Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America

Censorship in the Heartland: Eastern Iowa Libraries during World War I

E arly in 1918, Herbert Metcalf, secretary of the Iowa Council of National Defense, sent a request to public and academic libraries requesting that staff scour their shelves and remove materials sympathetic to the German war effort. While Metcalf’s original letter does not survive, his records at the State Historical Society of Iowa include responses from a number of Iowa librarians, which largely report the removal of fiction and nonfiction materials considered “pro-German.”1 Whether their actions were spurred by a desire to avoid scrutiny or a patriotic endeavor to assist the war effort, many public libraries around the state chose to comply with pressures from government and community members by removing fiction and nonfiction materials both before and after the United States’ entry into the war. Documents within the libraries both expand upon and at times contradict information contained in Metcalf’s files. Burlington Public Library, for example, gradually eliminated acquisition of German-language texts after 1914 in favor of materials discussing current events. While the librarian responded favorably to Metcalf’s censorship request, this is never mentioned in board meeting minutes, despite the library’s pro-access stance in response to other challenges made immediately following the war. Despite these occasional differences, the response of Iowa libraries supports the work of Wayne Wiegand, who found that libraries’ work could be understood in the context of a period of neutrality from 1914 to 1916 and one of more fervent involvement in the war effort upon the United States’ entrance into the war. Wiegand also found that this was in keeping with larger cultural shifts in the United States, as official policy and public sentiment moved away from neutrality and toward active involvement (alongside increasing patriotic fervor) as time progressed.2 151 Censorship in the Heartland  Eastern Iowa Libraries during World War I julia skinner This project used a small-scale approach based upon records created within six Iowa libraries to support Wiegand’s findings from a nationwide study of libraries, which sought “to view public libraries’ activity during World War I through the eyes of large and small local public libraries.”3 However, this essay provides a much more intimate focus on a smaller number of institutions within a statewide, rather than national, study. Through the examination of contemporary administrative records produced by Iowa libraries, this research creates a detailed portrait of individual institutions and their adaptation to life during wartime. The present paper compares the actions of these libraries using the same timeframes outlined in Wiegand’s book. These include public libraries in Burlington, Davenport, Mount Pleasant, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, and Dubuque. This study examines records created between 1912 and 1920, and thus the present discussion will include libraries before, during, and after the war. This will be followed by a brief mention of postwar library activity. The Population of Iowa Iowa’s population rose almost continuously from the 1830s, when European American settlers first came to the state, through 1915.4 For example, the population of the state was 2,210,050 in 1905 and rose to 2,358,066 in 1915.5 During the prewar and wartime periods, the percentage of foreign-born Iowans decreased, while the native-born population increased.6 However, the number of second-generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) was still high, indicating that while there was not a wave of immigration around the time World War I began, there had been a generation earlier. Those with two native-born parents numbered 1,422,464, while 654,855 others were residents with at least one foreign-born parent.7 This is in keeping with German immigration nationally, which steadily rose during the nineteenth century, peaking in the 1850s and 1880s.8 Despite fluctuating immigration patterns, German Americans made up a large proportion of Iowa’s immigrant population. In 1905, the number of foreign-born persons in Iowa who were born in Germany was 110,167. This was 39.08 percent of the total number of first-generation immigrants for this year: a much larger number than any other immigrant groups. The next largest group was the Swedes, who comprised only 10 percent of the foreignborn population. In 1915, the number of Iowa residents born in Germany had fallen to 88,450, or 33.48 percent of the total foreign-born population. Despite this drop, Germans still vastly outnumbered other immigrant groups: 152 julia skinner the next-largest...