Before Creed and Deed

 

Felix Adler

The young Felix Adler spoke at his father's temple (Emanu-el) on October 11, 1873.  This was an occasion of note, and the New York Times duly reported it on October 10 under the caption "City and Subsurban News":  

Rev. Dr. Felix Adler will preach at the Temple Emanuel, Fifth avenue and forty-second street to-morrow, at 10 A.M. (https://nyti.ms/4qUz461)

Adler's lecture, "The Temple of the Future," often referred to as the Temple Address, did not meet with universal acceptance by the Temple congregation (see Howard B. Radest, Toward Common Ground, pp. 13-15).   Indeed, in the aftermath of the lecture, Adler removed himself from consideration as a rabbi for Temple Emanu-El and seemed to be without a career.

The next Times report on Adler suggests, at least, a career as a public speaker.  On Monday, February 9, 1874, Adler spoke at Lyric Hall on Buddhism:  "The Life of Buddha---Lecture by Dr. Felix Adler" (https://nyti.ms/4gYH9C9).  The third and final pre-Ethical Culture lecture reported by the Times was datelined "Ithaca, Tuesday, June 30, 1874" and published the next day (https://nyti.ms/4xaCnHu).  While the lecture on Buddha seems likely to have been open to the public (Lyric Hall was a popular venue for lectures and other public events), the Ithaca lecture was reported as Adler's "inaugural" lecture, being given as a member of Cornell University's faculty, Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literatue and History, noting that:  "The Professorship was established during the last term on a foundation of $20,000 given by Mr. Seligman, New-York."

The Cornell lecture touched on history, philosophy, psychology, and philology.  Of note for its contemporary relevance is the following passage:

Absorbed in the interests of the present, we forget too often that there was a yesterday, that there will be a to-morrow.  Consciousness of what we owe to the past, or what we hold in trust to the future, will sanctify our national life.  The duty of guarding, preservings, and if need be, correcting the national spirit belongs to the universities. [Emphasis added]

Adler did not come to the attention of the Times again until 1877, in the spring of the first "season" of the new New York Society for Ethical Culture.

Adler and "the Departed"

Not a resting place, as Adler points out.

OK, so I'm taking another "break" from thinking about planning and logistics for the Archives and the Ethical Culture Institute and how to manage . . . well, I need a break.  So it's back to the Adler Study for a little time out.

Bookcase D reveals a number of books on religion, often from followers of some of those religions.  Mary Baker Eddy crops up, for example.  Joseph Fort Newman's 1926 book---Best Sermons:  1926---seemed sure to be one of those books.  Even though it referenced 1926 in the title, there was nothing in the photo of the book that I was working from that told me the date of publication, so I had to dig around a little.  Newman's book turned out to be quite popular, and I found it in several repositories.  

It took a while to get the publication date, and by that time I had also glanced at the table of contents.  I recognized some of the names, e.g., Fosdick, Niebuhr.  Imagine my surprise to see Felix Adler among them.

Yes, among the best sermons of 1926, Felix Adler rated with his "An Ethical Attitude toward the Departed."  

The source of this lecture is not evident.  A keyword search of NYSEC's list of lectures from 1893 to 1933 does not turn it up with either "attitude" or "departed."  The lecture was published as a chapter in Adler's Incompatibility in Marriage in 1930, but the only indication of source found there is the prefatory statement:  "The addresses in this volume were delivered at considerable intervals and under widely different circumstances" (p. [v]).  Perhaps it was given someplace other than NYSEC; perhaps it was given at NYSEC with another title.  As work progresses in the NYSEC Archvies, perhaps we will find the original text.

In the meantime, this is another example of what I am calling "reflection."  Adler gave a lecture that spread beyond the boundaries of Ethical Culture in quite a positive manner, reflecting Ethical Culture into the larger community.  (I emphasize "positive," since there are other examples turning up where the reflection is quite negative, a phenomenon in itself that might merit some further analysis at a later date).  In this instance, Adler's lecture was added to a serial publication which seemed largely Christian in its orientation (although Newman, who began as a Baptist in Texas and ended as an Episcopalian in Philadelphia, did have a period of working with "universalist" and "non-sectarian" churches).  Given Newman's apparent stature in the early 20th century, I'd say that Adler's inclusion was pretty positive.

Similarly, when the lecture was published as a chapter in Adler's later work, the New York Times gave a positive review (and more reflection), saying:

No one else pleads for the recognition of the ideal, for the luminous and austere but warmly human conception of life's duties and obligations, for the broadly visioned outlook upon human relations with quite the same combination of tolerant acceptance of human frailties and weaknesses and stern insistence on the endeavor of the individual to live up to the best that is in him.  (NYT, 3/23/1930) https://nyti.ms/4q49Lgk

The lecture itself (as published by Newman) is a fairly coherent review of the various ways in which we mourn, honor, or forget those who were part of our lives while alive---and then departed.  I say "fairly coherent" because one can make a good outline from it and list the various points that Adler makes about how we react to death and then how we should react to death.  It will take a bit more study for me to see the cohesion in his concluding paragraphs.  The concepts are, at this point, still rather vague to my understanding, although I see striking evidence of Emerson (still) here near the end of Adler's life.  It's possible that I am personally more comfortable with his conclusions in "Consolations."  It's also possible that I was looking for a more definitive discussion of the "acceptance of human frailties" mentioned by the Times.

Even so, an interesting afternoon with yet another puzzle to solve.

Doctor X and the Bibliography

The dustover tells the story

I'm taking a break from all the other things that are pulling at my time to "play" with the Bibliography for a while.  This sort of play is relaxing at the same time it holds my interest and provides the occasional challenge.  Right now, I am challenged to complete the inventory of NYSEC's Adler Study and decide which volumes should be added to the Bibliography.  So far I have not managed to recruit any volunteers to help with the task of converting the photos taken by Amy Schwarz and Danny Hansen (heroic volunteers themselves!) into bibliographic entries for the inventory.  So now, as a means of relaxing (really!), I'm doing it myself.

Aside from all the reasons why NYSEC (and the Ethical Culture Movement at large) might want an inventory of that collection, there are a number of other tasks to be performed, not only to protect and preserve it, but also to share it with members and interested scholars.  One task, in the not too distant future, will be to identify within the larger collection, those books which are "core."  That would include those written by Ethical Culture "thought leaders":  Society leaders, of course, but also members, writing about Ethical Culture itself and reflecting Ethical Culture in their writing (or other creations) on other topics.  This "core" will need extra protection, I believe, and will likely be moved to a new location within the Study where there will be less deterioration caused by sunlight.  I would also, of course, want to add these "core" items to the Bibliography.

One puzzle that occurs as I work my way through the full collection (I am only on the third of ten bookcases right now) is the occasional appearance of novels.   Were these of some interest for their ethical perspective?  Did a lecturer use them as a resource for a Sunday platform?  Were they written by a member of the Society?  Did they just "sneak in" to this rather special collection by accident?

I encountered the first of these novels in Bookcase A.  The title is Intern, and it was written by Dr. X, clearly a pseudonym.  A little searching on the internet provides the author's real name:  Alan E. Nourse.  Nourse, to my knowledge, is not an Ethical Culture leader.  A little more research revealed Nourse to be a science fiction writer who was also an MD, at least explaining the title.

A little more research pulls up Matthew Wisniok's Engineers for Change:  Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America due to a footnote listing Nourse and his book:  So You Want to Be an Engineer?  I had been trying to make a connection between Nourse and NYSEC (or any Ethical Culture Society), and, sure enough, NYSEC was also mentioned (sorta) in Wisniok's book.  Chapter 1, page 1:  Protesters at the 1971 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Convention in New York City gathered at Columbus Circle to protest the keynote speaker (David Packard, cf. Hewlett-Packard).  

Denied a booth inside the Convention, the dissident engineers worked to direct “ productive and creative people” to their counterconference a few blocks away at the Ethical Culture Society Hall. Those who made the trek discussed how to turn “ necrophilic” technologies into “ humane ” ones in a new organization called the Committee for Social Responsibility in Engineering (CSRE).

I can't tell you how much I hope NYSEC was a party to the development of CSRE!  

On the other hand, I'm still trying to figure out Nourse.  None of the other searches puts him in New York, so I can't make the connection that he was ever a member of NYSEC without considerably more research.  I was just about to think I'd have to read the book, when I found an image online that provided the needed enlightenment.  The dustcover tells it all:

The week-by-week diary of a young doctor during his year of hospital internship.  Frank, sometimes shocking, and completely honest, it is the first inside account of modern medical and hospital practice that has ever been . . . 

Oh!  Not actually a novel, I now consider this book a "source" for someone's lecture and will not add it to the Bibliography. 

Another novel, from Bookcase C, turns out to be "core."  Elizabeth Gertrude Stern wrote A Marriage Was Made in 1928.  A bit of searching turns up the fact that, in 1928 at least, Stern was a member of the Philadelphia Ethical Society.  That same search turned up more about her very interesting corpus of work that focused on the experience of cultural transition for immigrant families, women's roles in a time of social change, and family relationships.  I've added it to the Bibliography as a primary source.

The question of whether a source is primary or secondary is itself a troublesome one.  I added Stern's book because she was an ECS member, and I think that we must consider, in such works, whether and to what degree Ethical Culture might be an influence on the underlying philosophy which might inform or be expressed in such works.  That Stern eventually became a member of the Society of Friends, presumably leaving PES, makes that decision more complicated.  More research is needed to determine, if possible, what that decision meant to her alignment with EC and whether this or any other of her work should be included in the "core."  Interest in her presence, even if only temporarily, in the "core" might well spark more research into the history of the relationship between Ethical Culture and those who leave Judaism in America.

Some Fruits of the Ethical Education Tree

Muriel Rukeyser Quotation*

It's nice to have colleagues.  

Kirk Ruebenson contacted me several months ago to discuss the NYSEC Archives and his interest in consulting those resources.  We met, we chatted, and we shared all sorts of information about Felix Adler (and his family) as well as Ethical Culture and Kirk's particular interest--the Ethical Culture Schools.  

Because May 15 is considered "Founder's Day," the anniversary of Adler's Founding Address given in 1876, I have looking at early materials related to that occasion.  I ran across--in resources that Ruebenson had shared with me a while back--an article entitled:  “Struggle for the Soul of Felix Adler."  This led me to Jared R. Stallones, a scholar of the history of education, who wrote that article and another, "Struggle for the Soul of John Dewey:  Religion and Progressive Education.”  I read the article about Adler (thank you for sharing, Kirk) with considerable fascination, since it makes the connection between Adler's Jewish upbringing and the reflection of that upbringing and his more progressive ideas about religion as they are occur in the Temple Address ("Judaism of the Future," address to Temple Emanu-El, October 1873), a key point in Adler's pivot away from Judaism to Free Religion and, eventually, to Ethical Culture.  I hope to be able to read the article about Dewey, if I can get access to it.  In the meantime, I will add those articles and several others to the Bibliography along with Stallones' book--Conflict and Resolution:  Progressive Educators and the Question of Religion (2010)--which I have ordered.  I look forward to reading it since (a) he includes chapters on both Adler and Dewey and (b) the issue of religion in education--whether through state-supported charter schools run by religious organizations or plastering commandments all over classrooms here in Texas--is also related to the long-running discussion of the "moral instruction" of children in Ethical Culture.

In the meantime, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and ProQuest have all been helpful in tracking Stallones and, very interestingly, his citation in a dissertation by Laiti Mayk-Hai ("Towards a Poetics of I/Eye Witness:  Documentary Expression in Jewish-American Poetry of the 1930s" [Jewish Theological Seminary 2015]).  Mayk-Hai writes about the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser (among others) and links Rukeyser's writing to her years as a student in the Ethical Culture Fieldston School.  References to Adler also abound.

Ruebenson and I have shared some delightful conversations (part of the joy of collegiality) about "following rabbit trails" (part of the joy of research) as we move from one source to a reference to a whole new perspective on the issues that we are studying.  This day's work may provide yet another one of those conversations.  In the meantime, I must email him the link to Mayk-Hai's dissertation.

*Image credit:  Wikipedia contributors. “Muriel Rukeyser,” May 6, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Rukeyser#/media/File:Library_Walk_6.JPG.

International Journal of Ethics

"And miles to go before I sleep" . . . might aptly apply to the current task.  I was fortunate enough to run across an index to International Journal of Ethics for the first 24 or so volumes.  I am now working my way through the index to identify appropriate articles for inclusion in the Bibliography.  I am also fortunate that this journal is "important" enough to be digitized and available--in whole or in part--in several repositories.  The "miles to go" is the not-tedious-but-time-consuming effort to access each article, determine whether it is appropriate for the Bibliography, and then document it.  Of course, nothing is ever that simple.  It's one thing to see the Felix Adler's name (for an obvious example) shows 9 entries in the index.  It's another to determine whether the article is pertinent to Ethical Culture.  (In Adler's case, that's pretty much a no brainer.  He wrote it, so it's in.)  It's still another to determine how to include the article.  That's one point at which time can be consumed.  

In October, 1891, Adler published "The Problem of Unsectarian Instruction" (IJE, 2:1, pp. 11-19).  A couple of issues later (IJE, 2:3, pp. 374-75) there is his "Brief Rejoinder to J. Mavor (D)."  The "D" indicates that this is a discussion entry, so now I need to check J. Mavor's article to see what Adler is discussing.  As it happens, Mavor was discussing Adler's earlier article on unsectarian instruction.  Adler's rejoinder to Mavor provided the same information given by the footnote linked to the title of his original article:  

Introductory lecture of a course on Moral Instruction, given before the School of Applied Ethics, Plymouth, Mass., July 1891.  [The complete course of sixteen lectures will be published by D. Appleton & Co., New York.] 

And, sure enough, The Moral Education of Children (the complete course), was duly published as Volume 21 in Appleton's International Education Series in 1892.

The conundrum of which is primary, which secondary, and how to cite a discussion article has sent me thumbing through the Chicago Manual of Style (which is not a bad thing), but that adds to the consumption of time, because, well, I have to read some of these articles as well, don't I?

So, I've added one article by Jane Addams ("Ethical Survivals in Municipal Corruption") and will turn next to Bernard Bosanquet (British philosopher, active with the London Ethical Society).  But the time is taken with looking up biographical information, thumbing through--and pausing to read--the articles themselves, and considering the context both within and without Ethical Culture as these papers were written and sometimes delivered at various meetings.  It is rather like one of Felix Adler's favorite escapes, hiking in the Adirondack--an escape from the intense activity of life in the city, a chance to recoup a sense of peace and place, a rigorous bit of exercise that keeps one's faculties "in shape."

It will take a while to complete this "exercise."  The index for these earlier years of IJE (now published by the University of Chicago as Ethics) runs for 15 pages of abbreviated entries.  On a first pass, I have marked (on my copy) the names of authors that I recognize from previous work on the Bibliography.  Bosanquet already had one entry; ow we have the chance to learn more of his work in Ethical Culture.  Most of the names I have marked are, admittedly, past leaders of the early Societies.  After this first "pass" through the list, there will also need to be a further review of authors and topics.  Likely this will take months before I might consider that I have done all that I can, but there are two points that might bring an end to this somewhat wandering reflection on the IJE index:  (1) A structured plan to add entries to the Bibliography from this resource has now begun, and (2) after some time away from working on the Bibliography, it's good to be back, wandering through the hills and valleys of ideas and discussions, noting the milestones, looking with awe at the vistas of thought and knowledge that we can now add to our understanding of the history of Ethical Culture.

North American Review

Thomas Hunter

Because He Walked the Talk

Once in a while, I find something that intrigues me, that leads me down a new path.  Almost always I find something wonderful along that path even if the path doesn't seem to take me anywhere equally wonderful.  (Or something like that.  Metaphor is weak today.)  

So yesterday, I ran across a paper on the internet.  It was entitled "'Modernity' in Education around 1900," written by Jürgen Oelkers and sourced as "Opening lecture Conference 'Pragmatism in the Reticle of Modernization - Contexts, Concepts, Critiques' Centro Stefano Franscini Ascona, 7 September 2008." [https://www.ife.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:ffffffff-bb47-55f9-0000-0000209b615d/Ascona2008english.pdf, accessed March 26, 2025].  I think I was searching for information about Standard Hall, the location at which Felix Adler delivered what is called the "Founding Address" in 1876.  Since Oelkers mentions that lecture and its location, Google gave me this new path to follow.

Oeklers' bibliography included two Adler references that I had not seen before.

Adler, F. (1880): Educational Needs. In: The North American Review Vol. 136, No. 316 (March), p. 290-295.

Adler, F. (1889): The Democratic Ideal in Education. With an Illustration from the Workingman's School and Free Kindergarten, New York. In: The Century Vol. XXXVIII, New Series Vol. XVI (May to October), p. 927-930.  

So I looked them up.  Well, I looked up the first one, which took me further down that branch of the path to The North American Review.  I have yet to backtrack and follow the other branch (The Century), but I'm sure that will also be interesting.  The NAR branch was a bit of a challenge since the serial is still published, but its earlier volumes are no longer archived by the publisher.  Fortunately, The Hathi Trust has archived several volumes of the journal.  The NAR was founded in 1815 in Boston.  Oelkers references the 136th volume and gives the date as 1880, so it took a bit of searching to find that the 136th volume was published from January to June of 1883.  As it happens, the NAR issues two volumes per year.

A bit more search showed that Adler's article was part of a set of articles on the same topic by four contributors, including:

• G. Stanley Hall (earned the first PhD in psychology in the US);
• Thomas Hunter (founder of the Female Normal and High School, now Hunter College);
• Mary Putnam Jacobi (American physician, first woman graduate of a pharmacy college in the US).

On the whole, a rather elite panel for this discussion, providing a diversity of perspectives and well-worth considering as a whole.

Happily, the scan of this journal that was taken from the Cornell University collection also includes the index.  Happy is the path that passes by an index, I always (well, sometimes) say.  In this case, the path was a very happy one.  I found reference to yet another Adler article ("A Secular View of Moral Training"), Moncure D. Conway ("Gladstone"); Edwin P. Whipple ("Carlyle and Emerson"); Frederic Henry Hedge ("Ethical Systems"); and O. B. Frothingham ("Criticisms and Christianity").  Both of the Adler articles will now go in the Bibliography as will the third once I have a chance to follow the path to The Century and confirm it.  The relevance of the other articles to the Ethical Culture "core" of the Bibliography remains a question.

These are my unanswered questions plus a couple of opinions:

• Moncure D. Conway's name comes up often because of his association with the South Place Chapel in London, which was renamed the South Place Ethical Society when Stanton Coit replaced him as "leader."  Later, Conway replaced Coit, who moved on to the London Ethical Society.  South Place was eventually renamed as Conway Hall.  Did he lead South Place as an Ethical Society when he replaced Coit?  It's possible, of course, but I think Conway is an important historical figure to whom we owe some concern for accuracy.  That would also entail more research as well.
• Edwin P. Whipple's article is not directly related to Ethical Culture except to the extent that it relates to the two named writers who influenced and/or caught the attention of Ethical Culture leaders.  M. M. Mangasarian delivered two lectures at Carnegie Hall in 1894 concerning Carlyle and then Emerson.  Other leaders talked about them as well.  While this article doesn't seem like a candidate for the Bibliography, I'd certainly keep it handy for reference if I were to write about what various lecturers in the Movement had to say about Emerson and Carlyle.
• Frederic Henry Hedge's article doesn't seem to point toward Ethical Culture either.  He was however, one of the early Transcendentalists and, although he left that Movement eventually, he remained within the circle of friendships that arose from it.  His focus on ethics, especially in a journal that published Adler, warrants some attention, at the very least.  (I may have talked myself into adding this one to the Bibliography.)
• O. B. Frothingham was Adler's mentor in the Free Religious Association.  Adler left the FRA in 1882 because it seemed unable to walk the talk, but he hosted the memorial service for Frothingham at Carnegie Hall before the New York society for Ethical Culture in 1895.  As ubiquitous as Frothingham's name is whenever the early years of Ethical Culture are discussed, I tend to think we don't know enough about the man, his work, and his influence on Felix Adler.  Yet another path to follow?  (Yes.)

So, yes, there are many more volumes of the North American Review to review.  Miles to go before I sleep?   Or maybe this is a time to call for volunteers.  As paths go, this doesn't involve a lot of walking--if anyone is interested.

Update:  I just found the published source of the Oelkers article that I found as a PDF file online.  The citation would be:

Oelkers, Jürgen.  "'Modernity' in Education around 1900," in Pragmatism and Modernity.  edited by Daniel Tröhler, Thomas Schlag, and Fritz Osterwalder.  57-79.  Leiden:  Brill, 2010.

Adding it to the Bibliography now.

The Free Church of Universal Religion

Don't bother to Google that.  The reference in the title is to the church established in Tacoma, Washington, by Alfred W. Martin.  Or rather it is the church that he led to break from the Unitarian fellowship to become a Free Church around 1894.  It doesn't seem to exist anymore, but the name is one that reflects the early interest and work of this EC Leader, pre-EC.

Martin served as an Associate Leader for the New York Society for Ethical Culture (1907-1932) and, for twenty of those years, gave Sunday evening programs on comparative religion.  A large number of his works are already listed in the Bibliography of Ethical Culture.  I recently had the opportunity to talk about his work with the Ethical Society of Austin.  Preparing for that talk led me to a memorial essay by George O'Dell, Martin's colleague at NYSEC, which was published in World Unity Magazine in 1934.  O'Dell's personal knowledge of Martin, his life, and his work helped give me a more rounded picture of a very prolific writer who doesn't seem to figure in the "folklore" of Ethical Culture.  That is to say, few of us have ever heard of him.

Whether or not that will change as a result of my research, I can't say.  However, I have had several gratifying days of searching for and documenting his work.  While the same bibliographic quandaries his work raised earlier still remain, I am pleased to be able to add more entries from The Free Church Record, the serial that Martin edited and published from 1893 to 1900.  While much of Martin's writing in that journal reflect his own "spiritual journey" on a clearly theistic path, Ethical Culture is present here and there in the volumes of the journal that I have documented so far (1896 - 1897).  Since I can't yet resolve that issue of whether to "include everything" or just focus on what he wrote while actively engaged in Ethical Culture, I am just appending his non-EC writing to the Bibliography (temporarily, of course) while I figure out the best approach.  I do think the insights offered by his earlier writings will be useful if someone decides to do a more thorough study of Martin's development than is provided by O'Dell's brief tribute.  

Advancing the Bibliography, Bit by Bit

Distractions come in all forms--home, health, work on the NYSEC archives, holidays, and on and on.  I have not been able to work as consistently on the Bibliography of Ethical Culture as I would like in the past few months.  One advantage of a quiet holiday is time for the mind to return to whatever constitutes homeostasis.  For me, that "set point" or baseline seems to involve a chance to tinker with the Bibliography.  And so I did.

This morning's tinkering was a return to Ethical Addresses.  I am trying to track down the publication history of the articles in this serial, starting with the First Series (1895).  The volume's preface indicates that all of the lectures included were "given before Ethical Societies" and one had been published in the Forum.  Only M. M. Mangasarian's address--"The Religion of Ethical Culture"--includes specifics about its history, i.e., that it was an address given to the Chicago Ethical Society, April 8, 1894.  

Recently I found a typed list of addresses delivered to the New York Society for Ethical Culture from 1893 to 1933.  The list provided dates for Felix Adler's three addresses, all three of which appear to have been presented at Carnegie Hall:

• What Do We Stand For? - October 22, 1893
• The Modern Saint - March 11, 1894
• Prayer and Worship - December 2, 1894

The first of these was acknowledged as having been published in The Forum without providing more specific information.  I managed to track it down--The Forum, Volume 16, November 1893, pp. 379-87--with the title:  "Modern Scepticism and Ethical Culture."  At the same time, I found that the version published in EA had an addendum not included in the original essay--"A Statement as to the Attitude of the Ethical Movement toward Religion"--which is attributed to the joint agreement of the Ethical Culture "lecturers" of the period.

The Ethical Society of St Louis has inventoried and had posted a large portion of its archives online, but now that material seems to be unavailable to non-members.  I did (earlier) manage to confirm the dates (years) when Walter L. Sheldon's two lectures were given to that Society:

• What Does it Mean to Be Religious, and What Is Religion? - 1894
• True Liberalism - 1894

I was unable to find further references to any of William M. Salter's lectures in this volume.  The search will continue.

Another "area" for recent work on the Bibliography has been the result of the DDOS attack on the Internet Archive in October.  All of the issues of Ethical Addresses & Ethical Record are posted there as are many other works that have been listed in the Bibliography.  In the weeks following the attack(s), none of these works were available, which substantially hampered my ability to check references and such.  One task that I had intended to carry out was to add the link to each issue of EA&ER to each article listed in the Bibliography.  I had already provided links to the volumes, but that still required users to scroll up and down between the volume link and the individual articles.  Thinking I would make things easier to use, I started adding those links.  Since it's a tedious process, I would only complete one issue in a day and move on to something more interesting.  That work came to a screeching halt with the DDOS attacks and made me very aware of the vulnerability of a sole repository.  Now that service has returned, I am continuing to add those links.  It's still just as tedious, so it will be a while before I complete the effort, but at least it's possible.

One thing that is no longer possible with the Internet Archive is the result of another sort of attack, this one entirely legal but with lasting effect.  Hatchette v. Internet Archive resulted in the removal of thousands of books that had been made available for online lending--one hour at a time--from the site.  I can no longer remotely check out a book to look at its contents and determine whether it is relevant for the Bibliography much less spend any time reading it.  This will slow some of the work down considerably, since I have limited mobility and find it difficult to park and enter the brick and mortar libraries that are within driving distance of my home.  

Going forward (while remaining in out-of-copyright territory), I have begun looking at the International Journal of Ethics, which was published by the AEU from 1890 to 1914.  The goal will be to continue searching for overlap between EA&ER and IJE as well as to identify more primary and secondary sources related to Ethical Culture.  Hathi Trust looks like it will be my source for this material.  It should keep me busy between home, health, NYSEC archives, holidays and so on and on.

Happy new year!

Hunting the Snark in the NYSEC Archives, Part I

The Birth of Carnegie Hall

I am honored to have received the 2024 Mossler Grant from the New York Society for Ethical Culture to work on a project related to a corpus of lectures to NYSEC delivered between 1893 and 1910 at Carnegie Hall.  It is called, appropriately, The Carnegie Hall Project (and abbreviated as CH in much of my notes).  I started the project when the late Lawn'ence Miller granted me access to the digital scans of some of the CH lectures and wanted to know (and find) more.  As work progresses on converting those scanned lectures into more readable--and editable--formats, I have been searching for the hard copies of those lectures as well as the others that I am hoping also exist in the archives.

I sincerely hope that I am not hunting for a snark, or worse, a boojum.  In the meantime, I've found a fair number of clues to where we should be hunting and some fascinating information about what we are looking for.  

The most concrete resource is the digital file folder of CH lectures that L (as we called him) gave me.  I have already referred to that corpus is earlier posts, so I will try not to repeat myself, but there has been some progress in at least defining the scope of the project.

• Two typewritten lists of lectures to NYSEC have been discovered in the archives and the Adler Study.  I have compared the archive "record" to the AS "ledger" for the period between 1893 (when NYSEC began meeting at CH) and 1910 (when the Meeting House was completed).  
• The "record," with corrections and additions from the "ledger," has now been entered into a spreadsheet, recording date of delivery, title, speaker, and any other information available at this time about the venue, the text, or the speaker.  There is, of course, very little additional information at the moment, but I hope that will change in the coming days as I review other online sources.
• There were seventeen seasons of lectures given at Carnegie Hall.  All of the seasons began around the third Sunday in October (except the 1894-95 season, which began on the first Sunday of November).  Most of the seasons ended around the second Sunday in May with an anniversary address, almost always given by Felix Adler.
• The number of addresses given during a season ranged from 28 to 31, with most having 30 addresses.  Occasionally a late steamer or illness would cause a change in plans for addresses, and a substitution would be listed, but one or two lectures may have been cancelled--or records lost.  The total number of addresses appears to be either 505 or 507.  Until further records--or the lectures themselves--are recovered, the actual total is inexact.
• Adler himself delivered about 60 percent of the lectures (296).  A significant portion of the remainder were given by other leaders of the Movement, including John Lovejoy Elliott (33), Alfred W. Martin (21), Stanton Coit (17), William M. Salter (8), Walter L. Sheldon (10), David S. Muzzey (4), M. M. Mangasarian (30), Leslie Willis Sprague (16), Percival Chubb (9)--and Anna Garlin Spencer (9).  (These numbers do not reflect 5 meetings with untitled presentations from one or more of these leaders speaking with a group of presenters.)
• About 10 percent of the addresses at CH were delivered by guest speakers, including several notables (e.g., Gifford Pinchot) and academics (Nathaniel Schmidt, Edward Howard Griggs, and Charles Zueblin).  Only four women took the platform alone:  Enid Stacy Widdrington, Ethel M. Arnold, Caroline Bartlett-Crane, and Anna Garlin Spencer.  Several platforms were devoted to race-related issues.  Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois spoke as individual lecturers, but there were more than one panel of presenters on this recurring topic.
• As for topics, the CH lectures ran the gamut from Ethics to politics and elections (and the ethics thereof), from contemporary literature to the sacred texts of ancient days, from the travails of poverty to the discomfort of the wealthy.  Given the times, race relations, women's issues, and labor reforms were frequent topics.  

Now that we know more about the corpus of this "collection," we have to find the collection.  There are some hints.  In the process of tracking down those hints, I am also finding out more about Carnegie Hall, cf. the video link above.

Converting PDFs to Editable Text

 Or something like that.  We have about 58 (could be 57) PDF files of addresses given at Carnegie Hall in the 19th and 20th NYSEC seasons.   I have long wanted to convert them to something more readable and/or editable.  As the texts currently exist, they appear to be carbon copies of typed scripts.  The paper is yellowed with age, but it also seems to be a thin onion skin.  The carbon paper had, no doubt, been used several times already, hence the slightly blurred type.  The scans sometimes showed folded pages--obscuring text--and frequently were tilted to some greater or lesser degree from the horizontal.  To be honest--if also a tad biased--it's just not comfortable to read these texts.

I tried to convert the PDFs to Word files, so that they might be a bit more readable.  This was the result:

Not only was this even worse for reading, it was not going to be usable if we wanted to consider print publication.  

So I tried another method to create readable text:  Dictation.  Reading aloud to MS Word, I applied clear diction to spoken punctuation and formatting instructions and managed to read an entire address into Word.  This was much better.  It took awhile to figure out the command "lingo" (Word wants to hear "new line" rather than "paragraph").  The process was somewhat tiring.  Some measure of proofreading and reformatting would still be needed, but the outcome was readable.

Then my grandson asked "Why don't you just retype it?"  So I tried that, too.  Although I'm not a trained typist, I have gained some speed over the years, and I managed to retype about 4 pages in an hour. Retyping was, in my mind, the easier and more productive (less tiring) way to get a readable text (more attractive to the contemporary reader).  Even more important, retyping into a word processing program such as Word allows for easier copyediting and reformatting for print and online publication.

With that bit of "research," the project had to sit on the back burner while other projects took priority.  Eventually I was asked to talk about some of one of those projects for a Sunday gathering of the Ethical Society of Austin.  I presented:  "The Big Dig:  Delving into the History of Thought in Ethical Culture." Some of my talk was about online repositories of digital books and journals, but most of it was about the Bibliography of Ethical Culture.  I tossed out tidbits of (to me) fascinating information that I had been discovering as I worked on the Bibliography, and I took every opportunity to highlight points at which many hands could make the work light.  The good news?  Three new partners in the work!

For now the exciting news is that one of those partners, an excellent typist, will help pull the Carnegie Hall Project off of the back burner and get to work on giving us some new typescripts to work with.  Stay tuned.

Finding Matthew Ies Spetter

 

Matthew Ies Spetter

A few weeks ago, while visiting the New York Society for Ethical Culture (NYSEC), I had an opportunity to work with an archive box that I had previously "rescued" from the basement.  The basement area in which archives are stored is due for renovation, and there are ongoing discussions about where and how to store the archived materials now located there.  While "rescue" is too strong a term for my action, I did take the opportunity that presented itself to me to carry the box from the basement to the new "office" for the Archives Team in Room 406B at NYSEC for further study.  

What prompted this rather audacious act was the label on the box:  "Matthew Ies Spetter, Platforms 1970-1978."  I recognized the name and wanted to know more about this man who fought in the Dutch Resistance during World War II, survived Auschwitz, and became an Ethical Culture Leader when he immigrated to the US.  Who wouldn't?

The box contained 83 mimeographed platforms presented at the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture (RYSEC).  The platforms were published by RYSEC for distribution to subscribers in a serial called simply The Platform.   (There were also 5 or 6 typescripts of speeches given elsewhere or drafts of the later platforms in the box.)  One of the basic tasks in working with the archives is to document what we have.  I have done just that, and all of the platforms in that box that were published in The Platform are now listed in the Bibliography of Ethical Culture.  The same list plus the typescripts has been prepared for inclusion in the archive box as an inventory of its contents.  Since Spetter served as leader for RYSEC, there are likely to be many more platforms to be documented, but, first, we'll have to find them.

Fortunately, there are also a number of platforms given by Spetter at NYSEC.  When he retired from RYSEC, Spetter became a part-time leader at NYSEC.  Many of these were published in The Ethical Platform, NYSEC's in-house serial.  More about those in another post.

Now we come to another basic task for this work:  digitization.  Digitization--or scanning--is a much more time-consuming aspect of the work, but it is needful since so much of the past work of leaders and thinkers in the Movement is out of print or unpublished or no longer being sold.  By digitizing these works, we can store them in offsite (or in the cloud) locations, which protects against the loss of items for which there are only one or a few copies.  

One further benefit of digitization is the possibility of making the work accessible to a wider audience.  Right now, unless RYSEC has the means to have a reading or lending library, these particular platforms cannot be seen by the general membership.  Once they are digitized, they can be stored on a website or drive that is accessible to members.  

There are a lot of steps yet to complete before that can happen, but the process has begun.  We have requested permission from RYSEC to post these platforms online once we have scanned them.  We still have to do the scanning, set up the online storage repository, and develop policies for access, but we have a tentative target of May 15, 2025, to have something ready for member, if not public, access.  May 15, 2025, will mark the beginning of the 150th year since the Ethical Culture Movement was founded.  We will have a lot of reading to catch up on before the 150th anniversary rolls around!

On the Dating of Adler's Platforms

I've just made a personal "joke," reminding myself of an incredibly minor article that I once published entitled "On the Dating of Utendi wa Ayubu."  The joke is as minor as the article, so I will leave it with the wry smirk that issues do seem to repeat themselves.  Today's repetition has to do with dating, as in "when was that publicly presented?"

I'm working on one piece of the project that I have named the Carnegie Hall Project.  We possess digitized copies of typescripts from two seasons of platforms presented at Carnegie Hall, and they are the current focus of some effort that will make them available online in the foreseeable future.  In the process of examining these files (digital only--the hard copies are still unlocated), I have discovered some "interesting" aspects of the dating of these documents.

First, Adler stated in his Founding Address that the Ethical Society would meet on Sundays.  He offered reasons that made sense at the time, and most Ethical Societies these days do hold their primary weekly meetings on Sundays, usually in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon.

Second, indications from the New York Times coverage of these meetings in the 1890s indicates that NYSEC (and presumably the other early Societies) held their meetings in seasons which seemed to coincide roughly with the academic year.  If I understand correctly, the typical season began on the third Sunday in October and ended on the second (or third) Sunday in May, on which an anniversary speech would often be given.

The Carnegie Hall lectures for which we have digitized copies were given during the 1894-1895--or Nineteenth--Season, ending with the 19th Anniversary Address and the 1895-1896--or Twentieth--Season, ending with the 20th Anniversary Address.  (That sentence was harder to write than it might seem.)

Now, comparing a calendar for 1894 to the list of typescripts, I see that the first typescript is for November 4, so, if the season did begin in October, we are missing the record of the third and fourth Sundays.  (Did something happen to delay the season?  Are these records lost?)  I am also finding some potential for error in the use of calendars generated online (AI goofs?).  My "old reliable" yearly calendar template from Vertex gave 1894 dates a couple of days off, so I mistakenly developed a "theory" about all of the typescripts being dated as they were typed (on Tuesdays!) and not according to when the lectures were delivered.  (Oops! And that was a couple of hours wasted.)  A comparison to an image of a calendar printed in 1894 (thanks, Smithsonian!) set me straight--and serves as reminder that tracking the seasons for these early years of Ethical Culture can also be easier said than done.

Part of the Carnegie Hall Project is not only to publish (online or otherwise) the two seasons for which we have digital copies, but to locate the remaining seasons, running from 1893 to 1910.  One resource that I am looking at right now (because it is online, and I am in Texas) is the list of Finding Aids for the Felix Adler Papers at Columbia University.  Using 1893 and 1894 calendars, I am trying to track down any platforms that may be housed at Columbia with dates in the range of Season 18, the first season for lectures at Carnegie Hall.  I have managed to locate a few documents from that season, but in what format and whether actually delivered as addresses at Carnegie Hall needs further research.  Some of the files indicate dates ("Science and Ethics," April 22, 1894) but others give only the year or a month and the year.  Moreover, the documents listed comprise only half of the possible dates for Season 18, so there still remains the need (hope) to find more information in the NYSEC archives.  This whole process will be quite tedious--no joke!--but I believe it will be worth it to have a better understanding of these years at Carnegie Hall both for historical reasons but also for our contemporary Ethical consideration.  Issues do repeat themselves, and that's no joke either.

They Builded Better

Felix Adler

I'm still trying to find my rhythm after my trip to New York.  I'm not sure I'm there, but I am at least back in the mode to share the joys of old books and bibliographic work.  

One of the rewards of that trip to New York is that I now have folks who have joined me in the work.  Dan Hanson and Amy Schwarz, both members of the New York Society for Ethical Culture and both retired librarians, have begun the arduous task of developing an inventory of the Adler Study.  Dan is photographing the title pages (and reverse) of all the books in that collection.  Amy is straightening, organizing, and checking for Ethical Culture content.  The plan is to upload the photos to an online workspace so that I can convert the information to bibliographic entries.  

The value of this work is that it will help us identify publications that should be included in the Bibliography of Ethical Culture at the same time it can be used to create an inventory of the collection.  

This is a massive task.  There are 10 largish bookcases in the Adler Study with 6 shelves each.  On the first day of work, Dan photographed the contents of 5 shelves in the first case.  (The sixth has books that are fragile and need special care.)  That was 235 pictures (we don't have a count of the books yet).  So far I have created 23 entries for the inventory, cross-checking every title with online repositories to see what has already been digitized.  That takes time, because, remember, I'm having fun.  The top shelf on that first case has Carl Sandburg's multi-volume life of Lincoln.  I had to look at it and see what was there (a chapter on Lincoln's humor and his religion--I'll read that when I get a chance).  Ida Tarbell also made the shelf with her Lincoln biography.  Why so much about Lincoln, you ask?  One answer might be found in the Bibliography with the two platforms given by Algernon D. Black on Lincoln.  As we dig further into the archives at NYSEC, we may find more.  Then it will be interesting to see what our Ethical Culture leaders made of Lincoln and how they used his life to discuss ethics.  

In the meantime, one other find on (or around) this first shelf, Julius Henry Cohen's book, They Builded Better Than They Knew caught my attention with its archaic past tense.  Cohen's rather chatty book focuses on people and groups that he admired.  The chapter on Felix Adler was an entertaining look at Adler's sense of humor and praise of his contributions to legal ethics and labor relations.  The book was published in 1946, 13 years after Adler's death.  It is a valuable reminder at 90 or so years after Adler's death that he was human, not the cardboard figure that he might sometimes become in our thinking.  Cohen's small chapter helps to give us a more three-dimensional view of the founder of Ethical Culture.  There is also the reminder that Adler did not live a cloistered life of study and contemplation but rather involved himself rather deeply--and to good effect--in matters of the day.

Science for Democracy

Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Home again after almost three weeks at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, a time filled with many meetings and discussions of the archives of the Ethical Culture Movement, I am now trying to sort through my notes and papers to assess what was accomplished for the expansion of the Bibliography.  At the moment I am finding notes on Jerome Nathanson, NYSEC leader, mid-twentieth century.  One book that has caught my attention is Science for Democracy.  First published in 1946, the Internet Archive has a digitized copy of the 1970 reprint by Books for Libraries Press.  

Nathanson edited the volume and wrote a preface in which he argues that it is the role of scientists to insist on freedom of inquiry in a democratic nation.  It is the role of those who are not scientists to break any habits of complacency and educate themselves about the importance of science and free inquiry to a democratic nation so that they can support such inquiry for the sake of the nation.  

The chapters of the book are the results of several papers and two symposia that were presented as part of the Third Conference on Scientific Spirit and Democratic Faith, held at NYSEC, May 1945, and chaired by Nathanson.  He points out that the conference was held "weeks before a section of the earth was atomized, and before even those who knew were at liberty to say that such a thing as the atom bomb was in the immediate offing" (viii).  The questions/topics posed for the symposia were:

• Does private industry threaten freedom of scientific research?
• The role of science in the determination of democratic policy.

The sections on the symposia seem to be taken from transcripts, giving a strong sense of the give and take of the discussions among a diverse group of academic, industry, government, and religious speakers.  Eighty years on--just after a difficult period of shutdown in the midst of a global pandemic during which science was disvalued/disregarded by government as well as citizens--these discussions still seem relevant.  

Horace James Bridges, Firebreather

Horace James Bridges (1880 -1955), leader of the Chicago Ethical Society, "discovered" by Stanton Coit in England and sent to the US to apprentice with Felix Adler, is a delight to read--and to read about.  He rivals Arthur Dobrin in his output, of which I have documented in the Bibliography as much as I could manage, but Bridges is widely cited--into the current century--so tracking down secondary sources will take time and effort.  

I've known for some time that there was once a leader named Bridges, but I didn't actively seek out his works until several recent nudges made me actively wonder about who, exactly, this fellow was.  Long story short, I saw a copy of his book--On Becoming an American--in a photo of a shelf in the Adler Study and decided to search for it.  I ended up skimming the preface (and wrote about it here) and was hooked.  The man has a British sense of humor so dry it crackles off of the page.  I can't speak to the entire body of his work, but what I have seen suggests passionately held points of view that invoke the dragon as much as St. George.

There is an inkling of this in Our Fellow Shakespeare, when he talks about Shylock in humane terms and credits the Bard with similar sensitivity.  The more common attitudes of the period seem covered by the steady drip of acid.  That acid becomes even more evident when Bridges takes on the issue in more direct terms with Jew-Baiting, an Old Evil Newly Camouflaged.  

Less sympathetic to our hearts these days would be his take on conscientious objectors.  They get passing notice in the nonetheless fiery "The Duty of Hatred," published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1918.  It took a bit of searching, but I did finally see a copy of As I Was Saying: A Sheaf of Essays and Discourses at Hathi Trust wherein I could read Bridges' 1917 speech on ""Military Duty and the Conscientious Objector" (pp. 159 - 184).  And I wept to read it.  To accept his logic--which is as lovely as it is painful--is to accept that I, a bystander in the conflict between Israel and Gaza, am as culpable for the crimes of that war as is my government, given that I have done little to oppose--or stop--my government's actions in the Middle East.  Being only one individual among millions, I am nonetheless given no place to hide by Bridges' logic.  It is all the more impetus to work for peace--and shame on me if I have done nothing about it today.

Pivoting (less suddenly than it may seem) to matters of bibliographic interest, I have mentioned the work yet to be done in the search for articles and news reports.  There are also reviews and continued references to his work in journals and ephemera.  A good deal of his work before 1923--and a little afterwards--is available online in various repositories.  I created a section of the Bibliography to list some of those repositories a few weeks ago.  With Bridges' entries I am now making the effort to add notations of copies of his works in those repositories.  As I Was Saying, for example, is listed in Google Books, but that site does not link to a digitized copy of the work online.  Hathi Trust links to a copy available from the "University of California."  That link is now in the Bibliography following the entry for As I Was Saying with the symbol [HT].  I regret to say that it will take some practice to make this action a habit, so there is now some inconsistency.  Practice makes perfect, they say.  Let's hope so.

A little break now.

There may be intermittent or no posts for the next couple of weeks while I am in New York, working in the Archives.  I'm sure there will be much to report when I return mid-March.

A Bibliographic Puzzle: Goulding, Golding, or Bridges?

 

Henry J. Golding

Sometimes I find puzzling items that take a bit of searching to figure out.  One such item is an entry in the James F. Hornback's dissertation bibliography.  

GOULDING, HENRY J., ed., The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Movement. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1926.

Rather often, when I find a bibliographic entry in someone else's work, I try to track it down.  Sometimes a bibliographic entry doesn't include everything that the Chicago Manual of Style and I would like to see as part of the record, so I try find the missing piece.  Or I want to see whether the source is a primary source for Ethical Culture, a secondary source, or even has any relevance at all to this Bibliography.  Sometimes, I want to see if the source is available in a format that will be accessible to those who use the Bibliography.  The latter was the purpose of my attempt to track down this citation.  All the information is there in Hornback.  The title indicates its relevance.  I just needed to see if there might be an ebook out there for us all to look at.

No such luck.  I checked Google Books, Hathi Trust, Internet Library, and so on down the line.  I couldn't find much of anything by Henry J. Goulding.  Except, when I entered his name and the title exactly as Hornback had provided them, the search engine returned a single entry:  Hornback's dissertation.  I think we've been here before.  I think this is a typo.  

Horace J. Bridges (more on him soon) actually edited the Fiftieth Anniversary tribute to Felix Adler.  Henry J. Golding contributed an essay:  "The Spiritual Outlook on Life" (pp. 227-244).  I'm still looking for Henry J. Goulding.

On the other hand, serendipity occurred yet again when I went searching for Henry J. Golding.  Here's what Ladywell Live has to say about Golding:

Henry J. Golding (d.1931), writer and philosopher – Henry was a man of wide erudition who relinquished a successful business career in London to become an officer and lecturer of the English Ethical Society, before moving to the US to devote himself to the work of the Ethical Movement in America. Many of his articles appeared in the New York Times and he remained a popular speaker and lecturer, one observer generously noting in his delivery his ‘deep voice and virile figure’. Many of his moral insights often appear in more modern thought for the day aphorisms including Forbes Book of Quotations!  Often cited as H.J. Golding, he died in New York in 1931. Before departing for the US he lived at 16, Algiers road, Ladywell.

I expect there will more to learn about Golding, if not Goulding. 

Reminiscences of Algernon David Black

More serendipity.  This time someone asked me about Algernon D. Black.  I shared what I had (not a whole lot outside of the Bibliography), but I got curious and went looking for more.  Black was an alumnus of Harvard, which now houses many of his papers from 1932 - 1981.  Given his active public life, there are a number of records to be found in other places.  Interestingly, there is no Wikipedia page for Black (or most other Ethical Culture Leaders), but there is a page on KeyWiki:

a bipartisan knowledge base focusing primarily on corruption and the covert side of politics in the United States and globally. While particular interest is taken in the left, KeyWiki serves to expose covert politics on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.

Along the rabbit trail to find out more about Black, I also found ArchiveGrid, which lists archives of primary resources "held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies."  One happy find was an item held by Columbia University.  It was a happy find because the material was actually digitized and available for online reading.  The ArchiveGrid entry linked to the page on Columbia Library's website about "Reminiscences of Algernon David Black, 1978."

Merritt Russell interviewed Black over several weeks about his life, including:

Immigrant background, Ethical Culture School, Harvard; early interest in civil liberties; Roger N. Baldwin; settlement house work, 1926-1933; work with West Virginia mining families, 1933; teacher and leader at Ethical Culture from 1933; co-chairman, city-wide Committee on Harlem, 1941-1947; job opportunities for blacks; state committee on fair housing, 1949; chairman of board of National Committee on Discrimination in Housing, 1950-1967; black militancy in late 1960s; chairman of Civilian Complaint Review Board of Police Department, New York City, 1966; encampments for citizenship from 1939; writing and broadcasting on ethical issues; internal security investigations[.]

These interviews were tape recorded and then transcribed.  Black read the transcripts, made corrections and additions, and, given some of the controversies that he discussed, provided additional interviews to expand on those subjects.  These interviews were part of a larger oral history project at Columbia University. 

I couldn't stop myself from taking a peek at the transcript.  Then I couldn't stop myself from reading the whole transcript, all 251 pages of it.  It was fascinating.  From his earliest childhood memories to his work for human rights; from his early school experiences to his admission to the Ethical Culture School and what that meant for his life and understanding of human relations; from his civic roles to his handling of civil rights.  And more.  

Having done so, I was more disheartened than shocked when I ran across KeyWiki and its "guilt by association" post on Algernon D. Black.  How fortunate to have his own testimony to his work and his intentions and his ethics to throw some light on the matter.  How sad to see that the McCarthy Era hasn't ended and that good people--and the memory of good people--can still be subjected to such tactics.

Well, the interview is in the Bibliography now.  You should read it.

Wayback at the AEU

 

AEU Library - On the Wayback Machine

I can't believe that I just found a Library of Ethical Culture.  It's the American Ethical Union Library.  It exists on the Wayback Machine in the Internet Library (archive.org).  The Wayback Machine shows that its last crawl of this site was November 30, 2013.  After that, pffft!  

I don't see the Library on any AEU web space that I have access to.  We can be grateful to the Wayback Machine (and now the Internet Library) for recovering this lost resource.

As a resource, the Library is rather clunky to use.  It takes noticeable seconds to pull up any page that you want to look at.  Some pages indicate that there is more to see, but the Wayback machine seems only to have captured what is on screen and not whatever would have been found by scrolling down the page.  

Nonetheless we will also "capture" what we can and continue looking for the original files.  If they haven't been deleted.

And that, friends, is another reason to do this work.  Sometimes we seem to lack continuity as well as connection to our past--even a past as recent as 2013.  Institutional memory is actually a good thing.

Happy President's Day!

What to Do with the Adler Study

 

The Adler Study at NYSEC

Ever since my trip to New York last fall and the overwhelming discoveries in the areas where the archives are kept in the NYSEC building near Central Park, I have been thinking of how we can manage to preserve, document, and increase access to as many of those discoveries as possible.  Someone recently asked me if I knew whether a particular book was in the Adler Study.  😶  That's when I realized that I had not been including this seriously important repository of history and knowledge in my plans and strategies.  

The Adler Study is a historical space within the NYSEC building, which itself is a historical space for New York City and the nation.  It was Felix Adler's study--office--conference room--center of action--from its construction in 1910 until his death in 1933.  It houses books that he wrote, that he consulted for reference, that he read for study and further cultivation of his--and his followers'--Ethical being.

When I visited Room 514 last September, I could hear the pride--and a degree of reverence--in my guide's voice.  I recognized that I had entered a space where great thoughts and deeds had occurred.  But I also saw that this was a working space for the New York Society.  A place for meetings.  A place for gathering.  But not necessarily a place for study.  With all four walls filled with tall bookcases, the wealth of information and inspiration to be found there was behind locked glass doors.

I have no desire to see those doors thrown open for the everyday use of the resources there.  Much of what is there--as far as I have seen--is unique or in fragile condition or of historical value beyond measure.  I do, however, want to know what is behind those glass doors.  I also want to read and study what is behind those glass doors.  And I want to share it with others in some way that does not damage the physical condition of the contents.

I was privileged to examine the contents of just one of those cabinets.

Cabinet A, Adler Study, 2023

Among the treasures there were bound copies of Ethical Addresses and Ethical Record as well as its successor, The Standard.  There were books that Adler might have consulted in preparing for a lecture about Lincoln, and there were books published long after his death.  The Adler Study served other Leaders in the ensuing years.  

Well, this room and its contents have to be considered as part of the NYSEC Ethical Culture Archives (I just made up that name), and I have a few thoughts about what to do next.  While I am drafting a more detailed proposal reflecting those thoughts, here's a list for starters:

• Locate or create a Statement of Purpose for the Adler Study which serves to guide policy for its preservation and use.
• Photograph the entire Study, with detailed photo-documentation of the cases and each shelf.
• Locate any past inventories of the contents of the bookcases.
• Label the bookcases and shelves for location references.
• Develop a detailed inventory/bibliography of the contents of the Study, using photo-documentation to convey records to remote analysts/compilers (guess who? 🤠).
• Identify which items in the Study have already been digitized, and determine which, of the remainder, should be digitized.
• Develop an online repository for Ethical Culture's history of thought, including at least the inventory of this collection.  Add more items as allowed by US copyright laws.
• Develop policies related to use, retention, and dissemination of the contents of the Study.
• Write a history of the space prior to its current use as both archive and meeting space.

And, apparently, the list could go on.  Now that I think about it, the same list should apply to the room across the hall from 514:  The Elliott Library.  Work to be done.  More hands needed.  Just saying.

Manuscripts and Frothingham

Welcome to Carnegie Hall! Again.

A couple of distractions (family events and a virus) pulled me off-track a little.  Once that happens, it's tough to know where to start again, simply because there are so many places that need to be "started" again.  I have work yet to do on Arthur Dobrin's publications.  But first, one of those "places" that needs attention is the collection of Carnegie Hall Lectures, which I discussed earlier this month (January 10 and January 17).  I still have some loose ends to tie up there, but I did manage to achieve the first goal for the Project:  "Document the Carnegie Addresses in the Bibliography of Ethical Culture."  All 58 addresses have now been added to the Bibliography in a new section for Manuscripts/Typescripts.  This means that I will soon be adding all those typescripts from the Algernon D. Black file (Box 9D), which I recorded last September.

One other task related to the Carnegie Lectures has also been checked off my list.  I spent some (online) time with the Felix Adler Papers that are archived in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.  Happily almost all of the lectures in the NYSEC collection can be found there.  Indeed, it seems that there may be one or more copies of most of the lectures and, perhaps, more than one version of some of them.  I'll leave it to another scholar to compare the versions and progression of thought that they might reveal, since CU is bit out of the way for me these days.  

The value of the CU archive is, for me, more than scholarly curiosity.  We have digital copies of the Carnegie Lectures, but we don't actually know where the paper copies are.  Once we find them--and I will be looking for them on my next trip to New  York--we are also likely to see that they are in very fragile condition.  It is reassuring to know that there are other copies somewhere in the world.  Since the next goals of the project may require us to look at some of those other copies, well, we can breathe again.

Such is not the case with the search for a book that I only heard about a couple of days ago:  The Radical Pulpit.  This is a collection of lectures by Octavius B. Frothingham and Felix Adler.  The bulk of the collection is Frothingham's, but it is interesting to see the senior partner give such a boost to the junior partner (so to speak) with co-authorship.  After a fair amount of time searching all the usual repositories and sellers of books, I managed to find a clear description of the book in The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout:  Volume I [The Truthseeker Library] in New Zealand.  That listing includes the following information about The Radical Pulpit:

The Radical Pulpit. Comprising discourses of advanced thought by O. B. Ffothingham (sic) and Felix Adler, two of America's clearest thinkers. By O. B. Frothingham: The New Song of Christmas, The Departed Years, Life as a Test of Creed, Apocryphal Books of the New Testament, The Sectarian Spirit, The American Gentleman, The Language of the Old Testament, The Dogma of Hell, The Value of the Higher Sentiments, The American Lady, The Consolations of Rationalism. By Felix Adler: The Ethics of the Social Question, Emancipation. Lecture at the Second Anniversary of the Society for Ethical Culture, Our Leaders, Have We Still a Religion? Conscience. Price, in cloth, $1.00

I read that as 11 lectures by Frothingham and 3 by Adler. (Punctuation matters!)  However, we will need to find a copy in order to see whether I have counted correctly.  We will also need to find a copy so that we can document the publication information.  So far I have no place and no publisher and two copyright dates.  The dates that appear in various footnotes and lists are 1878 and 1883.  In all likelihood, the dates represent two editions, but it would be helpful to see copies.  Until then, I take some pleasure in seeing the young Felix Adler, who would have been 27 in 1878, getting a leg up thanks to the older and, at the time, much more famous author and speaker (not quite elderly at 56).  Lest it seem that I am getting all sentimental about Frothingham's "kindness" to Adler, I note that, in his last publication before his death in 1822, Frothingham wrote very positively about Ethical Culture as the predicted (by Emerson) Religion of Humanity and quoted Adler extensively (without, however, naming him).

If you run across a copy of The Radical Pulpit at your local library, snap a photo of the cover page and the reverse (where all the publication info is).  Oh, and get the table of contents, too.  Please and thank you!