Looking back one century, Washington University was settling into its new campus on the western edge of St. Louis in 1906. Pink granite buildings, including Ridgley Hall, had been erected and leased to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Classes began on the new campus with a January 30, 1905 Chapel Service. Washington University enrolled 843 students and hired 169 instructors for the 1905-06 academic year.
While the University was located on Washington Avenue, the Mercantile and Public Libraries fulfilled the library needs of our students and faculty. Not until 1883 did the annual catalog mention that one room in the main classroom building had been set aside as a library, but also noted that "no attempt is made at present to gather a general library." In 1889, the faculty submitted a special report to the Board of Trustees, complaining that of the library's 8,063 books, 1,000 were government documents, more than half the remainder were gifts, and the rest had no value.
The University Library moved into Ridgley Hall in January 1905. Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee gifts were displayed on the second floor during the World's Fair; the Hall of International Congresses, as the building was known, hosted a wide variety of meetings, including the American Library Association during 1904. Ridgley Library, as it was named in May 1907, was one of the campus showpieces. Behind its monumental reading room (today Holmes Lounge), with high windows and an ornate plaster ceiling, were the closed stacks, built for 40,000 volumes. Ridgley was shared by the Library and the School of Law until 1923, at which time the entire building could be used for its designated purpose.
Becoming a Depository Library solidified a growing documents collection that had begun in the 19th century with gifts and irregular distributions from the Government Printing Office (GPO), or Missouri's senators and representatives. Accepting the designation from the U.S. Superintendent of Documents as a Depository Library, Washington University began receiving one copy of every document produced by the GPO providing not only Washington University faculty and students but also the St. Louis community access to government information. The documents collection, shelved in the basement of Ridgley, had both physical and intellectual challenges to access. In the oldest surviving report of a University Librarian, Winthrop Holt Chenery (September 1911) writes "The library work, during the summer, has been hindered by lack of light. The Government Documents had to be arranged by candle light which is hardly safe and prejudices the insurance. ...Of the standing water in the basement I say nothing. It is a condition that you are already cognizant of." By 1913 there were lights in the basement and the documents collection had been organized, inventoried, and labeled, but not included in the Library's card catalog. The 1913-14 Regulations and Suggestions for the Guidance of the Corps of Instruction for use of the Washington University Library informed patrons that the documents collection was not cataloged, "but its contents may be ascertained by reference to the Librarian's copy of the Check List." A well worn copy, with annotations by documents librarians, is in the second History of Documents exhibit case. Bibliographic access is still provided outside the Libraries' web based catalog and is one of the challenging issues to be resolved in the GPO's Strategic Vision for the 21st Century.
Construction and development of the city and its suburbs were taking place adjacent to our campus. To the north, University City was incorporated in 1906 around the various business and reform impulses of Edward Gardner Lewis - the planned residential community having streets named for universities; the Peoples University (Washington University's Lewis Center today); and his publishing headquarters, today's University City Hall. A criminal case against Lewis and the resulting Congressional investigations of the Post Office have left a rich vein of local history among US government documents.
February - Upton Sinclair's 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle, the story of a young Lithuanian immigrate couple living and working in Chicago's Packingtown, produced an immediate public outcry, and meat sales fell dramatically in consequence.
April 18 - At 5:12 a.m. a massive earthquake ruptured 290 miles of the San Andreas Fault. In San Francisco, the resulting fire burned for three days; an estimated 28,000 buildings were destroyed. With a large number of troops stationed at the Presidio, the Army contributed significantly to the immediate relief efforts providing food and tents to an estimated 225,000 homeless in San Francisco alone. The US Geological Survey made an extensive study of the quake.
June 30 - The Pure Food and Drug Act, together with the Meat Inspection Act, were the most significant pieces of legislation enacted in 1906. Food testing began in 1862 when President Lincoln appointed a chemist to the newly created Department of Agriculture. After becoming chief chemist in 1883, Harvey W. Wiley launched a crusade against adulterated and mislabeled food and drugs. More than 100 pure food and drug acts had failed in Congress since 1880. Public outrage stemming from Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle and pressure from President Roosevelt brought success. Both acts were signed on June 30th. Meat inspection was placed within the Department of Agriculture's existing Bureau of the Animal Industry; by December 1906 the first inspectors were in place. Enforcement of the Food and Drugs Act was moved from the Chemistry Bureau to the new Food and Drug Inspection Board in 1907.
September 30 - Lieutenant Frank Lahm, of the US Army, flew the balloon United States 647 km (402 miles) to win the first Gordon Bennett Trophy. The second Gordon Bennett race was held in St. Louis the following year.
November 9 - Theodore Roosevelt, the first sitting President to travel outside the United States, left for a trip to Panama. Following his four-day inspection of the Canal under construction, he reported to Congress that all was well and urged full support for the men and women engaged in its construction. As a man of action, Roosevelt inspected the equipment personally. In 1904 Roosevelt had placed the Isthmian Canal Commission, responsible both for building the canal and for government in the Canal Zone, under the Secretary of War.
The Superintendent of Documents distributed over 338,000 documents to depository libraries in the year ending June 30, 1906. At the height of Theodore Roosevelt's administration and the Progressive Era, prevailing political theory called for a government actively leading in reform and scientific investigation. Thus the role of government publishing was to improve the lives of citizens through the dissemination of useful information, with a particular emphasis on research in applied science and the social sciences. Information from annual reports and other documents printed by the Government Printing Office in 1906 provide a window into that time period.
Meeting the needs of a nation of small farmers, the Agriculture Department was the largest publisher of government documents in 1906. The Soils Bureau, organized in 1894, began systematically mapping the country in 1899. Putnam County, one of the 31 Soil Maps published in 1906, was the eighth county mapped in Missouri. The Farmer's Bulletins, an irregular Agriculture Department series begun in 1889, published "Modern Conveniences for the Farm Home" (No. 270) which told farmers that, "Plumbing is becoming a necessity, not only for comfort and convenience but even more for health and cleanliness; and the proper disposal of the wastes of the household should not be neglected."
The Post Office was the largest civilian government department with 205,288 employees operating 65,600 offices and delivering over 11 billion pieces of mail. Letters cost 2¢ to mail and postcards were 1¢, while the international rates were 2¢ for postcards and 5¢ for letters. Rural Free Delivery, began in 1896, was rapidly expanding home delivery to American farm families. The final Post Office pneumatic mail tube opened in St. Louis to transport mail from Union Station to the Post Office at 8th and Olive.
Money collected by the Treasury Department for the year ended June 30, 1906 totaled $762 million; the major sources were customs duties ($300 million) internal revenue taxes ($249 million) and the post office ($167 million). Until the 16th Amendment authorized an income tax in 1913, taxes collected on beer, wine, and distilled spirits were a significant source of government revenue. The Gaugers' Manual taught Revenue Agents how to calculate the capacity of a wine barrel.
While the Census Bureau had declared the frontier to be closed in 1890, there were large sections of the nation still being mapped and charted. The Director of the U.S. Geological Survey reported that topographic mapping had been completed for 992,601 square miles, or 32% of the country. For Missouri 925 square miles had been surveyed in the previous year and that 47% of the state was complete. Meanwhile the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey was completing a cross-continental triangulation to link their survey work along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
The Smithsonian Institution, established in 1846 for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge" published a wide array of scientific papers including "Antiquities of the Jemez Plateau, New Mexico" (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 32) and Captain Roald Amundsen's "To the North Magnetic Pole and Through the Northwest Passage."
The United States Life-Saving Service, established in 1878 as a separate part of the Treasury Department, issued new first aid instructions for resuscitation of drowning victims. In 1915 they would merge with Revenue-Cutter Service to form the Coast Guard.
The Department of Commerce and Labor noted that increased urbanization of the United States resulted in more women and children in paid employment in cities. Work in the Bureau of Statistics was "facilitated by the use of adding calculating devices."
The Bureau of Immigration report continued immigration from southern and eastern Europe, while "those countries whose people are more nearly allied in race and social standards to the people of the United States have furnished fewer immigrants."
The Supreme Court considered a pollution case brought against the state of Illinois (Missouri v. Illinois, 200 U. S. 496). The federal courts had jurisdiction because the case was a dispute between states and it concerned navigable rivers. Each year about 200 people died in St. Louis each year from typhoid. Missouri challenged Chicago's practice of dumping sewage into Lake Michigan, which emptied into the Mississippi River, the source of drinking water for St. Louis. If harm could be shown from the pollution, injunctive relief could be obtained. The issue was whether the bacteria that caused typhoid could live in the river until it reached St. Louis. A review of the scientific evidence showed it to be very doubtful that the bacteria could survive the trip down the river, so the injunction was not granted.
Pacification and rebuilding of the Philippines following the war with Spain was in the hands of the War Department. While insurgents and religious fanatics still held sway on some islands, "Viewing the entire situation, the islands are in a peaceful and orderly condition, aside from the provinces of Samar and Leyte, and the now source of possible future difficulties involved in the fact that the fanatic Salvador is still at large in the interior recesses of north central Luzon." Elections for municipal offices were held in December 1905 and provincial governors in February 1906, "These elections are a vital part of the scheme that has been authorized by the Government of the United States in its altruistic and benevolent work of training the Filipinos for self-government..."
In July, Secretary of State Elihu Root attended the Third Conference of the American Republics (a forerunner to the Organization of American States) in Rio de Janeiro followed by an extended tour of South America during which he delivered speeches regarding American interests in this hemisphere.
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