LIBRARY Oi* w 0001245766 1 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE WITH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES . ■*&&& THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd TORONTO / Jane Addams TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE WITH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES BY JANE ADDAMS AUTHOR OF “DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS,” “THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH AND THE CITY STREETS,” “PEACE AND BREAD IN TIME OF WAR,” ETC. Edited by EVA WARNER CASE r FORMER DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS MANUAL TRAINING HIGH SCHOOL KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI j£eto gork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1923 Printed in the United States of America W\IM s c-^v WT>* -*• A* Copyright, igio, 1923 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1923. NOV 28 *23 ©C1A765151 V9 j INTRODUCTION I * 5 - “ Chicago's most useful citizen!” This is Cre way Chicagoans like to refer to Jane Addams. How well she has earned her right to this title, the reader may judge from the plain facts, simply set down, in the suc¬ ceeding pages. Jane Addams is her own best biographer. No one can read the stoty related here without gaining an understanding, better than any mere editorial interpretation could ever give, of the high moral courage, the unswerving devotion to duty, the passion for self-sacrifice for the good of others that served to make this frail woman elect to pass her life in an unsavory quarter of a huge industrial city and to spend the inherit¬ ance which would have maintained her in comfortable idle¬ ness amid the beautiful things she loved in ministering to the needy of that district. Since 1910, much of Miss Addams’s time has been given to the public through service on important state and national committees having to do with industrial and social as well as philanthropic problems. Despite all this, she has remained head resident of Hull-House and has found time to write for publication. During the tragic years of the war,. Miss Addams bent her energies toward peace—a peace that should prevent future wars. She helped to organize the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom at the Hague in 1915 and has ever since remained its president. For those who seek a viii TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE continuation of her efforts, her most recent work, “ Peace ai. Bread in Time of War,” published in 1922, is recommended For those who have not time for this, the following passage] from “Women as World Builders,” by Floyd Dell, may help toward an understanding of Miss Addams’s peace activities: “What is perhaps the most outstanding fact in the tem¬ perament of Miss Addams is revealed only indirectly \n her autobiography: it may be called the passion of conciliation. . . . . It is not intended to suggest that Miss Addams is one! of those inveterate compromisers who prefer 1 bad peace to a good war. But she has the gift of imaginative sympathy; and it is impossible for her to have toward either party in a conflict the cold hostility that each party has for the other. She sees both sides, and even though one side is the wrong side, she cannot help seeing why its partisans believe in it.” Since any attempt at interpreting Miss Addams or her motives must fall far short of the magnificent self-revealment of her own simple story, the reader is left to form his own judg¬ ment after reading the book. “Twenty Years at Hull-House” has been edited, not for literary values but for its influence in citizenship and Americanization. This edition is intend¬ ed primarily for young people in the early years of high school and is especially adapted for supplementary reading in courses in community civics though equally valuable in reading courses in English. Since its primary purpose is arousing a sense of civic responsibility, the notes are few and brief, with no attempts at “scholarly” or “research” effects. The book itself is such a throbbing, vital human document that attempts to improve upon it in any way seem useless. Only where information is needed to give a clear understanding of the narrative or to bring out the author’s purpose has a note been supplied. Where reference is made to some well-known English or American writer, with whom high-school students INTRODUCTION IX should be familiar, no note is given. For foreign authors or where some special explanation is needed the necessary information is at hand. The study outline, too, has grown out of the essential purpose of the book. There is not a single purely “literary” question in the list. All that are not intended merely to test the student’s comprehension of the facts Miss Addams has presented are so framed -as to bring out the sense of civic responsibility in the youthful mind. II “To provide a center for a higher civic and social life, to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enter¬ prises, and to investigate and improve the condition in the industrial districts of Chicago.” This was the object of Hull-House as set forth in its first charter, granted in 1894. In the succeeding pages, Miss Addams has traced the growth of the settlement and explained the ideals of the residents from its beginning in 1889 up to the end of its twentieth year in 1909. Space limitations will per¬ mit only the briefest further mention of the development of the various original Hull-House activities and the inception of new ones since 1909. The residential force at Hull-House numbers approximately fifty members of both sexes and of varying races and creeds. While no university qualification has ever been made, the majority of the residents have always been college persons. The residents pay their own expenses, under the direction of a house committee, on the plan of a cooperative club. The unmarried women have quarters in the original Hull-House Building, the unmarried men live in the Butler Building, while the families are housed in the Hull-House Apartments and the Boys’ Club Building. X TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Applicants are received on six months’ trial, when vacancies occur. Those who prove their worth and are voted into mem¬ bership must pledge themselves to remain for two years. All th ese residents have other employment or are persons of independent means. Hence they give only their leisure time to the work at Hull-House. In addition to these regular residents, 150 persons come to Hull-House each week as teachers, visitors, or directors of clubs. The work of these nonresidents proves a valuable supplement to that of the regular members. According to Hull-House records, 9,000 persons come to the settlement each week during the winter months as members of organizations or parts of an audience. The attractions offered include classroom instruction in English, current topics, typing, and arts and crafts for the adults, with other classes in music, drawing, folk dancing and the domestic arts for the children, free public lectures on topics of general social and scientific interest are offered every Sunday night, the speakers usually being professors from some of the near-by universities. Gymnasium classes are maintained for old and young alike. Advanced courses in music and drawing, as well as in cooking and sewing are also offered to adults. Clubs of various kinds supply the needs of the men, women, and children of the neighborhood. The largest of the men’s clubs is the West Side Sportsmen’s Association, the successor of the Men’s Club mentioned by Miss Addams in Chapter XV. The present membership is 200. Started originally to attract the men of the community from less desirable places of recreation, the club also has a civic and social program. Its ambition is to serve the Nine- teenth Ward and the community in the same way that the Gity Club and other civic organizations serve the city. Other clubs for men include the Greek Olympic Athletic INTRODUCTION xi dub, many of whose members hold wrestling and track ecords at home and over seas; the Greek Social Group, which olds its meetings every Sunday evening, with an open session nee a month to which they invite their friends from the ireek colony lying north of Hull-House—the largest Greek olony in America; and the Working People’s Social Science dub, where every conceivable social and economic question ; discussed with understanding and interest. The PIuil-House Woman’s Club, with meetings every Wednesday afternoon from October to May, has charge of ractically all the mothers’ activities. Its programs deal with eneral discussion and investigation of, and action upon uestions pertaining to household science, civics, advance- tent of women, and care of children. It regularly sends elevates to the State Federation of Women’s Clubs and the /eague of Cook County Clubs. Through some twenty committees the Woman’s Club arnes on a variety of activities. I he Old Settlers’ Party, ver which Miss Addams presides, has been a feature of New ;Tar’s Day at Hull-House for twenty-six years. Six parties or the grown people are given each winter. Another series of arties for young people of working age who do not belong to ny of the social clubs at Hull-House is a part of the club i/ork. The first Wednesday in May of each year is set aside br a Children’s May Party. Only club members and their hildren may attend, but the guests usually number 800. At be last meeting in June, the club holds a reception for the oung people who have just been graduated from either public r private schools, and prizes are offered those who show the est records for attendance and punctuality throughout the chool course. The club also maintains a circulating library of bout 1,700 volumes, with an extensive children’s department. Other clubs for women include the People’s friendly Club, xii TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE which grew out of the group which twenty years ago mad the first attempt at cultivating vacant lots; the Circol Italiano, which meets weekly for dancing and social enjo} ment; the Greek Women’s Club and the Italian Women’ Club, both of which, in addition to regular recreations ^activities, offer courses in citizenship, interior decorating and Red Cross nursing. During the World War, the Service Star Club, made up c wives and mothers of soldiers, met weekly at Hull-House t sing, to read letters from the camps, at home or abroad, an< each evening the club wrote at least one letter to soldiers preferably those in hospitals. A Red Cross chapter was als-' established at Hull-House, the work taking the form o knitting and making hospital supplies. Many lectures an< demonstrations in the use of substitute foods and the lessen ing of waste were given under the direction of the departmen of food conservation. The registration service of the Nine teenth Ward in the women’s division of the State Council ol National Defense was stationed at Hull-House. Thus the Hull-House residents, while championing the cause of peace, did their utmost to give aid and succor to every branch of war work. It is in connection with the children, however, that the most widely varying activities are to be found. From the kindergarten to the boys and girls of working age, something is offered for all. There are sixty-four children’s clubs meeting at Hull-House after school hours each day, with an average weekly attendance of more than 800 boys and girls. Most general in its purpose is the “Play Club,” to which any child is welcome without formal membership or registra¬ tion It was organized originally to take care of the smaller children, who must be looked after by an older sister during the mother’s absence at work or while she was cumbered with INTRODUCTION xui ousehold cares. Here these “Little Mothers’ may leave leir small charges to play while they themselves joyfully Attend the meeting of some club from which their responsibil- ies would otherwise have barred them. A kindergarten and a children’s library are maintained, the Ttter in connection with a branch of the public library. Some experimenting with street games in summer has proved very jiccessful. Fathers and mothers, sitting on their porches in ne short streets near Hull-House, became as interested as heir children, and a fine community spirit was developed. Health clinics are held every Tuesday and Wednesday even- lgs. The children are weighed, measured, and thoroughly xamined. Those needing treatment are recommended to the lichael-Reese Dispensary for further care. 1 he children are aught to care for their teeth and are drilled on a chart of iealth requirements. The residents report interest and co- peration, on the part of both children and parents. /The largest of the Hull-House clubs is the Boys’ Club, with membership of more than a thousand a year. This club >ccupies its own building, which contains, besides club rooms, >owling alleys, pool room, games room and band room, a ibrary of more than 1,500 volumes, class and study rooms, md shops for technical instruction. . The club is open during the afternoon for schoolboys and in he evening for working boys. 1 he boys have a band of sixty- wo pieces. Pool and bowling tournaments are held, the prize 3eing two weeks at the summer camp, which is Held every summer during July and August at Waukegan, Ill., on the Tores of Lake Michigan. A savings bank conducted in the dub helps the boys to save money for their camp expenses. Members of the Hull-House Boy Scouts troop save their funds to attend the scout camp at Whitehall, Mich., where they receive a thorough two weeks’ course in scouting, or xiv TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE spend a week-end at the Chicago Scouts camp ground on tl Desplaines River when funds for the Michigan trip are nt available. Numerous classes and clubs are organized within the clu itself to suit varying needs. A printing class composed ( | t eighth-grade boys edits, prints, and publishes once a mont the “Hull-House Boys’ Record,” the official club paper. In the cobbling class, under the direction of an experience* p practical shoe mender, the boys learn to mend shoes for them , t selves and their families, the only charge being for the leathe used. In the four woodwork classes, the boys are encouragec \ to make things which can be used in the home. The Whittling Club, the Camera Club, and the Chess Club all under the guidance of experts, are self-explanatory. The Explosion Club, so named from a slight explosion which occurred during a chemistry experiment, is composed of boys who meet once a week for a story, a stereopticon talk on birds or animals, a visit to some factory or plant, and an occasional Saturday hike. The Hull-House gymnasium, opened in 1893 and enlarged and remodeled in 1900, is in use from 8:30 a. m. until 10 p. m. seven days a week. Wednesday and Saturday evenings are set aside for practice and contest games. Monthly athletic contests are held, in addition to the interclass and interclub leagues, in basket ball, track, volley ball, and indoor baseball. 1 he monthly gymnasium attendance is about 3,000. All members are given a physical examination before being permitted to enter the classes. The members are divided into four groups: junior boys, 10 to 12 and 12 to 15 years; news¬ boys, 12 to 15 years; working and high-school boys, 15 to 18 years; men over 18. The last named are arranged in groups of thirty. I he gymnasium has fifteen showers, which are kept in constant use by the members and the men of the neighbor- INTRODUCTION XV hood. During the year, more than 6,000 paid showers are kaken, in addition to 12,000 taken by members. The social clubs all meet in the evening. At present, eight¬ een such clubs meet at Hull-House under the direction of leaders secured by the Social Clubs committee. Eight are composed of both boys and girls, ten entirely of girls. Various nationalities are represented, the Italian, Greek, and Jewish ^prevailing. The clubs are classified into age groups: the jjuniors from 14 to 17, the seniors 17 or over. Club policies hire debated and decided upon by the Hull-House Clubs’ Monthly Council, to which all the clubs maintain regular representatives. I he club directors also hold monthly meet¬ ings, which are occasionally addressed by outside speakers. ./The purely girls’ clubs include the Ida Wright Club, made up largely of girls of Bohemian, Polish, and Lithuanian parentage; the Silver Sword, of Russian girls interested in reading and dramatics; the Ukeleie Club, which originated in connection with community singing during the war; the Book and Needle Club, made up of Russian girls who like to read and sew; the Nyoda, originally a Camp Fire Group of Russian girls, now a “discussion club”; the Aim Well Club, whose members, all Russian, are versed in parliamentary law and specialize in folk dancing, clay modeling, and story-telling; the Gloom Dodgers, another Russian group, who are fond of out¬ door festivities and do much picnicking and hiking; the Tillicums, another former Camp Fire Group, interested in community gardening in summer and in sewing and the study of current movements in winter; the Jolly Circle, made up of 15-year-olds who do a little of everything to amuse them¬ selves; and the Amateur Ramblers, who interspeise their rambles with making towels and all sorts of domestic things for their “hope chests.” The mixed clubs comprise the Allegro, composed of Italian xvi TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE hoys and girls who meet solely for a good time and enjoy playing games; the Mutual, whose members are fond of athletics; the Majestic, whose Irish, Italian, and German members dance, play games, and sing; the Ace of Clubs, which has the honor of having attained the highest degree of self- government of any of the newer clubs; the Microcosmos, an Italian group whose members have a good time giving plays, hiking, and doing other purely recreational things; the jj Mirabilis, another Italian group meeting for recreation only; and the Unique Players, whose members have presented several groups of farces and dramas in a highly commendable manner. Through all these varying activities, Hull House continues to carry out the generous purpose of its founder. Young college people of both sexes continue to be attracted to the Settlement and go forth, strengthened in purpose by their residence there, to start similar movements for civic improve¬ ment in their own communities. Appreciation of the great work of Miss Addams con¬ tinues to grow. Only recently, at a conference of the women of Pan-America held in Baltimore, a list was compiled of the twelve greatest living American women in their respective Helds of activity. Heading that list was Jane Addams, philanthropist, and included therein was Julia C. Lathrop, her faithful friend and fellow worker, as leader in child welfare. The following extract from Edward Sandford Martin’s 4 1 he Unrest of Women ” may fittingly present Miss Addams to the young reader: “ Some women want the vote to add to their^ersonal luster or distinction^ Others want it as an instrument of power. . here is Miss Addams. She never seems to be reaching out for the vote tor any use of personal embellishment, or INTRODUCTION XVII V o add distinction or importance, which in her case would be lard. She seems to want it, incidentally, for women, because >f other things she wants for them and all mankind, and which he thinks, would come sooner if women had the suffrage, rh ese things that she wants belong to honest government >y capable officers and include such things as clean milk, imited hours of work, especially for women, restriction of :hild labor, protection from unguarded machinery and indus¬ trial diseases, old age insurance, the diversion of the pay of zonvicts from the pockets of contractors to the support of the convicts’ dependent families, and the extirpation, if possible, of prostitution. Miss Addams, when she talks of these matters, talks of them in a fashion and with a breadth of view and precision of instance that makes you feel that whatever Miss Addams is, is right.” Chronology of Jane Addams’s Life and Writings Born at Cedarville, Illinois, September 6, i860. Received her A. B. at Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois, 1881. Spent two years in Europe, 1883-5 Studied in Philadelphia, 1888. Opened Hull House, jointly with Miss Ellen Gates Starr, in 1889. Has ever since been head resident. Inspector of stseets and alleys in neighborhood of Hull House three years. LL. D., University of Wisconsin, 1904. President of National Conference of Chanties and Correc¬ tions, 1909. A. M., Yale University, 1910. LL. D., Smith College, 1910. Vice President of National Women’s Suffrage Associa¬ tion, 1912. xviii TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Past Chairman of Women’s Peace Party. Delegate to Peace Convention at 1 he Hague, 1915- President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom since its organization in 1915 - Delegate to Peace Convention, Zurich, 19175 Vienna, 1921; The Hague, 1922. Started January 12, 1923,011 a six-months’ tour of the world in the interests of world peace. Works “Democracy and Social Ethics,” 1902. “Newer Ideals of Peace,” 1907. “The Social Application of Religion,” 1908. “The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets,” 1909. “Twenty Years at Hull-House,” 1910. “A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil,” 1912. “A Modern Lear,” in “Satellite Cities,” G. R. Taylor, J 915 - “Women’s Conscience and Social Amelioration,” in “Women at the Hague: the International Congress of Women and Its Results,” in collaboration with Dr. Alice Hamilton and Miss Emily Balch. “The Long Road of Woman’s Memory,” 1916. “Peace and Bread in Time of War,” 1922. Bibliography “Heroines of Modern Progress,” E. C. and W. D. Foster, 1913. (pp. 280-307) “American Women in Civic Work,” H. C. Bennett, 1915. (PP- 7 i- 9 o) “Women as World Builders,” Floyd Dell, 1913. (pp. 30- 4°) ( “Heroines of Service,” Mary Parkman, 1917. 1 he Unrest or Women, Edward Sandford Martin, 1913. fftf CONTENTS PAGE Introduction .vii Twenty Years at Hull-House . i Notes. 4 X 5 Study Questions. 459 xix \ TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE CHAPTER I Earliest Impressions On the theory that our genuine impulses may be connected with our childish experiences, that one’s bent may be tracked back to that “No-Man’s Land” where character is formless but nevertheless settling into definite lines of future development, I begin this record with some impressions of my childhood. All of these are directly connected with my father, although of course I recall many experiences apart from him. I was one of the younger members of a large family and an eager participant in the village life, but because my father was so distinctly the dominant influence and because it is quite impossible to set forth all of one’s early impressions, it has seemed simpler to string these first memories on that single cord. More¬ over, it was this cord which not only held fast my supreme affection, but also first drew me into the moral concerns of life, and later afforded a clew there to which I somewhat wistfully clung in the intricacy of its mazes. 2 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE It must have been from a very early period that recall “horrid nights” when I tossed about in my beJ because I had told a lie. I was held in the grip of j miserable dread of death, a double fear, first, that 5 myself should die in my sins and go straight to tha fiery Hell which was never mentioned at home, bud which I had heard all about from other children, and second, that my father—representing the entire adult world which I had basely deceived—should himself die o before I had time to tell him. My only method of obtaining relief w T as to go downstairs to my father’s room and make full confession. The high resolve to do this would push me out of bed and carry me down the stairs without a touch of fear. But at the foot of the 5 stairs I would be faced by the awful necessity of pass¬ ing the front door—which my father, because of his Quaker tendencies, did not lock—and of crossing the wide and black expanse of the living room in order to reach his door. I would invariably cling to the newel ©post while I contemplated the perils of the situation, complicated by the fact that the literal first step meant putting my bare foot upon a piece of oilcloth in front of the door, only a few inches wide, but lying straight in my path. I would finally reach my father’s bedside s perfectly breathless and, having panted out the his¬ tory of my sin, invariably received the same assur¬ ance that if he “had a little girl who told lies,” he was very glad that she felt too bad to go to sleep after- EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 3 /ards.” No absolution was asked for nor received, ed'Ut apparently the sense that the knowledge of my /ickedness was shared, or an obscure understanding f the affection which underlay the grave statement, /as sufficient, for I always went back to bed as bold as 5 lion, and slept, if not the sleep of the just, at least hat of the comforted. I recall an incident which must have occurred before was seven years old, for the mill in which my father ransacted his business that day was closed in 1867. 1 The mill stood in the neighboring town adjacent to its >oorest quarter. Before then I had always seen the ittle city of ten thousand people with the admiring yes of a country child, and it had never occurred to ne that all its streets were not as bewilderingly attrac- 1 ive as the one which contained the glittering toyshop md the confectioner. On that day I had my first ight of the poverty which implies squalor, and felt the urious distinction between the ruddy poverty of the ountry and that which even a small city presents in 2 ts shabbiest streets. I remember launching at my ather the pertinent inquiry why people lived in such lorrid little houses so close together, and that after eceiving his explanation I declared with much firm- iess when I grew up I should, of course, have a large 2 louse, but it would not be built among the other large louses, but right in the midst of horrid little houses ike these. TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE I hat curious sense of responsibility for carrying o the world’s affairs which little children often exhib] because “the old man clogs our earliest years,” remember in myself in a very absurd manifestation s I dreamed night after night that every one in th ' world was dead excepting myself, and that upon m ; rested the responsibility of making a wagon whee The village street remained as usual, the village black smith shop was “all there,” even a glowing fire upor othe forge and the anvil in its customary place near th door, but no human being was within sight. They hac all gone around the edge of the hill to the village cemetery, and I alone remained alive in the deserted world. I always stood in the same spot in the black- s smith shop, darkly pondering as to how to begin, and never once did I know how, although I fully realized that the affairs of the world could not be resumed until at least one wheel should be made and something started. Every victim of nightmare is, I imagine, o overwhelmed by an excessive sense of responsibility and the consciousness of a fearful handicap in the effort to perform what is required; but perhaps never were the odds more heavily against “a warder of the world” than in these reiterated dreams of mine, doubtless s compounded in equal parts of a childish version of Robinson Crusoe” and of the end-of-the-world predic¬ tions of the Second Adventists, a few of whom were found in the village, fhe next morning would often! EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 5 31 nd me, a delicate little girl of six, with the further Usability of a curved spine, standing in the doorway f the village blacksmith shop, anxiously watching 11 he burly, red-shirted figure at work. I would store my find with such details of the process of making wheels 5 s I could observe, and sometimes I plucked up courage o ask for more. “ Do you always have to sizzle the ron in water?” I would ask, thinking how horrid it ^ould be to do. “Sure!” the good-natured blacksmith yould reply, “that makes the iron hard.” I would sigh 10 leavily and walk away, bearing my responsibility as !>est I could, and this of course I confided to no one, or there is something too mysterious in the burden of ‘the winds that come from the fields of sleep” 0 to be :ommumcated, although it is at the same time too 15 leavy a burden to be borne alone. My great veneration and pride in my father mani- ested itself in curious ways. On several Sundays, loubtless occurring in two or three different years, the LJnion Sunday School of the village was visited by 20 strangers, some of those “strange people” who live outside a child’s realm, yet constantly thrill it by their fclose approach. My father taught the laige bible class In the left-hand corner of the church next to the pulpit, and to my eyes at least, was a most imposing figuie in 25 his Sunday frock coat, his fine head rising high above all the others. I imagined that the strangers were filled with admiration for this dignified person, and I prayed 6 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE with all my heart that the ugly, pigeon-toed little giij whose crooked back obliged her to walk w T ith her he; held very much upon one side, would never be pointej out to these visitors as the daughter of this fine mat 5 In order to lessen the possibility of a connection bein made, on these particular Sundays I did not walk besid my father, although this walk was the great event of th week, but attached myself firmly to the side of m Uncle James Addams, in the hope that I should b ° mistaken for his child, or at least that I should not re mam so conspicuously unattached that troublesom questions might identify an Ugly Duckling with he | imposing parent. My uncle, who had many children o his own, must have been mildly surprised at this un 5 wonted attention, but he w~ould look down kindly at me and say, “So you are going to walk with me to-day?’ Yes, please, LTncle James, would be my meek reply. He fortunately never explored my motives, nor do I remember that my father ever did, so that in all proba-: obility my machinations have been safe from public knowledge until this hour. It is hard to account for the manifestations of a child s adoring affection, so emotional, so irrational, so tangled with the affairs of the imagination. I simply s could not endure the thought that “strange people” should know that my handsome father owned this homely little girl. But even in my chivalric desire to protect him from his fate, I was not quite easy in the EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 7 lr acrifice of my uncle, although I quieted my scruples /ith the reflection that the contrast was less marked nd that, anyway, his own little girl “was not so very >retty.” I do not know that I commonly dwelt much 111 pon my personal appearance, save as it thrust itself as n incongruity into my father’s life, and in spite of id Snending evidence to the contrary, there were even Slack moments when I allowed myself to speculate as o whether he might not share the feeling. Happily, However, this specter was laid before it had time to n ;row into a morbid familiar by a very trifling incident. e )ne day I met my father coming out of his bank on the 0 nain street of the neighboring city which seemed to me n t veritable whirlpool of society and commerce. With a Slayful touch of exaggeration, he lifted his high and Lining silk hat and made me an imposing bow. This y listinguished public recognition, this totally unneces¬ sary identification among a mass of “strange people” ,vho couldn’t possibly know unless he himself made the sign, suddenly filled me with a sense of the absurdity of he entire feeling. It may not even then have seemed as absurd as it really was, but at least it seemed enough so to collapse or to pass into the limbo of forgotten specters. ( I made still other almost equally grotesque attempts to express this doglike affection. The house at the end of the village in which I was born, and which was my home until I moved to Hull-House, in my earliest child¬ hood had opposite to it—only across the road and then 8 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE across a little stretch of greensward—two mills belon ing to my father; one flour mill, to which the vario; grains were brought by the neighboring farmers, ai one sawmill, in which the logs of the native timber we 5 sawed into lumber. The latter offered the great excit! ment of sitting on a log while it slowly approached til buzzing saw which was cutting it into slabs, and <] getting off just in time to escape a sudden and goi death. But the flouring mill was much more belovec io It was full of dusky, floury places which we adored, t empty bins in which we might play house; it had basement, with piles of bran and shorts which wer almost as good as sand to play in, whenever the mille let us wet the edges of the pile with water brought in hi i s sprinkling pot from the mill-race. In addition to these fascinations was the association of the mill with my father’s activities, for doubtless a that time I centered upon him all that careful imitatior which a little girl ordinarily gives to her mother’s way* 2 o and habits. My mother had died when I was a baby and my father’s second marriage did not occur until my eighth year. I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller’s thumb, and would sit contentedly for a long time rub- - s mg between my thumb and fingers the ground wheat as it fell rrom between the millstones, before it was taken up on an endless chain of mysterious little buckets to be bolted into flour. I believe I have never since EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 9 ir anted anything more desperately than I wanted my ght thumb to be flattened, as my father’s had become, uring his earlier years of a miller’s life. Somewhat iscouraged by the slow process of structural modifica- on, I also took measures to secure on the backs of my ands the tiny purple and red spots which are always >und on the hands of the miller who dresses millstones, he marks on my father’s hands had grown faint, but /ere quite visible when looked for, and seemed to me so esirable that they must be procured at all costs. Even hen playing in our house or yard, I could always tell r hen the millstones were being dressed, because the imbling of the mill then stopped, and there were few leasures I would not instantly forego, rushing at once 3 the mill, that I might spread out my hands near the lillstones in the hope that the little hard flints flying ■om the miller’s chisel would light upon their backs and lake the longed-for marks. I used hotly to accuse the ierman miller, my dear friend Ferdinand, “of trying ot to hit my hands,” but he scornfully replied that he ould not hit them if he did try, and that they were too ttle to be of use in a mill anyway. Although I hated is teasing, I never had the courage to confess my real urpose. This sincere tribute of imitation which affection ffers to its adored object, had later, I hope, subtler nanifestations, but certainly these first ones were alto- ether genuine. In this case, too, I doubtless contrib- io TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE uted my share to that stream of admiration which oi generation so generously poured forth for the self-mac man. I was consumed by a wistful desire to apprehenl the hardships of my father’s earlier life in that far-awa i 5 time when he had been a miller’s apprentice. I kne^l that he still woke up punctually at three o’clock, be cause for so many years he had taken his turn at th mill in the early morning, and if by chance I awoke a! the same hour, as curiously enough I often did, ioimagined him in the early dawn in my uncle’s old mil reading through the entire village library, book afte book, beginning with the lives of the signers of th< Declaration of Independence. Copies of the same books mostly bound in calfskin, were to be found in the librarj 15 below, and I courageously resolved that I too would read them all and try to understand life as he did. ] did in fact later begin a course of reading in the early morning hours, but I was caught by some fantastic notion of chronological order and early legendary form. 20 Pope’s translation of the “Iliad,” even followed by Dryden’s “Virgil,” did not leave behind the residuum of wisdom for which I longed, and I finally gave them up for a thick book entitled “ The History of the World ” as affording a shorter and an easier path. 1 2s Although I constantly confided my sins and per¬ plexities to my father, there are only a few occasions on which I remember having received direct advice or admonition; it may easily be true, however, that I have EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 11 oijirgotten the latter, in the manner of many seekers id ter advice who enjoyably set forth their situation but no not really listen to the advice itself. I can remember ai admonition on one occasion, however, when, as a e :tle girl of eight years, arrayed in a new cloak, gorgeous Kiyond anything I had ever worn before, I stood before 1 y father for his approval. I was much chagrined by s remark that it was a very pretty cloak—in fact so uch prettier than any cloak the other little girls in the mday School had, that he would advise me to wear y old cloak, which would keep me quite as warm, with ie added advantage of not making the other little girls el badly. I complied with the request but I fear with- it inner consent, and I certainly was quite without the y of self-sacrifice as I walked soberly through the llage street by the side of my counselor. My mind was isy, however, with the old question eternally suggested t the inequalities of the human lot. Only as we neared ie church door did I venture to ask what could be me about it, receiving the reply that it might never i righted so far as clothes went, but that people might J equal in things that mattered much more than clothes, e affairs of education and religion, for instance, which f * attended to when we went to school and church, and at it was very stupid to wear the sort of clothes that ade it harder to have equality even there. It must have been a little later when I held a con- rsation with my father upon the doctrine of fore- 12 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE ordination, which at one time very much perplexed r childish mind. After setting the difficulty before h and complaining that I could not make it out, althoii] my best friend “understood it peifectly, I settb s down to hear his argument, having no doubt that could make it quite clear. To my delighted surpri* for any intimation that our minds were on an equali lifted me high indeed, he said that he feared that he ai! I did not have the kind of mind that would ever undt I o stand foreordination very well and advised me not give too much time to it; but he then proceeded to s; other things of which the final impression left upon n mind was, that it did not matter much whether oi understood foreordination or not, but that it was vei 1 s important not to pretend to understand what yc didn’t understand and that you must always be hone with yourself inside, whatever happened. Perhaps c the whole as valuable a lesson as the Shorter Catechisn l itself contains. 20 My memory merges this early conversation on r; ligious doctrine into one which took place years lat< when I put before my father the situation in which found myself at boarding school when under gre;, evangelical pressure,.and once again I heard his test 2 5inony in favor of “mental integrity above everythin else.” I J At the time we were driving through a piece of timb< in which the wood choppers had been at work durin tk; EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 13 : 1 'is le winter, and so earnestly were we talking that he jddenly drew up the horses to find that he did not now where he was. We were both entertained by the icident, I that my father had been “lost in his own 31 mber” so that various cords of wood must have >caped his practiced eye, and he on his side that he lould have become so absorbed in this maze of youth- j il speculation. We were in high spirits as we emerged om the tender green of the spring woods into the clear ?ht of day, and as we came back into the main road I itegorically asked him:— What are you? What do you say when people ask a DU His eyes twinkled a little as he soberly replied: I am a Quaker.” << “But that isn’t enough to say,” I urged. “Very well,” he added, “to people who insist upon itails, as some one is doing now, I add that I am a icksite Quaker;” and not another word on the weighty ibject could I induce him to utter. These early recollections are set in a scene of rural auty, unusual at least for Illinois. The prairie round le village was broken into hills, one of them crowned / pine woods, grown up from a bagful of Norway pine eds sown by my father in 1844, th e very year he came Illinois, a testimony perhaps that the most vigorous oneers gave at least an occasional thought to beauty, he banks of the mill stream rose into high bluffs too i 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE j perpendicular to be climbed without skill, and contai mg caves of which one at least was so black that could not be explored without the aid of a candle; ail there was a deserted limekiln which became associate sin my mind with the unpardonable sin of Hawthorne] “Lime-Burner.” 0 My stepbrother and I carried cj games and crusades which lasted week after week, ar even summer after summer, as only free-ranging cout try children can do. It may be in contrast to this th; oone of the most piteous aspects in the life of city chi dren, as I have seen it in the neighborhood of Hul House, is the constant interruption to their play whic is inevitable on the streets, so that it can never have an continuity,— the most elaborate “plan or chart” o 5 “fragment from their dream of human life” is sure t be rudely destroyed by the passing traffic. Althoug they start over and over again, even the most vivaciou become worn out at last and take to that passive “stand ing ’round” varied by rude horse-play, which in tim o becomes so characteristic of city children. We had of course our favorite places and trees ant birds and flowers. It is hard to reproduce the com panionship which children establish with nature, bu certainly it is much too unconscious and intimate tc s come under the head of aesthetic appreciation or any¬ thing of the sort. When we said that the purple wind flowers — the anemone pattens — “looked as if tht winds had made them,” we thought much more of the Hi. EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS IS act that they were wind-born than that they were >eautiful: we clapped our hands in sudden joy over the oft radiance of the rainbow, hut its enchantment lay n our half belief that a pot of gold was to be found at ts farther end; we yielded to a soft melancholy when heard the whippoorwill in the early twilight, but /bile he aroused in us vague longings of which we spoke olemnly, we felt no beauty in his call. We erected an altar beside the stream, to which for everal years we brought all the snakes we killed during ur excursions, no matter how long the toilsome journey thich we had to make with a limp snake dangling be- ween two sticks. I remember rather vaguely the eremonial performed upon this altar one autumn day, /hen we brought as further tribute one out of every undred of the black walnuts which we had gathered, nd then poured over the whole a pitcherful of cider, resh from the cider mill on the bam floor. I think we ad also burned a favorite book or two upon this pyre of tones. The entire affair carried on with such solemnity /as probably the result of one of those imperative im- ulses under whose compulsion children seek a cere¬ monial which shall express their sense of identification /ith man’s primitive life and their familiar kinship with he remotest past. Long before we had begun the study of Latin at the ullage school, my brother and I had learned the Lord’s ffayer in Latin out of an old copy of the Vulgate, 0 and I o I S 2 O 2 5 16 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE gravely repeated it every night in an execrable pi - nunciation because it seemed to us more religious th 1 “plain English.” When, however, I really prayed, what I saw befc: 5 my eyes was a most outrageous picture which adorn 1 a song-book used in Sunday School, portraying t Lord upon His throne surrounded by tiers and tiers F saints and angels all in a blur of yellow. I am ash am j to tell how old I was when that picture ceased to appe * 1 o before my eyes, especially when moments of teiroi coi * pelled me to ask protection from the heavenly powei. I recall with great distinctness my first direct conta with death when I was fifteen years old: Polly was .t old nurse who had taken care of my mother and h. 15 followed her to frontier Illinois to help rear a secoL generation of children. She had always lived in o , house, but made annual visits to her cousins on a far* a few miles north of the village. During one of the: visits, word came to us one Sunday evening that Pol 20 was dying, and for a number of reasons I was the on person able to go to her. I left the lamp-lit, warm hou to be driven four miles through a blinding storm whi< every minute added more snow to the already hi| drifts, with a sense of starting upon a fateful erran 2 5 An hour after my arrival all of the cousin’s family we downstairs to supper, and I was left alone to watch wi Polly. The square, old-fashioned chamber in the lone farmhouse was very cold and still, with nothing to 1 r( i3 I 10 :!- 8 r ij a) a n « i 4 C| d N 1 t I! 1 : 1 EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 17 heard but the storm outside. Suddenly the great change came. I heard a feeble call ol “Sarah,” my mother’s name, as the dying eyes were turned upon me, followed by a curious breathing and in place of the face familiar from my earliest childhood and associated with homely household cares, there lay upon the pillow strange, august features, stern and withdrawn from all the small affairs of life. That sense of solitude, of being un¬ sheltered in a wide world of relentless and elemental forces which is at the basis of childhood’s timidity and which is far from outgrown at fifteen, seized me ir¬ resistibly before I could reach the narrow stairs and summon the family from below. As I was driven home in the winter storm, the wind through the trees seemed laden with a passing soul and the riddle of life and death pressed hard; once to be young, to grow old and to die, everything came to that, and then a mysterious journey out into the Unknown. Did she mind faring forth alone? Would the journey perhaps end in something as familiar and natural to the aged and dying as life is to the young and living? Through all the drive and indeed throughout the night these thoughts were pierced by sharp worry, a sense ol faithlessness because I had forgotten the text Polly had confided to me long before as the one from which she wished her funeral sermon to be preached. My comfort as usual finally came from my father, who pointed out what was essential and what was of little avail even in 18 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE ie such a moment as this, and while he was much too to grow dogmatic upon the great theme of death, I a new fellowship with him because we had discusse together. s Perhaps I may record here my protest against efforts, so often made, to shield children and yoi people from all that has to do with death and sorrowfc give them a good time at all hazards on the assumpt )r that the ills of life will come soon enough. Young peoh o themselves often resent this attitude on the part of tl ii elders; they feel set aside and belittled as if they we denied the common human experiences. They too w 1 to climb steep stairs and to eat their bread with tea and they imagine that the problems of existence wh 5 so press upon them in pensive moments would be 1 insoluble in the light of these great happenings. An incident which stands out clearly in my mind s an exciting suggestion of the great world of moral ent prise and serious undertakings must have occurr o earlier than this, for in 1872, when I was not yet twel years old, I came into my father’s room one morning find him sitting beside the fire with a newspaper in 1 hand, looking very solemn; and upon my eager inqui what had happened, he told me that Joseph Mazzii 5 was dead. I had never even heard Mazzini’s name, ai after being told about him I was inclined to grc argumentative, asserting that my father did not knc him, that he was not an American, and that I could n< EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS 19 anderstand why we should he expected to feel badly about him. It is impossible to recall the conversation vith the complete breakdown of my cheap arguments, but in the end I obtained that which I have ever re¬ garded as a valuable possession, a sense of the genuine 5 relationship which may exist between men who share [arge hopes and like desires, even though they difFer in Nationality, language, and creed; that those things :ount for absolutely nothing between groups of men vho are trying to abolish slavery in America or to throw 1 bff Hapsburg 0 oppression in Italy. At any rate, I was heartily ashamed of my meager notion of patriotism, lind I came out of the room exhilarated with the con¬ sciousness that impersonal and international relations ire actual facts and not mere phrases. I was filled with 1 oride that I knew a man who held converse with great ninds and who really sorrowed and rejoiced over happenings across the sea. I never recall those early conversations with my father, nor a score of others like hem, but there comes into my mind a line from Mrs. 2 drowning in which a daughter describes her relations vith her father:— “He wrapt me in his large Man’s doublet, careless did it fit or no.” CHAPTER II Influence of Lincoln I o I 5 2 O I suppose all the children who were born about th time of the Civil War have recollections quite unlik those of the children who are living now. Although was but four and a half years old when Lincoln died, distinctly remember the day when I found on our tw< white gate posts American flags companioned wit! black. I tumbled down on the harsh gravel walk in nr eager rush into the house to inquire what they wen “there for.” To my amazement I found my father ii tears, something that I had never seen before, having assumed, as all children do, that grown-up people neve cried. The two flags, my father’s tears and his im pressive statement that the greatest man in the world had died, constituted my initiation, my baptism, as it were, into the thrilling and solemn interests of a world lying quite outside the two white gate posts. The great war touched children in many ways: I remember an engraved roster of names, headed by the words “Ad- dams’ Guard,” and the whole surmounted by the in¬ signia of the American eagle clutching many flags, which always hung in the family living-room. As chil¬ dren we used to read this list of names again and again. 20 INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 21 We could reach it only by dint of putting the family Bible on a chair and piling the dictionary on top of it; using the Bible to stand on was always accompanied by a little thrill of superstitious awe, although we carefully put the dictionary above that our profane feet might 5 touch it alone. Having brought the roster within reach of our eager fingers, — fortunately it was glazed, — we would pick out the names of those who “had fallen on the field” from those who “had come back from the war,” and from among the latter those whose children 10 were our schoolmates. When drives were planned, we would say, “Let us take this road,” that we might pass the farm where a soldier had once lived; if flowers from the garden were to be given away, we would want them to go to the mother of one of those heroes whose names 15 we knew from the “ Addams’ Guard.” If a guest should become interested in the roster on the wall, he was at once led by the eager children to a small picture of Colonel Davis which hung next the opposite window, that he might see the brave Colonel of the Regiment. 20 The introduction to the picture of the one-armed man seemed to us a very solemn ceremony, and long after the guest was tired of listening, we would tell each other all about the local hero, who at the head of his troops had suffered wounds unto death. We liked very much to 2 3 talk to a gentle old lady who lived in a white farmhouse a mile north of the village. She was the mother of the village hero, Tommy, and used to tell us of her long 22 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE anxiety during the spring of ’62; how she waited da after day for the hospital to surrender up her son, eac morning airing the white homespun sheets and holdin, the little bedroom in immaculate readiness. It wa 5 after the battle of Fort Donelson that Tommy wa wounded and had been taken to the hospital at Spring field; his father went down to him and saw T him getting > worse each week, until it was clear that he was going t( die; but there was so much red tape about the depart s oment, and affairs were so confused, that his discharge ) could not he procured. At last the hospital surgeor > intimated to his father that he should quietly take him away; a man as sick as that, it would be all right; but when they told Tommy, weak as he was, his eyes) s flashed, and he said, “No, sir; I will go out of the front door or I’ll die here.” Of course after that every man in ; j the hospital worked for it, and in two weeks he was | honorably discharged. When he came home at last, his t mother’s heart was broken to see him so wan and l o changed. She would tell 11s of the long quiet days that j : followed his return, with the windows open that the^ dying eyes might look over the orchard slope to the j| meadow beyond where the younger brothers were mow- 1 ing the early hay. She told us of those days when his 5 school friends from the Academy flocked in to see him, ■ their old acknowledged leader, and of the burning words of earnest patriotism spoken in the crowded little room, so that in three months the Academy was almost de- INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 23 tysrted and the new Company who inarched away in the lutumn took as drummer hoy Tommy’s third brother, yho was only seventeen and too young for a regular. 53 he remembered the still darker days that followed, yhen the bright drummer boy was in Andersonville s'rison, and little by little she learned to be reconciled Oat Tommy was safe in the peaceful home graveyard. 0 However much we were given to talk of war heroes, re always fell silent as we approached an isolated farm- ■ouse in which two old people lived alone. Five of their 11 ins had enlisted in the Civil War, and only the young- 1 it had returned alive in the spring of 1865. In the f utumn of the same year, when he was hunting for wild 5 ucks in a swamp on the rough little farm itself, he was [ zcidentally shot and killed, and the old people were 1 ft alone to struggle with the half-cleared land as best iey might. When we were driven past this forlorn ; |ttle farm our childish voices always dropped into oeculative whisperings as to how the accident could ave happened to this remaining son out of all the men 1 the world, to him who had escaped so many chances death! Our young hearts swelled in first rebellion gainst that which Walter Pater 0 calls “the inexplicable lortcoming or misadventure on the part of life itself”; e were overwhelmingly oppressed by that grief of lings as they are, so much more mysterious and in- ilerable than those griefs which we think dimly to trace > man’s own wrongdoing. 24 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE It was well perhaps that life thus early gave me; hint of one of her most obstinate and insoluble riddl; for I have sorely needed the sense of universality th imparted to that mysterious injustice, the burden s which we are all forced to bear and with which I ha become only too familiar. My childish admiration for Lincoln is closely asso‘ ated with a visit made to the war eagle, Old Abe, wh as we children well knew, lived in the state capitol o Wisconsin, only sixty-five miles north of our housi really no farther than an eagle could easily fly! He hr' been carried by the Eighth Wisconsin Regiment throug the entire war, and now dwelt an honored pensioner if the state building itself. s Many times, standing in the north end of our orchard which was only twelve miles from that mysterious lin which divided Illinois from Wisconsin, we anxiousl scanned the deep sky, hoping to see Old Abe fly south ward right over our apple trees, for it was clearly possi oble that he might at any moment escape from hi keeper, who, although he had been a soldier and ; sentinel, would have to sleep sometimes. We gazec with thrilled interest at one speck after another in th< flawless sky, but although Old Abe never came to see us 5 a much more incredible thing happened, for we were at last taken to see him. We started one golden summer’s day, two happy children in the family carriage, with my father and INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 25 e lother and an older sister to whom, because she was | 1st home from boarding school, we confidently ap- 1 ealed whenever we needed information. We were riven northward hour after hour, past harvest fields in | r hich the stubble glinted from bronze to gold and the 5 eavy-headed grain rested luxuriously in rounded c iocks, until we reached that beautiful region of hills !( nd lakes which surrounds the capital city of Wisconsin. ( But although Old Abe, sitting sedately upon his high ii|erch, was sufficiently like an uplifted ensign to remind 10 1 s of a Roman eagle, and although his veteran keeper, I lad in an old army coat, was ready to answer all our uestions and to tell us of the thirty-six battles and drmishes through which Old Abe had passed un- ] :athed, the crowning moment of the impressive journey 15 I ime to me later, illustrating once more that children re as quick to catch the meaning of a symbol as they re unaccountably slow to understand the real world bout them. The entire journey to the veteran war eagle had itself 20 ynmbolized that search for the heroic and perfect which 3 persistently haunts the young; and as I stood under le great white dome of Old Abe’s stately home, for one 1 rief moment the search was rewarded. I dimly caught hint of what men have tried to say in their world-old 25 Fort to imprison a space in so divine a line that it shall old only yearning devotion and high-hearted hopes, ’ertainly the utmost rim of my first dome was filled 26 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE with the tumultuous impression of soldiers marching death for freedom’s sake, of pioneers streaming we ward to establish self-government in yet another sove eign state. Only the great dome of St. Peter’s itself h;[r sever clutched my heart as did that modest curve whit had sequestered from infinitude in a place small enoug for my child’s mind, the courage and endurance which- could not comprehend so long as it was lost in “the voi ' of unresponsive space” under the vaulting sky itselli io But through all my vivid sensations there persisted thin image of the eagle in the corridor below and Lincoln himself as an epitome of all that was great and good. 1 dimly caught the notion of the martyred President a n the standard bearer to the conscience of his country! i s men, as the eagle had been the ensign of courage to thd soldiers of the Wisconsin regiment. Fhnty-five years later, as I stood on the hill campusci of the University of Wisconsin with a commanding view! of the capitol building a mile directly across the city, L 20 saw again the dome which had so uplifted my childish- spirit. The University, which was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, had honored me with a doctor’s degiee, and in the midst of the academic pomp and the rejoicing, the dome again appeared to me as a fitting 25 symbol of a state s aspiration even in its high mission of universal education. 1 housands of children in the sixties and seventies, in the simplicity which is given to the understanding of a INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 27 hild, caught a notion of imperishable heroism when hey were told that brave men had lost their lives that he slaves might be free. At any moment the conversa- ion of our elders might turn upon these heroic events; here were red-letter days, when a certain general came 5 o see my father, and again when Governor Oglesby, 0 vhom all Illinois children called “Uncle Dick,” spent a •unday under the pine trees in our front yard. We felt ti n those days a connection with the great world so nuch more heroic than the village world which sur- 10 ounded us through all the other days. My father was member of the state senate for the sixteen years be- ween 1854 and 1870, and even as a little child I was limly conscious of the grave march of public affairs in sis comings and goings at the state capital. 15 He was much too occupied to allow time for rem- niscence, but I remember overhearing a conversation >etween a visitor and himself concerning the stirring lays before the war, when it was by no means certain hat the Union men in the legislature would always 20 iave enough votes to keep Illinois from seceding. I heard with breathless interest my father’s account of he trip a majority of the legislators had made one dark lay to St. Louis, that there might not be enough men or a quorum, and so no vote could be taken on the 25 nomentous question until the Union men could rally heir forces. My father always spoke of the martyred President as 28 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Mr. Lincoln, and I never heard the great name withoi a thrill. I remember the day — it must have been or of comparative leisure, perhaps a Sunday — when £ my request my father took out of his desk a thin packf smarked “Mr. Lincoln’s Letters,” the shortest one c which bore unmistakable traces of that remarkabl personality. These letters began, “My dear Double D’ed Addams,” and to the inquiry as to how th person thus addressed was about to vote on a certaiij o measure then before the legislature, was added th* assurance that he knew that this Addams “would vot< according to his conscience,” but he begged to know ii which direction the same conscience “was pointing.’ As my father folded up the bits of paper I fairly helc s my breath in my desire that he should go on with the reminiscence of this wonderful man, whom he had known in his comparative obscurity, or better still, that he should be moved to tell some of the exciting in¬ cidents of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. 0 There were at oleast two pictures of Lincoln that always hung in my father’s room, and one in our old-fashioned upstairs parlor, of Lincoln with little Tad.° For one or all of these reasons I always tend to associate Lincoln with the tenderest thoughts of my father. 5 I recall a time of great perplexity in the summer of 1894, wdien Chicago was filled with federal troops sent there by the President of the United States, and their presence was resented by the governor of the state, that INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 29 l walked the wearisome way from Hull-House to Lincoln Park — for no cars were running regularly at that moment of sympathetic strikes 0 — in order to look at and gain magnanimous counsel, it 1 might, from the marvelous St. Gaudens statue which had been but recently placed at the entrance of the park. Some of Lincoln’s immortal words were cut into the stone at his feet, and never did a distracted town more sorely need the healing of “with charity towards all” than did ! Chicago at that moment, and the tolerance of the man who had won charity for those on both sides of “an irrepressible conflict.” Of the many things written of my father in that sad August in 1881, when he died, the one I cared for most was written by an old political friend of his who was then editor of a great Chicago daily. Fie wrote that while there were doubtless many members of the Illinois legislature who during the great contracts of the war time and the demoralizing reconstruction days that followed, had never accepted a bribe, he wished to bear testimony that he personally had known but this one man who had never been offered a bribe because bad men were instinctively afraid of him. I feel now the hot chagrin with which I recalled this statement during those early efforts of Illinois in which FIull-House joined, to secure the passage of the first factory legislation. I was told by the representatives o an informal association of manufacturers that it the I o I 5 2 o 2 ' 30 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE residents of Hull-House would drop this nonsense abou a sweat shop bill, of which they knew nothing, certaii business men would agree to give fifty thousand dollar within two years to be used for any of the philanthrope 5 activities of the Settlement. As the fact broke upon itk that I was being offered a bribe, the shame was enor¬ mously increased by the memory of this statement.] What had befallen the daughter of my father that such a thing could happen to her? I he salutary reflection i o that it could not have occurred unless a weakness in myself had permitted it, withheld me at least from an heroic display of indignation before the two men making the offer, and I explained as gently as I could that we had no ambition to make Hull-House “the largest x s institution on the West Side/’ but that we were much concerned that our neighbors should be protected from untoward conditions of work, and — so much heroics, youth must permit itself—if to accomplish this the destruction of Hull-House was necessary, that we would 20 cheerfully sing a Te Deum on its ruins. The good friend who had invited me to lunch at the Union League Club to meet two of his friends who wanted to talk over the sweat shop bill here kindly intervened, and we all hastened to cover over the awkward situation by 2 sthat scurrying away from ugly morality which seems to be an obligation of social intercourse. Of the many old friends of my father who kindly came to look up his daughter in the first days of Hull- INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 31 House, I recall none with more pleasure than Lyman Trumbull, 0 whom we used to point out to the members %jf the Young Citizens’ Club as the man who had for i lays held in his keeping the Proclamation of Emancipa¬ tion until his friend President Lincoln was ready to : ssue it. I remember the talk he gave at Hull-House on me of our early celebrations of Lincoln’s birthday, his assertion that Lincoln was no cheap popular hero, that |:he “common people” would have to make an effort if :hey would understand his greatness, as Lincoln painstakingly made a long effort to understand the greatness of the people. There was something in the admiration of Lincoln’s contemporaries, or at least of those men who had known him personally, which was quite unlike even the best of the devotion and reverent understanding which has developed since. In the first place, they had so large a fund of common experience; they too had pioneered in a western country, and had surged the development of canals and railroads in order that the raw prairie crops might be transported to market; they too had realized that if this last tremen¬ dous experiment in self-government failed here, it would be the disappointment of the centuries and that upon their ability to organize self-government in state, county, and town depended the verdict of history. These men also knew, as Lincoln himself did, that if this tremendous experiment was to come to fruition, it must be brought about by the people themselves; that there I o 32 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE was no other capital fund upon which to draw. I re¬ member an incident occurring when I was about fifteen years old, in which the conviction was driven into my mind that the people themselves were the great resource s of the country. My father had made a little address of reminiscence at a meeting of ‘‘the old settlers of Stephenson County,” which was held every summer, in the grove beside the mill, relating his experiences in inducing the farmers of the county to subscribe for, stock in the Northwestern Railroad, which was the first to penetrate the county and to make a connection with the Gieat Lakes at C hicago. Many of the Pennsylvania German farmers doubted the value of “the whole new¬ fangled business, and had no use for any railroad, 1 5 much less for one in which they were asked to risk their hard-earned savings. My father told of his despair in one farmers’ community dominated by such prejudice which did not in the least give way under his argument, but finally melted under the enthusiasm of a high- 20 spirited German matron who took a share to be paid for “out of butter and egg money.” As he related his ad¬ miration of her, an old woman’s piping voice in the audience called out: “Em here to-day, Mr. Addams, and Ed do it again if you asked me.” The old woman, 2 5 bent and broken by her seventy years of toilsome life, was brought to the platform and 1 was much impressed by my father’s grave presentation of her as “one of the pubhc-spnited pioneers to whose heroic fortitude we are 33 INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN ndebted for the development of this country .’ 5 I re- nember that I was at that time reading with great bnthusiasm Carlyle’s “ Heroes and Hero Worship,” but bn the evening of “Old Settlers’ Day,” to my surprise, i- found it difficult to go on. Its sonorous sentences and exaltation of the man who “can” suddenly ceased to be eonvincing. I had already written down in my common¬ place book a resolution to give at least twenty-five :opies of this book each year to noble young people of ny acquaintance. It is perhaps fitting to record in this ffiapter that the very first Christmas we spent at Hull- douse, in spite of exigent demands upon my slender purse for candy and shoes, I gave to a club of boys wenty-five copies of the then new Carl Schurz’s ‘Appreciation of Abraham Lincoln.” In our early effort at Hull-House to hand on to our leighbors whatever of help we had found for ourselves, ve made much of Lincoln. We were often distressed by he children of immigrant parents who were ashamed of he pit whence they were digged, who repudiated the anguage and customs of their elders, and counted them- elves successful as they were able to ignore the past. Whenever I held up Lincoln for their admiration as the greatest American, I invariably pointed out his marvel- ms power to retain and utilize past experiences; that he lever forgot how the plain people in Sangamon County hought and felt when he himself had moved to town; hat this habit was the foundation for his marvelous 34 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE capacity for growth; that during those distracting years in Washington it enabled him to make clear beyond denial to the American people themselves, the goal towards which they were moving. I was sometimes 5 bold enough to add that proficiency in the art of recog¬ nition and comprehension did not come without effort, 1 and that certainly its attainment was necessary for any'? successful career in our conglomerate America. An instance of the invigorating and clarifying power oof Lincoln’s influence came to me many years ago in s England. I had spent two days in Oxford under the guidance of Arnold 1 oynbee’s 0 old friend Sidney Ball of St. John’s College, who was closely associated with that group of scholars we all identify with the beginnings of s the Settlement movement. It was easy to claim the 1 philosophy of lhomas Hdl Green, the road-building 1 episode of Ruskin, the experimental living in the East End by Frederick Maurice, the London Workingmen’s College of Edward Dennison, as foundations laid by o university men for the establishment of Toynbee Hall. I was naturally much interested in the beginnings of a movement whose slogan was “Back to the People,” and which could doubtless claim the Settlement as one of its manifestations. Nevertheless the processes by s which so simple a conclusion as residence among the poor in East London was reached, seemed to me very involved and roundabout, however inevitable these processes might be for class-conscious Englishmen, they INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 35 5 auld not but seem artificial to a western American who j ad been born in a rural community where the early | loneer life had made social distinctions impossible, lways on the alert lest American Settlements should seome mere echoes and imitations of the English 5 I ovement, I found myself assenting to what was shown •e only with that part of my consciousness which had jjien formed by reading of English social movements, hile at the same time the rustic American inside looked 1 in detached comment. I0 Why should an American be lost in admiration of a oup of Oxford students because they went out to mend disused road, inspired thereto by Ruskin’s teaching r the bettering of the common life, when all the ►untry roads in America were mended each spring by 1 s lf-respecting citizens, who were thus carrying out the mple method devised by a democratic government for oviding highways? No humor penetrated my high ood even as I somewhat uneasily recalled certain «’ring thaws when I had been mired in roads provided 20 \t the American citizen. I continued to fumble for a i nthesis which I was unable to make until I developed at uncomfortable sense of playing two roles at once, was therefore almost with a dual consciousness that I as ushered, during the last afternoon of my Oxford 25 ay, into the drawing-room of the Master of Baliol. I ward Caird’s “ Evolution of Religion/’ 0 which I had ad but a year or two before, had been of unspeakable 36 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE comfort to me in the labyrinth of differing ethical teach ings and religious creeds which the many immigran colonies of our neighborhood presented. I remembe that I wanted very much to ask the author himself 5 how far it was reasonable to expect the same quality o virtue and a similar standard of conduct from thes divers people. I was timidly trying to apply his metho of study to those groups of homesick immigrant! huddled together in strange tenement houses, amon^ owhom I seemed to detect the beginnings of a seculaii religion or at least of a wide humanitarianism evolvecr out of the various exigencies of the situation; somewhat as a household of children, whose mother is dead, out of their sudden necessity perform unaccustomed offices 5 for each other and awkwardly exchange consolations,n as children in happier households never dream of doing Perhaps Mr. Caird could tell me whether there was any religious content in this Faith to each other; this fidelity Of fellow wanderers in a desert place. But when tea was over and my opportunity came for a talk with my host, I suddenly remembered, to the exclusion of all other associations, only Mr. Caird’s fine analysis of Abraham Lincoln, delivered in a lecture two 5 years before. The memory of Lincoln, the mention of his name came like a refreshing breeze from off the prairie, blow ! INFLUENCE OF LINCOLN 37 ig aside all the scholarly implications in which I had ecome so reluctantly involved, and as the philosopher )oke of the great American “who was content merely ) dig the channels through which the moral life of his puntrymen might flow,” I was gradually able to make natural connection between this intellectual penetra- on at Oxford and the moral perception which is always ecessary for the discovery of new methods by which ) minister to human needs. In the unceasing ebb and . ow of justice and oppression we must all dig channels > best we may, that at the propitious moment some- hat of the swelling tide may be conducted to the arren places of life. Gradually a healing sense of well-being enveloped me nd a quick remorse for my blindness, as I realized that 0 one among his own countrymen had been able to iterpret Lincoln’s greatness more nobly than this Ox- >rd scholar had done, and that vision and wisdom as ell as high motives must lie behind every effective roke in the continuous labor for human equality; I re- lembered that another Master of Baliol, Jowett 0 him- df, had said that it was fortunate for society that every ge possessed at least a few minds which, like Arnold oynbee’s, were “perpetually disturbed over the ap- arent inequalities of mankind.” Certainly both the nglish and American settlements could unite in con- •ssing to that disturbance of mind. Traces of this Oxford visit are curiously reflected in 38 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE a paper I wrote soon after my return at the request c the American Academy of Political and Social Science It begins as follows:— The word “settlement,” which we have borrowed from Londoi 5 is apt to grate a little upon American ears. It is not, after all, so Ion ago that Americans who settled were those who had adventured int a new country, where they were pioneers in the midst of difficu! surroundings. The word still implies migrating from one conditio of life to another totally unlike it, and against this implication th i o resident of an American settlement takes alarm. We do not like to acknowledge that Americans are divided into tw nations, as her prime minister once admitted of England. We are no willing, openly and professedly, to assume that American citizens ar broken up into classes, even if we make that assumption the prefac i 5 to a plea that the superior class has duties to the inferior. Ou democracy is still our most precious possession, and we do well ti resent any inroads upon it, even though they may be made in th* name of philanthropy. Is it not Abraham Lincoln who has cleared the title 20to our democracy? He made plain, once for all, that democratic government, associated as it is with all the mistakes and shortcomings of the common people, stil remains the most valuable contribution America has made to the moral life of the world. CHAPTER III Boarding-school Ideals As my three older sisters had already attended the minary at Rockford, of which my father was trustee, ithout any question I entered there at seventeen, with ch meager preparation in Latin and algebra as the llage school had afforded. I was very ambitious to go 5 Smith College, 0 although I well knew that my father’s eory in regard to the education of his daughters im- ied a school as near at home as possible, to be followed 7 travel abroad in lieu of the wider advantages which 1 eastern college is supposed to afford. I was much 10 ipressed by the recent return of my sister from a year Europe, yet I was greatly disappointed at the oment of starting to humdrum Rockford. After the st weeks of homesickness were over, however, I he¬ me very much absorbed in the little world which the 15 >arding school in any form always offers to its students. The school at Rockford in 1877 had not changed its ime from seminary to college, although it numbered, l its faculty and among its alumnae, college women ao were most eager that this should be done, and who 20 ally accomplished it during the next five years. The hool was one of the earliest efforts for women’s higher 39 4 o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE i o i 5 2 O education in the Mississippi Valley, and from the be ginning was called “The Mount Holyoke 0 of the West.’ It reflected much of the missionary spirit of that pionee institution, and the proportion of missionaries amon^ its early graduates was almost as large as Mount Hol¬ yoke’s own. In addition there had been thrown aboui the founders of the early western school the glamour ol frontier privations, and the first students, conscious oi the heroic self-sacrifice made in their behalf, felt that each minute of the time thus dearly bought must be conscientiously used. This inevitably fostered an at mosphere of intensity, a fever of preparation which con tinued long after the direct making of it had ceased, and which the later girls accepted, as they did the campus and the buildings, without knowing that it could have been otherwise. There was, moreover, always present in the school a larger or smaller group of girls who consciously accepted this heritage and persistently endeavored to fulfill its obligation. We worked in those early years as if we really believed the portentous statement from Aristotle 0 2 5 which we found quoted in Boswell’s Johnson 0 and with which we illuminated the wall of the room occupied by our Chess Club; it remained there for months, solely out of reverence, let us hope, for the two ponderous names associated with it; at least I have enough confidence in human nature to assert that we never really believed that “ 1 here is the same difference between the learned BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 4 i id the unlearned as there is between the living and the :ad.” We were also too fond of quoting Carlyle to the ect, “ ’Tis not to taste sweet things, but to do noble id true things that the poorest son of Adam dimly ngs. 5 As I attempt to reconstruct the spirit of my con- mporary group by looking over many documents, I |jid nothing more amusing than a plaint registered ainst life’s indistinctness, which I imagine more or :s reflected the sentiments of all of 11s. At any rate 10 tre it is for the entertainment of the reader if not for s edification: “So much of our time is spent in S eparation, so much in routine, and so much in sleep, _i find it difficult to have any experience at all.” We I not, however, tamely accept such a state of affairs, 1 5 * we made various and restless attempts to break rough this dull obtuseness. At one time five of us tried to understand De Quin- ! ?’s marvelous “Dreams” more sympathetically, by Jgging ourselves with opium. We solemnly con- 20 i ned small white powders at intervals during an entire jig holiday, but no mental reorientation took place, d the suspense and excitement did not even permit us > grow sleepy. About four o’clock on the weird after- |3n, the young teacher whom we had been obliged to 25 Ike into our confidence grew alarmed over the whole [rformance, took away our De Quincey and all the re¬ fining powders, administered an emetic to each of the 42 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE five aspirants for sympathetic understanding of a human experience, and sent us to our separate room with a stern command to appear at family worship afte supper “whether we were able to or not.” s Whenever we had chances to write, we took, of course! large themes, usually from the Greek because they wei the most stirring to the imagination. 1 he Greek oratioij I gave at our Junior Exhibition was written with infinit pains and taken to the Greek professor in Beloit College* othat there might be no mistakes, even after the Rock ford College teacher and the most scholarly clergyman in town had both passed upon it. 1 he oration upoi Bellerophon 0 and his successful fight with the Minotaur contended that social evils could only be overcome by shim who soared above them into idealism, as Belle rophon, mounted upon the winged horse Pegasus, 0 hac slain the earthy dragon. There were practically no economics taught ii women’s colleges — at least in the fresh-water ones — o thirty years ago, although we painstakingly studiei “mental” and “moral” philosophy, which, though fa from dry in the classroom, became the subject of more spirited discussion outside, and gave us a clew loi animated rummaging in the little college library. 01 5 course we read a great deal of Ruskin and Browning, and liked the most abstruse parts the best; but like the famous gentleman who talked prose without knowing it, we never dreamed of connecting them with our BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 43 lilosophy. My genuine interest was history, partly scause of a superior teacher, and partly because my ther had always insisted upon a certain amount of storic reading ever since he had paid me, as a little rl, five cents a “Life” for each Plutarch hero 0 I could telhgently report to him, and twenty-five cents for r ery volume of Irving’s “Life of Washington.” When we started for the long vacations, a little group five would vow that during the summer we would lad all of Motley’s “Dutch Republic” or, more am- Itious still, all of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the I o 3man Empire.” When we returned at the opening of hool and three of us announced we had finished the :ter, each became skeptical of the other two. We fell 'on each other with a sort of rough-and-tumble exam- ation, in which no quarter was given or received; but e suspicion was finally removed that any one had ipped. We took for a class motto the early Saxon |»rd for lady,° translated into breadgiver, and we took our class color the poppy, because poppies grew long the wheat, as if Nature knew that wherever ire was hunger that needed food there would be pain it needed relief. We must have found the sentiment a book somewhere, but we used it so much that it ally seemed like an idea of our own, although of irse none of us had ever seen a European field, the [y page upon which Nature has written this particular ssage. i s 2 o 2 5 44 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE That this group of ardent girls who discussed ever thing under the sun with such unabated inteiest, d not take it all out in talk, may be demonstrated by tl fact that one of the class who married a missionai s founded a very successful school in Japan for the ch dren of the English and Americans living there; anoth I of the class became a medical missionary to Korea, ai because of her successful treatment of the Queen, w-»j made court physician at a time when the opening w; o considered of importance in the diplomatic as well in the missionary world; still another became an ui usually skilled teacher of the blind; and one of them pioneer librarian in that early effort to bring “ books t the people.” | s Perhaps this early companionship showed me ho t essentially similar are the various forms of social effor l and curiously enough, the actual activities of a mission; ary school are not unlike many that are carried on in | Settlement situated in a foreign quarter. Certainly thi omost sympathetic and comprehending visitors we hav| ever had at Hull-House have been returned missioiy aries; among them two elderly ladies, who had lived fcj years in India and who had been homesick and be 3 wildered since their return, declared that the lortmghji 5 at Hull-House had been the happiest and most familia, they had had in America. ^ Of course in such an atmosphere a girl like myself, c serious not to say priggish tendency, did not escape BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 45 Concerted pressure to push her into the “missionary Held.” During the four years it was inevitable that livery sort of evangelical appeal should have been made ir o reach the comparatively few “unconverted” girls in l! ! he school. We were the subject of prayer at the daily 'phapel exercise and the weekly prayer meeting, attend- %nce upon which was obligatory. ‘‘ I was singularly unresponsive to all these forms of emotional appeal, although I became unspeakably em¬ barrassed when they were presented to me at close 1 ange by a teacher during the “silent hour,” which we ll vere all required to observe every evening and which was never broken into, even by a member of the faculty, mless the errand was one of grave import. I found ' hese occasional interviews on the part of one of the 'nore serious young teachers, of whom I was extremely !1 ond, hard to endure, as was a long series of conversa- ions in my senior year conducted by one of the most 1 nthusiastic members of the faculty, in which the de- irability of Turkey as a field for missionary labor was nticingly put before me. I suppose I held myself aloof rom all these influences, partly owing to the fact that ny father was not a communicant of any church, and I remendously admired his scrupulous morality and ense of honor in all matters of personal and public con¬ duct, and also because the little group to which I have eferred was much given to a sort of rationalism, doubt- sss founded upon an early reading of Emerson. In this 46 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE connection, when Bronson Alcott came to lecture at the school, we all vied with each other for a chance to do him a personal service because he had been a friend of Emerson, and we were inexpressibly scornful of our s younger fellow-students who cared for him merely on the basis of his grandfatherly relation 0 to “Little Women.” I recall cleaning the clay of the unpaved streets off his heavy cloth overshoes in a state of ecstatic energy. o But I think in my case there were other factors as , well that contributed to my unresponsiveness to the , evangelical appeal. A curious course of reading I had marked out for myself in medieval history, seems to . have left me fascinated by an ideal of mingled learning, j 5 piety, and physical labor, more nearly exemplified by j the Port Royalists 0 than by any others. The only moments in which I seem to have ap¬ proximated in my own experience to a faint realization of the “beauty of holiness,” as I conceived it, was each o Sunday morning between the hours of nine and ten, i when I went into the exquisitely neat room of the teacher of Greek and read with her from a Greek testa¬ ment. We did this every Sunday morning for two years. It was not exactly a lesson, for I never prepared s for it, and while I was held within reasonable bounds of syntax, I was allowed much more freedom in translation than was permitted the next morning when I read Homer 0 ; neither did we discuss doctrines, for although BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 47 : was with this same teacher that in our junior year we tudied Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, committing all f it to memory and analyzing and reducing it to octrines within an inch of our lives, we never allowed n echo of this exercise to appear at these blessed unday morning readings. It was as if the disputatious ’aul had not yet been, for we always read from the lospels. The regime of Rockford Seminary was still ery simple in the 70’s. Each student made her own re and kept her own room in order. Sunday morning r as a great clearing up day, and the sense of having lade immaculate my own immediate surroundings, the Dnsciousness of clean linen, said to be close to the con- ;iousness of a clean conscience, always mingles in my lind with these early readings. I certainly bore away r ith me a lifelong enthusiasm for reading the Gospels li bulk, a whole one at a time, and an insurmountable istaste for having them cut up into chapter and verse, [r for hearing the incidents in that wonderful Life thus Inferred to as if it were merely a record. My copy of the Greek testament had been presented 3 me by the brother of our Greek teacher, Professor ►laisdell of Beloit College, a true scholar in “Christian Lthics,” as his department was called. I recall that i ne day in the summer after I left college — one of the lack days which followed the death of my father — his kindly scholar came to see me in order to bring i uch comfort as he might and to inquire how far I had 48 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE found solace in the little book he had given me so Ion before. When I suddenly recall the village in which was born, its steeples and roofs look as they did tha day from the hilltop where we talked together, th s familiar details smoothed out and merging, as it were into that wide conception of the universe, which for th moment swallowed up my personal grief or at leas assuaged it with a realization that it was but a drop ii that “torrent of sorrow and anguish and terror whicl oflows under all the footsteps of man.” This realizatioi of sorrow as the common lot, of death as the universa experience, was the first comfort which my bruisec spirit had received. In reply to my impatience wit! the Christian doctrine of “resignation,” that it impliec s that you thought of your sorrow only in its effect upor you and were disloyal to the affection itself, I remembei how quietly the Christian scholar changed his phrase¬ ology, saying that sometimes consolation came to us better in the words of Plato, 0 and, as nearly as I can o remember, that was the first time I had ever heard £ Plato’s sonorous argument for the permanence of the excellent. When Professor Blaisdell returned to his college, he left in my hands a small copy of “The Crito.” The 5 Greek was too hard for me, and I was speedily driven to Towett’s 0 translation. That old-fashioned habit of presenting favorite books to eager young people, al¬ though it degenerated into the absurdity of “friend- BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 49 1 hip’s offerings,” had much to be said for it, when it ndicated the wellsprings of literature from which the lonor himself had drawn waters of healing and inspira- ion. Throughout our school years we were always keenly 5 conscious of the growing development of Rockford «Seminary into a college. The opportunity for our Alma Hater to take her place in the new movement of full :ollege education for women filled us with enthusiasm, md it became a driving ambition with the under- io graduates to share in this new and glorious undertaking. Ne gravely decided that it was important that some )f the students should be ready to receive the bachelor’s legree the very first moment that the charter of the ;chool should secure the right to confer it. Two of us, i s iherefore, took a course in mathematics, advanced be¬ yond anything previously given in the school, from one jf those early young women working for a Ph.D., who was temporarily teaching in Rockford that she might study more mathematics in Leipsic. 0 20 My companion in all these arduous labors has since accomplished more than any of us in the effort to procure the franchise for women, for even then we all (took for granted the righteousness of that cause into which I at least had merely followed my father s con- 2 5 viction. In the old-fashioned spirit of that cause I might cite the career of this companion as an illustration of the efficacy of higher mathematics for women, for she 5 o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE possesses singular ability to convince even the dense: legislators of their legal right to define their ow electorate, even when they quote against her the dusties of state constitutions or city charters, s In line with this policy of placing a woman’s colleg on an equality with the other colleges of the state, w applied for an opportunity to compete in the inter collegiate oratorical contest of Illinois, and we succeeded in having Rockford admitted as the first woman’: o college. When I was finally selected as the orator, I wa: somewhat dismayed to find that, representing not onl} one school but college women in general, I could nol resent the brutal frankness with which my oratorical possibilities were discussed by the enthusiastic group 5 who would allow no personal feeling to stand in the way of progress, especially the progress of Woman’s Cause. I was told among other things that I had an intolerable habit of dropping my voice at the end of a sentence in the most feminine, apologetic, and even o deprecatory manner which would probably lose Woman the first place. Woman certainly did lose the first place and stood fifth, exactly in the dreary middle, but the ignominious position may not have been solely due to bad manner- 5 isms, for a prior place was easily accorded to William Jennings Bryan, 0 who not only thrilled his auditors with an almost prophetic anticipation of the cross of gold, but with a moral earnestness which we had mis- BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS is 5i ^takenly assumed would be the unique possession of the y feminine orator. I so heartily concurred with the decision of the judges af the contest that it was with a care-free mind that I g induced my colleague and alternate to remain long enough in “The Athens of Illinois,” 0 in which the r successful college was situated, to visit the state institu¬ tions, one for the Blind and one for the Deaf and Dumb. Doctor Gillette was at that time head of the latter i institution; his scholarly explanation of the method of 5 teaching, his concern for his charges, this sudden demon¬ stration of the care the state bestowed upon its most unfortunate children, filled me with grave speculations in which the first, the fifth, or the ninth place in an e oratorical contest seemed of little moment. However, this brief delay between our field of Water- 1 loo° and our arrival at our aspiring college turned out to be most unfortunate, for we found the ardent group not only exhausted by the premature preparations for the return of a successful orator, but naturally much irritated as they contemplated their garlands drooping disconsolately in tubs and bowls of water. They did not fail to make me realize that I had dealt the cause of woman’s advancement a staggering blow, and all my explanations of the fifth place were haughtily considered insufficient before that golden Bar of Youth, so ab¬ surdly inflexible! To return to my last year at school, it was inevitable 52 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE that the pressure toward religious profession should in¬ crease as graduating day approached. So curious, how¬ ever, are the paths of moral development that several times during subsequent experiences have I felt that s this passive resistance of mine, this clinging to an in¬ dividual conviction, was the best moral training I re¬ ceived at Rockford College. During the first decade of Hull-House, it was felt by propagandists of divers social theories that the new Settlement would be a fine o coign of vantage from which to propagate social faiths, and that a mere preliminary step would be the con¬ version of the founders; hence I have been reasoned with hours at a time, and I recall at least three oc¬ casions when this was followed by actual prayer. In 5 the first instance, the honest exhorter who fell upon his knees before my astonished eyes, was an advocate of single tax upon land values. He begged, in that indirect phraseology which is deemed appropriate for prayer, that“the sister might see the beneficent results it would o bring to the poor who live in the awful congested dis¬ tricts around this very house.” The early socialists used every method of attack, — a favorite one being the statement, doubtless sometimes honestly made, that I really was a socialist, but “too 5 much of a coward to say so.” I remember one socialist who habitually opened a very telling address he was in the habit of giving upon the street corners, by holding me up as an awful example to his fellow-socialists, as BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 53 one of their number “who had been caught in the toils ! )f capitalism.” He always added as a final clinching of :he statement, that he knew what he was talking about oecause he was a member of the Hull-House Men’s 31 ub. When I ventured to say to him that not all of :he thousands of people who belong to a class or club it Hull-House could possibly know my personal opin- ons, and to mildly inquire upon what he founded his issertions, he triumphantly replied that I had once idmitted to him that I had read Sombart and Loria,° md that any one of sound mind must see the inevitable conclusions of such master reasonings. I could multiply these two instances a hundred-fold, md possibly nothing aided me to stand on my own eet and to select what seemed reasonable from this vilderness of dogma, so much as my early encounter vith genuine zeal and affectionate solicitude, associated vith what I could not accept as the whole truth. I do not wish to take callow writing too seriously, out I reproduce from an oratorical contest the following oit of premature pragmatism, doubtless due much more :o temperament than to perception, because I am still eady to subscribe to it, although the grandiloquent ;tyle is, I hope, a thing of the past: “Those who believe :hat Justice is but a poetical longing within us, the enthusiast who thinks it will come in the form of a nillennium, those who see it established by the strong irm of a hero, are not those who have comprehended 54 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE the vast truths of life. The actual Justice must com by trained intelligence, by broadened sympathie , toward the individual man or woman who crosses ou path; one item added to another is the only method b 5 which to build up a conception lofty enough to be o use in the world.” This schoolgirl receipt has been tested in many late experiences, the most dramatic of which came when was called upon by a manufacturing company to act a: 0 one of three arbitrators in a perplexing struggle betweer themselves, a group of trade-unionists, and a non-unior employee of their establishment. The non-union man| who was the cause of the difficulty had ten years before sided with his employers in a prolonged strike and had 5 bitterly fought the union. He had been so badly in¬ jured at that time, that in spite of long months of hospital care he had never afterward been able to do a full d ay’s work, although his employers had retained him for a decade at full pay in recognition of his loyalty. oAt the end of ten years the once defeated union was strong enough to enforce its demands for a union shop, and in spite of the distaste of the firm for the arrange¬ ment, no obstacle to harmonious relations with the union remained but the refusal of the trade-unionists sto receive as one of their members the old crippled employee, whose spirit was broken at last and who was now willing to join the union and to stand with his old enemies for the sake of retaining his place. BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 55 15 But the union men would not receive “a traitor,” e he firm flatly refused to dismiss so faithful an employee, Ae busy season was upon them and every one con- 'ferned had finally agreed to abide without appeal by } |ie decision of the three arbitrators. The chairman of ur little arbitration committee, a venerable judge, :r uickly demonstrated that it was impossible to collect L*ustworthy evidence in regard to the events already 4n years old which lay at the bottom of this bitterness, 1 nd we soon therefore ceased to interview the conflicting witnesses; the second member of the committee sternly ade the men remember that the most ancient Hebraic uthority gave no sanction for holding even a just re- entment for more than seven years, and at last we all ettled down to that wearisome effort to secure the mer consent of all concerned, upon which alone the mystery of justice” as Maeterlinck 0 has told us, | ltimately depends. I am not quite sure that in the end le administered justice, but certainly employers, rades-unionists, and arbitrators were all convinced that iistice will have to be established in industrial affairs dth the same care and patience which has been neces- ary for centuries in order to institute it in men’s civic elationships, although as the judge remarked the earch must be conducted without much help from ♦recedent. The conviction remained with me, that lowever long a time might be required to establish ustice in the new relationships of our raw industrialism. 56 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE it would never be stable until it had received the sar- tion of those upon whom the present situation press? so harshly. Towards the end of our four years’ course we debatd s much as to what we were to be, and long before the ei of my school days it was quite settled in my mind th I should study medicine and ‘‘live with the poor.” Th conclusion of course was the result of many thiag perhaps epitomized in my graduating essay on “ Cassai odra”° and her tragic fate “always to be in the righ and always to be disbelieved and rejected.” Ihis state of affairs, it may readily be guessed, th essay held to be an example of the feminine trait c mind called intuition, “an accurate perception of Trut s and Justice, which rests contented in itself and wil make no effort to confirm itself or to organize througl existing knowledge.” The essay then proceeds — I an forced to admit, with overmuch conviction — with th< statement that woman can only “grow accurate ant o intelligible by the thorough study of at least one brand of physical science, for only with eyes thus accustomec to the search for truth can she detect all self-deceit and fancy in herself and learn to express herself without dogmatism.” So much for the first part of the thesis, sHaving thus “gained accuracy, would woman bring this force to bear throughout morals and justice, then she must find in active labor the promptings and inspirations that come from growing insight.” I was BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 57 juite certain that by following these directions care- 5 S Lilly, in the end the contemporary woman would find ‘her faculties clear and acute from the study of science, temd her hand upon the magnetic chain of humanity. This veneration for science portrayed in my final ^ssay was doubtless the result of the statements the ijiextbooks were then making of what was called the „ theory of evolution, the acceptance of which even thirty ayears after the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of rSpecies” 0 had about it a touch of intellectual adventure. We knew, for instance, that our science teacher had ( accepted this theory, but we had a strong suspicion that j,the teacher of Butler’s “Analogy” 0 had not. We chafed j,at the meagerness of the college library in this direction, j and I used to bring back in my handbag books belong¬ ing to an advanced brother-in-law who had studied medicine in Germany and who therefore was quite emancipated. The first gift I made when I came into possession of my small estate the year after I left school, was a thousand dollars to the library of Rockford College, with the stipulation that it be spent for scien¬ tific books. In the long vacations I pressed plants, stuffed birds, and pounded rocks in some vague belief that I was approximating the new method, and yet when my stepbrother, who was becoming a real scientist, tried to carry me along with him into the merest out¬ skirts of the methods of research, it at once became evident that I had no aptitude and was unable to follow I o I 5 58 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE intelligently Darwin’s careful observations on the eartl | worm. I made an heroic effort, although candor con pels me to state that I never would have finished if had not been pulled and pushed by my really arden s companion, who in addition to a multitude of earth worms and a fine microscope, possessed untiring tac j with one of flagging zeal. As our boarding-school days neared the end, in thV consciousness of approaching separation we vowec i o eternal allegiance to our early ideals,” and promisee each other we would “never abandon them without conscious justification,” and we often warned each other of “the perils of self-tradition.” We believed, in our sublime self-conceit, that the 15 difficulty of life would he solely in the direction of losing these precious, ideals of ours, of failing to follow the way of martyrdom and high purpose we had marked out for ourselves, and we had no notion of the obscure paths of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame 20 wherein, if we held our minds open, we might learn something of the mystery and complexity of life’s purposes. The year after I had left college I came back, with a classmate, to receive the degree we had so eagerly 2 5 anticipated. Two of the graduating class were also ready and four of us were dubbed B.A. on the very day that Rockford Seminary was declared a college in the midst of tumultuous anticipations. Having had a year BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS 59 • 1 outside of college walls in that trying land between vague hope and definite attainment, I had become very much sobered in my desire for a degree, and was al¬ ready beginning to emerge from that rose-colored mist .with which the dream of youth so readily envelops the -future. Whatever may have been the perils of self-tradition, fl certainly did not escape them, for it required eight years — from the time I left Rockford in the summer of 1881 until Hull-House was opened in the autumn of jgg^ — to formulate my convictions even in the least satisfactory manner, much less to reduce them to a plan for action. During most of that time I was ab¬ solutely at sea so far as any moral purpose was con¬ cerned, clinging only to the desire to live in a really living world and.refusing to be content with a shadowy intellectual or aesthetic reflection of it. CHAPTER IV The Snare of Preparation The winter after I left school was spent in the Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia, but the development of the spinal difficulty which had shad owed me from childhood forced me into Dr. Weir s Mitchell s hospital for the late spring, and the next winter I was literally bound to a bed in my sister’s house for six months. In spite of its tedium, the long winter had its mitigations, for after the first few weeks I was able to read with a luxurious consciousness of 3 leisure, and I remember opening the first volume of Carlyle’s “Frederick the Great” with a lively sense of gratitude that it was not Gray’s “Anatomy ,” 0 having found, like many another, that general culture is a much easier undertaking than professional study. The long illness inevitably put aside the immediate prose¬ cution of a medical course, and although I had passed my examinations creditably enough in the required subjects for the first year, I was very glad to have a physician s sanction for giving up clinics and dissecting rooms and to follow his prescription of spending the next two years in Europe. Before I returned to America I had discovered that 60 THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 61 here were other genuine reasons for living among the >oor than that of practicing medicine upon them, and ay brief foray into the profession was never resumed. The long illness left me in a state of nervous ex- laustion with which I struggled for years, traces of it 5 e emaining long after Hull-House was opened in 1889. e it the best it allowed me but a limited amount of • nergy, so that doubtless there was much nervous de¬ pression at the foundation of the spiritual struggles t vdfich this chapter is forced to record. However, it 10 s ould not have been all due to my health, for as my I vise little notebook sententiously remarked, “In his iwn way each man must struggle, lest the moral law )ecome a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his ictive life.” is It would, of course, be impossible to remember that ome of these struggles ever took place at all, were it lot for these selfsame notebooks, in which, however, I 10 longer wrote in moments of high resolve, but judging rom the internal evidence afforded by the books them- 20 ;elves, only in moments of deep depression when over- vhelmed by a sense of failure. One of the most poignant of these experiences, which iccurred during the first few months after our landing ipon the other side of the Atlantic, was on a Saturday 25 fight, when I received an ineradicable impression of the vretchedness of East London, and also saw for the first fine the overcrowded quarters of a great city at mid- 62 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE night. A small party of tourists were taken to the E2; End° by a city missionary to witness the Saturday nig : sale of decaying vegetables and fruit, which, owing J the Sunday laws in London, could not be sold uni 5 Monday, and, as they were beyond safe keeping, we disposed of at auction as late as possible on Saturdii night. On Mile End Road,° from the top of an omnibi which paused at the end of a dingy street lighted fcj only occasional flares of gas, we saw two huge masses < o ill-clad people clamoring around two hucksters’ cart They were bidding their farthings and ha’pennies for vegetable held up by the auctioneer, which he at las scornfully flung, with a gibe for its cheapness, to th successful bidder. In the momentary pause only on sman detached himself from the groups. He had bidde in a cabbage, and when it struck his hand, he instant! sat down on the curb, tore it with his teeth, and hastil; devoured it, unwashed and uncooked as it was. H and his fellows were types of the “submerged tenth,’ oas our missionary guide told us, with some little satis faction in the then new phrase, and he further addec that so many of them could scarcely be seen in one spo save at this Saturday night auction, the desire for cheaj food being apparently the one thing which could mov< 5 them simultaneously. They were huddled into ill fitting, cast-oflF clothing, the ragged finery which om sees only in East London. Their pale faces wen dominated by that most unlovely of human expressions. THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 63 jie cunning and shrewdness of the bargain-hunter who arves if he cannot make a successful trade, and yet ne final impression was not of ragged, tawdry clothing or of pinched and sallow faces, but of myriads of ands, empty, pathetic, nerveless, and workworn, show- s lg white in the uncertain light of the street, and clutch- lg forward for food which was already unfit to eat. r Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the uman hand, this oldest tool with which man has dug is way from savagery, and with which he is constantly 10 roping forward. I have never since been able to see a umber of hands held upward, even when they are loving rhythmically in a calisthenic exercise, or when ley belong to a class of chubby children who wave iem in eager response to a teacher’s query, without a 15 irtain revival of this memory, a clutching at the heart rminiscent of the despair and resentment which seized le then. For the following weeks I went about London almost urtively, afraid to look down narrow streets and alleys 20 ‘St they disclose again this hideous human need and iffering. I carried with me for days at a time that urious surprise we experience when we first come back ito the streets after days given over to sorrow and eath; we are bewildered that the world should be going 2 5 n as usual and unable to determine which is real, the mer pang or the outward seeming. In time all huge ondon came to seem unreal save the poverty in its 64 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE East End. During the following two years on tl continent, while I was irresistibly drawn to the poor quarters of each city, nothing among the beggars ■ South Italy nor among the saltminers of Austria carrie s with it the same conviction of human wretchedne: which was conveyed by this momentary glimpse of a East London street. It was, of course, a most fran mentary and lurid view of the poverty of East London and quite unfair. I should have been shown either Us oor more, for I went away with no notion of the hur dreds of men and women who had gallantly identifie their fortunes with these empty-handed people, an who, in church and chapel, “relief works,” and chari ties, were at least making an effort towards its mitiga s tion. Our visit was made in November, 1883, the very yea when the Pall Mall Gazette exposure 0 started “Th Bitter Cry of Outcast London,” and the conscience o England was stirred as never before over this joyles. ocity in the East End of its capital. Even then, vigorous and drastic plans were being discussed, and a splendic program of municipal reforms was already dimly out¬ lined. Of all these, however, I had heard nothing but the vaguest rumor. 5 No comfort came to me then from any source, and the painful impression was increased because at the very moment ol looking down the East London street from the top of the omnibus, I had been sharply and THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 65 linfully reminded of “The Vision of Sudden Death” hich had confronted De Quincey one summer’s night he was being driven through rural England on a high ail coach. Two absorbed lovers suddenly appear be- /een the narrow, blossoming hedgerows in the direct ith of the huge vehicle which is sure to crush them to leir death. De Quincey tries to send them a warning tout, but finds himself unable to make a sound be- tuse his mind is hopelessly entangled in an endeavor recall the exact lines from the “ Iliad” which describe te great cry with which Achilles alarmed all Asia ilitant. Only after his memory responds is his will re- ased from its momentary paralysis, and he rides on rough the fragrant night with the horror of the es- iped calamity thick upon him, but he also bears with m the consciousness that he had given himself over so any years to classic learning — that when suddenly died upon for a quick decision in the world of life and hath, he had been able to act only through a literary iggestion. This is what we were all doing, lumbering our minds ith literature that only served to cloud the really vital tuation spread before our eyes. It seemed to me too reposterous that in my first view of the horror of East ondon I should have recalled De Quincey’s literary Ascription of the literary suggestion which had once aralyzed him. In my disgust it all appeared a hateful, icious circle which even the apostles of culture them- 66 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE rn i selves admitted, for had not one of the greatest amo the moderns plainly said that “conduct, and culture, is three fourths of human life”? For two years in the midst of my distress over t 5 poverty which, thus suddenly driven into my co sciousness, had become to me the “Weltschmerz, there was mingled a sense of futility, of misdirect a energy, the belief that the pursuit of cultivation wouj not in the end bring either solace or relief. I gradual! o reached a conviction that the first generation of collejj women had taken their learning too quickly, had d parted too suddenly from the active, emotional life It by their grandmothers and great-grandmothers; th; the contemporary education of young women hs s developed too exclusively the power of acquiring know edge and of merely receiving impressions; that sorm where in the process of “being educated” they had lo; that simple and almost automatic response to th human appeal, that old healthful reaction resulting i o activity from the mere presence of suffering or of hel{ lessness; that they are so sheltered and pampered the have no chance even to make “the great refusal.” In the German and French pensions ,° which twenty five years ago were crowded with American mothers an s their daughters who had crossed the seas in search o culture, one often found the mother making real con nection with the life about her, using her inadequat German with great fluency, gayly measuring thi THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 67 lormous sheets or exchanging recipes with the German ausfrau, 0 visiting impartially the nearest kindergarten id market, making an atmosphere of her own, hearty lid genuine as far as it went, in the house and on the jreet. On the other hand, her daughter was critical id uncertain of her linguistic acquirements, and only ease when in the familiar receptive attitude afforded 7 the art gallery and the opera house. In the latter e was swayed and moved, appreciative of the power id charm of the music, intelligent as to the legend and hetry of the plot, finding use for her trained and weloped powers as she sat “being cultivated” in the miliar atmosphere of the classroom which had, as it iere, become sublimated and romanticized. I remember a happy busy mother who, complacent ith the knowledge that her daughter daily devoted ur hours to her music, looked up from her knitting to ; y, “ If I had had your opportunities when I was young, y dear, I should have been a very happy girl. I ways had musical talent, but such training as I had, olish little songs and waltzes and not time for half an iur’s practice a day.” The mother did not dream of the sting her words left id that the sensitive girl appreciated only too well that ;r opportunities were fine and unusual, but she also lew that in spite of some facility and much good aching she had no genuine talent and never would lfill the expectations of her friends. She looked back 68 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE upon her mother’s girlhood with positive envy becaie it was so full of happy industry and extenuating c- stacles, with undisturbed opportunity to believe tht her talents were unusual. The girl looked wistfully t 5 her mother, but had not the courage to cry out wh: was in her heart: “ I might believe I had unusual tale: if I did not know what good music was; I might enjr half an hour’s practice a day if I were busy and happ the rest of the time. You do not know what life mea owhen all the difficulties are removed! I am simp smothered and sickened with advantages. It is lil eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning. This, then, was the difficulty, this sweet dessert»; the morning and the assumption that the sheltered 5 educated girl has nothing to do with the bitter povert and the social maladjustment which is all about he and which, after all, cannot be concealed, for it breal through poetry and literature in a burning tide whic overwhelms her; it peers at her in the form of heav} o laden market women and underpaid street laborer gibing her with a sense of her uselessness. I recall one snowy morning in Saxe-Coburg, lookin from the window of our little hotel upon the tow square, that we saw crossing and recrossing it a singl 5 file of women with semicircular heavy wooden tank fastened upon their backs. They were carrying in thi primitive fashion to a remote cooling room these tank filled with a hot brew incident to one stage of bee THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 69 aking. The women were bent forward, not only under e weight which they were bearing, but because the nks were so high that it would have been impossible r them to have lifted their heads. Their faces and mds, reddened in the cold morning air, showed clearly e white scars where they had previously been scalded t the hot stuff which splashed if they stumbled ever so tie on their way. Stung into action by one of those dden indignations against cruel conditions which at mes fill the young with unexpected energy, I found yself across the square, in company with mine host, terviewing the phlegmatic owner of the brewery who ceived us with exasperating indifference, or rather re¬ lived me soon as the great magnate of the town began to >eak. I went back to a breakfast for which I had lost y appetite, as I had for Gray’s “Life of Prince Albert” 0 id his wonderful tutor, Baron Stockmar, which I had ^en reading late the night before. The book had lost 3 fascination; how could a good man, feeling so keenly s obligation “to make princely the mind of his prince,” nore such conditions of life for the multitude of imble, hard-working folk? We were spending two onths in Dresden 0 that winter, given over to much ading of “The History of Art” and to much visiting its art gallery and opera house, and after such an perience I would invariably suffer a moral revulsion ;ainst this feverish search after culture. It was doubt- , for the innkeeper mysteriously slunk away 70 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE less in such moods that I founded my admiration Albrecht Diirer, 0 taking his wonderful pictures, he ever, in the most unorthodox manner, merely as hum documents. I was chiefly appealed to by his unwillii s ness to lend himself to a smooth and cultivated view life, by his determination to record its frustrations a even the hideous forms which darken the day for c human imagination and to ignore no human complic tions. I believed that his canvases intimated the comi o religious and social changes of the Reformation and t peasants’ wars, 0 that they were surcharged with pi for the downtrodden, that his sad knights, grave standing guard, were longing to avert that shedding blood which is sure to occur when men forget how cot 5 plicated life is and insist upon reducing it to logic dogmas. The largest sum of money that I ever ventured spend in Europe was for an engraving of his “£ Hubert,” the background of which was said to be fro oan original Diirer plate. There is little doubt, I a afraid, that the background as well as the figures “we put in at a later date,” but the purchase at lea registered the high-water mark of my enthusiasm. The wonder and beauty of Italy later brought healir s and some relief to the paralyzing sense of the futility all artistic and intellectual effort when disconnectc from the ultimate test of the conduct it inspired. T 1 serene and soothing touch of history also aroused ol IMS . THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 71 I ithusiasms, although some of their manifestations ere such as one smiles over more easily in retrospection an at the moment. I fancy that it was no smiling atter to several people in our party, whom I induced walk for three miles in the hot sunshine beating down 5 )on the Roman Campagna, 0 that we might enter the iternal City on foot through the Porta del Popolo, 0 as lgrims had done for centuries. To be sure, we had ally entered Rome the night before, but the railroad ation and the hotel might have been anywhere else, 1 o id we had been driven beyond the walls after break- st and stranded at the very spot where the pilgrims ways said “Ecco Roma,”° as they caught the first impse of St. Peter’s dome. This melodramatic en- ance into Rome, or rather pretended entrance, was 1 5 le prelude to days of enchantment, and I returned to nrope two years later in order to spend a winter there ;id to carry out a great desire to systematically study ie Catacombs. 0 In spite of my distrust of “ advan¬ ces” I was apparently not yet so cured but that I 20 'anted more of them. The two years which elapsed before I again found syself in Europe brought their inevitable changes, lamily arrangements had so come about that I had i ent three or four months of each of the intervening 2 5 enters in Baltimore, where I seemed to have reached 1 e nadir of my nervous depression and sense of mal- djustment, in spite of my interest in the fascinating 72 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE lectures given there by Lanciani 0 of Rome, ant definite course of reading under the guidance of a Jo T T i i ^ i o i 5 Hopkins lecturer upon the United Italy movement, the latter I naturally encountered the influence Mazzini, which was a source of great comfort to r although perhaps I went too suddenly from a c< templation of his wonderful ethical and philosophi appeal to the workingmen of Italy, directly to 1 lecture rooms at Johns Hopkins University, for I v ceitainly much disillusioned at this time as to t effect of intellectual pursuits upon moral developme The summers were spent in the old home in northe Illinois, and one Sunday morning I received the rite baptism and became a member of the Presbyteri church in the village. At this time there was certain no outside pressure pushing me towards such a cision, and at tw^enty-five one does not ordinarily ta such a step from a mere desire to conform. While I w is not conscious oi any emotional ^conversion,” I toe 2 O upon myself the outward expressions of the religioi life with all humility and sincerity. It was doubtle: true that I was “Weary of myself and sick of asking What I am and what I ought to be,” 2 5 and that various cherished safeguards and claims t self-dependence had been broken into by many piteou failures. But certainly I had been brought to the con THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 73 'usion that “sincerely to give up one’s conceit or hope 'being good in one’s own right is the only door to the niverse’s deeper reaches.” Perhaps the young clergy- an recognized this as the test of the Christian temper; any rate he required little assent to dogma or miracle, 5 id assured me that while both the ministry and the ficers of his church were obliged to subscribe to ictrines of well-known severity, the faith required of ie laity was almost early Christian in its simplicity. I as conscious of no change from my childish accept- 10 ice of the teachings of the Gospels, but at this moment mething persuasive within made me long for an out- ard symbol of fellowship, some bond of peace, some essed spot where unity of spirit might claim right of ay over all differences. There was also growing within 15 e an almost passionate devotion to the ideals of :mocracy, and when in all history had these ideals been thrillingly expressed as when the faith of the fisher- an and the slave had been boldly opposed to the ac- pted moral belief that the well-being of a privileged 20 w might justly be built upon the ignorance and sacri- ie of the many? Who was I, with my dreams of uiversal fellowship, that I did not identify myself i th the institutional statement of this belief, as it •3od in the little village in which I was born, and with- 2 5 : t which testimony in each remote hamlet of Christen- :>m it would be so easy for the world to slip back into le doctrines of selection and aristocracy? 74 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE In one of the intervening summers between th f European journeys I visited a western state whenp had formerly invested a sum of money in mortgag I was much horrified by the wretched conditions amc 5 the farmers, which had resulted from a long period drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned ir my mind. A number of starved hogs — collateral foi promissory note — were huddled into an open p( Their backs were humped in a curious, camel-li o fashion, and they were devouring one of their o> number, the latest victim of absolute starvation possibly merely the one least able to defend bums 1 against their voracious hunger. Ihe farmer’s w looked on indifferently, a picture of despair as she sto< s in the door of the bare, crude house, and the two ch dren behind her, whom she vainly tried to keep,out sight, continually thrust forward their faces almo covered by masses of coarse, sunburned hair, and the little bare feet so black, so hard, the great cracks o filled with dust that they looked like flattened hoo The children could not be compared to anything joyous as satyrs, although they appeared but ha human. It seemed to me quite impossible to recei interest from mortgages placed upon farms which mig 5 at any season be reduced to such conditions, and wi great inconvenience to my agent and doubtless wi hardship to the farmers, as speedily as possible I wit jlrew all my investment. But something had to b 75 THE SNARE OF PREPARATION Ijone with the money, and in my reaction against tin¬ men horrors I bought a farm near my native village and Tt igiIso a flock of innocent-looking sheep. My partner in ie enterprise had not chosen the shepherd’s lot as a grmanent occupation, but hoped to speedily finish his fllege course upon half the proceeds of our venture, his pastoral enterprise still seems to me to have been isentially sound, both economically and morally, but li^rhaps one partner depended too much upon the ^peccability of her motives and the other found him- flf too preoccupied with study to know that it is not a al kindness to bed a sheepfold with straw, for certainly vjie venture ended in a spectacle scarcely less harrowing #an the memory it was designed to obliterate. At h|ast the sight of two hundred sheep with four rotting oofs each, was not reassuring to one whose conscience iaved economic peace. A fortunate series of sales of utton, wool, and farm enabled the partners to end the jiterprise without loss, and they passed on, one to 1 fllege and the other to Europe, if not wiser, certainly idder for the experience. j It was during this second journey to Europe that I :tended a meeting of the London match girls who were l strike and who met daily under the leadership of ell-knoWn labor men of London. The low wages that ere reported at the meetings, the phossy jaw° which as described and occasionally exhibited, the appear- ice of the girls themselves I did not, curiously enough, 76 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE in any wise connect with what was called the lab movement, nor did I understand the efforts of t London trades-unionists, concerning whom I held t vaguest notions. But of course this impression shuman misery was added to the others which were ; ready making me so wretched. I think that up to tl time I was still filled with the sense which Wei describes in one of his young characters, that som where in Church or State are a body of authoritati o people who will put things to rights as soon as th really know what is wrong. Such a young person pi sistently believes that behind all suffering, behind s and want, must lie redeeming magnanimity. He m; imagine the world to be tragic and terrible, but it nev 5 for an instant occurs to him that it may be contemptifc or squalid or self-seeking. Apparently I looked upon tl efforts of the trades-unionists as I did upon those Frederic Harrison and the Positivists 0 whom I hea the next Sunday in Newton Hall, as a manifestation o“loyalty to humanity” and an attempt to aid in progress. I was enormously interested in the Positivi during these European years; I imagined that th philosophical conception of man’s religious develo ment might include all expressions of that for which 5 many ages of men have struggled and aspired. I vagu ly hoped for this universal comity when I stood Stonehenge, 0 on the Acropolis 0 in Athens, or in tl Sistine Chapel 0 in the Vatican. But never did I so d THE SNARE OE PREPARATION 77 • e it as in the cathedrals of Winchester, 0 Notre Dame,° niens.° One winter’s day I traveled from Munich to I m° because I imagined from what the art books said at the cathedral hoarded a medieval statement of the >sitivists’ final synthesis, prefiguring their conception Supreme Humanity.” (< In this I was not altogether disappointed. The re- ious history carved on the choir stalls at Ulm con¬ ned Greek philosophers as well as Hebrew prophets, d among the disciples and saints stood the discoverer music and a builder of pagan temples. Even then I is startled, forgetting for the moment the religious /olutions of south Germany, to catch sight of a ndow showing Luther as he affixed his thesis 0 on the or at Wittenberg, the picture shining clear in the idst of the older glass of saint and symbol. My smug notebook states that all this was an ad- ission that ’‘the saints but embodied fine action,” id it proceeds at some length to set forth my hope for [cathedral of humanity,” which should be “capacious ough to house a fellowship of common purpose,” and iich should be “beautiful enough to persuade men to Id fast to the vision of human solidarity.” It is quite [possible for me to reproduce this experience at Ulm [less I quote pages more from the notebook in which leem to have written half the night, in a fever of com- fition cast in ill-digested phrases from Comte.° It ibtless reflected also something of the faith of the 78 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Old Catholics, a charming group of whom I had recei 1 met in Stuttgart, and the same mood is easily trace'ii my early hopes for the Settlement that it should uit in the fellowship of the deed those of widely diffeiij s religious beliefs. The beginning of 1887 found our little party of tH in very picturesque lodgings in Rome, and settled i :| a certain student’s routine. But my study of the CY combs was brought to an abrupt end in a fortnight o a severe attack of sciatic rheumatism, which kept 1 in Rome with a trained nurse during many weeks, £ later sent me to the Riviera 0 to lead an invalid’s once more. Although my Catacomb lore thus remair hopelessly superficial, it seemed to me a sufficient bq 5 for a course of six lectures which I timidly offered t< Deaconess’s Training School 0 during my first winter Chicago, upon the simple ground that this early int pretation of Christianity is the one which should presented to the poor, urging that the primitive chui o was composed of the poor and that it was they who to the wonderful news to the more prosperous Romai| 1 he open-minded head of the school gladly accepted t lectures, arranging that the course should be given ea spring to her graduating class of Home and Forei 5 Missionaries, and at the end of the third year she i vited me to become one of the trustees of the school, accepted and attended one meeting of the board, b never another, because some of the older members o 79 THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 1 cted to my membership on the ground that “no re- i( ;ious instruction was given at Hull-House.” I re- 1 ember my sympathy for the embarrassment in which 1 e head of the school was placed, but if I needed com- rt, a bit of it came to me on my way home from the ^ ustees’ meeting when an Italian laborer paid my street 1 r fare, according to the custom of our simpler neigh- brs. Upon my inquiry of the conductor as to whom I as indebted for the little courtesy, he replied roughly lough, “I cannot tell one dago from another when a ey are in a gang, but sure, any one of them would do ‘ for you as quick as they would for the Sisters.” 1 It is hard to tell just when the very simple plan a bich afterward developed into the Settlement began 1 form itself in my mind. It may have been even he¬ re I went to Europe for the second time, but I gradu- Ty became convinced that it would be a good thing to nt a house in a part of the city where many primitive id actual needs are found, in which young women who I id been given over too exclusively to study, might re- ore a balance of activity along traditional lines and arn of life from life itself; where they might try out •me of the things they had been taught and put truth it “the ultimate test of the conduct it dictates or in¬ ures.” I do not remember to have mentioned this an to any one until we reached Madrid in April, 1888. We had been to see a bull fight rendered in the most Magnificent Spanish style, where greatly to my surprise 8o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE and horror, I found that I had seen, with comparatii indifference, five bulls and many more horses killel The sense that this was the last survival of all t: glories of the amphitheater, the illusion that the ridt;i son the caparisoned horses might have been knights a tournament, or the matadore a slightly armed gladi tor facing his martyrdom, and all the rest of the obscu yet vivid associations of an historic survival, had carri< me beyond the endurance of any of the rest of the part ol finally met them in the foyer, stern and pale with di approval of my brutal endurance, and but partially r covered from the faintness and disgust which t! spectacle itself had produced upon them. I had no d fense to offer to their reproaches save that I had nc s thought much about the bloodshed; but in the evenir the natural and inevitable reaction came, and in dee chagrin I felt myself tried and condemned, not only b this disgusting experience but by the entire mor; situation which it revealed. It was suddenly mad o quite clear to me that I was lulling my conscience by dreamer’s scheme, that a mere paper reform had becom a defense for continued idleness, and that I was makin it a raison d’etre 0 for going on indefinitely with study ani travel. It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred pur 5 pose, of the promise the future can never keep, and had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception ii making myself believe that all this was in preparatioi tor great things to come. Nothing less than the mora •THE SNARE OF PREPARATION 81 action following the experience at a bull-fight had :en able to reveal to me that so far from following in le wake of a chariot of philanthropic fire, I had been ed to the tail of the veriest ox-cart of self-seeking. I had made up my mind that next day, whatever ippened, I would begin to carry out the plan, if only / talking about it. I can well recall the stumbling and icertainty with which I finally set it forth to Miss ;arr,° my old-time school friend, who was one of our irty. I even dared to hope that she might join in irrying out the plan, but nevertheless I told it in the ar of that disheartening experience which is so apt to flict our most cherished plans when they are at last vulged, when we suddenly feel that there is nothing lere to talk about, and as the golden dream slips irough our fingers we are left to wonder at our own tuous belief. But gradually the comfort of Miss :arr’s companionship, the vigor and enthusiasm which le brought to bear upon it, told both in the growth of le plan and upon the sense of its validity, so that by le time we had reached the enchantment of the Al- ambra, the scheme had become convincing and tangi- le although still most hazy in detail. A month later we parted in Paris, Miss Starr to go ack to Italy, and I to journey on to London to secure > many suggestions as possible from those wonderful laces of which we had heard, Toynbee Hall and the eople’s Palace. 0 So that it finally came about that in 82 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE June, 1888, five years after my first visit in East Lond 1 I found myself at Toynbee Hall equipped not only w! a letter of introduction from Canon Fremantle, 0 1 : with high expectations and a certain belief that wh j 5 ever perplexities and discouragement concerning t life of the poor were in store for me, I should at le; know something at first hand and have the solace daily activity. I had confidence that although life-* self might contain many difficulties, the period of me o passive receptivity had come to an end, and I had J last finished with the everlasting “ preparation for life however ill-prepared I might be. It was not until years afterward that I came upt Tolstoy’s phrase 0 “the snare of preparation,” which 1 s insists we spread before the feet of young people, hop lessly entangling them in a curious inactivity at tl very period of life when they are longing to constrm the world anew and to conform it to their own ideals. k CHAPTER V First Days at Hull-House The next January found Miss Starr and myself in licago, searching for a neighborhood in which we ight put our plans into execution. In our eagerness win friends for the new undertaking, we utilized ery opportunity to set forth the meaning of the settle- ent as it had been embodied in Toynbee Hall, al- ough in those days we made no appeal for money, eaning to start with our own slender resources. From e very first the plan received courteous attention, and te discussion, while often skeptical, was always friend- Professor Swing 0 wrote a commendatory column in e Evening Journal , and our early speeches were re¬ nted quite out of proportion to their worth. I recall a irited evening at the home of Mrs. Wilmarth, 0 which is attended by that renowned scholar, Thomas javidson, 0 and by a young Englishman who was a smber of the then new Fabian society 0 and to whom a culiar glamour was attached because he had scoured lives all summer in a camp of high-minded philosophers the Adirondacks. Our new little plan met with criti- ;m, not to say disapproval, from Mr. Davidson, who, nearly as I can remember, called it “one of those 83 84 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE * unnatural attempts to understand life through coope tive living. ” It was in vain we asserted that the collective livii> was not an essential part of the plan, that we would sways scrupulously pay our own expenses, and that any moment we might decide to scatter through t neighborhood and to live in separate tenements; still contended that the fascination for most of the volunteering residence would lie in the collective livi o aspect of the Settlement. His contention was, of cour essentially sound; there is a constant tendency for t residents to “lose themselves in the cave of their o\ companionship,” as the Toynbee Hall phrase goes, b on the other hand, it is doubtless true that the ve 5 companionship, the give and take of colleagues, is wh tends to keep the Settlement normal and in touch wi “the world of things as they are.” I am happy to s; that we never resented this nor any other difference opinion, and that fifteen years later Professor Davidsc o handsomely acknowledged that the advantages of group far outweighed the weaknesses he had ear pointed out. He was at that later moment sharing wit a group of young men, on the East Side of New Yorl his ripest conclusions in philosophy and was muc 5 touched by their intelligent interest and absorbed d< votion. I think that time has also justified our earl contention that the mere foothold of a house, easil accessible, ample in space, hospitable and tolerant i FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 85 (spirit, situated in the midst of the large foreign colonies which so easily isolate themselves in American cities. Would be in itself a serviceable thing for Chicago. I am not so sure that we succeeded in our endeavors “to make social intercourse express the growing sense of the Economic unity of society and to add the social function f'o democracy.” But Hull-House was soberly opened on the theory that the dependence of classes on each other is reciprocal; and that as the social relation is essentially a reciprocal relation, it gives a form of ex¬ pression that has peculiar value. In our search for a vicinity in which to settle we went ibout with the officers of the compulsory education lepartment, with city missionaries, and with the news¬ paper reporters whom I recall as a much older set of nen than one ordinarily associates with that profession, >r perhaps I was only sent out with the older ones on vhat they must all have considered a quixotic mission. )ne Sunday afternoon in the late winter a reporter took I ne to visit a so-called anarchist Sunday School, several >f which were to be found on the northwest side of the fity. The young man in charge was of the German ;tudent type, and his face flushed with enthusiasm as lie led the children singing one of Koerner’s poems. 0 The newspaper man, who did not understand German, isked me what abominable stuff they were singing, but le seemed dissatisfied with my translation of the simple vords and darkly intimated that they were “deep 86 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE ones,” and had probably “ fooled” me. When I repli^ that Koerner was an ardent German poet whose son;I inspired his countrymen to resist the aggressions J Napoleon, and that his bound poems were found in tl 5 most respectable libraries, he looked at me rather :] skanceand I then and there had my first intimation th;a to treat a Chicago man, who is called an anarchist, ; you would treat any other citizen, is to lay yourse j open to deep suspicion. o Another Sunday afternoon in the early spring, on th | way to a Bohemian mission in the carriage of one of itl founders, we passed a fine old house standing well bac from the street, surrounded on three sides by a broa piazza which was supported by wooden pillars of ex sceptionally pure Corinthian design and proportion, was so attracted by the house that I set forth to visit i the very next day, but though I searched for it then an for several days after, I could not find it, and at lengt I most reluctantly gave up the search, o 1 hree weeks later, with the advice of several of th oldest residents of Chicago, including the ex-mayor o the city, Colonel Mason, 0 who had from the first been warm friend to our plans, we decided upon a locatioi somewhere near the junction of Blue Island Avenue 1 s Halsted Street, and Harrison Street. I was surprisec and overjoyed on the very first day of our search foi quarters to come upon the hospitable old house, the quest for which I had so recently abandoned. The FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 87 :>use was of course rented, the lower part of it used for ffices and storerooms in connection with a factory that ood back of it. However, after some difficulties were kercome, it proved to be possible to sublet the second oor and what had been the large drawing-room on the •st floor. Ihe house had passed through many changes since had been built in 1856 for the homestead of one of diicago’s pioneer citizens, Mr. Charles J. Hull, and though battered by its vicissitudes, was essentially und. Before it had been occupied by the factory, it id sheltered a second-hand furniture store, and at one me the Little Sisters of the Poor had used it for a home r the aged. It had a half-skeptical reputation for a lunted attic, so far respected by the tenants living on he second floor that they always kept a large pitcher 11 of water on the attic stairs. 1 heir explanation of is custom was so incoherent that I was sure it was a rvival of the belief that a ghost could not cross ruli¬ ng water, but perhaps that interpretation was only y eagerness for finding folklore. The fine old house responded kindly to repairs, its ide hall and open fireplaces always insuring it a acious aspect. Its generous owner, Miss Helen ulver,° in the following spring gave us a free leasehold the entire house. Her kindness has continued rough the years until the group of thirteen buildings, lich at present comprises our equipment, is built 88 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE largely upon land which Miss Culver has put at service of the Settlement which bears Mr. Hull’s naie In those days the house stood between an undertak establishment and a saloon. “Knight, Death, and s Devil,” the three were called by a Chicago wit, a yet any mock heroics which might be implied by co paring the Settlement to a knight quickly dropped aw under the genuine kindness and hearty welcome. < tended to us by the families living up and down t d o street. We furnished the house as we would have furnish I it were it in another part of the city, with the phoi graphs and other impedimenta we had collected Europe, and with a few bits of family mahogan s While all the new furniture which was bought was e during in quality, we were careful to keep it in charact with the fine old residence. Probably no young matn ever placed her own things in her own house with mo pleasure than that with which we first furnished Hu o House. We believed that the Settlement may logical bring to its aid all those adjuncts which the cultivate man regards as good and suggestive of the best life the past. On the 18th of September, 1889, Miss Starr and 5 moved into it, with Miss Mary Keyser, who began b performing the housework, but who quickly develope into a very important factor in the life of the vicinit as well as in that of the household, and whose death fi\ FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 89 it' ian alci d cot ears later was most sincerely mourned by hundreds of ir neighbors. In our enthusiasm over “settling,” the rst night we forgot not only to lock but to close a side Dor opening on Polk Street, and were much pleased in le morning to find that we possessed a fine illustration 'the honesty and kindliness of our new neighbors. Our first guest was an interesting young woman who ved in a neighboring tenement, whose widowed mother ded her in the support of the family by scrubbing a Dwntown theater every night. The mother, of English rth, was well bred and carefully educated, but was in ,ie midst of that bitter struggle which awaits so many rangers in American cities who find that their social osition tends to be measured solely by the standards living they are able to maintain. Our guest has long nee married the struggling young lawyer to whom she as then engaged, and he is now leading his profession an eastern city. She recalls that month’s experience ways with a sense of amusement over the fact that the iccession of visitors who came to see the new Settle- ent invariably questioned her most minutely con- :rning “these people” without once suspecting that ley were talking to one who had been identified with »e neighborhood from childhood. I at least was able > draw a lesson from the incident, and I never addressed Chicago audience on the subject of the Settlement and s vicinity without inviting a neighbor to go with me, lat I might curb any hasty generalization by the con- 11 r 90 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE sciousness that I had an auditor who knew the c< ditions more intimately than I could hope to do. Halsted Street has grown so familiar during twer years of residence, that it is difficult to recall its gradi 5 changes, — the withdrawal of the more prosperc v Irish and Germans, and the slow substitution of Russi Jews, Italians, and Greeks. A description of the strvn their houses and have lived in the neighborhood for years; one ian is still living in his old farmhouse. P The policy of the public authorities of never taking an initiative, id always waiting to be urged to do their duty, is obviously fatal in ^neighborhood where there is little initiative among the citizens. The 5 01 ea underlying our self-government breaks down in such a ward. i:he streets are inexpressibly dirty, the number of schools inadequate, Jiinitary legislation unenforced, the street lighting bad, the paving dserable and altogether lacking in the alleys and smaller streets, id the stables foul beyond description. Hundreds of houses are 1 iconnected wdth the street sewer. The older and richer inhabitants em anxious to move away as rapidly as they can afford it. They ! ake room for newly arrived immigrants who are densely ignorant of vie duties. This substitution of the older inhabitants is accom- ished industrially also, in the south and east quarters of the ward. 1 he Jews and Italians do the finishing for the great clothing manu- 1 cturers, formerly done by Americans, Irish, and Germans, who fused to submit to the extremely low prices to wffich the sweating l ' r stem has reduced their successors. As the design of the sweating " stem is the elimination of rent from the manufacture of clothing, 2 Te “outside work” is begun after the clothing leaves the cutter. An iscrupulous contractor regards no basement as too dark, no stable 1 ft too foul, no rear shanty too provisional, no tenement room too nail for his workroom, as these conditions imply low rental. Hence lese shops abound in the worst of the foreign districts where the 2 veater easily finds his cheap basement and his home finishers. The houses of the ward, for the most part wooden, were originally lilt for one family and are now occupied by several. They are after te type of the inconvenient frame cottages found in the poorer iburbs twenty years ago. Many of them were built where they now 3 and; others were brought thither on rollers, because their previous tes had been taken for factories. The fewer brick tenement build- gs which are three or four stories high are comparatively new, and lere are few large tenements. The little wooden houses have a 92 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE temporary aspect, and for this reason, perhaps, the tenement-hoi legislation in C hicago is totally inadequate. Rear tenements flouris many houses have no water supply save the faucet in the back yai there are no fire escapes, the garbage and ashes are placed in wood 5 boxes which are fastened to the street pavements. One of the mt discouraging features about the present system of tenement houses that many are owned by sordid and ignorant immigrants. The theo that wealth brings responsibility, that possession entails at leng education and refinement, in these cases fails utterly. The childm t oof an Italian immigrant owner may “shine” shoes in the street, ai his wife may pick rags from the street gutter, laboriously sortii them in a dingy court. Wealth may do something for her self-cor placency and feeling of consequence; it certainly does nothing for h< comfort or her children s improvement nor for the cleanliness of ar 5 one concerned. Another thing that prevents better houses in Chicap is the tentative attitude of the real estate men. Many unsavory coi ditions are allowed to continue which would be regarded with horrc if they were considered permanent. Meanwhile, the wretched coi ditions persist until at least two generations of children have bee o born and reared in them. In every neighborhood where poorer people live, because rents ar supposed to be cheaper there, is an element which, although uncertai in the individual, in the aggregate can be counted upon. It is com posed of people of former education and opportunity who hav 5 cherished ambitions and prospects, but who are caricatures of wha they meant to be “hollow ghosts which blame the living men.’ There are times in many lives when there is a cessation of energy am loss of power. Men and women of education and refinement come tc live in a cheaper neighborhood because they lack the ability to make o money, because of ill health, because of an unfortunate marriage, oi for other reasons which do not imply criminality or stupidity. Amon^ them are those who, in spite of untoward circumstances, keep up some sort of an intellectual life; those who are “great for books,” as their neighbois say. To such the Settlement may be a genuine refuge FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 93 1 In the very first weeks of our residence Miss Starr Started a reading party in George Eliot’s “Romola,” 0 j vhich was attended by a group of young women who ollowed the wonderful tale with unflagging interest. The weekly reading was held in our little upstairs dining oom, and two members of the club came to dinner each veek, not only that they might be received as guests, >ut that they might help us wash the dishes afterwards tnd so make the table ready for the stacks of Florentine ihotographs. Our “first resident,” as she gayly designated herself, vas a charming old lady who gave five consecutive eadings from Hawthorne to a most appreciative tudience, interspersing the magic tales most delightfully vith recollections of the elusive and fascinating author, fears before she had lived at Brook Farm as a pupil of he Ripleys, 0 and she came to us for ten days because she vished to live once more in an atmosphere where “ideal- sm ran high.” We thus early found the type of class which through all the years has remained most popular — a combination of a social atmosphere with serious study. Volunteers to the new undertaking came quickly; i charming young girl° conducted a kindergarten in the Irawing-room, coming regularly every morning from ler home in a distant part of the North Side of the city. Although a tablet to her memory has stood upon a riantel shelf in Hull-House for five years, we still 94 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE associate her most vividly with the play of little ch dren, first in her kindergarten and then in her ov nursery, which furnished a veritable illustration Victor Hugo’s definition of heaven, — “a place whe s parents are always young and children always little. Herd aily presence for the first two years made it qui impossible for us to become too solemn and self-coi scious in our strenuous routine, for her mirth and buo; ancy were irresistible and her eager desire to share ti olife of the neighborhood never failed, although it w; often put to a severe test. One day at luncheon sf gayly recited her futile attempt to impress temperanc principles upon the mind of an Italian mother, to whor she had returned a small daughter of five sent to th s kindergarten “in quite a horrid state of intoxication from the wine-soaked bread upon which she had break fasted. 1 he mother, with the gentle courtesy of a Soutl Italian, listened politely to her graphic portrayal of th untimely end awaiting so immature a wine bibber; bu o long before the lecture was finished, quite unconsciou of the incongruity, she hospitably set forth her bes wines, and when her baffled guest refused one after th other, she disappeared, only to quickly return with small dark glass of whisky, saying reassuringly, “See, 5 have brought you the true American drink.” Til recital ended in seriocomic despair, with the ruefu statement that “the impression I probably made upo her darkened mind was, that it is the American custo FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 95 1 o breakfast children on bread soaked in whisky instead J»’)f light Italian wine.” lhat first kindergarten was a constant source of if “ducation to us. We were much surprised to find social edistinctions even among its lambs, although greatly 5 Amused with the neat formulation made by the superior ohttle Italian boy who refused to sit beside uncouth little (Angelina because “we eat our macaroni this way,” — " mitating the movement of a fork from a plate to his '! nouth, — “and she eat her macaroni this way,” hold- io ng his hand high in the air and throwing back his head, i|hat his wide-open mouth might receive an imaginary ascade. Angelina gravely nodded her little head in ipproval of this distinction between gentry and peasant. irBut isn’t it astonishing that merely table manners are 15 I nade such a test all the way along?” was the comment >f their democratic teacher. Another memory which I efuses to be associated with death, which came to her ! tll too soon, is that of the young girl who organized our irst really successful club of boys, holding their fas- 20 :inated interest by the old chivalrie tales, set forth so Iramatically and vividly that checkers and jackstraws vere abandoned by all the other clubs on Boys’ Day, hat their members might form a listening fringe to ‘The Young Heroes.” 25 I met a member of the latter club one day as he flung limself out of the House in the rage by which an emotional boy hopes to keep from shedding tears. 96 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE “There is no use coming here any more, Prince Roland is dead,” he gruffly explained as we passed. We en couraged the younger boys in tournaments and dramat ics of all sorts, and we somewhat fatuously believed tha s boys who were early interested in adventurers or ex¬ plorers might later want to know the lives of living statesmen and inventors. It is needless to add that the boys quickly responded to such a program, and that the only difficulty lay in finding leaders who were able to i o carry it out. 1 his difficulty has been with us through all the years of growth and development in the Boys’ Club until now, with its five-story building, its splendid equipment of shops, of recreation and study rooms, that group alone is successful which commands the 1 s services of a resourceful and devoted leader. The dozens of younger children who from the first came to Hull-House were organized into groups which weie not quite classes and not quite clubs. I he value of these groups consisted almost entirely in arousing a 20 higher imagination and in giving the children the op¬ portunity which they could not have in the crowded schools, for initiative and for independent social re¬ lationships. The public schools then contained little hand work of any sort, so that naturally any instruction 2 5 which we provided for the children took the direction ! of this supplementary work. But it required a constant effort that the pressure of poverty itself should not defeat the educational aim. The Italian girls in the FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 97 sewing classes would count that day lost when they could not carry home a garment, and the insistence that it should be neatly made seemed a super-refinement to those in dire need of clothing. . As these clubs have been continued during the twenty •years they have developed classes in the many forms of handicraft which the newer education is so rapidly adapting for the deiight of children; hut they still keep their essentially social character and still minister to that large number of children who leave school the very week they are fourteen years old, only too eager to close the schoolroom door forever on a tiresome task that is at last well over. It seems to us important that these children shall find themselves permanently attached to a House that ofFers them evening clubs and classes with their old companions, that merges as easily as possible the school life into the working life and does what it can to find places for the bewildered young things look¬ ing for work. A large proportion of the delinquent boys brought into the juvenile court in Chicago are the oldest sons in large families whose wages are needed at home. The grades from which many of them leave school, as the records show, are piteously far from the seventh and ; eighth where the very first instruction in manual train¬ ing is given, nor have they been caught by any other abiding interest. In spite of these flourishing clubs for children early established at Hull-House, and the fact that our first 98 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE organized undertaking was a kindergarten, we we very insistent that the Settlement should not l primarily for the children, and that it was absurd t suppose that grown people would not respond to of s portunities for education and social life. Our er thusiastic kindergartner herself demonstrated this wit an old woman of ninety, who, because she was left alon all day while her daughter cooked in a restaurant, hac formed such a persistent habit of picking the plaster of iothe walls that one landlord after another refused t( have her for a tenant. It required but a few weeks time to teach her to make large paper chains, and gradually she was content to do it all day long, and in the end took quite as much pleasure in adorning the 1 s walls as she had formerly taken in demolishing them. fortunately the landlord had never heard the aesthetic principle that the exposure of basic construction is more desirable than gaudy decoration. In course of time it was discovered that the old woman could speak Gaelic, 0 20 and when one or two grave professors came to see her, the neighborhood was filled with pride that such a wonder lived in their midst. To mitigate life for a woman of ninety was an unfailing refutation of the statement that the Settlement was designed for the 2 5 young. On our first New Year’s Day at Hull-House we in- , vited the older people in the vicinity, sending a carriage ^ FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 99 erj>r the most feeble and announcing to all of them that bj'e were going to organize an Old Settlers’ Party, t; Every New Year s Day since, older people in varying ojumbers have come together at Hull-House to relate eifirly hardships, and to take for the moment the place 1 the community to which their pioneer life entitles lem. Many people who were formerly residents of the a| icinity, but whom prosperity has carried into more esirable neighborhoods, come back to these meetings ad often confess to each other that they have never nee found such kindness as in early Chicago when all s citizens came together in mutual enterprises. Many F these pioneers, so like the men and women of my f arliest childhood that I always felt comforted by their resence in the house, were very much opposed to foreigners,” whom they held responsible for a de- reciation of property and a general lowering of the ane of the neighborhood. Sometimes we had a chance ar championship; I recall one old man, fiercely Ameri- an, who had reproached me because we had so many foreign views” on our walls, to whom I endeavored to et forth our hope that the pictures might afford a amiliar island to the immigrants in a sea of new and trange impressions. The old settler guest, taken off his uard, replied, “I see; they feel as we did when we saw Yankee notion from down East,” — thereby formu- ating the dim kinship between the pioneer and the I o I 5 2 o 2 5 ioo TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE immigrant, both “ buffeting the waves of a new develoj ment.” The older settlers as well as their childre throughout the years have given genuine help to oi various enterprises for neighborhood improvement, an 5 from their own memories of earlier hardships hav made many shrewd suggestions for alleviating th difficulties of that first sharp struggle with untowah conditions. In those early days we were often asked why we hac i o come to live on Halsted Street when we could afford t( live somewhere else. I remember one man who used t< shake his head and say it was “the strangest thing he had met in his experience,” but who was finally con¬ vinced that it was “not strange but natural.” In time 1 s it came to seem natural to all of us that* the Settlement should be there. If it is natural to feed the hungry and care for the sick, it is certainly natural to give pleasure to the young, comfort to the aged, and to minister to the deep-seated craving for social intercourse that all 2omen feel. Whoever does it is rewarded by something which, if not gratitude, is at least spontaneous and vital and lacks that irksome sense of obligation with which a substantial benefit is too often acknowledged. In addition to the neighbors who responded to the 2 s receptions and classes, we found those who were too battered and oppressed to care for them. To these, however, was left that susceptibility to the bare offices FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE IOI f humanity which raises such offices into a bond of dlowship. From the first it seemed understood that we were 3ady to perform the humblest neighborhood services. /e were asked to wash the new-born babies, and to 5 repare the dead for burial, to nurse the sick, and to mind the children.” Occasionally these neighborly offices unexpectedly ncovered ugly human traits. For six weeks after an peration we kept in one of our three bedrooms a forlorn 10 ttle baby who, because he was born with a cleft palate, as most unwelcome even to his mother, and we were orrified when he died of neglect a week after he was iturned to his home; a little Italian bride of fifteen fiught shelter with us one November evening, to escape 15 er husband who had beaten her every night for a week hen he returned home from work, because she had lost er wedding ring; two of us officiated quite alone at the irth of an illegitimate child because the doctor was ite in arriving, and none of the honest Irish matrons 20 ^ould “touch the likes of her”; we ministered at the eathbed of a young man, who during a long illness of aberculosis had received so many bottles of whisky irough the mistaken kindness of his friends, that the Cumulative effect produced wild periods of exultation, 25 t one of which he died. We were also early impressed with the curious isola- io2 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE tion of many of the immigrants; an Italian woman or 4 expressed her pleasure in the red roses that she saw ; one of our receptions in surprise that they had be I “brought so fresh all the way from Italy .” She woe snot believe for an instant that they had been grown America. She said that she had lived in Chicago for sj years and had never seen any roses, whereas in Italy si had seen them every summer in great profusion. Durii 1 all that time, of course, the woman had lived within 1 1 o blocks of a florist’s window; she had not been more tha a five-cent car ride away from the public parks; but si had never dreamed of faring forth for herself, and n! one had taken her. Her conception of America had bee the untidy street in which she lived and had made he s long struggle to adapt herself to American ways. But in spite of some untoward experiences, we wer constantly impressed with the uniform kindness ant courtesy we received. Perhaps these first days laid th< simple human foundations which are certainly essentia o foi continuous living among the poor: first, genuint preference for residence in an industrial quarter to any othei part of the city, because it is interesting and makes the human appeal; and second, the conviction, in the words of Canon Barnett, 0 that the things which 5 make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart, and that these basic likenesses, if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend the less FIRST DAYS AT HULL-HOUSE 103 i'nsential differences of race, language, creed, and hadition. t Perhaps even in those first days we made a beginning I ward that object which was afterwards stated in our larter: “To provide a center for a higher civic and 5 cial life; to institute and maintain educational and pilanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and im- jove the conditions in the industrial districts of hicago. ” CHAPTER VI Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements! The Ethical Culture Societies held a summer seho'cl at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1892, to which the I invited several people representing the then new Settle ^ ment movement, that they might discuss with other! 5 the general theme of Philanthropy and Social Progress] I venture to produce here parts of a lecture I de j livered in Plymouth, both because I have found it im * possible to formulate with the same freshness thos 1 early motives and strivings, and because, when pub- 10 lished with other papers given that summer, it was re¬ ceived by the Settlement people themselves as a satis¬ factory statement. I iemember one golden summer afternoon during the sessions of the summer school that several of us met on 15 the shores of a pond in a pine wood a few miles from Plymouth, to discuss our new movement. The natural leader of the group was Robert A. Woods. 0 He had recently returned from a residence in Toynbee Hall, London, to open Andover House in Boston, and had 2 ojust issued a book, “English Social Movements/’ in which he had gathered together and focused the many forms of social endeavor preceding and contemporane¬ ity SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 105 ijjis with the English Settlements. There were Miss Ida D. Scudder 0 and Miss Helena Dudley 0 from the (allege Settlement Association, Miss Julia C. Lathrop npd myself from Hull-House. Some of us had numbered I h years as far as thirty, and we all carefully avoided 5 e extiavagance of statement which characterizes >uth, and yet I doubt if anywhere on the continent at summer could have been found a group of people ore genuinely interested in social development or more icerely convinced that they had found a clew by which 1 o e conditions in crowded cities might be understood td the agencies for social betterment developed. We were all careful to avoid saying that we had found 3“ life work,” perhaps with an instinctive dread of ex- pnding all our energy in vows of constancy, as so often 15 hppens; and yet it is interesting to note that all of the pople whom I have recalled as the enthusiasts at that 1 tie conference, have remained attached to Settlements i actual residence for longer or shorter periods each yar during the eighteen years which have elapsed 20 sice then, although they have also been closely identi- hd as publicists or governmental officials with move- lents outside. It is as if they had discovered that the rttlement was too valuable as a method as a way of S>proach to the social question to be abandoned, al- 25 1 ough they had long since discovered that it was not a Isocial movement” in itself. This, however, is antici- Uting the future, whereas the following paper on “The 106 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE 1 Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” shou have a chance to speak for itself. It is perhaps too la in the day to express regret for its stilted title. This paper is an attempt to analyze the motives which underlie 5 movement based, not only upon conviction, but upon genuine em tion, wherever educated young people are seeking an outlet for th sentiment of universal brotherhood, which the best spirit of our tim I is forcing from an emotion into a motive. 1 hese young people accoi plish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear t x o brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. Th have been shut off from the common labor by which they live whi is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal win of harmony between their theory and theirlives, alack of coordinatio between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize ho 1 s seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brothei hood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to th democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socializ their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thu loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can b 20 permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it wil be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people them selves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civi( life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the bless¬ ings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can 2 5 be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. It is easier to state these hopes than to formulate the line of motives, which I believe to constitute 3 o the trend of the subjective pressure toward the Settlement. There is something primordial about these motives, but I am perhaps over* bold in designating them as a great desire to share the race life. We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 107 lojff t ^ ie race * Our very organism holds memories and glimpses ) || at long our ancestors which still goes on among so many of P' contemporaries. Nothing so deadens the sympathies and shrivels t: power of enjoyment, as the persistent keeping away from the great I portumties for helpfulness and a continual ignoring of the starva- 5 n struggle which makes up the life of at least half the race. To •It one’s self away from that half of the race life is to shut one’s self ay from the most vital part of it; it is to live out but half the inanity to which we have been born heir and to use but half our ulties. We have all had longings for a fuller life which should in- 1 o de the use of these faculties. These longings are the physical nplement of the “Intimations of Immortality,” on which no ode ■ yet been written. 1 o portray these would be the work of a poet, 1 it is hazardous for any but a poet to attempt it. fou may remember the forlorn feeling which occasionally seizes 1 5 1 when you arrive early in the morning a stranger in a great city: stream of laboring people goes past you as you gaze through the pte-glass window of your hotel; you see hard working men lifting gat burdens; you hear the driving and jostling of huge carts and yir heart sinks with a sudden sense of futility. The door opens 20 lind you and you turn to the man who brings you in your breakfast h a quick sense of human fellowship. You find yourself praying it you may never lose your hold on it all. A more poetic prayer uld be that the great mother breasts of our common humanity, wh its labor and suffering and its homely comforts, may never be 2 5 vchheld from you. You turn helplessly to the waiter and feel that it • uld be almost grotesque to claim from him the sympathy you crave b:ause civilization has placed you apart, but you resent your position ! h a sudden sense of snobbery. Literature is full of portrayals of •se glimpses: they come to shipwrecked men on rafts; they over- 30 ne the differences of an incongruous multitude when in the presence 1 great danger or when moved by a common enthusiasm. They are Ip, however, confined to such moments, and if we were in the habit telline them to each other, the recital would be as Iona: as the tales io8 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE of children are, when they sit down on the green grass and confide each other how many times they have remembered that they In once before. If these childish tales are the stirring of inherited pressions, just so surely is the other the striving of inherited po S “ It is true that there is nothing after disease, indigence and a s of guilt, so fatal to health and to life itself as the want of a pro outlet for active faculties.” I have seen young girls suffer and gr sensibly lowered in vitality in the first years after they leave scho In our attempt then to give a girl pleasure and freedom from care 1 i o succeed, for the most part, in making her pitifully miserable. S finds “life” so different from what she expected it to be. She besotted with innocent little ambitions, and does not understand tl apparent waste of herself, this elaborate preparation, if no work provided for her. There is a heritage of noble obligation which you 1 s people accept and long to perpetuate. The desire for action, the wi to right wrong and alleviate suffering haunts them daily. Soci smiles at it indulgently instead of making it of value to itself, wrong to them begins even farther back, when we restrain the fi childish desires for “doing good” and tell them that they must wa 2 o until they are older and better fitted. We intimate that social oblig tion begins at a fixed date, forgetting that it begins with birth itsel We treat them as children who, with strong-growing limbs, ar allowed to use their legs but not their arms, or whose legs are daih carefully exercised that after a while their arms may be put to higl 2 5 use. We do this in spite of the protest of the best educators, Lock* and Pestalozzi. We are fortunate in the meantime if their unusec members do not weaken and disappear. 1 hey do sometimes. T hen are a few girls who, by the time they are “educated,” forget their ole childish desires to help the world and to play with poor little girls 30 who haven t playthings. Parents are often inconsistent: the} deliberately expose their daughters to knowledge of the distress ir the world; they send them to hear missionary addresses on famines in India and China; they accompany them to lectures on the suffering m Siberia; they agitate together over the forgotten region of Easi SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 109 1 >ndon. In addition to this, from babyhood the altruistic tendencies these daughters are persistently cultivated. They are taught to self-forgetting and self-sacrificing, to consider the good of the lole before the good of the ego. But when all this information and »lture show results, when the daughter comes back from college 5 id begins to recognize her social claim to the “submerged tenth,” id to evince a disposition to fulfill it, the family claim is strenuously serted, she is told that she is unjustified, ill-advised in her efforts, she persists, the family too often are injured and unhappy unless e efforts are called missionary and the religious zeal of the family 1 o tries them over their sense of abuse. When this zeal does not exist, e result is perplexing. It is a curious violation of what we would in believe a fundamental law — that the final return of the deed is >on the head of the doer. The deed is that of exclusiveness and ution, but the return, instead of falling upon the head of the ex- 1 5 jsive and cautious, falls upon a young head full of generous and un¬ ifish plans. The girl loses something vital out of her life to which she entitled. She is restricted and unhappy; her elders, meanwhile, are (conscious of the situation and we have all the elements of a tragedy. We have in America a fast-growing number of cultivated young 20 ople who have no recognized outlet for their active faculties. They !ar constantly of the great social maladjustment, but no way is 1 ovided for them to change it, and their uselessness hangs about them 3 avily. Huxley declares that the sense of uselessness is the severest lock which the human system can sustain, and that if persistently 25 astained, it results in atrophy of function. These young people have 3 d advantages of college, of European travel, and of economic Udy, but they are sustaining this shock of inaction. They have pet I irases, and they tell you that the things that make us all alike are ronger than the things that make us different. They say that all 30 jen are united by needs and sympathies far more permanent and idical than anything that temporarily divides them and sets them i opposition to each other. If they affect art, they say that the decay artistic expression is due to the decay in ethics, that art when shut no TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE away from the human interests and from the great mass of humani is self-destructive. They tell their elders with all the bitterness youth that if they expect success from them in business or politics in whatever lines their ambition for them has run, they must let the 5 consult all of humanity; that they must let them find out what tl people want and how they want it. It is only the stronger youi people, however, who formulate this. Many of them dissipate the energies in so-called enjoyment. Others not content with that, go c studying and go back to college for their second degrees; not th: 1 o they are especially fond of study, but because they want somethir definite to do, and their powers have been trained in the direction ( mental accumulation. Many are buried beneath this mental accumi lation with lowered vitality and discontent. Walter Besant 0 sa} they have had the vision that Peter had when he saw the great shee x 5 let down from heaven, wherein was neither clean nor unclean. H calls it the sense of humanity. It is not philanthropy nor benevolenci but a thing fuller and wider than either of these. 1 his young life, so sincere in its emotion and good phrases and ye So undirected, seems to me as pitiful as the other great mass of desti 2 ° tute lives. One is supplementary to the other, and some method o communication can surely be devised. Mr. Barnett, who urged th< first Settlement, I oynbee Hall, in East London, — recognized thi; need of outlet for the young men of Oxford and Cambridge, and hoped that the Settlement would supply the communication. It it 2 s easy to see why the Settlement movement originated in England, where the years of education are more constrained and definite than they are here, where class distinctions are more rigid. The necessity ot it was greater there, but we are fast feeling the pressure of the need and meeting the necessity for Settlements in America. Our young 30 people feel nervously the need of putting theory into action, and respond quickly to the Settlement form of activity. Other motives which I believe make toward the Settlement are the result of a certain renaissance going forward in Christianity. The impulse to share the lives of the poor, the desire to make social service. 1 o I 5 SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS m " respective of propaganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as ■ hristianity itself. We have no proof from the records themselves ^at the early Roman Christians, who strained their simple art to the ir >int ol grotesqueness in their eagerness to record a “good news” on e walls of the catacombs, considered this good news a religion. 5 sus had no set of truths labeled Religious. On the contrary, his -ictrine was that all truth is one, that the appropriation of it is A'sedom. His teaching had no dogma to mark it off from truth and tion in general. He himself called it a revelation — a life. These rly Roman Christians received the Gospel message, a command love all men, with a certain joyous simplicity. The image of the aod Shepherd is blithe and gay beyond the gentlest shepherd of reek mythology; the hart no longer pants, but rushes to the water ooks. The Christians looked for the continuous revelation, but lieved what Jesus said, that this revelation, to be retained and made anifest, must be put into terms of action; that action is the only edium man has for receiving and appropriating truth; that the ictrine must be known through the will. That Christianity has to be revealed and embodied in the line of cial progress is a corollary to the simple proposition, that man’s 20 Ition is found in his social relationships in the way in which he con- I cts with his fellows; that his motives for action are the zeal and ection with which he regards his fellows. By this simple process is created a deep enthusiasm for humanity, which regarded man as I once the organ and the object of revelation; and by this process 25 i me about the wonderful fellowship, the true democracy of the early /•lurch., that so captivates the imagination. The early Christians lire preeminently nonresistant. They believed in love as a cosmic ajrce. There was no iconoclasm during the minor peace of the Church. Hey did not yet denounce nor tear down temples, nor preach the 30 i d of the world. They grew to a mighty number, but it never oc- * rred to them, either in their weakness or in their strength, to regard ther men for an instant as their foes or as aliens. The spectacle of \e Christians loving all men was the most astounding Rome had ever 11 2 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE seen. They were eager to sacrifice themselves for the weak, for dren, and for the aged; they identified themselves with slaves anc not avoid the plague; they longed to share the common lot that i might receive the constant revelation. It was a new treasure w 5 the early Christians added to the sum of all treasures, a joy hith unknown in the world — the joy of finding the Christ which liet each man, but which no man can unfold save in fellowship. A ha ness ranging from the heroic to the pastoral enveloped them. T were to possess a revelation as long as life had new meaning to ofold, new action to propose. I believe that there is a distinct turning among many young r k and women toward this simple acceptance of Christ’s message. Ti \ resent the assumption that Christianity is a set of ideas which beh to the religious consciousness, whatever that may be. They in 5 that it cannot be proclaimed and instituted apart from the social of the community and that it must seek a simple and natural pression in the social organism itself. The Settlement movemen only one manifestation of that wider humanitarian movement wh throughout Christendom, but preeminently in England, is endeav oing to embody itself, not in a sect, but in society itself. I believe that this turning, this renaissance of the early Christ humanitarianism, is going on in America, in Chicago, if you plea without leaders who write or philosophize, without much speakir but with a bent to express in social service and in terms of action t 5 spirit of Christ. Certain it is that spiritual force is found in the Sett ment movement, and it is also true that this force must be evoked ai must be called into play before the success of any Settlement is a sured. I here must be the overmastering belief that all that is noble in life is common to men as men, in order to accentuate the likeness o and ignore the differences which are found among the people w 7 ho the Settlement constantly brings into juxtaposition. Jt may be tru as the Positivists insist, that the very religious fervor of man can 1 turned into love for his race, and his desire for a future life into coi tent to live in the echo of Ins deeds; Paul’s formula of seeking for tl SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 113 rdirist which lieth in each man and founding our likenesses on him, ad sms a simpler formula to many of us. t til In a thousand voices singing the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel’s wfiS/Iessiah, ” it is possible to distinguish the leading voices, but the differences of training and cultivation between them and the voices 5 ;tj: the chorus, are lost in the unity of purpose and in the fact that they ap-e all human voices lifted by a high motive. This is a weak illustra- !• m of what a Settlement attempts to do. It aims, in a measure, to o< velop whatever of social life its neighborhood may afford, to focus d give form to that life, to bring to bear upon it the results of cul- 1 o -vation and training; but it receives in exchange for the music of Mated voices the volume and strength of the chorus. It is quite im- i i>ssible for me to say in what proportion or degree the subjective n icessity which led to the opening of Hull-House combined the three ;nds: first, the desire to interpret democracy in social terms; 1 5 condly, the impulse beating at the very source of our lives, urging to aid in the race progress; and, thirdly, the Christian movement ward humanitarianism. It is difficult to analyze a living thing; the lalysis is at best imperfect. Many more motives may blend with e three trends; possibly the desire for a new form of social success 20 le to the nicety of imagination, which refuses worldly pleasures un- ixed with the joys of self-sacrifice; possibly a love of approbation, vast that it is not content with the treble clapping of delicate hands, it wishes also to hear the bass notes from toughened palms, may ingle with these. 2 5 The Settlement, then, is an experimental effort to aid in the solution the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the odern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems e not confined to any one portion of a city. It is an attempt to lieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society 30 id the destitution at the other; but it assumes that this overaccumu- tion and destitution is most sorely felt in the things that pertain to icial and educational advantages. From its very nature it can stand >r no political or social propaganda. It must, in a sense, give the 11 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE warm welcome of an inn to all such propaganda, if perchance one them be found an angel. The one thing to be dreaded in the Sett ment is that it lose its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation, readiness to change its methods as its environment may demand. 5 must be open to conviction and must have a deep and abiding ser of tolerance. It must be hospitable and ready for experiment, should demand from its residents a scientific patience in the accurri lation of facts and the steady holding of their sympathies as one the best instruments for that accumulation. It must be grounded i o a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human rac a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be repr sented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy. Its residents must 1 emptied of all conceit of opinion and all self-assertion, and ready 1 arouse and interpret the public opinion of their neighborhood. The 1 5 must be content to live quietly side by side with their neighbors, unt they grow into a sense of relationship and mutual interests. The neighbors are held apart by differences of race and language whic the residents can more easily overcome. They are bound to see th netcio or their neighborhood as a whole, to furnish data for legislatior 2 o and to use their influence to secure it. In short, residents are pledge to devote themselves to the duties of good citizenship and to th arousing of the social energies which too largely lie dormant in ever neighborhood given over to industrialism. They are bound to regar the entire life of their city as organic, to make an effort to unify il 2 s and to protest against its over-differentiation. It is always easy to make all philosophy point one particular mora and all history adorn one particular tale; but I may be forgiven th reminder that the best speculative philosophy sets forth the solidarit of the human race; that the highest moralists have taught that with 3 o out the advance and improvement of the whole, no man can hope fo any lasting improvement in his own moral or material individua condition; and that the subjective necessity for Social Settlements i therefore identical with that necessity, which urges us on towar, social and individual salvation. CHAPTER VII Some Early Undertakings at Hull-House If the early American Settlements stood for a more vigent standard in philanthropic activities, insisting lat each new undertaking should be preceded by care- illy ascertained facts, then certainly Hull-House held 3 this standard in the opening of our new coffee-house 5 rst started as a public kitchen. An investigation of he sweatshops had disclosed the fact that sewing /omen during the busy season paid little attention to he feeding of their families, for it was only by working teadily through the long day that the scanty pay ol 1 ve, seven, or nine cents for finishing a dozen pairs of rousers could be made into a day’s wage; and they •ought from the nearest grocery the canned goods that ould be most quickly heated, or gave a few pennies to he children with which they might secure a lunch from 1 . neighboring candy shop. One of the residents made an investigation, at the nstance of the United States Department of Agricul- ure, into the food values of the dietaries of the various mmigrants, and this was followed by an investigation 2 jnade by another resident, for the United States De- >artment of Labor, into the foods of the Italian colony, n6 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE on the supposition that the constant use of importe( products bore a distinct relation to the cost of living, recall an Italian who, coming into Hull-House one da} as we were sitting at the dinner table, expressed great 5 surprise that Americans ate a variety of food, because he believed that they partook only of potatoes and beer, A little inquiry showed that this conclusion was drawn from the fact that he lived next to an Irish saloon and had never seen anything but potatoes going in and beer o coming out. At that time the New England kitchen was com¬ paratively new in Boston, and Mrs. Richards, who was largely responsible for its foundation, hoped that cheap¬ er cuts of meat and simpler vegetables, if they were s subjected to slow and thorough processes of cooking, might be made attractive and their nutritive value secured for the people who so sadly needed more nutritious food. It was felt that this could be best accomplished in public kitchens, where the advantage oof scientific training and careful supervision could be secured. One of the residents went to Boston for a training under Mrs. Richards, and when the Hull-House kitchen was fitted under her guidance and direction, our hopes ran high for some modification of the food 5 of the neighborhood. We did not reckon, however, with the wide diversity in nationality and inherited tastes, and while we sold a certain amount of the care¬ fully prepared soups and stews in the neighboring SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 117 4 ctories — a sale which has steadily increased through- |ht the years — and were also patronized by a few buseholds, perhaps the neighborhood estimate was Jest summed up by the woman who frankly confessed aat the food was certainly nutritious, but that she 5 idn’t like to eat what was nutritious, that she liked to lit “what she’d ruther.” If the dietetics were appreciated but slowly, the ;>cial value of the coffee-house and the gymnasium, hich were in the same building, were quickly demon- 10 rated. At that time the saloon halls were the only laces in the neighborhood where the immigrant could Ibid his social gatherings, and where he could celebrate |ich innocent and legitimate occasions as weddings and nristenings. These halls were rented very cheaply with the under- anding that various sums of money should be “passed :ross the bar,” and it was considered a mean host or jest who failed to live up to this implied bargain. The onsequence was that many a reputable party ended ith a certain amount of disorder, due solely to the fact Hat the social instinct was traded upon and used as a asis for money making by an adroit host. From the eginmng the young people s clubs had asked for danc- ig, and nothing was more popular than the increased pace for parties offered by the gymnasium, with the hance to serve refreshments in the room below. We ried experiments with every known soft drink, from 15 2 o 2 5 118 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE those extracted from an expensive soda water fountain to slender glasses of grape juice, but so far as drinks were concerned we never became a rival to the saloon, nor indeed did any one imagine that we were trying to do s so. I remember one man who looked about the cozy little room and said, “This would be a nice place to sit in all day if one could only have beer.” But the coffee¬ house gradually performed a mission of its own and became something of a social center to the neighborhood ioas well as a real convenience. Business men from the adjacent factories and school teachers from the nearest public schools, used it increasingly. The Hull-House students and club members supped together in little groups or held their reunions and social banquets, as, is to a certain extent, did organizations from all parts of the town. 1 he experience of the coffee-house taught us not to hold to preconceived ideas of what the neighbor¬ hood ought to have, but to keep ourselves in readiness to modify and adapt our undertakings as we discovered 2 o those things which the neighborhood was ready to accept. Better food was doubtless needed, but more attractive r ' and safer places for social gatherings were also needed, and the neighborhood was ready for one and not for the 2 s other. We had no hint then in Chicago of the small parks which were to be established fifteen years later, containing the halls for dancing and their own restau¬ rants in buildings where the natural desire of the young SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 119 Ir gayety and social organization, could be safely in- dged. Yet even in that early day a member of the ull-House Men’s Club who had been appointed iperintendent of Douglas Park had secured there the rst public swimming pool, and his fellow club members ere proud of the achievement. There was in the earliest undertakings at Hull-House touch of the artist’s enthusiasm when he translates is inner vision through his chosen material into out- | ard form. Keenly conscious of the social confusion all bout us and the hard economic struggle, we at times elieved that the very struggle itself might become a puree of strength. 1 he devotion of the mothers to heir children, the dread of the men lest they fail to rovide for the family dependent upon their daily [xertions, at moments seemed to us the secret stores of trength from which society is fed, the invisible anay |if passion and feeling which are the surest piotectois j,f the world. We fatuously hoped that we might pluck rom the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a Common destiny which should bring its own healing, hat we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a bower of cooperation which should be effective against :hem. Of course there was always present the harrowing consciousness of the difference in economic condition between ourselves and our neighbors. Even if we had gone to live in the most wretched tenement, there i2o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE would have always been an essential difference betwec them and ourselves, for we should have had a sense « security in regard to illness and old age and the lack ( these two securities are the specters which most pe ssistently haunt the poor. Could we, in spite of thi: make their individual efforts more effective throug organization and possibly complement them by sma! efforts of our own ? Some such vague hope was in our minds when w< o started the Hull-House Cooperative Coal Association which led a vigorous life for three years, and developec a large membership under the skillful advice of its one paid officer, an English workingman who had had ex¬ perience in cooperative societies at “ome.” Some of s the meetings of the association, in which people met to consider together their basic dependence upon fire and warmth, had a curious challenge of life about them. Because the cooperators knew what it meant to bring forth children in the midst of privation and to see the ° tmy creatures struggle for life, their recitals cut a cross section, as it were, in that world-old effort — the dying to live” which so inevitably triumphs over poverty and suffering. And yet their very familiarity with hardship may have been responsible for that s sentiment which traditionally ruins business, for a vote of the cooperators that the basket buyers be given one basket free out of every six, that the presentation of five purchase tickets should entitle the holders to a profit in SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 121 cal instead of stock “because it would be a shame to lep them waiting for the dividend,” was always pinted to by the conservative quarter-of-a-ton buyers ; the beginning of the end. At any rate, at the close < the third winter, although the Association occupied 5 [1 imposing coal yard on the southeast corner of the ' ull-House block and its gross receipts were between iree and four hundred dollars a day, it became evident lat the concern could not remain solvent it it con- nued its philanthropic policy, and the experiment was 10 laminated by the cooperators taking up their stock in le remaining coal. Our next cooperative experiment was much moie iccessful, perhaps because it was much more sponta- eous. At a meeting of working girls held at Hull-House uring a strike in a large shoe factory, the discussions lade it clear that the strikers who had been most easily Tightened, and therefore first to capitulate, were aturally those girls who were paying board and were 20 fraid of being put out if they fell too far behind. Aftei recital of a case of peculiar hardship one of them ex- laimed: “Wouldn’t it be fine if we had a boarding club >f our own, and then we could stand by each othei in a ime like this?” After that events moved quickly. We 25 -ead aloud together Beatrice Potter’s little book on Cooperation,” and discussed all the difficulties and 'ascinations of such an undertaking, and on the first of i22 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE May, 1891, two comfortable apartments near Hul House were rented and furnished. 1 be Settlement wa responsible for the furniture and paid the first month 5 rent, but beyond that the members managed the clu s themselves. The undertaking “marched,” as th French say, from the very first, and always on its owi feet. Although there were difficulties, none of then proved insurmountable, which was a matter for greai satisfaction in the face of a statement made by the head 10 of the United States Department of Labor, who, on 2 visit to the club when it was but two years old, said that his department had investigated many cooperative undertakings, and that none founded and managed by women had ever succeeded. At the end of the third 15 year the club occupied all of the six apartments which the original building contained, and numbered fifty members. It was in connection with our efforts to secure a building for the Jane Club, that we first found ourselves 20 in the dilemma between the needs of our neighbors and the kind-hearted response upon which we had already come to rely for their relief. The adapted apartments in which the Jane Club was housed were inevitably more 01 less uncomfortable, and we felt that the success of 2 5 the club justified the erection of a building for its sole use. > L p to that time, our history had been as the minor peace of the eail\ Church. We had had the most gener- SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 123 )US interpretation of our efForts. Of course, many >eople were indifferent to the idea of the Settlement; )thers looked on with tolerant and sometimes cynical imusement which we would often encounter in a good J;tory related at our expense; but all this was remote and 5 unreal to us and we were sure that if the critics could Diit touch “the life of the people,” they would under¬ stand. The situation changed markedly after the Pullman strike, and our efForts to secure factory legislation later 10 ( brought upon us a certain amount of distrust and suspicion; until then we had been considered merely a kindly philanthropic undertaking whose new form gave us a certain idealistic glamour. But sterner tests weie coming and one of the first was in connection with the 15 new building for the jane Club. A trustee of Hull- House came to see us one day with the good news that a friend of his was ready to give twenty thousand dollars with which to build the desired new clubhouse. When, however, he divulged the name of his generous friend, it 2 o proved to be that of a man who was notorious for under¬ paying the girls in his establishment and concerning whom there were even darker stories. It seemed clearly impossible to erect a clubhouse for working girls with such money and we at once said that we must decline 25 the offer. The trustee of Hull-House was put in the most embarrassing situation; he had, of course, induced the man to give the money and had had no thong it ut I2 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE that it would be eagerly received; he would now b obliged to return with the astonishing, not to say ir suiting, news that the money was considered unfit. In the long discussion which followed, it gradual! 5 became clear to all of us that such a refusal could b valuable only as it might reveal to the man himself am to others, public opinion in regard to certain method: of money-making, but that from the very nature of the case our refusal of this money could not be made public i o because a representative of Hull-House had asked for it. However, the basic fact remained that we could not accept the money, and of this the trustee himself was fully convinced. This incident occurred during a period of much discussion concerning ‘‘tainted money” and is 15 perhaps typical of the difficulty of dealing with it. It is impossible to know how far we may blame the in¬ dividual for doing that which all of his competitors and his associates consider legitimate; at the same time, social changes can only be inaugurated by those who 20feel the unrighteousness of contemporary conditions, and the expression of their scruples may be the one opportunity lor pushing forward moral tests into that dubious area wherein wealth is accumulated. In the course of time a new clubhouse was built by 25 an old friend of Hull-House much interested in working girls, and this has been occupied for twelve years by the very successful cooperating Jane Club. The in¬ cident of the early refusal is associated in my mind with SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 125 long talk upon the subject of questionable money I i teltl with the warden of Toynbee Hall, whom I visited t Bristol where he was then canon in the Cathedral, ly way of illustration he showed me a beautiful little hurch which had been built by the last slave-trading 5 1 nerchant in Bristol, who had been much disapproved of i >y his' fellow townsmen and had hoped by this trans¬ nutation of ill-gotten money into exquisite Gothic rchitecture to reconcile himself both to God and man. Tis impulse to build may have been born from his own 1 cruples or from the quickened consciences of his neigh- >ors who saw that the world-old iniquity of enslaving nen must at length come to an end. The Abolitionists nay have regarded this beautiful building as the fruit >f a contrite heart, or they may have scorned it as an 1 ittempt to magnify the goodness of a slave trader and hus perplex the doubting citizens of Bristol in regard o the entire moral issue. Canon Barnett did not pronounce judgment on the Bristol merchant. He was, however, quite clear upon 2 he point that a higher moral standard for industrial ife must be embodied in legislation as rapidly as possi¬ ble, that it may bear equally upon all, and that an ndividual endeavoring to secure this legislation must orbear harsh judgment. This was doubtless a sound 2 position, but during all the period of hot discussion con¬ cerning tainted money I never felt clear enough on the |eneral principle involved, to accept th« many invita- 126 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE tions to write and speak upon the subject, although' received much instruction in the many letters of d approval sent to me by radicals of various schools t cause I was a member of the university extension st;. s of the then new University of Chicago, the righteousne of whose foundation they challenged. 0 A little incident of this time illustrated to me tl confusion in the minds of at least many older men b tween religious teaching and advancing morality. Or i o morning I received a letter from the head of a Setth ment in New York expressing his perplexity over th fact that his board of trustees had asked money from | man notorious for his unscrupulous business methods My correspondent had placed his resignation in thi is hands of his board, that they might accept it at an} time when they felt his utterances on the subject o tainted money were offensive, for he wished to be free to openly discuss a subject of such grave moral import. The very morning when my mind was full of the ques- 20 tions raised by this letter, I received a call from the daughter of the same business man whom my friend considered so unscrupulous. She was passing through Chicago and came to ask me to give her some argu¬ ments which she might later use with her father to con- 25 fate the charge that Settlements were irreligious. She said, \ ou see, he has been asked to give money to our Settlement and would like to do it, if his conscience was only clear; disapproves of Settlements because they SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 127 ;! ve no religious instruction; he has always been a very Gisvout man.” I remember later discussing the incident with Wash¬ ington Gladden 0 who was able to parallel it from his vn experience. Now that this discussion upon tainted s I ioney has subsided, it is easy to view it with a certain etachment impossible at the moment, and it is even ifficult to understand why the feeling should have been 0 intense, although it doubtless registered genuine loral concern. 10 There was room for discouragement in the many un- jccessful experiments in cooperation which were jarried on in Chicago during the early nineties; a arpenter shop on Van Buren Street near Halsted, a ibor exchange started by the unemployed, not so 15 aradoxical an arrangement as it seems, and a very mbitious plan for a country colony which was finally arried out at Ruskin, Tennessee. In spite of failures, ooperative schemes went on, some of the same men ippearing in one after another with irrepressible 20 >ptimism. I remember during a cooperative congress, vhich met at Hull-House in the World’s Fair summer, hat Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, 0 who collected records of :ooperative experiments with the enthusiasm with vhich other men collect coins or pictures, put before 2 5 :he congress some of the remarkable successes in Ireland ind North England, which he later embodied in his book on “Copartnership.” One of the oldtime co- .28 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE operators denounced the modern method as “too mui like cut-throat business” and declared himself in fa\| of “principles which may have failed over and o\ • again, but are nevertheless as sound as the law ‘ 5 gravitation.” Mr. Lloyd and I agreed that the fie old man presented as fine a spectacle of devotion to lost cause as either of us had ever seen, although v both possessed memories well stored with such romant attachments. io And yet this dream that men shall cease to wast strength in competition and shall come to pool thei powers of production, is coming to pass all over the fac of the earth. Five years later in the same Hull-Hous< hall in which the cooperative congress was held, ai 15 Italian senator told a large audience of his fellow coun¬ trymen of the successful system of cooperative banks in north Italy and of their cooperative methods of selling produce to the value of millions of francs annually; still later Sir Horace Plunkett 0 related the remarkable 20 successes in cooperation in Ireland. I have seldom been more infected by enthusiasm than I once was in Dulwich at a meeting of English co- operators where I was fairly overwhelmed by the fervor underlying the businesslike proceedings of the congress, 2 5 and certainly when I served as a juror in the Paris Ex¬ position of 1900° nothing in the entire display in the department of Social Economy was so imposing as the building housing the exhibit, which had been erected by SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 129 v-operative trade-unions without the assistance of a ngle contractor. And so one’s faith is kept alive as one occasionally leets a realized ideal of better human relations. At last traces of successful cooperation are found even in dividualistic America. I recall my enthusiasm on the fiy when I set forth to lecture at New Harmony, idiana, for I had early been thrilled by the tale of obert Owen,° as every young person must be who is terested in social reform; I was delighted to find so uch of his spirit still clinging to the little town which id long ago held one of his ardent experiments, al- lough the poor old cooperators, who for many years aimed friendship at Hull-House because they heard iatwe“had once tried a cooperative coal association,” light well have convinced me of the persistency of the ^operative ideal. Many experiences in those early years, although ivid, seemed to contain no illumination; nevertheless ley doubtless permanently affected our judgments ^ncerning what is called crime and vice. I recall a Mes of striking episodes on the day when I took the ife and child, as well as the old godfather, of an Italian onvict to visit him in the State Penitentiary. When re approached the prison, the sight of its heavy stone alls and armed sentries threw the godfather into a aroxysm of rage; he cast his hat upon the ground and tamped upon it, tore his hair, and loudly fulminated in I o I 5 2 o 2 5 130 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE weird Italian oaths, until one of the guards, seeing 1 strange actions, came to inquire if “the gentleman w having a fit.” When we finally saw the convict, 1 wife, to my extreme distress, talked of nothing but I s striped clothing, until the poor man wept with chagri Upon our return journey to Chicago, the little son, ag< eight, presented me with two oranges, so affectionate and gayly that I was filled with reflections upon tl advantage of each generation making a fresh star o when the train boy, finding the stolen fruit in my la violently threatened to arrest the child. But strang than any episode was the fact itself that neither tl convict, his wife, nor his godfather for a moment coi sidered him a criminal. He had merely gotten excite s over cards and had stabbed his adversary with a knif “Why should a man who took his luck badly be kep forever from the sun? was their reiterated inquiry. I recall oui peiplexity over the first girls who ha< “gone astray,” the poor, little, forlorn objects o fifteen and sixteen years old, with their moral nature apparently untouched and unawakened; one of then whom the police had found in a professional house am asked us to shelter for a few days until she could be use( as a witness, was clutching a battered doll which sh< 5 had kept with her during her six months of an “evi life.” Two of these prematurely aged children came t( us one day directly from the maternity ward of th< Cook County hospital, each with a baby in her arms SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 131 ; king for protection, because they did not want to go f me for fear of '‘being licked.” For them were no tfels nor idle living such as the story-books portrayed, be first of the older women whom I knew came to Hull- buse to ask that her young sister, who was about to rive from Germany, might live near us; she wished to d her respectable work and wanted her to have the lecent pleasures” that Hull-House afforded. After J e arrangement had been completed and I had in a sasure recovered from my astonishment at the isinesslike way in which she spoke of her own life, I tntured to ask her history. In a very few words she tld me that she had come from Germany as a music tacher to an American family. At the end of two yars, in order to avoid a scandal involving the head of te house, she had come to Chicago where her child was brn, but when the remittances ceased after its death, fiding herself without home and resources, she had jadually become involved in her present mode of life, ly dint of utilizing her family solicitude, we finally in¬ deed her to move into decent lodgings before her sister drived, and for a difficult year she supported herself by rr exquisite embroidery. At the end of that time, she jive up the struggle, the more easily as her young sister, jell established in the dressmaking department of a Irge shop, had begun to suspect her past life. Rut discouraging as these and other similar efforts ught to be extended to the immigrants. The boys 1 :ame in great numbers to our provisional gymnasium itted up in a former saloon, and it seemed to us quite as latural that a Chicago man, fond of athletics, should ^rect a building for them, as that the boys should :lamor for more room. I do not wish to give a false impression, for we were often bitterly pressed for money and worried by the .prospect of unpaid bills, and we gave up one golden scheme after another because we could not afford it, we ^cooked the meals and kept the books and washed the 2 windows without a thought of hardship if we thereby saved money for the consummation of some aidcntly desired undertaking. 136 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE But in spite of our financial stringency, I always be¬ lieved that money would be given when we had once clearly reduced the Settlement idea to the actual deed. This chapter, therefore, would be incomplete if it did s not record a certain theory of nonresistance or rather universal good will which I had worked out in con¬ nection with the Settlement idea and which was later so often and so rudely disturbed. At that time I had come to believe that if the activities of Hull-House owere ever misunderstood, it would be either because there was not time to fully explain or because our motives had become mixed, for I was convinced that disinterested action was like truth or beauty in its lucidity and power of appeal, s But more gratifying than any understanding or re¬ sponse from without could possibly be, was the con¬ sciousness that a growing group of residents was gathering at Hull-House, held together in that soundest of all social bonds, the companionship of mutual inter- o ests. These residents came primarily because they were genuinely interested in the social situation and believed that the Settlement was valuable as a method of ap¬ proach to it. A house in which the men residents lived was opened across the street, and at the end of the first 5 five years the Hull-House residential force numbered fifteen, a majority of whom still remain identified with the Settlement. SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 137 Even in those early years we caught glimpses of the Fact that certain social sentiments, which are “the difficult and cumulating product of human growth” and which like all higher aims live only by communion and fellowship, are cultivated most easily in the foster- 5 ng soil of a community life. Occasionally I obscurely felt as if a demand were aeing made upon us for a ritual which should express and carry forward the hope of the social movement. I vas constantly bewildered by the number of requests I 10 eceived to officiate at funeral services and by the :urious confessions made to me by total strangers. For 1 time I accepted the former and on one awful occasion urnished “the poetic part” of a wedding ceremony eally performed by a justice of the peace, but I soon 15 earned to steadfastly refuse such offices, although I saw hat for many people without church affiliations the /ague humanitarianism the Settlement represented was he nearest approach they could find to an expression of heir religious sentiments. 20 These hints of what the Settlement might mean to at east a few spirits among its contemporaries became dear to me for the first time one summer’s day in rural ingland, when I discussed with John Trevor his at- empts to found a labor church and his desire to turn 25 he toil and danger attached to the life of the working- nan into the means of a universal fellowship. That i 3 8 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE very year a papyrus leaf brought to the British Museui from Egypt, containing among other sayings of Jesui “Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find me; cleav the wood and I am there,” was a powerful reminder t 5 all England of the basic relations between daily labc and Christian teaching. In those early years at Hull-House we were, howevejj in no danger of losing ourselves in mazes of speculatio or mysticism, and there was shrewd penetration in i o compliment I received from one of our Scotch neighbon He came down Polk Street as I was standing near th foundations of our new gymnasium, and in response t his friendly remark that “Hull-House was spreadin out,” I replied that “Perhaps we were spreading ou is too fast.” “Oh, no,” he rejoined, “you can afford t< spread out wide, you are so well planted in the mud,’ giving the compliment, however, a practical turn, as h glanced at the deep mire on the then unpaved street It was this same condition of Polk Street which hac 20caused the crown prince of Belgium 0 when he wa brought upon a visit to Hull-House to shake his hea( and meditatively remark, “ There is not such a street — no, not one — in all the territory of Belgium.” At the end of five years the residents of Hull-Hous( as published some first found facts and our reflection; thereon in a book called “Hull-House Maps anc Papers.” The maps were taken from information col- SOME EARLY UNDERTAKINGS 139 2cted by one of the residents for the United States bureau ol Labor in the investigation into “the slums f great cities” and the papers treated of various eighborhood matters with candor and genuine concern not with skill. I he first edition became exhausted in 5 wo years, and apparently the Boston publisher did ot consider the book worthy of a second. CHAPTER VIII Problems of Poverty That neglected and forlorn old age is daily brougti to the attention of a Settlement which undertakes t bear its share of the neighborhood burden imposed b poverty, was pathetically clear to us during our firs s months of residence at Hull-House. One day a boy c ten led a tottering old lady into the House, saying tha she had slept for six weeks in their kitchen on a be made up next to the stove; that she had come when he son died, although none of them had ever seen her be x o fore; but because her son had “once worked in the sam shop with Pa she thought of him when she had nc where to go.” The little fellow concluded by sayin that our house was so much bigger than theirs that h thought we would have more room for beds. The oil 15 woman herself said absolutely nothing, but looking o:f with that gripping fear of the poorhouse in her eyes, sh; was a living embodiment of that dread which is s heart-breaking that the occupants of the County In firmary themselves seem scarcely less wretched thai 20 those who are making their last stand against it. This look was almost more than I could bear for onl a few days before some frightened women had biddei 140 PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 141 5 come quickly to the house of an old German woman, 10m two men from the county agent’s office were at- npting to remove to the County Infirmary. The or old creature had thrown herself bodily upon a .all and battered chest of drawers and clung there, itching it so firmly that it would have been impossible remove her without also taking the piece of furniture, e did not weep nor moan nor indeed make any human I md, but between her broken gasps for breath she aealed shrilly like a frightened animal caught in a slip. The little group of women and children gathered her door stood aghast at this realization of the black e::3ad which always clouds the lives of the very poor eSien work is slack, but which constantly grows more ] minent and threatening as old age approaches. The j ighborhood women and I hastened to make all sorts promises as to the support of the old woman and the jnty officials, only too glad to be rid of their un- ppy duty, left her to our ministrations. This dread of 2 poorhouse, the result of centuries of deterrent Poor w administration, seemed to me not without some ;tification one summer when I found myself per- :ually distressed by the unnecessary idleness and jilornness of the old women in the Cook County In¬ nary, many of whom I had known in the years when i :ivity was still a necessity, and when they yet felt stlingly important. To take away from an old man whose life has been spent in household cares all i 4 2 twenty years at hull-house the foolish little belongings to which her affections cliu and to which her very fingers have become accustome is to take away her last incentive to activity, almost life itself. To give an old woman only a chair and s bed, to leave her no cupboard in which her treasur may be stowed, not only that she may take them 01 when she desires occupation, but that her mind m< dwell upon them in moments of reverie, is to redm living almost beyond the limit of human endurance, o The poor creature who clung so desperately to h« chest of drawers was really clinging to the last remnai of normal living — a symbol of all she was asked i renounce. For several years after this summer I ii vited five or six old women to take a two weeks’ vac s tion from the poorhouse which they eagerly and eve gayly accepted. Almost all the old men in the Count Infirmary wander away each summer taking the chances for finding food or shelter and return much r freshed by the little “tramp,” but the old women ca o not do this unless they have some help from the outsid and yet the expenditure of a very little money secur for them the coveted vacation. I found that a ie pennies paid their car fare into town, a dollar a wet procured a lodging with an old acquaintance; assure 5 of two good meals a day in the Hull-House coffee-hou they could count upon numerous cups of tea among ol friends to whom they would airily state that they ha “come out for a little change” and hadn’t yet made u PROBLEMS OF POVERTY H 3 ieir minds about “going in again for the winter.” hey thus enjoyed a two weeks’ vacation to the top of ieir bent and returned with wondrous tales of their Iventures, with which they regaled the other paupers iring the long winter. 1 he reminiscences of these old women, their shrewd imments upon life, their sense of having reached a >int where they may at last speak freely with nothing * lose because of their frankness, makes them often the ost delightful of companions. I recall one of my tests, the mother of many scattered children, whose le bright spot through all the dreary years had been e wedding feast of her son Mike, — a feast which had :come transformed through long meditation into the :ctar and ambrosia of the very gods. As a farewell ng before she went “in” again, we dined together upon sicken pie, but it did not taste like “the chicken pie at ike’s wedding” and she was disappointed after all. Even death itself sometimes fails to bring the dignity id serenity which one would fain associate with old ;e. I recall the dying hour of one old Scotchwoman lose long struggle to “keep respectable” had so em- ttered her, that her last words were gibes and taunts r those who were trying to minister to her. “So you < me in yourself this morning, did you? You only sent ings yesterday. I guess you knew when the doctor is coming. Don’t try to warm my feet with anything frit that old jacket that I’ve got there; it belonged to i 4 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE I my boy who was drowned at sea nigh thirty years a$i but it’s warmer yet with human feelings then any 1 your damned charity hot-water bottles. ” Suddenly tf harsh gasping voice was stilled in death and I await 5 the doctor’s coming shaken and horrified. The lack of municipal regulation already referred was, in the early days of Hull-House, paralleled by t inadequacy of the charitable efforts of the city and unfounded optimism that there was no real pover o among us. Twenty years ago there was no Chan Organization Society in Chicago and the Visiting Nut Association had not yet begun its beneficent work, wh i the relief societies, although conscientiously admin tered, were inadequate in extent and antiquated 5 method. As social reformers gave themselves over to di cussion of general principles, so the poor invariably a 1 cused poverty itself of their destruction. I recall certain Mrs. Moran, who was returning one rainy d; o from the office of the county agent with her arms full paper bags containing beans and flour which alone h between her children and starvation. Although she hi no money she boarded a street car in order to save h booty from complete destruction by the rain, and .1 5 the burst bags dropped “flour on the ladies’ dresses and “beans all over the place,” she was sharply re] rimanded by the conductor, who was further exaspe ated when he discovered she had no fare. He put h< PROBLEMS OF POVERTY H5 : , as she had hoped he would, almost in front of Hull- ouse. She related to us her state of mind as she lapped off the car and saw the last of her wares dis- ipearing; she admitted she forgot the proprieties and :ursed a little,” but, curiously enough, she pronounced r malediction, not against the rain nor the conductor, | >r yet against the worthless husband who had been nt up to the city prison, but, true to the Chicago spirit the moment, went to the root of the matter and lundly “cursed poverty.” This spirit of generalization and lack of organization mong the charitable forces of the city was painfully vealed in that terrible winter after the World’s fair, 0 aen the general financial depression throughout the * untry was much intensified in Chicago by the numbers < unemployed stranded at the close of the exposition, hen the first cold weather came the police stations id the very corridors of the city hall were crowded by en who could afford no other lodging. They made ige demonstrations on the lake front, reminding one “ the London gatherings in Trafalgar Square. 0 It was the winter in which Mr. Stead 0 wrote his in- ctment of Chicago. I can vividly recall his visits to ull-House, some of them between eleven and twelve clock at night, when he would come in wet and mgry from an investigation of the levee district, and, ; hile he was drinking hot chocolate before an open fire, I ould relate in one of his curious monologues, his ex- 146 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE perience as an out-of-door laborer standing in line wii out an overcoat for two hours in the sleet, that he migt have a chance to sweep the streets; or his adventui with a crook, who mistook him for one of his own ki s and offered him a place as an agent for a gambli house, which he promptly accepted. Mr. Stead \\ much impressed with the mixed goodness in Chicag the lack of rectitude in many high places, the simp] kindness of the most wretched to each other. Before io published “If Christ Came to Chicago” he made I attempt to rally the diverse moral forces of the city a huge mass meeting, which resulted in a tempora organization, later developing into the Civic Federatio I was a member of the committee of five appointed 15 carry out the suggestions made in this remarkable mee ing, and our first concern was to appoint a committee deal with the unemployed. But when has a commits ever dealt satisfactorily with the unemployed? Reli stations were opened in various parts of the cit 20 temporary lodging houses were established, Hull-Hou undertaking to lodge the homeless women who could received nowhere else; employment stations we opened giving sewing to the women, and street sweepi for the men was organized. It was in connection wi 2 s the latter that the perplexing question of the danger permanently lowering wages at such a crisis, in t praiseworthy effort to bring speedy relief, was broug home to me. I insisted that it was better to have t [ PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 147 ien work half a clay for seventy-five cents than a whole iay for a dollar, better that they should earn three •ollars in two days than in three days. I resigned from Ihe street cleaning committee in despair of making the 'est of the committee understand that, as our real ob- ?ct was not street cleaning but the help of the unem- loyed, we must treat the situation in such wise that ne men would not be worse off when they returned to leir normal occupations. The discussion opened up tuations new to me and carried me far afield in perhaps le most serious economic reading I have ever done. A beginning also was then made toward a Bureau of Organized Charities, the main office being put in charge f a young man recently come from Boston, who lived t Hull-House. But to employ scientific methods for le first time at such a moment in volved difficulties, and le most painful episode of the winter for me came from n attempt on my part to conform to carefully received istructions. A shipping clerk whom I had known for long time had lost his place, as so many people had lat year, and came to the relief station established at lull-House four or five times to secure help for his imily. I told him one day of the opportunity for work n the drainage canal and intimated that if any ern- loyment were obtainable, he ought to exhaust that ossibility before asking for help. 1 he man replied lat he had always worked indoors and that he could ot endure outside work in winter. I am gratelul to ■ u 148 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE remember that I was too uncertain to be severe, a though I held to my instructions. He did not corr again for relief, but worked for two days digging on tf canal, where he contracted pneumonia and died a wee slater. I have never lost trace of the two little childre he left behind him, although I cannot see them withoi a bitter consciousness that it was at their expense learned that life cannot be administered by definit rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man 10 difficulties comes only through some knowledge of hi life and habits as a whole; and that to treat an isolate episode is almost sure to invite blundering. It was also during this winter that I became pei manently impressed with the kindness of the poor t 15 each other; the woman who lives upstairs will willingl share her breakfast with the family below because sh knows they “are hard up”; the man who boarded wit them last winter will give a month’s rent because h knows the father of the family is out of work; the bake 20 across the street, who is fast being pushed to the wall b his downtown competitors, will send across three loave of stale bread because he has seen the children lookin longingly into his window and suspects they are hungry There are also the families who, during times of busines 2 s depression, are obliged to seek help from the county c some benevolent society, but who are themselves mos anxious not to be confounded with the pauper clasi with whom indeed they do not in the least belong PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 149 Charles Booth , 0 in his brilliant chapter on the unem- loyed, expresses regret that the problems of the work- *ig class are so often confounded with the problems of he inefficient and the idle, that although working eople live in the same street with those in need of harity, to thus confound two problems is to render the olution of both impossible. I remember one family in which the father had been ut of work for this same winter, most of the furniture ad been pawned, and as the worn-out shoes could not e replaced the children could not go to school. The lother was ill and barely able to come for the supplies nd medicines. Two years later she invited me to supper ne Sunday evening in the little home which had been ampletely restored, and she gave as a reason for the lvitation that she couldn’t bear to have me remember aem as they had been during that one winter, which ae insisted had been unique in her twelve years of larried life. She said that it was as if she had met me, ot as I am ordinarily, but as I should appear misshapen jdth rheumatism or with a face distorted by neuralgic ain; that it was not fair to judge poor people that way. he perhaps unconsciously illustrated the difference be- veen the relief-station relation to the poor and the ettlement relation to its neighbors, the latter wishing ) know them through all the varying conditions of fe, to stand by when they are in distress, but by no leans to drop intercourse with them when normal 1 5 o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE prosperity has returned, enabling the relation to becorr more social and free from economic disturbance. Possibly something of the same effort has to be mad within the Settlement itself to keep its own sense c 5 proportion in regard to the relation of the crowded cit quarter to the rest of the country. It was in the sprin following this terrible winter, during a journey to mee lecture engagements in California, that I found mysel amazed at the large stretches of open country am o prosperous towns through which w T e passed day by day whose existence I had quite forgotten. In the latter part of the summer of 1895, I served a a member on a commission appointed by the mayor o Chicago, to investigate conditions in the county poor 5 house, public attention having become centered on i through one of those distressing stories, which exagger ates the wrong in a public institution while at the sam< time it reveals conditions which need to be rectified However necessary publicity is for securing reformec o administration, however useful such exposures may bt for political purposes, the whole is attended by such r waste of the most precious human emotions, by such s tearing of living tissue, that it can scarcely be endured Every time I entered Hull-House during the days o 5 the investigation, I would find waiting for me fro twenty to thirty people whose friends and relative were in the suspected institution, all in such acute dis tress of mind that to see them was to look upon th PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 151 ctims of deliberate torture. In most cases my visitor Duld state that it seemed impossible to put their in- ilids in any other place, but if these stories were true, mething must be done. Many of the patients were ken out only to be returned after a few days or weeks meet the sullen hostility of their attendants and with .eir own attitude changed from confidence to timidity id alarm. This piteous dependence of the poor upon the good 11 of public officials was made clear to us in an early perience with a peasant woman straight from the Ids of Germany, whom we met during our first six Tnths at Hull-House. Her four years in America had en spent in patiently carrying water up and down two ^hts of stairs, and in washing the heavy flannel suits it iron foundry workers. For this her pay had averaged tirty-five cents a day. Three of her daughters had fallen >:tims to the vice of the city. The mother was be- vldered and distressed, but understood nothing. We lire able to induce the betrayer of one daughter to rirry her; the second, after a tedious lawsuit, supported it; child; with the third we were able to do nothing. ]lis woman is now living with her family in a little fuse seventeen miles from the city. She has made two pyments on her land and is a lesson to all beholders a she pastures her cow up and down the railroad ticks and makes money from her ten acres. She did tit need charity for she had an immense capacity for 152 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE hard work, but she sadly needed the service of State’s attorney office, enforcing the laws designed i the protection of such girls as her daughters. We early found ourselves spending many hours i 5 efforts to secure support for deserted women, insurais for bewildered widows, damages for injured operate, furniture from the clutches of the installment sto. The Settlement is valuable as an information and inti pretation bureau. It constantly acts between t o various institutions of the city and the people for whd benefit these institutions were erected. The hospital the county agencies, and State asylums are often b vague rumors to the people who need them most. A other function of the Settlement to its neighborho s resembles that of the big brother whose mere preser on the playground protects the little one from bulli We early learned to know the children of hard driv mothers who went out to work all day, sometimes lea ing the little things in the casual care of a neighbor, b o often locking them into their tenement rooms. T first three crippled children we encountered in t neighborhood had all been injured while their moth( were at work: one had fallen out of a third-sto window, another had been burned, and the third had 5 curved spine due to the fact that for three years he h; been tied all day long to the leg of the kitchen tab only released at noon by his older brother who hast ran in from a neighboring factory to share his lun PROBLEMS OF POVERTY i 53 id. him. When the hot weather came the restless lildren could not brook the confinement of the stuffy oms, and, as it was not considered safe to leave the >ors open because of sneak thieves, many of the fildren were locked out. During our first summer an creasing number of these poor little mites would ander into the cool hallway of Hull-House. We kept em there and fed them at noon, in return for which e were sometimes offered a hot penny which had been dd in a tight little fist “ever since mother left this orning, to buy something to eat with. ” Out of kinder- irten hours our little guests noisily enjoyed the >spitality of our bedrooms under the so-called care of ly resident who volunteered to keep an eye on them, it later they were moved into a neighboring apart- ent under more systematic supervision. Hull-House was thus committed to a day nursery iiich we sustained for sixteen years, first in a little *tage on a side street and then in a building designed r its use called the Children’s House. It is now rried on by the United Charities of Chicago in a lely equipped building on our block, where the im- ligrant mothers are cared for as well as the children, ad where they are taught the things which will make ]‘e in America more possible. Our early day nursery fought us into natural relations with the poorest ’amen of the neighborhood, many of whom were bear- jg the burden of dissolute and incompetent husbands . 154 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE i o i 5 2 O 2 5 in addition to the support of their children. Some them presented an impressive manifestation of th miracle of affection which outlives abuse, neglect, ar crime, — the affection which cannot be plucked fro the heart where it has lived, although it may serve on to torture and torment. “Has your husband con back?*” you inquire of Mrs. S., whom you have know for eight years as an overworked woman bringing h< three delicate children every morning to the nursen she is bent under the double burden of earning th money which supports them and giving them th tender care which alone keeps them alive. The oldes two children have at last gone to work, and Mrs. £ has allowed herself the luxury of staying at home tw days a week. And now the worthless husband is bac again — the “gentlemanly gambler’' type who, throug all vicissitudes, manages to present a white shirtfron and a gold watch to the world, but who is dissolute idle, and extravagant. You dread to think how muc his presence will increase the drain upon the family exj chequer, and you know that he stayed away until was certain that the children were old enough to ear money for his luxuries. Mrs. S. does not pretend t take his return lightly, but she replies in ail seriousn and simplicity, “You know my feeling for him h never changed. You may think me foolish, but I w always proud of his good looks and educated appear ance. I was lonely and homesick during those eigh PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 155 ears when the children were little and needed so much octoring, but I could never bring myself to feel hard oward him, and I used to pray the good Lord to keep im from harm and bring him back to us; so, of course, ’m thankful now.” She passes on with a dignity which 5 ives one a new sense of the security of affection. I recall a similar case of a woman who had supported er three children for five years, during which time her issolute husband constantly demanded money for rink and kept her perpetually worried and intimidated. 1 o )ne Saturday, before the “blessed Easter,” he came ack from a long debauch, ragged and filthy, but in a tate of lachrymose repentance. The poor wife received im as a returned prodigal, believed that his remorse pould prove lasting, and felt sure that if she and the is hildren w£nt to church with him on Easter Sunday and e could be induced to take the pledge before the priest, 11 their troubles would be ended. After hours of igorous effort and the expenditure of all her savings, he nally sat on the front doorstep the morning of Easter 20 unday, bathed, shaved, and arrayed in a fine new suit f clothes. She left him sitting there in the reluctant pring sunshine while she finished washing and dressing lie children. When she finally opened the front door Tth the three shining children that they might all set 25 :>rth together, the returned prodigal had disappeared, nd was not seen again until midnight, when he came ack in a glorious state of intoxication from the pro- 156 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE ceeds of his pawned clothes and clad once more in tl dingiest attire. She took him in without comment, on to begin again the wretched cycle. There were of cour instances of the criminal husband as well as of the mer 5 ly vicious. I recall one woman who, during seven year never missed a visiting day at the penitentiary whf she might see her husband, and whose little children : the nursery proudly reported the messages from fath< with no notion that he was in disgrace, so absolute] o did they reflect the gallant spirit of their mother. While one was filled with admiration for these hero women, something was also to be said for some of tl husbands, for the sorry men who, for one reason or ai other, had failed in the struggle of life. Sometimes th s failure was purely economic and the men were con petent to give the children, whom they were not abl to support, the care and guidance and even educatio which were of the highest value. Only a few month ago I met upon the street one of the early nurser o mothers who for five years had been living in anotht part of the city, and in response to my query as to th welfare of her five children, she bitterly replied, “ All c them except Mary have been arrested at one time o another, thank you.” In reply to my remark that 5 thought her husband had always had such admirabl control over them, she burst out, “That has been th whole trouble. I got tired taking care of him and didn’ PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 157 dieve that his laziness was all due to his health, as he lid, so I left him and said that I would support the fildren, but not him. From that minute the trouble ith the four boys began. I never knew what they were I oing, and after every sort of a scrape I finally put Jack 5 nd the twins into institutions where I pay for them, ae has gone to work at last, but with a disgraceful icord .behind him. I tell you I ain’t so sure that be- ause a woman can make big money that she can be oth father and mother to her children.” . 10 As I walked on, I could but wonder in which particu- ir we are most stupid, — to judge a man s worth so alely by his wage-earning capacity that a good wife eels justified in leaving him, or in holding fast to that /retched delusion that a woman can both support and is urture her children. One of the most piteous revelations of the futility of he latter attempt came to me through the mother of i Goosie,” as the children for years called a little boy vho, because he was brought to the nursery wrapped 2 o ip in his mother’s shawl, always had his hair filled with he down and small feathers from the feather brush actory where she worked. One March morning, doosie’s mother was hanging out the washing on a shed oof at six o’clock, doing it thus early before she left for a s :he factory. Five-year-old Goosie was trotting at her leels handing her clothespins, when he was suddenly 158 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE blown off the roof by the high wind into the alley belo : His neck was broken by the fall and as he lay piteo and limp on a pile of frozen refuse, his mother cheeri called him to “climb up again,” so confident do ove 5 worked mothers become that their children cannot g hurt. After the funeral, as the poor mother sat in tl nursery postponing the moment when she must g back to her empty rooms, I asked her, in a futile effbi to be of comfort, if there was anything more we coul iodo for her. The overworked, sorrow-stricken woma looked up and replied, “If you could give me m wages for to-morrow, I would not go to work in th factory at all. I would like to stay at home all day an< hold the baby. Goosie was always asking me to tak 15him and I never had any time.” This statement re vealed the condition of many nursery mothers who an obliged to forego the joys and solaces which belong t( even the most poverty-stricken. The long hours oi factory labor necessary for earning the support of a 20child leave no time for the tender care and caressing) which may enrich the life of the most piteous baby. With all of the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend them- 2 5 selves in the coarser work of the world! It is curiously inconsistent that with the emphasis which this genera¬ tion has placed upon the mother and upon the pro- PROBLEMS OF POVERTY i59 mgation of infancy, we constantly allow the waste of his most precious material. I cannot recall without idignation a recent experience. I was detained late ne evening in an office building by a prolonged com- littee meeting of the Board of Education. As I came 5 ut at eleven o’clock, I met in the corridor of the four- eenth floor a woman whom I knew, on her knees crubb'ing the marble tiling. As she straightened up to reet me, she seemed so wet from her feet up to her hin that I hastily inquired the cause. Her reply was 10 hat she left home at five o’clock every night and had o opportunity for six hours to nurse her baby. Her lother’s milk mingled with the very water with which he scrubbed the floors until she should return at mid- ight, heated and exhausted, to feed her screaming 15 hild with what remained within her breasts. These are only a few of the problems connected with he lives of the poorest people with whom the residents n a Settlement are constantly brought in contact. I cannot close this chapter without a reference to that 2 o allant company of men and women among whom my cquaintance is so large, who are fairly indifferent to tarvation itself because of their preoccupation with ! ligher ends. Among them are visionaries and en- husiasts, unsuccessful artists, writers, and reformers. 25 por many years at Hull-House, we knew a well-bred jerman woman who was completely absorbed in the 160 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE experiment of expressing musical phrases and melodi by means of colors. Because she was small and d formed, she stowed herself into her trunk every ni gh where she slept on a canvas stretched hammock-wi^ s from the four corners and her food was of the meageres nevertheless if a visitor left an offering upon her tabl 1 it was largely spent for apparatus or delicately colore silk floss, with which to pursue the fascinating exper ment. Another sadly crippled old woman, the wido 1 o of a sea captain, although living almost exclusive! upon malted milk tablets as affording a cheap form c prepared food, was always eager to talk of the beautift illuminated manuscripts she had sought out in he travels and to show specimens of her own work as ai 5 illuminator. Still another of these impressive oh women was an inveterate inventor. Although she ha< seen prosperous days in England, when we knew her she subsisted largely upon the samples given away a the demonstration counters of the department stores o and on bits of food which she cooked on a coal shovel ir the furnace of the apartment house whose basemen back room she occupied. Although her inventions wert not practicable, various experts to whom they were submitted always pronounced them suggestive anc 5 ingenious. I once saw her receive this complimentary verdict — ‘‘this ribbon to stick in her coat”°— with such dignity and gravity, that the words of condolence for her financial disappointment, died upon my lips. PROBLEMS OF POVERTY . 161 These indomitable souls are but three out of many, Tom I might instance to prove that those who are andicapped in the race for life’s goods, sometimes play ( magnificent trick upon the jade, life herself, by ceasing ) know whether or not they possess any of her tawdry s ,oods and chattels. 1 CHAPTER IX A Decade of Economic Discussion I o I 5 2 O The Hull-House residents were often bewildered b the desire for constant discussion which characterize Chicago twenty years ago, for although the resident in the early Settlements were in many cases youn persons, who had sought relief from the consciousnes of social maladjustment in the “anodyne of work afforded by philanthropic and civic activities, thei former experiences had not thrown them into company with radicals. The decade between 1890-1900 was, ii Chicago, a period of propaganda as over against con structive social effort; the moment for marching an( carrying banners, for stating general principles am making a demonstration, rather than the time for un covering the situation and for providing the legal meas ures and the civic organization through which nev social hopes might make themselves felt. When Hull-House was established in 1889, the event of the Haymarket riot° were already two years old, but during that time Chicago had apparently gone through the first period of repressive measures, and in the winter of 1889-1890, by the advice and with the active partici¬ pation of its leading citizens, the city had reached the 162 ECONOMIC DISCUSSION 163 inclusion that the only cure for the acts of anarchy was ee speech and an open discussion of the ills of which e opponents of government complained. Great open eetings were held every Sunday evening in the recital til of the then new auditorium, presided over by such 5 hpresentative citizens as Lyman Gage,° and every J tssible shade of opinion was freely expressed. A man no spoke constantly at these meetings used to be n|>inted out to the visiting stranger as one who had been evolved with the group of convicted anarchists, and 10 k' to doubtless would have been arrested and tried, but ei r the accident of his having been in Milwaukee when ni e explosion occurred. One cannot imagine such meet- ii gs being held in Chicago to-day, nor that such a man d ould be encouraged to raise his voice in a public as- 15 ljmblage presided over by a leading banker. It is hard tell just what change has come over our philosophy over the minds of those citizens who were then con¬ duced that if these conferences had been established rlier, the Haymarket riot and all its sensational re- 20 Its might have been avoided. At any rate, there seemed a further need for smaller lbs, where men who differed widely in their social eories might meet for discussion, where representatives J the various economic schools might modify each 25 rher, and at least learn tolerance and the futility of e deavoring to convince all the world of the truth of one jisition. Fanaticism is engendered only when men, 164 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE finding no contradiction to their theories, at last bel that the very universe lends itself as an exemplifica of one point of view. “The Working People’s So Science Club” was organized at Hull-House in s spring of 1890 by an English workingman, and seven years it held a weekly meeting. At eight o’cl every Wednesday night the secretary called to or * from forty to one hundred people; a chairman for evening was elected, a speaker was introduced who oallowed to talk until nine o’clock; his subject was t thrown open to discussion and a lively debate en until ten o’clock, at which hour the meeting was dared adjourned. The enthusiasm of this club seld lagged. Its zest for discussion was unceasing, and 5 attempt to turn it into a study or reading club alw met with the strong disapprobation of the members In these weekly discussions in the Hull-House dr ing-room everything was thrown back upon gene principles and all discussion save that which “went othe root of things,” was impatiently discarded as unworthy, halfway measure. I recall one evening this club when an exasperated member had thrown o the statement that “Mr. B. believes that socialism w cure the toothache.” Mr. B. promptly rose to his fi s and said that it certainly would, that when every chile teeth were systematically cared for from the beginnin toothache would disappear from the face of the ear belonging, as it did, to the extinct competitive order ECONOMIC DISCUSSION 0 ( 165 ie black plague had disappeared from the earth with le ill-regulated feudal regime of the Middle Ages. But,” he added, “why do we spend time discussing ifles like the toothache when great social changes are > be considered which will of themselves reform these inor ills?” Even the man who had been humorous, 11 into the solemn tone of the gathering. It was, per- ips, here that the socialist surpassed every one else in ie fervor of economic discussion. He was usually a erman or a Russian with a turn for logical presenta- on, who saw in the concentration of capital and the owth of monopolies an inevitable transition to the " (cialistic state. He pointed out that the concentration ' capital in fewer hands but increased the mass of lose whose interests were opposed to a maintenance its power, and vastly simplified its final absorption y the community; that monopoly “when it is finished f )th bring forth socialism.” Opposite to him, springing ) in every discussion was the individualist, or, as the •cialist called him, the anarchist, who insisted that we 1 iall never secure just human relations until we have quality of opportunity; that the sole function of the ate is to maintain the freedom of each, guarded by the ! ice freedom of all, in order that each man may be able ‘ > work out the problems of his own existence. That first winter was within three years of the Henry eorge° campaign in New York, when his adherents all ,er the country were carrying on a successful and I o I 5 2 o 2 5 66 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE effective propaganda. When Henry George hiir came to Hull-House one Sunday afternoon, the gyn il sium, which was already crowded with men to 1 Father Huntington’s 0 address on “Why should a s thinker believe in Christ,” fairly rocked on its four tions under the enthusiastic and prolonged appla which greeted this great leader and constantly in rupted his stirring address, filled, as all of his speec were, with high moral enthusiasm and humanita x o fervor. Of the remarkable congresses held in connect ai with the World’s Fair, perhaps those inaugurated the advocates of single tax exceeded all others in v enthusiasm. It was possibly significant that all tract proposition, that society is susceptible of edification and would even agree that all human titutions imply progressive development, but at the ne time he deeply distrusts those who seek to reform sting conditions. There is a certain common-sense ndation for this distrust, for too often the reformer he rebel who defies things as they are, because of the traints which they impose upon his individual desires her than because of the general defects of the system, len such a rebel poses for a reformer, his short- mings are heralded to the world, and his downfall is frished as an awful warning to those who refuse to prship “the god of things as they are.” \.nd yet as I recall the members of this early club, In those who talked the most and the least rationally < m to me to have been particularly kindly and “ safe. ” re most pronounced anarchist among them has long ize become a convert to a religious sect, holding kddhistic 0 tenets which imply little food and a distrust Hill action; he has become a wraith of his former self (i: he still retains his kindly smile, j n the discussion of these themes, Hull-House was of :c rse quite as much under the suspicion of one side as \ other. I remember one night when I addressed a lb of secularists, which met at the corner of South •listed and Madison streets, a rough looking man ted out: “You are all right now, but, mark my i7o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE words, when you are subsidized by the millionaires, will be afraid to talk like this.” The defense of speech was a sensitive point with me, and I quickly >u it e- plied that while I did not intend to be subsidized 5 millionaires, neither did I propose to be bullied workingmen, and that I should state my honest opin without consulting either of them. Fo my surprise, 1 audience of radicals broke into applause, and the a cussion turned upon the need of resisting tyrar i o wherever found, if democratic institutions were endure. This desire to bear independent witness social righteousness often resulted in a sense of c promise difficult to endure, and at many times it see to me that we were destined to alienate everybody is should have been most grateful at that time to acc the tenets of socialism, and I conscientiously made effort, both by reading and by many discussions w the comrades. I found that I could easily give affirmative answer to the heated question, ” Don’t y 20 see that just as the hand mill created a society witl feudal lord, so the steam mill creates a society with industrial capitalist?” But it was a little harder to g an affirmative reply to the proposition that the soc relation thus established proceeds to create principl 2 5 ideas, and categories as merely historical and transito products. Of course I use the term “socialism” technically ai do not wish to confuse it with the growing sensitivenc ECONOMIC DISCUSSION 171 ich recognizes that no personal comfort nor in- fadual development can compensate a man for the sery of his neighbors, nor with the increasing con- tion that social arrangements can be transformed ough man’s conscious and deliberate effort. Such a 5 n inition would not have been accepted for a moment nhe Russians, who then dominated the socialist party cChicago and among whom a crude interpretation of ni: class conflict was the test of the faith, during those first years on Halsted Street nothing 10 sis more painfully clear than the fact that pliable oman nature is relentlessly pressed upon by its physi- ir environment. I saw nowhere a more devoted effort inderstand and relieve that heavy pressure than the : ialists were making, and I should have been glad to 15 \ r e had the comradeship of that gallant company had v:|y not firmly insisted that fellowship depends upon atity of creed. They repudiated similarity of aim l social sympathy as tests which were much too >e and wavering as they did that vague socialism 20 ch for thousands has come to be a philosophy, or ler religion, embodying the hope of the world and the tection of all who suffer. also longed for the comfort of a definite social creed, ch should afford at one and the same time an ex- 2 5 lation of the social chaos and the logical steps aids its better ordering. I came to have an exag- ited sense of responsibility for the poverty in the 172 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE midst of which I was living and which the socia 51 constantly forced me to defend. My plight was not.i like that which might have resulted in my old da skepticism regarding foreordination, had I then l 5 compelled to defend the confusion arising from clashing of free wills as an alternative to an accept; of the doctrine. Another difficulty in the way of acc ing this economic determinism, so baldly depenc upon the theory of class consciousness, constantly a when I lectured in country towns and there had - portunities to read human documents of prospei n people as well as those of my neighbors who w crowded into the city. The former were stoutly r conscious of any classes in America, and the class c t s sciousness of the immigrants was fast being broken i t by the necessity for making new and unpreceden; connections in the industrial life all about them. In the meantime, although many men of many mi met constantly at our conferences, it was amazing ofind the incorrigible good nature which prevai Radicals are accustomed to hot discussion and sh differences of opinion and take it all in the day’s W( I recall that the secretary of the Hull-House So Science Club at the anniversary of the seventh yea sits existence read a report in which he stated that far as he could remember, but twice during that t had a speaker lost his temper, and in each case it 1 ECONOMIC DISCUSSION i73 ai :n a college professor who “wasn’t accustomed to 1 ng talked back to.” •He also added that but once had all the club members ^ ted in applauding the same speaker; only Samuel 1 les, who afterwards became “the golden rule” ia yor of T oledo, had been able to overcome all their T;matic differences, when he had set forth a plan of Towing a group of workingmen with a factory plant 1 a working capital for experimentation in hours and ^ges, quite as groups of scholars are endowed for er |earch. 'Chicago continued to devote much time to economic Hussion and remained in a state of youthful glamour c, oughout the nineties. I recall a young Methodist Tister who, in order to free his denomination from % entanglement in his discussion of the economic and ial situation, moved from his church building into a ]1 %hboring hall. The congregation and many other Tple followed him there, and he later took to the street Miners because he found that the shabbiest men liked tat the best. Professor Herron 0 filled to overflowing a vntown hall every noon with a series of talks en- ofea “Between Caesar and Jesus” — an attempt to ai >ly the teachings of the Gospel to the situations of dern commerce. A half dozen publications edited h some ability and much moral enthusiasm have sed away, perhaps because they represented 174 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE t( pamphleteering rather than journalism and came natural end when the situation changed. Certs their editors suffered criticism and poverty on of the causes which they represented. 5 Trades-unionists, unless they were also socialists, not prominent in those economic discussions, altho they were steaddy making an effort to bring order the unnecessary industrial confusion. They belon to the second of the two classes into which Mill div o all those who are dissatisfied with human life as ii and whose feelings are wholly identified with its rad amendment. He states that the thoughts of one c are in the region of ultimate aims, of “the highest id of human life,” while the thoughts of the other an 5 the region of the “immediately useful and practic attainable.” The meetings of our Social Science Club were cari on by men of the former class, many of them wit strong religious bias, who constantly challenged o Church to assuage the human spirit thus torn bruised “in the tumult of a time disconsolate.” Th men were so serious in their demand for religious fell ship, and several young clergymen were so ready respond to the appeal, that various meetings were s ranged at Hull-House, in which a group of people r together to consider the social question, not in a sp of discussion, but in prayer and meditation. Th clergymen were making heroic efforts to induce th ii al tr 4 4 rches to formally consider the labor situation, and d ing the years which have elapsed since then, many ECONOMIC DISCUSSION i75 ominations of the Christian Church have organized Dr committees; but at that time there was nothing he sort beyond the society in the established Church 'England “to consider the conditions of labor.” )uring that decade even the most devoted of that teer church society failed to formulate the fervid de- for juster social conditions into anything more con¬ ing than a literary statement, and the Christian r y ' - ialists, at least when the American branch held its ' ual meeting at Hull-House, afforded but a striking ^trayal of that “ betweenage mood” in which so many Sur religious contemporaries are forced to live. I 'ember that I received the same impression when I :nded a meeting called by the canon of an English ledral to discuss the relation of the Church to labor. !: men quickly indicted the cathedral for its useless- >, and the canon asked them what in their minds ild be its future. The men promptly replied that r [ new social order would wish, of course, to preserve itiful historic buildings, that although they would niss the bishop and all the clergy, they would want etain one or two scholars as custodians and inter- :ers. “And what next?” the imperturbable ec- iastic asked. “We would democratize it,” replied men. But when it came to a more detailed descrip- of such an undertaking, the discussion broke into 176 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE V? i i o i 5 2 O 2 5 a dozen bits, although illuminated by much sh wisdom and affording a clew, perhaps as to the des tion of the bishop’s palace by the citizens of this town, who had attacked it as a symbol of sw prosperity during the bread riots of the earlier pa the century. On the other hand the workingmen who contini demand help from the Church thereby acknowl j their kinship, as does the son who continues to bread from the father who gives him a stone. I r an incident connected with a prolonged strike in Chi on the part of the typographical unions for an e hour day. The strike had been conducted in a orderly manner and the union men, convinced o justice of their cause, had felt aggrieved because o the religious publishing houses in Chicago had stantly opposed them. Some of the younger clerg> of the denominations who were friendly to the stri cause came to a luncheon at Hull-House, where situation was discussed by the representatives o sides. The clergymen, becoming much interested ir idealism with which an officer of the State Federa of Labor presented the cause, drew from him the s of his search for fraternal relation: he said tha fourteen years of age he had joined a church, hopin find it there; he had later become a member of fraternal organizations and mutual benefit socie and, although much impressed by their rituals, he ECONOMIC DISCUSSION 177 tppointed in the actual fraternity. He had finally id, so it seemed to him, in the cause of organized >r, what these other organizations had failed to give — an opportunity for sacrificial effort, hicago thus took a decade to discuss the problems 5 irent in the present industrial organization and to sider what might be done, not so much against de¬ rate aggression as against brutal confusion and iect; quite as the youth of promise passes through a t of rose-colored hope before he settles in the land ic chievement where he becomes all too dull and literal ded. And yet as I hastily review the decade in zago which followed this one given over to dis- ion, the actual attainment of these early hopes, so is they have been realized at all, seems to have come 1 5 1 men of affairs rather than from those given to culation. Was the whole decade of discussion an tration of that striking fact which has been likened ie changing of swords in Hamlet: that the abstract ds at length yield to the inevitable or at least grow 20 ardent in their propaganda, while the concrete ds, dealing constantly with daily affairs, in the end onstrate the reality of abstract notions? remember w T hen Frederic Harrison visited Hull- [se that I was much disappointed to find that the 25 tivists had not made their ardor for humanity a e potent factor in the English social movement, as I surprised during a visit from John Morley 0 to find 178 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE m lk I o I 5 2 O 2 5 that he, representing perhaps the type of man w political life seemed to have pulled away from ideals of his youth, had yet been such a champic democracy in the full tide of reaction. My observai were much too superficial to be of value and cert; both men were well grounded in philosophy and t of social reform and had long before carefully formu their principles, as the new English Labor Party, is destined to break up the reactionary period, is being created by another set of theorists. There certainly moments during the heated discussions of decade when nothing seemed so important as i M theory: this was borne in upon me one brilliant eve ^ at Hull-House when Beniamin Kidd,° author of much read “Social Evolution,” was pitted aga| Victor Berger 0 of Milwaukee, even then consider* \ rising man in the Socialist Party. At any rate the residents at Hull-PIouse discov i that while their first impact with city poverty a i them to groups given over to discussion of sc theories, their sober efforts to heal neighborhood allied them to general public movements which without challenging creeds. But while we discov that we most easily secured the smallest of much nee improvements by attaching our efforts to thos organized bodies, nevertheless these very organizat would have been impossible, had not the public c ECONOMIC DISCUSSION i79 V " ence been aroused and the community sensibility ickened by these same ardent theorists. s 1 review these very first impressions of the workers unskilled industries, living in a depressed quarter of t: > city, I realize how easy it was for us to see ex- ■ >tional cases of hardship as typical of the average i‘, and yet, in spite of alleviating philanthropy and ' or legislation, the indictment of Tolstoy applied to uscow thirty years ago still fits every American city: /herever we may live, if we draw a circle around us 1 a hundred thousand, or a thousand, or even of ten es circumference, and look at the lives of those men e] )l women who are inside our circle, we shall find half- rved children, old people, pregnant women, sick and ik persons, working beyond their strength, who have rcjther food nor rest enough to support them, and who, this reason, die before their time; we shall see others, -grown, who are injured and needlessly killed by 3 lgerous and hurtful tasks.” \.s the American city is awakening to self-con- msness, it slowly perceives the civic significance of se industrial conditions, and perhaps Chicago has n foremost in the effort to connect the unregulated t rgrowth of the huge centers of population, with the Dnishingly rapid development of industrial enter- >es; quite as Chicago was foremost to carry on the liminary discussion through which a basis was laid I o I 5 2 o 2 5 180 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE 7 a ;r for like-mindedness and the coordination of divers I remember an astute English visitor, who had be guest in a score of American cities, observed that it hard to understand the local pride he constantly s countered; for in spite of the boasting on the pai leading citizens in the western, eastern, and sout towns, all American cities seemed to him essent li alike and all equally the results of an industry toiil unregulated by well-considered legislation, o I am inclined to think that perhaps all this ger discussion was inevitable in connection with the e Settlements, as they in turn were the inevitable re of theories of social reform, which in their full thusiasm reached America by way of England, onl s the last decade of the century. There must have 1 i tough fiber somewhere; for, although the resident li il Hull-House were often baffled by the radicalism wii the Social Science Club and harassed by the critic from outside, we still continued to believe that s o discussion should be carried on, for if the Settlen seeks its expression through social activity, it r learn the difference between mere social unrest spiritual impulse. The group of Hull-House residents, which by the 5 of the decade comprised twenty-five, differed widely social beliefs, from the girl direct from the country looked upon all social unrest as mere anarchy, to resident, who had become a socialist when a studen ECONOMIC DISCUSSION 181 wurich, and who had long before translated from the ererman Engels’s 0 “Conditions of the Working Class in ngland,” although at this time she had been read out the Socialist Party because the Russian and German npossibilists suspected her fluent English, as she tljways lightly explained. Although thus diversified in tcial beliefs, the residents became solidly united through lr mutual experience in an industrial quarter, and we jcame not only convinced of the need for social con- in ol and protective legislation but also of the value of eais preliminary argument. res This decade of discussion between 1890 and 1900 11 ready seems remote from the spirit of Chicago of ili-day. So far as I have been able to reproduce this birlier period, it must reflect the essential provisionality iff everything; “the perpetual moving on to something itlture which shall supersede the present,” that para- ic ount impression of life itself, which affords us, at one $ id the same time, ground for despair and for endless m id varied anticipation, ml I o I 5 2 o e ni CHAPTER X Pioneer Labor Legislation in Illinois Our very first Christmas at Hull-House, when we ; yet knew nothing of child labor, a number of little gi refused the candy which was offered them as part the Christmas good cheer, saying simply that th 5 “worked in a candy factory and could not bear t sight of it.” We discovered that for six weeks th had worked from seven in the morning until nine night, and they were exhausted as well as satiate The sharp consciousness of stern economic conditio iowas thus thrust upon us in the midst of the season good will. During the same winter three boys from a Hu House club were injured at one machine in a neig boring factory for lack of a guard which would ha'' 15 cost but a few dollars. When the injury of one of the boys resulted in his death, we felt quite sure that t owners of the factory would share our horror and r morse, and that they would do everything possible i prevent the recurrence of such a tragedy. To our su 20 prise they did nothing whatever, and I made my fir acquaintance then with those pathetic documen signed by the parents of working children, that the 182 LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 183 11 make no claim for damages resulting from “care- sness.” The visits we made in the neighborhood constantly ;covered women sewing upon sweatshop work, and ;en they were assisted by incredibly small children, emember a little girl of four who pulled out basting •reads hour after hour, sitting on a stool at the feet of |r Bohemian mother, a little bunch of human misery, it even for that there was no legal redress, for the ly child labor law in Illinois, with any provision for forcement, had been secured by the coal miners’ ions, and was confined to children employed in mines. We learned to know many families in which the rking children contributed to the support of their rents, not only because they spoke English better an the older immigrants and were willing to take ver wages, but because their parents gradually found easy to live upon their earnings. A South Italian asant who has picked olives and packed oranges from toddling babyhood, cannot see at once the differ- |:e between the outdoor healthy work which he has rformed in the varying seasons, and the long hours of motonous factory life which his child encounters en he goes to work in Chicago. An Italian father ne to us in great grief over the death of his eldest Id, a little girl of twelve, who had brought the largest ges in to the family fund. In the midst of his genuine row he said: “She was the oldest kid I had. Now I 184 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE shall have to go back to work again until the next is able to take care of me.” The man was only thir three and had hoped to retire from work at least dur the winters. No foreman cared to have him ir s factory, untrained and unintelligent as he was. It ^ much easier for his bright, English-speaking little \ to get a chance to paste labels on a box than for him i secure an opportunity to carry pig iron. The eff on the child was what no one concerned thought aboi oin the abnormal effort she made thus prematurely bear the weight of life. Another little girl of thirteeri Russian-Jewish child employed in a laundry at a hea < task beyond her strength, committed suicide, becai she had borrowed three dollars from a companion whij 5 she could not repay unless she confided the story to 1 parents and gave up an entire week’s wages — but wl I could the family live upon that week in case she d Her child mind, of course, had no sense of proportic and carbolic acid appeared inevitable, o While we found many pathetic cases of child lat and hard-driven victims of the sweating system w could not possibly earn enough in the short busy seas to support themselves during the rest of the year, became evident that we must add carefully collect s information to our general impression of neighborho conditions if we would make it of any genuine value. I here was at that time no statistical information Chicago industrial conditions, and Mrs. Flore " LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 185 (elley,° an early resident of Hull-House, suggested to re Illinois State Bureau of Labor that they investigate r e sweating system in Chicago with its attendant child ri3or. The head of the Bureau adopted this suggestion v,d engaged Mrs. Kelley to make the investigation, fhen the report was presented to the Illinois Legisla¬ te, a special committee was appointed to look into the i iicaga conditions. I well recall that on the Sunday Oje members of this commission came to dine at Hull- Duse, our hopes ran high, and we believed that at Hist some of the worst ills under which our neighbors ajbre suffering would be brought to an end. iij As a result of its investigations, this committee n|:ommended to the Legislature the provisions which terwards became those of the first factory law of i inois, regulating the sanitary conditions of the sweat- d op and fixing fourteen as the age at which a child ii ight be employed. Before the passage of the law uld be secured, it was necessary to appeal to all ;ments of the community, and a little group of us Idressed the open meetings of trades-unions and of nefit societies, church organizations, and social clubs erally every evening for three months. Of course the ost energetic help as well as intelligent understanding (me from the trades-unions. 1 he central labor body ( Chicago, then called the 1 rades and Labor Assembly, hd previously appointed a committee of investigation 1 inquire into the sweating system. 1 his committee 186 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE consisted of five delegates from the unions and five side their membership. Two of the latter were resid of Hull-House, and continued with the unions in t well-conducted campaign until the passage of Illin* first Factory Legislation was secured, a statute wl has gradually been built upon by many public-spir citizens until Illinois stands well among the states it 1 I o I 5 2 O 2 5 least in the matter of protecting her children. Hull-House residents that winter had their first exp ence in lobbying. I remember that I very much liked the word and still more the prospect of the lob ing itself, and we insisted that well-known Chic women should accompany this first little group Settlement folk who with trade-unionists moved u the state capitol in behalf of factory legislation, national or, to use its formal name, The Gent Federation of Women’s Clubs had been organized Chicago only the year before this legislation was cured. The Federation was then timid in regard to legislation because it was anxious not to frighten new membership, although its second president, M Henrotin, 0 was most untiring in her efforts to seci this law. It was, perhaps, a premature effort, though certaii founded upon a genuine need, to urge that a clai limiting the hours of all women working in factories workshops to eight a day, or forty-eight a week, shot he inserted in the first factory legislation of the Sta LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 187 ( Though we had lived at Hull-House but three years hen we urged this legislation, we had known a large umber of young girls who were constantly exhausted 3 y night work; for whatever may be said in defense of I ight work for men, few women are able to endure it. \ man who works by night sleeps regularly by day, but woman finds it impossible to put aside the household uties which crowd upon her, and a conscientious girl >«nds it hard to sleep with her mother washing and ;rubbing within a few feet of her bed. One of the most ainful impressions of those first years is that of pale, ^stless girls, who worked regularly in a factory of the icinity which was then running full night time. These [iris also encountered a special danger in the early horning hours as they returned from work, debilitated :nd exhausted, and only too easily convinced that a rink and a little dancing at the end of the balls in the aloon dance halls, was what they needed to brace hem. One of the girls whom we then knew, whose ame, Chloe, seemed to fit her delicate charm, craving drink to dispel her lassitude before her tired feet hould take the long walk home, had thus been decoyed ito a saloon, where the soft drink was followed by an lcoholic one containing “knockout drops,” and she woke in a disreputable rooming house — too frightened nd disgraced to return to her mother. Thus confronted by that old conundrum of the inter- ependence of matter and spirit, the conviction was 188 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE forced upon us that long and exhausting hours of w are almost sure to be followed by lurid and excit pleasures; that the power to overcome temptat f n reaches its limit almost automatically with that 5 physical resistance. The eight-hour clause in this fi factory law met with much less opposition in t Legislature than was anticipated, and was enforced a year before it was pronounced unconstitutional the Supreme Court of Illinois. During the halcyi o months when it was a law, a large and enthusias Eight-Hour Club of working women met at Hull-Hou to read the literature on the subject and in every w to prepare themselves to make public sentiment in fav of the measure which meant so much to them. T s adverse decision in the test case, the progress of whi they had most intelligently followed, was a matter 1 great disappointment. The entire experience left < my mind a distrust of all legislation which was n preceded by full discussion and understanding, o premature measure may be carried through a legislatu by perfectly legitimate means and still fail to posse vitality and a sense of maturity. On the other hand, tl administration of an advanced law acts somewhat as referendum. I he people have an opportunity for tw 5 years to see the effects of its operation. If they choo: to reopen the matter at the next General Assembly, can be discussed with experience and conviction; th LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 189 ery operation of the law has performed the function f the “referendum” in a limited use of the term. 1 Founded upon some such compunction, the sense hat the passage of the child labor law would in many iijases work hardship, was never absent from my mind uring the earliest years of its operation. I addressed i^s many mothers’ meetings and clubs among working ^omen' as I could, in order to make clear the object of ythe law and the ultimate benefit to themselves as well stis to their children. I am happy to remember that I isever met with lack of understanding among the hard¬ working widows, in whose behalf many prosperous vdeople were so eloquent. These widowed mothers (Vould say, “Why, of course, that is what I am working iior — to give the children a chance. I want them to lave more education than I had”; or another, “That or why we came to America, and I don’t want to spoil ndis start, even although his father is dead”; or, “It’s ifferent in America. A boy gets left if he isn’t educat¬ ed.” There was always a willingness, even among the Poorest women, to keep on with the hard night scrub¬ bing or the long days of washing for the children’s sake, s The bitterest opposition to the law came from the dirge glass companies who were so accustomed to use die labor of children, that they were convinced the manufacturing of glass could not be carried on without 1 9 o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Fifteen years ago the state of Illinois, as well Chicago, exhibited many characteristics of the pion country in which untrammeled energy and an start” were still the most highly prized generators 5 success. Although this first labor legislation was bringing Illinois into line with the nations in modern industrial world, which ‘ have long b obliged for their own sakes to come to the aid of t. workers by which they live, — that the child, the you o person, and the woman may be protected from their o weakness and necessity, — ” nevertheless from t first it ran counter to the instinct and tradition, aim to the very religion of the manufacturers of the sta who were for the most part self-made men. 5 This first attempt in Illinois for adequate facto legislation also was associated in the minds of busine men with radicalism, because the law was secured duri the term of Governor Altgeld 0 and was first enforc during his administration. While nothing in its gen oor spirit could be further from “anarchy” than facto legislation, and while the first law in Illinois was st far behind Massachusetts and New York, the fact th Governor Altgeld pardoned Irom the state s prison t anarchists who had been sentenced there after the Ha] 5 market riot, gave the opponents of this most reasonab legislation a quickly utilized opportunity to couple with that detested word; the state document whi accompanied Governor Altgeld’s pardon gave these e : LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 191 I nerous critics a further opportunity, because a magnan- iious action was marred by personal rancor, betraying |r the moment the infirmity of a noble mind. For all t these reasons this first modification of the undis- 1 rbed control of the aggressive captains of industry, 5 add not be enforced without resistance marked by ! amatic episodes and revolts. The inception of the v had already become associated with Hull-House, Ld when its ministration was also centered there, we ievitably received all the odium which these first 10 Forts entailed. Mrs. Kelley was appointed the first Jctory inspector with a deputy and a force of twelve Ispectors to enforce the law. Both Mrs. Kelley and } r assistant, Mrs. Stevens, lived at Hull-House; the trice was on Polk Street directly opposite, and one of 1 5 te most vigorous deputies was the president of the ne Club. In addition, one of the early men residents, nee dean of a state law school, acted as prosecutor in te cases brought against the violators of the law. Chicago had for years been notoriously lax in the 20 {ministration of law, and the enforcement of an un- ppular measure was resented equally by the president ( a large manufacturing concern and by the former ’ctim of a sweatshop who had started a place of his tm. Whatever the sentiments towards the new law on 2 5 te part of the employers, there was no doubt of its (thusiastic reception by the trades-unions, as the scuring of the law had already come from them, and i 9 2 twenty years at hull-house through the years which have elapsed since, the perience of the Hull-House residents would coinc with that of an English statesman who said that common rule for the standard of life and the condit r n 5 of labor may be secured by legislation, but it must maintained by trades unionism.” This special value of the trades-unions first beca clear to the residents of Hull-House in connection w the sweating system. We early found that the worn oin the sewing trades were sorely in need of help. 1 trade was thoroughly disorganized, Russian and Poll 11 e; tailors competing against English-speaking tailors, i - skilled Bohemian and Italian women competing agaii both. These women seem to have been best help s through the use of the label when unions of specializ workers in the trade are strong enough to insist ti¬ the manufacturers shall “give out work” only to the holding union cards. It was certainly impressive wh the garment makers themselves in this way fina o succeeded in organizing six hundred of the Itali women in our immediate vicinity, who had finish ii garments at home for the most wretched and precario wages. To be sure, the most ignorant women only kn< that “you couldn’t get clothes to sew” from the plac 5 where they paid the best, unless “you had a card,” b through the veins of most of them there pulsed t quickened blood of a new fellowship, a sense of comfo LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 193 d aid which had been held out to them by their fellow- hrkers. During the fourth year of our residence at Hull- buse we found ourselves in a large mass meeting dently advocating the passage of a Federal measure 5 lied the Sulzer Bill. Even in our short struggle with He evils of the sweating system it did not seem strange i at the center of the effort had shifted to .Washington, ir by that time we had realized that the sanitary ^ulation of sweatshops by city officials, and a careful 10 I forcement of factory legislation by state factory in¬ jectors will not avail, unless each city and state shall II able to pass and enforce a code of comparatively uni- %m legislation. Although the Sulzer Act failed to blize the Interstate Commerce legislation for its pur- 15 i. se, many of the national representatives realized for 3 e first time that only by federal legislation could their Hnstituents in remote country places be protected from lntagious diseases raging in New York or Chicago, for • any country doctors testify as to the outbreak of 20 brlet fever in rural neighborhoods after the children ii. ve begun to wear the winter overcoats and cloaks e-iich have been sent from infected city sweatshops. Through our efforts to modify the sweating system, e Hull-House residents gradually became committed 25 the fortunes of the Consumers’ League, an organiza¬ tion which for years has been approaching the question i 9 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE of the underpaid sewing woman from the point of v of the ultimate responsibility lodged in the consun It becomes more reasonable to make the presentat of the sweatshop situation through this League, as i s more effectual to work with them for the extensior legal provisions in the slow upbuilding of that code legislation which is alone sufficient to protect the ho from the dangers incident to the sweating system. The Consumers’ League seems to afford the b o method of approach for the protection of girls in dep; ment stores; I recall a group of girls from a neighbor “emporium” who applied to Hull-House for danc parties on alternate Sunday afternoons. In reply to < protest they told us they not only worked late ev< 5 evening, in spite of the fact that each was supposed have “two nights a week off,” and every Sunday mo ing, but that on alternate Sunday afternoons they w required “to sort the stock.” Over and over aga meetings called by the Clerks Union and others, lu obeen held at Hull-House protesting against these credibly long hours. Little modification has co about, however, during our twenty years of residen although one large store in the Bohemian quarter clo all day on Sunday and many of the others for th s nights a week. In spite of the Sunday work, these g prefer the outlying department stores to those do town; there is more social intercouse with the custom more kindliness and social equality between the sal LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 195 men and the managers, and above all the girls have j; protection naturally afforded by friends and neigh¬ 's and they are free from that suspicion which so en haunts the girls down town, that their fellow- rkers may not be “nice girls.” 5 n the first years of Hull-House we came across no des-unions among the women workers, and I think, haps,.that only one union, composed solely of women, 5 to be found in Chicago then — that of the book- ders. I easdy recall the evening when the president i 0 this pioneer organization accepted an invitation to e dinner at Hull-House. She came in rather a alcitrant mood, expecting to be patronized and so picious of our motives, that it was only after she had n persuaded to become a guest of the house for 15 i»eral weeks in order to find out about us for herself, t she was convinced of our sincerity and of the ability ‘outsiders” to be of any service to working women. : afterward became closely identified with Hull- use, and her hearty cooperation was assured until 20 moved to Boston and became a general organizer the American Federation of Labor, he women shirt makers and the women cloak makers e both organized at Hull-House as was also the rcas Federal Labor Union, which had been founded 25 laugh the efforts of a working woman, then one of | residents. The latter union met once a month in „ drawing-room. It was composed of representatives 196 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE from all the unions in the city which included womer their membership and also received other women sympathy with unionism. It was accorded represen tion in the central labor body of the city, and latei s joined its efforts with those of others to found i Woman’s Union Label League. In what we considei a praiseworthy effort to unite it with other organ! tions, the president of a leading Woman’s Club appf] for membership. We were so sure of her election tl oshe stood just outside of the drawing-room door, or, trades-union language, “the wicket gate, while 1 name was voted upon. To our chagrin she did not ceive enough votes to secure her admission, not becai the working girls, as they were careful to state, did i s admire her, but because she “seemed to belong to t other side.” Fortunately, the big-minded woman thoroughly understood the vote and her interest working women was so genuine, that it was less thai decade afterward when she was elected to the presiden oof the National Woman's Trades Union League. T incident and the sequel registers, perhaps, the change Chicago towards the labor movement, the recogniti of the fact that it is a general social movement concei ing all members of society and not merely a ch s struggle. Some such public estimate of the labor movement w brought home to Chicago during several conspicuo strikes; at least labor legislation has twice been i LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 197 ugurated because its need was thus made clear. After le Pullman strike 0 various elements in the community ere unexpectedly brought together that they might ffierly consider and rectify the weaknesses in the legal ructure which the strike had revealed. These citizens 5 rranged for a large and representative convention to 2 held in Chicago on Industrial Conciliation and rbitration. I served as secretary of the committee om the new Civic Federation having the matter in large, and our hopes ran high when, as a result of the 10 citation, the Illinois legislature passed a law creating State Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. But fen a state board cannot accomplish more than public ntiment authorizes and sustains, and we might easily ive been discouraged in those early days could we 15 ive foreseen some of the industrial disturbances which ive since disgraced Chicago. This law embodied the ist provisions of the then existing laws for the arbitra- an of industrial disputes. At the time the word bitration was still a word to conjure with, and many 20 hicago citizens were convinced, not only of the danger id futility involved in the open warfare of opposing cial forces, but further believed that the search for stice and righteousness in industrial relations was lade infinitely more difficult thereby. 25' The Pullman strike afforded much illumination to 1 any Chicago people. Before it, there had been nothing i my experience to reveal that distinct cleavage of 198 twenty years at hull-house society, which a general strike at least momentari affords. Certainly, during all those dark days of tl Pullman strike, the growth of class bitterness was mo obvious. The fact that the Settlement maintainc s avenues of intercourse with both sides seemed to gn it opportunity for nothing but a realization of thebitte ness and division along class lines. I had known M Pullman and had seen his genuine pride and pleasui in the model town he had built with so much care; an ol had an opportunity to talk to many of the Pullma employees during the strike when I was sent from a sc called “Citizens’ Arbitration Committee” to their fin meetings held in a hall in the neighboring village c Kensington, and when I was invited to the mode? s supper tables laid in the model houses. The employee then expected a speedy settlement and no one doubte but that all the grievances connected with the “stra> bosses” would be quickly remedied and that the benevc lence which had built the model town would not fa othem. They were sure that the “straw bosses” ha misrepresented the state of affairs, for this very firs awakening to class consciousness bore many traces c the servility on one side and the arrogance on the othe which had so long prevailed in the model town. Hi s entire strike demonstrated how often the outcome o far-reaching industrial disturbances is dependent upoi the personal will of the employer or the temperament o a strike leader. Those familiar with strikes know onh LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 199 x) well how much they are influenced by poignant omestic situations, by the troubled consciences of the linority directors, by the suffering women and children, y the keen excitement ol the struggle, by the religious Tuples sternly suppressed but occasionally asserting 5 lemselves, now on one side and now on the other, and y that undefined psychology of the crowd which we nderstand so little. All of these factors also influence le public and do much to determine popular sympathy id judgment. In the early days of the Pullman strike, 10 i I was coming down in the elevator of the Auditorium otel from one of the futile meetings of the Arbitration ommittee, I met an acquaintance, who angrily said that the strikers ought all to be shot.” As I had heard ithing so bloodthirsty as this either from the most en- 15 ged capitalist or front the most desperate of the men, id was interested to find the cause of such a senseless itbreak, I finally discovered that the first ten thousand ill ars which my acquaintance had ever saved, requir- g, he said, years of effort from the time he was twelve 20 iars old until he was thirty, had been lost as the suit of a strike; he clinched his argument that he lew what he was talking about, with the statement at “no one need expect him to have any sympathy ith strikers or with their affairs.” 25 A very intimate and personal experience revealed, at ast to myself, my constant dread of the spreading ill 11 . At the height of the sympathetic strike my oldest 200 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE sister, who was convalescing from a long illness in hospital near Chicago, became suddenly very mu< worse. While I was able to reach her at once, evei possible obstacle of a delayed and blocked transport 5 tion system interrupted the journey of her husband ar children who were hurrying to her bedside from a di tant state. As the end drew nearer and I was oblige to reply to my sister’s constant inquiries that her famil had not yet come, I was filled with a profound apprehei iosion lest her last hours should be touched with resem ment towards those responsible for the delay; lest he unutterable longing should at the very end be tinge with bitterness. She must have divined what was i my mind, for at last she said each time after the repeti 15 tion of my sad news, “I don’t blame any one, I am no judging them.” My heart was comforted and heav 1 at the same time; but how many more such moments o sorrow and death were being made difficult and loneb throughout the land, and how much would these ex 2experiences add to the lasting bitterness, that touch o self-righteousness which makes the spirit of forgivenes: well-nigh impossible? When I returned to Chicago from the quiet country I saw the Federal troops encamped about the post 25 office; almost every one on Halsted Street wearing a white ribbon, the emblem of the strikers’ side; the residents at Hull-House divided in opinion as to the righteousness of this or that measure; and no one able I LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 201 secure any real information as to which side was Horning the cars. After the Pullman strike I made an tempt to analyze in a paper which I called “The odern King Lear,” the inevitable revolt of human ture against the plans Mr. Pullman had made for Ji 5 employees, the miscarriage of which appeared to § m such black ingratitude. It seemed to me unendura- ii 2 not to make some effort to gather together the social ei plications of the failure of this benevolent employer d its relation to the demand for a more democratic 1 ministration of industry. Doubtless the paper repre- fnted a certain “excess of participation,” to use a sntle phrase of Charles Lamb’s in preference to a more t lphatic one used by Mr. Pullman himself. The last «::ture of the Pullman strike which I distinctly recall ihs three years later when one of the strike leaders cme to see me. Although out of work for most of the tne since the strike, he had been undisturbed for six mths in the repair shops of a street car company, der an assumed name, but he had at that moment en discovered and dismissed. He was a superior type English workingman, but as he stood there, broken d discouraged, believing himself so black-listed that ; skill could never be used again, filled with sorrow er the loss of his wife who had recently died after an i3 less with distressing mental symptoms, realizing mly the lack pf the respectable way of living he had yays until now been able to maintain, he seemed to 202 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE me an epitome of the wretched human waste such strike implies. I fervently hoped that the new arbitr tion law would prohibit in Chicago forever more sue brutal and ineffective methods of settling industrial di i s putes. And yet even as early as 1896, we found ti greatest difficulty in applying the arbitration law to tl garment workers’ strike, although it was finally acconf plished after various mass meetings had urged it. TH cruelty and waste of the strike as an implement fc o securing the most reasonable demands, came to me a another time, during the long strike of the clothin: cutters. They had protested, not only against varioi wrongs of their own, but against the fact that th| tailors employed by the custom merchants were oblige s to furnish their own workshops and thus bore a burde of rent which belonged to the employer. One of thl leaders in this strike, whom I had known for sever; years as a sober, industrious, and unusually intelligen man, I saw gradually break down during the many try o ing weeks and at last suffer a complete moral collapse He was a man of sensitive organization under th necessity, as is every leader during a strike, to addres the same body of men day after day with an appea sufficiently emotional to respond to their sense 0 s injury; to receive callers at any hour of the day or night to sympathize with all the distress of the strikers wh< see their familes daily suffering; he must do it all witl the sickening sense of the increasing privation in hi LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 203 vn home, and in this case with the consciousness that ilure was approaching nearer each day. This man, rcustomed to the monotony of his workbench and iddenly thrown into a new situation, showed every bn of nervous fatigue before the final collapse came. 5 e disappeared after the strike and I did not see him !.r ten years, but when he returned he immediately bgan talking about the old grievances which he had ipeated so often that he could talk of nothing else. It (as easy to recognize the same nervous symptoms which 10 le broken-down lecturer exhibits who has depended non the exploitation ol his own experiences to keep Imself going. One of his stories was indeed pathetic, lis employer, during the busy season, had met him one :inday afternoon in Lincoln Park whither he had taken 15 Is three youngest children, one of whom had been ill. le employer scolded him for thus wasting his time and :ughly asked why he had not taken home enough work keep himself busy through the day. The story was ite credible because the residents at Hull-House have 20 d many opportunities to see the worker driven ruth- sly during the season and left in idleness for long feks afterward. We have slowly come to realize that :riodical idleness as well as the payment of wages sufficient for maintenance of the manual worker in 25 1 industrial and domestic efficiency, stand economical- on the same footing with the “sweated” industries, 2 overwork of women, and employment of children. 204 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE I o i 5 2 O 2 5 But of all the aspects of social misery nothing is s heart-breaking as unemployment, and it was inevitab that we should see much of it in a neighborhood whei low rents attracted the poorly , paid worker and man newly arrived immigrants who were first employed i gangs upon railroad extensions and similar undertaking The sturdy peasants, eager for work, were either tl victims of the padrone who fleeced them unmercifully both in securing a place to work and then in supply in them with food, or they became the mere spoit of ui scrupulous employment agencies. Hull-House mad an investigation both of the padrone and ol the agencit in our immediate vicinity, and the outcome confirmin what we already suspected, we eagerly threw ourselvt into a movement to procure free employment bureau under State control until a law authorizing such bureau and giving the officials intrusted with their managemer power to regulate private employment agencies, passe the Illinois Legislature in 1899. The history of thes bureaus demonstrates the tendency we all have, consider a legal enactment in itself an achievement to grow careless in regard to its administration actual results; for an investigation into the situati ten years later discovered that immigrants were s shamefully imposed upon. A group of Bulgarians wei found who had been sent to work in Arkansas whe their services were not needed; they walked back Chicago only to secure their next job in Oklahoma a LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 205 pay another railroad fare as well as another com¬ ission to the agency. Not only was there no method r which the men not needed in Arkansas could know at there was work in Oklahoma unless they came ck to Chicago to find it out, but there was no cer- inty that they might not be obliged to walk back from dahoma because the Chicago agency had already it out, too many men. Ihis investigation of the employment bureau re- urces of Chicago was undertaken by the League for b Protection of Immigrants, with whom it is possible r Hull-House to cooperate whenever an investigation the immigrant colonies in our immediate neighbor- ad seems necessary, as was recently done in regard the Greek colonies of Chicago. The superintendent this League, Miss Grace Abbott, is a resident of Hull- »use and all of our later attempts to secure justice I opportunity for immigrants are much more effective ough the League, and when we speak before a con- ssional committee in Washington concerning the ids of Chicago immigrants, we represent the League well as our own neighbors. t is in connection with the first factory employment newly arrived immigrants and the innumerable iculties attached to their first adjustment, that some the most profound industrial disturbances in Chicago he come about. Under any attempt at classification se strikes belong more to the general social move- 206 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE merit than to the industrial conflict, for the strike i; implement used most rashly by unorganized labor \ i after they are in difficulties, call upon the trades-un i for organization and direction. They are similai i 5 those strikes which are inaugurated by the unionsl: behalf of unskilled labor. In neither case do the has ] organized unions usually hold after the excitement the moment has subsided, and the most valuable re of such strikes is the expanding consciousness of 1 o solidarity of the workers. This was certainly the re: i of the Chicago stockyard strike in 1905, inaugurated behalf of the immigrant laborers and so conspicuoL carried on without violence that, although twenty-i thousand workers were idle during the entire sumn 1 s there were fewer arrests in the stockyards district tl 1 the average summer months afford. However, story of this strike should not be told from Hull-Hoi: but from the University of Chicago Settlement, wh Miss Mary McDowell performed such signal pul 1 o service during that trying summer. It would be int esting to trace how much of the subsequent expos 1 of conditions and attempts at governmental control- this huge industry had their genesis in this first atten of the unskilled workers to secure a higher standard j s living. Certainly the industrial conflict when epito ized in a strike, centers public attention on conditions ! nothing else can do. A strike is one of the most exciti episodes in modern life and as it assumes the charact LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 207 <;tics of a game, the entire population of a city becomes ivided into two cheering sides. In such moments the hir-minded public, who ought to be depended upon as i referee, practically disappears. Any one who tries h keep the attitude of nonpartisanship, which is per¬ haps an impossible one, is quickly under suspicion by -oth sides. At least that was the fate of a group of itizens appointed by the mayor of Chicago to arbitrate luring the stormy teamsters’ strike which occurred in 5905. We sat through a long Sunday afternoon in the Mayor’s office in the City Hall, talking first with the •ffior men and then with the group of capitalists. The ndertaking was the more futile in that we were all [ ractically the dupes of a new type of “industrial con- piracy” successfully inaugurated in Chicago by a close tompact between the coal teamsters’ union and the coal earn owners’ association who had formed a kind of monopoly hitherto new to a monopoly-ridden public. The stormy teamsters’ strike, ostensibly undertaken 1 defense of the garment workers, but really arising rom causes so obscure and dishonorable that they have lever yet been made public, was the culmination of a ype of trades-unions which had developed in Chicago luring the preceding decade in which corruption had tourished almost as openly as it had previously done in he City Hall. This corruption sometimes took the orm of grafting after the manner of Samuel Parks in view York; sometimes that of political deals in the 208 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE “delivery of the labor vote”; and sometimes that c combination between capital and labor hunting gether. At various times during these years the bet type of trades-unionists had made a firm stand agai 5 this corruption and a determined effort to eradicat( from the labor movement, not unlike the general refo effort of many American cities against political c ruption. This reform movement in the Chicago Fede tion of Labor had its martyrs, and more than one rr onearly lost his life through the “slugging” methe employed by the powerful corruptionists. And ] even in the midst of these things were found touchi examples of fidelity to the earlier principles of broth hood totally untouched by the corruption. At one tii sthe scrub women in the downtown office buildings h a union of their own affiliated with the elevator men a the janitors. Although the union was used merely an weapon in the fight of the coal teamsters against the i of natural gas in downtown buildings, it did not preve othe women from getting their first glimpse into t fellowship and the sense of protection which is the gre gift of trades-unionism to the unskilled, unbefriend worker. I remember in a meeting held at Hull-Hoi one Sunday afternoon, that the president of a “loca s of scrub women stood up to relate her experience. S told first of the long years in which the fear of losi her job and the fluctuating pay were harder to be than the hard work itself, when she had regarded all t LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 209 her women who scrubbed in the same building merely rivals and was most afraid of the most miserable, :cause they offered to work for less and less as they are pressed harder and harder by debt. Then she told the change that had come when the elevator men and ren the lordly janitors had talked to her about an rganization and had said that they must all stand to- I ther. The told how gradually she came to feel sure of :r job and of her regular pay, and she was even start- g to buy a house now that she could “calculate” how iuch she “could have for sure.” Neither she nor any i the other members knew that the same combination fnch had organized the scrub women into a union, I ter destroyed it during a strike inaugurated for their m purposes. That a Settlement is drawn into the labor issues of > city can seem remote to its purpose only to those no fail to realize that so far as the present industrial stem thwarts our ethical demands, not only for social ^hteousness but for social order, a Settlement is com- itted to an effort to understand and, as far as possible, alleviate it. That in this effort it should be drawn to fellowship with the local efforts of trades-unions is ost obvious. This identity of aim apparently commits e Settlement in the public mind to all the faiths and nrks of actual trades-unions. Fellowship has so long iplied similarity of creed that the fact that the Settle- ent often differs widely from the policy pursued by 2io TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE trades-unionists and clearly expresses that differenl does not in the least change public opinion in regard its identification. This is especially true in periods industrial disturbance, although it is exactly at sn 5 moments that the trades-unionists themselves ; suspicious of all but their “own kind.” It is during t much longer periods between strikes that the Settlemen fellowship with trades-unions is most satisfactory in t agitation for labor legislation and similar undertakin o The first officers of the Chicago Woman’s Trades Uni League were residents of Settlements, although th can claim little share in the later record the Leag made in securing the passage of the Illinois Ten-Hc Law for Women and in its many other fine undertakinj s Nevertheless the reaction of strikes upon Chica Settlements affords an interesting study in soc psychology. For whether Hull-House is in any w identified with the strike or not, makes no differem When 4 ‘Labor” is in disgrace we are always regarded I o belonging to it and share the opprobrium. In the pub excitement following the Pullman strike Hull-House lc many friends; later the teamsters’ strike caused anoth? such defection, although my office in both cases h been solely that of a duly appointed arbitrator, s There is, however, a certain comfort in the assum 1 tion I have often encountered that wherever on< judgment might place the justice of a given situatioj it is understood that one’s sympathy is not alienated fi 211 LABOR LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS ongdoing, and that through this sympathy one is 11 subject to vicarious suffering. 1 recall an incident ring a turbulent Chicago strike which brought me ich comfort. On the morning of the day of a icheon to which I had accepted an invitation, the itress, whom I did not know, said to my prospective stess that she was sure I could not come. Upon ng asked for her reason she replied that she had seen the morning paper that the strikers had killed a :ab” and she was sure that I would feel quite too dly about such a thing, to be able to keep a social ^agement. In spite of the confused issues, she dently realized my despair over the violence in a ike quite as definitely as if she had been told about i Perhaps that sort of suffering and the attempt to lerpret opposing forces to each other will long remain i function of the Settlement, unsatisfactory and ificult as the role often becomes. There has gradually developed between the various jjitlements of Chicago a warm fellowship founded upon like-mindedness resulting from similar experiences, j,ite as identity of interest and endeavor develop an Turing relation between the residents of the same Ltlement. This sense of comradeship is never stronger ,m during the hardships and perplexities of a strike unskilled workers revolting against the conditions ich drag them even below the level of their European j:. At such times the residents in various Settlements 2i2 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE are driven to a standard of life argument running so what in this wise — that as the very existence of State depends upon the character of its citizens, tht fore if certain industrial conditions are forcing 5 workers below the standard of decency, it becor possible to deduce the right of State regulation. E 1 as late as the stockyard strike this line of argument s denounced as “socialism” although it has since b confirmed as wise statesmanship by a decision of o Supreme Court of the United States which was parently secured through the masterly argument of Brandeis brief 0 in the Oregon ten-hour case. In such wise the residents of an industrial neighb hood gradually comprehend the close connection 5 their own difficulties with national and even int national movements. The residents in the Chic; Settlements became pioneer members in the Americ branch of the International League for Labor Leg lation, because their neighborhood experiences h omade them only too conscious of the dire need for p tective legislation. In such a league, with its arde members in every industrial nation of Europe, with encouraging reports of the abolition of all night wc for women in six European nations, with its care 5 observations on the results of employer’s liabil legislation and protection of machinery, one becoir identified with a movement of world-wide significan and manifold manifestation. CHAPTER XI Immigrants and Their Children From our very first months at Hull-House we found much easier to deal with the first generation of rowded city life than with the second or third, because : is more natural and cast in a simpler mold. The talian and Bohemian peasants who live in Chicago, 5 till put on their bright holiday clothes on a Sunday nd go to visit their cousins. They tramp along with at iast a suggestion of having once walked over plowed elds and breathed country air. The second generation f city poor too often have no holiday clothes and con- 10 ider their relations a “bad lot.” I have heard a runken man in a maudlin stage, babble of his good ountry mother and imagine he was driving the cows ome, and I knew that his little son who laughed loud t him would be drunk earlier in life and would have 1 5 o such pastoral interlude to his ravings. Hospitality till survives among foreigners, although it is buried nder false pride among the poorest Americans. One hing seemed clear in regard to entertaining immigrants: o preserve and keep whatever of value their past life 20 ontained and to bring them in contact with a better ype of Americans. For several years, every Saturday 213 214 twenty years at hull-house evening the entire families of our Italian neighbors wefe our guests. 1 hese evenings were very popular duri)| our first winters at Hull-House. Many educatJ Italians helped us, and the house became known asl s place where Italians were welcome and where nation holidays were observed. 1 hey come to us with the, petty lawsuits, sad relics of the vendetta , with the incorrigible boys, with their hospital cases, with the aspirations for American clothes, and with their need i o for an interpreter. An editor of an Italian paper made a genuine coi nection between us and the Italian colony, not onl with the Neapolitans and the Sicilians of the lmmediai neighboihood, but with the educated connazidna 15 throughout the city, until he went south to start a agncultui al colony in Alabama, in the establishment which Hull-House heartily cooperated. Possibly the South Italians more than any other in migrants represent the pathetic stupidity of agriculture 20 people crowded into city tenements, and we were muc gratified when thirty peasant families were induced move upon the land which they knew so well how cultivate. The starting of this colony, however, was very expensive affair in spite of the fact that the color 2sists purchased the land at two dollars an acre; the needed much more than raw land, and although it w^a possible to collect the small sums necessary to sustai them during the hard time of the first two years, w c IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 215 iere fully convinced that undertakings of this sort Duld be conducted properly only by colonization (hcieties such as England has established, or, better : ill, by enlarging the functions of the Federal Depart¬ ment of Immigration. 5 t An evening similar in purpose to the one devoted to eue Italians was organized for the Germans, in our eirst year. Owing to the superior education of our teutonic guests and the clever leading of a cultivated erman woman, these evenings reflected something of 10 mat cozy social intercourse which is found in its per- 1 ction in the fatherland. Our guests sang a great deal i! the tender minor of the German folksong or in the rnsing spirit of the Rhine, and they slowly but per- 2 stently pursued a course in German history and 15 terature, recovering something of that poetry and >mance which they had long since resigned with other )od things. We found strong family affection between lem and their English-speaking children, but their leasures were not in common, and they seldom went 20 it together. Perhaps the greatest value of the Settle¬ ment to them was in placing large and pleasant rooms ith musical facilities at their disposal, and in reviving leir almost forgotten enthusiasms. I have seen sons id daughters stand in complete surprise as their 25 (Other’s knitting needles softly beat time to the song le was singing, or her worn face turned rosy under the and-clapping as she made an old-fashioned courtesy 216 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE at the end of a German poem. It was easy to fane ; growing touch of respect in her children’s manner ( her, and a rising enthusiasm for German literature 1 1 reminiscence on the part of all the family, an effort j 5 bring together the old life and the new, a respect for i ( older cultivation, and not quite so much assurance tl | the new was the best. j This tendency upon the part of the older immigrai i to lose the amenities of European life without shari j i o those of America, has often been deplored by kei observers from the home countries. When Profes j Masurek of Prague 0 gave a course of lectures in t University of Chicago, he was much distressed over t materialism into which the Bohemians of Chicago h 1 s fallen. The early immigrants had been so stirred by t opportunity to own real estate, an appeal perhaps the Slavic land hunger, and their energies had becon so completely absorbed in money-making that other interests had apparently dropped away. And y 20 I recall a very touching incident in connection with lecture Professor Masurek gave at Hull-House, which he had appealed to his countrymen to arou themselves from this tendency to fall below their hon civilization and to forget the great enthusiasm whic 2 5 had united them into the Pan-Slavic Movement. Bohemian widow who supported herself and her tw children by scrubbing, hastily sent her youngest chil to purchase, with the twenty-five cents which was t Ml IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 217 ve supplied them with food the next day, a bunch of 1 roses which she presented to the lecturer in appre- Ltion of his testimony to the reality of the things of e spirit. An overmastering desire to reveal the humbler im- grant parents to their own children lay at the base of lat has come to he called the Hull-House Labor useum. This was first suggested to my mind one rly spring day when I saw an old Italian woman, her staff against her homesick face, patiently spinning a read by the simple stick spindle so reminiscent of all iithern Europe. I was walking down Polk Street, rturbed in spirit, because it seemed so difficult to me into genuine relations with the Italian women id because they themselves so often lost their hold [,on their Americanized children. It seemed to me tat Hull-House ought to be able to devise some edu- ctional enterprise which should build a bridge between hropean and American experiences in such wise as to £/e them both more meaning and a sense of relation, meditated that perhaps the power to see life as a iole is more needed in the immigrant quarter of a :ge city than anywhere else, and that the lack of this I o I 5 2 o wer is the most fruitful source of misunderstanding tween European immigrants and their children, as is between them and their American neighbors; and iy should that chasm between fathers and sons, wning at the feet of each generation, be made so un- 2 5 218 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE i i necessarily cruel and impassable to these bewildeij immigrants? Suddenly I looked up and saw the < woman with her distaff, sitting in the sun on the stt of a tenement house. She might have served as a mo< s for one of Michael Angelo’s Fates, but her face brigl ened as I passed and, holding up her spindle for me see, she called out that when she had spun a little me yarn, she would knit a pair of stockings for her gc daughter. The occupation of the old woman gave r iothe clew that was needed. Could we not interest t young people working in the neighboring factories these older forms of industry, so that, through the own parents and grandparents, they would find a drams ic representation of the inherited resources of their dai 1 soccupation? If these young people could actually s that the complicated machinery of the factory h: been evolved from simple tools, they might at lea make a beginning toward that education which D Dewey 0 defines as ‘‘a continuing reconstruction 20experience.” They might also lay a foundation fi reverence of the past which Goethe declares to be tl basis of all sound progress. My exciting walk on Polk Street was followed b many talks with Dr. Dewey and with one of the teacl 2 5 ers in his school who was a resident at Hull-Hous Within a month a room was fitted up to which w might invite those of oui neighbors who w^ere possesse of old crafts and who were eager to use them. IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 219 We found in the immediate neighborhood, at least ( ur varieties of these most primitive methods of , inning and three distinct variations of the same spin- in connection with wheels. It was possible to put ,!,ese seven into historic sequence and order and to >jnnect the whole with the present method of factory t inning. The same thing was done for weaving, and ,[1 every Saturday evening a little exhibit was made these various forms of labor in the textile industry, ithin one room a Syrian woman, a Greek, an Italian, Russian, and an Irishwoman enabled even the most sual observer to see that there is no break in orderly olution if we look at history from the industrial andpoint; that industry develops similarly and peace- lly year by year among the workers of each nation, :edless of differences in language, religion, and ditical experiences. ) And then we grew ambitious and arranged lectures )on industrial history. I remember that after an teresting lecture upon the industrial revolution in ngland and a portrayal of the appalling conditions roughout the weaving districts of the north, which i;suited from the hasty gathering of the weavers into , e new towns, a Russian tailor in the audience was loved to make a speech. He suggested that whereas me had done much to alleviate the first difficulties in ie transition of weaving from hand work to steam )wer, that in the application of steam to sewing we i 5 2 5 220 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE are still in the first stages, illustrated by the isolate woman who tries to support herself by hand needl work at home until driven out by starvation, as mar of the hand weavers had been. ; 1 he historical analogy seemed to bring a certain con fort to the tailor as did a chart upon the wall, showir the infinitesimal amount of time that steam had bee applied to manufacturing processes compared to tf centuries of hand labor. Human progress is slow an perhaps never more cruel than in the advance of ir dustry, but is not the worker comforted by knowin that other historical periods have existed similar to th one in which he finds himself, and that the readjustmer may be shortened and alleviated by judicious actior and is he not entitled to the solace which an artist portrayal of the situation might give him? I remembc the evening of the tailor’s speech that I felt reproache because no poet or artist has endeared the sweater: victim to us as George Eliot has made us love the b lated weaver, Silas Marner. The textile museum connected directly with the basket weaving, sewin^ millinery, embroidery, and dressmaking constantl being taught at Hull-House, and so far as possible wit the other educational departments; we have also bee able to make a collection of products, of early implt ments, and of photographs which are full of suggestior Yet far beyond its direct educational value, we prize i because it so often puts the immigrants into the positio IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 221 teachers, and we imagine that it affords them a asant change from the tutelage in which all Ameri- s, including their own children, are so apt to hold m. I recall a number of Russian women working in sewing-room near Hull-House, who heard one 5 fistmas week that the House was going to give a ty to which they might come. They arrived one ^rnoon when, unfortunately, there was no party on id and, although the residents did their best to rertain them with impromptu music and refresh- 10 nts, it was quite evident that they were greatly appointed. Finally it was suggested that they be ,wn the Labor Museum — where gradually the rty sodden, tired women were transformed. Ihey 3W how to use the spindles and were delighted to find 15 > Russian spinning frame. Many of them had never tn the spinning wheel, which has not penetrated to (tain parts of Russia, and they regarded it as a new 1 wonderful invention. I hey turned up their dresses show their homespun petticoats; they tried the looms; 20 ;y explained the difficulty of the old patterns; in >rt, from having been stupidly entertained, they mselves did the entertaining. Because of a direct Deal to former experiences, the immigrant visitors [ re able for the moment to instruct their American 25 (itesses in an old and honored craft, as was indeed coming to their age and experience. In some such ways as these have the Labor Museum 222 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE and the shops pointed out the possibilities which Jij House has scarcely begun to develop, of demonstni that culture is an understanding of the long-establi occupations and thoughts of men, of the arts with w s they have solaced their toil. A yearning to recove the household arts something of their early sanctity ; meaning, arose strongly within me one evening wh t was attending a Passover Feast 0 to which I had 1 invited by a Jewish family in the neighborhood, w] iothe traditional and religious significance of worn daily activity was still retained. The kosher food Jewish mother spread before her family had been pared according to traditional knowledge and v constant care in the use of utensils; upon her had fa 15 the responsibility to make all ready according Mosaic instructions that the great crisis in a religi history might be fittingly set forth by her husband ; son. Aside from the grave religious significance in ceremony, my mind was filled with shifting pictures 20 woman’s labor with which travel makes one famili the Indian women grinding grain outside of their h as they sing praises to the sun and rain; a file of whi clad Moorish women whom I had once seen waiti their turn at a well in Tangiers; south Italian worn 2 s kneeling in a row along the stream and beating thl wet clothes against the smooth white stones; the mill mg, the gardening, the marketing in thousands of hai IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 223 !, which are such direct expressions of the solicitude " [ affection at the basis of all family life, here has been some testimony that the Labor seum has revealed the charm of woman’s primitive ivities. I recall a certain Italian girl who came every 5 urday evening to a cooking class in the same building Thich her mother spun in the Labor Museum exhibit; H yet Angelina always left her mother at the front kr while she herself went around to a side door be- se she did not wish to be too closely identified in the 10 s of the rest of the cooking class with an Italian nan who wore a kerchief over her head, uncouth >ts, and short petticoats. One evening, however, relina saw her mother surrounded by a group of tors from the School of Education, who much ad- 15 l ed the spinning, and she concluded from their con- sation that her mother was “the best stick-spindle iner in America.” When she inquired from me as the truth of this deduction, I took occasion to cribe the Italian village in which her mother had 20 id, something of her free life, and how, because of j opportunity she and the other women of the village 1 to drop their spindles over the edge of a precipice, I y had developed a skill in spinning beyond that of j: neighboring towns. I dilated somewhat on the 25 iLdom and beauty of that life — how hard it must be cexchange it all for a two-room tenement, and to give 224 twenty years at hull-house up a beautiful homespun kerchief for an ugly depi ment store hat. I intimated it was most unfair to ji j her by these things alone, and that while she n depend on her daughter to learn the new ways, she j shad a right to expect her daughter to know sometl i of the old ways. That which 1 could not convey to the child but ui which my own mind persistently dwelt, was that mother s whole life had been spent in a secluded s ioundei the rule of traditional and narrowly locali observances, until her very religion clung to lc sanctities to the shrine before which she had alw prayed, to the pavement and walls of the low vaul church and then suddenly she was torn from it i s and literally put out to sea, straight away from solid habits of her religious and domestic life, and : now walked timidly but with poignant sensibility up a new and strange shore. It was easy to see that the thought of her mod 20 with any other background than that of the teneme was new to Angelina and at least two things resultt she allowed her mother to pull out of the big box unc the bed the beautiful homespun garments which h been previously hidden away as uncouth; and s 2 5 openly came into the Labor Museum by the same do! as did her mother, proud at least of the mastery of t craft which had been so much admired. A club of necktie workers formerly meeting at Hu IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 225 ■use persistently resented any attempt on the part heir director to improve their minds. The president :e said that she “wouldn’t be caught dead at a !:ure,” that she came to the club “ to get some fun out t,” and indeed it was most natural that she should ve recreation after a hard day’s work. One evening hw the entire club listening to quite a stiff lecture in Labor Museum and to my rather wicked remark he president that I was surprised to see her enjoying : cture, she replied that she did not call this a lecture, t called this “getting next to the stuff you work with the time.” It was perhaps the sincerest tribute we re ever received as to the success of the undertaking, he Labor Museum continually demanded more ce as it was enriched by a fine textile exhibit lent by Field Museum, 0 and later by carefully selected cimens of basketry from the Philippines. 1 he shops r e finally included a group of three or four women, jh, Italian, Danish, who have become a permanent 'king force in the textile department which has eloped into a self-supporting industry through the i of its homespun products. hese women and a few men, who come to the seum to utilize their European skill in pottery, metal, rl wood, demonstrate that immigrant colonies might i d to our American life something very valuable, if ir resources were intelligently studied and developed. :call an Italian, who had decorated the doorposts of 226 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE his tenement with a beautiful pattern he had previou used in carving the reredos 0 of a Neapolitan chun who was “fired” by his landlord on the ground destroying property. * His feelings were hurt, not 5 much that he had been put out of his house, as that work had been so disregarded; and he said that wl people traveled in Italy they liked to look at wc carvings but that in America “they only made mor out of you. ” o Sometimes the suppression of the instinct of wo manship is followed by more disastrous results. Bohemian, whose little girl attended classes at Hi House, in one of his periodic drunken spells had litera 5 o 5 almost choked her to death, and later had commiti suicide when in delirium tremens. His poor wife, w stayed a week at Hull-House after the disaster unti new tenement could be arranged for her, one day show me a gold ring which her husband had made for th betrothal. It exhibited the most exquisite workrm ship, and she said that although in the old country had been a goldsmith, in America he had for twer years shoveled coal in a furnace room of a large mar facturing plant; that whenever she saw one of restless fits, which preceded his drunken peno coming on,” if she could provide him with a bit metal and persuade him to stay at home and work it, he was all right and the time passed without disast but that nothing else would do it.” 1 his story thr a flood of light upon the dead man’s struggle and on t IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 227 pid maladjustment which had broken him down. 11 ly had we never been told ? Why had our interest in 3 : remarkable musical ability of his child blinded us the hidden artistic ability of the father? We had gotten that a long-established occupation may form 5 very foundations of the moral life, that the art with ich a man has solaced his toil may be the salvation lis uncertain temperament. There are many examples of touching fidelity to nigrant parents on the part of their grown children: 10 oung man, who day after day, attends ceremonies 1 ich no longer express his religious convictions and 3 makes his vain effort to interest his Russian Jewish : ler in social problems; a daughter who might earn ch more money as a stenographer could she work 15 n Monday morning till Saturday night, but who etly and docilely makes neckties for low wages be- se she can thus abstain from work Saturdays to ase her father; these young people, like poor Maggie !liver,° through many painful experiences have 20 ched the conclusion that pity, memory, and faithful- s are natural ties with paramount claims, his faithfulness, however, is sometimes ruthlessly >osed upon by immigrant parents who, eager for S ney and accustomed to the patriarchal authority of 25 sant households, hold their children in a stern idage which requires a surrender of all their wages 1 concedes no time or money for pleasures, here are many convincing illustrations that this 238 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE parental harshness often results in juvenile delinquei: A Polish boy of seventeen came to Hull-House one to ask a contribution of fifty cents “towards a fie piece for the funeral of an old Hull-House club be 5 A few questions made it clear that the object fictitious, whereupon the boy broke down and defiantly stated that he wanted to buy two twenty* cent tickets, one for his girl and one for himself, dance of the Benevolent Social Twos; that he hadr i o penny of his own although he had worked in a b foundry for three years and had been advanced tv because he always had to give his pay envelope opened to his father; “just look at the clothes he b me” was his concluding remark. 15 Perhaps the girls are held even more rigidly. I recent investigation of two hundred working girl was found that only five per cent had the use of t! own money and that sixty-two per cent turned in they earned, literally every penny, to their mothers. 20 was through this little investigation that we first ki Marcella, a pretty young German girl who helped widowed mother year after year to care for a la family of younger children. She was content for most part although her mother’s old-country notion: 2 S dress gave her but an infinitesimal amount of her cl wages to spend on her clothes, and she was qi sophisticated as to proper dressing because she s \ silk in a neighborhood department store. Her mot tx IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 229 ie roved of the young man who was showing her eiious attentions and agreed that Marcella should crspt his invitation to a ball, but would allow her not jnny towards a new gown to replace one impossibly n and shabby. Marcella spent a sleepless night and 5 >t bitterly, although she well knew that the doctor’s for the children’s scarlet fever was not yet paid, next day as she was cutting off three yards of lining pink silk, the thought came to her that it would ce her a fine new waist to wear to the ball. She wist- 1 o ry saw it wrapped in paper and carelessly stuffed ) the muff of the purchaser, when suddenly the b|cel fell upon the floor. No one was looking and zk as a flash the girl picked it up and pushed it into blouse. The theft was discovered by the relentless 15 rl artment store detective who, for “the sake of the tlmple, ” insisted upon taking the case into court, n 3 poor mother wept bitter tears over this downfall ler “frommes Madchen’’ and no one had the heart ;ell her of her own blindness. 20 know a Polish boy whose earnings were all given to father who gruffly refused all requests for pocket rfney. One Christmas his little sisters, having been 1 by their mother that they were too poor to have r Christmas presents, appealed to the big brother as 25 pne who was earning money of his own. Flattered by <1 implication, but at the same time quite impecunious, lt 0 night before Christmas he nonchalantly walked 230 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE through a neighboring department store and stj manicure set for one little sister and a string of bea( the other. He was caught at the door by the 1 i detective as one of those children whom each m s department store arrests in the weeks before Chris n at the daily rate of eight to twenty. The younge these offenders are seldom taken into court but a either sent home with a warning or turned over tcj officers of the Juvenile Protective Association. ij 1 ° of these premature law breakers are in searcl j Americanized clothing and others are only looking playthings. They are all distracted by the profiij and variety of the display, and their moral sense is J fused by the general air of open-handedness. 15 These disastrous efforts are not unlike those of rr younger children who are constantly arrested for p thieving because they are too eager to take home or fuel which will relieve the distress and need the constantly hear discussed. The coal on the wag 20 the vegetables displayed in front of the grocery sh the very wooden blocks in the loosened street pa’ are a challenge to their powers to help out at home Bohemian boy who was out on parole from the detention home of the Juvenile Court itself, broi 2 5 back five stolen chickens to the matron for Sun dinner, saying that he knew the Committee were ‘T ing a hard time to fill up so many kids and perh these fowl would help out.” The honest immigi 231 IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN mts, totally Ignorant of American laws and munici- . regulations, often send a child to pick up coal on railroad tracks or to stand at three o'clock in the ning before the side door of a restaurant which s away broken food, or to collect grain for the 5 kens at the base of elevators and standing cars, latter custom accounts for the large number of boys sted for breaking the seals on grain freight cars. It isy for a child thus trained to accept the proposition junk dealer to bring him bars of iron stored in 10 rht yards. Four boys quite recently had thus ied away and sold to one man, two tons of iron. ’our fifths of the children brought into the Juvenile rt in Chicago are the children of foreigners. I he [mans are the greatest offenders, Polish next. Do 15 r children suffer from the excess of virtue in those bnts so eager to own a house and lot? One often a grasping parent in the court, utterly broken down n the Americanized youth who has been brought to f clings as piteously to his peasant father as if he 20 e still a frightened little boy in the steerage. Iany of these children have come to grief through r premature fling into city life, having thrown off mtal control as they have impatiently discarded ign ways. Boys of ten and twelve will refuse to 25 p at home, preferring the freedom of an old brewery It or an empty warehouse to the obedience required heir parents, and for days these boys will live on the 232 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE milk and bread which they steal from the back por<( after the early morning delivery. Such children c plain that there is “no fun” at home. One little cl who was given a vacant lot to cultivate by the ( 5 Garden Association, insisted upon raising only pope and tried to present the entire crop to Hull-House be used for the parties,” with the stipulation that would have “to be invited every single time.” T there are little groups of dissipated young men \ i o pride themselves upon their ability to live wi th working, and who despise all the honest and sober w of their immigrant parents. They are at once a men and a center of demoralization. Certainly the be 1 dered parents, unable to speak English and ignoran 1 s the city, whose children have disappeared for days weeks, have often come to Hull-House, evincing t agony which fairly separates the marrow from the be as if they had discovered a new type of suffering, dev of the healing in familiar sorrows. It is as if they 20 not know how to search for the children without assistance of the children themselves. Perhaps the m f pathetic aspect of such cases is their revelation of | premature dependence of the older and wiser upon 1: young and foolish, which is in itself often responsi t 2 s for the situation because it has given the children undue sense of their own importance and a false secur that they can take care of themselves. On the other hand, an Italian girl who has had lessc IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 233 )oking at the public school, will help her mother to iect the entire family with. American food and ;ehold habits. That the mother has never baked d in Italy — only mixed it in her own house and taken it out to the village oven — makes all the 5 j valuable her daughter’s understanding of the plicated cooking stove. The same thing is true of prl who learns to sew in the public school, and more anything else, perhaps, of the girl who receives irst simple instruction in the care of little children 1 lat skillful care which every tenement-house baby ires if he is to be pulled through his second summer. result of this teaching I recall a young girl who fully explained to her Italian mother that the i>n the babies in Italy were so healthy and the babies 1 jhicago were so sickly, was not, as her mother had oy insisted, because her babies in Italy had goat’s l and her babies in America had cow’s milk, but ; ise the milk in Italy was clean and the milk in iago was dirty. She said that when you milked 2 j own goat before the door, you knew that the milk s:lean, but when you bought milk from the grocery 1 after it had been carried for many miles in the itry, you couldn’t tell whether or not it was fit for : aby to drink until the men from the City Hall, who 2 ivatched it all the way, said that it was all right. 111s through civic instruction in the public schools, ultalian woman slowly became urbanized in the 234 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE sense in which the word was used by her own ancestors, and thus the habits of her entire family modified. The public schools in the immigrant co deserve all the praise as Americanizing agencies ’ scan be bestowed upon them, and there is little < that the fast-changing curriculum in the direction < vacation-school experiments will react still more d ly upon such households. It is difficult to write of the relation of the olde omost foreign-looking immigrants to the childn other people, — the Italians whose fruit carts are simply because they are “dagoes,” or the Ri peddlers who are stoned and sometimes badly in because it has become a code of honor in a gang of 5 to thus express their derision. The members of a tective Association of Jewish Peddlers organiz< Hull-House, related daily experiences in which ol had been treated with such irreverence, cher dignity with such disrespect, that a listener cau o passion of Lear in the old texts, as a platitude < ciated by a man who discovers in it his own exper thrills us as no unfamiliar phrases can possibly do. Greeks are filled with amazed rage when their name is flung at them as an opprobrious epithet. D 5 less these difficulties would be much minimize America, if we faced our own race problem with coi and intelligence, and these very Mediterranean migrants might give us valuable help. Certainly 1 IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 235 ^less conscious than the Anglo-Saxon of color dis¬ cions, perhaps because of their traditional familiarity 1 Carthage and Egypt. They listened with respect I enthusiasm to a scholarly address delivered by lessor Du Bois° at Hull-House on a Lincoln’s birth- 5 1 with apparently no consciousness of that race trence which color seems to accentuate so absurdly, upon my return from various conferences held in interest of “the advancement of colored people,” ve had many illuminating conversations with my 10 aopolitan neighbors. ne celebration of national events has always been irce of new understanding and companionship with nembers of the contiguous foreign colonies, not only een them and their American neighbors but be- 15 n them and their own children. One of our earliest an events was a rousing commemoration of Gari- s birthday, 0 and his imposing bust, presented to i-House that evening, was long the chief ornament r front hall. It called forth great enthusiasm from 20 onnazionali whom Ruskin calls, not the “common le” of Italy, but the “ companion people” because eir power for swift sympathy, huge Hellenic meeting held at Hull-House, in 1 the achievements of the classic period were set 25 both in Greek and English by scholars of well- n repute, brought us into a new sense of fellowship all our Greek neighbors. As the mayor of Chicago 236 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE was seated upon the right hand of the dignified s< i priest of the Greek Church and they were gna alternately in the national hymns of America 1 Greece, one felt a curious sense of the possibilit i s transplanting to new and crude Chicago, some o;:l traditions of Athens itself, so deeply cherished ir:| hearts of this group of citizens. j The Greeks indeed gravely consider their tradi j as their most precious possession and more than on:j o meetings of protest held by the Greek colony ag j the aggressions of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, I i heard it urged that the Bulgarians are trying to el lish a protectorate, not only for their immediate j vantage, but that they may claim a glorious histor fi s their “ barbarous country. ” It is said that on the | of this protectorate, they are already teaching in j schools that Alexander the Great was a Bulgarian j that it will be but a short time before they claim totle himself, an indignity the Greeks will never si o To me personally the celebration of the hundi anniversary of Mazzini’s birth was a matter of \ interest. Throughout the world that day Italians believed in a United Italy came together. The; called the hopes of this man who, with all his dev< s to his country, was still more devoted to humanity who dedicated to the workingmen of Italy an a{ so philosophical, so filled with a yearning for right< ness, that it transcended all national boundaries / IMMIGRANTS, THEIR CHILDREN 237 j:ame a bugle call for “The Duties of Man.” A copy •this document was given to every school child in the blic schools of Italy on this one hundredth anniver- y, and as the Chicago branch of the Society of t ung Italy marched into our largest hall and presented Hull-House an heroic bust of Mazzini, I found my- f devoutly hoping that the Italian youth, who have nmitted their future to America, might indeed be¬ ne “the Apostles of the fraternity of nations” and lit our American citizenship might be built without turbing these foundations which were laid of old CHAPTER XII Tolstoyism The administration of charity in Chicago during winter following the World’s Fair had been of necessj most difficult for, although large sums had been gb to the temporary relief organization which endeavo 5 to care for the thousands of destitute strangers strai ed in the city, we all worked under a sense of desper need and a paralyzing consciousness that our efforts were most inadequate to the situation. During the many relief visits I paid that winter , o tenement houses and miserable lodgings, I was c< stantly shadowed by a certain sense of shame tha , should be comfortable in the midst of such distrc,, I his resulted at times in a curious reaction against , the educational and philanthropic activites in whicl 5 had been engaged. In the face of the desperate hunj and need, these could not but seem futile and supL ficial. The hard winter in Chicago had turned t. thoughts of many of us to these stern matters. |« young friend of mine who came daily to Hull-Hou o consulted me in regard to going into the paper wa , f house belonging to her father that she might there rags with the Polish girls; another young girl took 238 II TOLSTOYISM 239 e in a sweatshop for a month, doing her work so :>ly and thoroughly that the proprietor had no jon that she had not been driven there by need; still 9 others worked in a shoe factory; — and all this ipened before such adventures were undertaken in 5 ter to procure literary material. It was in the follow- f winter that the pioneer effort in this direction, ter Wyckoff’s account of his vain attempt to find jk in Chicago, compelled even the sternest business 1 to drop his assertion that “any man can find work 10 j wants it.” he dealing directly with the simplest human wants • have been responsible for an impression which I ied about with me almost constantly for a period vo years and which culminated finally in a visit to 15 toy, — that the Settlement, or Hull-House at :, was a mere pretense and travesty of the simple jlse “to live with the poor” so long as the residents not share the common lot of hard labor and scant ■; 2 o ctual experience had left me in much the same state ind I had been in after reading Tolstoy’s “What to which is a description of his futile efforts to re- h the unspeakable distress and want in the Moscow tier of 1881, and his inevitable conviction that only 25 /ho literally shares his own shelter and food with needy can claim to have served them, oubtless it is much easier to see “what to do” in 2 4 o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE rural Russia, where all the conditions tend to make contrast as broad as possible between peasant 1, and noble idleness, than it is to see “what to do the interdependencies of the modern industrial < 5 But for that very reason perhaps, Tolstoy’s clear st ment is valuable for that type of conscientious pe in every land who finds it hard, not only to walk in path of righteousness, but to discover where the [ lies. o I had read the books of Tolstoy steadily all the y since “My Religion” had come into my hands mediately after I left college. The reading of that t had made clear that men’s poor little efforts to do r are put forth for the most part in the chill of self- s trust; I became convinced that if the new social oi ever came, it would come by gathering to itself all pathetic human endeavor which had indicated forward direction. But I was most eager to ki whether lolstoy s undertaking to do his daily shat o the physical labor of the world, that labor which is disproportionate to the unnourished strength” of tl by whom it is ordinarily performed, had brought peace! I had time to review carefully many things in s mind during the long days of convalescence follov an illness of typhoid fever which I suffered in autumn of 1895. The illness was so prolonged that health was most unsatisfactory during the follov TOLSTOYISM 241 iter, and the next May I went abroad with my :nd, Miss Smith, to effect if possible a more complete overy. The prospect of seeing Tolstoy filled me with the )e of finding a clew to the tangled affairs of city /erty. I was but one of thousands of our contempor- es who were turning towards this Russian, not as to eer — 1 his message is much too confused and con- dictory for that — but as to a man who has had the lity to lift his life to the level of his conscience, to nslate his theories into action. )ur first few weeks in England were most stimulating, lozen years ago London still showed traces of “that jiting moment in the life of the nation when its nth is casting about for new enthusiasms,” but it meed still more of that British capacity to perform f hard work of careful research and self-examination *ich must precede any successful experiments in cial reform. Of the varied groups and individuals 7use suggestions remained with me for years, I recall n which her well-founded business of rent collecting I; established, and with pardonable pride showed us is ^ Red Cross Square with its cottages, marvelously li:uresque and comfortable, on two sides, and on the l|:d a public hall and common drawing-room for the * of all the tenants; the interior of the latter had been iorated by pupils of Walter Crane 0 with mural fres- 20 ts portraying the heroism in the life of the modern Irkingman. [Vhile all this was warmly human, we also had op- itunities to see something of a group of men and men who were approaching the social problem from 25 r study of economics; among others Mr. and Mrs. iney Webb who were at work on their “Industrial Imocracy” 0 ; Mr. John Hobson 0 who was lecturing on h evolution of modern capitalism. 244 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE We followed factory inspectors on a round of du performed with a thoroughness and a trained int gence which were a revelation of the possibilitie: public service. When it came to visiting Settleme 5 we were at least reassured that they were not fal into identical lines of effort. Canon Ingram, 0 who aj since become Bishop of London, was then wardeidj Oxford House and in the midst of an experiment wl pleased me greatly, the more because it was carriec' o by a churchman. Oxford House had hired all the c cert halls — vaudeville shows we later called then i Chicago — which were found in Bethnal Green, every Saturday night. The residents had censored programs, which they were careful to keep popu s and any workingman who attended a show in Betl Green on a Saturday night, and thousands of them < heard a program the better for this effort. One evening in University Hall Mrs. Hump Ward, 0 who had just returned from Italy, described o effect of the Italian salt tax in a talk which was evidt ly one in a series of lectures upon the economic wro which pressed heaviest upon the poor; at Brown House, 0 at the moment, they were giving prizes to th of their costermonger neighbors who could present s best cared-for donkeys, and the warden, Herbert Ste exhibited almost the enthusiasm of his well-knc brother for that crop of kindliness which can garnered most easily from the acreage where hun TOLSTOYISM 245 lings grow the thickest; at the Bermondsey Settlement ey were rejoicing that their University Extension udents had successfully passed the examinations for j.e University of London. The entire impression re¬ vived in England of research, of scholarship, of organ- led public spirit, was in marked contrast to the im- essions of my next visit in 1900, when the South frican'War 0 had absorbed the enthusiasm of the nation ud the wrongs at ‘The heart of the empire” were dis-- garded and neglected. London, of course, presented sharp differences to ussia where social conditions were written in black id white with little shading, like a demonstration of ie Chinese proverb, “Where one man lives in luxury, , lother is dying of hunger. ” The fair of Nijni-Novgorod° seemed to take us to the iry edge of a civilization so remote and eastern that le merchants brought their curious goods upon the acks of camels or on strange craft riding at anchor on le broad Volga. But even here our letter of intro- uction to Korolenko, 0 the novelist, brought us to a J^alization of that strange mingling of a remote past id a self-conscious present which Russia presents on /ery hand. This same contrast was also shown by the ilgrims trudging on pious errands to monasteries, to imbs, and to the Holy Land itself, with their bleeding ;et bound in rags and thrust into bast sandals, and, on le other hand, by the revolutionists even then ad- 246 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE vocating a Republic which should obtain not only political but also in industrial affairs. We had letters of introduction to Mr. and IV i A Aylmer Maude 0 of Moscow, since well known as s translators of “Resurrection” and others of Tolsto later works, who at that moment were on the eve leaving Russia in order to form an agricultural colcv in South England where they might support themseb by the labor of their hands. We gladly accepted IN o Maude’s offer to take us to Yasnaya Polyana and introduce us to Count Tolstoy, and never did a disci c journey towards his master with more enthusiasm th did our guide. When, however, Mr. Maude actua presented Miss Smith and myself to Count Tolstc 5 knowing well his master’s attitude toward philanthrof he endeavored to make Hull-House appear much me noble and unique than I should have ventured to do. Tolstoy, standing by clad in his peasant garb, listen 1 gravely but, glancing distrustfully at the sleeves of r o traveling gown, which unfortunately at that season we monstrous in size, he took hold of an edge and pulli out one sleeve to an interminable breadth, said qui simply that ‘ there was enough stuff on one arm to ma a frock for a little girl,” and asked me directly if I d 5 not find “such a dress” a “barrier to the people, was too disconcerted to make a very clear explanatio although I tried to say that monstrous as my sleev were they did not compare in size with those of tl TOLSTOYISM 247 )rking girls in Chicago and that nothing would more ectively separate me from “the people” than a cotton Duse following the simple lines of the human form; ^en if I had wished to imitate him and “dress as a °}asant,” it would have been hard to choose which asant among the thirty-six nationalities we had re- lo.ntly counted in our ward. Fortunately the countess me tamy rescue with a recital of her former attempts clothe hypothetical little girls in yards of material t from a train and other superfluous parts of her best ifwn until she had been driven to a firm stand which e advised me to take at once. But neither Countess aflstoy nor any other friend was on hand to help me t of my predicament later, when I was asked who ed” me, and how did I obtain “shelter”? Upon my ply that a farm a hundred miles from Chicago supplied e with the necessities of life, I fairly anticipated the next scathing question: “So you are an absentee land¬ ing? Do you think you will help the people more by ft 1 ding yourself to the crowded city than you would by linfing your own soil?” This new sense of discomfort nit er a failure to till my own soil was increased when ablstoy’s second daughter appeared at the five-o’clock d a table set under the trees, coming straight from the ’ irvest field where she had been working with a group io peasants since five o’clock in the morning, not pre- vinding to work but really taking the place of a peasant tl am an who had hurt her foot. She was plainly much I o I 5 2 o 2 5 248 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE exhausted but neither expected nor received sympai from the members ot a family who were quite aci people should be repeated each day of the year, t 20 seemed to me then that we were all attracted by t 3 sermon of the deed, because Tolstoy had made the c| supreme personal effort, one might almost say the cd frantic personal effort, to put himself into right relaticJ with the humblest people, with the men who tilled ]| 2 5 soil, blacked his boots and cleaned his stables. Doull less the heaviest burden of our contemporaries is a cc] sciousness of a divergence between our democra ] theory on the one hand, that working people have] TOLSTOYISM 249 ;ht to the intellectual resources of society, and the tual fact on the other hand, that thousands of them S 2 so overburdened with toil that there is no leisure 1 r energy left for the cultivation of the mind. We nstantly suffer from the strain and indecision of be- ’ ving this theory and acting as if we did not believe and this man who years before had tried “to get off e backs of the peasants,” who had at least simplified S life and worked with his hands, had come to be a ototype to many of his generation. ' Doubtless all of the visitors sitting in the Tolstoy rden that evening had excused themselves from labor¬ er with their hands upon the theory that they were d ing something more valuable for society in other ! iys. No one among our contemporaries has dissented 1 >m this point of view so violently as I olstoy himself, d yet no man might so easily have excused himself >m hard and rough work on the basis of his genius and his intellectual contributions to the world. So far, ' wever, from considering his time too valuable to he ent in labor in the field or in making shoes, our great 1 st was too eager to know life to be willing to give up is companionship of mutual labor. One instinctively and reasons why it was easier for a Russian than for e rest of us, to reach this conclusion, the Russian 0 asants have a proverb which says: Labor is the lt .use that love lives in,” by which they mean that no ' tq people nor group of people, can come into affec- 250 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE tionate relations with each other unless they carry together a mutual task, and when the Russian peaf talks of labor he means labor on the soil, or, to use phrase of the great peasant, BonderefF, “bread labc 5 1 hose monastic orders founded upon agricultural lal those philosophical experiments like Brook Farm ; many another, have attempted to reduce to action i same truth. Tolstoy himself has written many till his own convictions and attempts in this direction, p iohaps never more tellingly than in the description* Lavin s morning spent in the harvest field, when he 1 his sense of grievance and isolation and felt a strai new brotherhood for the peasants, in proportion as rhythmic motion of his scythe became one with the 15 the long dinner table laid in the garden were 1 various traveling guests, the grown-up daughters, sj the younger children with their governess. The count presided over the usual European dinner served men, but the count and the daughter who had worl 20 all day in the fields, ate only porridge and black bre and drank only kvas, the fare oi the hay-maki peasants. Of course we are all accustomed to the f; that those who perform the heaviest labor, eat t coarsest and simplest fare at the end of the day, but 251s not often that we sit at the same table with th( while we ourselves eat the more elaborate food prepar by some one else s labor, iolstoy ate his simple supp without remark or comment upon the food his farm TOLSTOYISM 251 vid guests preferred to eat, assuming that they, as well is: he, had settled the matter with their own consciences. e'The Tolstoy household that evening was much inter¬ red in the fate of a young Russian spy who had re- ab|ntly come to Tolstoy in the guise of a country school- 5 master, in order to obtain a copy of “Life,” which had t ;en interdicted by the censor of the press. After spend¬ ing the night in talk with Tolstoy, the spy had gone pivay with a copy of the forbidden manuscript but, n ^fortunately for himself, having become converted to 10 blstoy’s views he had later made a full confession to an e authorities and had been exiled to Siberia. Tolstoy, biding that it was most unjust to exile the disciple eiihile he, the author of the book, remained at large, had minted out this inconsistency in an open letter to one 15 a j‘ the Moscow newspapers. I he discussion of this in¬ cident, of course, opened up the entire subject of non- :sistance, and curiously enough I was disappointed in bolstoy’s position in the matter. It seemed to me that rep made too great a distinction between the use of 20 anysical force and that moral energy which can override (bother’s differences and scruples with equal ruthless- 2SS. With that inner sense of mortification with which one nds one’s self at difference with the great authority, I 25 ^called the conviction of the early Hull-House residents |iat whatever of good the Settlement had to offer should | e put into positive terms, that we might live with op-' 252 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOETSE position to no man, with recognition of the good in ev< J man, even the most wretched. We had often deparis from this principle, but had it not in every case beei; confession of weakness, and had we not always fou 5 antagonism a foolish and unwarrantable expenditure energy? The conversation at dinner and afterwards, althou conducted with animation and sincerity, for t moment stirred vague misgivings within me. W ioTolstoy more logical than life warrants? Could t wrongs of life be reduced to the terms of unrequitl labor and all be made right if each person perform! the amount necessary to satisfy his own wants? Was not always easy to put up a strong case if one took tl is naturalistic view of life? But what about the histor view, the inevitable shadings and modifications whi< life itself brings to its own interpretation? Miss Smii and I took a night train back to Moscow in that tumu of feeling which is always produced by contact with 2 ° cons cience making one more of those determined effor to probe to the very foundations of the mysterioi world in which we find ourselves. A horde of perplexir questions, concerning those problems of existence c which in happier moments we catch but fleeting glinnq 2 s ses and at which we even then stand aghast, pursued i relentlessly on the long journey through the great whe; plains of South Russia, through the crowded Ghetto 0 c \\ arsaw, and finally into the smiling fields of German TOLSTOYISM 253 here the peasant men and women were harvesting the ain. I remember that through the sight of those toil- g peasants, I made a curious connection between the ead labor advocated by Tolstoy and the comfort the irvest fields are said to have once brought to Luther 5 hen, much perturbed by many theological difficulties, h suddenly forgot them all in a gush of gratitude for ere bread, exclaiming, “How it stands, that golden dlow corn, on its fine tapered stem; the meek earth, at od’s kind bidding, has produced it once again!” At 10 ast the toiling poor had this comfort of bread labor, id perhaps it did not matter that they gained it un- lowingly and painfully, if only they walked in the ith of labor. In the exercise of that curious power issessed by the theorists to inhibit all experiences 15 hich do not enhance his doctrine, I did not permit yself to recall that which I knew so well — that ;igent and unremitting labor grants the poor no leisure r en in the supreme moments of human suffering and !at “all griefs are lighter with bread.” 20 I may have wished to secure this solace for myself at e cost of the least possible expenditure of time and ,ergy, for during the next month in Germany, when I iad everything of Tolstoy’s that had been translated ito English, German, or French, there grew up in my 25 find a conviction that what I ought to do upon my re- i rn to Hull-House, was to spend at least two hours rery morning in the little bakery which we had recent- 254 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE ly added to the equipment of our coffee-house. T < hours’ work would be but a wretched compromise, Ij it was hard to see how I could take more time outij each day. I had been taught to bake bread in my chi s hood not only as a household accomplishment, but cause my father, true to his miller’s tradition, had sisted that each one of his daughters on her twel birthday must present him with a satisfactory wh< loaf of her own baking, and he was most exigent as othe quality of this test loaf. What could be more keeping with my training and tradition than baki bread? I did not quite see how my activity would fit with that of the German union baker who presided ov the Hull-House bakery but all such matters w< s secondary and certainly could be arranged. It may that I had thus to pacify my aroused conscience befi I could settle down to hear Wagner’s “Ring” at Be reuth; it may be that I had fallen a victim to t phrase, “bread labor”; but at any rate I held fast othe belief that I should do this, through the ent journey homeward, on land and sea, until I actually ; rived in Chicago when suddenly the whole scheii seemed to me as utterly preposterous as it doubth was. The half dozen people invariably waiting to si s me after breakfast, the piles of letters to be opened ai): answered, the demand of actual and pressing hum 1 wants—were these all to be pushed aside and ask ; to wait while I saved my soul by two hours’ work i baking bread? i TOLSTOYISM 255 Although my resolution was abandoned, this may be t best place to record the efforts of more doughty t lls to carry out Tolstoy’s conclusions. It was per- | ps inevitable that Tolstoy colonies should be founded, hough Tolstoy himself has always insisted that each 5 jin should live his life as nearly as possible in the place ltfwhich he was born. The visit Miss Smith and I made tyear or two later to a colony in one of the southern sktes, portrayed for us most vividly both the weakness d the strange august dignity of the Tolstoy position. 10 ; le colonists at Commonwealth held but a short creed, tiey claimed in fact that the difficulty is not to state )\ ith but to make moral conviction operative upon • f tual life, and they announced it their intention “to ey the teachings of Jesus in all matters of labor and 15 f e use of property.” They would thus transfer the idication of creed from the church to the open field, >m dogma to experience. t The day Miss Smith and I visited the Commonwealth lony of threescore souls, they were erecting a house 2 o r the family of a one-legged man, consisting of a wife d nine children, who had come the week before in a rlorn prairie schooner from Arkansas. As this was the Jrgest family the little colony contained, the new house vis to be the largest yet erected. Upon our surprise at 25 I is literal giving “to him that asketh, we inquired if te policy of extending food and shelter to all who ap- pied, without test of creed or ability, might not result i the migration ol all the neighboring poorhouse popu- 256 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE lation into the colony. We were told that this actu;i had happened during the winter until the colony H of corn meal and cow peas had proved so unattract a that the paupers had gone back, for even the poorest)! s the southern poorhouses occasionally supplied haul with the pone if only to prevent scurvy, from which ^ colonists themselves had suffered. The difficulty ofvl poorhouse people had thus settled itself by the sh 5 poverty of the situation, a poverty so biting that 1 10 only ones willing to face it were those sustained b} conviction of its righteousness. The fields and garde were being worked by an editor, a professor, a cler^ man, as well as by artisans and laborers, the fruit the of to be eaten by themselves and their families or 15 any other families who might arrive from Arkans; The colonists were very conventional in matters family relationship and had broken with society only regard to the conventions pertaining to labor ai pioperty. We had a curious experience at the end 20 the day when we were driven into the nearest tow We had taken with us as a guest the wife of the preside of the colony, wishing to give her a dinner at the hot< because she had girlishly exclaimed during a conve sation that at times during the winter she had becom < 2 5 so eager to hear good music that it had seemed to h t as if she were actually hungry for it, almost as hungi as she was for a beefsteak. Yet as we drove away v 1 had the curious sensation that while the experiment w; r ; TOLSTOYISM 257 viously coming to an end, in the midst of its priva- ns it yet embodied the peace of mind which comes him who insists upon the logic of life whether it is sonable or not the fanatic’s joy in seeing his own mula translated into action. At any rate, as we :ched the commonplace southern town of workaday :‘n and women, for one moment its substantial build- nd group of Dukhobors, a religious sect who had crested all of Tolstoy’s followers because of their ral acceptance of non-resistance and other Christian I o 1 5 2 O 2 5 258 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE doctrines which are so strenuously advocated h Tolstoy. It was for their benefit that Tolstoy a finished and published “Resurrection,” brea n through his long-kept resolution against novel wrii ij s After the Dukhobors were settled in Canada, of the, 1 hundred dollars left from the “Resurrection” fu : one half was given to Hull-House. It seemed post) to spend this fund only for the relief of the most pr tive wants of food and shelter on the part of the r 1 i o needy families. CHAPTER XIII Public Activities and Investigations M J)ne of the striking features of our neighborhood jnty years ago, and one to which we never became r mciled, was the presence of huge wooden garbage u es fastened to the street pavement in which the disturbed refuse accumulated day by day. The 5 :em of garbage collecting was inadequate through- the city but it became the greatest menace in a d such as ours, where the normal amount of waste much increased by the decayed fruit and vegetables arded by the Italian and Greek fruit peddlers, and io the residuum left over from the piles of filthy rags ch were fished out of the city dumps and brought to homes of the rag pickers for further sorting and hing. he children of our neighborhood twenty years ago i 5 r ed their games in and around these huge garbage ss. They were the first objects that the toddling I learned to climb; their bulk afforded a barricade i their contents provided missiles in all the battles he older boys; and finally they became the seats 2 o in which absorbed lovers held enchanted converse, 'are obliged to remember that all children eat every- 259 26 o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE thing which they find and that odors have a curious intimate power of entwining themselves into our ten< est memories, before even the residents of Hull-Hc can understand their own early enthusiasm for the s moval of these boxes and the establishment of a be system of refuse collection. It is easy for even the most conscientious citizei Chicago to forget the foul smells of the stockyards the garbage dumps, when he is living so far from tl othat he is only occasionally made conscious of tl existence but the residents of a Settlement are perfc constantly surrounded by them. During our first tl years on Halsted Street, we had established a small cinerator at Hull-House and we had many times s ported the untoward conditions of the ward to the C Hall. We had also arranged many talks for the migrants, pointing out that although a woman r sweep her own doorway in her native village and al the refuse to innocently decay in the open air and s o shine, in a crowded city quarter, if the garbage is properly collected and destroyed, a tenement-hc mother may see her children sicken and die, and t the immigrants must therefore, not only keep their ( houses clean, but must also help the authorities to k 5 the city clean. Possibly our efforts slightly modified the worst c ditions but they still remained intolerable, and fourth summer the situation became for me absolui ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 261 Operate when I realized in a moment of panic that my dicate little nephew for whom I was guardian, could Dt be with me at Hull-House at all unless the sickening ilors were reduced. I may well be ashamed that other dicate children who were torn from their families, )t into boarding school but into eternity, had not long Tore driven me to effective action. Under the direc- on of the first man who came as a resident to Hull- ouse we began a systematic investigation of the city stem of garbage collection, both as to its efficiency in her wards and its possible connection with the death te in the various wards of the city. The Hull-House Woman’s Club had been organized ie year before by the resident kindergartner who had •st inaugurated a mothers’ meeting. The members ime together, however, in quite a new way that sum- er when we discussed with them the high death rate » persistent in our ward. After several club meetings svoted to the subject, despite the fact that the death te rose highest in the congested foreign colonies and )t in the streets in which most of the Irish American ub women lived, twelve of their number undertook in inflection with the residents, to carefully investigate ie condition of the alleys. During August and Septem- ir the substantiated reports of violations of the law nt in from Hull-House to the health department were ie thousand and thirty-seven. For the club woman ho had. finished a long day’s work of washing or ironing 262 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE followed by the cooking of a hot supper, it would h < been much easier to sit on her doorstep during a sunn ■ evening than to go up and down ill-kept alleys and g into trouble with her neighbors over the condition j s their garbage boxes. It required both civic enterp ] and moral conviction to he willing to do this three ev nigs a week during the hottest and most uncomforta months of the year. Nevertheless, a certain numbei women persisted, as did the residents, and three c i o inspectors in succession were transferred from the w; because of unsatisfactory services. Still the death r; remained high and the condition seemed little impro\ throughout the next winter. In sheer desperation, t following spring when the city contracts were award x 5 for the removal of garbage, with the backing of two wt known business men, I put in a bid for the garbage j moval of the nineteenth ward. My paper was thro\ out on a technicality but the incident induced t mayor to appoint me the garbage inspector of the wa 20 I he salary was a thousand dollars a year, and t loss of that political “plum” made a great stir amo the politicians. I he position was no sinecure wheth regarded from the point of view of getting up at six the morning to see that the men were early at work; 2sol following the loaded wagons, uneasily dropping the contents at intervals, to their dreary destination at tl dump; or of insisting that the contractor must increa- the number of his wagons from nine to thirteen an I o i ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 263 )m thirteen to seventeen, although he assured me that nil lost money on every one and that the former in¬ ti ector had let him off with seven; or of taking careless idlords into court because they would not provide the pioper garbage receptacles; or of arresting the tenant 5 10 tried to make the garbage wagons carry away the ntents of his stable. With the two or three residents who nobly stood by, cb set up six of those doleful incinerators which are vi pposed to burn garbage with the fuel collected in the r ey itself. The one factory in town which could utilize tin cans was a window weight factory, and we luged that with ten times as many tin cans as it could e — much less would pay for. We made desperate tempts to have the dead animals removed by the 15 ntractor who was paid most liberally by the city for at purpose but who, we slowly discovered, always ade the police ambulances do the work, delivering the rcasses upon freight cars for shipment to a soap factory Indiana where they were sold for a good price al- 20 lough the contractor himself was the largest stock- blder in the concern. Perhaps our greatest achieve¬ ment was the discovery of a pavement eighteen inches ider the surface in a narrow street, although after it as found we triumphantly discovered a record of its 25 ( istence in the city archives. The Italians living on the reet were much interested but displayed little aston- hment, perhaps because they were accustomed to see 264 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE buried cities exhumed. This pavement became t casus belli 0 between myself and the street commission when I insisted that its restoration belonged to hii after I had removed the first eight inches of garba^ 5 d he matter was finally settled by the mayor himse who permitted me to drive him to the entrance of ti street in what the children called my “garbage phaetoi and who took my side of the controversy. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who hi i o done some excellent volunteer inspection in boi Chicago and Pittsburg, became my deputy and pe foimed the work in a most thoroughgoing manner f( three years. During the last two she was under tl regime of civil service, for in 1895, to the great joy <1 x 5 many citizens, the Illinois legislature made that possibl Many of the foreign-born women of the ward wer much shocked by this abrupt departure into the ways c men, and it took a great deal of explanation to conve the idea even remotely that if it were a womanly tas 20 to go about in tenement houses in order to nurse th sick, it might be quite as womanly to go through th same district in order to prevent the breeding of so called filth diseases. ’ While some of the women enthu siastically approved the slowly changing conditions anc 2 s saw that their housewifely duties logically extended t< the adjacent alleys and streets, they yet were quit* certain that it was not a lady’s job. ” A revelation 0 this attitude was made one day in a conversation whicl ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 265 inspector heard vigorously carried on in a laundry, e of the employees was leaving and was expressing mind concerning the place in no measured terms, iming up her contempt for it as follows: “I would her be the girl who goes about in the alleys than to 5 y here any longer!” \nd yet the spectacle of eight hours’ work for eight irs’ pay, the even-handed justice to all citizens ir- 3 ective of “pull,” the dividing of responsibility be- :en landlord and tenant, and the readiness to enforce 10 dience to law from both, was, perhaps, one of the 5 t valuable demonstrations which could have been de. Such daily living on the part of the office holder >f infinitely more value than many talks on civics after all, we credit most easily that which we see. is i careful inspection combined with other causes, ught about a great improvement in the cleanliness comfort of the neighborhood and one happy day, ;n the death rate of our ward was found to have pped from third to seventh in the list of city wards 20 was so reported to our Woman’s Club, the applause ich followed recorded the genuine sense of participa- 1 in the result, and a public spirit which had “made d.” But the cleanliness of the ward was becoming ;h too popular to suit our all-powerful alderman and, 2 5 ough we felt fatuously secure under the regime of l service, he found a way to circumvent us by linating the position altogether. He introduced an 266 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE I O ordinance into the city council which combined th collection of refuse with the cleaning and repairing c the streets, the whole to be placed under a war superintendent. The office of course was to be fillei 5 under civil service regulations but only men wer eligible to the examination. Although this latter regula tion was afterwards modified in favor of one woman it was retained long enough to put the nineteenth war inspector out of office. Of course our experience in inspecting only made u more conscious of the wretched housing conditions ove which we had been distressed from the first. It wa during the World’s Fair summer that one of the Hull House residents in a public address upon housing reforir i s used as an example of indifferent landlordism a larg block in the neighborhood occupied by small tenemen and stables unconnected with a street sewer, as wa much similar property in the vicinity. In the lectu the resident spared neither a description of the propert 20 nor the name of the owner. The young man who own the property was justly indignant at this public metho of attack and promptly came to investigate the con dition of the property. Together we made a careful tour of the houses and stables and in the face of the con 2s ditions that we found there, I could not but agree with him that supplying South Italian peasants with sanitary appliances seemed a difficult undertaking. Nevertheless he was unwilling that the block should remain in its ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 267 •lorable state, and he finally cut through the dilemma h the rash proposition that he would give a free >e of the entire tract to Hull-House, accompanying offer, however, with the warning remark, that if we uld choose to use the income from the rents in 5 itary improvements we should be throwing our ney away. wen tvhen we decided that the houses were so bad t we could not undertake the task of improving m, he was game and stuck to his proposition that 10 should have a free lease. We finally submitted a 1 that the houses should be torn down and the entire :t turned into a playground, although cautious- ad- ;rs intimated that it would be very inconsistent to for subscriptions for the support of Hull-House when 15 were known to have thrown away an income of two usand dollars a year. We, however, felt that a :tacle of inconsistency was better than one of bad llordism and so the worst of the houses were de- ished, the best three were sold and moved across 20 street under careful provision that they might never used for junkshops or saloons, and a public play- tnd was finally established. Hull-House became •onsible for its management for ten years, at the of which time it was turned over to the City Play- 2 5 ind Commission although from the first the city de- id a policeman who was responsible for its general ir and who became a valued adjunct of the House. 268 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE During fifteen years this public-spirited owner of t property paid all the taxes, and when the block v finally sold he made possible the playground equipme of a near-by school yard. On the other hand, the c 5 possessed tenants, a group of whom had to be evict by legal process before their houses could be torn dov have never ceased to mourn their former estates. Oe the other day I met upon the street an old Itali harness maker, who said that he had never succeed ioso well anywhere else nor found a place that “seem so much like Italy.” Festivities of various sorts were held on this eai playground, always a May day celebration with i Maypole dance and its May queen. I remember th 15 one year the honor of being queen was offered to t little girl who should pick up the largest number scraps of paper which littered all the streets and alle} The children that spring had been organized into league and each member had been provided with a st 20 piece of wire upon the sharpened point of which str bits of paper were impaled and later soberly counted ( into a large box in the Hull-House alley. The litt Italian girl who thus won the scepter took it ve gravely as the just reward of hard labor, and we we 2 s all so absorbed in the desire for clean and tidy stree that we were wholly oblivious to the incongruity of th selecting “the queen of love and beauty.” It was at the end of the second year that we receiv I ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 269 isit from the warden of Toynbee Hall° and his wife, they were returning to England from a journey and the world. They had lived in East London for ly years, and had been identified with the public vements for its betterment. They were much s -ked that, in a new country with conditions still ;tic and hopeful, so little attention had been paid to eriments and methods of amelioration which had ady been tried; and they looked in vain through our ary for blue books and governmental reports which 1 (>rded painstaking study into the conditions of lish cities. hey were the first of a long line of English visitors xpress the conviction that many things in Chicago i untoward, not through paucity of public spirit but 1 ugh a lack of political machinery adapted to modern life. This was not all of the situation but perhaps casual visitor could be expected to see that these Iters of detail seemed unimportant to a city in the flush of youth, impatient of correction and con- 2 :ed that all would be well with its future. The most ous faults were those connected with the congested ;ing of the immigrant population, nine tenths of 1 from the country, who carried on all sorts of itional activities in the crowded tenements. That 2 oup of Greeks should be permitted to slaughter p in a basement, that Italian women should be ?ed to sort over rags collected from the city dumps, 270 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE not only within the city limits hut in a court swarm with little children, that immigrant bakers should c tinue unmolested to bake bread for their neighbors unspeakably filthy^ spaces under the pavement, s peared incredible to visitors accustomed to careful c regulations. I recall two visits made to the ItaL quarter by John Burns — the second, thirteen yei| after the first. During the latter visit it seemed to L unbelievable that a certain house owned by a r o Italian should have been permitted to survive. He f membered with the greatest minuteness the positid of the houses on the court, with the exact space betwe the front and rear tenements, and he asked at 01 whether we had been able to cut a window into a d; shall as he had recommended thirteen years before. J though we were obliged to confess that the landlc would not permit the window to be cut, we were a to report that a City Homes Association had exis : for ten years; that following a careful study of tenemr oconditions in Chicago, the text of which had be' written by a Hull-House resident, the association E obtained the enactment of a model tenement-hoijt code, and that their secretary had carefully watched In administration of the law for years so that its operatiii 5 might not be minimized by the granting of too man exceptions in the city council. Our progress still seenov slow to Mr. Burns because in Chicago the actual hou were quite unchanged, embodying features long sir ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 271 lared illegal in London. Only this year could we re reported to him, had he again come to challenge that the provisions of the law had at last been ex- ded to existing houses and that a conscientious corps nspectors under an efficient chief, were fast remedy- the most glaring evils, while a band of nurses and •tors were following hard upon the “trail of the white 5 y trse. rhe mere consistent enforcement of existing laws 1 efforts for their advance often placed Hull-House, least temporarily, into strained relations with its ghbors. I recall a continuous warfare against local dlords who would move wrecks of old houses as a :leus for new ones in order to evade the provisions of : building code, and a certain Italian neighbor who s filled with bitterness because his new rear tenement s discovered to be illegal. It seemed impossible to ke him understand that the health of the tenants s in any wise as important as his undisturbed rents. Nevertheless many evils constantly arise in Chicago m congested housing which wiser cities forestall and :vent: the inevitable boarders crowded into a dark lement already too small for the use of the im- »rant family occupying it; the surprisingly large nber of delinquent girls who have become criminally olved with their own fathers and uncles; the school Idren who cannot find a quiet spot in which to read study and who perforce go into the streets each 272 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE evening; the tuberculosis superinduced and fostered 1 the inadequate rooms and breathing spaces. One the Hull-House residents, under the direction of Chicago physician who stands high as an authority < 5 tuberculosis and who devotes a large proportion of 1 time to our vicinity, made an investigation into housii conditions as related to tuberculosis with a result - startling as that of the “lung block” in New York. It is these subtle evils of wretched and inadequa s o housing which are often most disastrous. In the sur mer of 1902 during an epidemic of typhoid fever j which our ward, although containing but one thirt sixth of the population of the city, registered one six' of the total number of deaths, two of the Hull-Hou s residents made an investigation of the methods jj plumbing in the houses adjacent to conspicuous grouj of fever cases. They discovered among the people wl had been exposed to the infection, a widow who hi lived in the ward for a number of years, in a comfortab; olittle house of her own. Although the Italian in, migrants were closing in all round her, she was n< willing to sell her property and to move away until si had finished the education of her children. In the meai time she held herself quite aloof from her Italian neigl s bors and could never be drawn into any of the publ efforts to secure a better code of tenement-hou; sanitation. Her two daughters were sent to an eastei college. One June when one of them had graduate ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 273 l the other still had two years before she took her | ;ree, they came to the spotless little house and to ir self-sacrificing mother for the summer holiday, ey both fell ill with typhoid fever and one daughter d because the mother’s utmost efforts could not keep infection out of her own house. 1 he entire disaster )rds, perhaps, a fair illustration of the futility of the ividual conscience which would isolate a family from ; rest of the community and its interests. The careful information collected concerning the I tapostion of the typhoid cases to the various systems dumbing and nonplumbing, was made the basis of a :teriological study by another resident, Dr. Alice imilton, 0 as to the possibility of the infection having 1 n carried by flies. Her researches were so convincing 11 they have been incorporated into the body of hntific data supporting that theory, but there were I) practical results from the investigation. It was bovered that the wretched sanitary appliances lough which alone the infection could have become I widely spread, would not have been permitted to (lain, unless the city inspector had either been ninally careless or open to the arguments of favored i dlords. The agitation finally resulted in a long and stirring tl before the civil service board of half of the em- yees in the Sanitary Bureau, with the final discharge eleven out of the entire force of twenty-four. The 274 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE inspector in our neighborhood was a kindly old m; greatly distressed over the affair, and quite unable understand why he should not have used his disereti as to the time when a landlord should he forced to p 5 in modern appliances. If he was “very poor,” or “ji about to sell his place,” or “sure that the house wot be torn down to make room for a factory,” why shot one “inconvenience” him? The old man died SO' after the trial, feeling persecuted to the very last a i ionot in the least understanding what it was all aboi We were amazed at the commercial ramifications whi graft in the City Hall involved and at the indignati which interference with it produced. Hull-House lc some large subscriptions as the result of this investig 1 s tion, a loss which, if not easy to bear, was at least coi prehensible. We also uncovered unexpected graft connection with the plumbers’ unions, and but for t fearless testimony of one of their members, could nev have brought the trial to a successful issue. 20 Inevitable misunderstanding also developed in co nection with the attempt on the part of Hull-Hou residents to prohibit the sale of cocaine to minor which brought us into sharp conflict with many dru gists. I recall an Italian druggist living on the edge « 2 5 the neighborhood, who finally came with a committt of lus fellow countrymen to see what Hull-House w T ante of him, thoroughly convinced that no such effort coul be disinterested. One dreary trial after another ha ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 275 :n lost through the inadequacy of the existing legis- ion and after many attempts to secure better legal ulation of its sale, a new law with the cooperation of kny agencies was finally secured in 1907. Through all Is the Italian druggist, who had greatly profited by A sale of cocaine to boys, only felt outraged and fised. And yet the thought of this campaign brings lore my mind with irresistible force, a young Italian jp- who died — a victim to the drug at the age of Jenteen. He had been in our kindergarten as a hand- ine merry child, in our clubs as a vivacious boy, and in gradually there was an eclipse of all that was Imated and joyous and promising, and when I at last him in his coffin, it was impossible to connect that >;gard shriveled body with what I had known before. V midwife investigation, undertaken in connection h the Chicago Medical Society, while showing the 1 at need of further state regulation in the interest of the 1st ignorant mothers and helpless children, brought into conflict with one of the most venerable of all toms. Was all this a part of the unending struggle ween the old and new, or were these oppositions so :xpected and so unlooked for merely a reminder of t old bit of wisdom that “there is no guarding against ^rpretations”? Perhaps more subtle still, they were i to that very super-refinement of disinterestedness ich will not justify itself, that it may feel superior to die opinion. Some of our investigations of course I o I 5 2 o 2 5 276 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE had no such untoward results, such as “An Intens Study of Truancy” undertaken by a resident of Eli House in connection with the compulsory educati department of the Board of Education and the Visiti 5 Nurses Association. The resident, Mrs. Britton, 0 wlj having had charge of our children’s clubs for ma years, knew tnousands of children in the neigh.borho( 1 made a detailed study of three hundred families, traci back the habitual truancy of the children to econon ioand social causes. This investigation preceded a me interesting conference on truancy held under a coi mittee of which I was a member from the Chica Board of Education. It left lasting results upon t administration of the truancy law as well as the c 1 5 operation of volunteer bodies. We continually conduct small but careful investig, tions at Hull-House, which may guide us in our ir mediate doings such as two recently undertaken 1 Mrs. Britton, one upon the reading of school childrr 20 before new books were bought for the children’s civ libraries, and another on the proportion of tuberculos among school children, before we opened a little expei mental outdoor school on one of our balconies. Son of the Hull-House investigations are purely negative i 2 s result; we once made an attempt to test the fatigue < factory girls in order to determine how far overwor superinduced the tuberculosis to which such a surprisin number of them were victims. The one scientific ir ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 277 rument it seemed possible to use was an ergograph, 0 a mplicated and expensive instrument kindly lent to from the physiological laboratory of the University Chicago. I remember the imposing procession we ade from Hull-House to the factory full of working 5 )men, in which the proprietor allowed us to make the sts; first there was the precious instrument on a hand tck guarded by an anxious student and the young lysician who was going to take the tests every after- on; then there was Dr. Hamilton, the resident in 10 arge of the investigation, walking with a scientist who is interested to see that the instrument was properly stalled; I followed in the rear to talk once more to e proprietor of the factory to be quite sure that he >uld permit the experiment to go on. T he result of all 15 is preparation, however, was to have the instrument bord less fatigue at the end of the day than at the tginning, not because the girls had not worked hard id were not “dog tired” as they confessed, but be¬ muse the instrument was not fitted to find it out. 20 For many years we have administered a branch lition of the federal post office at Hull-House, which h applied for in the first instance because our neigh- :rs lost such a large percentage of the money they lit to Europe, through the commissions to middle 2 5 fen. The experience in the post office constantly gave data for urging the establishment of postal savings i we saw one perplexed immigrant after another turn- 278 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE ing away in bewilderment when he was told that i United States post office did not receive savings. We find increasingly, however, that the best resi are to be obtained in investigations as in other unc s takings, by combining our researches with those other public bodies or with the state itself. When 1 the Chicago Settlements found themselves distres over the condition of the newsboys who, because tlj are merchants and not employees, do not come un :othe provisions of the Illinois child labor law, tl united in the investigation of a thousand young ne^ boys, who were all interviewed on the streets during i same twenty-four hours. 1 heir school and domes status was easily determined later, for many of the be s lived in the immediate neighborhoods of the ten Sett j ments which had undertaken the investigation. \ report embodying the results of the investigation reco mended a city ordinance containing features from t Boston and Buffalo regulations, and although o ordinance was drawn up and a strenuous effort made to bring it to the attention of the aldermen, no of them would introduce it into the city council withe newspaper backing. We were able to agitate for again at the annual meeting of the National Ch s Labor Committee which was held in Chicago in 19c and which was of course reported in papers through the entire country. 1 his meeting also demonstrat that local measures can sometimes be urged m ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 279 fectively when joined to the efforts of a national body, ldoubtedly the best discussions ever held upon the leration and status of the Illinois law, were those illicit took place then. The needs of the Illinois chil- ■ en were regarded in connection with the children of 5 e nation and advanced health measures for Illinois sire compared with those of other states. \ The investigations of Hull-House thus tend to be krged with those of larger organizations, from the in¬ stigation of the social value of saloons, made for the 10 v,»mmittee of Fifty in 1896, to the one on infant mortal- tj' in relation to nationality, made for the American nademy of Science in 1909. This is also true of Hull- cpuse activities in regard to public movements, some ti which are inaugurated by the residents of other 1 s fSttlements, as the Chicago School of Civics and ifilanthropy, founded by the splendid efforts of Dr. i aham Taylor, 0 for many years head of Chicago Com- >ns. All of our recent investigations into housing ve been under the department of investigation of this 20 100I with which several of the Hull-House residents si identified, quite as our active measures to secure liter housing conditions have been carried on with i City Homes Association and through the coopera- n of one of our residents, who several years ago was 25 pointed a sanitary inspector on the city staff. ‘Perhaps Dr. Taylor himself offers the best possible ample of the value of Settlement experience to public 280 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE undertakings, in his manifold public activities of wf a c(| mission recently appointed by the governor of Illii j to report upon the best method of Industrial Insura 5 or Employer’s Liability Acts, and his influence securing another to study into the subject of Industi Diseases. The actual factory investigation under ' latter is in charge of Dr. Hamilton, of Hull-Hoi whose long residence in an industrial neighborhood owell as her scientific attainment, give her pecu! qualifications for the undertaking. And so a Settlement is led along from the concrete: the abstract, as may easily be illustrated. Many ye ago a tailors’ union meeting at Hull-House asked < s cooperation in tagging the various parts of a man’s c< in such wise as to show the money paid to the peo who had made it; one tag for the cutting and anotl for the buttonholes, another for the finishing and so ■ the resulting total to be compared with the selling pi oof the coat itself. It quickly became evident that t had no way of computing how much of this larger b. ance was spent for salesmen, commercial travelers, r< and management, and the poor tagged coat was fina left hanging limply in a closet as if discouraged with 1 s attempt. But the desire of the manual worker to kn the relation of his own labor to the whole is not oi legitimate but must form the basis of any intelligt action for his improvement. It was therefore with t one might instance his work at the moment upon ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 281 pe of reform in the sewing trades that the Hull- >use residents testified before the Federal Industrial immission in 1900, and much later with genuine en- hsiasm joined with trades-unionists and other public- rited citizens in an industrial exhibit which made a 5 ’iphic presentation of the conditions and rewards of >or. The large casino building in which it was held s filled every day and evening for two weeks, showing w popular such information is, if it can be presented iphically. As an illustration of this same moving 1 m the smaller to the larger, I might instance the arts of Miss McDowell 0 of the University of Chicago :tlement, and others, in urging upon Congress the :essity for a special investigation into the condition women and children in industry because we had dis- 1 /ered the insuperable difficulties of smaller investi- ions, notably one undertaken for the Illinois Bureau Labor by Mrs. Van der Vaart of Neighborhood >use and by Miss Breckinridge of the University of icago. This investigation made clear that it was as 2 possible to detach the girls working in the stockyards m their sisters in industry, as it was to urge special islation on their behalf. [n the earlier years of the American Settlements, the idents were sometimes impatient with the accepted 2 thods of charitable administration and hoped, lough residence in an industrial neighborhood, to (cover more cooperative and advanced methods of 282 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE dealing with the problems of poverty which are dependent upon industrial maladjustment. But dur; twenty years, the Settlements have seen the charita people, through their very knowledge of the poor, cc s stantly approach nearer to those methods forme designated as radical. I he residents, so far from holdi aloof from organized charity, find testimony, certair in the National Conferences, that out of the most p< sistent and intelligent efforts to alleviate poverty, v ioin all probability arise the most significant suggestio for eradicating poverty. In the hearing before a co gressional committee for the establishment of a Ch dren s Bureau, residents in American Settlemen joined their fellow philanthropists in urging the ne 15 of this indispensable instrument for collecting and d seminating information which would make possib concerted intelligent action on behalf of children. Mr. Howells has said that we are all so besotted wi our novel reading that we have lost the power of seeir 20 certain aspects of life with any sense of reality becau we aie continually looking for the possible romanc The description might apply to the earlier years of tl American settlement, but certainly the later years ai filled with discoveries in actual life as romantic as the 2 s are unexpected. If I may illustrate one of these romai tic discoveries from my own experience, I would cite tb indications of an internationalism as sturdy and viri as it is unprecedented which I have seen in our co ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS 283 apolitan neighborhood: when a South Italian Catho- : is forced by the very exigencies of the situation to take friends with an Austrian Jew representing an¬ il er nationality and another religion, both of which t into all his most cherished prejudices, he finds it 5 irder to utilize them a second time and gradually loses em. He thus modifies his provincialism for if an old emy working by his side has turned into a friend, al- ost anything may happen. When, therefore, I he¬ me identified with the peace movement both in its 10 ternational and National Conventions, I hoped that is internationalism engendered in the immigrant larters of American cities might be recognized as an ective instrument in the cause of peace. I first set it rth with some misgiving before the Convention held 1 s Boston in 1904 and it is always a pleasure to recall e hearty assent given to it by Professor Williamjames. I have always objected to the phrase “sociological boratory” applied to us, because Settlements should : something much more human and spontaneous than 20 ; ch a phrase connotes, and yet it is inevitable that the sidents should know their own neighborhoods more oroughly than any other, and that their experiences ere should affect their convictions, j, Years ago I was much entertained by a story told 25 ; the Chicago Woman’s Club by one of its ablest Members in the discussion following a paper of mine on |rhe Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall.” She said that 284 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE 5 o when she was a little girl playing in her mother’s gard she one day discovered a small toad who seemed to very forlorn and lonely, although as she did not in least know how to comfort him, she reluctantly left \ to his fate; later in the day, quite at the other end the garden, she found a large toad, also apparently wi out family and friends. With a heart full of tenl sympathy, she took a stick and by exercising infin patience and some skill, she finally pushed the lit toad through the entire length of the garden into t company of the big toad, when, to her inexpressi horror and surprise, the big toad opened his mouth a l V l< T >i ■i I swallowed the little one. The moral of the tale was cle applied to people who lived tc where they did r 5 naturally belong, although I protested that was ( actly what we wanted — to be swallowed and digest to disappear into the bulk of the people. Twenty years later I am willing to testify that sorr thing of the sort does take place after years of identific o tion with an industrial community. CHAPTER XIV Civic Cooperation One of the first lessons we learned at Hull-House was tat private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal th the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited. We -so quickly came to realize that there are certain types j wretchedness from which every private philanthropy 5 1 rinks and which are cared for only in those wards of e county hospital provided for the wrecks of vicious ring or in the city’s isolation hospital for smallpox ttients. I have heard a broken-hearted mother exclaim when 1 :r erring daughter came home at last, too broken and seased to be taken into the family she had disgraced, There is no place for her but the top floor of the ounty Hospital; they will have to take her there,” and is only after every possible expedient had been tried 1 suggested. This aspect of governmental responsi- lity was unforgetably borne in upon me during the nallpox epidemic following the World’s Fair, when le of the residents, Mrs. Kelley, as State factory In¬ jector, was much concerned in discovering and destroy- 2 g clothing which was being finished in houses con- ining unreported cases of smallpox. The deputy most 285 I o I 5 2 O 2 5 286 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE successful in locating such cases lived at Hull-Ho during the epidemic because he did not wish to exp his own family. Another resident, Miss Lathrop, a membei of the State Board of Charities, went bs and forth to the crowded pest house which had bt hastily constructed on a stretch of prairie west of t city. As Hull-House was already so exposed, it seem best for the special smallpox inspectors from the Boa of Health to take their meals and change their clothi there before they went to their respective homes. J of these officials had accepted without question and implicit in public office, the obligation to carry on t dangerous and difficult undertakings for w 7 hich priva philanthropy is unfitted, as if the commonalty of cor passion represented by the State was more comprehen mg than that of any individual group. It was as early as our second winter on Halst< Stieet that one of the Hull-House residents received i appointment from the Cook County agent as a count visitor. She reported at the agency each morning, an all the cases within a radius of ten blocks from Hul House were given to her for investigation. This ga\ her a legitimate opportunity for knowing the poore; people in the neighborhood and also for understandin the county method of outdoor relief. The commissions were at first dubious of the value of such a visitor ar predicted that a woman would be a perfect “co chute” for giving away county supplies, but the CIVIC COOPERATION 287 adually came to depend upon her suggestion and !| Ivice. In 1893 this same resident, Miss Julia C. Lathrop, 0 ras appointed by the governor a member of the Illinois : ate Board of Charities. She served in this capacity r two consecutive terms and was later reappointed to third term. Perhaps her most valuable contribution wards the enlargement and reorganization of the laritable institutions of the State came through her timate knowledge of the beneficiaries, and her ex¬ igence demonstrated that it is only through long sidence among the poor that an official could have arned to view public institutions as she did, from the andpoint of the inmates rather than from that of the anagers. Since that early day, residents of Hull- louse have spent much time in working for the civil rrvice methods of appointment for employees in the runty and state institutions; for the establishment of tate colonies for the care of epileptics; and for a dozen (her enterprises which occupy that borderland between uaritable effort and legislation. In this borderland we c operate in many civic enterprises for I think we may cairn that Hull-House has always held its activities [rhtly, ready to hand them over to whosoever would (rry them on properly. Miss Starr had early made a collection of framed potographs, largely of the paintings studied in her art ass, which became the basis of a loan collection first 288 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE used by the Hull-House students and later extended the public schools. It may be fair to suggest that t effort was the nucleus of the Public School Art Soci< which was later formed in the city and of which M 5 Starr was the first president. In our first two summers we had maintained th baths in the basement of our own house for the use the neighborhood and they afforded some expener.’ and argument for the erection of the first public bat xo house in Chicago, which was built on a neighbori street and opened under the city Board of Health. T lot upon which it was erected belonged to a friend j Hull-House who offered it to the city without rent, aij this enabled the city to erect the first public bath froj 15 the small appropriation of ten thousand dollars. Gre fear was expressed by the public authorities that tl baths would not be used and the old story of the bat tubs in model tenements which had been turned in coal bins was often quoted to us. We were supplie 20 however, with the incontrovertible argument that our adjacent third square mile there were in 1892 bi three bathtubs and that this fact was much complaine of by many of the tenement-house dwellers. Our cor tention was justified by the immediate and overflowin 2 5 use of the public baths, as we had before been sustaine in the contention that an immigrant population woul respond to opportunities for reading when the Publi Library Board had established a branch reading roor at Hull-House. CIVIC COOPERATION 289 We also quickly discovered that nothing brought us I absolutely into comradeship with our neighbors as utual and sustained effort such as the paving of a reet, the closing of a gambling house, or the restora- 3n of a veteran police sergeant. , Several of these earlier attempts at civic cooperation [?re undertaken in connection with the Hull-House en’s Club which had been organized in the spring of 93, had been incorporated under a state charter of ; own and had occupied a club room in the gymnasium hiding. This club obtained an early success in one of e political struggles in the ward and thus fastened >on itself a specious reputation for political power. It is at last so torn by the dissensions of two political ctions which attempted to capture it that, although is still an existing organization, it has never regained e prestige of its first five years. Its early political ccess came in a campaign Hull-House had instigated ainst a powerful alderman who has held office for are than twenty years in the nineteenth ward, and 10, although notoriously corrupt, is still firmly in- snched among his constituents. Hull-House has had to do with three campaigns I ganized against him. In the first one he was apparent- only amused at our “Sunday School” effort and did tie to oppose the election to the aldermanic office of a maber of the Hull-House Men’s Club who thus be- me his colleague in the city council. When Hull- however, made an effort in the following spring 290 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE against the reelection of the alderman himself, we countered the most determined and skillful opposition In these campaigns we doubtless depended too mu upon the idealistic appeal, for we did not yet comprehe 5 the element of reality always brought into the politic struggle in such a neighborhood where politics deal directly with getting a job and earning a living. We soon discovered that approximately one out every five voters in the nineteenth ward at that tir i o held a job dependent upon the good will of the aide man. There were no civil service rules to interfere ai the unskilled voter swept the street and dug the sewe, as secuie in his position as the more sophisticated vot who tended a bridge or occupied an office chairin the Cii 15 Hall. The alderman was even more fortunate in findir places with the franchise-seeking corporations; it toe us some time to understand why so large a proportic of our neighbors were street-car employees and wh we had such a large club composed solely of telephor 20girls. Our powerful alderman had various methods < intrenching himself. Many people were indebted t him for his kindly services in the police station and th, justice courts, for in those days Irish constituents easil broke the peace, and before the establishment of th 2 s Juvenile Court, boys were arrested for very trivi; offenses; added to these were hundreds of constituent indebted to him for personal kindness, from the peddle who received a free license to the business man wh CIVIC COOPERATION 291 d a railroad pass to New York. Our third campaign ainst him, when we succeeded in making a serious pression upon his majority, evoked from his hench- ;n the same sort of hostility which a striker so in- itably feels against the man who would take his job, en sharpened by the sense that the movement for orm came from an alien source. Another result of the campaign was an expectation the part of our new political friends that Hull-House >uld perform like offices for them, and there resulted dless confusion and misunderstanding because in my cases we could not even attempt to do what the lerman constantly did with a right good will. When protected a law breaker from the legal consequences 3 his act, his kindness appeared, not only to himself :t to all beholders, like the deed of a powerful and ndly statesman. When Hull-House on the other hand 1 listed that a law must be enforced, it could but ap- ar like the persecution of the offender. We were rtainly not anxious for consistency nor for individual hievement, but in a desire to foster a higher political >rality and not to lower our standards, we constantly ished with the existing political code. We also un- I ttingly stumbled upon a powerful combination of uch our alderman was the political head, with its jinking, its ecclesiastical, and its journalistic represent- 1 ves, and as we followed up the clew and naively told i we discovered, we of course laid the foundations for 292 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE opposition which has manifested itself in many fo the most striking expression of it was an attack i Hull-House lasting through weeks and months 1 Chicago daily newspaper which has since ce 5 publication. During the third campaign I received many am mous letters those from the men often obscene, tl from the women revealing that curious connection tween prostitution and the lowest type of politics w i o every city tries in vain to hide. I had offers from men in the city prison to vote properly if relea various communications from lodging-house keeper to the prices of the vote they were ready to deli 1 everywhere appeared that animosity which is evo i s only when a man feels that his means of livelihoo threatened. n c e 3 >s •f Ci 1 d a: d z As I look back, I am reminded of the state of of Kipling’s newspaper men who witnessed a vole*, eruption at sea, in which unbelievable deep-sea creati owere expelled to the surface, among them an enorm white serpent, blind and smelling of musk, whose de thioes thrashed the sea into a fury. Whth professio instinct unimpaired, the journalists carefully obser the uncanny creature never designed for the eyes s men; but a few days later, when they found themsel in a comfortable second-class carriage, traveling fr Southampton to London between trim hedgerows smug English villages, they concluded that the CIVIC COOPERATION 293 oHence was too sensational to be pat before the British iblic, and it became improbable even to themselves. Many subsequent years of living in kindly neighbor- end fashion with the people of the nineteenth ward p produced upon my memory the soothing effect of 5 noli second-class railroad carriage and many of these tli iticaUexperiences have not only become remote but neadv seem improbable. On the other hand, these vjnpaigns were not without their rewards; one of them ujs a quickened friendship both with the more sub- 10 agntial citizens in the ward and with a group of fine ding voters whose devotion to Hull-House has never liJce failed; another was a sense of identification with oiplic-spirited men throughout the city who con- oouted money and time to what they considered a 15 lant effort against political corruption. I remember dyoung professor from the University of Chicago :a|o with his wife came to live at Hull-House, traveling tuff long distance every day throughout the autumn Jl winter that he might qualify as a nineteenth-ward 20 efer in the spring campaign. He served as a watcher oj.he polls and it was but a poor reward for his devotion It he was literally set upon and beaten up, for in those s >d old days such things frequently occurred. Many 1 other case of devotion to our standard, so recklessly 25 n »ed, might be cited but perhaps more valuable than 2 t of these was the sense of identification we obtained f h the rest of Chicago. 294 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE So far as a Settlement can discern and bring to lc consciousness neighborhood needs which are comn needs, and can give vigorous help to the munici measures through which such needs shall be met 5 fulfills its most valuable function. To illustrate fi our first effort to improve the street paving in vicinity, we found that when we had secured the c sent of the majority of the property owners on a gr street for a new paving, the alderman checked the otire plan through his kindly service to one man who 1 appealed to him to keep the assessments down. 1 street long remained a shocking mass of wet, dilapida i cedar blocks, where children were sometimes mired f they floated a surviving block in the water wh j- s speedily filled the holes whence other blocks had b<* extracted for fuel. And yet when we were able demonstrate that the street paving had thus been duced into cedar pulp by the heavily loaded wagons j an adjacent factory, that the expense of its repav o should be borne from a general fund and not by the p property owners, we found that we could all unite advocating reform in the method of repaving assc ments, and the alderman himself was obliged to co into such a popular movement. The Nineteenth W; 5 Improvement Association which met at Hull-Hoi during two winters, was the first body of citizens a to make a real impression upon the local paving sit' tion. They secured an expert to watch the paving a: CIVIC COOPERATION 2 9S it down to be sure that their half of the paving money well expended. In the belief that property values ild be thus enhanced, the common aim brought to- ter the more prosperous people of the vicinity, some- it as the Hull-House Cooperative Coal Association 5 light together the poorer ones, remember that during the second campaign against alderman, Governor Pingree 0 of Michigan came to t at Hull-House. He said that the stronghold of i a man was not the place in which to start municipal i o meration; that good aldermen should be elected n the promising wards first, until a majority of est men in the city council should make politics un¬ itable for corrupt men. We replied that it was cult to divide Chicago into good and bad wards, but i 5 : a new organization called the Municipal Voters’ gue was attempting to give to the well-meaning ;r in every ward throughout the city, accurate in¬ nation concerning the candidates and their relation, : and present, to vital issues. One of our trustees, 20 • was most active in inaugurating this League, al- s said that his nineteenth-ward experience had con- | :ed him of the unity of city politics, and that he itantly used our campaign as a challenge to the roused citizens living in wards less conspicuously 25 upt. ertainly the need for civic cooperation was obvious lany directions, and in none more strikingly than in 296 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE that organized effort which must be carried on i ceasingly if young people are to be protected from darker and coarser dangers of the city. The coopera between Hull-House and the Juvenile Protect s Association came about gradually, and it seems nov most inevitably. From our earliest days we saw m boys constantly arrested, and I had a number of ri enlightening experiences in the police station with Irish lad whose mother upon her deathbed had beg 10 me to look after him.” We were distressed by gangs of very little boys who would sally forth with enterprising leader in search of old brass and ir sometimes breaking into empty houses for the sake the faucets or lead pipe which they would sell for a g< 1 s price to a junk dealer. With the money thus obtaii they would buy cigarettes and beer or even can which could be conspicuously consumed in the a where they might enjoy the excitement of being s and suspected by the “coppers.” From the third y 20 of Hull-House, one of the residents held a semi-ofli position in the nearest police station; at least the s geant agreed to give her provisional charge of ev boy and girl under arrest for a trivial offense. Mrs. Stevens, who performed this work for seve 2 5 years, became the first probation officer of the Juver Couit when it w~as established in Cook County in 18 She was the sole probation officer at first, but at time of her death, which occurred at Hull-House CIVIC COOPERATION 2 97 io, she was the senior officer of a corps of six. Her : re experience had fitted her to deal wisely with way- id chilchen. She had gone into a New England cotton at the age o! thirteen, where she had promptly lost index finger of her right hand through “careless- > she was told, and no one then seemed to under- id that freedom from care was the prerogative of dhood. Later she became a typesetter and was one he first women in America to become a member of typographical union, retaining her “card” through he later years of editorial work. As the Juvenile rt developed, the committee of public-spirited ens who first supplied only Mrs. Stevens’ salary, • maintained a corps of twenty-two such officers; iral of these were Hull-House residents who brought fie house for many years a sad little procession of ilren struggling against all sorts of handicaps. When Hation was secured which placed the probation iers upon the pay roll of the county, it was a chai¬ se to the efficiency of the civil service method of ap- ltrnent to obtain by examination men and women td fpr this delicate human task. As one of five people d by the civil service commission to conduct this S examination for probation officers, I became con- Ed that we were but at the beginning of the non- lical method of selecting public servants, but even i and unbending as the examination may be, it is iour hope of political salvation. 298 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE In 1907 the Juvenile Court was housed in a m court building of its own, containing a detention h and equipped with a competent staff. The commi of citizens largely responsible for this result therei 5 turned their attention to the conditions which records of the court indicated had led to the alarn amount of juvenile delinquency and crime. They off ized the Juvenile Protective Association, whose twe two officers meet weekly at Hull-House with t 10 executive committee to report what they have fo and to discuss city conditions affecting the live children and young people. The association discovers that there are cer temptations into which children so habitually fall 1 1 s it is evident that the average child cannot withst them. An overwhelming mass of data is accumul: ~ showing the need of enforcing existing legislation - of securing new legislation, but it also indicate, hundred other directions in which the young peopleT 2 o so gayly walk our streets, often to their own destruct need safeguarding and protection. The effort of the association to treat the youth of city with consideration and understanding has ral. the most unexpected forces to its standard. Quite - 2 5 the basic needs of life are supplied solely by those y, make money out of the business, so the modern dy they have become regular contributors to the ciation; the special watchmen in all the railroad Is agree not to arrest trespassing boys but to report ri to the association; the firms manufacturing mov- bicture films not only submit their films to a volun- j inspection committee, but ask for suggestions in !rd to new matter; and the Five-Cent Theaters ar- ;e for “stunts” which shall deal with the subject of ic health and morals when the lecturers provided entertaining as well as instructive, is not difficult to arouse the impulse of protection he young, which would doubtless dictate the daily of many a bartender and pool-room keeper if they I only indulge it without thereby giving their rivals dvantage. When this difficulty is removed by an -handed enforcement of the law, that simple kind- 3 oo TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE liness which the innocent always evoke goes from on another like a slowly spreading flame of good t D oubtless the most rewarding experience in any s) undertaking as that of the Juvenile Protective Assoj stion, is the warm and intelligent cooperation con from unexpected sources — official and commercia well as philanthropic. Upon the suggestion of association, social centers have been opened in varij parts of the city, disused buildings turned into rec otion rooms, vacant lots made into gardens, hit parties organized for country excursions, batf beaches established on the lake front, and public sch< opened for social purposes. Through the efforts public-spirited citizens a medical clinic and a Psyc spathic Institute have become associated with j Juvenile Court of Chicago, in addition to which an haustive study of court-records has just been complei To this carefully collected data concerning the j normal child, the Juvenile Protective Association ho‘ oin time to add knowledge of the normal child who li under the most adverse city conditions. It was not without hope that I might be able forward in the public school system the solution of sci of these problems of delinquency so dependent up 5 truancy and ill-adapted education, that I became member of the Chicago Board of Education in Jt 1905. It is impossible to write of the situation as itl came dramatized in half a dozen strong personalit CIVIC COOPERATION 3 oi t the entire experience was so illuminating as to the ■ficulties and limitations of democratic government at it would be unfair in a chapter on Civic Coopera- >n not to attempt an outline. Even the briefest statement, however, necessitates 5 eview of the preceding few years. For a decade the licago, school teachers, or rather a majority of them o were organized into the Teachers’ Federation, had tn engaged in a conflict with the Board of Education th for more adequate salaries and for more self- 10 ection in the conduct of the schools. In pursuance the first object, they had attacked the tax dodger ng the entire line of his defense, from the curbstone ithe Supreme Court. 1 hey began with an intricate estigation which uncovered the fact that in 1899, *5 5,000,000 of value of public utility corporations paid hing in taxes. The Teachers’ Federation brought a t which was prosecuted through the Supreme Court Illinois and resulted in an order entered against the ite Board of Equalization, demanding that it tax the 20 porations mentioned in the bill. In spite of the fact it the defendant companies sought federal aid and lained an order which restrained the payment of a ition of the tax, each year since 1900, the Chicago ird of Education has benefited to the extent of 2 5 re than a quarter of a million dollars. Although this lit had been attained through the unaided efforts of teachers, to their surprise and indignation their 302 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE salaries were not increased. The Teachers’ Federatf therefore, brought a suit against the Board of Educat for the advance which had been promised them th years earlier but never paid. The decision of the lo\ s court was in their favor but the Board of Educat: appealed the case, and this was the situation when 1 seven new members appointed by Mayor Dunne 0- 1905 took their seats. The conservative public suspe ed that these new members were merely representatr oof the Teachers’ Federation. This opinion was found upon the fact that Judge Dunne had rendered a fav able decision in the teachers’ suit and that the teach' had been very active in the campaign which had suited in his election as mayor of the city. It seem s obvious that the teachers had entered into politics i the sake of securing their own representatives on t; Board of Education. These suspicions were, of cour ; only confirmed when the new board voted to withdr; the suit of their predecessors from the Appellate Com o and to act upon the decision of the lower court. T teachers, on the other hand, defended their long eff< in the courts, the State Board of Equalization, and t Legislature, against the charge of “dragging the schot into politics,” and declared that the exposure of t s indifference and cupidity of the politicians was a we deserved rebuke, and that it was the politicians wl had brought the schools to the verge of financial rui they further insisted that the levy and collection CIVIC COOPERATION 303 es, tenure of office, and pensions to civil servants in icago were all entangled with the traction situation, ich in their minds at least had come to he an example ;he struggle between the democratic and plutocratic ninistration of city affairs. The new appointees to School Board represented no concerted policy of T kind, but were for the most part adherents to the v education. The teachers, confident that their se was identical with the principles advocated by h educators as Colonel Parker, 0 were therefore sure t the plans of the “new education” members would necessity coincide with the plans of the Teachers’ (eration. In one sense the situation was an epitome Mayor Dunne’s entire administration, which was nded upon the belief that if those citizens represent- social ideals and reform principles were but ap- nted to office, public welfare must be established. )uring my tenure of office I many times talked to officers of the Teachers’ Federation, but I was lorn able to follow their suggestions and, although I ily cooperated in their plans for a better pension Item and other matters, only once did I try to in- tnce the policy of the Federation. When the with- il salaries were finally paid to the representatives of 1 Federation who had brought suit and were divided Dng the members who had suffered both financially professionally during this long legal struggle, I was lit anxious that the division should voluntarily be 3o 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE extended to all of the teachers who had experience loss of salary although they were not members of Federation. It seemed to me a striking opportunity refute the charge that the Federation was self-seel 5 and to put the whole long effort in thq v minds the public, exactly where it belonged, as one of voted public service. But it was doubtless much ea for me to urge this altruistic policy than it was those who had borne the heat and burden of the d oto act upon it. The second object of the Teachers’ Federation 2 entailed much stress and storm. At the time of financial stringency, and largely as a result of it, Board had made the first substantial advance ir 5 teacher’s salary dependent upon a so-called promotio examination, half of which was upon academic subje entailing a long and severe preparation. The teach resented this upon two lines of argument: first, tl the scheme was unprofessional in that the teacher v o advanced on her capacity as a student rather than her professional ability; and, second, that it added intolerable and unnecessary burden to her already ov full day. The administration, on the other hand, cc tended with much justice that there was a consta s danger in a great public school system that teach< lose pliancy and the open mind, and that many of tht had obviously grown mechanical and indifferent. T conservative public approved the promotional examir |; l CIVIC COOPERATION 305 as as the symbol of an advancing educational stand- 1, and their sympathy with the superintendent was reased because they continually resented the affilia- n of the Teachers’ Federation with the Chicago deration of Labor which had taken place several irs before the election of Mayor Dunne on his ction .platform. This much talked of affiliation between the teachers 1 the trades-unionists had been, at least in the first I tance, but one more tactic in the long struggle against : tax-dodging corporations. The Teachers’ Federa- in had won in their first skirmish against that public r ifference which is generated in the accumulation of valth and which has for its nucleus successful com- rrcial men. When they found themselves in need of ither legislation to keep the offending corporations 1 ler control, they naturally turned for political in- I mce and votes to the organization representing vrkingmen. The affiliation had none of the sinister raning so often attached to it. The Teachers’ Federa- i a never obtained a charter from the American Federa- j|i of Labor and its main interest always centered in 1 legislative committee. * Lid yet this statement of the difference between the pjority of the grade school teachers and the Chicago Ijtool Board is totally inadequate, for the difficulties lie stubborn and lay far back in the long effort of >lic school administration in America to free itself I o I 5 2 o 2 5 3 o6 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE from the rule and exploitation of politics. In eve city for many years the politician had secured positio for his friends as teachers and janitors; he had receiv a rake-off in the contract for every new building or cc 5 supply or adoption of schoolbooks. In the long strugg against this political corruption, the one remedy co 1 tinually advocated was the transfer of authority in educational matters from the Board to the supe 1 intendent. The one cure for “pull” and corrupt^ owas the authority of the “expert.” The rules ai records of the Chicago Board of Education are full relics of this long struggle honestly waged by hone : men, who unfortunately became content with t! ideals of an “efficient business administration.” The s business men established an able superintendent with large salary, with his tenure of office secured by sta law so that he would not be disturbed by the wrath 1 the balked politician. 1 hey instituted impersonal e aminations for the teachers both as to entrance in o the system and promotion, and they proceeded “ hold the superintendent responsible” for smoot running schools. All this however dangerously appro>* mated the commercialistic ideal of high salaries on for the management with the final test of a small e s pense account and a large output. In this long struggle for a quarter of a century to fn the public schools from political interference, in Chica^ at least, the high wall of defense erected around tl CIVIC COOPERATION 307 100I system in order “to keep the rascals out,” un- rtunately so restricted the teachers inside the system it they had no space in which to move about freely d the more adventurous of them fairly panted for ht and air. Any attempt to lower the wall for the ce of the teachers within was regarded as giving an fportunity to the politicians without, and they were en openly accused, with a show of truth, of being in gue with each other. Whenever the Dunne members the Board attempted to secure more liberty for the iichers, we were warned by tales of former difficulties ;:h the politicians, and it seemed impossible that the niggle, so long the focus of attention, should recede to the dullness of the achieved and allow the energy the Board to be free for new effort. The whole situation between the superintendent, sup- rted by a majority of the Board, and the Teachers’ deration had become an epitome of the struggle be- |een efficiency and democracy; on one side a well- entioned expression of the bureaucracy necessary in arge system but which under pressure had become necessarily self-assertive, and on the other side a rly militant demand for self-government made in ; name of freedom. Both sides inevitably exagger- d the difficulties of the situation and both felt that :y were standing by important principles. ! certainly played a most inglorious part in this un- :essary conflict; I was chairman of the School Man- 3 o8 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE agement Committee during one year when a majoo of the members seemed to me exasperatingly c< servative, and during another year when they w frustratingly radical, and I was of course highly i s satisfactory to both. Certainly a plan to retain the i doubted benefit of required study for teachers in si wise as to lessen its burden, and various schemes i vised to shift the emphasis from scholarship to p fessional work, were most impatiently repudiated othe Teachers’ Federation, and when one badly mutilat plan finally passed the Board, it was most reluctam administered by tbe superintendent. I at least became convinced that partisans wot never tolerate the use of stepping-stones. They < 5 much too impatient to look on while their belov scheme is unstably balanced, and they would rather s it tumble into the stream at once than to have brought to dry land in any such half-hearted fashicj Before my School Board experience, I thought that 1 ohad taught me at least one hard-earned lesson, thj existing arrangements and the hoped for improvemer, must be mediated and reconciled to each other, th, the new must be dovetailed into the old as it were, if were to endure; but on the School Board I discern 5 that all such efforts were looked upon as compromisi: and unworthy, by both partisans. In the general d order and public excitement resulting from the illeg dismissal of a majority of the “Dunne” board ar CIVIC COOPERATION 309 sir reinstatement by a court decision, I found myself longing to neither party. During the months follow- r the upheaval and the loss of my most vigorous {[leagues, under the regime of men representing the hding Commercial Club of the city who honestly 5 flieved that they were rescuing the schools from a Ihdition of chaos, I saw one beloved measure after iother withdrawn. Although the new president scru- :lously gave me the floor in the defense of each, it was > possible to consider them upon their merits in the 10 *rid light which at the moment enveloped all the :ins of the “uplifters.” Thus the building of smaller i ioolrooms, such as in New York mechanically avoid ercrowding; the extension of the truant rooms so suc- cssfully inaugurated, the multiplication of school play- 15 Sounds and many another cherished plan was thrown :t or at least indefinitely postponed. The final discrediting of Mayor Dunne’s appointees t the School Board affords a very interesting study in Hal psychology; the newspapers had so constantly 20 elected and intensified the ideals of a business Board, td had so persistently ridiculed various administration ans for the municipal ownership of street railways, at from the beginning any attempt the new Board ade to discuss educational matters, only excited their 2 5 rision and contempt. Some of these discussions were lagthy and disorderly and deserved the discipline of rlicule, but others which were well conducted and in 3io TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE which educational problems were seriously set fortl i men of authority, were ridiculed quite as sharply recall the surprise and indignation of a University ] o fessor who had consented to speak at a meeting r 5 ranged in the Board rooms, when next morning his r i partisan and careful disquisition had been twisted i; the most arrant uplift nonsense and so connected v a fake newspaper report of a trial marriage address : livered, not by himself, but by a colleague, that a le ;oing clergyman of the city, having read the newspa account, felt impelled to preach a sermon, calling uj all decent people to rally against the doctrines wh were being taught to the children by an immoral Sch Board. As the bewildered professor had lectured s response to my invitation, I endeavored to find i animus of the complication, but neither from editor chief nor from the reporter could I discover anythi more sinister than that the public expected a go story out of these School Board “talk fests,” and tl o any man who even momentarily allied himself with radical administration, must expect to be ridiculed those papers which considered the traction policy the administration both foolish and dangerous. As I myself was treated with uniform courtesy It s the leading papers, I may perhaps here record my d couragement over this complicated difficulty of op< discussion, for democratic government is founded up< the assumption that differing policies shall be freely di CIVIC COOPERATION 3 ii sed and that each party shall have an opportunity at least a partisan presentation of its contentions, fis attitude of the newspapers was doubtless intensi- 1 because the Dunne School Board had instituted a I /suit challenging the validity of the lease for the 5 100I ground occupied by a newspaper building. This t has ,since been decided in favor of the newspaper, 1 it may be that in their resentment they felt justified loing everything possible to minimize the prosecuting 100I Board. I am, however, inclined to think that 10 1 newspapers but reflected an opinion honestly held many people, and that their constant and partisan mentation of this opinion clearly demonstrates one the greatest difficulties of governmental administra- n in a city grown too large for verbal discussions of 15 blic affairs. It is difficult to close this chapter without a reference the efforts made in Chicago to secure the municipal mchise for women. During two long periods of itation for a new city charter, a representative body 20 : women appealed to the public, to the charter con¬ ation, and to the Illinois legislature for this very isonable provision. During the campaign when I ted as chairman of the federation of a hundred omen’s organizations, nothing impressed me so 25 rcibly as the fact that the response came from bodies women representing the most varied traditions. We 'rejoined by a church society of hundreds of Lutheran 312 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE women, because Scandinavian women had exercis the municipal franchise since the seventeenth centu and had found American cities strangely conservativ by organizations of working women, who had keer 5 felt the need of the municipal franchise in order secure for their workshops the most rudimenta sanitation and the consideration which the vote ala obtains for workingmen; by federations of mothei meetings, who were interested in clean milk and t! i o extension of kindergartens; by property-owning wome who had been powerless to protest against unjust tax tion; by organizations of professional women, of un versity students, and of collegiate alumnae; and b women s clubs interested in municipal reforms. Thei i s was a complete absence of the traditional women rights clamor, but much impressive testimony froi busy and useful women that they had reached tb place where they needed the franchise in order to carr on their own affairs. A striking witness as to the nee 20 of the ballot, even for the women who are restricted t the most primitive and traditional activities, occurre when some Russian women waited upon me to as whether under the new charter, they could vote fc covered markets and so get rid of the shocking Chicag 2sgrime upon all their food; and when some neighborin Italian women sent me word that they would certain! vote for public washhouses if they ever had the chanc to vote at all It was all so human, so spontaneous, an< CIVIC COOPERATION 313 direct that it really seemed as if the time must be e for political expression of that public concern on the ft of women which has so long been forced to seek lirection. None of these busy women wished to take r place of men nor to influence them in the direction men’s affairs, but they did seek an opportunity to iperate directly in civic life through the use of the lot in regard to their own affairs. \ Municipal Museum which was established in the icago public library building several years ago, ?ely through the activity of a group of women who I served as jurors in the departments of social jinomy, of education, and of sanitation in the World’s ir at St. Louis, 0 showed nothing more clearly than it it is impossible to divide any of these departments m the political life of the modern city which is con- ntly forced to enlarge the boundary of its activity. CHAPTER XV The Value of Social Clubs ,1 From the early days at Hull-House, social clubs a posed of English speaking American born young pec grew apace. So eager were they for social life that \ mistakes in management could drive them away I o I 5 2 O remember one enthusiastic leader who read aloud t club a translation of “Antigone,” 0 which she 1 selected because she believed that the great theme} the Greek poets were best suited to young people, came into the club room one evening in time to hear president call the restive members to order with statement, “You might just as well keep quiet for is bound to finish it, and the quicker she gets to readi the longer time we’ll have for dancing.” And yet same club leader had the pleasure of lending four cop of the drama to four of the members, and one young rr almost literally committed the entire play to memo On the whole we were much impressed by the gr desire for self-improvement, for study and debate, hibited by many of the young men. This very tenden in fact, brought one of the most promising of our ear clubs to an untimely end. The young men in the cl twenty in number, had grown much irritated by 3 H VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 315 volity of the girls during their long debates, and had tally proposed that three of the most “frivolous” be pelled. Pending a final vote, the three culprits ap- aled to certain of their friends who were members of e Hull-House Men’s Club, between whom and the de- ting young men the incident became the cause of a larrel so bitter that at length it led to a shooting, irtunately the shot missed fire, or it may have been te that it was “only intended for a scare,” but at any te, we were all thoroughly frightened by this inani¬ mation of the hot blood which the defense of woman s so often evoked. After many efforts to bring about -econciliation, the debating club of twenty young men d the seventeen young women, who either were or etended to be sober minded, rented a hall a mile west Hull-House severing their connection with us be- use their ambitious and right-minded efforts had been lappreciated, basing this on the ground that we had >t urged the expulsion of the so-called “tough” mem- :rs of the Men’s Club, who had been involved in the fliculty. The seceding club invited me to the first eeting in their new quarters that I might present to em my version of the situation and set forth the cident from the standpoint of Hull-House. The dis- ission I had with the young people that evening has ways remained with me as one of the moments of umination which life in a Settlement so often affords. [ response to my position that a desire to avoid all 316 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE that was ‘Tough” meant to walk only in the path smug self-seeking and personal improvement lea straight into the pit of self-righteousness and p achievement and was exactly what the Settlement snot stand for, they contended with much justice ambitious young people were obliged for their c reputation, if not for their own morals, to avoid connection with that which bordered on the tough, that it was quite another matter for the Hull-Ho i o residents who could afford a more generous judgme It was in vain I urged that life teaches us nothing m inevitably than that right and wrong are most c fusingly confounded; that the blackest wrong may within our own motives, and that at the best, right \ i s not dazzle us hy its radiant shining, and can only found by exerting patience and discrimination. Th still maintained their wholesome bourgeois positic which I am now quite ready to admit was most reasc c y t) i< at r n .11 d ;e b U e i-| ei li ej r I J able. co Of course there were many disappointments cc nected with these clubs when the rewards of politic and commercial life easily drew the members away frc the principles advocated in club meetings. One of t young men who had been a shining light in the advoca 2 5 of municipal reform, deserted in the middle of a refor campaign because he had been offered a lucrative offi in the City Hall; another even after a course of lectur on business morality, “worked” the club itself VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 3U 1 secure orders for custom-made clothing from samples Sf cloth he displayed, although the orders were filled by e ready-made suits slightly refitted and delivered at double their original price. But nevertheless, there was l much to cheer us as we gradually became acquainted °.with the daily living of the vigorous young men and women who filled to overflowing all the social clubs. We have been much impressed during our twenty years, by the ready adaptation of city young people to %he prosperity arising from their own increased wages Lr from the commercial success of their families. This quick adaptability is the great gift of the city child, his one reward for the hurried changing life which he has always led. The working girl has a distinct advantage 'in the task of transforming her whole family into the Vays and connections of the prosperous when she works down town and becomes conversant with the manners and conditions of a cosmopolitan community. Ihere- fore having lived in a Settlement twenty years, I see scores of young people who have successfully established themselves in life, and in my travels in the city and out¬ side, I am constantly cheered by greetings from the rising young lawyer, the scholarly rabbi, the successful teacher, the prosperous young matron buying clothes for her blooming children. “Don’t you remember me? I used to belong to a Hull-House club. I once asked one of these young people, a man who held a good position on a Chicago daily, what special thing Hull- 318 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Hou se had meant to him, and he promptly replies It was the first house I had ever been in where boo] and magazines just lay around as if there were pleni of them in the world. Don’t you remember how muc s I used to read at that little round table at the back < the library? lo have people regard reading as a re; sonable occupation changed the whole aspect of life t me and I began to have confidence in what I could do. Among the young men of the social clubs a larg i o proportion of the Jewish ones at least obtain the ad vantages of a higher education. The parents make ever sacrifice to help them through the high school afte which the young men attend universities and pro fessional schools, largely through their own efforts 15 h rom time to time they come back to us with thei honors thick upon them; I remember one who returnee with the prize in oratory from a contest between severa Western state universities, proudly testifying that h< had obtained his confidence in our Henry Clay Club 20 another came back with a degree from Harvard Uni¬ versity saying that he had made up his mind to go then the summer I read RoyceV ‘‘Aspects of Modem I hilosophy with a group of young men who had challenged my scathing remark that Herbert Spencei 2 5 was not the only man who had ventured a solution of the riddles of the universe. Occasionally one of these learned young folk does not like to be reminded that he once lived in our vicinity, but that happens rarely, VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 3i9 ind for the most part they are loyal to us in much the ;ame spirit as they are to their own families and :raditions. Sometimes they go further and tell us that 0 nt ^:he standards of tastes and code of manners which Hull- House has enabled them to form, have made a very rreat difference in their perceptions and estimates of 1 :he larger world as well as in their own reception there. Five out of one club of twenty-five young men who had Oeld together for eleven years, entered the University 1 )f Chicago but although the rest of the Club called them •he “intellectuals,” the old friendships still held. In addition to these rising young people given to de- f Date and dramatics, and to the members of the public School alumni associations which meet in our rooms, ;here are hundreds of others who for years have come :o Hull-House frankly in search of that pleasure and -ecreation which all young things crave and which those vho have spent long hours in a factory or shop demand as a right. For these young people all sorts of pleasure Hubs have been cherished, and large dancing classes 'aave been organized. One supreme gayety has come to be an annual event of such importance that it is talked oLfrom year to year. For six weeks before St. Patrick’s day, a small group of residents put their best powers of invention and construction into preparation For a cotillion which is like a pageant in its gayety and vigor. The parents sit in the gallery, and the mothers appreciate more than any one else perhaps, the value 320 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE of this ball to which an invitation is so highly prized although their standards of manners may differ wideh from the conventional, they know full well when th< companionship of the young people is safe and unsullied s As an illustration of this difference in standard, . may instance an early Hull-House picnic arranged b) a club of young people, who found at the last momeni that the club director could not go and accepted the offer of the mother of one of the club members to take to charge of them. When they trooped back in the even¬ ings tired and happy, they displayed a photograph ol the group wherein each man’s arm was carefully placed§ about a girl; no feminine waist lacked an arm save that of the proud chaperon, who sat in the middle smiling s upon all. Seeing that the photograph somewhat sur¬ prised us, the chaperon stoutly explained, “This may look queer to you, but there wasn’t one thing about that picnic that wasn t nice, and her statement was a per¬ fectly truthful one. o Although more conventional customs are carefully ; enforced at our many parties and festivities, and while It the dancing classes are as highly prized for the opportu¬ nity they afford for enforcing standards as for their ostensible aim, the residents at Hull-House, in their IS s efforts to provide opportunities for clean recreation, >o leceive the most valued help from the experienced i wisdom of the older women of the neighborhood, r Bowen Hall is constantly used for dancing parties with r VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 321 ft drinks established in its foyer. The parties given 7 the Hull-House clubs are by invitation and the >ung people themselves carefully maintain their stand- d of entrance so that the most cautious mother may p safe when her daughter goes to one of our parties, jo club festivity is permitted without the presence of jdirector; no young man under the influence of liquor i allowed; certain types of dancing, often innocently arted, are strictly prohibited; and above all, early >sing is insisted upon. This standardizing of pleasure s always seemed an obligation to the residents of all-Hou se, but we are, I hope, saved from that iggishness which young people so heartily resent, by fce Mardi Gras° dance and other festivities which the rfidents themselves arrange and successfully carry out. In spite of our belief that the standards of a ball may I almost as valuable to those without as to those with- i the residents are constantly concerned for those riny young people in the neighborhood who are too hdonistic to submit to the discipline of a dancing class even to the claim of a pleasure club, but who go about freebooter fashion to find pleasure wherever it may cheaply on" sale. Such young people, well meaning but impatient of itrol, become the easy victims of the worst type of blic d ance halls and of even darker places, whose rposes are hidden under music and dancing. We re thoroughly frightened when we learned that during 322 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE the year which ended last December, more than twenl- five thousand young people under the age of twenty-fi; passed through the Juvenile and Municipal Courts I Chicago — approximately one out of every eighty 5 the entire population, or one out of every fifty-two those under twenty-five years of age. One’s heart acf for these young people caught by the outside glitter- city gayety, who make such a feverish attempt snatch it for themselves. The young people in our clu xoare comparatively safe, but many instances come the knowledge of Hull-House residents which make long for the time when the city, through more sm; parks, municipal gymnasiums, and schoolrooms op* for recreation, can guard from disaster these youi 1 s people who walk so carelessly on the edge of the pit. Ihe heedless girls believe that if they lived in b houses and possessed pianos and jewelry, the covet* social life would come to them. I know a Bohemi; girl who surreptitiously saved her overtime wages un 20 she had enough money to hire for a week a room with. piano in it where young men might come to call, as th< could not do in her crowded untidy home. Of cour she had no way of knowing the sort of young men wl, quickly discover an unprotected girl. 2 5 Another girl of American parentage who had con to Chicago to seek her fortune, found at the end of year that sorting shipping receipts in a dark corner * a warehouse not only failed to accumulate riches bi ; VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 323 ft id not even bring the “attentions” which her quiet auntry home afforded. By dint of long sacrifice she ad saved fifteen dollars; with five she bought an nitation sapphire necklace, and the balance she tanged into a ten dollar bill. The evening her pathetic 5 ttle snare was set, she walked home with one of the erks in the establishment, told him that she had come ito a fortune, and was obliged to wear the heirloom ecklace to insure its safety, permitted him to see that te carried ten dollars in her glove for carfare and con- 1 ucted him to a handsome Prairie Avenue residence, here she gayly bade him good-by and ran up the steps mtting herself in the vestibule from which she did not nerge until the dazzled and bewildered young man ad vanished down the street. 1 s Then there is the ever recurring difficulty about dress; le insistence of the young to be gayly bedecked to the cter consternation of the hardworking parents who *e paying for a house and lot. The Polish girl who ole five dollars from her employer’s till with which to 20 ay a white dress for a church picnic was turned away om home by her indignant father, who replaced the oney to save the family honor, but would harbor no thief” in a household of growing children who, in Imte of the sister’s revolt, continued to be dressed in 2 5 Nark heavy clothes through all the hot summer. There \ e a multitude of working girls who for hours carry air ribbons and jewelry in their pockets or stockings, 3 2 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE « for they can wear them only during the journey to an from work. Sometimes this desire to taste pleasure, t escape into a world of congenial companionship, take more elaborate forms and often ends disastrously. « 5 recall a charming young girl, the oldest daughter of respectable German family, whom I first saw one sprin afternoon issuing from a tall factory. She wore a blu print gown which so deepened the blue of her eyes tha Wordsworth’s line fairly sung itself:— o 1 he pliant harebell swinging in the breeze On some gray rock. I was grimly reminded of that moment a year late when I heard the tale of this seventeen-year-old girl who had worked steaddy in the same factory for foil 5 years before she resolved “to see life.” In order not t< arouse her parents’ suspicions, she borrowed thirt dollars from one of those loan sharks who require m security from a pretty girl, so that she might start fron home every morning as if to go to work. For three o weeks she spent the first part of each dearly bought da\ in a department store where she lunched and un fortunately made some dubious acquaintances; in the afternoon she established herself in a theater and sat contentedly hour alter hour, watching the endles: s vaudeville until the usual time for returning home. At the end of each week she gave her parents her usual wage, but when her thirty dollars was exhausted it VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 325 emed unendurable that she should return to the anotony of the factory. In the light of her newly quired experience she had learned that possibility iich the city ever holds open to the restless girl. That more such girls do not come to grief is due to I ose mothers who understand the insatiable demand r a good time, and if all of the mothers did under- md, those pathetic statistics which show that four ths of all prostitutes are under twenty years of age iDuld be marvelously changed. We are told that “the * 11 to live” is aroused in each baby by his mother’s ir- cdstible desire to play with him, the physiological slue of joy that a child is born, and that the high : ath rate in institutions is increased by “the discon¬ rated babies” whom no one persuades into living. :mething of the same sort is necessary in that second rth at adolescence. The young people need affection ; d understanding, each one for himself, if they are to induced to live in an inheritance of decorum and rfety and to understand the foundations upon which :is orderly world rests. No one comprehends their [ eds so sympathetically as those mothers who iron the insy starched finery of their grown-up daughters late to the night, and who pay for a red velvet parlor set : the installment plan, although the younger children !iy sadly need new shoes. These mothers apparently aerstand the sharp demand for social pleasure and i their best to respond to it, although at the same 326 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE time they constantly minister to all the physical net of an exigent family of little children. We often coi to a realization of the truth of Walt Whitman’s sta ment, that one of the surest sources of wisdom is t 5 mother of a large family. It is but natural, perhaps, that the members of t Hull-House Woman’s Club, whose prosperity has giv them some leisure and a chance to remove their o\ families to neighborhoods less full of temptatior i i o should have offered their assistance in our attempt 1 provide recreation for these restless young people, many instances their experience in the club itself h enabled them to perceive these needs. One day L Juvenile Court officer told me that a woman’s cli p 1 s member, who has a large family of her own and oi i boy sufficiently difficult, had undertaken to care for it ward of the Juvenile Court who lived only a block froi ; her house, and that she had kept him in the path <$ rectitude for six months. In reply to my congratuk aotions upon this successful bit of reform to the clu woman herself, she said that she was quite ashame that she had not undertaken the task earlier for she ha - for years known the boy’s mother, who scrubbed a downs towm office building, leaving home every evening atf 2 5 five and returning at eleven during the very time th ; b°y could most easily find opportunities for wrong , doing. She said that her obligation toward this bo 1 had not occurred to her until one day when the clul VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 327 f jmbers were making pillowcases for the Detention i! )me of the Juvenile Court, it suddenly seemed per¬ tly obvious that her share in the salvation of way- Lid children was to care for this particular boy and 2 had asked the Juvenile Court officer to commit him her. She invited the boy to her house to supper every y that she might know just where he was at the icial moment of twilight, and she adroitly managed t keep him under her own roof for the evening if she |I not approve of the plans he had made. She con¬ ceded with the remark that it was queer that the sight c the boy himself hadn’t appealed to her but that the Sggestion had come to her in such a roundabout way. | She was, of course, reflecting upon a common trait in hman nature — that we much more easily see the ty at hand when we see it in relation to the social ty of which it is a part. When she knew that an effort ns being made throughout all the large cities in the lited States to reclaim the wayward boy, to provide m with reasonable amusement, to give him his chance r growth and development, and when she became ady to take her share in that movement, she suddenly w the concrete case which she had not recognized l:fore. I We are slowly learning that social advance depends |iite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as 1 does upon a sense of duty, and of this one could cite I any illustrations. I was at one time chairman ol the 328 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Child Labor Committee in the General Federation Woman’s Clubs, which sent out a schedule asking ea club in the United States to report as nearly as possit all the working children under fourteen living in ij 5 vicinity. A Florida club filled out the schedule with ;1 astonishing number of Cuban children who were j work in sugar mills, and the club members registered) complaint that our committee had sent the schedule t( late, for if they had realized the conditions earlier, the ' o might have presented a bill to the legislature which ha now adjourned. Of course the children had been worl ing in the sugar mills for years, and had probably gor : back and forth under the very eyes of the club women but the women had never seen them, much less felt an 15 obligation to protect them, until they joined a club and the club joined a Federation, and the Federatio : appointed a Child Labor Committee who sent them - schedule. With their quickened perceptions they the saw the rescue of these familiar children in the light o 20 a social obligation. Through some such experiences th- members of the Hull-House Women’s Club have ob tamed the power of seeing the concrete through the general and have entered into various undertakings. Ve iy eai ly in its history the club formed what wL 2 s called “A Social Extension Committee.” Once a month this committee gives parties to people in the neighborhood who for any reason seem forlorn and without much social pleasure. One evening they in- VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 329 sd only Italian women, thereby crossing a distinct ial "gulf,” for there certainly exists as great a sense social difference between the prosperous Irish- lerican women and the South-Italian peasants as ween any two sets of people in the city of Chicago. 5 Italian women, who were almost eastern in their fits, all stayed at home and sent their husbands, and social extension committee entered the drawing- m to find it occupied by rows of Italian working- 1, who seemed to prefer to sit in chairs along the wall. ty were quite ready to be "socially extended,” but inly puzzled as to what it was all about. The even- finally developed into a very successful party, not imuch because the committee were equal to it, as ause the Italian men rose to the occasion. Jntiring pairs of them danced the tarantella; they g Neapolitan songs; one of them performed some of se wonderful sleight-of-hand tricks so often seen on streets of Naples; they explained the coral finger of Januarius which they wore; they politely ate the ^nge American refreshments; and when the evening over, one of the committee said to me, " Do you w I am ashamed of the way I have always talked ut ‘dagos’; they are quite like other people, only must take a little more pains with them. I have 1 nagging my husband to move off M Street because / are moving in, but I am going to try staying iile and see if I can make a real acquaintance with 330 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE some of them.” lo my mind at that moment t speaker had passed from the region of the uncultivat person into the possibilities of the cultivated perse 1 he former is bounded by a narrow outlook on li 5 unable to overcome differences ol dress and habit, a his interests are slowly contracting within a circu scribed area; while the latter constantly tends to -i more a citizen of the world because of his growi i understanding of all kinds of people with their varyi I o experiences. We send our young people to Europe tff they may lose their provincialism and be able to jud their fellows by a more universal test, as we send the f to college that they may attain the cultural backgroui and a larger outlook; all of these it is possible to acqui sin other ways, as this member of the woman’s club h; discovered for herself. i 1 his social extension committee under the leadersh of an ex-president of the Club, a Hull-House reside with a wide acquaintance, also discover many of tho o lonely people of which every city contains so large number. We are only slowly apprehending the ven real dangei to the individual who fails to establish son sort of genuine relation with the people who surrour him. We are all more or less familiar with the resul sof isolation in rural districts; the Bronte sisters 0 hay portrayed the hideous immorality and savagery of tl remote dwellers on the bleak moorlands of norther England; Miss Wilkins has written of the overdevelope VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 331 11 of the solitary New Englander; but tales still wait be told of the isolated city dweller. In addition to e lonely young man recently come to town, and e country family who have not yet made their con- ctions, are many other people who, because of mperament or from an estimate of themselves which 11 not permit them to make friends with the ‘‘people ound 'here,” or who, because they are victims to a mbination of circumstances, lead a life as lonely and [touched by the city about them as if they were in mote country districts. The very fact that it requires ; effort to preserve isolation from the tenement-house 2 which flows all about them, makes the character iffer and harsher than mere country solitude could do. !Many instances of this come into my mind: the led, ladylike hairdresser, who came and went to her urk for twenty years, carefully concealing her dwelling I ice from the “other people in the shop,” moving lenever they seemed too curious about it, and priding rself that no neighbor had ever “stepped inside her or,” and yet when discovered through an asthma nich forced her to crave friendly offices, she was most f;ponsive and even gay in a social atmosphere. An- lier woman made a long effort to conceal the poverty [ailting from her husband’s inveterate gambling and secure for her children the educational advantages to iiich her family had always been accustomed. Her e children, who are now university graduates, do not 332 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE realize how hard and solitary was her early married li when we first knew her, and she was beginning to regi the isolation in which her children were being rear* for she saw that their lack of early companions!" 5 would always cripple their power to make friends. S was glad to avail herself of the social resources of Hu House for them, and at last even for herself. ihe leader of the social extension committee h also been able, through her connection with the vaca olot garden movement in Chicago, to maintain a mo flourishing “friendly club” largely composed of peop who cultivate these garden plots. During the ch evening at least, they regain something of the ease ! the man who is being estimated by the bushels per ac s of potatoes he has raised, and not by that flimsy ci judgment so often based upon store clothes. The jollity and enthusiasm are unbounded, expressing itse in clog dances and rousing old songs, often in sharp co trast to the overworked, worn aspects of the member o Of course there are surprising possibilities discovere through other clubs, in one of Greek women or in tf “circolo Italiano,” for a social club often affords sheltered space in which the gentler social usages ma be exercised, as the more vigorous clubs afford a poir 5 of departure into larger social concerns. The experiences of the Hull-House Woman’s Clu constantly react upon the family life of the member Their husbands come with them to the annual mid VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 333 inter reception, to club concerts and entertainments5 2 little children come to the May party, with its hieing and games; the older children, to the day in ne when prizes are given to those sons and daughters the members who present a good school record as 5 iduates either from the eighth grade or from a high tool. t seemed, therefore, hut a fit recognition of their >rts when the president of the club erected a building nned especially for their needs, with their own 10 ary and a hall large enough for their various social llertakings, although of course Bowen Hall is con- intly put to many other uses. t was under the leadership of this same able presi- 11 that the club achieved its wider purposes and took 15 jplace with the other forces for city betterment. The i had begun, as nearly all women’s clubs do, upon basis of self-imprdvement, although the foundations this later development had been laid by one of their iest presidents, who was the first probation officer 20 1 he Juvenile Court, and who had so shared her ex- E ences with the club that each member felt the truth iweil as the pathos of the lines inscribed on her jnorial tablet erected in their club library:— “As more exposed to suffering and distress 0 25 Thence also more alive to tenderness.” ach woman had discovered opportunities in her 334 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE own experience for this same tender understandi and under its succeeding president, Mrs. Pelham,, its determination to be of use to the needy and < tressed, the club developed many philanthropic unc 5 takings from the humble beginnings of a linen cE kept constantly filled with clothing for the sick and pc It required, however, an adequate knowledge of.j verse city conditions so productive of juvenile de quency and a sympathy which could enkindle itself omany others of divers faiths and training, to arouse club to its finest public spirit. This was done by a la president, Mrs. Bowen, 0 who, as head of the Juvei Protective Association, had learned that the morali: energy of a group is best fitted to cope with the cc 5 plicated problems of a city; but it required ability an unusual order to evoke a sense of social obligat from the very knowledge of adverse city conditi< which the club members possessed, and to conned with the many civic and philanthropic organizations o the city in such wise as to make it socially useful. 11 financial and representative connection with outs organizations is valuable to the club only as it expre^ its sympathy and kindliness at the same time in o crete form. A group of members who lunch with IV! 5 Bowen each week at Hull-House discuss, not o topics of public interest, sometimes with experts wh they have long known through their mutual und VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 335 kings, but also their own club affairs in the light of is larger knowledge. Thus the value of social clubs broadens out in one’s nd to an instrument of companionship through which my may be led from a sense of isolation to one of uc responsibility, even as another type of club pro¬ les recreational facilities for those who have had only ianingless excitements, or as a third type opens new d interesting vistas of life to those who are ambitious. The entire organization of the social life at Hull- mse, while it has been fostered and directed by ;idents and others, has been largely pushed and :alized from within by the club members themselves. • Walter Besant once told me thac Hull-House stood his mind more nearly for the ideal of the “ Palace of dight”° than did the £k London People’s Palace” be- use we had depended upon the social resources of the ople using it. He begged me not to allow Hull-House become too educational. He believed it much easier develop a polytechnic institute than a large recrea- >nal center, but he doubted whether the former was useful. The social clubs form a basis of acquaintanceship for my people living in other parts of the city. Through endly relations with individuals, which is perhaps 3 sanest method of approach, they are thus brought .0 contact, many of them for the first time, with the 336 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE industrial and social problems challenging the mc^ resources of our contemporary life. During our tweiJ years hundreds of these non-residents have direcid( clubs and classes, and have increased the number ( s Chicago citizens who are conversant with adverse soci conditions and conscious that only by the unceasil devotion of each, according to his strength, shall ij compulsions and hardships, the stupidities and cruelt* of life be overcome. The number of people thus ( i o formed is constantly increasing in all our America cities, and they may in time remove the reproach social neglect and indifFerence which has so long rest upon the citizens of the new world. I recall the c perience of an Englishman who, not only because he w 15 a member of the Queen’s Cabinet and bore a title, b also because he was an able statesman, was entertain j with great enthusiasm by the leading citizens of Chicaj: a At a large dinner party he asked the lady sitting ne to him what our tenement-house legislation was 20 regard to the cubic feet of air required for each occupa of a tenement bedroom; upon her disclaiming a) knowledge of the subject, the inquiry was put to all t diners at the long table, all of whom showed surprL that they should be expected to possess this information 25 In telling me the incident afterward, the English gue said that such indifference could not have been foui among the leading citizens of London, whose pub! spirit had been aroused to provide such housing co VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS 337 IQ tions as should protect tenement dwellers at least eipm wanton loss of vitality and lowered industrial ciiciency. When I met the same Englishman in >ndon five years afterwards, he immediately asked me )c tether Chicago citizens were still so indifferent to the nditions of the poor that they took no interest in tlieir oper housing. I was quick with that defense which American is obliged to use so often in Europe, that r very democracy so long presupposed that each izen could care for himself that we are slow to develop li sense of social obligation. He smiled at the familiar rases and was still inclined to attribute our indiffer- ce to sheer ignorance of social conditions. The entire social development of Hull-House is so like what I predicted twenty years ago, that I venture quote from that ancient writing as an end to this [apter. lr | l he social organism has broken down through large districts of our £at cities. Many of the people living there are very poor, the f jority of them without leisure or energy for anything but the gain jjmbsistence. Ijrhey live for the moment side by side, many of them without ihwledge of each other, without fellowship, without local tradition ( public spirit, without social organization of any kind. Practically jhing is done to remedy this. The people who might do it, who he the social tact and training, the large houses, and the traditions tl customs of hospitality, live in other parts of the city. The club fises, libraries, galleries, and semi-public conveniences for social life a also blocks away. We find workingmen organized into armies of 338 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE producers because men of executive ability and business sagacity h found it to their interests thus to organize them. But these work men are not organized socially; although lodging in crowded tenem houses, they are living without a corresponding social contact. 5 chaos is as great as it would be were they working in huge facto without foreman or superintendent. Their ideas and resources cramped, and the desire for higher social pleasure becomes extir They have no share in the traditions and social energy which make, progress. Too often their only place of meeting is a saloon, their o i o host a bartender; a local demagogue forms their public opinion. IV.j of ability and refinement, of social power and university cultivati stay away from them. Personally, I believe the men who lose m. are those who thus stay away. But the paradox is here: wl cultivated people do stay away from a certain portion of the popu 1 5 tion, when all social advantages are persistently withheld, it may for years the result itself is pointed to as a reason and is used as argument for the continued withholding. It is constantly said that because the masses have never had soc advantages, they do not want them, that they are heavy and di 20 and that it will take political or philanthropic machinery to char, them. This divides a city into rich and poor; into the favored, w' express their sense of the social obligation by gifts of money, and ii the unfavored, wdio express it by clamoring for a “share” — both them actuated by a vague sense of justice. This division of the c: 2 s would be more justifiable, however, if the people w T ho thus isol: themselves on certain streets and use their social ability for ea other, gained enough thereby and added sufficient to the sum total social progress to justify the withholding of the pleasures and resu of that progress from so many people who ought to have them. B‘ 3 o they cannot accomplish this for the social spirit discharges itself many forms, and no one form is adequate to its total expression. CHAPTER XVI Arts at Hull-House The first building erected for Hull-House contained t'art gallery, well lighted for day and evening use, and I: first exhibit of loaned pictures was opened in June, 1 ) 1 , by Mr. and Mrs. Barnett 0 of London. It is al- iys pleasant to associate their hearty sympathy with 5 lit first exhibit, and thus to connect it with their f neer efforts at Toynbee Hall to secure for working |>ple the opportunity to know the best art, and with Hr establishment of the first permanent art gallery in i: industrial quarter. io |Ve took pride in the fact that our first exhibit con- lied some of the best pictures Chicago afforded, and I conscientiously insured them against fire and care- i y guarded them by night and day. I'Ve had five of these exhibits during two years, after 15 1 gallery was completed: two of oil paintings, one of | engravings and etchings, one of water colors, and I: of pictures especially selected for use in the public tools. These exhibits were surprisingly well attended |l thousands of votes were cast for the most popular 20 Itures. Their value to the neighborhood of course had [be determined by each one of us according to the 339 3 4 o TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE value he attached to beauty and the escape it offe from dreary reality into the realm of the imaginatic M iss Starr always insisted that the arts should recei adequate recognition at Hull-House and urged th 5one must always remember “the hungry individual so which without art will have passed unsolaced and unfe followed by other souls who lack the impulse his shou have given.” The exhibits afforded pathetic evidence that tl o older immigrants do not expect the solace of art in th country; an Italian expressed great surprise when 1 ‘ found that we, although Americans, still liked picture and said quite naively that he didn’t know that Amei cans cared for anything but dollars — that looking ; s pictures was something people only did in Italy. The extreme isolation of the Italian colony was den' onstrated by the fact that he did not know that thei was a public art gallery in the city nor any houses i which pictures were regarded as treasures, o A Greek was much surprised to see a photograph ( the Acropolis at Hull-House because he had lived i Chicago for thirteen years and had never before me any Americans who knew about this foremost glory c 1 the world. Before he left Greece he had imagined th a 5 Americans would be most eager to see pictures c 1 Athens, and as he was a graduate of a school of techno °gy? be had prepared a book of colored drawings an had made a collection of photographs which he was sur ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 34 i .mericans would enjoy. But although from his fruit ;and near one of the large railroad stations he had onversed with many Americans and had often tried to ad the conversation hack to ancient Greece, no one ad responded, and he had at last concluded that “the tsople of Chicago knew nothing of ancient times.” . The loan exhibits were continued until the Chicago rt Institute was opened free to the public on Sunday iternoons and parties were arranged at Hull-House id conducted there by a guide.' In time even these irties were discontinued as the galleries became better iiown in all parts of the city and the Art Institute anagement did much to make pictures popular. From the first a studio was maintained at Hull-House, ihich has developed through the changing years under I e direction of Miss Benedict, one of the residents who a member of the faculty in the Art Institute. Build- gs on the Hull-House quadrangle furnish studios for Stists who find something of the same spirit in the con- l;uous Italian colony that the French artist is tradi- linally supposed to discover in his beloved Latin Jiarter. These artists uncover something of the |cturesque in the foreign colonies, which they have rproduced in painting, etching, and lithography. They fid their classes filled not only by young people pos- sssing facility and sometimes talent, but also by older pople to whom the studio affords the one opportunity c escape from dreariness: a widow with four children, 342 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE who supplemented a very inadequate income by teac ing the piano, for six years never missed her week painting lesson because it was “her one pleasure”; ai other woman, whose youth and strength had gone ini 5 the care of an invalid father, poured into her afternoc in the studio once a week, all of the longing for sel expression which she habitually suppressed. Perhaps the most satisfactory results of the studi have been obtained through the classes of young me owho are engaged in'the commercial arts, and who ai glad to have an opportunity to work out their ow ideas. I his is true of young engravers and lithographer; of the men who ha ve to do with posters and illustratior in various ways. I he little pile of stones and the lithe sgrapher’s handpress in a corner of the studio have bee used in many an experiment, as has a set of beautifi type loaned to Hull-House by a bibliophile. I he work of the studio almost imperceptibly merge into the crafts and well within the first decade a sho o was opened at Hull-House under the direction of sever; residents who were also members of the Chicago Art and Crafts Society. 1 his shop is not merely a scho( where people are taught and then sent forth to use thei teaching in art according to their individual initiativ sand opportunity, but where those who have alread been carefully trained may express the best they cai in wood or metal. 1 he Settlement soon discovers ho\ difficult it is to put a fringe of art on the end of a da ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 343 ent in a factory. We constantly see young people ing overhurried work. Wrapping bars of soap in sees of paper might at least give the pleasure of ac- racy and repetition if it could be done at a normal ce, but when paid for by the piece, speed becomes the 5 le requirement and the last suggestion of human Merest is taken away. In contrast to this the Hull- 3use shop affords many examples of the restorative wer in the exercise of a genuine craft. A young issian who, like too many of his countrymen, had io ide a desperate effort to fit himself for a learned pro- ision, and who had almost finished his course in a *ht law school, used to watch constantly the work ing done in the metal shop at Hull-House. One even- y in a moment of sudden resolve, he took off his coat, 15 t down at one of the benches, and began to work, viously as a very clever silversmith. He had long ncealed his craft because he thought it would hurt his orts as a lawyer and because he imagined an office ire honorable and “more American” than a shop. 20 he worked on during his two leisure evenings each ek, his entire bearing and conversation registered the ief of one who abandons the effort he is not fitted for d becomes a man on his own feet, expressing himself rough a familiar and delicate technique. 25 Miss Starr at length found herself quite impatient rh her role of lecturer on the arts, while all the handi- ift about her was untouched by beauty and did not 344 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE even reflect the interest of the workman. She took training in bookbinding in London under Mr. Cobde Sanderson and established her bindery at Hull-Hot in which design and workmanship, beauty and th( soughness are taught to a small number of apprentic From the very first winter, concerts which are st continued were given every Sunday afternoon in t- Hull-House drawing-room and later, as the audienc increased, in the larger halls. For these we are indebt oto musicians from every part of the city. Mr. Willia Tomlins early trained large choruses of adults as 1 assistants did of children, and the response to all these showed that while the number of people in o vicinity caring for the best music was not large, th< s constituted a steady and appreciative group. It was connection with these first choruses that a publi spirited citizen of Chicago offered a prize for the be; labor song, competition to be open to the entire countr The responses to the offer literally filled three lari o barrels and speaking at least for myself as one of tl bewildered judges, we were more disheartened by the- quality than even by their overwhelming bulk. A parently the workers of America are not yet ready < sing, although I recall a creditable chorus trained s Hull-House for a large meeting in sympathy with tl anthracite coal strike in which the swinging lines “Who was it made the coal? Our God as well as theirs” ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 345 emed to relieve the tension of the moment. Miss leanor Smith, the head of the Hull-House Music :hool, who had put the words to music, performed the me office for the “Sweatshop” of the Yiddish poet,° e translation of which presents so graphically the wilderment and tedium of the New York shop that might be applied to almost any other machine in- istry as the first verse indicates:— “Ihe roaring of the wheels has filled my ears, The clashing and the clamor shut me in, Myself, my soul, in chaos disappears, I cannot think or feel amid the din.” may be that this plaint explains the lack of labor igs in this period of industrial maladjustment when e worker is overmastered by his very tools. In addi- n to sharing with our neighborhood the best music could procure, we have conscientiously provided *eful musical instruction that at least a few young 3ple might understand those old usages of art; that fey might master its trade secrets, for after all it is ly through a careful technique that artistic ability 1 express itself and be preserved. [From the beginning we had classes in music, and the all-House Music School, which is housed in quarters uts own in our quieter court, was opened in 1893. The 100I is designed to give a thorough musical instruction 1 a limited number of children. From the first lessons 346 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE they are taught to compose and to reduce to order tl musical suggestions which may come to them, and this wise the school has sometimes been able to recov the songs of the immigrants through their childre 5 Some of these folk songs have never been committed ,■ paper, but have survived through the centuries becau of a touch of undying poetry which the world has alwa^ cherished; as in the song of a Russian who is digging post hole and finds his task dull and difficult until 1 o strikes a stratum of red sand, which, in addition i making digging easy, reminds him of the red hair of h sweetheart, and all goes merrily as the song lifts into joyous melody. I recall again the almost hilarious ei joyment of the adult audience to whom it was sung b s the children who had revived it, as well as the moi sober appreciation of the hymns taken from the lips ( the cantor, whose father before him had officiated i the sjmagogue. 1 he recitals and concerts given by the school ai o attended by large and appreciative audiences. On tin Sunday before Christmas the program of Christma songs draws together people of the most divergin faiths. In the deep tones of the memorial organ erecte at Hull-House, we realize that music is perhaps th s most potent agent for making the universal appeal an inducing men to forget their differences. Some of the pupils in the music school have develops during the years into trained musicians and are sup ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE tl 347 § orting themselves in their chosen profession. On the ther hand, we constantly see the most promising ' msieal ability extinguished when the young people iter industries which so sap their vitality that they mnot carry on serious study in the scanty hours out- de of factory work. Many cases indisputably illustrate nis: a Bohemian girl, who, in order to earn money for -essirig family needs, first ruined her voice in a six onths’ constant vaudeville engagement, returned to ir trade, working overtime in a vain effort to continue te vaudeville income; another young girl whom Hull- ouse had sent to the high school so long as her parents •nsented, because we realized that a beautiful voice is {ten unavailable through lack of the informing mind, Iter extinguished her promise in a tobacco factory; a 1 ird girl, who had supported her little sisters since she 'as fourteen, eagerly used her fine voice for earning loney at entertainments held late after her day’s work, util exposure and fatigue ruined her health as well as ; musician’s future; a young man whose music-loving jfmily gave him every possible opportunity, and who Reduced some charming and even joyous songs during e long struggle with tuberculosis which preceded his kath, had made a brave beginning, not only as a teach- of music but as a composer. In the little service held Hull-House in his memory, when the children sang Ijs composition, “How t Sweet is the Shepherd’s Sweet |)t,” it was hard to realize that such an interpretive 348 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE pastoral could have been produced by one whose chil hood had been passed in a crowded city quarter. Even that bitter experience did not prepare us fi the sorrowful year when six promising pupils out of 5 class of fifteen developed tuberculosis. It required bi little penetration to see that during the eight years tl class of fifteen school children had come together to tl music school, they had approximately an even chanc but as soon as they reached the legal working age on! oa scanty moiety of those who became self-supportir could endure the strain of long hours and bad air. Thi the average human youth, “With all the sweetness < the common dawn,” is flung into the vortex of ii dustrial life wherein the everyday tragedy escapes i 5 save when one of them becomes conspicuously ui fortunate. Twice in one year we were compelled “To find the inheritance of this poor child His little kingdom of a forced grave.” Ith as been pointed out many times that Art lives b« o devouring her own offspring and the world has come t justify even that sacrifice, but w^e are unfortified an unsolaced when we see the children of Art devourec not by her, but by the uncouth stranger, Modern Ir dustry, who, needlessly ruthless and brutal to her ow 5 children, is quickly fatal to the offspring of the gentlt mother. And so schools in art for those who go to wor at the age when more fortunate young people are sti ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 349 ieltered and educated, constantly epitomize one of the lunting problems of life: why do we permit the waste this most precious huilian faculty, this consummate Tssession of civilization? When we fail to provide the issel in which it may be treasured, it runs out upon le ground and is irretrievably lost. ' The universal desire for the portrayal of life lying aite outside of personal experience evinces itself in iany forms. One of the conspicuous featuies of our rughborhood, as of all industrial quarters, is the per- stency with which the entire population attends the leater. The verv first day I saw Halsted Street, a long ne of young men and boys stood outside the gallery itrance of the Bijou Theater, waiting for the Sunday latinee to begin at two o’clock, although it was only igh noon. This Waiting crowd might have been seen irery Sunday afternoon during the twenty years which ave elapsed since then. Our first Sunday evening in lull-House, when a group of small boys sat on our iazza and told us “about things around here,” their dk was all of the theater and of the astonishing things iey had seen that afternoon. But quite as it was difficult to discover the habits nd purposes of this group of boys because they much referred talking about the theater to contemplating heir own lives, so it was all along the line, the young ien told us their ambitions in the phrases of stage eroes, and the girls, so far as their romantic dreams I o I 5 2 O 2 5 i 5 2 5 350 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE could be shyly put into words, possessed no others b those soiled by long use in the melodrama. All of the young people looked upon an afternoon a week in tl gallery of a Halsted Street theater as their one oj > portunity to see life. J he sort of melodrama they st there has recently been described as “the ten commanc ments written in red fire.” Certainly the villain alwa^ comes to a violent end, and the young and handsom hero is rewarded by marriage with a beautiful gtr usually the daughter of a millionaire, but after all tha is not a portrayal of the morality of the ten command ments any more than of life itself. Nevertheless the theater, such as it was, appeared t( be the one agency which freed the boys and girls fron that destiuctive isolation of those who drag themselves up to maturity by themselves, and it gave them a glimpse of that order and beauty into which even the poorest diama endeavors to restore the bewildering facts of life. The most prosaic young people bear ’ testimony to this overmastering desire. A striking illustration of this came to us during our second yeaEs residence on Halsted Street through an incident in the Italian colony, where the men have always boasted that they were able to guard their daughters from the dan¬ gers of city life, and until evil Italians entered the busi¬ ness of the white slave traffic, their boast was well founded. 1 he first Italian girl to go astray known to the 1 esidents of Hull-House, was so fascinated by the ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 35i utage that on her way home from work she always : >itered outside a theater before the enticing posters, hree months after her elopement with an actor, her istracted mother received a picture of her dressed in ,t he men’s clothes in which she appeared in vaudeville. 5 ler family mourned her as dead and her name was ever mentioned among them nor in the entire colony, i n further illustration of an overmastering desire to see r fe as portrayed on the stage are two young girls whose Dber parents did not approve of the theater and would 10 How no money for such foolish purposes. In sheer esperation the sisters evolved a plot that one of them /ould feign a toothache, and while she was having her Doth pulled by a neighboring dentist the other would teal the gold crowns from his table, and with the money 15 bus procured they could attend the vaudeville theater j very night on their way home from work. Apparently he pain and wrongdoing did not weigh for a moment gainst the anticipated pleasure, i he plan was carried ut to the point of selling the gold crowns to a pawn- 20 roker when the disappointed girls were arrested. All this effort to see the play took place in the years efore the five-cent theaters had become a feature of very crowded city thoroughfare and before their i “opularity had induced the attendance of two and a 25 uarter million people in the United States every wenty-four hours. The eagerness of the penniless hildren to get into these magic spaces is responsible for 352 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE an entire crop of petty crimes made more easy becau two children are admitted for one nickel at the lastpe formance when the hour is late and the theater nearl deserted. The Hull-House residents were aghast at th s early popularity of these mimic shows, and in the daj before the inspection of films and the present regulatior for the five-cent theaters, we established at Hull-Hous a moving picture show. Although its success justifie its existence, it was so obviously but one in the midst c i o hundreds that it seemed much more advisable to tun our attention to the improvement of all of them, o rather to assist as best we could the successful effort m this direction by the Juvenile Protective Association However, long before the five-cent theater was ever is heard of, we had accumulated much testimony as tc the power of the drama, and we would have been dul indeed if we had not availed ourselves of the use of th( play at Hull-House, not only as an agent of recreation and education, but as a vehicle of self-expression for the 20teeming young life all about us. Long before the Hull-House theater was built we had many plays, first in the drawing-room and later in the gymnasium. The young people’s clubs never tired of rehearsing and preparing for these dramatic occasions, 2 s and we also discovered that older people were almost equally ready and talented. We quickly learned that no celebration at Thanksgiving was so popular as a graphic portrayal on the stage of the Pilgrim Fathers, ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 353 id we were often put to it to reduce to dramatic Fects the great days of patriotism and religion. At one of our early Christmas celebrations Long- How’s “Golden Legend” was given, the actors por- aying it with the touch of the miracle play spirit which 5 reflects. I remember an old blind man, who took the art of a shepherd, said, at the end of the last per- irmance, “Kind Heart,” a name by which he always Idressed me, “it seems to me that I have been waiting 1 my life to hear some of these things said. I am glad 10 e had so many performances, for I think I can re¬ ember them to the end. It is getting hard for me to >ten to reading, but the different voices and all made lis very plain. ” Had he not perhaps made a legitimate rnnand upon the drama, that it shall express for us x 5 lat which we have not been able to formulate for our- :lves, that it shall warm us with a sense of com- anionship with the experiences of others; does not revy genuine drama present our relations to each other id to the world in which we find ourselves in such wise 20 ; may fortify us to the end of the journey? The immigrants in the neighborhood of Hull-House ive utilized our little stage in an endeavor to reproduce le past of their own nations through those immortal ramas which have escaped from the restraining bond 25 ■ one country into the land of the universal. A large colony of Greeks near Hull-House, who often el that their history and classic background are com- 354 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE pletely ignored by Americans, and that they are easil confused with the more ignorant immigrants from othd parts of southeastern Europe, welcome an occasion t present Greek plays in the ancient text. With expei 5 help in the difficulties of staging and rehearsing a class! play, they reproduced the “Ajax” of Sophocles 0 upon th Hull-House stage. It was a genuine triumph to th actors who felt that they were “showing forth th glory of Greece” to “ignorant Americans.” Th i o scholar, who came with a copy of Sophocles in hand an< followed the play with real enjoyment, did not in th least realize that the revelation of the love of Greell poets was mutual between the audience and the actors! The Greeks have quite recently assisted an enthusias i 5 in producing “Electra,” 0 while the Lithuanians, thots,” which appeal to the youngest children, to the roic plays of “William Tell,” “King John,” and -Vat Tyler” for the older lads, and to the romances d comedies which set forth in stately fashion the jiborated life which so many young people admire. A joup of Jewish boys gave a dramatic version of the )ry of Joseph and his brethren and again of Queen ither. They had almost a sense of proprietorship in e fine old lines and were pleased to bring from home Its of Talmudic lore 0 for the stage setting. The same ; ib of boys at one time will buoyantly give a roaring Lmedy and five years later will solemnly demand a 5ama dealing with modern industrial conditions. The iull-House theater is also rented from time to time to Lmbers of the Young People’s Socialist League, who ve plays both in Yiddish and English which reduce heir propaganda to conversation, through such hum- s experiments as the Hull-House stage, as well as trough the more ambitious reforms which are at- Impted in various parts of the country, the theater Lay at last be restored to its rightful place in the coin- unity. [There have been times when our little stage was able 360 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE to serve the theatre libre. A Chicago troupe, finding difficult to break into a trust theater, used it one wint< twice a week for the presentation of Ibsen 0 and ol French comedy. A visit from the Irish poet Yeats 0 ii 5 spired us to do our share toward freeing the stage froi its slavery to expensive scene setting, and a forest o stiff conventional trees against a gilt sky still remair with us as a reminder of an attempt, not wholly unsu< cessful, in this direction. o 1 his group of Hull-House artists have filled our littl foyer with a series of charming playbills and by dint c painting their own scenery and making their ow costumes have obtained beguiling results in stag setting. Sometimes all the artistic resources of th s House unite in a Wagnerian combination 0 ; thus th text of the “ Trolfs Holiday’’ was written by on resident, set to music by another; sung by the Musi School, and placed upon the stage under the carefu direction and training of the dramatic committee; an othe little brown trolls could never have tumbled abou so gracefully in their gleaming caves unless they ha been taught in the gymnasium. Some such synthesis takes place every year at th Hull-House annual exhibition, when an effort is mad s to bring together in a spirit of holiday the nine thousan people who come to the House every week during dulle times. Curiously enough the central feature at th annual exhibition seems to be the brass band of th« ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 361 ! ys’ club which apparently dominates the situation by ser size and noise, but perhaps their fresh boyish en- jsiasm expresses that which the older people take ore soberly. I As the stage of our little theater had attempted to s rtray the heroes of many lands, so we planned one *ly spring seven years ago, to carry out a scheme of iral decoration upon the walls of the theater itself, ich should portray those cosmopolitan heroes who ve become great through identification with the com- 10 bn lot, in preference to the heroes of mere achieve- r nt. In addition to the group of artists living at Hull- buse several others were in temporary residence, and hy all threw themselves enthusiastically into the In. I he series began with Tolstoy plowing his field, is nch was painted by an artist of the Glasgow school, I I the next was of the young Lincoln pushing his flat- it down the Mississippi River at the moment he re- ved his first impression of the “great iniquity.” is was done by a promising young artist of Chicago 20 |i the wall spaces nearest to the two selected heroes Ire quickly filled with their immortal sayings. K spirited discussion thereupon ensued in regard to I: heroes for the two remaining large wall spaces, fen to the surprise of all of us the group of twenty- 2 5 [i residents who had lived in unbroken harmony for Ire than ten years, suddenly broke up into cults and 1 n camps of hero worship. Each cult exhibited draw- 362 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE ings of its own hero in his most heroic moment, and course each drawing received enthusiastic backing frc the neighborhood, each according to the nationality the hero. Ihus Phidias 0 standing high on his scaffif 5 as he finished the heroic head of Athene; the you David 0 dreamily playing his harp as he tended 1 father’s sheep at Bethlehem; St. Francis 0 washing t feet of the leper; the young slave Patrick 0 guiding 1 master through the bogs of Ireland, which he later i ioof their dangers; the poet Hans Sachs 0 cobbling shot Jeanne d’Arc° dropping her spindle in startled wond before the heavenly visitants, naturally all obtain such enthusiastic following from our cosmopolit; neighborhood that it was certain to give offense if ai 15 two were selected. T hen there was the cult of residen who wished to keep the series contemporaneous wi the two heroes already painted, and they advocatV William Morris 0 at his loom, Walt Whitman 0 trampii the open road, Pasteur 0 in his laboratory, or Floren 20 Nightingale 0 seeking the wounded on the field of battl But beyond the socialists, few of the neighbors h; heard of William Morris, and the fame of Walt Whi man was still more apocryphal; Pasteur was co sidered merely a clever scientist without the romam 2 s which evokes popular affection, and in the provision drawing submitted for votes, gentle Florence Nightii gale was said “to look more as if she were robbing tl dead than succoring the wounded.” The remark shov ARTS AT HULL-HOUSE 363 ow high the feeling ran, and then, as something must e done quickly, we tried to unite upon strictly local eroes, such as the famous fire marshal who had lived >r many years in our neighborhood — hut why pro¬ ng this description which demonstrates once more 5 pat art, if not always the handmaid of religion, yet sists upon serving those deeper sentiments for which e unexpectedly find ourselves ready to fight? When e were all fatigued and hopeless of compromise, we >ok refuge in a series of landscapes connected with our 10 vo heroes by a quotation from Wordsworth slightly storted to meet our dire need, but still stating his im- issioned belief in the efficacious spirit capable of com- mionship with man which resides in “particular >ots.” Certainly peace emanates from the particular is Iding of the hills in one of our treasured mural land- apes, yet occasionally when a guest with a bewildered r looks from one side of the theater to the other, we *e forced to conclude that the connection is not con- ncing. 2 o In spite of its stormy career this attempt at mural acoration connects itself quite naturally with the spirit our earlier efforts to make Hull-House as beautiful ; we could, which had in it a desire to embody in the itward aspect of the House something of the rem- 25 iscence and aspiration of the neighborhood life. As the House enlarged for new needs and mellowed trough slow-growing associations, we endeavored to 364 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE fashion it from without, as it were, as well as fro within. A tiny wall fountain modeled in classic patter for us penetrates into the world of the past, but for t Italian immigrant it may defy distance and barriers 5 he dimly responds to that typical beauty in which Ita has ever written its message, even as classic art kne no region of the gods which was not also sensuous, ar as the art of Dante 0 mysteriously blended the materi and the spiritual. 10 Perhaps the early devotion of the Hull-House re.< dents to the pre-Raphaelites° recognized that the above all English speaking poets and painters reve “the sense of the expressiveness of outward things which is at once the glory and the limitation of the art CHAPTER XVII Echoes of the Russian Revolution The residents of Hull-House have always seen many vidences of the Russian Revolution; a forlorn family f little children whose parents have been massacred at Jshinev 0 are received and supported by their relatives 1 our Chicago neighborhood; or a Russian woman, her ice streaming with tears of indignation and pity, asks ou to look at the scarred back of her sister, a young irl, who has escaped with her life from the whips of le Cossack soldiers; or a studious young woman sud- enly disappears from the Hull-House classes because ie has returned to Kiev to be near her brother while e is in prison, that she may earn money for the nour- hing food which alone will keep him from contracting iberculosis; or we attend a protest meeting against the ewest outrages of the Russian government in which ie speeches are interrupted by the groans of those hose sons have been sacrificed and by the hisses of thers who cannot repress their indignation. At such loments an American is acutely conscious of our ;norance of this greatest tragedy of modern times, and t our indifference to the waste of perhaps the noblest uman material among our contemporaries. Certain it 365 366 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE is, as the distinguished Russian revolutionists have con to Chicago, they have impressed me, as no one else ev has done, as belonging to that noble company J martyrs who have ever and again poured forth bloc 5 that human progress might be advanced. Sometime these men and women have addressed audienc< gathered quite outside the Russian colony and hav filled to overflowing Chicago’s largest halls wit American citizens, deeply touched by this message ( o martyrdom. One significant meeting was addressed b a member of the Russian Duma 0 and by one of Russia oldest and sanest revolutionists; another by Madam Breshkovsky, 0 who later languished a prisoner in th fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 0 s In this wonderful procession of revolutionists, Princ Kropotkin, 0 or, as he prefers to be called, Peter Kropot km, was doubtless the most distinguished. When h came to America to lecture, he was heard throughou the country with great interest and respect; that he wa 0 a guest of Hull-House during his stay in Chicago at tracted little attention at the time, but two years later when the assassination of President McKinley 0 oc curred, the visit of this kindly scholar, who had alway called himself an * anarchist” and had certainly written s fiery tracts in his younger manhood, was made the bash of an attack upon Hull-House b}^ a daily newspaper which ignored the fact that while Prince Kropotkir had addressed the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society at ECHOES OE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 367 lull-House, giving a digest of his remarkable book on Fields, Factories, and Workshops,” he had also poken at the State Universities of Illinois and Wis- onsin and before the leading literary and scientific ocieties of Chicago. These institutions and societies vere not, therefore, called anarchistic. Hull-House had oubtless laid itself open to this attack through an in- ident connected with the imprisonment of the editor f an anarchistic paper, who was arrested in Chicago nmediately after the assassination of President 1 TcKinley. In the excitement following the national alamity and the avowal by the assassin of the influence f the anarchistic lecture to which he had listened, ar- ests were made in Chicago of every one suspected of narchy, in the belief that a widespread plot would be ncovered. The editor’s house was searched for in- riminating literature, his wife and daughter taken to a 'olice station, and his son and himself, with several ther suspected anarchists, were placed in the disused ells in the basement of the city hall. It is impossible to overstate the public excitement of I he moment and the unfathomable sense of horror with which the community regarded an attack upon the hief executive of the nation, as a crime against govern- lent itself which compels an instinctive recoil from all iw-abiding citizens. Doubtless both the horror and ecoil have their roots deep down in human expenence; he earliest forms of government implied a group which 368 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE offered competent resistance to outsiders, but assumir no protection was necessary between any two of i own members, promptly punished with death tf traitor who had assaulted any one within. An ai 5 archistic attack against an official thus furnishes a accredited basis both for unreasoning hatred and fc prompt punishment. Both the hatred and the detei mination to punish reached the highest pitch in Chicag after the assassination of President McKinley, and th xo group of wretched men detained in the old-fashionec scarcely habitable cells, had not the least idea of thei ultimate fate. They were not allowed to see an attorne and were kept “in communicado” as their excite< friends called it. I had seen the editor and his famih 1 5 only during Prince Kropotkin’s stay at Hull-House when they had come to visit him several times. Th< editor had impressed me as a quiet, scholarly man, chal lenging the social order by the philosophic touchstom of Bakunin 0 and of Herbert Spencer, somewhat startlec 20 by the radicalism of his fiery young son and much com forted by the German domesticity of his wife ant daughter. Perhaps it was but my hysterical symptorr of the universal excitement, but it certainly seemed tc me more than I could bear when a group of his in- 2 S dividualistic friends, who had come to ask for help, said: “You see what becomes of your boasted law; the authorities won t even allow an attorney, nor will they accept bail for these men, against whom nothing can ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 369 ie proved, although the veriest criminals are not denied uch a right.” Challenged by an anarchist, one is al¬ ways sensitive for the honor of legally constituted aciety, and I replied that of course the men could have n attorney, that the assassin himself would eventually 5 e furnished with one, that the fact that a man was an narchist had nothing to do with his rights before the iw! I'was met with the retort that that might do for theory, but that the fact still remained that these men ad been absolutely isolated, seeing no one but police- 10 ien, who constantly frightened them with tales of ublic clamor and threatened lynching. This conversation took place on Saturday night and, s the final police authority rests in the mayor, with a riend who was equally disturbed over the situation, I 15 epaired to his house on Sunday morning to appeal to im in the interest of a law and order that should not ield to panic. We contended that to the anarchist hove all men it must be demonstrated that law is im- artial and stands the test of every strain. The mayor 20 eard us through with the ready sympathy of the uccessful politician. He insisted, however, that the aen thus far had merely been properly protected gainst lynching, but that it might now be safe to allow hem to see some one; he would not yet, however, take 25 he responsibility of permitting an attorney, but it I nyself chose to see them on the humanitarian errand ■if an assurance of fair play, he would wnte me a permit 370 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE at once. I promptly fell into the trap, if trap it wa and within half an hour was in a corridor in the city ha basement, talking to the distracted editor and su rounded by a cordon of police, who assured me that s was not safe to permit him out of his cell. The edito who had grown thin and haggard under his suspens< asked immediately as to the whereabouts of his wif and daughter, concerning whom he had heard not word since he had seen them arrested. Gradually h 1 o became composed as he learned, not that his testimon had been believed to the effect that he had never see the assassin but once, and had then considered him foolish half-witted creature, but that the most thorough going “dragnet’ investigations on the part of th 15 united police of the country had failed to discover . plot and that the public was gradually becoming con \mced that the dastardly act was that of a solitar man with no political or social affiliations. The entire conversation was simple and did not seen 20 to me unlike, in motive or character, interviews I hac had with many another forlorn man who had fallen intc prison. I had scarce returned to Hull-House, however before it was filled with reporters, and I at once dis covered that whether or not I had helped a brother oui 2 s of a pit, I had fallen into a deep one myself. A period o: sharp public opprobrium followed, traces of which, 1 suppose, will always remain. And yet, in the midst of the letters of protest and accusation which made my ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 371 tail a horror every morning, came a few letters of an¬ ther sort, one from a federal judge whom I had never ^en and another from a distinguished professor in con- itutional law, who congratulated me on what they irmed a sane attempt to uphold the law in time of anic. Although one or two ardent young people rushed into rint to defend me from the charge of “abetting narchy,” it seemed to me at the time that mere words ould not avail. I had felt that the protection of the iw itself, extended to the most unpopular citizen, was le only reply to the anarchistic argument, to the effect lat this moment of panic revealed the truth of their teory of government; that the custodians of law and rder have become the government itself quite as the rmed men hired by the medieval guilds to protect them 1 the peaceful pursuit of their avocations, through leer possession of arms finally made themselves rulers f the city. At that moment I was firmly convinced I nat the public could only be convicted of the blindness fits course, when a body of people with a hundred-fold 1 f the moral energy possessed by a Settlement group, Ifiould make clear that there is no method by which , ny community can be guarded against sporadic efforts n the part of half-crazed, discouraged men, save by a I ense of mutual rights and securities which will include Lhe veriest outcast. It seemed to me then that in the millions of words 372 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE uttered and written at that time, no one adequate uiged that public-spirited citizens set themselves ti task of patiently discovering how these sporadic acts violence against government may be understood ar 5 averted. We do not know whether they occur amor the discouraged and unassimilated immigrants, wb might be cared for in such a way as enormously to lesse the probability of these acts, or whether they are tf result of anarchistic teaching. By hastily concludin i o that the latter is the sole explanation for them, we mak no attempt to heal and cure the situation. Failure t make a proper diagnosis may mean treatment of disease which does not exist, or it may furthermor mean that the dire malady from which the patient i 15 suffering be permitted to develop unchecked. And ye as the details of the meager life of the President’s as; sassin were disclosed, they were a challenge to the force for social betterment in American cities. Was it not ai indictment to all those whose business it is to interpre 2 ° and. solace the wretched, that a boy should have growr up in an American city so uncared for, so untouched by higher issues, his wounds of life so unhealed by religion that the first talk he ever heard dealing with life’s wrongs, although anarchistic and violent, should yet 2 5 appear to point a way of relief? The conviction that a sense of fellowship is the only implement which will break into the locked purpose of ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 373 half-crazed creature bent upon destruction in the ime of justice, came to me through an experience re¬ tted to me at this time by an old anarchist. He was a German cobbler who, through all the chang- in the manufacturing of shoes, had steadily clung to s little shop on a Chicago thoroughfare, partly as an pression of his individualism and partly because he eferred bitter poverty in a place of his own to good ’ages under a disciplinary foreman. The assassin of resident McKinley, on his way through Chicago only few days before he committed his dastardly deed, had sited all the anarchists whom he could find in the cy, asking them for “the password” as he called it. Hey, of course, possessed no such thing, and had 1 rned him away, some with disgust and all with a < rtain degree of impatience, as a type of the ill- hlanced man who, as they put it, was always “hang- ig around the movement, without the slightest con- (ption of its meaning.” Among other people, he ’sited the German cobbler, who treated him much as 1 e others had done, but who, after the event had made ear the identity of his visitor, was filled with the most Itter remorse that he had failed to utilize his chance leeting with the assassin to deter him from his purpose, je knew as well as any psychologist who has read the 1 story of such solitary men that the only possible way 1 break down such a persistent and secretive purpose 374 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE was by the kindliness which might have induced co fession, which might have restored the future assass into fellowship with normal men. In the midst of his remorse, the cobbler told me a ta 5 of his own youth; that years before, when an ardei young fellow in Germany, newly converted to tl philosophy of anarchism, as he called it, he had mac up his mind that the Church, as much as the State, w; responsible for human oppression, and that this fae iocould best he set forth in the deed” by the publi destruction of a clergyman or priest; that he had carrie firearms for a year with this purpose in mind, but tha one pleasant summer evening, in a moment of weaknes: he had confided his intention to a friend, and that fror x 5 that moment he not only lost all desire to carry it oui but it seemed to him the most preposterous thin imaginable. In concluding the story he said: “Tha poor fellow sat just beside me on my bench; if I ha. only put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Now, lool 2ohere, brother, what is on your mind? What makes yoi talk such nonsense? Tell me. I have seen much of life and understand all kinds of men. I have been younj and hot-headed and foolish myself’; if he had told me o his puipose then and there, he would never have carriet 2 s it out. 1 he whole nation would have been spared thi: honor. As he concluded he shook his gray head anc sighed as if the whole incident were more than he coulc heai one of those terrible sins of omission; one of the ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 375 ings he “ought to have done,” the memory of which so hard to endure. The attempt a Settlement makes to interpret Ameri- n institutions to those who are bewildered concerning em, either because of their personal experiences or hcause of preconceived theories, would seem to lie in e direct path of its public obligation, and yet it is »parently impossible for the overwrought community distinguish between the excitement the Settlements e endeavoring to understand and to allay and the titude of the Settlement itself. At times of public mic, fervid denunciation is held to be the duty of 1 ery good citizen, and if a Settlement is convinced that e incident should be used to vindicate the law and ues not at the moment give its strength to denuncia- nn, its attitude is at once taken to imply a champion- : ip of anarchy itself. The public mind at such a moment falls into the old edieval confusion — he who feeds or shelters a heretic upon prima facie 0 evidence a heretic himself—he iio knows intimately people among whom anarchists ;ise, is therefore an anarchist. I personally am con- nced that anarchy as a philosophy is dying down, not (dy in Chicago, but everywhere; that their leading 1 gans have discontinued publication, and that their ost eminent men in America have deserted them, ven those groups which have continued to meet are ividing, and the major half in almost every instance 'Ol 376 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE calls itself socialist-anarchists, an apparent conti- diction of terms, whose members insist that the soci;« istic organization of society must be the next stage ’ social development and must be gone through with, , s to speak, before the ideal state of society can be reache, so nearly begging the question that some orthod^ socialists are willing to recognize them. It is certain* true that just because anarchy questions the vei foundations of society, the most elemental sense of pr iotection demands that the method of meeting the cha lenge should be intelligently considered. T 5 2 o Whether or not Hull-House has accomplished ami thing by its method of meeting such a situation, or ; least attempting to treat it in a way which will m destroy confidence in the American institutions .< adored by refugees from foreign governmental on pression, it is of course impossible for me to say. And yet it was in connection with an effort to purse] an intelligent policy in regard to a so-called “ foreign anarchist” that Hull-House again became associatei with that creed six years later. This again was an ech of the Russian revolution, but in connection with on f of its humblest representatives. A young Russian Je^ named Averbuch appeared in the early morning at th house of the Chicago chief of police upon an obscur errand. It was a moment of panic everywhere in regan to anarchists because of a recent murder in Denve which had been charged to an Italian anarchist, am ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 377 e chief of police, assuming that the dark young man anding in his hallway was an anarchist bent upon his ;sassination, hastily called for help. In a panic born ‘ fear and self-defense, young Averbuch was shot to jath'. The members of the Russian-Jewish colony on 5 le west side of Chicago were thrown into a state of m- :nse excitement as soon as the nationality of the young ian became known. They were filled with dark tore- odings from a swift prescience of what it would mean ) them were the odium of anarchy rightly or wrongly 1 o ttached to one of their members. It seemed to the isidents of Hull-House most important that every Tort should be made to ascertain just what did happen, lat every means of securing information should be ex- austed before a final opinion should be formed,, and 15 his odium fastened upon a colony of law-abiding itizens. The police might be right or wrong in their as- ertion that the man was an anarchist. It was, to our linds, also most unfortunate that the Chicago police I the determination to uncover an anarchistic plot 20 hould have utilized the most drastic methods of search ivithin the Russian-Jewish colony, composed of families inly too familiar with the methods of the Russian >olice. Therefore, when the Chicago police ransacked II the printing offices they could locate in the colony, 25 vhen they raided a restaurant which they regarded as uspicious because it had been supplying food at cost o the unemployed, when they searched through private 378 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE houses for papers and photographs of revolutionarf, when they seized the library of the Edelstadt group 0 ai| carried the books, including Shakespeare and Herbe: Spencei, to the city hall, when they arrested two frien s of young Averbuch and kept them in the police sfatii forty-eight hours, when they mercilessly “sweated” t! sister, Olga, that she might be startled into a co; fession all these things so poignantly reminded the of Russian methods, that indignation, fed both by ol i o memory and bitter disappointment in America, swej over the entire colony. The older men asked wheth( constitutional rights gave no guarantee against sue violent aggression of police power, and the hot-heade \ounger ones cued out at once that the only way to de; i s with the police was to defy them, which was true c police the world over. It was said many times tha those who are without influence and protection in j strange country fare exactly as hard as do the poor ii Europe; that all the talk of guaranteed protectioi 20 through political institutions is nonsense. Every Settlement has classes in citizenship in whici the principles of American institutions are expounds and of these the community, as a whole, approves. Bu the Settlements know better than any one else that 25 while these classes and lectures are useful, nothing car possibly give lessons in citizenship so effectively anc make so clear the constitutional basis of a self-governing community as the current event itself. The treatment ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 379 t a given moment of that foreign colony which feels tself outraged and misunderstood, either makes its constitutional rights clear to it, or forever confuses it >n the subject. The only method by which a reasonable and loyal 5 onception of government may be substituted lor the me formed upon Russian experiences, is that the actual ‘xpenence of refugees with government in America ;hall gradually demonstrate what a very different thing rovernment means here. Such an event as the Aver- 1 o mch affair affords an unprecedented opportunity to nake clear this difference and to demonstrate beyond he possibility of misunderstanding that the guarantee if constitutional rights implies that officialism shall be -estrained and guarded at every point, that the official 15 epresents, not the will of a small administrative body, 3ut the will of the entire people, and that methods zherefore have been constituted by which official ag¬ gression may be restrained, lhe Averbuch incident >ave an opportunity to demonstrate this to that very 2 o body of people who need it most: to those who have lived in Russia where autocratic officers represent autocratic power and where government is officialism. It seemed to the residents in the Settlements nearest the Russian-Jewish colony that it was an obvious piece 2 5 of public spirit to try out all the legal value involved, to insist that American institutions were stout enough not to break down in times of stress and public panic. ' 380 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE The belief of many Russians that the Averbu incident would be made a prelude to the constant u of the extradition treaty for the sake of terrorizir revolutionists both at home and abroad, received sceitain corroboration when an attempt was made i 190.X to extradite a Russian revolutionist named Rud< vitz who was living in Chicago. The first hearing before United States Commissioner gave a verdict favorabl to the Russian Government although this was aftei 1 o wards reversed by the Department of State in Wash mgton. Partly to educate American sentiment, parti- to express sympathy with the Russian refugees in thei dire need, a series of public meetings was arranged ir which the operations of the extradition treaty wen .5 discussed by many of us who had spoken at a meetim ield in protest against its ratification fifteen years be- fore It is impossible for any one unacquainted wit the Russian colony to realize the consternation pr duced by this attempted extradition. I acted as 3 ° treasurer of the fund collected to defray the expenses O Tails and printing m the campaign against the policy of extradition and had many opportunities to talk with members of the colony. One old man, tearing his hair and beard as he spoke, declared that all his sons and 2 5grandsons might thus be sent back to Russia; in fact all of the younger men in the colony might be extra¬ dited, tor every high-spirited young Russian was, in a sense, a revolutionist. - I ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 381 Would it not provoke to ironic laughter that very ‘ nemesis which presides over the destinies of nations, if the most autocratic government yet remaining in civilization should succeed in utilizing for its own 1 autocratic methods the youngest and most daring ex¬ periment in democratic government which the world has eyer seen? Stranger results have followed a course of stupidity and injustice resulting from blindness and panic! It is certainly true that if the decision of the federal office in Chicago had not been reversed by the depart¬ ment of state in Washington, the United States govern¬ ment would have been committed to return thousands of spirited young refugees to the punishments of the Russian autocracy. It was perhaps significant of our need of what Napoleon called a “revival of civic morals” that the public appeal against such a reversal of our traditions had to be based largely upon the contributions to American progress made from other revolutions: the Puritans 0 from the English, Lafayette 0 from the French, Carl Schurz 0 and many another able man from the German upheavals in the middle of the century. A distinguished German scholar, writing at the end of his long life a description of his friends of 1848 who made a gallant although premature effort to unite the German states and to secure a constitutional govern¬ ment, thus concludes: “But not a few saw the whole 382 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE of their lives wrecked, either in prison or poverty though they had done no wrong, and in many case were the finest characters it has been my good fortun to know. They were before their time; the fruit wa 5 not ripe, as it was in 1871, and Germany but lost he best sons in those miserable years. ” When the time i ripe in Russia, when she finally yields to those grea forces which are molding and renovating contemporar life, when her Cavour and her Bismarck 0 finally thro\ ointo the first governmental forms all that yearning fo juster human relations which the idealistic Russiai revolutionists embody, we may look back upon thesi “miserable years” with a sense of chagrin at our lacl of sympathy and understanding, s Again it is far from easy to comprehend the grea Russian struggle. I recall a visit from the famou: revolutionist Gershuni, who had escaped from Siberia in a barrel of cabbage rolled under the very fortress o the commandant himself, had made his way through o Manchuria and China to San Francisco, and on his wa}] back to Russia had stopped in Chicago for a few days I hree months later we heard of his death, and whenevei I recall the conversation held with him, I find it in¬ vested with that dignity which last words imply. Upon 5 the request of a comrade Gershuni had repeated the substance of the famous speech he had made to the court which sentenced him to Siberia. As representing the government against which he had rebelled he told ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 383 he court that he might in time be able to forgive all of heir outrages and injustices save one: the unforgivable mtrage would remain that hundreds of men like him¬ self, who were vegetarians because they were not willing o participate in the destruction of living creatures, who lad never struck a child even in punishment, who were ,0 consumed with tenderness for the outcast and op- )ressed that they had lived for weeks among starving leasants only that they might cheer and solace them hat these men should have been driven into terrorism, mtil impelled to “execute,” as they call it assas¬ sinate” the Anglo-Saxon would term it — public offi- :ials, was something for which he would never forgive he Russian government. It was, perhaps, the heat of he argument, as much as conviction, which led me to •eply that it would be equally difficult for society to orgive these very revolutionists for one thing they had lone, their institution of the use of force in such wise hat it would inevitably be imitated by men of less scruple and restraint; that to have revived such a nethod in civilization, to have justified it by their iisinterestedness of purpose and nobility ot chaiacter, vas perhaps the gravest responsibility that any group if men could assume. With a smile of indulgent pity such as one might grant to a mistaken child, he replied that such Tolstoyan principles were as fitted to Russia as “these toilettes,” pointing to the thin summer gowns if his listeners, “were fitted to a Siberian winter. 384 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE And yet I held the belief then, as I certainly do no^ that when the sense of justice seeks to express itse quite outside the regular channels of established goveri ment, it has set forth on a dangerous journey inevitabl s ending in disaster, and that this is true in spite of tf fact that the adventure may have been inspired b noble motives. Still more perplexing than the use of force by th revolutionists is the employment of the agent-prc 1 o vocateut on the part of the Russian government. Th visit of Vladimir Rourtzeff 0 to Chicago just after hi exposure of the famous secret agent, AzefF, filled on with perplexity in regard to a government which wouh connive at the violent death of a faithful official an. j is that of a member of the royal household for the sak of bringing opprobrium and punishment to the revolu j tiomsts and credit to the secret police. The Settlement has also suffered through its effor j to secure open discussion of the methods of the Russiai j 20 government. During the excitement connected witl the visit of Gorki 0 to this country, three different com ] mittees came to Hull-House begging that I would s secure a statement in at least one of the Chicagcj dailies of their own view, that the agents of the Czai i -shad cleverly centered public attention upon Gorki’s?: private life and had fomented a scandal so successfully: that the object of Gorki’s visit to America had been] foiled; he who had known intimately the most wretched ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 385 >f the Czar’s subjects, who was best able to sym¬ pathetically portray their wretchedness, not only failed T 0 get a hearing before an American audience, but could Scarcely find the shelter of a roof. I told two of the Russian committees that it was hopeless to undertake i my explanation of the bitter attack until public excite- nent had somewhat subsided; but one Sunday after¬ noon when a third committee arrived, I said that I vould endeavor to have reprinted in a Chicago daily he few scattered articles written for the magazines 1;which tried to explain the situation, one by the head 1 professor in political economy of a leading univeisity, j md others by publicists well informed as to Russian 1 iffairs. ■ I hoped that a cosmopolitan newspaper might feel m obligation to recognize the desire for fair play on he part of thousands of its readers among the Russians, Poles, and Finns, at least to the extent of reproducing these magazine articles under a noncommittal caption. That same Sunday evening in company with one of the residents, I visited a newspaper office only to heat its representative say that my plan was quite out of the question, as the whole subject was what newspaper men called “a sacred cow. 5 ’ He said, however, that he would willingly print an article which I myself should 1 write and sign. I declined this offer with the statement that one who had my opportunities to see the struggles of poor women in securing support for their children, 386 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE found it impossible to write anything which wou however remotely justify the loosening of marria bonds, even if the defense of Gorki made by the Russi; committees was sound. We left the newspaper offi s somewhat discouraged with what we thought one mo unsuccessful effort to procure a hearing for the imm grants. I had considered the incident closed, when to m horror and surprise several months afterwards it w; i o made the basis of a story with every possible vicioi interpretation. One of the Chicago newspapers ha been indicted by Mayor Dunne for what he considere an actionable attack upon his appointees to the Chicag School Board of whom I was one, and the incident, er 15 larged and coarsened, was submitted as evidence to th Grand Jury in regard to my views and influence. A 1 though the evidence was thrown out, an attempt wa again made to revive this story by the managers c Mayor Dunne’s second campaign, this time to sho\ 20how “the protector of fhe oppressed” was traduced I he incident is related here as an example of the cleve use of that old device which throws upon the radical ii religion, in education, and in social reform, the odiun of encouraging “harlots and sinners” and of defending 2 5 their doctrines. If the under dog were always right, one might quit( easily try to defend him. I ne trouble is that very often he is hut obscurely right, sometimes only partially ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 387 ight, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so iltogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehen¬ sible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable lifficulties of understanding him. It was, perhaps, not 5 surprising that with these excellent opportunities for nisjudging Hull-House, we should have suffered attack rom time to time whenever any untoward event gave an opening, as when an Italian immigrant murdered a priest in Denver, Colorado. Although the wretched man 1 aad never been in Chicago, much less at Hull-House, a Chicago ecclesiastic asserted that he had learned hatred pf the Church as a member of the Giordano Bruno 0 Club, an Italian Club, one of whose members lived at Tull-House, and which had occasionally met there, al- 1 though it had long maintained clubrooms of its own. This club had its origin in the old struggles of united Italy against the temporal power of the Pope, one of the European echoes with which Chicago resounds. The Italian resident, as the editor of a paper representing 2 new Italy, had come in sharp conflict with the Chicago ecclesiastic, first in regard to naming a public school of the vicinity after Garibaldi, which was of couise not tolerated by the Church, and then in regard to many another issue arising in anticlericahsm, which, although 2 a political party, is constantly involved, from the very nature of the case, in theological difficulties. The con-^ test had been carried on with a bitterness impossible 388 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE for an American to understand, but its origin ar implications were so obvious that it did not occur any of us that it could be associated with Hull-Houi . either in its motive or direction, s The ecclesiastic himself had lived for years in Rom and as I had often discussed the problems of Italia politics with him, I was quite sure he understood th raison d’etre for the Giordano Bruno Club. Fortunatel in the midst of the rhetorical attack, our friendly re I i olations remained unbroken with the neighboring priest j from whom we continued to receive uniform courtes as we cooperated in cases of sorrow and need. Hundred of devout communicants identified with the variou j Hull-House clubs and classes were deeply distresse i 15 by the incident, but assured us it was all a misunder j standing. Easter came soon afterwards, and it was no difficult to make a connection between the attack anc; the myriad of Easter cards which filled my mail. 'i Thus a Settlement becomes involved in the man) . 20 difficulties of its neighbors as its experiences make vivid the consciousness of modern internationalism. And: yet the very fact that the sense of reality is so keen and the obligation of the Settlement so obvious, may per¬ haps in itself explain the opposition Hull-House has 2 s encountered when fit expressed its sympathy with the Russian revolution. We were much entertained, al¬ though somewhat ruefully, when a Chicago woman withdrew from us a large annual subscription because I ECHOES OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 389 lull -House had defended a Russian refugee while she, dio had seen-much of the Russian aristocracy in urope, knew from them that all the revolutionary gitation was both unreasonable and unnecessary! It is, of course, impossible to say whether these op- ositions were inevitable or whether they were indica- ions that Hull-House had somehow bungled at its ask. Many times I have been driven to the confession f the blundering Amiel°: “It requires ability to make rhat we seem agree with what we are.” I o CHAPTER XVIII Socialized Education In a paper written years ago I deplored at sor; length the fact that educational matters are mo- democratic in their political than in their social aspe< | and I quote the following extract from it as throwii 5 some light upon the earlier educational undertakin at Hull-House:— Teaching in a Settlement requires distinct methods, for it is true f people who have been allowed to remain undeveloped and wh ? faculties are inert and sterile, that they cannot take their learn : i o heavily. It has to be diffused in a social atmosphere, informat i must be held in solution, in a medium of fellowship and good will Intellectual life requires for its expansion and manifestation influence and assimilation of the interests and affections of othi, Mazzini, that greatest of all democrats, who broke his heart over t! 1 5 condition of the South European peasantry, said: “ Education is i: merely a necessity of true life by which the individual renews vital force in the vital force of humanity; it is a Holy Communi with generations dead and living, by which he fecundates all 1 faculties. \Vhen he is withheld from this Communion for generatio: 2 o as the Italian peasant has been, we say, ‘He is like a beast of t field; he must be controlled by force.’” Even to this it is sometiir added that it is absurd to educate him, immoral to disturb his contei W e stupidly use the effect as an argument for a continuance of t cause. It is needless to say that a Settlement is a protest against ; 2 s restricted view of education. 390 SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 39i In line with this declaration, Hull-House in the very >eginning opened what we called College Extension Classes with a faculty finally numbering thirty-five ollege men and women, many of whom held their mpils for consecutive years. As these classes antedated in Chicago the University Extension and Normal Ex¬ tension classes and supplied a demand for stimulating construction, the attendance strained to their utmost capacity the spacious rooms in the old house. The gelation of students and faculty to each other and to he residents was that of guest and hostess and at the lose of each term the residents gave a reception to stu¬ dents and faculty which was one of the chief social 4 vents of the season. Upon this comfortable social iasis some very good work was done. In connection with these classes a Hull-House stun¬ ner school was instituted at Rockford College, which ?as most generously placed at our disposal by the rustees. f or ten years one hundred women gathered here for six weeks; in addition there were always men j n the faculty, and a small group of young men among he students, who were lodged in the gymnasium build- ng. The outdoor classes in bird study and botany, the erious reading of literary masterpieces, the boat ex- ursions on the Rock River, the cooperative spirit of loing the housework together, the satirical commence¬ ments in parti-colored caps and gowns, lent themselves oward a reproduction of the comradeship which college [fe fosters. 392 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE As each member of the faculty, as well as the studen paid three dollars a week, and as we had little outlf beyond the actual cost of food, we easily defrayed or expenses. The undertaking was so simple and gratify sing in results that it might well be reproduced in ma]j college buildings which are set in the midst of beautill surroundings, unused during the two months of tY year, when hundreds of people, able to pay only k moderate price for lodgings in the country, can fii ^ i o nothing comfortable and no mental food more satisf i ing than piazza gossip. Every Thursday evening during the first years, public lecture came to be an expected event in tl j neighborhood, and Hull-House became one of the ear; i 1 s University Extension centers, first in connection witj an independent society and later with the University have the mother say: “Please don’t come here, oil will only get hurt, too. ” Of course I did not get urt, but the episode left upon my mind one of the most ainfuf impressions I have ever received in connection ith the children of the neighborhood. In addition to il else are the lessons of loyalty and comradeship to ome to them as the mere reversals of class antagonism ? nd yet it was but a trifling incident out of the general )irit of bitterness and strife which filled the city. Therefore the residents of Hull-House place increas- ig emphasis upon the great inspirations and solaces of terature and are unwilling that it should ever languish > a subject for class instruction or for reading parties, he Shakespeare club has lived a continuous existence t Hull-House for sixteen years during which time its iembers have heard the leading interpreters of Shake- >eare, both among scholars and players. I recall that le of its earliest members said that her mind was copied with Shakespeare characters during her long burs of sewing in a shop, that she couldn’t remember hat she thought about before she joined the club, and included that she hadn’t thought about anything at 1. To feed the mind of the worker, to lift it above the onotony of his task, and to connect it with the larger I o I 5 2 O 2 5 398 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE world, outside of his immediate surroundings, has 1 ways been the object of art, perhaps never more no fulfilled than by the great English hard. Miss Starr 1 held classes in Dante and Browning for many years a the great lines are conned with never failing enthusias I recall Miss Lathrop’s Plato club and an audience listened to a series of lectures by Dr. John Dewey “Social Psychology,” as genuine intellectual grot consisting largely of people from the immediate nei borhood, who were willing to make “that effort fr which we all shrink, the effort of thought.” But w we prize these classes as we do the help we are able give to the exceptional young man or woman who reac es the college and university and leaves the neighbc hood of his childhood behind him, the residents of Hu House feel increasingly that the educational efforts a Settlement should not he directed primarily to repi duce the college type of culture, but to work out method and an ideal adapted to the immediate situ tion. 1 hey feel that they should promote a cultu which will not set its possessor aside in a class wi others like himself, but which will, on the contrar connect him with all sorts of people by his ability understand them as well as by his power to suppleme their present surroundings with the historic bac ground. Among the hundreds of immigrants who ha 1 for years attended classes at Hull-House design primarily to teach the English language, dozens SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 399 hem have struggled to express in the newly acquired ' ongue some of those hopes and longings which had so nuch to do with their emigration. ir A series of plays was thus written by a young Bohe¬ mian; essays by a Russian youth, outpouring sorrows 5 ivaling Werther 0 himself and yet containing the precious stuff of youth’s perennial revolt against ac¬ cepted wrong; stories of Russian oppression and petty njustices throughout which the desire for free America oecame a crystallized hope; an attempt to portray the 10 Jewish day of Atonement, in such wise that even in¬ dividualistic Americans may catch a glimpse of that deeper national life which has survived all transplant- ng and expresses itself in forms so ancient that they ippear grotesque to the ignorant spectator. I remember 15 1 pathetic effort on the part of a young Russian Jewess to describe the vivid inner hie ol an old 1 almud scholar, probably her uncle or father, as of one persistently oc- :upied with the grave and important things of the spirit, although when brought into sharp contact with 20 busy and overworked people, he inevitably appeared self-absorbed and slothful. Certainly no one who had read her paper could again see such an old man in his praying shawl bent over his crabbed book, without a sense of understanding. 2 5 On the other hand, one of the most pitiful periods in the drama of the much-praised young American who attempts to rise in life, is the time when his educational 400 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE requirements seem to have locked him up and ma< him rigid. He fancies himself shut off from his u educated famdy and misunderstood by his friends, b is bowed down by his mental accumulations and oftt 5 gets no farther than to carry them through life as great burden, and not once does he obtain a glimpse < the delights of knowledge. The teacher in a Settlement is constantly put upo lus mettle to discover methods of instruction whic i o shall make knowledge quickly available to his pupil and I should like here to pay my tribute of admiratio to the dean of our educational department, Miss Land* berg, and to the many men and women who ever winter come regularly to Hull-House, putting untirin 1 s energy into the endless task of teaching the newly ai rived immigrant the first use of a language of which h has such desperate need. Even a meager knowledge o English may mean an opportunity to work in a factor versus nonemployment, or it may mean a question o 20life or death when a sharp command must be under stood in order to avoid the danger of a descending crane In response to a demand for an education whicl should be immediately available, classes have beer established and grown apace in cooking, dressmaking 2 s and millinery. A girl who attends them will often sa} that she expects to marry a workingman next spring,’ and because she has worked in a factory so long she knows little about a house.” Sometimes classes arc SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 401 :omposed of young matrons of like factory experiences. [ recall one of them whose husband had become so lesperate after two years of her unskilled cooking that ie had threatened to desert her and go where he could ret “decent food,” as she confided to me in a tearful nterview, when she followed my advice to take the Tull-House courses in cooking, and at the end of six nonths reported a united and happy home. - Two distinct trends are found in response to these rlasses: the first is for domestic training, and the other s for trade teaching which shall enable the poor little nilliner and dressmaker apprentices to shorten the two years of errand running which is supposed to teach them heir trade. The beginning of trade instruction has been already fivolved in connection with the Hull-House Boys’ club. [The ample Boys’ club building presented to Hull-House rhree years ago by one of our trustees has afforded well- bquipped shops for work in wood, iron, and brass; for hmithing in copper and tin; for commercial photography, 'or printing, for telegraphy, and electrical construction. I These shops have been filled with boys who are eager ; or that which seems to give them a clew to the in¬ dustrial life all about them. These classes meet twice a veek and are taught by intelligent workingmen, who ipparently give the boys what they want better than lo the strictly professional teachers. While these classes n no sense provide a trade training, they often enable a 402 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE [ o boy to discover his aptitude and help him in the selei lion ol what he “wants to be” by reducing the trade to embryonic forms. I he factories are so complicate that the boy brought in contact with them, unless h 5 has some preliminary preparation, is apt to become cor fused. In pedagogical terms, he loses his “power c oiderly reaction ’ and is often so discouraged or so over stimulated in his very first years of factory life that hi future usefulness is seriously impaired. One of Chicago’s most significant experiments in th direction of correlating the schools with actuaj industr was for several years carried on in a public school build ing situated near Hull-House, in which the bricklayer? appientices were taught eight hours a day in specia s classes during the non-bricklaying season. This earl public school venture anticipated the very successfu arrangement later carried on in Cincinnati, in Pittsburg and in Chicago itself, whereby a group of bovs at worl m a factory alternate month by month with anothe o group who are in school and are thus intelligently con ducted into the complicated processes of modern in dustry. But for a certain type of boy who has beei demoralized by the constant change and excitement o street life, even these apprenticeship classes are toi s strenuous, and he has to be lured into the path of know! edge by all sorts of appeals. It sometimes happens that boys are held in the Hull House classes for weeks by their desire for the excite SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 403 ient of placing burglar alarms under the door mats, ut to enable the possessor of even a little knowledge > thus play with it, is to decoy his feet at least through le first steps of the long, hard road of learning, al- lough even in this, the teacher must proceed warily. 5 typical street boy who was utterly absorbed in a ood-carving class, abruptly left never to return when 5 was told to use some simple calculations in the laying it of the points. He evidently scented the approach : his old enemy, arithmetic, and fled the field. On the 1 :her hand, we have come across many cases in which ays have vainly tried to secure such opportunities for lemselves. During the trial of a boy of ten recently rrested for truancy, it developed that he had spent iany hours watching the electrical construction in a 1 owntown building, and many others in the public brary “reading about electricity.” Another boy, who as taken from school early, when his father lost both f his legs in a factory accident, tried in vain to find a lace for himself “with machinery.” He was declared 2 )o small for any such position, and for four years orked as an errand boy, during which time he steadily irned in his unopened pay envelope for the use of the ousehold. At the end of the fourth year the boy dis- ppeared, to the great distress of his invalid father and 2 is poor mother, whose day washings became the sole ipport of the family. He had beaten his way to Kansas City, hoping “they wouldn’t be so particular 4 o 4 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE , there about a fellow’s size.” He came back at the er of six weeks because he felt sorry for his mother wh aroused at last to a realization of his unbending pu pose, applied for help to the Juvenile Protective A 5 sociation. They found a position for the boy in machine shop and an opportunity for evening classes. Out of the fifteen hundred members of the Hul House Boys’ club, hundreds seem to respond only t the opportunities for recreation, and many of the old< : o ones apparently care only for the bowling and tb billiards. And yet tournaments and match game under supervision and regulated hours are a great ac vance over the sensual and exhausting pleasures to b found so easily outside the club. These organized sport 5 readily connect themselves with the Hull-House gyrr nasium and with all those enthusiasms which are s mysteriously aroused by athletics. Our gymnasium has been filled with large and en thusiastic classes for eighteen years in spite of th o popularity of dancing and other possible substitutes while the Saturday evening athletic contests have be come a feature of the neighborhood. 1 he Settlemen strives for that type of gymnastics which is at leas partly a matter of character, for that training whicl 5 presupposes abstinence and the curbing of impulse, a well as for those athletic contests in which the mind o the contestant must be vigilant to keep the body closeh to the rules of the game. As one sees in rhythmic mo SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 405 rion the slim bodies of a class of lads, “that scrupulous and uncontaminate purity of form which recommended tself even to the Greeks as befitting messengers from :he gods, if such messengers should come,” one offers up in awkward prosaic form the very essence of that old prayer, “Grant them with feet so light to pass through ife.” But while the glory stored up for Olympian win¬ ters 0 was at most a handful of parsle}^ an ode, fame or family and city, on the other hand, when the men and boys from the Hull-House gymnasium bring back :heir cups and medals, one’s mind is filled with some- hing like foreboding in the reflection that too much success may lead the winners into that professionalism which is so associated with betting and so close to mgilism. Candor, however, compels me to state that 1 long acquaintance with the acrobatic folk who have :o do with the circus, a large number of whom practice n our gymnasium every winter, has raised our estimate >f that profession. Young people who work long hours at sedentary oc- :upations, factories and offices, need perhaps more than inything else the freedom and ease to be acquired from 1 symmetrical muscular development and are quick to respond to that fellowship which athletics apparently lifford more easily than anything else. The Greek im¬ migrants form large classes and are eager to reproduce he remnants of old methods of wrestling, and other bits )f classic lore which they still possess, and when one of 406 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE the Greeks won a medal in a wrestling match whit represented the championship of the entire city, it w; quite impossible that he should present it to the Hul House trophy chest without a classic phrase which I s recited most gravely and charmingly. It was in connection with a large association of Gree lads that Hull-House finally lifted its long restriction against military drill. If athletic contests are th residuum of warfare first waged against the conquerc o without and then against the tyrants within the State the modern Greek youth is still in the first stage so fa as his inherited attitude against the 1 urk is concernec Each lad believes that at any moment he may be calle home to fight this long time enemy of Greece. Wit s such a genuine motive at hand, it seemed mere affecta tion to deny the use of our boys’ club building an< gymnasium for organized drill, although happily i forms but a small part of the activities of the Gree Educational Association. o Having thus confessed to military drill countenance if not encouraged at Hull-House, it is perhaps only fai to relate an early experience of mine with the “Colum bian Guards,” an organization of the World’s Fai summer. Although the Hull-House squad was organ s ized as the others were with the motto of a clean city, i was very anxious for military drill. I his request no only shocked my nonresistant principles, but seemed t afford an opportunity to find a substitute for the mill SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 407 tary tactics which were used in the boys’ brigades every¬ where, even in those connected with churches. As the cleaning of the filthy streets and alleys was the ostensi¬ ble purpose of the Columbian Guards, I suggested to the boys that we work out a drill with sewer spades, which with their long, narrow blades and shortened handles were not so unlike bayoneted guns in size, weight, and general appearance but that much of the usual military drill could be readapted. While I myself was present at the gymnasium to explain that it was nobler to drill in imitation of removing disease-breeding filth than to drill in simulation of warfare; while I distractedly re¬ adapted tales of chivalry to this modern rescuing of the endangered and distressed, the new drill went for¬ ward in some sort of fashion, but so surely as I with¬ drew, the drillmaster would complain that our troops would first grow self-conscious, then demoralized, and finally flatly refuse to go on. Throughout the year-s since the failure of this Quixotic experiment, I occasion¬ ally find one of these sewer spades in a Hull-House storeroom, too truncated to be used for its original pur¬ pose and too prosaic to serve the purpose for which it was bought. I can only look at it in the forlorn hope that it may foreshadow that piping time when the weapons of warfare shall be turned into the implements of civic salvation. Before closing this chapter on Socialized Education, • it is onlv fair to speak of the education accruing to the 4 o8 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE Hull-House residents themselves during their years o living in what at least purports to be a center for socia and educational activity. While a certain number of the residents are primarily 5 interested in charitable administration and the amelior ation which can be suggested only by those who knov actual conditions, there are other residents identified with the House from its earlier years to whom thti groups of immigrants make the historic appeal, and wh< 1 ouse, not only'their linguistic ability, but all the resource j they can command of travel and reading to qualify themselves for intelligent living in the immigrant quar-; ter of the city. I remember one resident lately returned from a visit in Sicily, who was able to interpret to a be- swildered judge the ancient privilege of a jilted lover tc scratch the cheek of his faithless sweetheart with tht edge of a coin. Although the custom in America had; degenerated into a knife slashing, after the manner of foreign customs here, and although the Sicilian deserved ) o punishment, the incident was yet lifted out of the slough of mere brutal assault, and the interpretation j won the gratitude of many Sicilians. There is no doubt that residents in a Settlement too often move towards their ends * l with hurried and 5 ignoble gait,” putting forth thorns in their eagerness to bear grapes. It is always easy for those in pursuit of ends which they consider of overwhelming importance to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 409 and temper, to gradually develop a dark, mistaken eager¬ ness alternating with fatigue, which supersedes “the great and gracious ways” so much more congruous with worthy aims. Partly because of this universal tendency, partly be- 5 cause a Settlement shares the perplexities of its times and is never too dogmatic concerning the final truth, the residents would be glad to make the daily life at the Settlement “conform to every shape and mode of excellence.” 1° It may not be true “That the good are always the merry Save by an evil chance,” but a Settlement would make clear that one need not be heartless and flippant in order to be merry, nor 15 solemn in order to be wise. Therefore quite as Hull- House tries to redeem billiard tables from the associa¬ tion of gambling, and dancing from the temptations of the public dance halls, so it would associate with a life af upright purpose those more engaging qualities which 20 In the experience of the neighborhood are too often con¬ nected with dubious aims. Throughout the history of Hull-House many in¬ quiries have been made concerning the religion of the residents, and the reply that they are as diversified in 25 belief and in the ardor of the inner life as any like num¬ ber of people in a college or similar group, apparently 410 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE does not carry conviction. I recall that after a house fo men residents had been opened on Polk Street and th residential force at Hull-House numbered twenty, w made an effort to come together on Sunday evening s in a household service, hoping thus to express our mora unity in spite of the fact that we represented mam creeds. But although all of us reverently knelt whei the High Church resident read the evening service anc bowed our heads when the evangelical resident led ii 10 pi aver after his chapter, and although we sat respect¬ fully through the twilight when a resident read hei ! favorite passages from Plato and another from Abt Vogler, we concluded at the end of the winter that this was not religious fellowship and that we did not care foi | 1 s another reading club. So it was reluctantly given up, and we found that it was quite as necessary to cornel together on the basis of the deed and our common aimj inside the household as it was in the neighborhood itself I once had a conversation on the subject with the ward- 20 en of Oxford House, who kindly invited me to the even¬ ing service held for the residents in a little chapel on the top floor of the Settlement. All the residents were High Churchmen to whom the service was an important and leverent part of the day. Upon my reply to a 2 5 Query of the warden that the residents of Hull-House could not come together for religious worship because there were among us Jews, Roman Catholics, English Churchmen, Dissenters, and a few agnostics, and that SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 411 ve had found unsatisfactory the diluted form of worship \vhich we could carry on together, he replied that it 'mist be most difficult to work with a group so diversi- 'Red, for he depended upon the evening service to clear away any difficulties which the day had involved and 5 to bring the residents to a religious consciousness of their common aim. I replied that this diversity of :reed was part of the situation in American Settlements, as it was our task to live in a neighborhood of many nationalities and faiths, and that it might be possible 1 that among such diversified people it was better that the Settlement corps should also represent varying religious beliefs. A wise man has told us that “men are once for all so made that they prefer a rational world to believe in and 1 to live in,” but that it is no easy matter to find a world rational as to its intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and practical aspects. Certainly it is no easy mattei if the place selected is of the very sort where the four aspects are apparently furthest from perfection, but an under- 2 taking resembling this is what the Settlement gradually becomes committed to, as its function is revealed through the reaction on its consciousness of its own experiences. Because of this fourfold undertaking, the Settlement has gathered into residence people of widely 2 diversified tastes and interests and in Hull-House, at least, the group has been surprisingly permanent. The majority of the present corps of forty residents support 412 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE themselves by their business and professional occup tions in the city, giving only their leisure time to Settl ment undertakings. 1 his in itself tends to continuit of residence and has certain advantages. Among th 5 present staff, of whom the larger number have been i residence for more than twelve years, there are th secretary or the City Club, two practicing physician; several attorneys, newspaper men, business mer teachers, scientists, artists, musicians, lecturers in th i o School of Civics and Philanthropy, officers in The Juve nile Protective Association and in The League for th Protection of Immigrants, a visiting nurse, a sanitar inspector, and others. We have also worked out during our years of resident 1 s a plan of living which may be called cooperative, fo the families and individuals who rent the Hull-Hous< apartments have the use of the central kitchen ancjl dining room so far as they care for them; many of then work for hours every week in the studios and shops; the 20 theater and drawing-rooms are available for such socia] oigamzation as they care to form; the entire group oi thirteen buildings is heated and lighted from a central plant. During the years, the common human experi- i ences have gathered about the House; funeral services 2 5 have been held there, marriages and christenings, and many memories hold us to each other as well as to our neighbors. Each resident, of course, carefully defrays his own expenses, and his relations to his fellow residents SOCIALIZED EDUCATION 413 re not unlike those of a college professor to his col¬ eagues. The depth and strength of his relation to the leighborhood must depend very largely upon himself md upon the genuine friendships he has been able to nake. His relation to the city as a whole comes largely 5 hrough his identification with those groups who are :arrving forward the reforms which a Settlement leighborhood so sadly needs and with which residence las made him familiar. Life in the Settlement discovers above all what has 10 3een called “the extraordinary pliability of human lature,” and it seems impossible to set any bounds to the moral capabilities which might unfold under ideal civic and educational conditions. But in order to obtain these conditions, the Settlement recognizes the need of 15 cooperation, both with the radical and the conservative, and from the very nature of the case the Settlement can¬ not limit its friends to any one political party or economic school. The Settlement casts aside none of those things 20 which cultivated men have come to consider reasonable and goodly, but it insists that those belong as well to that great body of people who, because of toilsome and underpaid labor, are unable to procure them for them¬ selves. Added to this is a profound conviction that the 25 common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position o him who would approach it, that those “best results of 4 H TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE civilization upon which depend the finer and free aspects of living must be incorporated into our commoi life and have free mobility through all elements o society if we would have our democracy endure. 5 I he educational activities of a Settlement, as well a; its philanthropic, civic, and social undertakings, are bul differing manifestations of the attempt to socialize democracy, as is the very existence of the Settlement itself. in NOTES 5:14. “the winds that come from the fields of sleep.” ee Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality in Early Childhood for exact quotation. # 12:18. Shorter Catechism. The Presbyterian Church uses he Westminster Assembly’s Catechism, or book of questions nd answers on the church doctrines and principles of re¬ gion, in two forms, the shorter, or condensed, and the 3ng er. The first named is intended especially for use with hildren. _ , ~ , , 14:6. Hawthorne’s “Lime-Burner.” Ethan Brand, hero ,f Hawthorne’s short story, who goes as a youth seeking the ‘unpardonable sin” mentioned in the Bible, only to find Tter many years that he has been unconsciously com- nitting it himself. c . 1^:28. Vulgate. The Latin version of the Scriptures, iccepted as the authorized version of the Roman Catholic 18:24. Joseph Mazzini. (1805-72.) An Italian patriot, born at Genoa, who devoted his entire life to freeing Italy from tyranny at home and abroad. While in pnson m 1830. he mapped out an organization to be known as lot g Italy,” through which he worked for the rest of lus life. Its publicly-avowed aims were the freeing of Italy from domestic and foreign tyranny and its unification under a republican form of government. The means were to be education an , where advisable, insurrection by guerilla bands. Mazzini lived to see Italy free and united, but not as a republic. 4i5 4i 6 NOTES 1 19:11. Hapsburg. The name of the famous family frc which have sprung the dukes and archdukes of Austria sin 1282, the kings of Hungary and Bohemia since 1526 and t emperors of Austria since 1804. The Hapsburgs were ai Roman emperors and German kings from 1438 to 1806 ai kings of Spam from 1516 to 1700. The last Austrian emper died in exile following the World War, when Austria holdings were disrupted to form several smaller states c racial lines. nntfdt ^ alter ? atei |-, (i8 39 - 94 -) An English essayis noted for his wonderfully polished and beautiful style As young man he had intended becoming a clergyman, bu f n i er lnfluence ° f hls reading at Oxford University, h instend A r n t n amty became shaken ’ a " d he turned to writin instead. All his writings are more or less tinged with th mental conflict brought on by his religious struggle 27:6. Governor Oglesby. Richard James Oglesby (18,4 99 ) served in both the Mexican and the Civil wars, rising the rank of major general in the latter. He was governor o from°Tli n 72i « WaS regl “ ted ’ but resigned to become senato 1885-9 lnUI ' 1 e sery ed again as governor durin; 1 28: ' 9 - . Lmcoln-Uouglas debates. In 1858, Lincoln wa* the candidate of the newly-organized Republican Party foi senator from Illinois, and Stephen A. Douglas the Denio- rh K- Follo ™" g the re P eal of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of ,854, slavery was thTchief durin^r 011 Challenged Douglas to meet the same audiences during the coming campaign. Douglas accepted, but cleverly arranged the time to get four opening and closing speeches to Lincoln s three. Douglas, who was acknowledged to b the best speaker in Congress, took with the crowd 8 and wo i d^r-M- , Wh ! le LinC ° ln left the dee P er impressio; and set the people thinking. Douglas was elected senatoi fro NOTES 417 jut two years later Lincoln won the presidency, largely as n outcome of the currents of thought set in motion by the a | reat joint debate. The speeches are still studied by young peakers seeking models in debate and oratory. 28:22. Little Tad. Lincoln’s much-loved little son, Thad- eus, his father’s constant companion. 29:3. Sympathetic strikes. A s}^mpathetic strike is one ndertaken by a body of workmen, who have no special rievance of their own, in behalf of another body of workers n strike. It is of recent development and is the working- blj nan’s recognition of “the solidarity of labor”; that is, the In >rinciple that labor’s interests are everywhere the same and hat an injury to one is an injury to all. The Pullman strike tl >f 1894 was a s)^mpathetic strike. 29:5. St. Gaudens statue. The statue of Lincoln, unveiled n Lincoln Park, Chicago, in 1887, is still considered the inest portrait statue in America. It is the work of Augustus It. Gaudens (1848-1907), an American sculptor, born in Dublin of Irish and French parentage. In the opinion of I minent critics, “In simple dignity of conception, subtle ombination of the real with the ideal, quiet strength and ntensely human appeal, the Lincoln statue surpasses. 31:2. Lyman Trumbull. (1813-96.) A lawyer who served n the Illinois Legislature in 1840. He was Secretary of State r or Illinois, 1841-2, and justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, :848-53- He was senator from Illinois, 1855-73. Guring the ympathetic strikes of 1894 (see 29:3)) Mr. Irumbull dr- ended the imprisoned strike leaders. 34:12. Arnold Toynbee. (1852-83.) An English social re- ormer and economist, who died at the early age of 31 as a esult of overwork in behalf of the poor in the W hitechapel lum district of East London. In his Whitechapel work, he lad been closely associated with Canon A. S. Barnett. (See 02:26.) In commemoration of Toynbee’s efforts to aid the- 4i 8 NOTES P° or > ^ oyn ^ ee ^all, t ^ ie fi rst °f many settlement houses the East Side of London, was erected for the purpose of u lifting and brightening the lives of the poor. How mu< Miss Addams owed to the influence of Toynbee Hall may 1 judged from her frequent references to it in her account < the influences leading up to the founding of Hull-House 35:27. Caird’s “Evolution of Religion.” Published in 18c by Edward Caird (1835-1908), an English educator an philosopher. Mr. Caird was professor of moral philosophy 2 Glasgow University for thirty-eight years and succeede Doctor Jowett as master of Baliol College in 1893, servin until two years before his death. 37 : 21 . Jowett. Benjamin Jowett (1817-93) was a the ologian, a tutor, a university reformer, and a great master o a great college. His best claim to remembrance, accordin to those who knew and worked with him, was his greatnes 3 f R TTPn aChei X PT 1870 until llis death ’ he was maste of Baliol College, Oxford, a college which has a high reputa- tion for scholarship. 39-6. Smith College. A college for women, founded a; Northampton M ass., in 1875, with funds left for that pur- pose by Miss Sophia Smith (1796-1870). Miss Smith hersell outlined the plans for the college, which has become one oi the largest in the world for women. fonnd 2 3 fT 1 H r ° Iy0k ®- A P' oneer college for women. in ,8,* Tk Y V' 0 ".. (797-1849) at South Hadley, Mass., m 1836. The school which was opened in 1837, has a reputa- tion for thorough scholarship. a DU nil'nm S f t0tIe ' if 4 ' 3 / 2 B ' r' } A S reat Greek philosopher, tleln P schoo! a of’p a hnosop U h y der “ kn ° Wn “ ^ A " St °- 40:22 Boswell's Johnson. James Boswell (174^95) was a Scotch lawyer, whose name lives to the present day because of his famous Biography of Samuel Johnson,” published ini7 9I . NOTES 419 42:9. Beloit College. A coeducational, nonsectarian insti- ution in Beloit, Wis., directly north of Rockford, Ill. 42:13. Bellerophon . . .fight with Minotaur. In Greek nythology, Bellerophon was the conqueror, not of the vlinotaur, but of the Chimerae, the monsters symbolizing torms and other destructive natural forces. Theseus, with he help of Ariadne, slew the Minotaur. 42:16. Pegasus. The famous winged horse which sprang rom the head of the gorgon Medusa when she was slain by 3 erseus. Mounted on Pegasus, Bellerophon slew the Chi- nerae, but when he tried to fly heavenward, the horse threw lim. 43:5. Plutarch hero. The celebrity of Plutarch (46-120 l.d.) is founded on his forty-six “Parallel Lives,” in which he ;ives in pairs the biographies of famous Greek and Roman tatesmen, orators, and warriors. Thus Lycurgus is paired vith Numa, Theseus with Romulus, and Alexander with ulius Caesar. 43:19. Saxon word for lady. AS Hlcefdige , later hitsfdie, 1 compound of hlaf, loaf, bread, and dige, connected with Icegee , a kneader, from the root of dah, dough. 1 he whole )ictures the original “Lady of the manor,” who doled out )read to her husband’s dependents. 46:6. Grandfatherly relation. Bronson Alcott was the ather of Louisa May Alcott, author of “Little Women,” which vas eagerly read by the girls of Miss Addams s day. 46:16. Port Royalists. The convent of Port-Royal-des- Ihamps near Versailles was long a retreat for lay persons vho desired to lead a life of solitude without taking vows, iome of the most distinguished scholars of the time lived :here, devoting their time to prayer, spiritual reading, in¬ struction, and manual labor. Coming into conflict with the Catholic Church because of too liberal views during the seventeenth century, the order was dispersed. 420 NOTES 46.28. Homer. The great Greek epic poet, who probabl h v ed in the ninth or tenth century b.c. His great works ar the “Iliad,” dealing with the Trojan War, and the “Odyssey, which tells ot the wanderings of Ulysses and his companion following the fall of Troy. 48.19- Plato. A great Athenian philosopher (427-347 b.c. In his writings, two great forces are persistent: the love c truth and the zeal for human improvement. His two i portant works are his “Dialogues” and the “Republic.” 48:26. Jowett’s translation. See 41 7. 49.20. Leipsic. The University of Leipsic was at that tim the third largest of the German universities. 50:26. William Jennings Bryan. A well-known politica leader. 51:6. Athens of Illinois. Since Athens was the center o Greek culture, places containing centers of learning have been fond of calling themselves the “Athens” of their par¬ ticular region. In this case the reference is to Jacksonville because of the number of educational institutions located there. 51:17. Field Oi Waterloo. Field of defeat. An allusion to Napoleon s decisive defeat at Waterloo in June, 1815, which closed his long victorious career as master of Europe. 53 - IO - Sombart and Loria. Werner Sombart (1863—) is a German political economist. Achille Loria (1857—) is an Italian economist of the school which explains history in the lght of economic conditions. He is in sympathy with the Socialists, but unlike them, believes that natural forces will eventually give the laborer his just reward. 55 - 1 7 - Maeterlinck. Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian poet, essayist, and dramatist, was born in 1862. His writings are characterized by a dreamy symbolism, of which “The Ue N B ! F 1 (l9 °? ) , ls an excel,ent example. He was awarded the In o bel prize in literature in 1911. NOTES 421 56:10. Cassandra. Daughter of Priam and Hecuba of froy, beloved of Apollo and gifted by him with the power of >rophecy. After receiving the gift, she laughed at his love, ind in revenge he decreed that her prophecies should always >e discredited. The term “Cassandra-like” is applied to varnings which are true but not heeded. 57:10. Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” The full title of the )ook, published by Charles Darwin (1809-92) in 1859, is ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or he Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle of Life.” The book brought the author into conflict with the Church, ince it contradicted the special-creation hypothesis. “The descent of Man, and Selection With Relation to Sex,” ap- >earing in 1871, brought Darwin into fuller conflict with hose who interpreted the Bible narrowly and literally, since ‘The Descent of Man” taught that the mind of man was ssentially an animal mind, which had progressed through he ages through natural causes. 57:13. Butler’s “Analogy.” Published in 1736 by Joseph Sutler (1692-1752), an English theologian. The full title is ‘The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature.” The leading aim of the >ook is “to show that all the objections to revealed religion re equally applicable to the whole constitution of nature, nd that the general analogy between the principles of livine government, as revealed in the Scriptures, and those nanifested in the course of nature warrants the belief that hey have one author.” Naturally, a firm 'believer in the ‘Analogy” would not be among the first to embrace Dar¬ winism ! 60:12. Gray’s “Anatomy.” A standard work on descriptive nd surgical anatomy, published in 1858 by Henry Gray, 'ellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and lecturer on natomy at St. George’s Hospital Medical School, London. 422 NOTES I his sentence states Miss Addams’s sense of relief at havir escaped from the drudgery of the medical course for whit she had found herself unsuited. 62:2. East End. That part of London lying east of “tl City,” or great commercial heart of London. Roughly, tl “East End” comprises the boroughs of Stepney, Popla Shoreditch, and Bethnal Green. It is here that the prol lems attaching to London’s poor were primarily workej out. 62:7. Mile End Road. The name applied to the norther of the two main roads entering London from the east. Entei ing at Stratford, the road is successively known as Bow Roac Mile End Road, Whitechapel Road, and High Street. Natui ally, it traverses the poorest districts of London. 64:17. Pall Mall Gazette Exposure. The Pall Ma Gazette, a famous London newspaper, then under the editoi ship of W. T. Stead, published in 1889 a series of article called The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. While th articles brought Mr. Stead’s editorship to an end, they ha< the effect of arousing a wave of indignation at the revelatio; given of the horrors of the “white slave traffic” among wome: and girls in London’s poorer districts. 66:6. “Weltschmerz.” Literally world-sorrow. Grie over existing conditions. 66:23. Pensions. A continental term for boarding houses derived from the French pension, money paid for board. 67:2. Hausfrau. Housewife. 69:17. a Lif& of Prince Albert.” Albert, consort of Queei Victoria of England, was a prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. a German state comprising the duchy of Saxe-Coburg, bor dering Bavaria, and Gotha, bordering Prussia. Albert owe< much of the qualities that endeared him to the Englisl people to the wise training of his tutor, Baron Stockmar mentioned in the following line. NOTES 423 69:24. Dresden. The capital of the former kingdom of axony. It is famous for its picture gallery, which is especially ch in works of the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch painters. 70:2. Albrecht Diirer. (1471-1528.) A German painter, igraver, and designer, the most prominent and influential laster of the German Renaissance. His work varied from mple portraits to wonderfully executed altar pieces, and reat series of wood cuts, such as the “Apocalypse” series of xteen blocks, published in 1498, the fourth block, 1 he our Riders of the Apocalypse,” probably being the greatest. The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian,” published after r5i2, as composed of ninety plates, so engraved as to form a riumphal arch ten feet high. 70:11. Reformation and peasants’wars. Th g Reformation as the name applied to the great revolution which took lace in the sixteenth century against certain doctrines and ractices of the Roman Catholic Church. Although primarily religious revolution, which attacked the universal suprem- cy of the Pope, it was accompanied by political and social hanges, one of which was the peasants war. The Gerntan easants of Luther’s day were in a more deplorable state han those of France and England. When in 1525 the new eligious doctrines were spread among them, accompanied by ew ideas of property rights, the peasants rose in revolt and nflicted upon their late masters much the same cruelties as hose recently inflicted by the Russian peasants when they •verthrew the Romanoff rule. Luther at first sympathized vdth the peasants, but as their excesses grew, he feared for lis reforms to be associated with anarchy and urged that he rebels be put down with the sword. I he revolt was stamp- d out without any apparent improvement for the peasantry. 71:6. Roman Campagna. The name applied to the low, inhealthful plain of Italy surrounding Rome. In recent years, Irainage and the planting of trees by the Italian Government 424 NOTES have done much to reclaim the district and make it mo healthful. 71:7. Porta del Popolo. A gate replacing the Pori Flaminia, one of the fourteen gates in the Aurelian Wal built 271-80 a.d. as a protection against sudden attacl from the Germans and other northern tribes. It is on tl Via Flaminia, the northwest entrance through the Aurelia Wall into Rome. 71:13. Ecco Roma. “Behold Rome.” 71:19* Catacombs. Subterranean vaults used as buri; places for the dead. The Roman Catacombs, about sixty i number, are the best known in the world. During the perst cution of the Christians in the first four centuries followin Christ, the Catacombs were also used as places of refuge an for secret religious worship. Because of their religious assc ciations and the frescoes and carvings with which they ar decorated, the Roman Catacombs have always been place 2 of interest to visitors. 72:1. Lanciani. Rodolfo Amedo Lanciani (1847—) is ail Italian archeologist, who has been in the service of the Italiaij Government since 1870 and who has directed most of th famous excavations of the last half century. He became well known in the United States through his books dealing witl monuments and excavations of ancient Rome and througl his lecture tour of America, 1886-7. 72:3. Johns Hopkins. A university in Baltimore, Md.j founded in 1867 by Johns Hopkins, who bequeathed #7,000,00c to found a university and hospital. The Johns HopkinJ Hospital was opened in 1889, and the work of the John: Hopkins Medical School inaugurated in 1893* Fhe school i: noted for thoroughness and for the advanced type of re-1 search work carried on there. 75*26. Phossy jaw. A chronic form of poisoning occurring in the manufacture of phosphorus matches. NOTES 425 76:7. Wells. H. G. Wells (1866—■) is an English novelist strongly marked socialistic tendencies. Beginning his terary career with books of scientific and sociological forecast : the Jules Verne type, such as “The War of the Worlds,” [898) in which our planet is invaded by monstrous creatures om Mars, he had progressed to discussion of purely social- tic questions, such as “The Future in America,” in 1906, and New Worlds for Old,” in 1908, an account of socialism. 76:18: Positivists. A school of philosophers who adopted leir name from August Comte’s term, which purported to :clude all theorizing and confine itself to “positive” scientific lowdedge of facts. In England, positivism has attempted to ! stitutionalize itself by the establishment of a church, with tual, ceremonials, and the like, all in the worship of Human- y. Frederic Harrison (1831—) was president of the English ositivist Committee from 1880 to 1905. 76:27. Stonehenge. A celebrated stone circle, the ruins of hich stand on Salisbury Plain in southern England. It is obably a relic of the ancient Druids, dating back to the ronze Age. 76:27. Acropolis. An acropolis in ancient Greece was a rtified natural eminence, usually containing the palace of' te chief. When defended by a wall, it usually lost its military laracter and was given over to temples. The Acropolis of thens was the religious center of the city, crowned with rmples and shrines. 76:28. Sistine Chapel. The private chapel of the Pope in le palace of the Vatican, Rome. It was built in 1473 and intains beautiful examples of the marble decorations of the irly Renaissance. The walls and ceilings are richly frescoed. 77:1. Winchester. A famous British cathedral, built in >70 on the site of a church built in 166; destroyed in 266; stored in 293 and converted into a temple to Wodin; de- royed in 635 to make room for the ancient cathedral, in NOTES 426 which were buried the Saxon kings of Wessex. The presei cathedral is a beautiful type of Norman architecture ai contains the tombs of Edmund, son of King Alfred, and William Rufus (1056-1100). 77:1. Notre Dame. A celebrated church in Paris, dedicate to the Virgin Mary. It was begun in 1163 by Bishop Mauri de Sully, and its construction was carried on through sever centuries. All through the succeeding centuries, Notre Dar- de Paris (Our Lady of Paris) has been the scene of the me important ceremonies of church and state in France. 77:2. Amiens. The largest cathedral in France and one the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in Europe, was begun in 1220 and finished in 1288, but numerous adt tions have since been made. 77:3. Ulm. A city in Wiirtemburg,Germany. TheMinste, a Protestant church, is the most important and beautif example of Gothic architecture in Germany, and next the Cologne Cathedral the largest church in that country. 77:14. Luther. . .affixed his thesis. Martin Luther (148 1546) was a German monk, who, becoming convinced abuses within the Roman Catholic Church, particularly regard to the open sale by agents of the Pope of indulgence which included the remission of temporal punishment f the committing of sin as well as remission of pains of purgato after death, nailed to the church door at Wittenberg, Octob 31, 1517, ninety-five theses calling into question the value indulgences and the practices of the agents employed to si them. From this grew the great Protestant Reformatio (See 70:11.) 77:27. Comte. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was a cel bra ted French philosopher, the founder of what is known 1 the Positivist school of philosophy. (See 76:18.) 78:12. Riviera. The popular name for the beautiful coa line of Italy and southern France, particularly around ti NOTES 427 !ulf of Genoa. Thousands are attracted here each winter by ,le mild climate to the famous resorts of Cannes, Nice, .lentone, Monte Carlo, and San Remo. 78:16. Deaconess’s Training School. An institution sanc- oned by the Episcopal, the Methodist Episcopal, the Lu- Jieran, and the Presbyterian churches for the instruction ,nd training of women in church and charitable work. It is similar to the Catholic sisterhoods, except that the members ike no, vows and are bound to no terms of service. 80:23. Raison d’etre. Literally reason for being ; in other /ords, an excuse. 81:9. Miss Starr. Ellen Gates Starr, Miss Addams’s de- oted friend and fellow worker, joint founder of Hull-House, fiss Starr has taken an intense interest in the labor move¬ ment, especially as it affected women workers, and was ar- ssted for protesting against the arrest of girl pickets in the Taitresses’ strike in Chicago, March 2, 1914. She was cquitted, thus vindicating the right of free speech. She was lade an honorary member of the Clothing Workers’ Union Dr valuable services in their strike in 1915-16. 81:28. People’s Palace. See 110:13. 82:3. Canon Fremantle. William Henry Fremantle, born 1 1831, is a distinguished English clergyman, who was Can- n of Canterbury in 1882 and Dean of Ripon in 1895. He /as Bampton lecturer at Oxford in 1883, his lectures being ublished in 1885 under the title, he World on the Subject »f Redemption.” 82:14. Tolstoy’s phrase. Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) /as a famous Russian novelist whose writings and life had a Tofound influence on the thought of the last half of the nine- eenth century. Born of the aristocratic class and inheriting reat estates, he became in his later life so impressed with the alutary influence of labor that he gave up most of his estate 0 the peasants and lived and worked among them. NOTES 428 83:11. Professor Swing. David Swing (1830-94) was 2! American minister, at one time pastor of the Fourth Presb’ terian Church in Chicago. He was tried for heresy becau:! of his liberal views in 1874 but was acquitted. However, 1 withdrew and organized a new church, meeting first in theater, later in Central Music Hall. Part of his congn gation followed, and he preached to the largest crowds i Chicago. 83:14. Mrs. Wilmarth. A Chicago phdanthropist who wc a devoted friend and supporter of Hull-House. Before tk House was opened, she gave a reception at her home t introduce Miss Addams and Miss Starr to people in Chicag who might be interested in the project. She died in Augus 1920. 83:16. Thomas Davidson. (18401900.) An America philosopher, born in Scotland and educated at the Univei sity of Aberdeen, who came to the United States in 1867 settling at Cambridge, Mass., in 1875 where he was activ ; as a scholar, author, and lecturer. For many years he cor ducted a “summer school of culture” in the Adirondack and from 1898 a class of Russian Jews in New York City. 83:17* Fabian society. An organization for the advance ment of socialism. It takes its name from the Roman genera Fabius, who by his policy of delay saved the state. Thi society seeks to improve social conditions by trying to bette existing conditions instead of by revolutionary attempts The movement was begun in London in 1883 when an Arneri can, Thomas Davidson, who happened to be in London, heh parlor conferences, with a group of literary workers chiefly on the social duties of the times. Since 1888, the society ha held public meetings and carries an on active propaganda for government ownership of land and “such industries a | can be managed conveniently.” It seeks to abolish th< idle class and to give equality of opportunity to ail. NOTES 429 85:24. Koerner’s poems. Karl Theodor Koerner (more commonly Korner) was a young German poet and patriot, born in 1791. He was killed in guerilla warfare against Napo¬ leon in 1813. His fiery patriotic songs, written to encourage his fellow fighters to repel the invader, have remained popular among his countrymen. 86 :22. Colonel Mason. Roswell B. Mason, mayor of Chicago in 1869. 87-125. Miss Helen Culver. (1832—.) A teacher and philanthropist, born at Little Valley, N. Y. In 1853, she established a private school at Sycamore, Ill. She was a teacher in the Chicago schools, 1854-61, and matron of a military hospital at Murfreesboro, Tenn., in 1863. She entered the real estate business with a relative, Charles J. Hull, in 1868. After Mr. Hull’s death, she built and endowed the four Hull biological laboratories for the University of Chicago, 1895. She has been trustee for the Hull-House Association since its foundation in 1895. 93:2. “Romola.” A story of Florentine life in the fifteenth century. The monk Savonarola plays an important part. 93:17. Brook Farm . . . the Ripleys. Brook Farm was a community organized in 1841 by George Ripley and his wife as an experiment in cooperative living. A farm of 200 acres was purchased. Each member had to do some share of the work, the rate of pay being the same for all kinds of work, and all having a share in the social and educational enjoy¬ ments. Among the prominent persons connected with Brook Farm were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles A. Dana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, George W. Curtis, and Margaret Fuller. Hawthorne’s “Blithedale Romance” was written out of his experiences here. The asso¬ ciation came to an end in 1847, “plain living and high think¬ ing” having failed to hold the group of intellectuals to their self-imposed tasks. 430 NOTES (See Codman’s “Brook Farm, Historic and Personal Mem¬ oirs”; Frothingham’s “Life of George Ripley”; and Swift’s “Brook Farm, Its Members, Scholars, and Visitors.”) 93:24. The charming young girl was Miss Jennie Dow. Her kindergarten was the first organized activity of Hull- House. She remained only one year, later becoming Mrs. William Harvey. She died in 1904. 96:1. Prince Roland. According to tradition, Roland was i the nephew of Charlemagne and prefect of Brittany. He was the hero of the “Chanson de Roland,” a famous eleventh- century epic poem, and figured in many tales of knightly daring. 98:19. Gaelic. The language of the Highland Scotch. Also loosely applied to any of the Celtic tongues, including Irish and Manx. 102:24. CanonBarnett. Samuel Augustus Barnett(i844—■), an English clergyman, who was the first warden of Toynbee Hall in 1884. His book, “Practical Socialism,” appeared in 1893. 104:17. Robert A. Woods. An American settlement worker born in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1865. He received his A. B. at Amherst in 1886 and was in residence for six months at Toynbee Hall (see 37:25) in 1890. Since 1911, he has been secretary of the National Federation of Settlements. His published works include “English Social Movements,” 1891; “Americans in Process,” 1902. He has contributed many articles to the current magazines. 105:2. Miss Vida D. Scudder. Miss Scudder, who was born in India in 1861, was graduated from Smith College in 1884, receiving her A.M. in 1889. She was connected with the beginnings of the college settlement movement in Amer¬ ica. She is at present professor of literature at Wellesley College, is the author of several books, chiefly on literary subjects, and has edited numerous college and high school classics. NOTES 43 i 105:2. Miss Helena Dudley. An American settle¬ ment worker, born in Nebraska in 1853. She was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Bryn Mawr. In 1892-3, she was head worker in a college settlement in Philadelphia. From 1893 to 1912, she was head worker in the Denison House College Settlement, Boston. 108:26. Locke and Pestalozzi. John Locke (1632-1704) was -an English philosopher, whose fame rests largely on his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” published in 1687 after seventeen years of labor. The essay marks an epoch in the history of philosophy. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) w 7 as a Swiss reformer and chief founder of modern pedagogy. He conceived the idea of combining learn¬ ing with handwork and centering it upon objects of the child’s immediate environment. Pestalozzi was the founder of the first “normal school” for training teachers in “methods in accordance with nature.” The great American normal school movement grew out of his work. He himself said his great effort was “to psychologize education.” 110:13. Walter Besant. An English novelist and critic, who in 1882 wrote “All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” deal.ing with social conditions in the East Side of London. 1 he work gave such a clear picture of the sordid life and limited oppor¬ tunities of the common people of East London that it led to the establishment of the People’s Palace and gave impetus to many other attempts at social reforms. The People’s Palace, which was established at Mile End in 1887, is intended to furnish the people of East London with educational and recreational facilities. The original fund was established in 1840 by John Beaumont. A quarter of a million, raised by Sir Edward Hay Currie, was added later. Besant’s Palace of Delight in “All Sorts and Conditions of Men” suggested a name and created a wider interest in the work. The institution 432 NOTES offers the same sort of advantages, educational and recreation¬ al, as Hull-House, only on a larger scale. 126:6. University. . .righteousness of whose foundation they challenged. John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil magnate, contributed the larger part of the original endowment fund and has since added gifts totaling $10,500,000 more. Since the Standard Oil Company was a trust, Mr. Rockefeller’s money was said to be “tainted,” because it had been obtained- by crushing small competitors and driving them out of business. 127:4. Washington Gladden. An American author and clergyman (1836-1918), widely known as a writer on social reforms. Among his published works are: “Workingmen and Their Employers,” 1876; “Applied Christianity,” 1887; “Tools and the Man,” 1893; “Social Facts and Forces,” 1897. 127:23. Henry D. Lloyd. An American lecturer and writer (1847-1903) with the Chicago Tribune from 1872 to 1885. He was secretary of the American Free Trade League. His published works include “The Strike of Millionaires Against Miners,” 1890, based on the Spring Valley (Ill.) coal strike of 1889; “Wealth Against Commonwealth,” 1894; “A Country Without Strikes: New Zealand,” 1900. 128:19. Sir Horace Plunkett. An Irish statesman, born in 1854. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and lived on a Montana ranch, 1879-89. He has worked untiringly for a free but united Ireland and striven in every way to aid the Irish peasant to better his condition. He recently visited America to study agricultural methods here. 128:26. Paris Exposition. A great “world’s fair” held at Paris in 1900. 129:9. Robert Owen. An English social reformer (1771- 1858), born in Wales. He was a wealthy mill owner, who came to believe mills should be operated for the benefit of the workers and the community at large. He set up two social NOTES 433 communities on his own plan: one at Orbiston in Lanark¬ shire and the other at New Harmony, Ind. Both were failures. Owen is regarded as one of the founders of English socialism. 138 :20. Crown prince of Belgium. The present King Albert. 145:13. World’s Fair. The World’s Columbian Exposition, held at Jackson Park, Chicago, in 1893, was intended to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus. The “Panic of ’93” struck the country at about that time and strikes abounded. Conditions all over the country were very bad, and lack of employment intensified the suffering among the poor. 145:21. Trafalgar Square. A London square named from the Battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British fleet under Lord Nelson and the combined fleets of France and Spain, October 21, 1805. The English won, Napoleon’s sea power was shattered, but Nelson lost his life. The square contains an imposing granite column in memory of Nelson. Many public buildings center about the square, which is a favorite spot for mass meetings. 145:22. Mr. Stead. W. T. Stead (1849-1912) was a British writer and social reformer, best known as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. His visit to America in 1893 resulted in the book “ If Christ Came to Chicago,” which laid bare unspeakable conditions among the poor of Chicago, similar to his Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (See 64:17), with its terrible indictment of London. Mr. Stead died in the sinking of the great ocean liner, the Titanic. 149:1. Charles Booth. An English statistician and writer on social questions, born in 1840. His ‘ Life and Labor of the People of London,” in ten volumes, 1891-1903, a storehouse of accurate social facts dealing chiefly with the people of East London, won him world-wide attention. He has taken an NOTES 434 active part in the move resulting in the English Old Age Pension Laws and has written a number of books on this subject. 160:26. “this ribbon to stick in her coat. ,, See Browning’s The Lost Leader: “Just for a handful of silver he left us— Just for a riband to stick in his coat.” Miss Addams uses the phrase to indicate how the old woman, *1 though receiving no financial returns from her inventions, could still flaunt the favorable opinions of the experts in the faces of her neighbors. 162:18. Haymarket Riot. When the Chicago police attempted to break up a meeting of anarchists in Haymarket Square, Randolph Street, May 4, 1886, a bomb, thrown by an unidentified member, killed seven policemen and wounded twenty-seven. I he actual bomb thrower was never caught, but August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Albert Parsons were hanged as accomplices November 11, 1887. Louis Ling, sentenced to death, committed suicide in prison. Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab, sentenced for life, and Oscar Neebe, for fifteen years, were pardoned by Governor Altgeld. 163:6. Lyman Gage. An American financier, who was born in De Ruyter, N. Y., in 1836 and came to Chicago in 1855. Eta was connected with various bank and trust com¬ panies and served as Secretary of the Treasury under both McKinley and Roosevelt, 1897-1902. He was president of the board of directors of the Chicago World’s Fair and twice president of the Civic Federation of Chicago. 165:27. Henry George. An American economist (1839-97) born in Philadelphia. He learned the printer’s trade in Mel¬ bourne, Australia, where he had worked his way on a sailing vessel. Returning to San Francisco, he became a newspaper writer there. 1 he great fortunes acquired in California NOTES 435 through the rapid increase in land values fixed his attention on the land problem and caused him to formulate the theory, later worked out in “Our Land Policy,” 1871, and “Progress and Poverty,” 1879; namely, that the value of land represents a monopoly power, and that the entire burden of taxation should be levied on it, thus freeing industry from taxation and equalizing opportunity by destroying monopolistic ad¬ vantage. Out of this grew his “Single Tax Theory,” ardently advocated by his followers to the present day. 166:4. Father Huntington. Frederick Dan Huntington (1819-1904), an American clergyman and writer, was the first Episcopal bishop of Central New York. His published works include “Lectures on Human Society,” i860, and “I he Golden Rule Applied to Business and Social Life,” 1892. 167:12. Schopenhauer. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher whose writings are characterized by cynicism and a very low estimate of the average human being and particularly of woman. To him, the welfare of society was a subordinate aim, never to be allowed to dwarf the individual’s aim of the full realization of an ideal being. His philosophy was therefore a selfish one, seeking individual happiness no matter what the cost to society. Among his works are “The World as Will and Idea,” 1818, and “The Will in Nature,” 1836. 168:12. “Utopia.” A book printed in Latin by Sir Thomas More, an English statesman (1478-1535) about 1516, though written some years before, described the kingdom of Utopia (literally “nowhere”), a fictitious country wherein were rem¬ edied all the evil conditions then existing in Europe. 1 he criticism was too outspoken for More to venture to publish the book in England or issue it in the English language. It was printed in Latin on the Continent and remained long untranslated. 1 he term Utopia has come to mean a purely ideal state or condition, impossible of attainment. NOTES 436 169:20. Buddhistic. Of or pertaining to the religious and ethical teachings of Buddha, “the enlightened/’ prince of an Aryan clan seated during the fifth century b.c. about fifty miles north of Benares, India. Self-conquest and universal charity are the main principles of the Buddhist teachings. From India, the Buddhist faith has spread to Thibet, Ceylon, Siam, and parts of China and Japan. 173:21. Professor Herron. George D. Herron, born at Montezuma, Md., in 1862, was ordained in the Congregational^ ministry and became professor of applied Christianity at Iowa College in 1893. Opposition to his teachings, which were strongly socialistic, led to his resignation in 1900. He initiated social crusades in Chicago and New York, founded the Social Crusader , and lectured on “The Economics of the Kingdom of Heaven,” in which he advocated transforming the present economic order in conformity with the Christian prin¬ ciples of brotherhood. Expelled from the ministry, he went to Italy and has since devoted his time to writing. His best known works are “Between Caesar and Jesus,” 1899, “Why I Am a Socialist,” 1900, and “The Day of Judgment,” 1904. 177:28. John Morley. An English statesman and author, born in 1838. He was associated editorially with the Morning Star , 1868 to 1870, the Fortnightly Review , 1867 to 1883, and Macmillan s Magazine , 1883. He was chief secretary for Ire¬ land under Gladstone in 1886, and out of this association grew his “Life of Gladstone” in 1900. He was a Boer sympathizer during the South African War and resigned from the Cabinet at the outbreak of the World War in August, 1914, because his convictions were opposed to war and he desired no re¬ sponsibility for British action against Germany after Belgium was invaded. He died September 23, 1923. 178:14. Benjamin Kidd. An English sociologist, born in 1858, who attracted much attention in 1894 by his book “Social Evolution.” In this, he declared that society should be NOTES 437 interpreted in terms of biology and pointed out that one of the conditions of progress is the conflict between private inter¬ est and social welfare, the struggle which eliminates the unfit. 178:16. Victor Berger. Editor of the Milwaukee Leader , a socialist daily. He has written numerous essays and pam¬ phlets on social questions. He was elected to the Sixty-second Congress (1911-13) from the Fifth Wisconsin District, and was the first socialist ever elected to that body. Mr. Berger was born at Nieder Rebbuch, Austria-Hungary, in i860, and received his education in the university at Budapest and Vienna but came to America before being graduated. 181:2. Engels. Friedrich Engels (1825-95) was a German socialist, who became interested in the Chartist and Owenist movements in England in 1842. He was a lifelong friend and fellow worker of Karl Marx and was a joint author of the Communist Manifesto of 1848. He took an active part in forming the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864. His “Condition of the Working Classes in England” first ap¬ peared in 1845. 185:1. Mrs. Florence Kelley. Mrs. Kelley was state in¬ spector of factories for Illinois, 1893-7, and has been general secretary of the National Consumers’ League since 1899. 186:22. Mrs. Henrotin. Ellen Martin, wife of Charles Henrotin, a Chicago banker, was vice president of the Con¬ gressional Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1904, and president of the General federation of Women’s Clubs, 1894-8. She was decorated by the Sultan of Turkey with the Order of Chefakat, 1893; made an Officier de l’Academie by the French Republic, 1899; and decorated as Chevalier de 1 ’Ordre de Leopold by the King of Belgium 111 1904. 190:18. Governor Altgeld. John Peter Altgeid, governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897, achieved much notoriety in con¬ nection with his pardoning of the Haymarket anarchists. NOTES 438 197:2. Pullman strike. The Pullman strike in 1894 was a sympathetic strike undertaken by the American Railway Union in behalf of the employees of the Pullman Sleeping; Car Company, the object being to boycott all Pullman cars and prevent their use on all railways. Traffic was delayed and considerable violence occurred, especially in Chicago. Na¬ tional troops were brought into use by President Cleveland over protests of state governors. The president and other' officers of the railway unions were imprisoned through the use of the injunction, and the strike was a failure. Miss Addams refers later to the bewilderment and hurt feelings of George M. Pullman, who had built a model town for his employees and was himself a kindly and generous man, over the discontent of the workers. 212:12. Brandeis brief. Louis Dembitz Brandeis, asso¬ ciate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1916, has consistently fought for the cause of the working people in monopoly cases. He was counsel for the people in cases involving the constitutionality of the Oregon and Illinois io-hour laws for working women, the Ohio 9-hour law, the California 8-hour law, and the Oregon minimum wage law. 216:12. Professor Masurek. Thomas G. Masurek (com¬ monly spelled Masaryk), president of the newly-formed Czecho-Slovakian Republic, was a professor at the New Bohemian University at Prague, 1882, and opposed the en¬ croachment of Germany on Austria and the aggressive policy of Austria in the Balkans, especially the annexation of Bosnia. After the outbreak of the World War, he fled to England where he lectured at King’s College, Oxford, and organized the Czecho-Slovakian movement for independence. 218:19. Doctor John Dewey. An American educator, born at Burlington, Vt., in 1859, whose views have revolu¬ tionized American school methods. At the time of which Miss Addams writes, he was director of the school of education at NOTES 439 the then recently-founded University of Chicago. Since 1904, he has been professor of philosophy at Columbia University. His “School and Society,” 1899, and “Democracy and Educa¬ tion/’ 1916, have had a profound influence on American educational ideals. 222:8. Passover Feast. I his was originally the feast of the unleavened bread, by which the ancient Israelites were accustomed to open the harvest season. No one tasted the new grain or parched fresh ears of corn until the first sheaf had been presented to Jehovah. Then all hastened to enjoy divine blessing by eating unleavened cakes without waiting for the dough to rise by fermentation. Later, a spring sacrifice of the firstlings of the flock became connected with the exodus from Egypt and the passage over the Red Sea, from which the waters were miraculously rolled back. The Passover of the time of Christ consisted of a sacrifice from the flock, presented at the sanctuary and eaten with unleavened bread. It was slain on the evening of the first day, but the use of unleavened bread continued for seven days. 225:16. Field Museum. This museum, on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, was founded by Marshall Field, the Chicago “merchant prince.’’ His gifts to the museum total $9,000,000. There are four departments: anthropology, geology, botany, and zoology. The working library contains 50,000 volumes. 226:2. Reredos. A screen or partition wall, usually orna¬ mented, behind an altar. 227:20 Maggie Tulliver. The unfortunate heroine of George Eliot’s “The Mill on the Floss,’’ whose entire life was spent in renunciation and sacrifice of self to her family. 235:5. Professor Du Bois. William Edward Du Bois is a negro editor and author. He was graduated from Fisk University (for negroes) at Nashville, lenn., and later from Harvard. He also studied at the University of Berlin. He 44° NOTES was for a time professor of economics and history at Atlanta University. Since 1910, he has been director of publicity for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 235:18. Garibaldi’s birthday. Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807- 82) was an Italian patriot, an associate of Mazzini. After Victor Emmanuel had defeated Francis II in 1861, Garibaldi, believing Rome must be wrested from the Pope before Italy could be unified, raised a force of volunteers to capture Rome. He was checked by Victor Emmanuel, who feared an attack on the Pope would bring about foreign intervention. 242:3. Ben Tillet. A strong labor and socialist worker. He worked in a brick}^ard at eight and served on a fishing smack at twelve. He finally settled at the Docks and organized the Dockers’ Union,.of which he was for many years secretary. 242:8. John Burns. A British labor leader, in Parliament from 1893 until 1908, when, by retaining under the Asquith government the office of president of the Local Government Board which he had held under the Campbell-Bannerman government since 1905, he displeased the more radical labor elements. 242:20. Sir John Gorst. An English legislator, born in 1835. He was Parliament from 1866 to 1868 and again from 1875 to 1906. 242:23. Keir Hardie. An English labor leader, who worked in the coal mines from seven to twenty-four, finally becom¬ ing secretary of the Lanarkshire Miners’ Union. He edited the Cumnock Nezvs , 1882-6, and the Labor Leader , 1887-1903. He founded the Socialistic Independent Labor Party in 1903. Entering Parliament in 1892, he became leader of the Labor Party in the House of Commons in 1906. 243:5. Robert Blatchford. An English newspaper man, born in Maidstone in 1851, at present joint editor of the Clarion. According to his own account he was “educated NOTES 441 nowhere,” was successively a soldier, a clerk, and a newspa¬ per man. His best known books are “Britain for the British,” 1902, “God and My Neighbors,” 1903, and “Not Guilty, a Plea for the Bottom Dog,” 1905. 243:6. Karl Marx. (1818-83.) A great economist and socialist, properly regarded as the founder of the modem socialist movement. Jointly with Friedrich Engels, Marx drew up in 1847 what is known as the “Communist Manifesto.” It was published in most of the languages of Europe and was known as the creed of the socialistic revolutionaries. Its chief measures are set forth here that advanced classes may, if the teacher thinks it profitable, trace their influence on legislation both in Europe and in America during the last half century. The points are: (1) abolition of property in land and the application of all rents to public purposes; (2) progressive (graduated) income tax; (3) abolition of all rights of inheritance; (4) confiscation of property of emigrants and rebels; (5) centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly; (6) government ownership of means of communi¬ cation and transportation; (7) extension of productive enter¬ prises by state reclamation of waste land and general im¬ provement of the soil; (8) compulsory labor with the estab¬ lishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture; (9) a combination of agriculture with manufacturing, tending to eliminate the distinction between town and country by a more even distribution of population; (10) free education with abolition of child labor in factories. 243:7. Liebknecht. Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900) was a German Social Democrat and agitator, who escaped to England after the Revolution of 1848 and was associated in the Communistbund with Marx and Engels. (See 181:2.) Returning to Germany in 1862, he wrote for socialist dailies, becoming editor of the Berlin Vorwaerts in 1890. He was 442 NOTES imprisoned for four months in 1895 on a charge of lese majeste’ y that is, uttering or publishing something reflecting upon the administration of the government or the person of the reigning sovereign—in this case the German “War Lord,” Wilhelm II. 243:11. Bernard Shaw. A British critic, dramatist, and socialist, whose dramas deal with socialistic doctrine. “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” 1893; “John Bull’s Other Island,” 1904; “Arms and the Man,” 1894; “Candida,” which is considered the best comedy since Sheridan; and “Man and Superman” present the best expositon of Shaw’s philosophy of life. He is noted for his destructive criticisms of society and institutions. 243:13. Octavia Hill. An English social reformer (1836- 1912), who early began efforts to improve the homes of Lon¬ don’s poor. She began work with Frederic Maurice, but later was associated with John Ruskin, who advanced money for purchasing houses for improvement or for erecting new ones. Miss Hill taught the poor to help themselves and inculcated the principles of cleanliness, order, and self-respect. Her writings comprise “The Homes of London’s Poor,” 1875, and “Our Common Land,” 1877. 243:20. Walter Crane. An English artist, born in 1845, associated with William Morris in the revival of decorative arts and crafts in England. He published “Bases of Design,” 1898, and “Line and Form,” 1900. 243:28. “Industrial Democracy.” This book was published in 1897. Mr. Webb, who was born in 1859, was formerly a lecturer on political economy at the City of London College and Workingmen's College. He is at present professor of public administration at the University of London and has written many other books on social problems. 243:28. John Hobson. An English social worker and writer born in 1868. 244:6. Canon Ingram. Arthur Foley Winnington, born in 1858, is an Anglican bishop, who in 1889 became head of NOTES 443 Oxford House, Bethnal Green. In 1896, he became dean of Spitalfields; in 1897, canon of St. Paul’s and Bishop of Stepney; in 1901, Bishop of London. “Church Difficulties,” 1896; “Work in Great Cities,” 1896; and “Banners of the Christian Faith,” 1899, are among his published works. 244:19. Mrs. Humphry Ward. Mrs. Ward, who was born in 1851, is the granddaughter of the famous Doctor Arnold of Rugby. Her husband is art critic for the London Times. “Robert Elsmere,” 1888, a suggestive presentation of widely discussed religious problems, achieved much fame. She founded a settlement for social and philanthropic work at University Hall, London, in 1890, now known as the Passmore Edwards Settlement. In 1906 she founded evening play centers for children, since spread into fourteen of the poorest districts of London with an average weekly attendance of 30,000. 244:23. Browning House. A settlement at Walworth of which Herbert Stead (1857—) was warden from 1894 to 1921. Mr. Stead was editor of the Independent and Nonconformist , 1890-92, and assistant editor of the Review of Reviews , 1894- 1912. He initiated a series of conferences with Charles Booth which resulted in the National Conference on Old Age Pen¬ sions, 1898; initiated Labor Week, 1910; commenced agitation for national Old Age Homes, 1913; and convened the League to Abolish War in 1916. His “Handbook of Young People’s Guilds” appeared in 1889; “No more War,” in 1917; “The Pro¬ letarian Gospel of Galilee” and “Unseen Leadership,” in 1922. 245:8. South African War. Also known as the Boer War (1899-1902). It originated in the discontent of the foreign population of the South African Republic, mostly British subjects, who complained of having no political rights while owning most of the property and paying most of the taxes. The war ended with the Boers giving allegiance to the British Government, receiving in return full amnesty and return of their property. 444 NOTES 245:16. Fair of Nijni-Novgorod. A great commercial fair held yearly at Nijni-Novgorcd, at the junction of the Oka and Volga rivers, 276 miles east of Moscow. Here goods from all parts of Russia were exchanged as well as wares imported from Siberia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Persia. 245:21. Korolenko. Vladimir Korolenko, born in 1859, is a Russian writer, who was exiled to Siberia for revolutionary ideas from 1879 to 1885. His psychological novel, “The Blind Musician,” 1886, put him in the front rank of Russian writers. ' His subsequent fiction, however, has been confined to short stories. 246:4. Aylmer Maude. An English writer, interested in social problems, born in 1858. He lived in Russia 1877-80 and 1890-97. He helped to arrange for the migration of the Doukhobors, a peculiar Russian religious sect, to Canada in 1898. He was lecturer to north Russia for the Y. M. C. A. in 1918-9. Most of his published works deal with Russia and Russian problems and writers, particularly with Tolstoy’s life and works. 252:27. Ghetto. A quarter to which Jews are restricted or in which they live in large numbers. The ghetto is a relic of medievalism, when Jews were not permitted in the cities except within portions that were walled. All the Jews were compelled to be “within the pale” by a set hour, when the gates were barred. The term is loosely used to-day to indi-. cate a part of a community largely given over to Jews. 264:2. Casus belli. A Latin phrase meaning “cause of „ 99 war. 269:1. Warden of Toynbee Hall. See 102:24. 273:14. Dr. Alice Hamilton. An American bacteriologist (1869—), a graduate of the University of Michigan, who has done graduate research work at Leipsic, Munich, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. From 1899 to 1902, she was pro- NOTES 445 fessor of pathology at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. In 1910, she was investigator for the Illinois Commission on Industrial Diseases, and in 192021, she investigated industrial poisons for the Department of Labor. She has been assistant professor of industrial medicine at the Harvard Medical School since 1919. 276:5. Mrs. Britton. Mrs. Gertrude Howe Britton, born in Chicago in 1871, is a social worker, who has been a resident of Hull-House since 1895. She was the first officer of the Juvenile Protective Association and a member of the Chicago Board of Education, 1913-16. She has been superintendent of the Bureau of Social Service for Cook County since 1916. 277:1. Brgograph. From erg, a theoretical unit of work or energy, being the work done by a dyne (unit of force) working through a centimeter of space, and grapho , I write. 279:18. Dr. Graham Taylor. An American sociologist, born at Schenectady, N. Y., in 1857. He was ordained in the Dutch .Reformed ministry, 1873. Since 1892, he has been professor of social economics at the Chicago Theological Seminary. He was the founder and resident warden of the Chicago Commons Social Settlement in 1894. He is president of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and asso¬ ciate editor of the Survey. In 1913, he published “Religion in Social Action.” 281:12. Miss McDowell. Mary McDowell, a member of the University of Chicago faculty, was born in 1854. She is a noted settlement worker and since 1893 has been director of the Chicago Settlement in the stockyards district. She is also director of the Frederick Douglass Center and of the Immigrants* Protective League. 287:3. Miss Julia Lathrop. An active worker in various reform movements, born at Rockford, Ill., 1858. During her connections with Hull-House, she has made a splendid study of the care of the insane, better education of children, and 446 NOTES juvenile court laws. She has several times visited foreign countries to observe methods employed there. Her public services include: member of the Illinois State Board of Charities, 1893-1909; former president of the Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene; former vice president of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy; former chief of Children’s Bureau, Department of Labor, Washington. During the absence of Miss Addams on her present world tour in the interests of peace, Miss Lathrop is acting head of Hull-House. A recent Congress of American Women held at Baltimore selected Miss Lathrop as the foremost American woman in child welfare work. 295:8. Governor Pingree. Hazen Senter Pingree (1842- 1901) , while mayor of Detroit, 1890-98, developed the plan of assigning the vacant lands of the city to the poor for culti¬ vating potatoes, thereby earning the nickname “Potato Pingree.” He was Republican governor of Michigan in 1896, resigning in 1900. 302:7. Mayor Dunne. Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne, a Chicago attorney, born in Waterville, Conn., 1843, was mayor of Chicago, 1905-7. He served as governor of Illinois from 1913 to 1917. 303:10. Colonel Parker. Francis Wayland Parker (1837- 1902) was an American educator who served in the Civil War and rose to the rank of colonel. He was principal of the Cook County Normal School in 1883; president of the Chicago Normal school in 1896; and president of the Chicago Institute in 1899. 313:14. World’s Fair at St. Louis. Held at St. Louis, Mo., in 1904, in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the purchase of the Louisiana Territory by President Jefferson in 1803. 314:6. “Antigone.” A play by Sophocles, the great Greek dramatist (495-406 b.c.), having for its heroine Antigone, NOTES 447 daughter of Oedipus, King of Thebes, who put out his eyes and resigned his throne on finding he had unwittingly married his mother. Antigone was noted for her fidelity to her blind father and also for her devotion in burying the body of her brother, Polynices, contrary to Theban edict. For this, she was sentenced to be buried alive in a vault. 318:22. Royce. Josiah Royce, born in California in 1855, was from 1914 to the time of his death professor of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity at Harvard, where he had been a teacher since 1885. Both as an instructor and a writer, he has exercised a profound influence on Amer¬ ican thought. 321:14. Mardi Gras. Literally “fat Tuesday,” a day of feasting and merrymaking preceding the Lenten season, which opens the following day, Ash Wednesday, and con¬ tinues for forty days. 330:25. Bronte sisters. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte were the daughters of a country clergyman in the north of England. All were writers, Charlotte being the most talented. They drew their characters from the narrow life about them with remarkable fidelity, and their works are characterized by a fierce glow of fire and imagination and depths of human character revealed through suffering. Charlotte (1816-55) is best known for her novel “Jane Eyre”; “The Professor” and “Shirley” having also attracted much attention. Emily’s best work is “Wuthering Heights”; Anne’s is “Agnes Grey.” 333 :2 5- <$ As more exposed . . .” These lines are dedicated to Mrs. Alzina Parsons Stevens, one of the early Hull-House residents, who was president of the Woman’s Club from 1898 to 1900. Because of her early and hard experiences as a factory worker, she identified herself throughout her life with the labor movement, especially with reference to children. She was a member of the Knights of Labor and was influential in organizing the Women’s Union Label League, the first NOTES 448 women’s organization that succeeded the Knights of Labor. She was one of the first to start the Juvenile Court movement in Chicago and one of three who founded the Chicago Parental School. 334:12. Mrs. Bowen. (See Introduction.) Louise de Koven Bowen (Mrs. Joseph Bowen) is a well-known Chicago social worker, born in 1859. She has served as president of the juvenile Protective Association, vice president of the United j Charities of Chicago, treasurer of Hull-House, and director of the School of Civics and Philanthropy. 335:16. Palace of Delight. See 110:13. 339:4. Mr. and Mrs. Barnett See 102:24. 345:4. Yiddish poet. Morris Rosenfeld, author of “The Sweatshop,” w T as born in Poland in 1862. Coming to New York to toil in the gloomy sweatshops, he poured out his sense of suffering and wrongs in poems written in Yiddish and published first in the Yiddish papers of New York’s Ghetto and later in book form. Professor Leo Wiener of Columbia University, who discusses Rosenfeld in his excellent study of contemporary Yiddish writers, “The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century,” considers Rosenfeld the most striking figure among Yiddish writers in America at the close of the nineteenth century. “Rosenfeld’s poetry will survive as a witness of that lowermost hell which political persecution, religious and racial hatred, and indus¬ trial oppression have created for the Jew at the end of our enlightened nineteenth century,” writes Professor Wiener. 354:6. “Ajax of Sophocles.” A drama based on the life of the Greek legendary hero, Ajax, who was second only to Achilles in bravery. During the siege of Troy, when the armor of the dead Hector was awarded to Ulysses instead of to himself, Ajax turned mad from vexation and stabbed himself. 354 :i 5 - “Electra.” Probably the Electro of Sophocles, since his Ajax was also presented. Euripides has also taken NOTES 449 Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and the faithless Clytem- nestra and sister of Orestes and Iphigenia, for the heroine of one of his dramas. 356:28. Passion Play at Oberammergau. This is a play representing scenes from the life of Christ, each scene being prefaced by one of similar import from the Old Testament. It h as been given, with occasional breaks, every ten years since 1633 by the inhabitants of the little Bavarian village, who in that year first gave the play in the hope of staying the plague which was then raging. About 700 actors are required, all belonging to the village. Each performance lasts nine hours, with a short intermission at noon. It is held in an open-air theater each Sunday during the summer. Since the villagers regard the performance as a solemn act of religious worship, all performances are characterized by the greatest reverence. 359:15. Talmudic lore. The “Talmud” is the Hebrew book of laws. There are two versions, the Palestinian, embodying the discussions of the laws by hundreds of doctors living in Palestine, chiefly in Galilee, from the end of the second to the beginning of the fifth century. The Babylonian embodies similar discussions by Babylonian doctors from about the year 190 to the end of the sixth century. The purpose of these dis¬ cussions is to exhibit the development of “oral law'’ and the views taken of this development by rabbis of various times. The doctors discuss the correctness of the text and meanings of the laws and introduce the whole body of tradition handed down to their time. The “Talmud” therefore furnishes a rich background for Jewish history down to the end of the sixth century a.d. 360:3. Ibsen. Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian dramatist, widety read and discussed in the United States. His plays are studies in human responsibility under modern conditions, which in many points Ibsen considers danger- NOTES 450 ously diseased. He has become ‘'the poet of protest.” He writes of vice with loathing and lays bare the causes of evils but prescribes no remedies. His work marks a new stage in dramatic art, since he is thoroughly realistic and unconven¬ tional. Representative Ibsen plays are: “Pillars of Society,” 1877; “The Doll’s House,” 1879; “Ghosts,” 1881; “Rosmer- holm,” 1886; “Hedda Gabler,” 1890; “Little Eyolf,” 1894; “When We Dead Awaken,” 1900. 360:4. Yeats. William Butler Yeats is an Irish writer/ born in Dublin in 1865. His poetry has been very popular in America, particularly his “Plays for an Irish Theater,” 1912. 360:15. Wagnerian combination. Probably a reference to the methods of the school conducted at Baireuth by Frau Cosima Wagner, widow of Richard Wagner (1813-83), the great German dramatic composer and reformer of musical drama. 362:4. Phidias. A great Greek sculptor, born about 500 b.c. His famous Parthenon statue of Athene, done in ivory and gold, was completed in 438. His masterpiece was the the great gold and ivory statue of Zeus in the newly-erected temple at Olympia, where he died. 362:6. David. King David, who was called from tending his father’s flocks to rule over Israel. 362:7. St. Francis. Francis of Assisi in Italy (1182-1226), founder of the order of Franciscans. His chief passion was a consuming spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion to others. Hence he sought out the lepers, loathsome and hitherto abhorred, and kissed them and ministered to their wants. 362:8. Patrick. Patron saint of Ireland, who is reputed to have freed the island from snakes. As a youth of fifteen, he was carried off from the neighborhood at the head of the Solway and sold as a slave on the opposite coast of Ireland, by the Scots and Piets during one of their raids about 411 a.d. fing after six years, he prepared himself for the priest- NOTES 45 1 hood, probably at St. Niman’s Monastery, and returned to Ireland as a missionary. His death is said to have occurred in 469 a.d. 362:10. Hans Sachs. 1 he cobbler poet of Germany, born at Nuremburg in 1494. Sachs was an ardent follower of Luther, and his hymns are the best of the thousands of poems written by him. He was the son of a shoemaker and was himself trained to the same calling. 362:11. Jeanne d’Arc. Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, was born in 1411 in the village of Domremy. She was a girl of a deeply religious nature, who became impressed with the prophecy that the calamities which fell on France through the depravity of a woman should be removed by the agency of a chaste virgin who should come from the forest of Dom¬ remy. Led by her “voices,” she guided the forces of France to victory until she was betrayed into the hands of the Eng¬ lish and burned by them as a witch, May 30, 1431. 362:18. William Morris. An English socialist, poet, and artist (1834-96). Educated at Oxford, he intended to found a religious brotherhood but instead became an architect. In 1861, in connection with Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and others, he established a firm for the designing and manufacturing of artistic furniture and household decorations. Later he took up the manufacture of tapestry, dyeing, book illum¬ inating, and printing. In 1890, he founded the famous Kelm- scott Press at Hammersmith. For the practical advancement of the lesser arts and of the doctrine that all things should be made beautiful, Morris did more than any other man of his time. In 1885, he became an active socialist and delivered lectures to workingmen as well as contributed to the Common¬ weal , the organ of the Socialist League. 362:18. Walt Whitman. An eccentric American poet (1819-92) whose poems, written on unconventional subjects in unrhymed, irregular verse, aroused a storm of discussion. NOTES 452 His writings are “not art, but propaganda—philosophic, sociopolitical, artistic.” He himself lived the life he advocated, ‘.ramping the open in enjoyment of nature, scorning the refinements of society. “Leaves of Grass,” a collection of his irregular verse, is his best-known work. 362:19. Pasteur. Louis Pasteur (1822-1905) was an eminent French chemist and bacteriologist, whose hundredth anniversary was recently celebrated by his countrymen. -|i His studies in pathological research, led to the preparation of vaccines to be used in making man and the higher animals immune to such diseases as anthrax, fowl cholera, diphtheria, and hydrophobia. Milk is “pasteurized” to destroy germs because of Pasteur’s discoveries in research. 362:26. Florence Nightingale. Miss Nightingale (1820- 1910) was the pioneer of the army of trained nurses. Hearing of the sufferings of the English soldiers during the Crimean War, she sailed for the Crimea in 1854 with a force of thirty-eight volunteer nurses. Despite the prejudice against women nurses, Miss Nightingale’s little band did such heroic work as to call forth general admiration. Her own nightly rounds of the wards, lamp in hand, inspired Longfellow’s beautiful poem, Santa Filomena , with its picture of the “lady with the lamp.” The British Government gave her £50,000, with which she founded a home for training nurses. Her influence and example led to the founding of the Red Cross Society. 364:8. Dante. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was the great¬ est of the Italian poets. He is best known for nis “Divine Comedy,” with its vivid pictures of purgatory and hell, as con¬ ceived by the mediaeval mind. This great work was completed only a short time before his death. He stands among the first of the world’s greatest authors. 364:11. Pre-Raphaelites. A name applied to a school or group that arose in England about the middle of the nine- NOTES 453 teenth century and accomplished great results both in art and in literature. The members sought their inspiration in the art of the age preceding Raphael, a time when art was simple, sincere, and religious. William Morris owed much of his inspiration to his connection with this movement. 365:4. Kishinev. The capital of the province of Bessarabia in Russia, eighty-six miles northwest of Odessa on the Dniester 'River. In 1912, 41 per cent of the population of 125,876 was Jewish. In 1903, the town was the scene of an unprovoked massacre of J ewish inhabitants by a mob, with the approval of the authorities. This was the first of a series of pogroms , or slaughters, throughout Russia, extending over a series of years. A second massacre occurred at Kishinev in 1905. 366:11. Russian Duma. (Douma.) The Russian parlia¬ ment, created by inperial edict in 1905. Previous to that time, Russia had been an absolute monarchy, the will of the Czar being uncurbed by any legislative body. 366:13. MadameBreshkovsky. Ekaterina Breshkovskaya, “the grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” was born of well-to-do parents in 1843. Being brought up in the country, she sympathized with the peasants, as did Tolstoy. At twenty-five, she left her husband and child “to preach the gospel of liberty.” Four years later she was arrested and sentenced to twenty-two years in Siberia. She returned to Russia in 1896, and at once started the Social Revolution. She visited America in 1904 and was again sent to Siberia on her return. Freed by the Revolution of 1917? she returned to Russia to renew her work among the common people. Despite her enfeebled condition, due to her years and long confinement, she at once set about establishing printing press¬ es in the more populous centers of Russia for circulating further propaganda among the peasants. 366:14. St. Peter and St. Paul. Originally a fortress on Peterburgsky Island, opposite the Winter Palace in St. NOTES 454 Petersburg (Petrograd). At the time of which Miss Addarns writes, it was used as a state prison. “Imprisoned in St. Peter and St. Paul” meant the first step on the road to Si¬ beria or the gallows for the Russian political offender. 366:16. Prince Kropotkin. A Russian geographer and anarchist, born in 1842. His interest in social reforms grew out of his observation of the unhappy economic conditions, particularly among the peasantry, in the course of his geo¬ graphic observations in various parts of Russia, including i Siberia and Finland. When the government refused to remedy conditions, Kropotkin resolved to devote his life to the solving of social problems. He soon joined the anarchists, and has several times been imprisoned. Since 1896, he has made his home in England. 366 :22. Assassination of McKinley. William McKinley, President of the United States from 1897 to 1901, was shot by Leon Czolgosz while holding a reception in the Music Hall of the Pan-American Congress at Buffalo, N. Y., September 6, 1901, six months after his second inauguration. Mr. McKinley was born in 1843. 368:19. Bakunin. Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76) was a Russian agitator and writer and founder of militant anarch¬ ism, which proposed the overthrow of all established forms of government. He took part in various German outbreaks, 1841-50, and was condemned to death, first by the Saxon, later by the Austrian, and finally by the Russian Government. He was sent to Siberia for life in 1855 but escaped to Japan and thence through America to England in 1859. Here he was associated with Marx and Engels and founded the Social Democratic Alliance in 1869. He was expelled from England in 1872 and retired to Switzerland. 375 :2 o* Prima facie. A latin phrase meaning “at first sight.” Prima facie evidence is evidence which, without minute examination into its merits, seems plausible or correct, NOTES 455 although closer investigation may prove it entirely the op¬ posite. 378:2. Edelstadt group. An American anarchist group, which originated in New York under the leadership of David Edelstadt, a young Jewish poet, who died not long after the period of which Miss Addams writes. Edelstadt, who wrote in Yiddish, was known as “the poet of the Anarchist Party.” His followers were mostly of the milder “literary” type. His verses were chiefly in praise of anarchism and the heroes of freedom who had fallen in unequal combat. Professor Leo Wiener says of Edelstadt in his “History of Yiddish Litera¬ ture in the Nineteenth Century,” “His poems seem to be written, not because he was a poet, but because he belongs to the Anarchistic Party.” 381:21. Puritans. The name applied to seceders from the English Church, so called because they rejected all human tradition and interference in religion, acknowledging the sole authority of the “pure word of God,” without “note or com¬ ment.” Their motto was, “The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.” New England was settled largely by the Puritans. 381:21. Lafayette. Consult any text on American history for the services of Lafayette during the American Revolution. Recall also the wave of sentiment that swept France and America more than a hundred years later, when General John Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American Expedi¬ tionary Forces aiding France in her struggle for life against the Germans, stood at the the tomb of Lafayette. The simple phrase, “Lafayette, we are here!” uttered then by Colonel C. E. Stanton, expressed the gratitude of a whole nation to the gallant young Frenchman who had swung France to the aid of America in her hour of need. 381:22. Carl Schurz. A German-American soldier, polit¬ ical leader, and journalist, who came to America in 1852 by NOTES 456 way of London, where he had escaped after taking part in the Revolution of 1848. He rose to the rank of major general during the Civil War. He took up journalism and founded the Detroit Post in 1866 and was editor with Joseph Pulitzer of the Westliche Post , a St. Louis German paper, 1869-75. From 1881 to 1883 he was editor and part owner of the New York Evening Post. Mr. Schurz, who was born in 1829, held many important political positions. He died in 1906. 382:9. Cavour and Bismarck. Count Cavour (1810-61) was an Italian statesman, called “the regenerator of Italy” and considered one of the greatest of modern statesmen. It was due chiefly to Cavour that Italy recovered her national rights and led the way in two of the most beneficent revolutions (1830 and 1848) that have taken place in the history of the world. Prince Karl Otto von Bismarck (1815-98) was known as the “Iron Chancellor of Germany.” It was largely through his efforts that the unification of the modern German mon¬ archy was achieved. Bismarck became first chancellor of the new German Empire. His sway remained unbroken until the accession of William II in 1888. Two autocrats came into collision, and Bismarck resigned, after numerous quarrels, in March, 1890. 384:11. Vladimir Bourtzeff . . . Azeff. Bourtzeff, still a social revolutionist, is living in Paris, where he violently opposes the methods of the present Russian revolutionists. For a time, he edited a magazine, Byloe (The Past). Azeff, who posed as a revolutionist in order to gain the confidence of his victims and betray them to the police, was afterward shot by the revolutionaries. 384:21. Gorki. Maxim Gorki (also Gorky) is a Russian writer, born in 1868. He has several times been arrested for his -revolutionary sympathies. His visit to the United States in 1906 to obtain funds for Russian freedom was ruined by the incidents referred to by Miss Addams, and he was com- NOTES 457 pelled to abandon his tour. His novels are based chiefly on life in the underworld, which he describes with startling fidelity. 387:13. Giordano Bruno. An Italian philosopher (1548- 1600), whose philosophy took the form of attacks upon estab¬ lished religion. His “Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” represents the monks as pedants who would destroy all joy on . earth but who are themselves greedy, dissolute, and breeders of dissensions and squabbles. It scoffs at the mysteries of faith, puts the Jewish records of the Old Testament on a level with the Greek myths, and laughs at the miracles of the New Testament. Bruno was arrested by the agents of the In¬ quisition, and, after seven years of imprisonment, burned at the stake. 389:9. Amiel. Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-81) was a Swiss author, best known for his “Fragments of an Intimate Diary,” wherein he sets down freely his shortcomings and errors. 395:13. Jean Valjean. Valjean was the hero of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” Out of work and desperate, he stole a loaf of bread to feed the seven starving children of his widowed sister. For this he was cast into prison. Escaping after nineteen years, through a simple invention he amassed great wealth, which he devoted to helping the needy and the oppressed, though he himself lived constantly within the shadow of the law. 399:6. Rivaling Werther. Werther was the hero of Goethe’s “Sorrows of Werther,” a highly-sentimental German romance, published in 1774. 405:8. Olympian winners. The Olympic games were held every fourth year in early Grecian times. While the first recorded list of winners dates from 776 b.c., the games were instituted much earlier. No one not of Greek blood and no one convicted of a crime or of impiety might participate, since the games were of a highly religious nature, the display 458 NOTES of manly strength being thought pleasing to the gods. The winner received only a wreath of wild olive at Olympia, but at home enjoyed the gifts and veneration of his fellow citizens. Poets recited his victories in odes, and sculptors reproduced them in stone and marble. To the end of his days, he re¬ mained a distinguished man. STUDY QUESTIONS Chapter I. i. Why does Miss Addams center all her earlier experiences around her father? 2. At what age did Miss Addams first show her interest in the poor and unfortunate? 3. What two things mentioned by Miss Addams in this chapter help to explain the close tie between the little girl and her father? 4. What do you know of the beliefs of the Quakers that will explain why the child found the religious atmosphere of her home different from that of the others of her community? 5. Sum up your impressions of Mr. Addams from the in¬ cidents related in this chapter. Try to find a single apt word or phrase to express each quality. 6. Can you find a sentence in this chapter that will show why Miss Addams’s efforts during the World War were directed toward peace and toward a better understanding among all nations? Chapter II. 1. Name the various ways in which the Civil War was impressed upon the minds of the Addams children. 2. What resemblance did the little child see between “Old Abe,” the Wisconsin war eagle, and Abraham Lincoln? 3. How does the atmosphere at Rockford, as explained in this chapter, help us to understand Miss Addams’s devotion to an ideal later? 4. What facts does tne author give to show that the girls of her group were in earnest? 459 460 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE 5. Why did Miss Addams not become a foreign mission¬ ary? In what way may her later labors at Hull-House be termed “missionary work”? 6. In what ways was life in a girl’s school in the ’70’s dif¬ ferent from that of the present day? 7. Why does Miss Addams relate the incident of the orator¬ ical contest? ¥8. What does Miss Addams consider the best moral train¬ ing she received at Rockford? Why? 9. Relate the trade union incident, and point out the in¬ consistency in the action of the members. What conviction did Miss Addams receive from the incident? 10. What career had the author decided upon for herself while in school? How much of her plans did she carry out? 11. How did Miss Addams show her interest in scientific study? What did she believe women might gain from such study? Chapter IV. 1. After reading this chapter, explain why the author named it “The Snare of Preparation.” 2. Recount Miss Addams’s London experiences and show how they were unconsciously helping to direct her toward her later work at Hull-House. Give Miss Addams’s impression of the effect of college education upon the women of her day. Has the nature of education for women changed since that time? Is there still room for improvement? 4. What was the mistake made by the American mother who was keeping her daughter abroad for a musical educa¬ tion ? 5. Why did Miss Addams lose interest in Prince Albert and his tutor? Was she justified? 6. Why was she so interested in the work of Diirer? STUDY QUESTIONS 461 7. How does Miss Addams explain her formal entrance into the church? Are her reasons good? Chapter V. 1. Why did Professor Davidson oppose Miss Addams’s settlement plan? What caused his later change of attitude? / 2. State the theory on which Hull-House was opened, and explain it in your own words. 3. Why were the founders of Hull-House so careful in its furnishings? 4. Repeat Miss Addams’s description of Halsted Street, and tell of the changes of the first twenty years. What other changes in the last fourteen years? (See Preface.) 5. What is the “the idea underlying our self-govern¬ ment” ? 6. What class of tenement house owners did Miss Addams find hardest to deal with? Why? 7. To what class of people did Hull-House make its first appeal? Why? 8. What were the various means used to attract boys to Hull-House? Girls? In what ways was it made attractive to older persons? 9. What does Miss Addams consider “the simple human foundations which are certainly essential for continuous liv¬ ing among the poor”? 10. Give the purpose of Hull-House as stated in the char¬ ter. Prove from the description of conditions in this chapter that such a place was needed. Chapter VI. 1. Why does Miss Addams reproduce an address delivered in 1892? 2. Repeat the three motives which Miss Addams believes urge educated young people to take up settlement work. 3. Why can settlement work “stand for no political or social propaganda”? 462 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE 4. What are the duties of a resident at a settlement house, as set forth in this address? Chapter VII. 1. Why was the Hull-House coffee-house opened? How did the residents prepare themselves to make it useful? Why did the food sales go slowly at first? 2. Recount the Hull-House Cooperative Coal Associa¬ tion experiment. Why did it fail? 3. What was the next cooperative experiment? Why was. it more successful? 4. How w r ere the Hull-House experimenters treated by the public at first? What caused a change of attitude later? 5. Why did Miss Addams refuse the first offer of funds for the clubhouse? Do you approve of her stand? Why? 6. Name in order the various additions to Hull-House facilities mentioned in this chapter and tell how each was made possible. Chapter VIII. 1. In what way did Hull-House make life more bearable for the old women in the County Infirmary? 2. Do you know whether your county has a poor farm? If so, where is it located? Can you describe it? 3. What is the work of the Visiting Nurse Association? 4. Relate Miss Addams’s experience on the committee dealing with the unemployment situation in 1893. 5. Cite instances showing the kindness of the poor to¬ ward one nnntlier following: “ 1 he Settlement is valuable as an information and interpretive bureau.” 7. Describe the beginnings of the day nursery. 8. How is this work now carried on? 9. Why does Miss Addams relate the story of “Goosie”? Chapter IX. 1. Explain the difference between a socialist and an anarchist. 2. Sum up Miss Addams’s statement of the creed of each. STUDY QUESTIONS 463 3. Name the two classes into which Miss Addams divides the Chicago of her day? 4. Restate the business man’s reasons for distrusting the reformer. 5. How does Miss Addams characterize the decade from 1890 to 1900 in Chicago? 6. Mention important movements with which she had been connected during that time. Chapter X. I. Recount instances showing the evil effects of child labor. 2. What has your state done to prevent such things happening? 3. Has any national law on this subject been passed since Miss Addams wrote this? 4. Account for the opposition to the passage of the Illinois Factory Regulation law? 5. Why did Miss Addams favor an 8-hour law for working women? Has your state such a law? 6. Explain “sweatshop.” Why would such a system naturally flourish among foreigners? 7. Why did Miss Addams help organize labor unions among working women? How does she explain the close relation of the Settlement to all labor troubles? Chapter XI. I. Give the origin of the Hull-House labor museum. 2. What did Miss Addams find back of the break between immigrant parents and their American-trained children? 3. How can cooking and sewing, as taught in the public schools, help to Americanize a foreign family? 4. How can America hope to receive anything of value rrom the immigrant? Chapter XII. i. Why did Miss Addams go to visit Tolstoy? 464 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE 2. What resolution did she make while there? Why die she fail to keep her resolution on her return? 3. Can you see why colonies founded on Tolstoy’s theories would naturally fail? Chapter XIII. 1. Describe Miss Addams’s fight foi better sanitation. 2. How was she able to secure the cooperation of the women of the neighborhood? The children? - 1 ) 3. How is garbage removed in your district? 4. Why did Miss Addams fight for better housing condi¬ tions? 5. Mention other public services rendered by Hull-House,; c as described in this chapter. Chapter XIV. I. How did Hull-House residents come to 1 accept city, state, and county offices? 2. Name some of the offices held. 3. Mention other civic enterprises in which Hull-House cooperated. 4. Describe the campaign against the “the corrupt aider- man.” 5. Why did it fail? 6. What does this show as to the necessity for investigat¬ ing men for whom we are called upon to vote? 7. Why does Miss Addams favor a civil service examina¬ tion as a means of selecting “public servants”? 8. Sum up the work of the Juvenile Protective Associa¬ tion. 9. Why did Miss Addams accept a position as member of the Chicago Board of Education? 10. Why did she find it impossible to secure satisfactory results? 11. What was the final outcome of the attempt to “take the schools out of politics”? STUDY QUESTIONS 465 12. What part did the Chicago newspapers take in the struggle? Why? 13. Give the reasons assigned by various groups of women for wanting the right to vote. Comment on each. Chapter XV. 1. Classify the different Hull-House clubs and discuss the purpose of each. 2. In what ways did the clubs help to inspire their mem¬ bers to higher things? 3. -Why did Hull-House find a need for recreational clubs? 4. Explain the work of the social extension committee. 5. How do the experiences of the club members react up¬ on the lives of their own family circle? 6. Why did the English visitor accuse Americans of being indifferent to social conditions? 7. What has your community done to investigate, with a view to bettering, the conditions under which the masses of the people must live? 8. Can you name any organizations for social betterment in your community, or give instances of good accomplished by them? Chapter XVI. 1. Why did the Hull-House residents hold art exhibits? How did the foreign visitors regard the exhibits? Why were the exhibits finally discontinued? 2. Describe the work in arts and crafts at Hull-House. 3. In what way do the music classes minister to the needs of the Hull-House district? What was often the effect of the industrial world on the talent uncovered in the school? 4. Give the three ends to be achieved by the introduction of dramatic work at Hull-House. Give instances to show that each goal was reached. 5. What great truth regarding the function of the stage came to Miss Addams as a result of her witnessing the Ober- ammergau Passion Play? 466 TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE 6. Recount the difficulties experienced in selecting the decorations for the Hull-House i heatre. How was the matter finally decided? 7- Explain Young Lincoln.at the moment he received his first impression of the ‘great iniquity.’” 8. Why would a community like that of the Hull-House dis¬ trict respond to appeals to the artistic instinct? 9. Do you believe it is worth while for purely American- communities to cultivate this instinct? Why? 10. Has your community any organization similar to those described in this chapter? Chapter XVII. 1. When and under what circumstances was President McKinley assassinated? 2. Why was the editor referred to in this chapter arrested? Why did Miss Addams go to visit this editor in prison? 3. How did Miss Addams see in the story of McKinley’s slayer a challenge to the forces for social betterment in Amer¬ ican cities? 4. Discriminate the terms anarchist and socialist , and show that the two should never be confused. 5. How did the Averbuch incident affect the Russian-Jew- ish colony’s opinion of America? ^6.; Which does Miss Addams consider more effective as a means toward Americanization, classes in citizenship or humane and intelligent treatment of the foreigner? 7- How only can those who have fled from persecution abroad be led to love America and trust in her government? 8. How did Miss Addams regard the use of assassination as a weapon of the Russian revolutionists? How did the revolutionists defend themselves? How has this idea carried over into the present Russian revolution? 9. How were Miss Addams and Hull-House penalized for attempting to secure a fair hearing for the foreigners? I STUDY QUESTIONS 467 10. Do you recognize the allusion to one who “encouraged harlots and sinners”? Chapter XVIII. i. Why were college extension classes opened at Hull-House? 2. Explain the work of university and normal extension courses. 3. In what ways did the people of the neighborhood show . their interest in the Sunday night lectures? 4. ,Why has it been so difficult to get the right sort of lec¬ tures for Hull-House audiences? 5. Give Miss Addams’s definition of the object of art. In what ways has Hull-House sought to attain this objective? 6. How has the culture Hull-House has sought to give its people differed from so-called “college culture”? 7. What two distinct trends mark the demand for classes for women at EIull-House? 8. What purposes have the trades classes for boys served? 9. What types of athletic contests have been favored in the Hull-House gymnasium? Why? 10. How does Miss Addams justify the great number of purely recreational facilities offered by Hull-House? 11. Relate the incident of the Columbian Guards. Why does Miss Addams class it as “a Quixotic experiment”? 12. In what ways have the Hull-House residents them¬ selves been “educated” through their work? 13. Why was Miss Adams unable to hold regular religious septfices among the residents? / 14. What is the settlement’s “fourfold undertaking”? 15. Sum up Miss Addams’s account of the educational ac¬ tivities of a settlement house. 16. Explain “ . . . . the attempt to socialize democracy.” 17. Why is this such an important undertaking in a coun¬ try like America? Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: October 2017 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724) 779-2111