A Champion of Individual Liberty f

John Cotton Dana 1856-1929

by Bruce E. Ford

THE NEWARK PUBLIC LIBRARY 2006

A Champion of Individual Liberty: John Cotton Dana (1856-1929) John Cotton Dana, the second director of the Newark Public Library, the founder of the Newark Museum, a leader in his profession, and an extremely influential participant in Newark’s civic life was above all a champion of individual liberty. He genuinely respected the preferences and interests of every individual. Although he was a classicist, he staunchly insisted that not everyone ought to read the classics. While he acknowledged that great thinkers of many generations had read certain works and profited from reading them, he held that individuals who did not enjoy reading these works would derive greater benefit from reading others. He advised a father not to direct his son’s reading. “With most boys,” he wrote, “this guiding will lead to some extent to the habit of being guided, which is, of course, not good for the boy.”1 In Dana’s view, schooling contributed much less to the intellectual development of an individual than independent reading, guided by personal curiosity. He questioned the value of university extension programs, suggesting that people would learn more through independent reading and study than through such programs. “We are in danger of being overtaught,” he wrote. “We are always in danger of submitting too much to authority.”2 He particularly disdained educators’ efforts to promote conformity, stating that, The public school must be mechanical. That it may “work” it must drive its pupils, each and all, around the same little circle of its stated curriculum, and it must strive to cast them all in the same mold. But, “the essence of barbarism is equality.” The shadow of death upon a nation is a growing likeness of it units. However elaborate, then, be the furnishing of the public school, in so far as it works toward making our children of one mind, it works against civilization.”3

1

Dana also chided both schools and museums for telling people what they ought to appreciate, maintaining that by doing so they encouraged hypocrisy—the greatest impediment to the cultivation of genuine sensibility. He did not believe that any aesthetic norms were immutable. He went so far as to predict that in the future the architecture of ancient Greece might fall into disfavor. He abhorred the dismissive stance that many museums had adopted toward American art. He acquired it enthusiastically for the Newark Museum. Frankly admitting that he did not enjoy or understand all the modern works that he acquired, he eagerly exhibited them for others to study and enjoy. He deplored snobbery, boldly asserting that beauty bears no relation to age, rarity, or price. To encourage recognition and enjoyment of beauty in commonplace things, he once exhibited well-designed pottery that he had procured from a five-and-ten-cent store, proudly announcing that not a single piece had cost more than twenty-five cents. He decried social conventions that limited women’s freedom. Frank Kingdon reported that among his papers was a note which said, Every woman should be trained for a job. Every woman who knows enough to do it should take advantage of every possible opportunity to promote the independence of women. No young woman should be expected to stay at home and take care of her parents with any greater degree of expectancy than is extended to the young men of the family.4

His commitment to the advancement of women was manifest in his management of the Newark Public Library and the Newark Museum. He delegated much responsibility and authority to Beatrice Winser, who served as second-in-command in both institutions and with a free hand managed and deployed the staff in both. Although Winser held him in high esteem, she was decidedly not a sycophant. Other women, furthermore, filled most of the managerial positions at both the library and the museum.

2

Early twentieth-century proponents of social, political, and economic reform, promotion of public health, and the extension of the benefits of education are collectively identified as the Progressives. The Progressives generally advocated improved efficiency in public institutions, greater accountability from public officials and employees, expansion of public health services, and extension of the benefits of education to all classes; but they were a truly heterogeneous lot. As Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick have noted, … historians have used the term progressivism to describe the many reform movements of the early twentieth century. Yet in the goals they sought and the remedies they tried, the reformers were a varied and contradictory lot. Some progressives wanted to increase the political influence and control of ordinary people, while other progresssives wanted to concentrate authority in experts. Many reformers tried to curtail the growth of large corporations; others accepted bigness in industry on account of its supposed economic benefits. Some progressives were genuinely concerned about the welfare of the “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe; other progressives sought, sometimes frantically, to “Americanize” the newcomers or to keep them out altogether. In general progressives sought to improve the conditions of life and labor and to create as much social stability as possible But each group of progresssives had its own definitions of improvement and stability.5

Progressives included in their number some who, like Dana, placed a high premium on personal freedom and embraced cultural pluralism.6 They were not, however, in the majority. Most Progressives, who were themselves members of the middle class, had no qualms about instilling “the habit of being guided” in members of the lower classes, and particularly in immigrants. Furthermore, the guidance they offered was aimed at making their “inferiors” more like themselves. Many sought to improve “moral conditions” by securing legislation to prohibit of behavior

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that they judged offensive, such as the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Progressives often supported woman suffrage not because they wished to liberate women from traditional social constraints but because they believed that women would support restrictive laws against “immorality.” Only during the political and social upheavals of the 1960s did views about personal freedom such as Dana espoused gain wide currency. During the past forty years constraints on individual freedom have diminished dramatically. Sex-role stereotypes restrict the behavior of both men and women less than ever before. Women routinely succeed in careers formerly reserved to men. A growing number of suburban communities welcome same-sex couples. Independent thought, which used to incur opprobrium, now more usually evokes respect. Purportedly universal aesthetic standards have yielded to chacun à son goût. Claims of authority and expertise are more often greeted with skepticism than with deference. In relation to educational, religious, and cultural institutions, contemporary Americans regard themselves as consumers, demanding that these institutions meet their individual requirements. The transformation that has occurred would have pleased Dana; but it occurred only after several decades during which American society’s demand for conformity in both behavior and thought had grown stronger. The effect of this demand was evident in history of the three institutions Dana had influenced most. John Cotton Dana College, even though it was not founded until shortly after his death, embodied his philosophy. Its founder, Richard Currier, endeavored to create a school that would not follow in the tradition of older institutions of higher learning but would meet the special needs of urban, working-class students. Its admission requirements were flexible. It admitted students whose high school preparation had included more vocationally-oriented courses than other colleges allowed. Currier hoped, in fact, to add such courses to the curriculum. Political liberals dominated the college’s faculty, and intellectual freedom flourished.7

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Frank Kingdon, a protégé of Beatrice Winser and Dana’s biographer, served as the first president of the University of Newark, into which Dana College was merged in 1935. Kingdon worked on the assumption that the influence of an urban university ought to extend beyond its students to the city at large. He encouraged university involvement in civic affairs. His commitment to intellectual freedom was uncompromising. The political inclinations of many faculty members and students aroused criticism—notably from a group of led by the Reverend Matthew J. Toohey of St. James Church, who charged that the University of Newark was “honey-combed with radicals of the most extreme type.” Kingdon countered that it was “exactly as radical as the constitution of the United States, which guarantees freedom of speech to all its citizens.” His stance incurred the wrath of Frank Hague, political boss of Jersey City, whose encroachments upon free speech had been opposed by members of the university’s law school faculty. Pressure that Toohey and Hague brought to bear led to Kingdon’s dismissal and, indirectly, to the subsequent resignation of Beatrice Winser, who had succeeded Dana as Librarian of the Newark Public Library. After her resignation, the Newark Public Library became more bureaucratic and cautious. In the ensuing years its managers declined to add The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger to the Young Adult Collection and, until several years after its publication, they refused to acquire Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita, thereby attracting the notice of the New York Times.8 The civic unrest that surfaced in Newark during the late 1960s compelled the officers of the library, the museum, and RutgersNewark, the successor to the University of Newark, to face questions about their role in relation to the city that Dana had considered much earlier; and the conclusions they reached quite often accorded with his. Dana’s ideals continue to influence their decisions and remain a standard against which they measure their performance.

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References Letter to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, quoted in Frank Kingdon, John Cotton Dana: A Life (Newark : The Public Library and Museum, 1940), 124. 1

2

Kingdon, op. cit., 50

“The Public School,” Librarian at Large: Selected Writings of John Cotton Dana, edited and with an introduction by Carl A. Hanson (Washington, D. C. : Special Libraries Association, 1991), 141-144. Originally published: Denver Arbitrator, February 16, 1889. 3

4

Kingdon, op. cit., 143.

Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (Arlington Heights, Ill. : Harlan Davidson, 1983), 2. 5

Kevin Mattson, “The Librarian as Secular Minister to Democracy: The Life and Ideas of John Cotton Dana,” Libraries and Culture, 35: 4: 515516 (Fall 2000). 6

Information about the University of Newark and its antecedent institutions is taken from Brewing Bachelors: The History of Rutgers University of Newark, by Harold S. Wechsler, viewed at: http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/history/history-wechsler.pdf. 7

8

New York Times, October 8, 1958: 19.