarious the
Speaker 1: first time, and when he's doing it in the nineties,
Speaker 1: I'm not laughing. There's nothing funny. Now, you're just a sad,
Speaker 1: weird man in Lake Placid making typos on purpose. Do
Speaker 1: We hired a stenographer who he described in his unique
Speaker 1: spelling way as a dainty little l I T L
Speaker 1: flapper and better looking than I expected b E t R.
Speaker 1: After he hugged and kissed her in public, she threatened
Speaker 1: to file charges and ended up settling with Dewey for
Speaker 1: two thousand, one forty seven dollars in sixty six cents.
Speaker 1: And again like that's not nothing that and also like
Speaker 1: it's again, this is egregious enough that he doesn't think
Speaker 1: he can win in court despite being a rich dude
Speaker 1: against this woman like pro like you know, like people
Speaker 1: being sexually harassed, just taking the rich person's money because
Speaker 1: the justice system is so fucking broken. It's like, go
Speaker 1: as far as you can in the justice system and
Speaker 1: take all their money where while you're what you can,
Speaker 1: you know um. According to Wayne wigand author of Irrepressible Reformer,
Speaker 1: a biography of Melville Dewey, Dewey was upset with the
Speaker 1: settlement not because he had been reprimanded for anything improper,
Speaker 1: but because he worried the stenographer might got might spread
Speaker 1: rumors that she got two thousand dollars for no work.
Speaker 1: Similarly unrepentant after he yeah, I know, right, like what
Speaker 1: the fun still efficiency minded even when he is in
Speaker 1: court for being a sex pest, Similarly unrepentant after he
Speaker 1: was centured by the A L A. Do we insisted
Speaker 1: he hadn't done anything wrong. Peer women would understand my ways,
Speaker 1: he said, I have no comment. He's just like sucks.
Speaker 1: It sucks pretty bad. There's there's just like this impulse
Speaker 1: in people that I don't understand too um double down
Speaker 1: on the worst parts of themselves, to the point where
Speaker 1: like anything remotely useful that they had done in their
Speaker 1: entire lives are rendered upsetting to even think about, Like
Speaker 1: what is that element of human nature? It is so
Speaker 1: ugly and dark and I'm and I'm upset. Robert, Well,
Speaker 1: here's a here's a good thing. He even dies soon
Speaker 1: he does. He dies on December of a stroke like clacid.
Speaker 1: D you please say there's no more information. No, he's
Speaker 1: fucking dead as ship now now for decades he is,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about a bit, largely lionized and applauded
Speaker 1: for his achievements, but in recent years the tide has
Speaker 1: begun to turn, not because of new evidence brought up
Speaker 1: against the man, but because his behavior started being recognized
Speaker 1: by broader culture as problematic. Again. In two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: the American Library Association dropped his name from an award
Speaker 1: as the result of his racism and sexual harassment. Sherry Harrington,
Speaker 1: part of the task force that drafted the resolution to
Speaker 1: do this, explained it wasn't like he's being judged by
Speaker 1: twenty first century standards. He was called out repeatedly for
Speaker 1: his sexual harassment behavior during his time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I that's I mean, that's crumbs. But I'm glad
Speaker 1: that it happened. Very good. It does. It does happen.
Speaker 1: And it is like when I heard there was a
Speaker 1: man who got canceled for sexual harassment in nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, we've got to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Would have that will have had to have been pretty
Speaker 1: fucking bad. Yeah, and it's got to be a tale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it sure was. Wow, Robert, this had I simply
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't this was all. Was this all
Speaker 1: information that you learned about relatively recently. I had known
Speaker 1: Dewey was like a sexist asshole, I didn't know most
Speaker 1: of it. I certainly did not know that, like the
Speaker 1: racism in the Dewey decimal, I had no idea about
Speaker 1: any of that, which is probably just right there. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's a lot that has I mean, I know
Speaker 1: there's a lot that has I'm sure there's more to
Speaker 1: be written about the impact that has had, which is
Speaker 1: certainly like the most toxic thing he did in terms
Speaker 1: of its impact on society. Yeah, it's um, pretty bad,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty shitty, dude, Melville Dewey. Wow, I'm not a fan,
Speaker 1: gonna sorry takeaways. I'm going to go burn down a library,
Speaker 1: burned out a library. Um. You know, um, all librarians
Speaker 1: are your enemy now, and I think that's clear. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: hunt them down in there in their places, um wherever
Speaker 1: they hied. You know, if if someone makes a perks
Speaker 1: and Recreation joke, I will kill myself, So don't I
Speaker 1: don't even know. Are there librarians in that show? There's
Speaker 1: there's librarians in that show. And that's see and that's
Speaker 1: what I love about you. Um there, No, it's fine.
Speaker 1: I I do I I do love a library. I
Speaker 1: do feel that it's still so wild to me that
Speaker 1: libraries are so underfunded and also like are the only
Speaker 1: place where so many things are able to happen in
Speaker 1: a socially acceptable like it's the only socially acceptable place
Speaker 1: to get free WiFi or go to the bathroom or read. Like.
Speaker 1: The two coolest things our government does is the post
Speaker 1: office and libraries. Um that government in general does like yeah,
Speaker 1: um um. So it sucks that there was a deeply unsettling,
Speaker 1: bigoted person who has such a large effect on libraries,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad that libraries are grappling with Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like this is a thing because it is like
Speaker 1: a very like the library biz. Like, the people who
Speaker 1: are in libraries tend to be well educated and pretty progressive.
Speaker 1: I think the somewhat progressive as an organism. I'm sure
Speaker 1: librarians there are progressive librarians might disagree with aspects of that,
Speaker 1: but I think broadly speaking, um, it seems like there
Speaker 1: are there are ongoing attempts to address the impact of
Speaker 1: these problems. Can I can I plug a quick library
Speaker 1: related thing? For sure? Okay, if you're currently and if there,
Speaker 1: if it's one of the products and services in the episode,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. But if you're currently an audible subscriber, stop
Speaker 1: giving your money to Jeff Bezos and there are so
Speaker 1: I get all of my audio books from the library
Speaker 1: on an app. Absolutely, And so if you are, if
Speaker 1: you're not tapped into your local libraries like audiobook system
Speaker 1: or e book system, stop giving money to billionaires and
Speaker 1: start giving money to nobody. It's your right, it's your
Speaker 1: into Sharon Stone's biography. Speaking as a guy who's written
Speaker 1: multiple books that are in libraries. Every now and then
Speaker 1: you get some fucking ship head writer on Twitter who
Speaker 1: is like, well, you're you're taking money from me by
Speaker 1: like getting my books from a library. If if you
Speaker 1: find a writer who has that attitude, stop reading their
Speaker 1: books and start hitting them with a give him a brick.
Speaker 1: You know that's a brick. Free books are dope. Free
Speaker 1: books are amazing. Uh and and um make sure that you're, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're using your library for all it's work, because that's
Speaker 1: why it's there. Yeah, good times and all right, what Dewey, Jamie,
Speaker 1: you've got any other plug doubles you want? To drop
Speaker 1: in the p zone in the zone, in the zone.
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember when pozones were a thing? Of
Speaker 1: course it was like pizza hut, Right, Joey Chestnut competed
Speaker 1: in pozzone competition. Who the fund is Joey Chestnut? You
Speaker 1: talk about Joey Chestnut of the time, and I have
Speaker 1: no idea who you're talking about. Is that that sounds
Speaker 1: like a fake guy. Not a fake It's a real
Speaker 1: guy guy, Joey Chestnut. Don't like he's not. Although actually
Speaker 1: there is a behind the bastards in the hot dog
Speaker 1: eating world that I will talk to you about off
Speaker 1: Mike because it's fascinating. Oh um, I'll do I'll lead
Speaker 1: the episode for Christ's sake. I just wrote twelve words
Speaker 1: about it. Absolutely. Jamie greenwell, any time you come here
Speaker 1: and we'll do a reverse Bastards. That sounds incredible. That
Speaker 1: would be really fun. I know way too much. Joey
Speaker 1: Chestnut is the the the champion, I mean hot dogs,
Speaker 1: but also everything. He's the He's the champion. Okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense of the world. His name sounds like a
Speaker 1: fake person. It's a real name. Joseph Chestnut of sand Chesnut.
Speaker 1: Come on Joseph chessnunt San Jose, California is Indiana. Now
Speaker 1: it's I really it. Look he's one po Zone Contests.
Speaker 1: There's a whole I would high. Okay. The other thing
Speaker 1: I'll plug besides library cards is the thirty for thirty
Speaker 1: episode about two Kara Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut. It is
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating stories ever told. Or don't
Speaker 1: watch it and I will recap it for you on
Speaker 1: a future episode of Behind the Bastards because it is
Speaker 1: just wild. I think I'm about to learn a lot
Speaker 1: about the competitive eating industry, which I have devoted about
Speaker 1: a third of a second thinking too in my life
Speaker 1: up to this point. Um, I would say of my
Speaker 1: knowledge of competitive eating comes from that one King of
Speaker 1: the Hill episode that's pretty good and that that is
Speaker 1: a pretty well informed episode. Um. I will plug. I'll
Speaker 1: plug two things I'll plug. Um. I have a solo
Speaker 1: podcasts that have come out in the last year, Act Cast,
Speaker 1: which is about Kathy podcast or the Kathy Comic not
Speaker 1: podcast UM and Lolita podcast which is about Lolita and
Speaker 1: its cultural impact. And I'll also plug uh TV show
Speaker 1: I wrote on last year that just got released on
Speaker 1: HBO Max called Teenage Euthanasia. Um, it's a very fun
Speaker 1: show about tea. Yeah, it's about a family that owns
Speaker 1: a funeral home and zombies in Florida. So it's it's
Speaker 1: very fun and it's on HBO Max. Finally, it was
Speaker 1: really hard to watch for a while, so you can
Speaker 1: watch it now. And you can catch my show, Mrs
Speaker 1: Joseph Chestnut America USA in l A at the Allegian
Speaker 1: Theater on February seventeen at nine o'clock PM. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited for it. I play Joey chestnuts widow because I
Speaker 1: murdered him. So if you live in the l A area,
Speaker 1: it's mandatory you have to come watch Jamie's Sweet Ash show. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, that's it. Go you know five a librarian.
Speaker 1: Just challenge a librarian to a duel. You know, they
Speaker 1: have to accept. That's one of the rules about being
Speaker 1: a librarian. If you challenge them to a formal duel,
Speaker 1: they can't say no. They cannot turn you down. And
Speaker 1: it's not you can report them. No. They get to
Speaker 1: pick the weapon, so be careful there. Um, but you
Speaker 1: they will fight you. Everyone, Katana, I've encountered a Katana
Speaker 1: librarian or two. In my day, I've never won. Let's
Speaker 1: how you lost those fingers? Um? Well, that's the episode
Speaker 1: of Behind the Bastards. Go um go with God. Wow, God,
Speaker 1: Bless Jesus Christ. Five