The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Tamiment Library Opens Its Doors So much has been happening at 7 East 15th Street that it's about time for me to say something about it. During the past year,...
...Now it is certain to be utilized by many more...
...One thing that always fascinated me when I worked in this library was the great number of journalistic tragedies recorded in prematurely completed files...
...It began with programs of music, lectures and art exhibits at Camp Tamiment...
...Many a weekly paper or monthly magazine was started by eager, hopeful reformers, only to flicker out after a short and troubled career...
...The library has been completely cleaned and put in order...
...On October 25, it will be dedicated under its new name...
...The great struggle to organize the workers in the clothing industry and improve their condition is recorded in the files of the New York Call, the Volks-Zeitung and a great many Jewish publications...
...This old library at 7 East 15th Street is full of the sort of records that explain how and why such changes were made...
...During the past year, the International Association of Machinists has taken over the building which since 1917 has been the home of the Rand School of Social Science...
...The formation of the Knights of Labor and, later, of the American Federation of Labor can be followed step by step in all sorts of publications and minutes of conventions...
...Even the New Leader offices have been rejuvenated...
...The Institute started 21 years ago as a broad-gauged, imaginative cultural outfit and has been expanding ever since...
...The editors are working in a brighter, more efficient place...
...There is propaganda material sent out by forward-looking trade-union leaders who tried—far ahead of their time—to bring the various craft unions together in a national organization...
...Life has been vastly improved...
...It presents annual awards for the best works of biography...
...A good many threads of American history can be traced through records left by magazines which failed...
...As time goes on, this institution will expand and improve...
...Notices are being sent out to libraries and schools announcing that the collections are available for study...
...He soon awoke, too, to the fact that these rarities were in such hopeless disorder that they could be of little use to anyone...
...For many years, this library has had on its shelves a really exceptional and distinguished collection of literary and historical materials...
...The files of the Call have been made permanent by microfilming...
...And the Tamiment Institute has enlarged its interests and activities by taking over what was formerly known as the Rand School Library and later as the Meyer London Library...
...But now, under this new Tamiment regime, a real librarian has been placed in charge of the collections...
...Tamiment-in-the-Poconos, which occupies the first floor of the building, has expanded its offices and done its share of brightening and restoring...
...There are books, pamphlets and leaflets which were printed and distributed to promote the 8-hour day 'way back at the middle of the 19th century...
...If our readers have sensed a livelier spirit in our pages, this change may account for it...
...It gives prizes for essays written by college students...
...From now on, it is to be known as the Tamiment Institute Library and is to be operated as part of the Tamiment Institute's program...
...The Eugene V. Debs collection contains historical records that can be found nowhere else...
...Its amazingly complex lot of treasures is being catalogued and rearranged...
...It proposes now to hold an annual seminar "which will bring together some of the country's leading scholars and experts and permit them to explore in depth questions of urgent concern in contemporary life...
...But soon it began to operate projects which are nationwide in scope...
...The arguments in favor of industrial unionism can be traced through the editorials Debs wrote and published when he was editor of the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine in the 1890s...
...and insuring its permanence...
...During the past hundred years, laws, customs and standards of living have changed...
...But the change in the old building at 7 East 15th Street which touches me most immediately is that which involves the library...
...There are available, too, the official records of the Socialist party and of many trade unions...
...It has been renovated and improved from top to bottom...
...Anyone who entered the wide room which housed its chief treasures was instantly impressed by the dignified Richardsonesque architecture...
...If he took time to look about, he soon perceived that he was in the presence of records that were rare and precious...
...Even during its days of confusion, the library was visited by many students of trade-unionism, socialism, radical movements and, in general, the history of social progress here and abroad...
...The Tamiment Institute is to be congratulated on taking it over, expanding and improving it...
...This Tamiment Institute Library is full of the kind of material which brings history alive...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 42
