"She speaks as one having authority": Mary E. Downey's use of libraries as a means to public power.

The history of women in the West includes little about women as librarians. Librarians who came West were looking for professional and administrative opportunities away from the established centers of library authority in the East. Western states hired state library organizers to oversee library development. The women who accepted these positions enjoyed professional autonomy, responsibility, and power unavailable to other professional women. Mary Elizabeth Downey was one such librarian. This study gives a voice to these women and provides insight into the western American social and cultural environment that permitted them to attain this level of public power.

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Recent scholarship by western women's historians has shed light on the lives of women in mining camps and on homesteads and as teachers, journalists, and suffragists, (1) but little has been written about women as librarians, particularly the second generation of librarians whose careers in the Midwest and West spanned the early modern period of the first half of the twentieth century. Most of the work on early librarians focuses primarily on the first generation of leaders in the eastern United States and on those who worked in large, urban public libraries in the same region, such as Laurel Grotzinger's biography of Katharine Sharp, Mary Niles Maack's work on Mary Wright Plummer, and Paula Watson's work on women influential in establishing Carnegie libraries. Dee Garrison's study of early public librarians, which is concerned primarily with the period 1876-1920, is restricted to "published and unpublished statements by and about" national library leaders and "library reports, and printed library journals of the period" and is limited to a select few large urban libraries in the East. (2) Only two works examine women librarians in the West: Debra Gold Hansen, Karen Gracy, and Sheri Irvin's look at three early female librarians at the Los Angeles Public Library and Joanne Passet's Cultural Crusaders. (3) Both Garrison and Passet construct composite portrait of the "average librarian," albeit a very different one, that is at least as concealing as it is revealing. Such a portrait tends to simplify the complex, obscuring the differences among individuals and so presenting obstacles to examinations of the development of individual professional identity and career or considerations of the relationship between personal and professional values and ideals.

In addition, most public library history has ignored the differences between the society and culture of the eastern, midwestern, and western United States and has suggested that the history of the development of the public library in the eastern United States is the history of the development of the public library in the United States as a whole. (4) However, the history of libraries in the West differs from that of libraries in the East because of social, cultural, geographic, and economic differences and because the idea of the public library had taken root in the East by the time much of the West was settled. Early in the history of western settlement the public library was as much an accepted social institution as the church and the school. Rather than being the product of a mature and stable society, as in the East, the library was a force in the creation of mature and stable societies in the West through its value as a symbol and sign of that society and its culture. (5) Because of the much lower tax base in the primarily agricultural West and the lack of wealthy male philanthropists and businessmen to endow public institutions, women, both as individuals and as members of women's organizations, were central to the creation, maintenance, and support of public libraries in the West. (6)

The history of librarians in the West also differs from that of the East because, as Passet has demonstrated, those librarians who came West were different from many of those who remained in the eastern urban centers. Women who accepted positions in western libraries were active and ambitious, looking for opportunities to "exercise professional and personal autonomy" away from the established centers of library authority in the East and "for adventure, advancement, or as temporary assignments that enabled them to see a new and interesting region" as well as to "earn higher salaries." (7) They were some of the women whom Josephine Rathbone described as viewing librarianship as an opportunity "for the exercise of all a woman's powers, executive ability, knowledge of books, social sympathies, [and] knowledge of human nature." (8)

Positions in western libraries became available to these women as the number of libraries and the size of collections increased throughout the West. States with many small, isolated community libraries recognized the need for providing them with professional encouragement, advice, and leadership. To achieve these goals they hired state library organizers, whose duties were to visit each community in the state, assess local conditions, evaluate local library practice, provide advice and assistance, advise on improvements to facilities and equipment, aid in Carnegie grant applications, arouse local support for the library, and make recommendations to the appropriate state agency regarding funding and future library construction and expansion. The women who accepted these positions enjoyed a level of autonomy, responsibility, and power that was unavailable to other professional women who worked primarily in male-dominated and male-controlled public libraries, schools, and hospitals. At the same time, only independent, self-confident, strong-minded women would have applied for such positions. Mary Elizabeth Downey was one such librarian. A study of her life, with a special focus on her term as Utah state library organizer from 1914 to 1920, gives a voice to this category of public woman and provides insight into the western American social and cultural environment that permitted these librarians to attain this level of public power. (9)

Mary Elizabeth Downey's Early Life and Career

Mary Elizabeth Downey's background was typical of the western librarian, described by Passet as a "product of the Progressive Era." (10) Born in Sarahsville, Ohio, about 1872 to Dr. Hiram James and Martha Ball Downey, she was from an established, middle-class, midwestern Protestant family. She taught in the local public schools before becoming a librarian and attended college, earning a B.A. in classics from Denison University in 1899. She was in her late twenties when she studied library science from 1899 to 1901 under University of Chicago librarian Zella Allen Dixson through the University of Chicago Extension Division. (11) Downey was one of only seventeen students to graduate from the program. (12)

Unlike the positions of many of her contemporaries, Downey's first position was not in a public library. From 1901 to 1902 she served as first assistant librarian at the Field Museum of Chicago, which had been established to house the natural history collections of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Although the reason that she accepted the position is unknown, it suggests that she had ambitions beyond serving as a small-town public librarian or assistant librarian in a large urban library.

Downey left the museum after only one year to become the first public librarian of Ottumwa, Iowa. Dixson recommended her as "a safe person to entrust with the grave responsibilities of such a charge," (13) suggesting that the traits that qualified her for the position were reliability, trustworthiness, professionalism, and responsibility rather than gentility and submissiveness, as suggested by Garrison. Others who recommended her included the president of the University of Chicago, the dean of women of Shephardson College, the pastor of the local Baptist church, the librarian of the Art Institute, and a teacher at Ottumwa High School, indicating the breadth and depth of her professional connections at that early stage of her career. (14)

As librarian, Downey was the only woman to speak at the dedication of the Ottumwa Carnegie Library in 1902. The local newspaper published her address in its entirety and featured her photograph on the front page, along with that of five male members of the board of trustees, indicating that, in the eyes of the community, the position of librarian was one of authority and responsibility within the masculine public sphere. (15) The newspaper also published her 1902 address to the Iowa Library Association in which she advised fellow librarians that "we must not force even a child into using the library, but if possible, lead [the child] voluntarily into the reading habit" by teaching the "intelligent use of books." Boys were invited to help move the books into the new library, after which several of them became regular volunteers. Allowing children to serve as volunteers provided an opportunity for her to "talk to them in little groups" about the use of the library. She ended her remarks by saying "what an advantage it is to the child while dependent to have someone who knows the best in literature to direct his reading," that someone being the librarian. (16) Librarians could transmit correct moral values and cultural norms by encouraging the habit of reading "good books," particularly in children, who were more impressionable and compliant than adults, a philosophy shared by the library profession in general. (17)

During her time in Ottumwa Downey began a story hour in the library, invited Friends of the Library to give presentations on books, and gave talks on the history of the book and the library at the high school. She also established the Children's Library League, which met weekly to read and discuss books, with the motto "Clean hearts, clean hands, and clean books." The Iowa Library Association elected her secretary for 1904-5. (18)

The Chautauqua School for Librarians

Downey's public influence and power spread beyond Ottumwa when in 1906 she accepted the position of director of the Chautauqua School for Librarians, a position she held for the next thirty summers. (19) By 1922 more than 1,200 librarians from every state except Nevada had attended the school. In 1918 Downey expanded the program from a short-course summer school to one that granted a professional certificate equivalent to a teaching certificate. In the time between summer courses students in the program were required to visit libraries and other relevant institutions, attend local and national library association meetings, and read and write on library science in order to foster "the habit of continuous study and systematic reading" for continual professional development. (20) She also instructed audiences other than librarians about the importance of books and reading for proper moral and social development…