The Library Employee's Union of Greater New York, 1917-1929

The Library Employees' Union, founded in 1917 in New York City, was the first union of public library workers in the United States. Disbanded twelve years later in 1929, the union had only a brief period of significant activity. Although open to employees of all types of libraries, the union focused its attention on the three public libraries of New York City: The New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library. Most of the known union members were employees of the New York Public Library, the most frequent target of union criticism. Repeated union charges against the public libraries precipitated city investigations into library personnel practices and administration. The union supported the incorporation of public library employees into the New York City civil service system. Despite its failure to achieve any substantial membership, the union was something of a force to be reckoned with in the city's public libraries, especially in their relations with the municipality, and the union's founding, the positions it espoused, and its tactics reflected contemporary social and political trends. A major focus of the Library Employees' Union was the status of women in libraries. The union related low salaries in libraries to women's inferior position and declared itself for full sexual equality in the library world. The union's main spokesperson, Maud Malone, had been active in the revival of the woman suffrage movement in the first decade of the twentieth century and the union applied the tactics that had been used during the suffrage movement to the library world. The union advocated the affiliation of library workers with working class and women's organizations and opposed the professionalization of the library field. This dissertation is a study of the nature, ideology, activities, and impact of this union within the political, ideological and institutional contexts of that time.