glitches

I wrote recently that reporters don't get the benefit of as much editing as they used to. Day by day, the Columbia Journalism Review kindly points to shortcomings in their stories. But, though fewer in numbers than formerly, editors do still exist and do still seek to improve the writings that come to them.

Instances:

1. Gawker recently called attention to a production error that both shows some of the sloppiness revealed in CJR alerts and shows the editorial blue pencil at its best. Yesterday morning Gawker's Hamilton Nolan gave us
A Washington Post Story With All the Editor’s Notes In It in which he shows a WaPo piece picked up from the Louisville Courier Journal containing both the writer's text and the editor's ideas for strengthening it. It was, as my son points out, a CJ web editor's inattention which let the story appear prematurely. And it was a CJ copy editor's carefulness that is shown in the thoughtful interpolations (IN CAPS) throughout the text.

Not long after the Gawker piece showed up, Betsy Rothstein picked up the story in a post called Editing Disaster Alert:WaPo Botches Pap Smear Story on mediabistro's FishbowlDC blog.

Both accounts are worth reading, as is the CJR's take on the matter — A Glimpse into WaPo’s Editing Practices — by Joel Meares, which came out Tuesday morning this week.

It's kind of interesting that Betsy Rothstein and Joel Meares both do good work, but, whether by oversight or design, she does not mention the Nolan piece and Meares does not mention hers.

2. Not long ago Matt Seaton of the Guardian, wrote a blog post showing another side of the editorial contribution to newspaper writing: Abraham Lincoln's 1861 address, abridged. While preparing for publication Eric Foner's article on the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration speech Seaton searched for a copy of the speech so that he could link to it. The one he found, at University of Virginia's Miller Centre of Public Affairs, did not contain text which Foner quoted and, checking further, he found that the Miller Center text was considerably shorter than the original. (I've checked the two and found the Miller Center text to have been a third shorter.)

Because they deal with slavery, Seaton thought the omissions might have been intentional, but, on querying the Center, he received a reply saying the Bowlderization was caused by a "technical glitch." The reply states: "We recently moved much of the content on our website from an old content management system to a new one. A programming error in the script used to migrate the content failed to anticipate certain HTML tags, so the software removed them and all content in between them. This caused entire paragraphs to be deleted in several speeches." (The Miller Center response is given in an update to Seaton's article.)

There's a debate about the excisions in the comments to Seaton's post. Seaton himself is satisfied with the Miller Center explanation and withdraws his suspicion that someone deliberately removed references to slavery as a main cause of the emerging conflict between South and North. However a commenter jokes that the html code which choked the new CMS wasn't benign: "Yes I too am reassured that the University of Virginia has fully explained the 'technical glitch' involving html tags that excised parts of Lincolns address. Presumably it was the fault of the little known <remove reference to slavery>\</remove reference to slavery> tag?"

Personally, I have a problem with the explanation that the Miller Center gives. If you search the Wayback machine for instances of Lincoln's speech in the Center's web pages, you find two in 2010, four in 2009, and two in 2008. The Center says a programming error caused the deletions during "a recent move" to a new CMS. I didn't check them all, but the version of the speech that Wayback captured in October 2008 is missing the deleted text and it seems to me October 2008 doesn't qualify as "recent."

There's also evidence that the CMS used in 2008 was very different from the one used now. You can see this in the Wayback-captured html coding of the versions of the speech given on the Center's web site in both 2008 and 2011. The code does not name the CMS used in either case, but, given the differences in coding it seems very unlikely to be the same one.

This is the coded first sentence of the speech in the 2008 version:

<h4>Transcript</h4><p><p>Fellow citizens of the United States:</p>
<p>In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of his office." </p>

This is the same sentence as it appears in the current version:

<div id="transcript"><h4>Transcript</h4><p> </p><div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Fellow citizens of the United States:</div><div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of his office."</div>

It's possible that there was yet another (pre-2008) CMS and that the programming mistake occured while moving the speech from an older CMS to the CMS that was used in 2008. And it's possible that the Miller Center didn't wish to explain that they've upgraded their CMS yet another time since the "technical glitch" occured. Possible, yes; but it doesn't seem likely to me.

Here are five paragraphs in the version that currently appears:

I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured; and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it.

I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

They are reduced to only two in the version on the Wayback machine from October 16, 2008:

I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration, in all paralel cases, by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be over-ruled, and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon the court, or the judges. It is a duty, from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs, if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.

I will venture to add that, to me, the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take, or reject, propositions, originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such, as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution---which amendment, however, I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government, shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable.

Herald Square

Update: Dave, on the Shorpy blog did a feature on Herald Square a few days after I published this post. In it, he presents a photo that stitches together the two photos that were used to make the postcard from NYPL. It's nice work — a lot better than my effort. Also, as often is the case, the comments on Dave's post are quite interesting.

--------------

{Herald Square, ca. 1908, a Photochrom postcard by the Detroit Publishing Co.; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

Before there was a theater district in the vicinity of Broadway and 42nd Street, there was a theater district eight blocks south around Broadway and 34th. In 1873 the Colosseum opened its doors at Broadway and 35th. A few years later it morphed into the New York Aquarium, and in 1883 the New Park Theatre. That theatre gave way to Harrigan's Park Theatre in 1890 and in 1894 it became the Herald Square Theatre which still stands. Not far away, the Eagle opened its doors in 1884 at Broadway and 33rd. It became the Standard Theatre in 1878 and was demolished in 1897 to make way for Gimbel's Department Store. The Schley Music Hall began business in 1900 at 112 West 34th and within a few months became the Savoy Theatre which lasted until 1952.

When theaters began to cluster around Broadway and 34th there was no Herald Square at that location (just as there was no Times Square when they began to cluster at Broadway and 42nd). The intersection of Broadway, 34th, and 6th Ave became Herald Square in 1893, when the New York Herald began building its new home there. The area was then far to the north of the city's commercial core, but soon became a popular destination, greatly more so in 1902 when R.H. Macy built the world's largest department store in the block west of Broadway between 34th and 35th.

This photo was taken about 1908. Though you can't easily tell, the big building at left is Macy's. It does take up the whole block with the exception of the corner of 34th and B'way, which R.H. was unable to purchase. The tall Times Building is near center in the distance. You can't tell, but the Herald Square Theatre lies between the two. The New York Herald Building is at right.

{Herald Square, New York, N.Y., Detroit Publishing Co., from a glass negative, 10 x 8 in.; source: Library of Congress}

Notice that this photocrom postcard was made from a photo taken at the same time and place. The image is cut off a bit at top and bottom and, interestingly, it shows quite a bit more of what's off to the right of the black & white photo. It seems as if a shorter, wider lens had been used for the postcard.

{Herald Square, ca. 1908, a Photochrom postcard by the Detroit Publishing Co.; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This is a companion to the first photo, taken at the same time from a close-by vantage point.

{Herald Square, New York, N.Y., Detroit Publishing Co., from a glass negative, 10 x 8 in.; source: Library of Congress}

Here are the two side-by-side. You can the tell what time has elapsed by the time showing on the clocks.

As you can see, the left-most photo was taken about 25 minutes before the right. It took quite a while to move and set up the big view camera that the photographer used.


You can tell something else from the side-by-side photos: The postcard wasn't made with a shorter lens. Instead, the two photos were stitched together to make it. Here's the card again. You can see the meeting point of the two source images just to the left of the girder supporting the elevated train tracks. There's actually a smudge where the front left corner of a street car appears in the left image of the side-by-side photos.


By cropping and stitching I was able to pretty closely duplicate was the maker of the postcard accomplished. Here is my version of the two photos merged to more or less replicate the card. The New York Herald Building is smushed in this version but not in the postcard. That may account for the smudge on the card. The person who stitched images to make the card had to erase the corner of the street car and some pedestrians to make the result look right.


Here, again, is the postcard I put at the top of this post.


The here are the two cards, stitched side-by-side for comparison.


----------

Some sources:

New York Herald in wikipedia

THE FUTURE HOME OF THE NEW-YORK HERALD, New York Times, May 11, 1893

TWO BIG REAL ESTATE DEALS ON BROADWAY, Macy's Store to be Transferred to Herald Square. Mammoth Building on Block from 34th to 35th Street -- Adjoining Block Secured by Other Interests, New York Times, April 20, 1901

OPENING OF MACY'S NEW BIG STORE, New Locality for Trade at Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street, New York Times, November 9, 1902
When the Street plan for Manhattan was laid out in 1811,

Herald Square on the New York Parks web site. The text is brief:

This park was named for the newspaper that was once published directly to its north. The City of New York acquired the area in 1846 as part of the opening of Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway). By the early 20th century, many printers and publishers had located in the area. The New York Herald, founded by James Gordon Bennett in 1835, was best known for its sensational coverage of scandal and crime, and for its enormous circulation. Herald Square's centerpiece monument to Bennett and his son houses a sculpture and clock that formerly topped the Herald building. The bronze figures include Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and invention, and two bell-ringing blacksmiths. The clock and figures were installed on the monument in 1940, and blacksmiths "Stuff and Guff" or "Gog and Magog" have chimed the hours ever since.

A history of the New York stage from the first performance in 1732 to 1901 by Thomas Allston Brown (Dodd, Mead and company, 1903)

Demolished Broadway Theatres, a list on a web site called Musicals101, the Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film

make me a pallet

Mississippi John Hurt, Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor

{from Complete Studio Recordings; source: Ordinary Finds }

I've been listening to this over and over. Like good poetry it gains from repeated hearings. As others have pointed out, this is not mean blues, it's graceful, subtle, and sweet. The music is more complex than at first it seems. The voice is whiskey mellow and the phrasing is relaxed rather than intense.

Although this recording is an old friend, it hasn't lost any of its appeal through familiarity. I first heard John Hurt sing it back in 1964 when a bunch of us drove to Newport for the Blues Festival. With crowds of other happy people we slept on the beach, ate hot dogs, and soaked up music. As it happens you can find me in a photo of the audience listing to John Hurt that memorable time. The image appears on the sleeves of the LP record set that Vanguard issued some months later and it looks like this.

I'm located at about 11 o'clock next to my brother, by two college classmates, and behind my best friend and suitemate.


Mississippi John Hurt had a face that showed his soft-spoken gentleness and dignified, poised bearing. To me it also showed his resilience, something of the hardships he'd endured, and the patient endurance often seen in photos that show sharecroppers of his generation.

{image source: mleddy.blogspot.com}

{source: Ordinary finds}

{source: delta-slider.blogspot.com}

He was a field hand, later a share-cropper in a tiny hamlet called Avalon, Mississippi. Hardly anything remains of Avalon today. There had to be a country store because, with just a mule-drawn wagon or their own feet for transportation, most share-croppers couldn't survive without one, and the remains of that store can still be found in Avalon. There's hardly anything else — a few houses plus his old home, now the Mississippi John Hurt Museum which looks like this.

{museum: msjohnhurtmuseum.com}

Like most institutions in the Jim-Crow South, farming on shares was exploitive, but, within that harsh environment, it was also a repository of many rural virtues. Share-croppers could easily move their few possessions from one shack to another, seeking better land, better land-owners, better contracts regarding the provisions needed before planting and the division of proceeds after the crop was in. The work required families to work together, each member except the very youngest taking part in running their borrowed bit of farmstead. Having little or no money they bartered and, in hard times, tended to give one another unselfish communal support.

There were many men and women who grew up with memories of rich black soil warming their bare feet and hot sunshine making intense shadows in the crop rows as they hoed out weeds or picked off weevils. And many of them felt privileged to have lived through that time despite the recurrent periods of suffering they were forced to endure.[1] Hurt himself turned down opportunities to leave saying he "just never wanted to get away from home."[2] Though hours were long, the life was not one of unrelenting work. When very young, Hurt found time to teach himself to play a borrowed guitar and later developed his skill while doing music for Saturday night dances near home. Once "discovered" and recorded, he spent time in cities and festivals like the one I attended, but always returned home and, at the end of his life, died in Avalon as he had long lived there.

The lyrics to Make Me a Pallet give you no sense of the art he brings to their expression. The story is fairly routine in the country blues genre — a man and woman together, each seeking to hide from a jealous lover — but there's nothing salacious in Hurt's treatment of the theme. He asks for comfort not ecstasy. He's tired and will be happy to be bedded down low, warm and safe, away from cold sleet and snow. He wants to keep close, to be kept close.

Hurt uses the song's broad vowel sounds to express a longing for a temporary refuge. He makes wonderful use of its long "o" sounds — low, door, and floor, along with more, snow, and go. The repeated sounds, words, and phrases subtly alter with each iteration. In its many variations, the word me attains something special that I find difficult to express, particularly when held, as they are in the last two lines of the chorus.

Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor

Mississippi John Hurt

Make me down a pallet on your floor
Make me down
Make me a pallet down soft and low
Make me a pallet on your floor

Up the country forty miles or more
I'm goin up the country while there's cold sleet and snow
I'm goin up the country while there's cold sleet and snow
No telling how much further I may go

Just make me down
Make me down
Make me a pallet down soft and low
Make me a pallet on your floor

Well, sleeping, my back and shoulders tired
Well, sleeping, my back and shoulders tired
The way I'm sleeping my back and shoulders tired
Gonna turn over and try it on the side

Oh make me down
Make me down
Make me a pallet down soft and low
Make me a pallet on your floor

Don't you let my good girl catch you here
Don't let my good girl catch you here
Oh she might shoot you, like to cut and starve you too
No tellin what she might do

Yes make me down
Make me down
Make me a pallet down soft and low
Make me a pallet on your floor

Make it baby close behind your door
Make it baby close behind your door
Make me a pallet close behind your door
Make it where your good man'll never go

Oh make me down
Make me down
Make me a pallet on your floor
Make me a pallet on your floor

-----------

Here are some photos that Dorothea Lange and Marion Post Wolcott took for the Farm Security Administration between 1936 and 1939. All come from collections in the Prints and Photos Division of the Library of Congress.

{Mississippi Delta Negro children by Dorothea Lange, 1936 July}

{Sharecropper's cabin and sharecropper's wife, ten miles south of Jackson, Mississippi, by Dorothea Lange, 1937 June}

{Negro sharecropper and wife. Mississippi. They have no tools, stock, equipment, or garden. By Dorothea Lange, 1937 June-July}

{Feet of Negro cotton hoer near Clarksdale, Mississippi, by Dorothea Lange, 1937 June}

{Negroes fishing in creek near cotton plantations outside Belzoni, Mississippi, by Marion Post Wolcott, 1939 Oct}

-------------

Notes:

[1] I've done a number of blog posts on aspects of share-cropping, including these:

• Walker Evans
• sharecropper families of the 1930s
• the Whitfield and Lyons families, North Carolina,1939
• Wheeley's Church
• Tucks
• sharecropper cabin on hillside farm
• Caroline Atwater
• Whitfields, Bains, and a heritage of slavery
• roughhousing
• wasn't anything to steal
• working families
• better than money
• in the front row of the white folks' church
• aint much of a hand at going to town
• stories of the rural South in the 1930s
• a farmhouse morning
• a people bound up
• Sams, Trollope, & Lange
• old cars
• farming cotton on shares
• men of Macon County, July 1937
• thirteen-year old sharecropper boy

[2] The quote is given in the wikipedia article on MJH. It is taken from Lawrence Cohen's essay accompaying Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 Okeh Recordings. (Columbia/Legacy, CD, 1996)

slick stuff

I imagine journalists have always felt a bit torn between two desires that are mostly in competition with one another. They want to be respected for the quality of their writing and want also to gain as many readers as possible. The quest for quality tends toward depth, nuance, and balance. The quest for numbers of readers tends toward simplification, exaggeration, and surprise. As the size of newsrooms dwindles one expects this personal, internal struggle to increase as each journalist tries to show how very good she or he is both at delivering excellence and at capturing vast quantities of eyeballs. This conflict of personal ambitions can, and I think frequently does, lead both to honest mistakes and to guilty transgressions. The case I outlined yesterday seems apt. A reporter jumped at the chance to put on display a stalwart union member in blue collar Janesville, Wisconsin — a man, he wrote, who turned against his kind and became a supporter of Governor Walker and the Gov.'s union-bashing policies. The reporter assumed his prize exhibition to be a card-carrying UAW-ite and neither he nor his editor took the trouble to check whether this assumption was correct. It was not. I'd like to be able to say he and his paper are now forced to regret the negligence, but, as my blog post indicates, this doesn't (at least yet) seem to be so.

It's easy to find examples which show journalist eagerness getting the better of journalist caution. The events leading to the dismissal of Kurt Bardella are an instance. Jack Shafer's piece in Slate gives all I expect you'll need to know about this. A congressional staffer in the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, Bardella took advantage of reporters' pitiful eagerness for scraps of news. Playing a game of suck-up that (apparently) is all too common in Washington, the reporters let themselves be led by the nose. Unwilling to set a news item in its proper context, they wrote up what was handed to them as if it were their own work. Shafer points to the moral: "Faux scandals such as the one unfolding in Issa's office stand to remind us that every reader needs to be his own press critic, constantly asking himself if the publication he's reading — or the channel he is watching — is in the tank for its sources. If a story reads a lot like a press release, say, it's the first to report that Rep. Cheese is going run for speaker of the House, it probably is a gussied-up press release." (Ryan Lizza, in the New Yorker, adds to the story: News Desk: Issa and His Aide.)

I've a second example of a similar nature. Seeking to make the most of a fairly routine press release, PopSci's Clay Dillow comes to the sensational conclusion that New 'Nanolube' Could Cut Engine Friction by More Than Half. Trouble is, he misreads the press release on which he bases his story. As one commenter helpfully (and very politely) points out: "I'm not sure the amount of friction reduction is as significant as this article implies, hence this article may be titled incorrectly... I think we need some better numbers and more descriptive language before we jump to conclusions about how much these nanopolymers are going to double our gas mileage and make our engines last forever." It doesn't take much internet sleuthing to find out that the commenter is right. The press release says quite distinctly that the nanoparticle technique was able increase the performance of the best available lubricants by half again (55%). Thus if a lubricant were able to reduce friction by 10% then the lubricant plus nano-additive would reduce it by a bit more than 15%. There is nothing in the nano-research that showed the technique "could cut engine friction by more than half."

In his eagerness for a good story Dillow not only misreads his source, but also fails to notify the reader that the research he reports was first published not this month or last, but more than a year ago, in December 2009. The press release he glommed onto is about an award given to the primary researcher, not — primarily — the research outcome. As the flaks at the researcher's university tell us: "Dr. Liu’s discovery has earned the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers’ Captain Alfred E. Hunt Memorial Award. This prestigious award is given annually to the STLE member who authors the best paper dealing with the field of lubrication or an allied field."

Shafer's right to say we should our own press critics. You should, he says, "be no more gullible in your news consumption than you are when buying a used car."

straight facts

It's not always easy for journalists to get their facts straight. Even back when papers could afford the salaries of editors and re-write men, they still would sometimes get names wrong, dates wrong, affiliations wrong. Now that money has fled it's much harder for them to get things right. Still, when the New York Times features a front page piece by a reporter named Sulzberger, you expect some extra attention to detail. You expect it the more when highly-contentious politics are involved. Just as much, you expect that when a key "fact" given in the top two paragraphs is shown to be false, the Great Gray Lady will give prominence to the correction so that it will be picked up by the thousands of outlets that have already shown their readers the erroneous information.

Not so.

Here's how the article originally began. I've highlighted the phrase that the Times later corrected.

JANESVILLE, Wis. -- Rich Hahan worked at the General Motors plant here until it closed about two years ago. He moved to Detroit to take another G.M. job while his wife and children stayed here, but then the automaker cut more jobs. So Mr. Hahan, 50, found himself back in Janesville, collecting unemployment for a time, and watching as the city's industrial base seemed to crumble away. Among the top five employers here are the county, the schools and the city. And that was enough to make Mr. Hahan, a union man from a union town, a supporter of Gov. Scott Walker's sweeping proposal to cut the benefits and collective-bargaining rights of public workers in Wisconsin, a plan that has set off a firestorm of debate and protests at the state Capitol. He says he still believes in unions, but thinks those in the public sector lead to wasteful spending because of what he sees as lavish benefits and endless negotiations. "Something needs to be done," he said, "and quickly."

Here's the Times' whoopsie note, published four days later at the bottom of page 2:

Correction: February 26, 2011

A front-page article on Tuesday about reaction among private-sector workers in Wisconsin to Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to cut benefits and collective-bargaining rights for unionized public employees referred incorrectly to the work history of one person quoted, and also misspelled his surname. While the man, Rich Hahn (not Hahan) described himself to a reporter as a "union guy," he now says that he has worked at unionized factories, but was not himself a union member. (The Times contacted Mr. Hahn again to review his background after a United Auto Workers official said the union had no record of his membership.)

As you might expect, the original article achieved much greater reach than the corrected version that's now online. A Google search for the original, uncorrected, text gives close to 3,000 hits while a search for the corrected text gives 119 at the moment.

All this is the more interesting because Wisconsin's Gov. Walker referred to the erroneous text in his notorious phone conversation with the faux David Koch. In it Walker says he wants wide distribution of the Sulzberger piece, particularly among people who have doubts about his union bashing campaign.

A reporter on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Daniel Bice did a nice, succinct blog post on this subject yesterday. It has also drawn a highly-readable tirade from Keith Olbermann.

I haven't found any news hounds who've uncovered how it was that Sulzberger came to be speaking with Rich Hahn in Janesville. It's pretty certain that he and Monica Davey did not just show up and begin interviewing people at random. They might have had a local handler with them and that handler might have had a connection with Wisconsin Republicans, but it's just as likely they used other local sources. The local chamber of commerce is one possibility. It's a fact that the Times article has been rebroadcast via a collection of web sites that all have the domain name "CITYNAMEbusinessvotes.com" and all these sites are affiliated with local chambers of commerce across the U.S. (for example the Ashland OH, C-of-C).

From the article itself it seems pretty clear that neither Sulzberger nor Davey asked for a backgrounding from the Times' premier labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse. As Jason Linkins points out, "just a year ago, Greenhouse wrote a long and excellent investigation of Janesville's GM plant for Granta (Janesville, Wisconsin). In it, Greenhouse looked at the plant closure, the unions, and all the factors at play."

Having been given some front-page real estate for his story, you'd think Sulzberger would be happy to publicize it but you'd be wrong. As Jonathan Schwarz points out, Sulzberger wrote a 733-word article about the Walker prank call and in it, he says A.G.S. unaccountably fails to mention something: "Number of mentions of Walker loving a certain Sulzberger-written New York Times article?" he asks. And "Zero," he answers.

I Guess!

Before he wrote his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler and his brother Francis wrote a little language guide called The King’s English (2d ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1908). Like it's big cousin, TKE takes a pragmatic view. The authors tell us usage nannies are frequently downright wrong in what they proscribe and they say what's right is often no more than what the ear tells us is right. They also give plenty of examples of turgid, ugly, vague, awkward, ambiguous, and misleading prose.

In its section on Americanisms the book says our U.S. idioms are foreign words "and should be so treated." But it also says many of these vulgarities have deep English roots. "I guess" is the first example. F and F say the English man on the street would instantly name that phrase as a pure Yankee original. But, they say, it's not so. "Inquiry into it would at once bear out the American contention that what we are often rude enough to call their vulgarisms are in fact good old English. I gesse is a favourite expression of Chaucer's, and the sense he sometimes gives it is very finely distinguished from the regular Yankee use." They add, however, that good old English doesn't always, as in this instance, make "good new English." One is advised not to use "I guess" when writing the King's English. They say new Americanisms, are all well and good, but — good old English or not — they belong in American speech and writings, not English: "English and the American language and literature are both good things; but they are better apart than mixed."

Not surprisingly, the nineteenth century dictionaries of American usage give special attention to "I guess." One says educated citizens condemn it. Another says: "There is, probably, no word in the Dictionary that has given more occasion to animated discussion than this; [it is] quoted almost by every writer in America as one of the most obtrusive and repulsive Americanisms."[1] Another says English purists have mercilessly, but quite wrongly, twitted Americans about it.[2] Linguists point out that the English in England have long used "I guess" to mean "I conjecture" and people there as well as in the US would say "I guess" when unsure of a result.

What Americans would (most colorfully) do and English (boringly) not dare is to use "I guess" when there is no uncertainty. One lexicographer explains thus: "The only difference between the English and the American use of the word is, probably, that the former denotes a fair, candid guess, while the Yankee who guesses is apt to be quite sure of what he professes to doubt. As he only calculates when he has already solved his problem, so he also guesses when he has made sure of his fact. 'I guess I do,' is with him an expression of confident certainty. He is, however, quite as prone to go to the other extreme and to use the word without any other meaning than mere 'thinking,' as when he says: 'I guess he is well,' or, 'I guess I won't go to-day.'" Another gives as example this emphatic assertion: "Jem, would n't you like a julep to cool you off this sultry morning?" "I guess I would!"[3] Yet another dictionary gives this usage: "'I rayther guess there's petticuts goes with them mud-mashers.' The gal she flamed up at that, and says she: 'I guess you're barkin' up the wrong saplin'.'"[4] And here's one more:

Rev. Mr. Selah (to desk editor of the Daily Roarer) 'Mr. Seezars, are you going to publish my prayer in full?'

Desk Editor 'In full? Well, I guess not. (Changing his tone) 'However, we'll do what we can for you. By swiping out the flub-dub and guff, I guess we'll have room to put in the points.' (Detroit Free Press, August, 1888).[5]

The author of an article published in 1881 gives this fanciful derivation:

When an American says, "I guess so," he does not mean "I think it may be so," but more nearly "I know it to be so." The expression is closely akin to the old English saying, "I wis." Indeed, the words "guess" and "wis" are simply different forms of the same word. Just as we have "guard" and "ward," "guardian" and "warden," "Guillaume" and "William," "guichet" and "wicket," etc., so have we the verbs to "guess" and to "wis" (in the Bible we have not "I wis," but we have "he wist"). "I wis" means nearly the same as "I know," and that this is the root meaning of the word is shown by such words as "wit," "witness," "wisdom," the legal phrase "to wit," and so forth. "Guess" was originally used in the same sense; and Americans retain that meaning, whereas in our modern English the word has changed in significance.[6]

I guess I'll let John Farmer have the last words. He closes his treatment of "guess" with these:

'What is your age?' asked Colonel James
(that dreadful question to a lady).
'I GUESS I am about forty.'
'You GUESS? Don't you know?'
'Well, forty next June.'
-- New York Herald, March 27th, 1888.

She walked into the dry goods store
      With stately step and proud,
She turn'd the frills and laces o'er,
      And pushed aside the crowd.
She asked to see some rich brocade,
      Mohairs and grenadines,
She looked at silk of every shade —
      And then at velveteens.
She sampled jackets blue and red,
      She tried on nine or ten,
And then she toss'd her head, and said
      She GUESS'D she'd call again.
-- Texas Siftings, June 23rd, 1888.[7]

--------------

Some sources:

Americanisms: the English of the New world by Maximilian Schele de Vere (C. Scribner & company, 1872)

Dictionary of Americanisms, a glossary of words and phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States by John Russell Bartlett (Little, Brown and Co., 1889)

Americanisms, old and new by John S. Farmer (London, Priv. print. by T. Poulter, 1889)

Glossary of supposed Americanisms by Alfred L. Elwyn (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1859)

Current Americanisms, a dictionary of words and phrases in common use, by T. Baron Russell (London, Howe, 1893).

A new dictionary of Americanisms; being a glossary of words supposed to be peculiar to the United States and the dominion of Canada, by Sylvia Clapin (New York, Louis Weiss & Co., 1902)

Slang and its analogues past and present, A dictionary, historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc. by John S. Farmer (London, Printed for subscribers only, 1890)

"English and American English" by Richard A. Proctor in The Gentleman's magazine, Volume 251 (F. Jeffries, 1881) -- reprinted in "ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH" by Richard A. Proctor in Appletons' journal, vol. 11 (Volume 11 (D. Appleton and Co., 1881)

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Notes:

[1] The first author John Farmer — Americanisms, old and new by John S. Farmer (London, Priv. print. by T. Poulter, 1889). The second is Maximilian Schele de Vere — Americanisms: the English of the New world by Maximilian Schele de Vere (C. Scribner & company, 1872).

[2] A new dictionary of Americanisms; being a glossary of words supposed to be peculiar to the United States and the dominion of Canada, by Sylva Clapin (New York, Louis Weiss & Co., 1902).

[3] First quote from same source; second from Dictionary of Americanisms, a glossary of words and phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States by John Russell Bartlett (Little, Brown and Co., 1889).

[4] Current Americanisms, a dictionary of words and phrases in common use, by T. Baron Russell (London, Howe, 1893).

[5] Slang and its analogues past and present, A dictionary, historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc. by John S. Farmer (London, Printed for subscribers only, 1890).

[6] "English and American English" by Richard A. Proctor in The Gentleman's magazine, Volume 251 (F. Jeffries, 1881). The OED does not support Proctor's etymology. It gives no connection with "wis"; asserts that the word probably comes from (or is at least related to) the Old Norse geta, to get, guess.

[7] Farmer, Slang and its analogues past and present

a cheerful tenement

{Caption: New York City, interior of tenement house, Detroit Publishing Co., made sometime between 1900 and 1910; source: Library of Congress}

This is a far cry from the slum tenements that I've previously shown (for example here and here). As you can see from its caption the photo came from the Detroit Publishing Co., a business that produced some excellent large format images of New York in the 1890s and 1910s. This is my 30th blog post showing their work. You can find the others by clicking the Detroit Publishing Co. link in the list of blogger "labels" at right.

This photo's unlike the others. For the most part the firm showed exteriors — buildings, parks, blocks, riverside, and skylines. The photographic technology of the time did not favor interior shots. To get a good one you had to have a good subject, lots of natural light, and enough room for the bulky 8x10 view camera with its tripod.

On this occasion the photographer was favored with all three. The rooms and their contents are fascinating, there's abundant light, and the camera fit into a dark corner or perhaps the doorway to an adjoining room. The light is particularly interesting. The sun comes strongly from our left. Presumably it's early in the morning and it hasn't yet risen far. Its light is a bit diffused as it comes in a window that's off frame to our left but shines full force through window of the back room. There's a strong secondary light source as it reflects off the wall in that room, right back toward the lens. You can see its cross currents in the shadows cast by the table legs.

LC has scanned this image at very high resolution, so great that it would take a computer screen five feet wide and nearly four high to view the entire uncompressed image all at once. (In the photo at top you are seeing a smaller version that's been compressed with jpeg technology.)

The HR imaging yields marvelous detail. We're viewing portions of two rooms of a city apartment. The back one seems too small to be a bedroom but it probably was. From the presence of a cook stove and of two tables (one which we see clearly and another only partly visible) we can tell the front room is used as both kitchen and dining room.

We know from the caption that the building is a tenement, meaning what we today call an apartment building, but probably also meaning a structure built to house low-income tenants. (Apartment buildings for middle-class New Yorkers tended to be called "flats" at that time.)

It's clear the inhabitants of this apartment made the most of the little space they occupied. If it's typical of tenements of its time it has only one other room, a second bedroom.

You can't tell whether there was a sink in this room; I think not. There almost certainly was no private bathroom but rather a shared facility down the hall.

Carpets were expensive and usually a luxury beyond the reach of tenement dwellers, as seems to be the case here.

Here are some detail views. As usual, you can click to see them full size.

1. The stove is compact. It runs on gas, but there was a coal stove when the place was constructed. You can tell that by the inverted pie-plate high up the wall. It covers a hole into the chimney where the stove flue used to go.


2. Here's a close up view of the pie plate flue cover.


3. On the wall just to the left of the cooker is a match holder. There were no pilot lights for the five top burners or three oven jets.


4. Just in front, hard to make out, is a pet cat. The camera was on a tripod, of course, and the exposure time was set to maybe a quarter of a second and in that time the cat moved a bit, causing the ghost image. Because of the motion it almost looks like a small dog.


5. There's so much else to see. Working from the left, I notice a battlefield picture of Napoleon on the wall. There are so many feminine touches in the photo that it comes as a surprise to see this.


6. In the corner is another somewhat masculine picture, a bucolic one showing a bovine family in a dramatic highland setting. The pipe rising in the corner to its left presumably carries gas to the floor above (gas having been put in after the building was constructed).


7. A bit more to the right we see a hull design for a sailboat. These were collected as decorations (as here), but were made to be guides for boat builders to use. Near it are a sentimental picture of children washing something (a pet?), some scissors, ribbons or laces, and a pocket watch.


8. Further right, I notice some scrapbooks in the corner of the next room. The fact that they lie on the floor indicates to me that the apartment wasn't rearranged to make the photo more interesting but was used by its occupants just as we see it.


9. Then we see a chest of drawers with its mirror. I'd guess that after the stove, these are the most precious pieces of furniture that the tenants own. There is a lot to see on the chest and mirror; and in the mirror as well. At least one person living here has a flair for design.


10. While I'm observing these details, I've noticed the overhead gas lights. They have no mantles to capture the flames and no glass globes or shades to diffuse and redirect their light. Nighttime lighting wouldn't be very pleasant in these rooms. It wouldn't have been easy to turn on the gas and light the lamps. Presumably that task took two people, both standing on chairs — one to turn on the tap and the other to ignite the gas. I suspect the occupants simply didn't use gas light; perhaps it was too expensive. Notice in this detail that there's a pie plate flue cover in the back room. Presumably the flue pipe from the kitchen stove crossed through the next room to get to the nearest chimney entrance. That pipe would have helped heat the little room; it's now probably quite cold in there during the winter months. Notice also that the wall merges into the ceiling not in a sharp corner but in a smooth curve.


11. Here is a handsome chair and better look at the dresser.


12. By the doorway are a whisk broom and small purse.


13. The purse seems to be worth closer inspection.


14. The shelf is handsomely draped with a scarf and its contents are interesting. The occupants of this apartment seem to have at least one child, whose photo we see at left; or maybe it's two, as shown on the right. The woven-wood fan is probably the little boy's making. It seems the husband or a male relative is serving in the military, or was serving during the recently-completed Spanish-American War. There's pen and ink here by the candlestick and a Hummel-like image of children. The key that hung by the photo at right may unlock the top drawers of the dresser; it's certainly hung high to keep it out of little hands.


15. The table is nicely draped and on it we see a newspaper and something (an art project?) that's hard to identify.


There's more to see, but I leave that to you.

When this photo was featured on the Shorpy blog it drew some informative comments. Here are extracts from them:

Anne S. says "Notice the hat pins, scent bottles and other such items on the dressing table. This tenement dweller did not leave home unadorned!" Mr Mel says "The photo doesn't let us know where in NYC it is. 1910 tenements usually conjure an image of the Lower East Side, a neighborhood of immigrants. In this picture, which could be in Midtown, Yorkville or the Upper West Side or even Harlem, we have reasonable living quarters for 1910." Scribe says "It is faint in the photo, but it appears there is a flatiron leaning against the baseboard behind the corner of the stove." Scribe seems to be right:


Cranch says the flue covers "had spring clips on the back that snapped into the circular opening." Anonymous Tipster notices that the newspaper is Hearst's Evening Journal and says it was begun in 1895, became the Journal-American in 1936, and ended life in a complex merge into the World-Telegram and Sun and the Herald-Tribune. This person also says "The thing reflected in the mirror appears to be a yarn swift, or winder. The bag would be used to store it."

--------------

The floor plan of a typical "dumbbell" tenement also called an Old Law Tenement was different from the floor plan of our tenement. Dumbbell buildings were constructed throughout New York between 1879 and 1901 in an effort to make apartment buildings healthier, safer, and generally better than they had been before.

Here's a typical dumbbell floor plan.

{source: edtech.com}

Here, I have modified the plan to show a plan that's closer to our tenement's (in oval at top left). In both plans, the small bedroom is quite tiny.


This is an 8x10 view camera of the type that the photographer might have used. It was loaded at back, one plate at a time, and could only be used on a tripod.

{source: http://piercevaubel.com}

----------

See also:

New York City, Tenement Life

Detroit Publishing Company Collection overview from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920, a set of links from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Detroit Publishing Company Photographs selected bibliography from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Detroit Photographic Company; about the collection

32163 results containing "Detroit Publishing Co." from the Prints and Photographs Division online catalog

a free circulating library for New York

I've had a mild sort of passion for libraries from the day I first set foot in the small room of books below our first grade classroom in the basement of my elementary school. My love diminished only a little when, years later, I found that libraries contained necessary tools of research and were thereby inseparably connected with hated and much procrastinated term papers. In college I learned to study in them, or rather "study" since I also learned that the body fooled the mind into believing that study was being done when its actual state was one of trance-like stupor. And, still later, I learned that self-directed independent exploration within libraries could yield serendipitous discoveries and learned, too, that the pleasure of these finds was mitigated by the lurching shifts of research direction they produced. And later yet I actually earned money (very little but still hard cash) doing free-lance tasks for publishers in the magnificent research libraries of New York City. Still, it took me two more decades of alternate employment before I entered the field as one of those whose work behind the scenes (in "processing" or "tech services") enables libraries to provide their admirable services.

In mid-century New York, that is mid-19th-century New York, the idea of free public libraries was new and somewhat suspect. There were many comfortably-off, conservative-minded people who were unwilling to support an institution which might stir thoughts of betterment among the poor; or, worse, stir resentment at the impossible gap between themselves and the rich with whom they shared the city. Put another way: fearing the rise of organized labor and radical politics, these cautious power-wielding New Yorkers felt that a populace without books would be more malleable and easy to control than one that had learned to read, discuss, and thoughtfully consider matters.

This pessimistic set of mind is seen in the way the earliest free schools sought to inculcate unthinking obedience and patient endurance along with the three Rs.[1] And it was is seen as well in the refusal of the city's alderman to give public funds so that libraries might be established for free lending of books to all comers. New York's earliest "public" libraries of the time were all privately funded and intended for the use restricted audiences. The best known among them served the needs of bibliophiles and scholars and they did not welcome as patrons men and women whose dress marked them as lower class.[2]

All the same, not all of New York's power elite felt that public schools had to teach a specific Protestant morality or that "public" libraries were not supposed to serve the public. Some felt that New York deserved free circulating public libraries of its own simply because Boston (and other cities) had shown up New York by creating them. To these men the existence of a true public library was a matter of prestige, of civic pride. In this vein an editorial writer in the New York Times complained in this manner: "There is something humiliating in the reflection that our City and State have so long ignored this important subject, and that we are today so far in the rear of other States and countries."[3]

At the same time some New Yorkers argued for the benefits that New York's citizens would receive from access to libraries. The arguments put forward by these progressives worked the conservatives' fears against them. As one of them put it, public libraries would help prevent the envy and grievances of poor working men and women from turning into class hatred. And they would help to prevent an ignorant populace from becoming easy prey for unscrupulous leaders. Libraries, this speaker said, would "thwart the efforts of the specious and designing men who undertake to use the motives and grievances of the people as aids to their own demagogic ambition and objects." He closed by an appeal to social order: "Let the rich men aid in this work of bridging over the chasm between themselves and the less fortunate or wealthy classes, and they would lay broader and deeper the foundation of society with a regulated liberty, in which the rich might not only enjoy the fruits of their toil and labors and intellects, but be safe from violence and crime and from the stupid hate and envy of those who have not succeeded as well as they in the battle of life."[4] A bit later Carl Schurz expanded on the theme by stressing the importance of public libraries in a democracy. Libraries foster knowledge, he said, and it makes no sense to keep citizens ignorant when "our honor and greatness, the safety of our institutions, our whole social order, depend upon the intelligence and virtue with which the people govern themselves."[5]

The progressives and those for whom it was a matter of civic pride seem to have made a significant advance when, in 1872, an editorial in the New York Times stated, quite baldly, "it would appear to be a proposition requiring no argument, that the City of New York greatly needs, and would largely profit by the early establishment of a Free Public Library." [6]

A few years later the first such library came into existence, but, surprisingly, it was "public" in the sense of "open to all" but not "public" in the sense of "publicly funded." The city's first free public lending library had its beginnings not in the construction of a large purpose-built structure for public use, but rather in the small-scale charitable effort of a few enlightened ladies belonging to the parish of the city's largest Episcopal church.

Here's the story: "The New York Free Circulating Library, now a part of the New York Public Library system, had its real beginning in 1879, in a sewing class in connection with the charitable work of Grace Church. The class was a small one, and as the girls showed an inclination to read cheap paper novels, one of the teachers proposed lending to each a book a week. In a short time other women became interested. About 500 books were collected, and a little library started in a room in Thirteenth Street, east of Fourth Avenue. It increased with wonderful strides, so that at the end of the first year about 1,200 books, all gifts, were on the shelves. The conclusion was reached that there was need for establishing a circulating library in various parts of the city, and this resulted in the formation, in 1880, of the New York Free Circulating Library. In March of that year the library was moved to two rooms at 36 Bond Street, where it remained until 1883, when it took possession of the entire building at 49 Bond Street (the present Bond Street Branch). From this time on branches were formed in various parts of the city, until [in 1901] the library was merged into the Public Library system."[7]

This photo shows the building where the library had two rooms at 36 Bond St.

{36 Bond Street, undated image from a lantern slide; caption: First Home of the N.Y.F.C. Library, exterior view showing neighboring buildings. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This shows the library at 49 Bond St. in 1885.

{Bond Street Branch of the N.Y. Public Library, circulating dept. [next to building numbered 28] by Lewis Hine; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

The Free Circulating Library was a great success.[8] Usage was high and demand grew for branch libraries to be opened throughout the city.[9]

This list names the nine branches that existed at the time the NYPL took them over in 1901. They appear in the order in which they were brought into the system.

• 1880, Bond St., 3rd location, 49 Bond St. May 1883
• 1884, Ottendorfer, 135 Second Ave.
• 1888, George Bruce, first location, 226 W. 42nd St.
• 1888, Jackson Sq, 251 W 13th St.
• 1892, Harlem, first location, 18 e. 125th St.
• 1893, Muhlenberg, first location, 220 6th Av.
• 1896, Bloomingdale, first location, 816 Amsterdam Ave.
• 1897, Riverside, first location, 261 W. 69th St.
• 1897, Yorkville, first location, 1523 2nd Ave.

This old photo shows (left-to-right, top row first) the Bond St, Bloomingdale, Yorkville, Ottendorfer, Jackson Square, and George Bruce branches, with their street addresses in 1901 (some had by then moved to larger quarters).

{The distributing stations of the New York Free Circulating Library, Mar. 30, 1901. Printed on border of images: "49 Bond Street; 206 West 100th Street; 261 West 69th Street; 135 Second Avenue; 251 West 13th Street; 226 West 42d Street." Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This brief notice in the New York Times marks the opening of the first branch in 1880.

{THE FREE CIRCULATING LIBRARY, New York Times, May 4, 1880}

This photo shows school children at 49 Bond St. branch.

{After school hours: interior of the Bond Street Branch of the New York Free Circulating Library, ca. 1899, from The new metropolis: memorable events of three centuries, 1600-1900, from the island of Mana-Hat-Ta to greater New York at close of nineteenth century by Zeisloft, E. Idell (New York, Appleton, c. 1899); source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

Here you can see catalog and some of the stacks at 49 Bond St.

{Oldest Branch in Library--Bond Street (below Astor Place, Manhattan) by Lewis Hine, ca. 1886. None of the branches permitted patrons to retrieve their own books until the opening of the Yorkville branch in 1897. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

-----------

This article in the New York Times is a brief status report from early in 1884.

{OUTGROWING ITS FACILITIES.; PROSPEROUS CONDITION OF THE NEW-YORK FREE CIRCULATING LIBRARY, New York Times, January 13, 1884. First para: "In the fourth annual report of the New York Free Circulating Library, for the year 1883, the Trustees say they have reason to believe that they will soon be called upon to assume charge of a free library which is being erected by a public-spirited citizen on the east side of the city."}

-------------

See also:

IN AND ABOUT THE CITY; THE FREE LIBRARY PROJECT. FACTS DRAWN FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF THE CIRCULATING LIBRARY, New York Times, February 5, 1886

READING FOR THE PEOPLE - THE NEW-YORK FREE CIRCULATING LIBRARY. EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND AND OTHER CITIZENS ADDRESS A LARGE MEETING IN CHICKERING HALL, EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND AND OTHER CITIZENS ADDRESS A LARGE MEETING IN CHICKERING HALL, New York Times, March 7, 1890. First para: "Every seat in Chickering Hall was filled yesterday afternoon by an audience which assembled to listen to what several distinguished gentlemen had to say concerning the New-York Free Circulating Library, the institution which has conferred so many benefits upon the great number of persons who have claimed the use of its advantages."

LIBRARY WORK; Points in the Annual Report of the Free Circulating Library of New York, New York Times, March 25, 1899

BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE - THE NEW-YORK FREE CIRCULATING LIBRARY. A GREAT DEAL OF WORK DONE WITH A VERY LITTLE MONEY -- FIGURES FOR THE PAST YEAR -- SOME NEEDS OF THE INSTITUTION; A GREAT DEAL OF WORK DONE WITH A VERY LITTLE MONEY -- FIGURES FOR THE PAST YEAR -- SOME NEEDS OF THE INSTITUTION. New York Times, January 15, 1892. First para: "The New-York Free Circulating Library has just issued its twelfth annual report. It sets forth the work done, and indicates what an extension of this work there might be if funds enough were forthcoming. The amount of good work done by this institution is well worth considering."

MANY BOOKS READ. - GROWTH OF THE NEW-YORK FREE CIRCULATING LIBRARY, New York Times, November 21, 1892. First para: "The annual report of the New-York Free Circulating Library for 1892 shows that the expenses of the institution during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 were $27,708.33. All the departments of the library work show a large increase. The usefulness of the library has been greatly extended, and the whole condition improved."

List of libraries in 19th-century New York City in wikipedia

Statistics of Public, Society and School Libraries by the United States Office of Education (Govt. print. off. 1893).

Appleton's Dictionary of New York and its vicinity, with maps of New York and its environs (Appleton, 1898)

LIBRARIES FOR THE POOR; A MOVEMENT TO SUPPLY A MUCH NEEDED WANT, New York Times, January 21, 1882. First para: "The question of the need and the feasibility of establishing a number of well-organized and well-supplied free circulating libraries in this City was the matter which attracted a large and cultured audience last night to the ball of the Union League Club. The meeting was held under the auspices of the New-York Free Circulating Library, Bond-street."

A WELL-MANAGED INSTITUTION; FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NEW-YORK FREE CIRCULATING LIBRARY, New York Times, December 23, 1880. First para: "The first annual report of the New-York Free Circulating Library, which has just been issued, is invested with particular interest from the fact that the institution is the only free circulating library in this City. In this respect New-York was behind other cities, and this enterprise was undertaken without contemplating any burden on the tax-payer."

OUTGROWING ITS FACILITIES.; PROSPEROUS CONDITION OF THE NEW-YORK FREE CIRCULATING LIBRARY, New York Times, January 13, 1884. First para: "In the fourth annual report of the New York Free Circulating Library, for the year 1883, the Trustees say they have reason to believe that they will soon be called upon to assume charge of a free library which is being erected by a public-spirited citizen on the east side of the city."

REV. DR. JOHN HALL DEAD; The Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church Expires Near Belfast, Ireland. HEART DISEASE THE CAUSE He Was on the Point of Returning to New York -- The Story of His Life of Unusual Activity. New York Times, September 18, 1898

The Free Circulating Library.; TWO NEW BRANCHES ESTABLISHED -- OTHER IMPORTANT CHANGES, New York Times, June 12, 1897

"Free Circulating Libraries," in American annual cyclopaedia and register of important events (D. Appleton and company, 1887)

"New York Free Public Libraries," in The Cosmopolitan, Vol. 3 (Schlicht & Field, 1887)

------------

Notes:

[1] You can see this attitude in debates, largely raised by Catholics, about the reading of the Protestant Bible to students in publicly-funded schools. As part of this argument the city superintendent of schools defended this reading as a means of procuring among students "order, quietude, neatness, punctuality, fidelity, industry, obedience, honor, truth, uprightness, deference to the wants, the rights, and conveniences of others." Here's more of his defense:

In all our Public Schools and departments, with very few and inconsiderable exceptions, the services of each day are commenced by the reading of selections from the Bible, by the Principal or some one of the School Officers, followed by the solemn and reverent repetition of the Lord's Prayer by all the pupils and teachers in concert, and by the singing of one or more appropriate hymns of Christian thanksgiving and praise. In many of them these devotional exercises are repeated at the close of the school. In all of them, without a solitary exception, at frequent and appropriate intervals during the day, songs, imbued with the purest principles of Christian morality, form a portion of the course of instruction, and are participated in by all the pupils. In all of them, without a solitary exception, lessons and precepts of virtue and Christian conduct are daily inculcated by the teachers, school officers, superintendents, or visitors; the fundamental principles of religion recognized and enforced; and the importance and necessity of strict honesty and integrity, undeviating truthfulness, frankness, sincerity, mutual affection and regard, obedience and respect to parents, and the conscientious and uniform observance of all the requisitions of a pure Christian morality, taught by precept and example. In all of them, the daily routine and discipline of the school are directly and powerfully adapted to the formation and perpetuation of habits of order, quietude, neatness, punctuality, fidelity, industry, obedience, honor, truth, uprightness, deference to the wants, the rights, and conveniences of others, and to the assiduous culture of the highest and noblest principles of action and conduct in all the varied relations of life. This is the character of the teachings of our Public Schools; these are the agencies and instrumentalities in daily operation within their walls; and no influences at variance with these are permitted, under any pretence, to find access or gain a footing among them. Neither the mind nor the heart of the child most religiously and scrupulously trained and disciplined in the domestic circle or the sanctuary of the Church, is exposed to the slightest contamination by the instructions or discipline of the school; while, on the other hand, every lesson of pure Christian morality or ethics, communicated in either of the former, is strengthened and confirmed by the pervading instruction and influence of the latter. -- Report of the City Superintendent of Schools to the Board of Education, New-York, Dec. 30, 1857; in Documents of the Board of Education of the City of New York (New York Board of Education, 1858)

[2] These were the Astor and Lenox libraries. See History of The New York Public Library on the NYPL web site and A Free Public Library and How to Get It, an editorial in the New York Times, January 28, 1872. Extract: "The Astor books were gathered for the single purpose of meeting the wants of the student, the critic, the scholar, and thus of feeding tastes already cultivated to the point of hunger. This purpose they are admirably fitted to serve. As a reference library, therefore, to be consulted on the premises, the Astor is not surpassed in this country." The writer says if the reluctant trustees would agree to expand the Astor to included a free, public, lending library, tens of thousands of New Yorkers "would flock to the newly-opened fountain of literature."

[3] The quote comes from Free Public Libraries, an editorial in the New York Times, January 14, 1872. Extract: "Other cities in our country have taken the lead of us a long way in this matter of a free distribution of books among the people. Notably, Boston has, in her splendid Public Library, met and answered successfully all the questions and obligations to the system as a practical scheme. [There are free libraries elsewhere in Massachusetts, in other states, and in foreign cities.] Even Italy has for several years enjoyed the advantages of popular circulating libraries, and at least thirty towns and cities have established libraries since 1861.... There is something humiliating in the reflection that our City and State have so long ignored this important subject, and that we are today so far in the rear of other States and countries." See also, for example, this from 1866: "Boston has a public library, where every resident of the city, without price or payment, can take home his couple of volumes from an immense and most valuable collection. New-York has a number of excellent libraries and reading rooms, (though not half enough for the wants of the City,) and yet their management and selection of late have not been satisfactory or sufficiently profitable. ... We find all sorts of barriers and formalities thrown up against readers, until many persons would rather do without a book or magazine, or purchase it, than laboriously extract it from the library. ... What we need, then, in New-York, is a greater hospitality and liberality in the existing libraries, as if they existed for the public and not the public for them." -- The Libraries of the City, editorial in the New York Times, June 10, 1866.

[4] The quotes come from a speech by Rev. Dr. John Hall, head of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, and one of New York's foremost religious leaders. The occasion was a meeting held at the Union League Club in support of the New-York Free Circulating Library, Bond Street. Here are some additional extracts of Hall's remarks from an account which appeared in the New York Times:

Idleness, vacant and unoccupied minds, added to temptations, were the conditions which produced and nurtured crime in the community, and to remedy this condition of things was a noble and worthy work. The present purpose was to give opportunity to those who do not now enjoy it of coming into contact with good books. -- not just "poetry, history, biography" but also fiction [even fiction, although many might disagree, the circulating library must provide it]... In the beginning this work he hoped the movers would bear in mind that it was not merely good things, but first-class things that were wanted for the people. In our land there was a large number of untutored, ignorant, stupid, and discontented men who were compelled to earn their living by severe labor, and who made known their grievances and discontent at times by appeals to violent feelings. Call them Communists, or the spirit which animated them Socialism, or whatever else they might, it was dangerous for the land in which it existed. Here was one way in which the higher and more favored classes might do much to thwart the efforts of the specious and designing men who undertake to use the motives and grievances of the people as aids to their own demagogic ambition and objects. Let the rich men aid in this work of bridging over the chasm between themselves and the less fortunate or wealthy classes, and they would lay broader and deeper the foundation of society with a regulated liberty, in which the rich might not only enjoy the fruits of their toil and labors and intellects, but be safe from violence and crime and from the stupid hate and envy of those who have not succeeded as well as they in the battle of life. -- LIBRARIES FOR THE POOR; A MOVEMENT TO SUPPLY A MUCH NEEDED WANT; Books to be Loaned Free of Cost. The question of the need and the feasibility of establishing a number of well-organized and well-supplied free circulating libraries in this City was the matter which attracted a large and cultured audience last night to the ball of the Union League Club. The meeting was held under the auspices of the New-York Free Circulating Library, Bond-street.

[5] New York Public Library: Ottendorfer Branch Dedication, in Speeches of Carl Schurz from Carl Schurz's papers in the Library of Congress; this is a printed proof with scattered hand-written edits by Schurz.

[6] The writer expressed a common view of "the poor" in adding that a lending library for the poor would make common books available to the lower classes and thereby "reach the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, the coal-heaver and the stevedore, the slop-shop seamstress and the household drudge, with the means of beguiling their listless leisure, feeding their hunger of mind where any exists, or tempting such mental appetite where it is latent."Free Reading for the People. New York Times, January 21, 1872

[7] This comes from a paperback pocketbook largely concerned with good works for the betterment of the poor: The better New York, A Practical Hand Book to the Resources and Progress of New York, by William Howe Tolman (The American Institute of Social Service, 1904). The sewing circle ladies were unusual in not requiring that their clients read morally uplifting literature. The other Grace Church good works seem to have had more missionary flavor. As for example the next entry in Tolman's book: "Strong and decided efforts are made day and night for the reformation of fallen women and young girls at the Florence Crittenden Mission, 21 Bleecker Street. Here the homeless may find a home and every incentive toward moral and educational advancement."

[8] The American Annual Cyclopaedia for ... gives usage statistics for the first five branches of the Free Circulating Library. The author reported that the five branches that existed in his day contained not much more than 100,000 volumes, and, "the eagerness with which these few books are sought for by the large number of readers who avail themselves of the privileges afforded, as shown by the statistics given below, is sufficient proof, if any were needed, of the use that would be made of a large free public library accessible to all, and of such a character as would place the city in the same rank in this respect as it maintains in other respects among the cities of the country." -- "Free Circulating Libraries" in American annual cyclopaedia and register of important events Vol. 26 (D. Appleton and company, 1887).

[9] The branch libraries were at first called distribution stations. Here's an account of the decision to create what we now call a library system: "It is the plan of the New York Free Circulating Library to establish 'stations' in different parts of the city for the distribution of books; stations each of which is, in fact, a complete library in itself, but all of which are under one general management — a sort of federation of libraries, as it were. This method, though having grave drawbacks, meets well the needs of a place the size of New York. To be obliged to go ten miles to change one's library book is a necessity always likely to weaken one's attachment to literature. On Bond street was established the first station, and now, though a second station of equal importance is established on Second avenue, it is generally referred to as a branch of the Bond-street Library." -- "NEW YORK FREE PUBLIC LIBRARIES" by Viola Roseboro in The Cosmopolitan Volume 3 (Schlicht & Field, 1887).