Latest / Classic History Book Collection / Twenty Years at Hull-House Part 1 - Jane Addams
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Adams preface. Every
- 0:06Speaker 1: preface is, I imagine written after the book has been completed.
- 0:11Speaker 1: And now that I have finished this volume, I will
- 0:13Speaker 1: state several difficulties which may put the reader upon his
- 0:16Speaker 1: guard unless he too, postpones the preface to the very last.
- 0:21Speaker 1: Many times during the writing of these reminiscences, I have
- 0:24Speaker 1: become convinced that the task was undertaken all too soon.
- 0:28Speaker 1: One's fiftieth year is indeed an impressive milestone had which
- 0:32Speaker 1: one may well pause to take an accounting. But the
- 0:34Speaker 1: people with whom I have so long journeyed have become
- 0:37Speaker 1: so intimate a part of my lot that they cannot
- 0:40Speaker 1: be written of, either in praise or blame. The public
- 0:43Speaker 1: movements and causes with which I am still identified have
- 0:46Speaker 1: become so endeared, some of them through their very struggles
- 0:50Speaker 1: and failures, that it is difficult to discuss them. It
- 0:54Speaker 1: has also been hard to determine what incidents and experiences
- 0:57Speaker 1: should be selected for recital, and I have found that
- 1:00Speaker 1: I might give an accurate report of each isolated event,
- 1:03Speaker 1: and yet to give a totally misleading impression of the
- 1:06Speaker 1: whole solely by the selection of the incidents. For these
- 1:10Speaker 1: reasons and many others, I have found it difficult to
- 1:13Speaker 1: make a faithful record of the year since the autumn
- 1:15Speaker 1: of eighteen eighty nine, when, without any preconceived social theories
- 1:19Speaker 1: or economic views, I came to live in an industrial
- 1:23Speaker 1: district of Chicago. If the reader should inquire why the
- 1:26Speaker 1: book was ever undertaken in the face of so many difficulties,
- 1:29Speaker 1: in reply, I could instance two purposes, only one of which,
- 1:33Speaker 1: in the language of organized charity, is worthy. Because settlements
- 1:38Speaker 1: have multiplied so easily in the United States, I hope
- 1:41Speaker 1: that a simple statement of an earlier effort, including the
- 1:44Speaker 1: stress and storm, might be of value in their interpretation
- 1:48Speaker 1: and possibly clear them of a certain charge of superficiality.
- 1:52Speaker 1: The unworthy motive was a desire to start a backfire,
- 1:55Speaker 1: as it were, to extinguish two biographies of myself, one
- 1:59Speaker 1: of which had been submitted to me an outline that
- 2:01Speaker 1: made life in a settlement all too smooth and charming.
- 2:05Speaker 1: The earlier chapters present influences and personal motives with a
- 2:09Speaker 1: detail which will be quite unpardonable if they fail to
- 2:12Speaker 1: make clear the personality upon whose various social and industrial
- 2:15Speaker 1: movements at Chicago reacted during a period of twenty years.
- 2:20Speaker 1: No effort is made in the recital to separate my
- 2:22Speaker 1: own history from that of Hull House during the years
- 2:25Speaker 1: in which I was launched deep into the stormy intercourse
- 2:28Speaker 1: of human life. For so far as a mind is
- 2:31Speaker 1: pliant under the pressure of events and experiences, it becomes
- 2:34Speaker 1: hard to detach it. It has unfortunately been necessary to
- 2:39Speaker 1: abandon the chronological order in favor of the topical. For
- 2:42Speaker 1: during the early years at Hull House, time seemed to
- 2:45Speaker 1: afford a mere framework for certain lines of activity, and
- 2:49Speaker 1: I have found in writing this book that after these
- 2:51Speaker 1: activities have been recorded, I can scarcely recall the scaffolding.
- 2:56Speaker 1: More than a third of the material in the book
- 2:58Speaker 1: has appeared in the American Magis magazine, one chapter of
- 3:01Speaker 1: it in McClure's magazine, and earlier statements of the settlement
- 3:05Speaker 1: motive published years ago have been utilized in chronological order
- 3:09Speaker 1: because it seemed impossible to reproduce their enthusiasm. It is
- 3:13Speaker 1: a matter of gratification to me that the book is
- 3:16Speaker 1: illustrated from drawings made by Miss Norah Hamilton of Hull House,
- 3:19Speaker 1: and the cover designed by another resident mister Frank Hosenbug.
- 3:24Speaker 1: I am indebted for the making of the index, and
- 3:26Speaker 1: from many other services to Miss Clara Landsberg, also of
- 3:30Speaker 1: Hull House. If the conclusions of the whole matter are
- 3:34Speaker 1: similar to those I have already published at intervals during
- 3:36Speaker 1: the twenty years at Hull House, I can only make
- 3:39Speaker 1: the defense that each of the earlier books was an
- 3:42Speaker 1: attempt to set forth a thesis supported by experience, whereas
- 3:46Speaker 1: this volume endeavors to trace the experiences through which various
- 3:50Speaker 1: conclusions were forced upon me. And of preface, Chapter one
- 3:57Speaker 1: earliest impressions on the theory that our genuine impulses may
- 4:03Speaker 1: be connected with our childish experiences, that one's bent may
- 4:06Speaker 1: be tracked back to that no man's land where character
- 4:10Speaker 1: is formless, but nevertheless settling into definite lines of future development.
- 4:15Speaker 1: I begin this record with some impressions of my childhood.
- 4:18Speaker 1: All of these are directly connected with my father, although
- 4:22Speaker 1: of course I recall many experiences apart from him. I
- 4:25Speaker 1: was one of the younger members of a large family
- 4:27Speaker 1: and an eager participant in the village life. But because
- 4:31Speaker 1: my father was so distinctly the dominant influence, and because
- 4:34Speaker 1: it is quite impossible to set forth all of one's
- 4:37Speaker 1: early impressions, it has seemed simpler to string these first
- 4:40Speaker 1: memories on that single chord. Moreover, it was this chord
- 4:44Speaker 1: which not only held fast my supreme affections, but also
- 4:48Speaker 1: first drew me into the moral concerns of life, and
- 4:51Speaker 1: later afforded a clue there to which I somewhat wistfully
- 4:54Speaker 1: clung in the intricacy of its mazes. It must have
- 4:58Speaker 1: been from a very early period that I re call
- 5:00Speaker 1: horrid nights when I tossed about in my bed because
- 5:03Speaker 1: I had told a lie. I was held in the
- 5:05Speaker 1: grip of a miserable dread of death, a double fear,
- 5:08Speaker 1: first that I myself should die in my sins and
- 5:11Speaker 1: go straight to that fiery hell which was never mentioned
- 5:14Speaker 1: at home, but which I had heard all about from
- 5:17Speaker 1: other children. And second that my father, representing the entire
- 5:21Speaker 1: adult world which I had basely deceived, should himself die
- 5:25Speaker 1: before I had time to tell him. My only method
- 5:28Speaker 1: of obtaining relief was to go downstairs to my father's
- 5:31Speaker 1: room and make full confession. The high resolve to do
- 5:34Speaker 1: this would push me out of bed and carry me
- 5:37Speaker 1: down the stairs without a touch of fear. But at
- 5:40Speaker 1: the foot of the stairs, I would be faced by
- 5:41Speaker 1: the awful necessity of passing the front door, which my father,
- 5:45Speaker 1: because of his Quaker tendencies, did not lock, and of
- 5:48Speaker 1: crossing the wide and black expanse of the living room
- 5:51Speaker 1: in order to reach his door. I would invariably cling
- 5:55Speaker 1: to the nwell post while I contemplated the perils of
- 5:57Speaker 1: the situation, complicated by the fire that the literal first
- 6:01Speaker 1: step meant, putting my bare foot upon a piece of
- 6:03Speaker 1: oil cloth in front of the door only a few
- 6:06Speaker 1: inches wide, but lying straight in my path, I would
- 6:09Speaker 1: finally reach my father's bedside, perfectly breathless, and having panted
- 6:14Speaker 1: out the history of my sin, invariable received the same
- 6:17Speaker 1: assurance that if he had a little girl who told lies,
- 6:21Speaker 1: he was very glad that she felt too bad to
- 6:23Speaker 1: go to sleep. Afterward, no absolution was asked for or received,
- 6:28Speaker 1: but apparently the sense that the knowledge of my wickedness
- 6:30Speaker 1: was shared, or an obscure understanding of the affection which
- 6:33Speaker 1: underlay the grave statement, was sufficient, for I always went
- 6:37Speaker 1: back to bed as bold as a lion, and slept,
- 6:40Speaker 1: if not the sleep of the just, at least that
- 6:43Speaker 1: of the comforted. I recall an incident which must have
- 6:46Speaker 1: occurred before I was seven years old, for the mill
- 6:49Speaker 1: in which my father transacted his business that day was
- 6:52Speaker 1: closed in eighteen sixty seven. The mill stood in the
- 6:55Speaker 1: neighboring town, adjacent to its poorest quarter. Before then, I
- 6:59Speaker 1: had always seen the little city of ten thousand people
- 7:02Speaker 1: with the admiring eyes of a country child, and it
- 7:04Speaker 1: had never occurred to me that all its streets were
- 7:07Speaker 1: not as bewilderingly attractive as the one which contained the
- 7:10Speaker 1: glittering toy shop and the confectioner. On that day, I
- 7:14Speaker 1: had my first sight of the poverty which implies squalor,
- 7:17Speaker 1: and felt the curious distinction between the ruddy poverty of
- 7:20Speaker 1: the country and that which even a small city presents
- 7:23Speaker 1: in its shabbiest streets. I remember launching at my father
- 7:27Speaker 1: the pertinent inquiry why people lived in such horrid little
- 7:30Speaker 1: houses so close together, and that after receiving his explanation,
- 7:35Speaker 1: I declared with much firmness, when I grew up, I should,
- 7:38Speaker 1: of course have a large house, but it would not
- 7:40Speaker 1: be built among the other large houses, but right in
- 7:43Speaker 1: the midst of horrid little houses like those that curious
- 7:47Speaker 1: sense of responsibility for carrying on the world's affairs, which
- 7:50Speaker 1: little children often exhibit because the old man clogs our
- 7:53Speaker 1: earliest years. I remember in myself, in a very absurd manifestation,
- 7:58Speaker 1: I dreamed, night after night night that every one in
- 8:01Speaker 1: the world was dead, excepting myself, and that upon me
- 8:04Speaker 1: rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. The village
- 8:08Speaker 1: street remained as usual, The village blacksmith shop was all there,
- 8:12Speaker 1: even a glowing fire upon the forge and the anvila
- 8:14Speaker 1: in its customary place near the door, but no human
- 8:17Speaker 1: being was within sight. They had all gone round the
- 8:20Speaker 1: edge of the hill to the village cemetery, and I
- 8:22Speaker 1: alone remained alive in the deserted world. I always stood
- 8:26Speaker 1: in the same spot in the blacksmiths shop, darkly pondering
- 8:29Speaker 1: as to how to begin, and never once did I
- 8:32Speaker 1: know how, although I fully realized that the affairs of
- 8:35Speaker 1: the world could not be resumed until at least one
- 8:37Speaker 1: wheel should be made and something started. Every victim of
- 8:41Speaker 1: nightmare is, i imagine, overwhelmed by an excessive sense of
- 8:44Speaker 1: responsibility and the consciousness of a fearful handicap in the
- 8:48Speaker 1: effort to perform what is required But perhaps never were
- 8:51Speaker 1: the odds more heavily against a warder of the world
- 8:54Speaker 1: than in these reiterated dreams of mine, doubtless compounded in
- 8:58Speaker 1: equal parts of a childish verse of Robinson Crusoe and
- 9:01Speaker 1: of an end of the world predictions of the second Adventists,
- 9:05Speaker 1: a few of whom were found in the village. The
- 9:07Speaker 1: next morning would often find me a delicate little girl
- 9:10Speaker 1: of six, with the further disability of a curved spine,
- 9:14Speaker 1: standing in the doorway of the village blacksmith's shop, anxiously
- 9:17Speaker 1: watching the burly red shirted figure at work. I would
- 9:20Speaker 1: store my mind with such details of the process of
- 9:23Speaker 1: making wheels as I could observe, and sometimes I plucked
- 9:26Speaker 1: up courage to ask for more. Do you always have
- 9:30Speaker 1: to sizzle the iron in water? I would ask, thinking
- 9:33Speaker 1: how horrid it would be to do. Sure, the good
- 9:36Speaker 1: natured blacksmith would reply, that makes the iron hard. I
- 9:40Speaker 1: would sigh heavily and walk away, bearing my responsibility as
- 9:44Speaker 1: best I could, And this, of course I confided to
- 9:47Speaker 1: no one, for there is something too mysterious in the
- 9:49Speaker 1: burden of the winds that come from the fields of
- 9:52Speaker 1: sleep to be communicated, although it is, at the same
- 9:55Speaker 1: time too heavy a burden to be borne alone. My
- 9:58Speaker 1: great veneration and pride in my fo manifested itself in
- 10:01Speaker 1: curious ways. On several Sundays, doubtless occurring in two or
- 10:05Speaker 1: three different years, the Union Sunday school of the village
- 10:08Speaker 1: was visited by strangers, some of those strange people who
- 10:12Speaker 1: live outside a child's realm, yet constantly thrill it by
- 10:16Speaker 1: their close approach. My father taught the large Bible class
- 10:19Speaker 1: in the left hand corner of the church, next to
- 10:22Speaker 1: the pulpit, and to my eyes at least was a
- 10:24Speaker 1: most imposing figure in his Sunday frock coat, his fine
- 10:28Speaker 1: head rising high above all the others. I imagined that
- 10:31Speaker 1: the strangers were filled with admiration for this dignified person.
- 10:35Speaker 1: And I prayed with all my heart that the ugly
- 10:37Speaker 1: pigeon toed little girl, whose crooked back obliged her to
- 10:40Speaker 1: walk with her head held very much upon one side,
- 10:43Speaker 1: would never be pointed out to these visitors as the
- 10:45Speaker 1: daughter of this fine man. In order to lessen the
- 10:48Speaker 1: possibility of a connection being made, on these particular Sundays,
- 10:52Speaker 1: I did not walk beside my father, Although this walk
- 10:55Speaker 1: was the great event of the week, but attached myself
- 10:58Speaker 1: firmly to the side of my uncle Jane Adams, in
- 11:01Speaker 1: the hope that I should be mistaken for his child,
- 11:03Speaker 1: or at least that I should not remain so conspicuously
- 11:06Speaker 1: unattached that troublesome questions might identify an ugly duckling with
- 11:10Speaker 1: her imposing parent. My uncle, who had many children of
- 11:13Speaker 1: his own, must have been mildly surprised at this unwonted attention.
- 11:17Speaker 1: But he would look down kindly at me and say,
- 11:20Speaker 1: so you are going to walk with me to day? Yes? Please,
- 11:24Speaker 1: Uncle James, would be my meek reply. He fortunately never
- 11:28Speaker 1: explored my motives, nor do I remember that my father
- 11:31Speaker 1: ever did, so that in all probability my machinations have
- 11:34Speaker 1: been safe from public knowledge until this hour. It is
- 11:38Speaker 1: hard to account for the manifestations of a child's adoring affection,
- 11:41Speaker 1: so emotional, so irrational, so tangled with the affairs of
- 11:45Speaker 1: the imagination. I simply could not endure the thought that
- 11:49Speaker 1: strange people should know that my handsome father owned this
- 11:52Speaker 1: homely little girl. But even in my chivalric desire to
- 11:55Speaker 1: protect him from his fate, I was not quite easy
- 11:58Speaker 1: in the sacrifice of my uncle, although I quieted my
- 12:01Speaker 1: scruples with the reflection that the contrast was less marked,
- 12:04Speaker 1: and that any way, his own little girl was not
- 12:06Speaker 1: so very pretty. I do not know that I commonly
- 12:09Speaker 1: dwelt much upon my personal appearance, save as it thrust
- 12:12Speaker 1: itself as an incongruity into my father's life, And in
- 12:15Speaker 1: spite of unending evidence to the contrary, there were even
- 12:19Speaker 1: black moments when I allowed myself to speculate as to
- 12:21Speaker 1: whether he might not share the feeling. Happily, however, this
- 12:25Speaker 1: specter was laid before it had time to grow into
- 12:27Speaker 1: a morbid familiar by a very trifling incident. One day,
- 12:30Speaker 1: I met my father coming out of his bank on
- 12:32Speaker 1: the main street of the neighboring city, which seemed to
- 12:35Speaker 1: me a veritable whirlpool of society and commerce. With a
- 12:38Speaker 1: playful touch of exaggeration, he lifted his high and shining
- 12:42Speaker 1: silk hat and made me an imposing bow. This distinguished
- 12:46Speaker 1: public recognition, this totally unnecessary identification among a mass of
- 12:50Speaker 1: strange people who couldn't possibly know unless he himself made
- 12:54Speaker 1: the sign, suddenly filled me with a sense of the
- 12:56Speaker 1: absurdity of the entire feeling. It may not even then
- 12:59Speaker 1: have seemed as absurd as it really was, but at
- 13:02Speaker 1: least it seemed enough so to collapse, or so to
- 13:04Speaker 1: pass in the limbo of forgotten specters. I made still other,
- 13:08Speaker 1: almost equally grotesque attempts to express this doglike affection. The
- 13:13Speaker 1: house at the end of the village in which I
- 13:14Speaker 1: was born, and which was my home until I moved
- 13:17Speaker 1: to Hull House in my earliest childhood, had opposite to it,
- 13:21Speaker 1: only across the road, and then across a little stretch
- 13:23Speaker 1: of greensward, two mills belonging to my father, one flour mill,
- 13:28Speaker 1: to which the various grains were brought by the neighboring farmers,
- 13:31Speaker 1: and one saw mill, in which the logs of the
- 13:33Speaker 1: native timber were sawed into lumber. The latter offered the
- 13:37Speaker 1: great excitement of sitting on a log while it slowly
- 13:40Speaker 1: approached the buzzing saw which was cutting it into slabs,
- 13:43Speaker 1: and of getting off just in time to escape a
- 13:45Speaker 1: sudden and gory death. But the flowering mill was much
- 13:48Speaker 1: more beloved. It was full of dusky, flowery places which
- 13:52Speaker 1: we adored, of empty bins in which we might play house.
- 13:55Speaker 1: It had a basement with piles of bran and shorts,
- 13:59Speaker 1: which were almost as good as sand to play in
- 14:01Speaker 1: whenever the miller let us wet the edges of the
- 14:03Speaker 1: pile with water brought in his sprinkling pot from the
- 14:06Speaker 1: mill race. In addition to these fascinations was the association
- 14:10Speaker 1: of the mill with my father's activities. For doubtless, at
- 14:13Speaker 1: that time I centered upon him all that careful imitation
- 14:16Speaker 1: which a little girl ordinarily gives to her mother's ways
- 14:19Speaker 1: and habits. My mother had died when I was a baby,
- 14:22Speaker 1: and my father's second marriage did not occur until my
- 14:24Speaker 1: eighth year. I had a consuming ambition to possess a
- 14:28Speaker 1: miller's thumb, and would sit contentedly for a long time,
- 14:31Speaker 1: rubbing between my thumb and fingers the ground wheat as
- 14:34Speaker 1: it fell from between the millstones, but for it was
- 14:37Speaker 1: taken up on an endless chain of mysterious little buckets
- 14:40Speaker 1: to be bolted into flour. I believe I have never
- 14:43Speaker 1: since wanted anything more desperately than I wanted my right
- 14:45Speaker 1: thumb to be flattened, as my father's had become during
- 14:48Speaker 1: his earlier years of a miller's life. Somewhat discouraged by
- 14:52Speaker 1: the slow process of structural modification. I also took measures
- 14:56Speaker 1: to secure on the backs of my hands the tiny
- 14:58Speaker 1: purple and red spot which are always found on the
- 15:01Speaker 1: hands of the miller who dresses millstones. The marks on
- 15:04Speaker 1: my father's hands had grown faint, but were quite visible
- 15:07Speaker 1: when looked for, and seemed to me so desirable that
- 15:10Speaker 1: they must be procured at all costs. Even when playing
- 15:14Speaker 1: in our house or yard, I could always tell when
- 15:16Speaker 1: the millstones were being dressed, because the rumbling of the
- 15:19Speaker 1: mill then stopped, and there were few pleasures I would
- 15:22Speaker 1: not instantly forego rushing at once to the mill, that
- 15:25Speaker 1: I might spread out my hands near the millstones in
- 15:28Speaker 1: the hope that the little hard flints flying from the
- 15:30Speaker 1: miller's chisel would light upon their backs and make the
- 15:33Speaker 1: longed form marks. I used hotly to accuse the German miller,
- 15:37Speaker 1: my dear friend Ferdinand, of trying not to hit my hands,
- 15:41Speaker 1: but he scornfully replied that he could not hit them
- 15:43Speaker 1: if he did try, and that they were too little
- 15:45Speaker 1: to be of use in the mill anyway. Although I
- 15:48Speaker 1: hated his teasing, I never had the courage to confess
- 15:51Speaker 1: my real purpose. This sincere tribute of imitation which affection
- 15:55Speaker 1: offers to its adored object, had later, I hope, subtler manifestation,
- 16:00Speaker 1: but certainly these first ones were altogether genuine. In this
- 16:04Speaker 1: case too, I doubtless contributed my share to that stream
- 16:07Speaker 1: of admiration which our generation so generously poured forth for
- 16:11Speaker 1: the self made man. I was consumed by a wistful
- 16:14Speaker 1: desire to apprehend the hardships of my father's earlier life.
- 16:17Speaker 1: In that far away time when he had been a
- 16:19Speaker 1: miller's apprentice. I knew that he still woke up punctually
- 16:22Speaker 1: at three o'clock, because for so many years he had
- 16:25Speaker 1: taken his turn at the mill in the early morning.
- 16:27Speaker 1: And if by chance I awoke at the same hour,
- 16:30Speaker 1: as curiously enough I often did, I imagined him in
- 16:33Speaker 1: the early dawn in my uncle's old mill, reading through
- 16:36Speaker 1: the entire village library, book after book, beginning with the
- 16:40Speaker 1: lives of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Copies
- 16:43Speaker 1: of the same books, mostly bound in calf skin, were
- 16:46Speaker 1: to be found in the library below, and I courageously
- 16:49Speaker 1: resolved that I too would read them all and try
- 16:52Speaker 1: to understand life as he did. I did, in fact,
- 16:55Speaker 1: later begin a course of reading in the early morning hours,
- 16:57Speaker 1: but I was caught by some fantastic notion of chronological
- 17:01Speaker 1: order and early legendary form. Pope's translation of the Iliad,
- 17:05Speaker 1: even followed by Dryden's Virgil, did not leave behind the
- 17:08Speaker 1: residuum of wisdom for which I longed, and I finally
- 17:11Speaker 1: gave them up for a thick book entitled The History
- 17:14Speaker 1: of the World, as affording a shorter and an easier path.
- 17:19Speaker 1: Although I constantly confided my sins and perplexities to my father,
- 17:23Speaker 1: there are only a few occasions on which I remember
- 17:25Speaker 1: having received direct advice or admonition. It may easily be true, however,
- 17:30Speaker 1: that I have forgotten the latter, in the manner of
- 17:32Speaker 1: many seekers after advice who enjoyably set forth their situation,
- 17:36Speaker 1: but do not really listen to the advice itself. I
- 17:39Speaker 1: can remember an admonition on one occasion, however, when as
- 17:42Speaker 1: a little girl of eight years, arrayed in a new cloak,
- 17:45Speaker 1: gorgeous beyond anything I had ever worn before, I stood
- 17:48Speaker 1: before my father for his approval. I was much chagrined
- 17:52Speaker 1: by his remark that it was a very pretty cloak,
- 17:54Speaker 1: in fact, so much prettier than any cloak the other
- 17:57Speaker 1: little girls in the Sunday school had that he would
- 17:59Speaker 1: advise me to where my old cloak, which would keep
- 18:01Speaker 1: me quite as warm, with the added advantage of not
- 18:04Speaker 1: making the other little girls feel badly. I complied with
- 18:07Speaker 1: the request, but I fear without inner consent, and I
- 18:11Speaker 1: certainly was quite without the joy of self sacrifice. As
- 18:14Speaker 1: I walked soberly through the village street by the side
- 18:16Speaker 1: of my counselor, my mind was busy, however, with the
- 18:19Speaker 1: old question eternally suggested by the inequalities of the human lot.
- 18:23Speaker 1: Only as we neared the church door did I venture
- 18:25Speaker 1: to ask what could be done about it, receiving the
- 18:28Speaker 1: reply that it might never be righted so far as
- 18:30Speaker 1: clothes went, but that people might be equal in things
- 18:33Speaker 1: that mattered much more than clothes, the affairs of education
- 18:36Speaker 1: and religion, for instance, which we attended to when we
- 18:39Speaker 1: went to church and school, and that it was very
- 18:41Speaker 1: stupid to wear the sort of clothes that made it
- 18:43Speaker 1: harder to have equality even there. It must have been
- 18:46Speaker 1: a little later when I held a conversation with my
- 18:48Speaker 1: father upon the doctrine of foreordination, which at one time
- 18:52Speaker 1: very much perplexed my childish mind. After setting the difficulty
- 18:56Speaker 1: before him and complaining that I could not make it out,
- 18:59Speaker 1: although my best friend understood it perfectly, I settled down
- 19:03Speaker 1: to hear his argument, having no doubt that he could
- 19:05Speaker 1: make it quite clear. To my delighted surprise, for any
- 19:09Speaker 1: intimation that our minds were on an equality lifted me high. Indeed,
- 19:13Speaker 1: he said he feared that he and I did not
- 19:15Speaker 1: have the kind of mind that would ever understand for
- 19:17Speaker 1: ordination very well, and advised me not to give too
- 19:20Speaker 1: much time to it. But he then proceeded to say
- 19:23Speaker 1: other things, of which the final impression left upon my
- 19:25Speaker 1: mind was that it did not matter much whether one
- 19:28Speaker 1: understood for ordination or not, but that it was very
- 19:31Speaker 1: important not to pretend to understand what you didn't understand,
- 19:34Speaker 1: and that you must always be honest with yourself inside
- 19:37Speaker 1: whatever happened, perhaps on the whole, as valuable a lesson
- 19:41Speaker 1: as the shorter Catechism itself contains. My memory merges this
- 19:46Speaker 1: early conversation on religious doctrine into one which took place
- 19:49Speaker 1: years later, when I put before my father the situation
- 19:52Speaker 1: which I found myself at boarding school when under great
- 19:55Speaker 1: evangelical pressure, and once again I heard his testimony in
- 19:59Speaker 1: favor of mental integrity above everything else. At the time,
- 20:03Speaker 1: we were driving through a piece of timber in which
- 20:05Speaker 1: the wood choppers had been at work during the winter,
- 20:08Speaker 1: and so earnestly were we talking that he suddenly drew
- 20:11Speaker 1: up the horses to find that he did not know
- 20:13Speaker 1: where he was. We were both entertained by the incident.
- 20:16Speaker 1: I that my father had been lost in his own timber,
- 20:19Speaker 1: so that various cords of wood must have escaped his
- 20:21Speaker 1: practiced eye, and he on his side, that he should
- 20:24Speaker 1: have become so absorbed in this maze of youthful speculation.
- 20:27Speaker 1: We were in high spirits as we emerged from the
- 20:30Speaker 1: tender green of the spring woods into the clear light
- 20:32Speaker 1: of day, and as we came back into the main road,
- 20:35Speaker 1: I categorically asked him, what are you? What do you
- 20:39Speaker 1: say when people ask you? His eyes twinkled a little
- 20:42Speaker 1: as he soberly replied, I am a Quaker. But that
- 20:47Speaker 1: isn't enough to say, I urged very well, he added,
- 20:51Speaker 1: to people who insist upon details, as some one is
- 20:54Speaker 1: doing now, I add that I am a Hicksite Quaker,
- 20:58Speaker 1: and not another word the weighty subject. Could I induce
- 21:01Speaker 1: him to utter. These early recollections are set in a
- 21:05Speaker 1: scene of rural beauty, unusual at least for Illinois. The
- 21:09Speaker 1: prairie around the village was broken into hills, one of
- 21:12Speaker 1: them crowned by pine woods grown up from a bag
- 21:15Speaker 1: full of Norway pine seeds sown by my father in
- 21:17Speaker 1: eighteen forty four, the very year he came to Illinois,
- 21:21Speaker 1: a testimony perhaps that the most vigorous pioneers gave at
- 21:24Speaker 1: least an occasional thought to beauty. The banks of the
- 21:27Speaker 1: mill Stream rose into high bluffs, too perpendicular to be
- 21:30Speaker 1: climbed without skill, and containing caves of which one at
- 21:34Speaker 1: least was so black that it could not be explored
- 21:36Speaker 1: without the aid of a candle. And there was a
- 21:39Speaker 1: deserted lime kiln, which became associated in my mind with
- 21:42Speaker 1: the unpardonable sin of Hawthorne's lime burner. My stepbrother and
- 21:46Speaker 1: I carried on games and crusades which lasted week after
- 21:49Speaker 1: week and even summer after summer, as only free ranging
- 21:53Speaker 1: country children can do. It may be in contrast to
- 21:56Speaker 1: this that one of the most piteous aspects in the
- 21:58Speaker 1: life of city children, as I have seen it, in
- 22:00Speaker 1: the neighborhood of hull house is the constant interruption to
- 22:03Speaker 1: their play, which is inevitable on the streets, so that
- 22:06Speaker 1: it can never have any continuity. The most elaborate plan
- 22:10Speaker 1: or chart or fragment from their dream of human life
- 22:13Speaker 1: is sure to be rudely destroyed by the passing traffic.
- 22:16Speaker 1: Although they start over and over again, even the most
- 22:19Speaker 1: vivacious become worn out at last and take to that
- 22:23Speaker 1: passive standing round, varied by rude horse play, which in
- 22:27Speaker 1: time becomes so characteristic of city children. We had, of course,
- 22:31Speaker 1: our favorite places and trees, and birds and flowers. It
- 22:34Speaker 1: is hard to reproduce the companionship which children establish with nature,
- 22:38Speaker 1: But certainly it is much too unconscious and intimate to
- 22:41Speaker 1: come under the head of esthetic appreciation or anything of
- 22:44Speaker 1: that sort. When we said that the purple wind flowers
- 22:47Speaker 1: the anemone pattens looked as if the winds had made them,
- 22:50Speaker 1: we thought much more of the fact that they were
- 22:52Speaker 1: wind born than that they were beautiful. We clapped our
- 22:55Speaker 1: hands in sudden joy over the soft radiance of the rainbow,
- 22:59Speaker 1: but its enchant and lay in our half belief that
- 23:01Speaker 1: a pot of gold was to be found at its
- 23:03Speaker 1: farther end. We yielded to a soft melancholy when we
- 23:06Speaker 1: heard the whipperwill in the early twilight. But while he
- 23:09Speaker 1: aroused in us vague longings of which we spoke solemnly,
- 23:12Speaker 1: we felt no beauty in his call. We erected an
- 23:15Speaker 1: altar beside the stream, to which for several years we
- 23:18Speaker 1: brought all the snakes we killed during our excursions, no
- 23:21Speaker 1: matter how long the toilsome journey which we had to
- 23:24Speaker 1: make with a limp snake dangling between two sticks. I
- 23:27Speaker 1: remember vaguely the ceremonial performed upon this altar one autumn day,
- 23:31Speaker 1: when we brought us further tribute one out of every
- 23:34Speaker 1: hundred of the black walnuts which we had gathered, and
- 23:36Speaker 1: then poured over the whole a pitcher full of cider
- 23:39Speaker 1: fresh from the cide or mill on the barn floor.
- 23:42Speaker 1: I think we had also burned a favorite book or
- 23:44Speaker 1: two upon this pyre of stones. The entire affair, carried
- 23:47Speaker 1: on with such solemnity, was probably the result of one
- 23:50Speaker 1: of those imperative impulses under whose compulsion children seek a
- 23:54Speaker 1: ceremonial which shall express their sense of identification with man's
- 23:57Speaker 1: primitive life and their familiar kinds with the remotest past.
- 24:02Speaker 1: Long before we had begun the study of Latin at
- 24:04Speaker 1: the village school, my brother and I had learned the
- 24:07Speaker 1: Lord's Prayer in Latin out of an old copy of
- 24:09Speaker 1: the Vulgate, and gravely repeated it every night, inexecrable pronunciation,
- 24:14Speaker 1: because it seemed to us more religious than plain English. When, however,
- 24:18Speaker 1: I really prayed, what I saw before my eyes was
- 24:21Speaker 1: a most outrageous picture which adorned a song book used
- 24:24Speaker 1: in Sunday school, portraying the Lord upon his throne, surrounded
- 24:28Speaker 1: by tears and tears of saints and angels, all in
- 24:31Speaker 1: a blur of yellow. I am ashamed to tell how
- 24:33Speaker 1: old I was when that picture ceased to appear before
- 24:36Speaker 1: my eyes, especially when moments of terror compelled me to
- 24:39Speaker 1: ask protection from the heavenly powers. I recall with great
- 24:43Speaker 1: distinctness my first direct contact with death, when I was
- 24:46Speaker 1: fifteen years old. Polly was an old nurse who had
- 24:49Speaker 1: taken care of my mother and had followed her to Frontier,
- 24:52Speaker 1: Illinois to help rear a second generation of children. She
- 24:55Speaker 1: had always lived in our house, but made annual visits
- 24:58Speaker 1: to her cousins on a farm a few miles rowth
- 25:00Speaker 1: of the village. During one of those visits, word came
- 25:03Speaker 1: to us one Sunday evening that Polly was dying, and
- 25:06Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, I was the only person
- 25:09Speaker 1: able to go to her. I left the lamp lit,
- 25:11Speaker 1: warm house to be driven four miles through a blinding
- 25:14Speaker 1: storm which every minute added more snow to the already
- 25:17Speaker 1: high drifts, with a sense of starting upon a fateful
- 25:21Speaker 1: errand an hour after my arrival, all of the cousin's
- 25:24Speaker 1: family went downstairs to supper, and I was left alone
- 25:27Speaker 1: to watch with Polly. The square, old fashioned chamber in
- 25:31Speaker 1: the lonely farmhouse was very cold and still, with nothing
- 25:34Speaker 1: to be heard but the storm outside. Suddenly the great
- 25:38Speaker 1: change came. I heard a feeble call of Sarah, my
- 25:42Speaker 1: mother's name, as the dying eyes were turned upon me,
- 25:46Speaker 1: followed by a curious breathing, and in place of the
- 25:48Speaker 1: face familiar for my earliest childhood and associated with homely
- 25:52Speaker 1: household cares, there lay upon the pillow strange, august features, stern,
- 25:57Speaker 1: and withdrawn from all the small affairs of life, that
- 26:01Speaker 1: sense of solitude, of being unsheltered in a wide world
- 26:04Speaker 1: of relentless and elemental forces, which is at the basis
- 26:07Speaker 1: of childhood's timidity, and which is far from outgrown. At fifteen,
- 26:12Speaker 1: seized me irresistibly before I could reach the narrow stairs
- 26:15Speaker 1: and summon the family from below. As I was driven
- 26:18Speaker 1: home in the winter's storm, the wind through the trees
- 26:21Speaker 1: seemed laden with a passing soul, and the riddle of
- 26:23Speaker 1: life and death pressed hard. Once to be young, to
- 26:27Speaker 1: grow old, and to die. Everything came to that, and
- 26:31Speaker 1: then a mysterious journey out into the unknown? Did she
- 26:35Speaker 1: mind faring forth alone? Would the journey perhaps end in
- 26:38Speaker 1: something as familiar and natural to the age, and dying
- 26:41Speaker 1: as life is to the young, and living through all
- 26:44Speaker 1: the drive and indeed through the night. These thoughts were
- 26:47Speaker 1: pierced by sharp worry, a sense of faithlessness, because I
- 26:51Speaker 1: had forgotten the text Polly had confided to me long
- 26:54Speaker 1: before as the one from which she wished her funeral
- 26:57Speaker 1: sermon to be preached. My comfort, as usual, will finally
- 27:00Speaker 1: came from my father, who pointed out what was essential
- 27:03Speaker 1: and what was of little avail even in such a
- 27:05Speaker 1: moment as this. And while he was too much wise
- 27:08Speaker 1: to grow dogmatic upon the great theme of death, I
- 27:11Speaker 1: felt a new fellowship with him because we had discussed
- 27:14Speaker 1: it together. Perhaps I may record here my protest against
- 27:18Speaker 1: the efforts so often made to shield children and young
- 27:22Speaker 1: people from all that has to do with death and sorrow,
- 27:25Speaker 1: to give them a good time at all hazards, on
- 27:28Speaker 1: the assumption that the ills of life will come soon enough.
- 27:31Speaker 1: Young people themselves often resent this attitude on the part
- 27:34Speaker 1: of their elders. They feel set aside and belittled, as
- 27:37Speaker 1: if they were denied the common human experiences. They too
- 27:40Speaker 1: wished to climb steep stairs and to eat their bread
- 27:43Speaker 1: with tears, And they imagine that the problems of existence
- 27:46Speaker 1: which so press upon them in pensive moments, would be
- 27:49Speaker 1: less insoluble in the light of these great happenings. An
- 27:52Speaker 1: incident which stands out clearly in my mind as an
- 27:54Speaker 1: exciting suggestion of the great world of moral enterprise and
- 27:58Speaker 1: serious undertakings must have occur warred earlier than this. For
- 28:01Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy two, when I was not yet twelve
- 28:04Speaker 1: years old, I came into my father's room one morning
- 28:06Speaker 1: to find him sitting beside the fire with a newspaper
- 28:09Speaker 1: in his hand, looking very solemn, And upon my eager inquiry,
- 28:12Speaker 1: what had happened. He told me that Joseph Messini was dead.
- 28:16Speaker 1: I had never even heard Massini's name, and after being
- 28:19Speaker 1: told about him, I was inclined to grow argumentative, asserting
- 28:22Speaker 1: that my father did not know him, that he was
- 28:24Speaker 1: not an American, and that I could not understand why
- 28:26Speaker 1: we should be expected to feel badly about him. It
- 28:29Speaker 1: is impossible to recall the conversation with the complete breakdown
- 28:32Speaker 1: of my cheap arguments, But in the end I obtained
- 28:35Speaker 1: that which I have ever regarded as a valuable possession,
- 28:38Speaker 1: A sense of the genuine relationship which may exist between
- 28:41Speaker 1: men who share large hopes and like desires, even though
- 28:45Speaker 1: they differ in nationality, language, and creed that those things
- 28:49Speaker 1: count for absolutely nothing between groups of men who were
- 28:52Speaker 1: trying to abolish slavery in America or to throw off
- 28:55Speaker 1: Habsburg oppression in Italy. At any rate, I was heartily
- 28:58Speaker 1: ashamed of my meager notion of patriotism, and I came
- 29:01Speaker 1: out of the room exhilarated with the consciousness that impersonal
- 29:04Speaker 1: and international relations are actual facts and not mere phrases.
- 29:09Speaker 1: I was filled with pride that I knew a man
- 29:11Speaker 1: who held converse with great minds and who really sorrowed
- 29:14Speaker 1: and rejoiced over happenings across the sea. I never recall
- 29:18Speaker 1: those early conversations with my father, nor score of others
- 29:21Speaker 1: like them. But there comes into my mind a line
- 29:23Speaker 1: from Missus Browning in which a daughter describes her relations
- 29:26Speaker 1: with her father. He wrapped me in his large man's
- 29:30Speaker 1: doublet careless. Did it fit or no? End of Chapter one,
- 29:37Speaker 1: Chapter two. Influence of Lincoln. I suppose all the children
- 29:43Speaker 1: who were born about the time of the Civil War
- 29:45Speaker 1: have recollections quite unlike those of the children who are
- 29:48Speaker 1: living now. Although I was but four and a half
- 29:51Speaker 1: years old when Lincoln died, I distinctly remembered the day
- 29:54Speaker 1: when I found on our two white gate posts American
- 29:57Speaker 1: flags companioned with black I tell down on the harsh
- 30:01Speaker 1: gravel walk, and my eager rush into the house to
- 30:03Speaker 1: inquire what they were there for. To my amazement, I
- 30:07Speaker 1: found my father in tears, something that I had never
- 30:10Speaker 1: seen before, having assumed, as all children do, that grown
- 30:13Speaker 1: up people never cried the two flags. My father's tears
- 30:18Speaker 1: and his impressive statement that the greatest man in the
- 30:20Speaker 1: world had died constituted my initiation, my baptism as it
- 30:25Speaker 1: were into the thrilling and solemn interests of a world
- 30:28Speaker 1: lying quite outside the two white gate posts. The Great
- 30:32Speaker 1: War touched children in many ways. I remember an engraved
- 30:36Speaker 1: roster of names, headed by the words Adam's Guard, and
- 30:40Speaker 1: the whole surmounted by the insignia of the American Eagle
- 30:43Speaker 1: clutching many flags, which always hung in the family living room.
- 30:47Speaker 1: As children, we used to read this list of names
- 30:50Speaker 1: again and again. We could reach it only by dint
- 30:53Speaker 1: of putting the family Bible on a chair and piling
- 30:56Speaker 1: the dictionary on top of it. Using the Bible to
- 30:59Speaker 1: stand on was allD, always accompanied by a little thrill
- 31:01Speaker 1: of superstitious awe, although we carefully put the dictionary above
- 31:05Speaker 1: that our profane feet might touch it alone, having brought
- 31:09Speaker 1: the roster within reach of our eager fingers. Fortunately it
- 31:13Speaker 1: was glazed. We would pick out the names of those
- 31:15Speaker 1: who had fallen on the field, from those who had
- 31:17Speaker 1: come back from the war, and from among the latter
- 31:20Speaker 1: those whose children were our schoolmates. When drives were planned,
- 31:24Speaker 1: we would say, let us take this road, that we
- 31:27Speaker 1: might pass the farm where a soldier had once lived.
- 31:30Speaker 1: If flowers from the garden were to be given away,
- 31:33Speaker 1: we would want them to go to the mother of
- 31:35Speaker 1: one of those heroes whose names we knew from the
- 31:37Speaker 1: Adams Guard. If a guest should become interested in the
- 31:41Speaker 1: roster on the wall, he was at once led by
- 31:44Speaker 1: the eager children to a small picture of Colonel Davis,
- 31:47Speaker 1: which hung next the opposite window, that he might see
- 31:50Speaker 1: the brave colonel of the regiment. The introduction to the
- 31:53Speaker 1: picture of the one Armed Man seemed to us a
- 31:56Speaker 1: very solemn ceremony, and long after the guest was tired
- 31:59Speaker 1: of listening, we would tell each other all about the
- 32:02Speaker 1: local hero who, at the head of his troops, had
- 32:04Speaker 1: suffered wounds unto death. We liked very much to talk
- 32:08Speaker 1: to a gentle old lady who lived in a white
- 32:10Speaker 1: farmhouse a mile north of the village. She was the
- 32:13Speaker 1: mother of the village hero Tommy, and used to tell
- 32:16Speaker 1: us of her long anxiety during the spring of sixty two,
- 32:19Speaker 1: how she waited day after day for the hospital to
- 32:22Speaker 1: surrender up her son, each morning airing the white homespun
- 32:26Speaker 1: sheets and holding the little bedroom in immaculate readiness. It
- 32:30Speaker 1: was after the Battle of Fort Donelson that Tommy was
- 32:32Speaker 1: wounded and had been taken to the hospital at Springfield.
- 32:36Speaker 1: His father went down to him and saw him getting
- 32:38Speaker 1: worse each week, until it was clear that he was
- 32:41Speaker 1: going to die. But there was so much red tape
- 32:43Speaker 1: about the department, and affairs were so confused that his
- 32:46Speaker 1: discharge could not be procured. At last, the hospital surgeon
- 32:51Speaker 1: intimated to his father that he should quietly take him
- 32:53Speaker 1: away a man as sick as that it would be
- 32:56Speaker 1: all right. But when they told Tommy, weak as he was,
- 32:59Speaker 1: his eyes flashed and he said, no, sir, I will
- 33:03Speaker 1: go out of the front door, or I'll die here.
- 33:06Speaker 1: Of course, after that every man in the hospital worked
- 33:09Speaker 1: for it, and in two weeks he was honorably discharged.
- 33:12Speaker 1: When he came home at last, his mother's heart was
- 33:14Speaker 1: broken to see him so wan and changed. She would
- 33:18Speaker 1: tell us of the long quiet days that followed his return,
- 33:21Speaker 1: with the windows open so that the dying eyes might
- 33:23Speaker 1: look over the orchard slope to the meadow beyond, where
- 33:26Speaker 1: the younger brothers were mowing the early hay. She told
- 33:29Speaker 1: us of those days when his school friends from the
- 33:31Speaker 1: academy flocked in to see him their old acknowledged leader,
- 33:35Speaker 1: and of the burning words of Earnest patriotism spoken in
- 33:38Speaker 1: the crowded little room, so that in three months the
- 33:41Speaker 1: academy was almost deserted, and the new company who marched
- 33:44Speaker 1: away in the autumn took as drummer Boy, Tommy's third brother,
- 33:48Speaker 1: who was only seventeen and too young for a regular.
- 33:51Speaker 1: She remembered the still darker days that followed when the
- 33:54Speaker 1: bright drummer Boy was in Andersonville Prison, and little by
- 33:57Speaker 1: little she learned to be reconciled that Tommy was safe
- 34:00Speaker 1: in the peaceful home graveyard. However much we were given
- 34:04Speaker 1: to talk of war heroes, we always fell silent as
- 34:06Speaker 1: we approached an isolated farmhouse in which two old people
- 34:10Speaker 1: lived alone. Five of their sons had enlisted in the
- 34:13Speaker 1: Civil War, and only the youngest had returned alive in
- 34:16Speaker 1: the spring of eighteen sixty five. In the autumn of
- 34:19Speaker 1: the same year, when he was hunting for wild ducks
- 34:22Speaker 1: in a swamp on the rough little farm itself, he
- 34:24Speaker 1: was accidentally shot and killed, and the old people were
- 34:28Speaker 1: left alone to struggle with the half cleared land as
- 34:30Speaker 1: best they might. When we were driven past this forlorn
- 34:33Speaker 1: little farm, our childish voices always dropped into speculative whisperings
- 34:38Speaker 1: as to how the accident could have happened to this
- 34:40Speaker 1: remaining sun, out of all the men in the world,
- 34:43Speaker 1: to him who had escaped so many chances of death.
- 34:46Speaker 1: Our young heart swelled in first rebellion against that which
- 34:49Speaker 1: Walter Pater calls the inexplicable shortcoming or misadventure on the
- 34:54Speaker 1: part of life itself. We were overwhelmingly oppressed by that
- 34:57Speaker 1: grief of things, as they are so much much more
- 35:00Speaker 1: mysterious and intolerable than those griefs which we think dimly
- 35:03Speaker 1: to trace to man's own wrongdoing. It was well perhaps
- 35:07Speaker 1: that life thus early gave me a hint of one
- 35:09Speaker 1: of her most obstinate and insoluble riddles, for I have
- 35:13Speaker 1: sorely needed the sense of universality thus imparted to that
- 35:16Speaker 1: mysterious injustice, the burden of which we are all forced
- 35:19Speaker 1: to bear, and with which I have become only too familiar.
- 35:24Speaker 1: My childish admiration for Lincoln is closely associated with a
- 35:27Speaker 1: visit made to the war eagle old Abe, who, as
- 35:31Speaker 1: we children well knew, lived in the state capital of Wisconsin,
- 35:34Speaker 1: only sixty five miles north of our house, really no
- 35:38Speaker 1: farther than an eagle could easily fly. He had been
- 35:41Speaker 1: carried by the eighth Wisconsin Regiment through the entire war,
- 35:44Speaker 1: and now dwelt an honored pensioner in the State building itself.
- 35:48Speaker 1: Many times, standing in the north end of our orchard,
- 35:51Speaker 1: which was only twelve miles from that mysterious line which
- 35:54Speaker 1: divided Illinois from Wisconsin, we anxiously scanned the deep sky,
- 35:59Speaker 1: hoping to see see Old Abe fly southward right over
- 36:02Speaker 1: our apple trees, for it was clearly possible that he
- 36:05Speaker 1: might at any moment escape from his keeper, who, although
- 36:08Speaker 1: he had been a soldier and a sentinel, would have
- 36:10Speaker 1: to sleep. Sometimes we gazed with thrilled interest at one
- 36:14Speaker 1: speck after another in the flawless sky. But although Old
- 36:18Speaker 1: Abe never came to see us, a much more incredible
- 36:20Speaker 1: thing happened, for we were at last taken to see him.
- 36:24Speaker 1: We started one gold in summer's day, two happy children
- 36:28Speaker 1: in the family carriage, with my father and mother, and
- 36:30Speaker 1: an older sister, to whom, because she was just home
- 36:33Speaker 1: from boarding school, we confidently appealed whenever we needed information.
- 36:37Speaker 1: We were driven northward hour after hour, past harvest fields
- 36:41Speaker 1: in which the stubble glinted from bronze to gold, and
- 36:44Speaker 1: the heavy headed grain rested luxuriously in rounded shocks till
- 36:47Speaker 1: we reached that beautiful region of hills and lakes which
- 36:50Speaker 1: surrounds the capital city of Wisconsin. But although Old Abe,
- 36:55Speaker 1: sitting sedately upon his high perch, was sufficiently like an
- 36:58Speaker 1: uplifted ensign urm mid us of a Roman eagle, and
- 37:01Speaker 1: though his veteran keeper, clad in an old army coat,
- 37:05Speaker 1: was ready to answer all our questions and to tell
- 37:07Speaker 1: us of the thirty six battles and skirmishes which Old
- 37:10Speaker 1: Abe had passed unscathed, the crowning moment of the impressive
- 37:13Speaker 1: journey came to me later, illustrating once more that children
- 37:17Speaker 1: are as quick to catch the meaning of a symbol
- 37:19Speaker 1: as they are unaccountably slow to understand the real world
- 37:22Speaker 1: about them. The entire journey to the veteran war eagle
- 37:25Speaker 1: had itself symbolized that search for the heroic and perfect
- 37:28Speaker 1: which so persistently haunts the young. And as I stood
- 37:32Speaker 1: under the great white dome of Old Abe's stately home
- 37:35Speaker 1: for one brief moment, the search was rewarded. I dimly
- 37:39Speaker 1: caught a hint of what men have tried to say
- 37:41Speaker 1: in their world old effort to imprison a space in
- 37:43Speaker 1: so divine a line that it shall hold only yearning
- 37:46Speaker 1: devotion and high hearted hopes. Certainly, the utmost rim of
- 37:50Speaker 1: my first dome was filled with the tumultuous impression of
- 37:53Speaker 1: soldiers marching to death for freedom's sake, of pioneers streaming
- 37:57Speaker 1: westward to establish self government and yet another sovereign state.
- 38:02Speaker 1: Only the great Dome of Saint Peter's itself has ever
- 38:04Speaker 1: clutched my heart, as did that modest curve which had
- 38:08Speaker 1: sequestered from infinitude in a place small enough for my
- 38:11Speaker 1: child's mind, the courage and endurance which I could not
- 38:14Speaker 1: comprehend so long as it was lost in the void
- 38:17Speaker 1: of unresponsible space under the vaunting sky itself. But through
- 38:22Speaker 1: all my vivid sensations there persisted the image of the
- 38:24Speaker 1: Eagle in the corridor below, and Lincoln himself as an
- 38:28Speaker 1: epitome of all that was great and good. I dimly
- 38:32Speaker 1: caught the notion of the martyred President as the standard
- 38:34Speaker 1: bearer to the conscience of his countrymen, as the eagle
- 38:37Speaker 1: had been the ensign of courage to the soldiers of
- 38:39Speaker 1: the Wisconsin Regiment thirty five years later, as I stood
- 38:43Speaker 1: on the hill campus of the University of Wisconsin, with
- 38:45Speaker 1: a commanding view of the capitol building a mile directly
- 38:48Speaker 1: across the city, I saw again the dome which had
- 38:51Speaker 1: so uplifted my childish spirit. The university, which was celebrating
- 38:55Speaker 1: its fiftieth anniversary, had honored me with a doctor's degree,
- 38:59Speaker 1: and in the midst of the academic pomp and the rejoicing,
- 39:02Speaker 1: the dome again appeared to me as a fitting symbol
- 39:04Speaker 1: of the state's aspiration, even in its high mission of
- 39:07Speaker 1: universal education. Thousands of children in the sixties and seventies,
- 39:12Speaker 1: in the simplicity which is given to the understanding of
- 39:14Speaker 1: a child, caught a notion of imperishable heroism when they
- 39:17Speaker 1: were told that brave men had lost their lives, that
- 39:20Speaker 1: the slaves might be free at any moment the conversation
- 39:24Speaker 1: of our elders might turn upon these heroic events. There
- 39:27Speaker 1: were read letter days when a certain general came to
- 39:29Speaker 1: see my father, and again when Governor Oglesby, whom all
- 39:33Speaker 1: Illinois children called Uncle Dick, spent a Sunday under the
- 39:36Speaker 1: pine trees in our front yard. We felt on those
- 39:40Speaker 1: days a connection with the great world. So much more
- 39:42Speaker 1: heroic than the village world which surrounded us through all
- 39:45Speaker 1: the other days. My father was a member of the
- 39:48Speaker 1: State Senate for the sixteen years between eighteen fifty four
- 39:51Speaker 1: and eighteen seventy, and even as a little child, I
- 39:54Speaker 1: was dimly conscious of the grave march of public affairs
- 39:57Speaker 1: in his comings and goings at the state Capitol. He
- 40:00Speaker 1: was too much occupied to allow time for reminiscence. But
- 40:03Speaker 1: I remember overhearing a conversation between a visitor and himself
- 40:07Speaker 1: concerning the stirring days before the war, when it was
- 40:09Speaker 1: by no means certain that the union men in the
- 40:11Speaker 1: legislature would always have a note votes to keep Illinois
- 40:14Speaker 1: from seceding. I heard with breathless interest my father's account
- 40:18Speaker 1: of the trip a majority of the legislators had made
- 40:20Speaker 1: one dark day to Saint Louis, that there might not
- 40:23Speaker 1: be enough men for a quorum, and so no vote
- 40:26Speaker 1: could be taken on the momentous question until the union
- 40:28Speaker 1: men could rally their forces. My father always spoke of
- 40:32Speaker 1: the martyred president as mister Lincoln, and I never heard
- 40:35Speaker 1: the great name without a thrill. I remember the day.
- 40:38Speaker 1: It must have been one of comparative leisure, perhaps the Sunday,
- 40:42Speaker 1: when at my request my father took out of his
- 40:44Speaker 1: desk a thin packet marked mister Lincoln's letters, the shortest
- 40:48Speaker 1: one of which bore unmistakable traces of that remarkable personality.
- 40:53Speaker 1: These letters began my dear double deed Adams, and to
- 40:57Speaker 1: the inquury as to how the person thus addressed was
- 41:00Speaker 1: about to vote on a certain measure then before the
- 41:02Speaker 1: legislature was added the assurance that he knew that this
- 41:05Speaker 1: Adams would vote according to his conscience, but he begged
- 41:09Speaker 1: to know in which direction the same conscience was pointing.
- 41:12Speaker 1: As my father folded up the bits of paper, I
- 41:15Speaker 1: fairly held my breath and my desire that he should
- 41:17Speaker 1: go on with the reminiscences of this wonderful man whom
- 41:20Speaker 1: he had known in his comparative obscurity, or better still,
- 41:23Speaker 1: that he should be moved to tell some of the
- 41:25Speaker 1: exciting incidents of the Lincoln Douglas debates. There were at
- 41:29Speaker 1: least two pictures of Lincoln that always hung in my
- 41:31Speaker 1: father's room, and one in our old fashioned upstairs parlor,
- 41:35Speaker 1: of Lincoln with Little Tad. For one or all of
- 41:38Speaker 1: these reasons, I always tend to associate Lincoln with the
- 41:41Speaker 1: tenderest thoughts of my father. I recall a time of
- 41:44Speaker 1: great perplexity in the summer of eighteen ninety four, when
- 41:48Speaker 1: Chicago was filled with federal troops sent there by the
- 41:50Speaker 1: President of the United States, and their presence was resented
- 41:54Speaker 1: by the governor of the state, that I walked the
- 41:56Speaker 1: wearisome way from Hull House to Lincoln Park for no
- 41:59Speaker 1: cause were running regularly at that moment of sympathetic strikes,
- 42:03Speaker 1: in order to look at and gain magnanimous council, if
- 42:06Speaker 1: I might, from the marvelous Saint Gaudon's statue, which had
- 42:09Speaker 1: been but recently placed at the entrance of the park.
- 42:12Speaker 1: Some of Lincoln's immortal words were cut into the stone
- 42:15Speaker 1: at his feet. And never did a distracted town more
- 42:18Speaker 1: sorely need the healing of with charity towards all than
- 42:22Speaker 1: did Chicago at that moment, and the tolerance of the
- 42:26Speaker 1: man who had won charity for those on both sides
- 42:28Speaker 1: of in irrepressible conflict. Of the many things written of
- 42:32Speaker 1: my father in that sad August in eighteen eighty one
- 42:34Speaker 1: when he died, the one I cared for most was
- 42:37Speaker 1: written by an old political friend of his, who was
- 42:40Speaker 1: then editor of a great Chicago daily. He wrote that
- 42:43Speaker 1: while there were doubtless many members of the Illinois legislature who,
- 42:47Speaker 1: during the great contracts of the war time and the
- 42:49Speaker 1: demoralizing reconstruction days that followed, had never accepted a bribe,
- 42:54Speaker 1: he wished to bear testimony that he personally had known
- 42:57Speaker 1: but this one man who had never been offered a
- 42:59Speaker 1: bribe because bad men were instinctively afraid of him. I
- 43:03Speaker 1: feel now the hot chagrin with which I recalled this statement.
- 43:06Speaker 1: During those early efforts of Illinois, in which hull House
- 43:10Speaker 1: joined to secure the passage of the first Factory Legislation,
- 43:14Speaker 1: I was told by the representative of an informal association
- 43:17Speaker 1: of manufacturers that if the residence of hull House would
- 43:20Speaker 1: drop this nonsense about a sweat shop bill of which
- 43:23Speaker 1: they knew nothing, certain business men would agree to give
- 43:26Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars within two years, to be used for
- 43:29Speaker 1: any of the philanthropic activities of the settlement. As the
- 43:32Speaker 1: fact broke upon me that I was being offered a bribe,
- 43:35Speaker 1: the shame was enormously increased by the memory of this statement.
- 43:39Speaker 1: What had befallen the daughter of my father that such
- 43:41Speaker 1: a thing could happen to her. The salutary reflection that
- 43:45Speaker 1: it could not have occurred unless a weakness in myself
- 43:47Speaker 1: had permitted it withheld me at least from an historic
- 43:50Speaker 1: display of indignation before the two men making the offer,
- 43:53Speaker 1: and I explained as gently as I could that we
- 43:55Speaker 1: had no ambition to make Hull House the largest institution
- 43:58Speaker 1: on the West Side, but that we were much concerned
- 44:01Speaker 1: that our neighbors should be protected from untoward conditions of work,
- 44:04Speaker 1: and so much heroics youth must permit itself. If to
- 44:08Speaker 1: accomplish this, the destruction of Hull House was necessary, that
- 44:11Speaker 1: we would cheerfully sing a todayum on its ruins. The
- 44:14Speaker 1: good friend who had invited me to lunch at the
- 44:16Speaker 1: Union League Club to meet two of his friends who
- 44:19Speaker 1: wanted to talk over the sweatshop bill here kindly intervened,
- 44:23Speaker 1: and we all hastened to cover the awkward situation by
- 44:26Speaker 1: that scurrying away from ugly morality, which seems to be
- 44:29Speaker 1: an obligation of social intercourse. Of the many old friends
- 44:33Speaker 1: of my father who kindly came to look up his daughter.
- 44:36Speaker 1: In the first days of Hull House, I recall none
- 44:38Speaker 1: with more pleasure than Lyman Trumbull, whom we used to
- 44:41Speaker 1: point out to members of the Young Citizen's Club as
- 44:44Speaker 1: the man who had for days held in his keeping
- 44:46Speaker 1: the Proclamation of Emancipation until his friend President Lincoln was
- 44:50Speaker 1: ready to issue it. I remember the talk he gave
- 44:53Speaker 1: at Hull House on one of our early celebrations of
- 44:55Speaker 1: Lincoln's birthday, his assertion that Lincoln was no cheap popular hero,
- 45:00Speaker 1: that the common people would have to make an effort
- 45:02Speaker 1: if they would understand his greatness, as Lincoln painstakingly made
- 45:05Speaker 1: a long effort to understand the greatness of the people.
- 45:08Speaker 1: There was something in the admiration of Lincoln's contemporaries, or
- 45:12Speaker 1: at least of those men who had known him personally,
- 45:14Speaker 1: which was quite unlike even the best of the devotion
- 45:17Speaker 1: and reverent understanding which has developed since in the first place,
- 45:21Speaker 1: they had so large a fund of common experience. They
- 45:24Speaker 1: too had pioneered in a western country, and had urged
- 45:27Speaker 1: the development of canals and railroads in order that the
- 45:30Speaker 1: raw prairie crops might be transported to market. They too
- 45:34Speaker 1: had realized that if this last tremendous experiment in self
- 45:37Speaker 1: government failed, here it would be the disappointment of the centuries,
- 45:41Speaker 1: and that upon their ability to organize self government in state, county,
- 45:45Speaker 1: and town depended the verdict of history. These men also knew,
- 45:49Speaker 1: as Lincoln himself did, that if this tremendous experiment was
- 45:53Speaker 1: to come to fruition, it must be brought about by
- 45:55Speaker 1: the people themselves. That there was no other capital fund
- 45:58Speaker 1: upon which to draw. I remember an incident occurring when
- 46:02Speaker 1: I was about fifteen years old, in which the conviction
- 46:04Speaker 1: was driven into my mind that the people themselves were
- 46:07Speaker 1: the great resource of the country. My father had made
- 46:10Speaker 1: a little address of reminiscence at a meeting of the
- 46:12Speaker 1: old settlers of Stephenson County, which was held every summer
- 46:16Speaker 1: in the grove beside the mill, relating his experiences and
- 46:19Speaker 1: inducing the farmers of the county to subscribe for stock
- 46:22Speaker 1: in the Northwestern Railroad, which was the first to penetrate
- 46:26Speaker 1: the county and make a connection with the Great Lakes
- 46:28Speaker 1: at Chicago. Many of the Pennsylvania German farmers doubted the
- 46:32Speaker 1: value of the whole new fangled business. Had had no
- 46:35Speaker 1: use for any railroad, much less for one in which
- 46:37Speaker 1: they were asked to risk their hard earned savings. My
- 46:40Speaker 1: father told of his despair in one farmer's community dominated
- 46:43Speaker 1: by such prejudice, which did not in the least give
- 46:46Speaker 1: way under his argument, but finally melted under the enthusiasm
- 46:49Speaker 1: of a high spirited German matron who took a share
- 46:52Speaker 1: to be paid for out of butter and egg money.
- 46:55Speaker 1: As he related his admiration of her, an old woman's
- 46:58Speaker 1: piping voice in the audience called out, I'm here today,
- 47:01Speaker 1: mister Adams, and I'd do it again if you asked me.
- 47:05Speaker 1: The old woman, bent and broken by her seventy years
- 47:08Speaker 1: of toilsome life, was brought to the platform, and I
- 47:11Speaker 1: was much impressed by my father's grave presentation of her
- 47:14Speaker 1: as one of the public spirited pioneers to whose heroic
- 47:17Speaker 1: fortitude we are indebted for the development of this country.
- 47:21Speaker 1: I remember that I was at that time reading with
- 47:23Speaker 1: great enthusiasm Carlyle's Heroes and hero Worship. But on the
- 47:28Speaker 1: evening of Old Settler's Day, to my surprise, I found
- 47:31Speaker 1: it difficult to go on its sonorous sentences and exaltation
- 47:36Speaker 1: of the man who can suddenly ceased to be convincing.
- 47:39Speaker 1: I had already written down in my commonplace book a
- 47:42Speaker 1: resolution to give at least twenty five copies of this
- 47:44Speaker 1: book each year to noble young people of my acquaintance.
- 47:48Speaker 1: It is perhaps fitting in this chapter that the very
- 47:50Speaker 1: first Christmas we spent at Hull House, in spite of
- 47:53Speaker 1: exigent demands upon my slender purse for candy and shoes,
- 47:57Speaker 1: I gave to a club of boys twenty five copies
- 47:59Speaker 1: of the then knew Karl Schertz's appreciation of Abraham Lincoln.
- 48:05Speaker 1: In our early effort at Hull House to hand on
- 48:07Speaker 1: to our neighbors whatever of help we had found for ourselves,
- 48:10Speaker 1: we made much of Lincoln. We were often distressed by
- 48:14Speaker 1: the children of immigrant parents, who were ashamed of the
- 48:16Speaker 1: pit whence they were digged, who repudiated the language and
- 48:19Speaker 1: customs of their elders, and counted themselves successful as they
- 48:23Speaker 1: were able to.
- 48:23Speaker 2: Ignore the past.
- 48:25Speaker 1: Whenever I held up Lincoln for their admiration as the
- 48:27Speaker 1: greatest American, I invariably pointed out his marvelous power to
- 48:31Speaker 1: retain and utilize past experiences that he never forgot. How
- 48:35Speaker 1: the plain people in Sangamon County thought and felt, when
- 48:39Speaker 1: he himself had moved to town, that this habit was
- 48:42Speaker 1: the foundation for his marvelous capacity for growth, that during
- 48:45Speaker 1: those distracting years in Washington, it enabled him to make clear,
- 48:49Speaker 1: beyond denial, to the American people themselves, the goal towards
- 48:53Speaker 1: which they were moving. I was sometimes bold enough to
- 48:55Speaker 1: add that proficiency in the art of recognition and comprehension
- 48:59Speaker 1: did not come without effort, and that certainly its attainment
- 49:02Speaker 1: was necessary for any successful career in our conglomerate America.
- 49:08Speaker 1: An instance of the invigorating and clarifying power of Lincoln's
- 49:11Speaker 1: influence came to me many years ago in England. I
- 49:14Speaker 1: had spent two days in Oxford under the guidance of
- 49:17Speaker 1: Arnold Toynbee's old friend, Sidney Ball of Saint John's College,
- 49:21Speaker 1: who was closely associated with the group of scholars we
- 49:23Speaker 1: all identify with the beginnings of the Settlement movement. It
- 49:27Speaker 1: was easy to claim the philosophy of Thomas Hill Green,
- 49:30Speaker 1: the road building Episode of Ruskin, the Experimental Living in
- 49:33Speaker 1: the East End by Frederick Morris, the London Workingmen's College
- 49:37Speaker 1: of Edward Denison as foundations laid by university men for
- 49:40Speaker 1: the establishment of Toynbee Hall. I was naturally much interested
- 49:44Speaker 1: in the beginnings of the movement whose slogan was back
- 49:47Speaker 1: to the People, and which could doubtless claim the settlement
- 49:50Speaker 1: as one of its manifestations. Nevertheless, the processes by which
- 49:54Speaker 1: so simple a conclusion as residents among the poor and
- 49:57Speaker 1: East London was reached seemed to be very involved and
- 50:00Speaker 1: round about. However inevitable these processes might be for class
- 50:04Speaker 1: conscious Englishmen, they could not but seem artificial to a
- 50:07Speaker 1: Western American who had been born in a rural community
- 50:10Speaker 1: where the early pioneer life had made social distinctions impossible.
- 50:14Speaker 1: Always on the alert lest American settlements should become mere
- 50:17Speaker 1: echoes and imitations of the English movement, I found myself
- 50:20Speaker 1: assenting to what was shown me only with that part
- 50:23Speaker 1: of my consciousness which had been formed by reading of
- 50:26Speaker 1: English social movements, while at the same time the rustic
- 50:29Speaker 1: American looked on in detached comment Why should an American
- 50:33Speaker 1: be lost in admiration of a group of Oxford students
- 50:36Speaker 1: because they went out to mend a disused road inspired
- 50:39Speaker 1: thereto by Ruskin's teaching for the bettering of the common life,
- 50:42Speaker 1: When all the country roads in America were mended each
- 50:45Speaker 1: spring by self respecting citizens who were thus carrying out
- 50:48Speaker 1: the simple method devised by a democratic government for providing highways.
- 50:53Speaker 1: No humor penetrated my high mood. Even as I somewhat
- 50:56Speaker 1: uneasily recalled certain spring saws when I had been mired
- 50:59Speaker 1: in roads provided by the American citizen. I continued to
- 51:03Speaker 1: fumble for a synthesis, which I was unable to make
- 51:06Speaker 1: until I developed that uncomfortable sense of playing two roles
- 51:09Speaker 1: at once. It was therefore, almost with a dual consciousness,
- 51:12Speaker 1: that I was ushered, during the last afternoon of my
- 51:15Speaker 1: Oxford stay, into the drawing room of the Master of Balliol.
- 51:19Speaker 1: Edward Cared's Evolution of Religion, which I had read but
- 51:22Speaker 1: a year or two before, had been of unspeakable comfort
- 51:25Speaker 1: to me in the labyrinth of differing ethical teachings and
- 51:27Speaker 1: religious creeds which the many immigrant colonies of our neighborhood presented.
- 51:32Speaker 1: I remember that I wanted very much to ask the
- 51:34Speaker 1: author himself how far it was reasonable to expect the
- 51:37Speaker 1: same quality of virtue and a similar standard of conduct
- 51:40Speaker 1: from these diverse people. I was timidly trying to apply
- 51:43Speaker 1: his method of study to those groups of homesick immigrants
- 51:46Speaker 1: huddled together in strange tenement houses, among whom I seemed
- 51:50Speaker 1: to detect the beginnings of a secular religion, or at
- 51:52Speaker 1: least of a wide humanitarianism, evolved out of the various
- 51:55Speaker 1: exigencies of the situation, somewhat as a household of children
- 52:00Speaker 1: whose mother is dead, out of their sudden necessity perform
- 52:03Speaker 1: unaccustomed offices for each other and awkwardly exchange consolations as
- 52:07Speaker 1: children and happier households never dream of doing. Perhaps mister
- 52:11Speaker 1: Cared could tell me whether there was any religious content
- 52:14Speaker 1: in this faith to each other, this fidelity of fellow
- 52:17Speaker 1: wanderers in a desert place. But when tea was over
- 52:21Speaker 1: and my opportunity came for a talk with my host,
- 52:24Speaker 1: I suddenly remembered, to the exclusion of all other associations,
- 52:27Speaker 1: only mister Caird's fine analysis of Abraham Lincoln, delivered in
- 52:31Speaker 1: a lecture two years before the memory of Lincoln. The
- 52:35Speaker 1: mention of his name came like a refreshing breeze from
- 52:38Speaker 1: off the prairie, blowing aside all the scholarly implications in
- 52:41Speaker 1: which I had become so reluctantly involved, And as the
- 52:44Speaker 1: philosopher spoke of the great American who was content merely
- 52:48Speaker 1: to dig the channels through which the moral life of
- 52:50Speaker 1: his countrymen might flow. I was gradually able to make
- 52:53Speaker 1: a natural connection between this intellectual penetration at Oxford and
- 52:57Speaker 1: the moral perception, which is always necessary for the discovery
- 53:00Speaker 1: of new methods by which to minister to human needs.
- 53:03Speaker 1: In the unceasing ebb and flow of justice and oppression.
- 53:07Speaker 1: We must all dig channels as best we may, that
- 53:09Speaker 1: at the propitious moment, somewhat of the swelling tide may
- 53:12Speaker 1: be conducted to the barren places of life. Gradually, a
- 53:16Speaker 1: healing sense of well being enveloped me, and a quick
- 53:19Speaker 1: remorse for my blindness, as I realized that no one
- 53:22Speaker 1: among his own countrymen had been able to interpret Lincoln's
- 53:25Speaker 1: greatness more nobly than this Oxford scholar had done, and
- 53:29Speaker 1: that vision and wisdom, as well as high motives, must
- 53:31Speaker 1: lie behind every effective stroke in the continuous labor for
- 53:35Speaker 1: human equality. I remembered that another master of Balliol, Jowett himself,
- 53:40Speaker 1: had said that it was fortunate for society that every
- 53:43Speaker 1: age possessed at least a few minds, which, like Arnold Toynbee's,
- 53:47Speaker 1: were perpetually disturbed over the apparent inequalities of mankind. Certainly
- 53:52Speaker 1: both the English and American settlements could unite in confessing
- 53:55Speaker 1: to that disturbance of mind. Traces of this Oxford visit
- 53:59Speaker 1: are curiously reflected in a paper I wrote soon after
- 54:02Speaker 1: my return at the request of the American Academy of
- 54:05Speaker 1: Political and Social Science. It begins as follows. The word settlement,
- 54:10Speaker 1: which we have borrowed from London, is apt to grat
- 54:13Speaker 1: a little upon American ears. It is, not, after all,
- 54:16Speaker 1: so long ago that Americans who settled were those who
- 54:19Speaker 1: had adventured into a new country, where they were pioneers
- 54:22Speaker 1: in the midst of difficult surroundings. The word still implies
- 54:25Speaker 1: migrating from one condition of life to another totally unlike it.
- 54:29Speaker 1: And against this implication, the resident of an American settlement
- 54:33Speaker 1: takes alarm. We do not like to acknowledge that Americans
- 54:36Speaker 1: are divided into two nations, as her Prime Minister once
- 54:40Speaker 1: admitted of England. We are not willing openly and professedly
- 54:44Speaker 1: to assume that American citizens are broken up into classes.
- 54:47Speaker 1: Even if we make that assumption the preface to a
- 54:50Speaker 1: plea that the superior class has duties to the inferior
- 54:53Speaker 1: Our democracy is still our most precious possession, and we
- 54:57Speaker 1: do well to resent any inroads upon it, even though
- 55:00Speaker 1: they may be made in the name of philanthropy. Is
- 55:04Speaker 1: it not Abraham Lincoln who has cleared the title to
- 55:06Speaker 1: our democracy? He made plain once for all that democratic government,
- 55:11Speaker 1: associated as it is with the mistakes and the shortcomings
- 55:14Speaker 1: of the common people, still remains the most valuable contribution
- 55:18Speaker 1: America has made to the moral life of the world.
- 55:22Speaker 1: End of Chapter two. Chapter three. Boarding school ideals. As
- 55:28Speaker 1: my three older sisters had already attended the seminary at Rockford,
- 55:32Speaker 1: of which my father was trustee, without any question, I
- 55:35Speaker 1: entered there at seventeen with such meager preparation in Latin
- 55:39Speaker 1: and algebra as the village school had afforded. I was
- 55:42Speaker 1: very ambitious to go to Smith College, although I well
- 55:45Speaker 1: knew that my father's theory in regard to the education
- 55:48Speaker 1: of his daughters implied a school as near at home
- 55:50Speaker 1: as possible, to be followed by travel abroad in lieu
- 55:54Speaker 1: of the wider advantages which the Eastern College is supposed
- 55:56Speaker 1: to afford. I was much impressed by the recent return
- 55:59Speaker 1: of my sister from a year in Europe. Yet I
- 56:02Speaker 1: was greatly disappointed at the moment of starting to humdrum Rockford.
- 56:05Speaker 1: After the first weeks of homesickness were over, however, I
- 56:08Speaker 1: became very much absorbed in the little world which the
- 56:11Speaker 1: boarding school in any form always offers to its students.
- 56:15Speaker 1: The school at Rockford in eighteen seventy seven had not
- 56:17Speaker 1: changed its name from seminary to college, although it numbered
- 56:21Speaker 1: on its faculty and amongst its alumnae college women who
- 56:24Speaker 1: were most eager that this should be done and who
- 56:27Speaker 1: really accomplished it. During the next five years. The schools
- 56:30Speaker 1: one of the earliest efforts for women's higher education in
- 56:33Speaker 1: the Mississippi Valley, and from the beginning was called the
- 56:36Speaker 1: Mount Holyoake of the West. It reflected much of the
- 56:39Speaker 1: missionary spirit of that pioneer institution, and the proportion of
- 56:43Speaker 1: missionaries among its early graduates was almost as large as
- 56:46Speaker 1: Mount Holyoake's own. In addition, there had been thrown about
- 56:49Speaker 1: the founders of the early Western school the glamor of
- 56:52Speaker 1: frontier privations, and the first students, conscious of the heroic
- 56:56Speaker 1: self sacrifice made in their behalf, felt that each minute
- 56:59Speaker 1: of the time thus dearly bought, must be conscientiously used.
- 57:03Speaker 1: This inevitably fostered an atmosphere of intensity, a fever of preparation,
- 57:08Speaker 1: which continued long after the direct making of it had ceased,
- 57:11Speaker 1: and which the later girls accepted as they did the
- 57:13Speaker 1: campus and the buildings, without knowing that it could have
- 57:16Speaker 1: been otherwise. There was, moreover, always present in the school
- 57:20Speaker 1: a larger or smaller group of girls who consciously accepted
- 57:23Speaker 1: this heritage and persistently endeavor to fulfill its obligation. We
- 57:28Speaker 1: worked in those early years as if we really believed
- 57:30Speaker 1: the portentous statement from Aristotle which we found quoted in
- 57:33Speaker 1: Boswell's Johnson, and with which we illuminated the wall of
- 57:36Speaker 1: the room occupied by our chess club. It remained there
- 57:40Speaker 1: for months solely out of reverence. Let us hope for
- 57:43Speaker 1: the two ponderous names associated with it. At least I
- 57:46Speaker 1: have enough confidence in human nature to assert that we
- 57:49Speaker 1: never really believed that there is the same difference between
- 57:52Speaker 1: the learned and the unlearned as there is between the
- 57:55Speaker 1: living and the dead. We were also too fond of
- 57:58Speaker 1: quoting Carlyle to the effect tis not to taste sweet things,
- 58:02Speaker 1: but to do noble and true things. That the poorest
- 58:04Speaker 1: son of adam dimly longs. As I attempt to reconstruct
- 58:08Speaker 1: the spirit of my contemporary group. By looking over many documents,
- 58:11Speaker 1: I find nothing more amusing than a plaint registered against
- 58:14Speaker 1: life's indistinctness, which I imagine more or less reflected the
- 58:18Speaker 1: sentiments of all of us. At any rate. Here it
- 58:21Speaker 1: is for the entertainment of the reader, if not for
- 58:23Speaker 1: his edification. So much of our time is spent in preparation,
- 58:28Speaker 1: so much in routine, and so much in sleep, we
- 58:30Speaker 1: find it difficult to have any experience at all. We did, not, however,
- 58:35Speaker 1: tamely accept such a state of affairs, for we made
- 58:37Speaker 1: various and restless attempts to break through this dull obtuseness.
- 58:42Speaker 1: At one time, five of us tried to understand de
- 58:44Speaker 1: Quincey's marvelous dreams more sympathetically by drugging ourselves with opium.
- 58:49Speaker 1: We solemnly consumed small white powders at intervals during an
- 58:53Speaker 1: entire long holiday. But no mental reorientation took place, and
- 58:58Speaker 1: the suspense and excitement did not even permit us to
- 59:00Speaker 1: grow sleepy. About four o'clock on the weird afternoon, the
- 59:04Speaker 1: young teacher whom we had been obliged to take into
- 59:06Speaker 1: our confidence, grew alarmed over the whole performance, took away
- 59:10Speaker 1: our de quincey and all the remaining powders, administrated in
- 59:13Speaker 1: emetic to each of the five aspirants for sympathetic understanding
- 59:16Speaker 1: of all human experience, and sent us to our separate
- 59:19Speaker 1: rooms with a stern command to appear at family worship
- 59:22Speaker 1: after supper, whether we were able to or not. Whenever we
- 59:26Speaker 1: had a chance to write, we took, of course large themes,
- 59:29Speaker 1: usually from the Greek, because they were the most stirring
- 59:32Speaker 1: to the imagination. The Greek oration I gave at our
- 59:35Speaker 1: junior exhibition was written with infinite pains and taken to
- 59:39Speaker 1: the Greek professor in Beloit College that there might be
- 59:41Speaker 1: no mistakes, even after the Rockford College teacher and the
- 59:44Speaker 1: most scholarly clergyman in town had both passed upon it.
- 59:48Speaker 1: The oration upon Bellerophon and his successful fight with the
- 59:51Speaker 1: Chimera contended that social evils could only be overcome by
- 59:55Speaker 1: him who soared above them into idealism. As Bellerophon mounted
- 59:58Speaker 1: upon the winged horse pegs Uses had slain the earthly dragon.
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: There were practically no economics taught in women's colleges, at
- 1:00:06Speaker 1: least in the fresh Water ones thirty years ago, although
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: we painstakingly studied mental and moral philosophy, which, though far
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: from dry in the class room, became the subject of
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: more spirited discussion outside and gave us a clue for
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: animated rummaging. In the little college library, of course, we
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: read a great deal of Ruskin and Browning, and I
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: liked the more abstruse parts the best. But like the
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: famous gentleman who talked prose without knowing it, we never
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: dreamed of connecting them with our philosophy. My genuine interest
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: was history, partly because of a superior teacher, and partly
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: because my father had always insisted upon a certain amount
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: of historic reading ever since he had paid me as
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: a little girl five cents a life for each Plutarch
- 1:00:48Speaker 1: hero I could intelligently report to him, and twenty five
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: cents for every volume of Irving's Life of Washington. When
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: we started for the long vacations, a little group of
- 1:00:57Speaker 1: five would vow that during the summer we would read
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: all of Motley's Dutch Republic, or more ambitious still, all
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: of Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. When
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: We returned at the opening of school, and three of
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: us announced we had finished. The latter each became skeptical
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: of the other two. We fell upon each other in
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: a sort of rough and tumble examination, in which no
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: quarter was given or received, but the suspicion was finally
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: removed that any one had skipped. We took for a
- 1:01:24Speaker 1: class motto the early Saxon word for lady, translated into
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: bread giver, and we took for our class color the poppy,
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: because poppies grow among the wheat, as if nature knew
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: that wherever there was hunger that needed food, there would
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: be pain that needed relief. We must have found the
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: sentiment in a book somewhere, but we used it so
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: much that finally it seemed like an idea of our own,
- 1:01:46Speaker 1: although of course none of us had ever seen a
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: European field. The only page upon which nature has written
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: this particular message, that this group of ardent girls, who
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: discussed everything under the sun with unabated interest, did not
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: take it all out in talk, may be demonstrated by
- 1:02:01Speaker 1: the fact that one of the class, who married a missionary,
- 1:02:04Speaker 1: founded a very successful school in Japan for the children
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: of the English and Americans. Living there. Another of the
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: class became a medical missionary to Korea, and because of
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: her successful treatment of the queen, was made court physician
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: at a time when the opening was considered of importance
- 1:02:18Speaker 1: in the diplomatic as well as in the missionary world.
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: Still another became an unusually skilled teacher of the blind,
- 1:02:24Speaker 1: and one of them a pioneer librarian in that early
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: effort to bring books to the people. Perhaps this early
- 1:02:30Speaker 1: companionship showed me how essentially similar are the various forms
- 1:02:33Speaker 1: of social effort, and curiously enough, the actual activities of
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: a missionary school are not unlike many that are carried
- 1:02:40Speaker 1: on in a settlement situated in a foreign quarter. Certainly,
- 1:02:44Speaker 1: the most sympathetic and comprehending visitors we have ever had
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: at Hull House have been returned missionaries. Among them two
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: elderly ladies who had lived for years in India, who
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: had been homesick and bewildered since their return, declared that
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: the fortnight at Hull House had been the happiest and
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: most familiar they are had in America. Of Course, in
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: such an atmosphere, a girl like myself of serious, not
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: to say priggish tendency did not escape a concerted pressure
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: to push her into the missionary field. During the four years,
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: it was inevitable that every sort of evangelical appeal should
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: have been made to reach the comparatively few unconverted girls
- 1:03:18Speaker 1: in the school. We were the subject of prayer at
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: the daily chapel exercise and the weekly prayer meeting, attendance
- 1:03:24Speaker 1: upon which was obligatory. I was singularly unresponsive to all
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: these forms of emotional appeal, although I became unspeakably embarrassed
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: when they were presented to me at close range by
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: a teacher during the silent hour which we were all
- 1:03:37Speaker 1: required to observe every evening, and which was never broken
- 1:03:40Speaker 1: into even by a member of the faculty, unless the
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: errand was one of grave import. I found these occasional
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: interviews on the part of one of the more serious
- 1:03:49Speaker 1: young teachers, of whom I was extremely fond hard to endure,
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: as was a long series of conversations in my senior
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: year conducted by one of the most enthusiastic members of
- 1:03:59Speaker 1: the faculty, in which the desirability of Turkey as a
- 1:04:02Speaker 1: field for missionary labor was enticingly put before me. I
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: suppose I held myself aloof from all these influences, partly
- 1:04:09Speaker 1: owing to the fact that my father was not a
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: communicant of any church, and I tremendously admired his scrupulous
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: morality and sense of honor in all matters of personal
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: and public conduct, and also because the little group to
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: which I have referred was much given to a sort
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: of rationalism, doubtless founded upon an early reading of Emerson.
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: In this connection, when Bronson Alcott came to lecture at
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: the school, we all vied with each other for a
- 1:04:32Speaker 1: chance to do him a personal service, because he had
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: been a friend of Emerson, and we were inexpressibly scornful
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: of our younger fellow students who cared for him merely
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: on the basis of his grandfatherly relation to little women.
- 1:04:44Speaker 1: I recall cleaning the clay of the unpaved streets off
- 1:04:46Speaker 1: his heavy cloth overshoes in a state of ecstatic energy.
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: But I think in my case there were other factors
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: as well that contributed to my unresponsiveness to the evangelical appeal.
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: A curious course of reading I had marked out from
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: a myself in medieval history seems to have left me
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: fascinated by an ideal of mingled learning, piety, and physical labour,
- 1:05:06Speaker 1: more nearly exemplified by the port Royalists than by any others.
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: The only moments in which I seemed to have approximated
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: in my own experience to a faint realization of the
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: beauty of holiness as I conceived it, was each Sunday morning,
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: between the hours of nine and ten, when I went
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: into the exquisitely neat room of the Teacher of Greek
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: and read with her from a Greek Testament. We did
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: this every Sunday morning for two years. It was not
- 1:05:30Speaker 1: exactly a lesson, for I never prepared for it, and
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: while I was held within reasonable bounds of syntax, I
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: was allowed much more freedom in translation than was permitted.
- 1:05:38Speaker 1: The next morning, when I read Homer, neither to be
- 1:05:41Speaker 1: discussed doctrines. For although it was with the same teacher
- 1:05:43Speaker 1: that in our junior year we studied Paul's Epistle to
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: the Hebrews, committing all of it to memory and analyzing
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: and reducing it to doctrines with an inch of our lives,
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: we never allowed an echo of this exercise to appear
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: at these blessed Sunday morning readings. It was as if
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: the disputations of Paul had not yet been for we
- 1:06:00Speaker 1: always read from the Gospels. The regime of Rockford Seminary
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: was still very simple in the seventies. Each student made
- 1:06:07Speaker 1: her own fire and kept her own room in order.
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: Sunday morning was a great clearing up day, and the
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: sense of having made immaculate my own immediate surroundings. The
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: consciousness of clean linen, said to be close to the
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: consciousness of a clean conscience, always mingles in my mind.
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: With these early readings, I certainly bore away with me
- 1:06:24Speaker 1: a life long enthusiasm for reading the Gospels in bulk,
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: a whole one at a time, and an insurmountable distaste
- 1:06:31Speaker 1: for having them cut up into chapter and verse, or
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: for hearing the incidents in that wonderful life thus referred
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: to as if it were merely a record. My copy
- 1:06:39Speaker 1: of the Greek Testament had been presented to me by
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: the brother of our Greek teacher, Professor Blasdell of Beloit College,
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: a true scholar in Christian ethics, as his department was called.
- 1:06:49Speaker 1: I recall that one day in the summer after I
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: left college, one of the black days which followed the
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: death of my father. This kindly scholar came to see
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: me in order to bring such comfort as he might,
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: and to an inquire how far I had found solace
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: in the little book he had given me so long before.
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: When I suddenly recalled the village in which I was born,
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: its steeples and roofs look as they did that day
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: from the hilltop where we talked together, The familiar details
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: smoothed out and merging, as it were, into that wide
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: conception of the universe, which for the moment swallowed up
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: my personal grief, or at least assuaged it with realization
- 1:07:23Speaker 1: that it was but a drop in that torrent of
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: sorrow and anguish and terror which flows under all the
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: footsteps of man. This realization of sorrow as the common lot,
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: of death as the universal experience, was the first comfort
- 1:07:36Speaker 1: which my bruised spirit had received in reply to my
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: impatience with the Christian doctrine of resignation that it implied
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: that you thought of your sorrow only in its effect
- 1:07:45Speaker 1: upon you, and were disloyal to the affection itself. I
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: remember how quietly the Christian scholar changed his phraseology, saying
- 1:07:52Speaker 1: that sometimes consolation came to us better in the words
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: of Plato, and as nearly as I can remember, that
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: was the first time I had ever heard Plato's sonorous
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: argument for the permanence of the excellent. When Professor Blasdell
- 1:08:04Speaker 1: returned to his college, he left in my hands a
- 1:08:07Speaker 1: small copy of the Crito. The Greek was too hard
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: for me, and I was speedily driven to Jowitt's translation.
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: That old fashioned habit of presenting favorite books to eager
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: young people, although it degenerated into the absurdity of Friendship's offerings,
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: had much to be said for it when it indicated
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: the well springs of literature from which the donor himself
- 1:08:26Speaker 1: had drawn waters of healing and inspiration. Throughout our school years,
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: we were keenly conscious of the growing development of Rockford's
- 1:08:33Speaker 1: seminary into a college. The opportunity of our alma mater
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: to take her place in the new movement of full
- 1:08:39Speaker 1: college education for women filled us with enthusiasm, and it
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: became a driving ambition with the undergraduates to share in
- 1:08:45Speaker 1: this new and glorious undertaking. We gravely decided that it
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: was important that some of the students should be ready
- 1:08:50Speaker 1: to receive the bachelor's degree the very first moment that
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: the charter of the school should secure the right to
- 1:08:55Speaker 1: confer it. Two of us therefore took a course in
- 1:08:58Speaker 1: mathematicsancing beyond anything previously given in the school, from one
- 1:09:02Speaker 1: of those early young women working for a pH d
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: who was temporarily teaching in Rockford, that she might study
- 1:09:08Speaker 1: more mathematics in Leipzic. My companion, in all these arduous labors,
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: has since accomplished more than any of us in the
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: effort to procure the franchise for women. For even then
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: we all took for granted the righteousness of that cause
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: into which I at least had merely followed my father's
- 1:09:23Speaker 1: conviction in the old fashioned spirit of that cause, I
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: might cite the career of this companion as an illustration
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: of the efficacy of higher mathematics for women, For she
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: possesses singular ability to convince even the densest legislators of
- 1:09:36Speaker 1: their legal right to define their own electorate, even when
- 1:09:39Speaker 1: they quote against her the dustiest of state constitutions or
- 1:09:42Speaker 1: city charters. In line with this policy of placing a
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: woman's college on an equality with the other colleges of
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: the state, we applied for an opportunity to compete in
- 1:09:51Speaker 1: the Intercollegiate Oratorical Contest of Illinois, and we succeeded in
- 1:09:55Speaker 1: having Rockford admitted as the first woman's college. When I
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: was final selected as the orator, I was somewhat dismayed
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: to find that, representing not only one school, but college
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: women in general, I could not resent the brutal frankness
- 1:10:09Speaker 1: with which my oratorical possibilities were discussed by the enthusiastic group,
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: who would allow no personal feeling to stand in the
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: way of progress, especially the progress of woman's cause. I
- 1:10:19Speaker 1: was told, among other things, that I had an intolerable
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: habit of dropping my voice at the end of a
- 1:10:23Speaker 1: sentence in the most feminine, apologetic, and even deprecatory manner,
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: which would probably lose woman the first place. Woman certainly
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: did lose the first place and stood fifth, exactly in
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: the dreary middle, but the ignominious position may not have
- 1:10:39Speaker 1: been solely due to bad mannerisms. For a prior place
- 1:10:42Speaker 1: was easily accorded to William Jennings Bryan, who not only
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: thrilled his auditors with an almost prophetic anticipation of the
- 1:10:48Speaker 1: Cross of Gold, but with a moral earnestness which we
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: had mistakenly assumed would be the unique possession of the
- 1:10:53Speaker 1: feminine orator. I so heartily concurred with the decision of
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: the judges of the contest that it was with the
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: care free mind that I induced my colleague and alternate
- 1:11:03Speaker 1: to remain long enough in the Athens of Illinois, in
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: which the successful college was situated, to visit the state institutions,
- 1:11:09Speaker 1: one for the blind and one for the deaf and dumb.
- 1:11:12Speaker 1: Doctor Jillette, at that time, was the head of the
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: latter institution, his scholarly explanation of the method of teaching,
- 1:11:18Speaker 1: his concern for his charges. This sudden demonstration of the
- 1:11:22Speaker 1: care the state bestowed upon its most unfortunate children filled
- 1:11:25Speaker 1: me with grave speculations in which the first, the fifth,
- 1:11:28Speaker 1: or the ninth place in the oratorical contest seemed of
- 1:11:31Speaker 1: little moment. However, this brief delay between our field of
- 1:11:35Speaker 1: Waterloo and our arrival at our aspiring college turned out
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: to be most unfortunate, for we found the ardent group
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: not only exhausted by the premature preparations for the return
- 1:11:44Speaker 1: of a successful orator, but naturally much irritated as they
- 1:11:48Speaker 1: contemplated their garlands drooping disconsolately in tubs and bowls of water.
- 1:11:53Speaker 1: They did not fail to make me realize that I
- 1:11:55Speaker 1: had dealt the cause of woman's advancement a staggering blow,
- 1:11:58Speaker 1: and all my explanations of the fifth place were haughtily
- 1:12:01Speaker 1: considered insufficient. Before that golden bar of youth so absurdly inflexible.
- 1:12:07Speaker 1: To return to my last year of school, it was
- 1:12:10Speaker 1: inevitable that the pressure toward religious profession should increase as
- 1:12:13Speaker 1: graduating day approached. So curious, however, are the paths of
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: moral development that, several times during subsequent experiences have I
- 1:12:21Speaker 1: felt that this passive resistance of mine, this clinging to
- 1:12:24Speaker 1: an individual conviction, was the best moral training I received
- 1:12:27Speaker 1: at Rockford College. During the first decade at Hull House,
- 1:12:31Speaker 1: it was felt by propagandists of diverse social theories that
- 1:12:34Speaker 1: the New Settlement would be a fine coign of vantage
- 1:12:36Speaker 1: from which to propagate social faiths, and that a mere
- 1:12:39Speaker 1: preliminary step would be the conversion of the founders. Hence,
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: I have been reasoned with hours at a time, and
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: I recall at least three occasions when this was followed
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: by actual prayer. In the first instance, the honest exhorter,
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: who fell upon his knees before my astonished eyes, was
- 1:12:55Speaker 1: an advocate of single tax upon land values. He begged,
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: in that phrasey hofeology, which is deemed appropriate for prayer,
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: that the sister might see the beneficent results it would
- 1:13:05Speaker 1: bring to the poor who live in the awful congested
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: districts around this very house. The early socialists used every
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: method of attack, a favorite one being the statement, doubtless
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: sometimes honestly made that I really was a socialist, but
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: too much of a coward to say so. I remember
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: one socialist who habitually opened a very telling address he
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: was in the habit of giving upon the street corners,
- 1:13:27Speaker 1: by holding me up as an awful example to his
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: fellow socialists as one of their number who had been
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: caught in the toils of capitalism. He always added, as
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: a final clinching of the statement, that he knew what
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: he was talking about because he was a member of
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: the Hull House Men's Club. When I ventured to say
- 1:13:43Speaker 1: to him that not all of the thousands of people
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: who belonged to a class or club at Hull House
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: could possibly know my personal opinions, and to mildly inquire
- 1:13:51Speaker 1: upon what he founded his assertions. He triumphantly replied that
- 1:13:55Speaker 1: I had once admitted to him that I had read
- 1:13:57Speaker 1: Sombart and Loria, and that any one of sound mine
- 1:14:00Speaker 1: must see the inevitable conclusions of such master reasonings. I
- 1:14:04Speaker 1: could multiply these two instances a hundredfold, and possibly nothing
- 1:14:07Speaker 1: aided me to stand on my own feet and to
- 1:14:09Speaker 1: select what seemed reasonable from this wilderness of dogma. So
- 1:14:13Speaker 1: much as my early encounter with genuine zeal and affectionate
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: solicitude associated with what I could not accept as the
- 1:14:19Speaker 1: whole truth. I do not wish to take callo writing
- 1:14:23Speaker 1: too seriously, but I reproduce from an oratorical contest the
- 1:14:26Speaker 1: following bit of premature pragmatism, doubtless do much more to
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: temperament than to perception, because I am still ready to
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: subscribe to it. Although the grandiloquent style is, I hope
- 1:14:36Speaker 1: a thing of the past. Those who believe that justice
- 1:14:40Speaker 1: is but a poetical longing within us. The enthusiast who
- 1:14:43Speaker 1: thinks it will come in the form of a millennium.
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: Those who see it established by the strong arm of
- 1:14:48Speaker 1: a hero, are not those who have comprehended the vast
- 1:14:51Speaker 1: truths of life. The actual justice must come by entrained intelligence,
- 1:14:56Speaker 1: by broadened sympathies toward the individual man or woman who
- 1:14:59Speaker 1: crosses our path. One item added to another as the
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: only method by which to build up a conception lofty
- 1:15:05Speaker 1: enough to be of use in the world. This schoolgirl
- 1:15:09Speaker 1: recipe has been tested in many later experiences, the most
- 1:15:12Speaker 1: dramatic of which came when I was called upon by
- 1:15:14Speaker 1: a manufacturing company to act as one of three arbitrators
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: in a perplexing struggle between themselves, a group of trade unionists,
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: and a non union employee of their establishment. The non
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: union man who was the cause of the difficulty, had
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: ten years before sided with his employers in a prolonged
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: strike and had bitterly fought the union. He had been
- 1:15:33Speaker 1: so badly injured at that time that, in spite of
- 1:15:35Speaker 1: long months of hospital care, he had never afterward been
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: able to do a full day's work, although his employers
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: had retained him for a decade at full pay in
- 1:15:43Speaker 1: recognition of his loyalty. At the end of ten years,
- 1:15:46Speaker 1: the once defeated union was strong enough to enforce its
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: demands for a union shop, and in spite of the
- 1:15:51Speaker 1: distaste of the firm for the arrangement. No obstacle to
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: harmonious relations with the union remained, but for the refusal
- 1:15:57Speaker 1: of the trade unionists to receive as one of their
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: members the old crippled employee, whose spirit was broken at last,
- 1:16:03Speaker 1: and who was now willing to join the union and
- 1:16:05Speaker 1: to stand with his old enemies for the sake of
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: retaining his place. But the union men would not receive
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: a trader. The firm flatly refused to dismiss so faithful
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: an employee. The busy season was upon them, and every
- 1:16:17Speaker 1: one concerned had finally agreed to abide without appeal by
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: the decision of the arbitrators. The chairman of our little
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: arbitration committee, a venerable judge, quickly demonstrated that it was
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: impossible to collect trustworthy evidence in regards to the events
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: already ten years old, which lay at the bottom of
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: this bitterness, and we soon therefore ceased to interview the
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: conflicting witnesses. The second member of the committee sternly bade
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: the men remember that the most ancient Hebraic authority gave
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: no sanction for holding even a just resentment for more
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: than seven years. And at last we all settled down
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: to that wearisome effort to secure the inner consent of
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: all concerned, upon which alone the mystery of justice, as
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: Materlink has told us, ultimately depends. I am not quite
- 1:16:56Speaker 1: sure that in the end we administered justice, but certainly
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: employed lawyers, trade unionists and arbitrators were all convinced that
- 1:17:03Speaker 1: justice will have to be established in industrial affairs with
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: the same care and patience which has been necessary for centuries,
- 1:17:09Speaker 1: in order to institute it in men's civic relationships. Although,
- 1:17:13Speaker 1: as the judge remarked, the search must be conducted without
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: much help from precedent, the conviction remained with me that,
- 1:17:19Speaker 1: however long a time might be required to establish justice
- 1:17:21Speaker 1: in the new relationships of our raw industrialism, it would
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: never be stable until it had received the sanction of
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: those upon whom the present situation presses so harshly. Towards
- 1:17:32Speaker 1: the end of our four years course, we debated much
- 1:17:34Speaker 1: as to what we were to be, and long before
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: the end of my school days, it was quite settled
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: in my mind that I should study medicine and live
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: with the poor. This conclusion, of course, was the result
- 1:17:45Speaker 1: of many things, perhaps epitomized in my graduating essay on
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: Cassandra and her tragic fate always to be in the right,
- 1:17:52Speaker 1: and always to be disbelieved and rejected. This state of affairs,
- 1:17:57Speaker 1: it may readily be guessed, the essay held to be
- 1:17:59Speaker 1: an exact sample of the feminine trait of mind called intuition,
- 1:18:03Speaker 1: an accurate perception of truth and justice, which rests contented
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: in itself and will make no effort to confirm itself
- 1:18:09Speaker 1: or to organize through existing knowledge. The essay then proceeds,
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: I am forced to admit, with over much conviction with
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: the statement that women can only grow accurate and intelligible
- 1:18:20Speaker 1: by the thorough study of at least one branch of
- 1:18:22Speaker 1: physical science. For only with eyes thus accustomed to the
- 1:18:25Speaker 1: search for truth can she detect at all self deceit
- 1:18:28Speaker 1: and fancy in herself, and learn to express herself without dogmatism.
- 1:18:32Speaker 1: So much for the first part of my thesis. Having
- 1:18:35Speaker 1: thus gained accuracy, would woman bring this force to bear
- 1:18:38Speaker 1: throughout morals and justice? Then she must find an active
- 1:18:41Speaker 1: labor the promptings and inspirations that come from growing insight.
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: I was quite certain that by following these directions carefully,
- 1:18:49Speaker 1: in the end, the contemporary woman would find her faculties
- 1:18:52Speaker 1: clear and acute from the study of science, and her
- 1:18:55Speaker 1: hand upon the magnetic chain of humanity. This veneration for science,
- 1:18:59Speaker 1: portrays in my final essay, was doubtless the result of
- 1:19:02Speaker 1: the statements the text books were then making of what
- 1:19:04Speaker 1: was called the theory of evolution, the acceptance of which,
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: even thirty years after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species,
- 1:19:11Speaker 1: had about it a touch of intellectual adventure. We knew,
- 1:19:14Speaker 1: for instance, that our science teacher had accepted this theory,
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: but we had a strong suspicion that the teacher of
- 1:19:19Speaker 1: Butler's Analogy had not. We chafed at the meagerness of
- 1:19:23Speaker 1: the college library in this direction, and I used to
- 1:19:26Speaker 1: bring back in my handbag books belonging to an advanced
- 1:19:29Speaker 1: brother in law, who had studied medicine in Germany, and
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: who therefore was quite emancipated. The first gift I made
- 1:19:35Speaker 1: when I came into possession of my small estate the
- 1:19:37Speaker 1: year after I left school, was a thousand dollars to
- 1:19:39Speaker 1: the library of Rockford College, with the stipulation that it
- 1:19:42Speaker 1: be spent for scientific books. In the long vacations, I
- 1:19:46Speaker 1: pressed plants, stuffed birds, and pounded rocks in some vague
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: belief that I was approximating the new method. And yet
- 1:19:53Speaker 1: when my stepbrother, who was becoming a real scientist, tried
- 1:19:56Speaker 1: to carry me along with him to the merest outskirts
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: of the methods of research, it at once became evident
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: that I had no aptitude and was unable to follow
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: intelligently Darwin's careful observations on the earthworm. I made a
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: heroic effort, though candor compels me to state that I
- 1:20:11Speaker 1: never would have finished if I had not been pulled
- 1:20:13Speaker 1: and pushed by my really ardent companion, who, in addition
- 1:20:16Speaker 1: to a multitude of earth worms and a fine microscope,
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: possessed untiring tact with one of flagging zeal. As our
- 1:20:22Speaker 1: boarding school days neared the end, in the consciousness of
- 1:20:25Speaker 1: approaching separation, we vowed eternal allegiance to our early ideals
- 1:20:29Speaker 1: and promised each other we would never abandon them without
- 1:20:32Speaker 1: conscious justification, and we often warned each other of the
- 1:20:35Speaker 1: perils of self tradition. We believed, in our sublime self
- 1:20:39Speaker 1: conceit that the difficulty of life would lie solely in
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: the direction of losing these precious ideals of ours, of
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: failing to follow the way of martyrdom and high purpose
- 1:20:47Speaker 1: we had marked out for ourselves, and we had no
- 1:20:50Speaker 1: notion of the obscure paths of tolerance, just allowance and
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: self blame, wherein if we held our minds open, we
- 1:20:56Speaker 1: might learn something of the mystery and complexity of life's purposes.
- 1:21:00Speaker 1: The year after I had left college, I came back
- 1:21:03Speaker 1: with a classmate to receive the degree we had so
- 1:21:05Speaker 1: eagerly anticipated. Two of the graduating class were also ready,
- 1:21:09Speaker 1: and four of us were dubbed b A on the
- 1:21:12Speaker 1: very day that Rockford Seminary was declared a college. In
- 1:21:15Speaker 1: the midst of tumultuous anticipations, having had a year outside
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: of college walls and that trying land between vague hope
- 1:21:21Speaker 1: and definite attainment, I had become very much sobered in
- 1:21:24Speaker 1: my desire for a degree, and was already beginning to
- 1:21:27Speaker 1: emerge from that rose colored mist with which the dream
- 1:21:30Speaker 1: of youth so readily envelops the future. Whatever may have
- 1:21:34Speaker 1: been the perils of self tradition, I certainly did not
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: escape them, for it required eight years from the time
- 1:21:40Speaker 1: I left Rockford in the summer of eighteen eighty one
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: until Hull House was opened in the autumn of eighteen
- 1:21:44Speaker 1: eighty nine to formulate my convictions, even in the least
- 1:21:48Speaker 1: satisfactory manner, much less to reduce them to a plan
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: for action. During most of that time I was absolutely
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: at sea so far as any more purpose was concerned,
- 1:21:57Speaker 1: clinging only to the desire to live in a really
- 1:21:59Speaker 1: living world, and refusing to be content with a shadowy
- 1:22:02Speaker 1: intellectual or esthetic reflection of it. End of Chapter three,
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: Chapter four, The Snare of Preparation. The winter after I
- 1:22:13Speaker 1: left school was spent in the Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia,
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: but the development of the spinal difficulty which had shadowed
- 1:22:20Speaker 1: me from childhood, forced me into Doctor Weir Mitchell's hospital
- 1:22:24Speaker 1: for the late spring and the next winter. I was
- 1:22:26Speaker 1: literally bound to a bed in my sister's house for
- 1:22:29Speaker 1: six months. In spite of its tedium, the long winter
- 1:22:33Speaker 1: had its mitigations, for after the first few weeks I
- 1:22:36Speaker 1: was able to read with a luxurious consciousness of leisure,
- 1:22:40Speaker 1: and I remember opening the first volume of Carlyle's Frederick
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: the Great with a lively sense of gratitude that it
- 1:22:45Speaker 1: was not Grey's Anatomy, having found like many another that
- 1:22:50Speaker 1: general culture is a much easier undertaking than professional study.
- 1:22:54Speaker 1: The long illness inevitably put aside the immediate prosecution of
- 1:22:58Speaker 1: a medical course, and although I had passed my examinations
- 1:23:02Speaker 1: credibly enough in the required subjects for the first year,
- 1:23:05Speaker 1: I was very glad to have a physician's sanction for
- 1:23:07Speaker 1: giving up clinics and dissecting rooms, and to follow his
- 1:23:10Speaker 1: prescription of spending the next two years in Europe before
- 1:23:15Speaker 1: I returned to America. I had discovered that there were
- 1:23:17Speaker 1: other genuine reasons for living among the poor than that
- 1:23:20Speaker 1: of practicing medicine upon them, and my brief foray into
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: the profession was never resumed. The long illness left me
- 1:23:28Speaker 1: in a state of nervous exhaustion, with which I struggled
- 1:23:30Speaker 1: for years, traces of it remaining long after Hull House
- 1:23:34Speaker 1: was opened in eighteen eighty nine. At the best it
- 1:23:37Speaker 1: allowed me but a limited amount of energy, so that
- 1:23:39Speaker 1: doubtless there was much nervous depression at the foundation of
- 1:23:42Speaker 1: the spiritual struggles with which this chapter is forced to record. However,
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: it could not have been all due to my health,
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: for as my wise little note book sententiously remarked in
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: his own way, each man must struggle lest the moral
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: law become a far off abstraction, utterly separated from his
- 1:23:59Speaker 1: active life life. It would of course be impossible to
- 1:24:03Speaker 1: remember that some of these struggles ever took place at all,
- 1:24:05Speaker 1: were it not for these self same note books, in which, however,
- 1:24:09Speaker 1: I no longer wrote in moments of high resolve, but,
- 1:24:11Speaker 1: judging from the internal evidence afforded by the books themselves,
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: only in moments of deep depression, when overwhelmed by a
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: sense of failure. One of the most poignant of these experiences,
- 1:24:23Speaker 1: which occurred during the first few months after our landing
- 1:24:25Speaker 1: upon the other side of the Atlantic, was on a
- 1:24:28Speaker 1: Saturday night, when I received an ineradicable impression of the
- 1:24:31Speaker 1: wretchedness of East London, and also saw for the first
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: time the overcrowded quarters of a great city. At midnight,
- 1:24:39Speaker 1: a small party of tourists were taken to the East
- 1:24:42Speaker 1: End by a city missionary to witness the Saturday night's
- 1:24:45Speaker 1: sale of decaying vegetables and fruit, which, owing to the
- 1:24:48Speaker 1: Sunday laws in London, could not be sold until Monday,
- 1:24:51Speaker 1: and as they were beyond safe keeping, were disposed of
- 1:24:54Speaker 1: at auction as late as possible on Saturday night. On
- 1:24:58Speaker 1: mile end road. From the top of a omnibus, which
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: paused at the end of a dingy street lighted only
- 1:25:03Speaker 1: by occasional flares of gas, we saw two huge masses
- 1:25:07Speaker 1: of ill clad people clamoring around two huckster's carts. They
- 1:25:11Speaker 1: were bidding their farthings and hapennies for a vegetable held
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: up by the auctioneer, which he at last scornfully flung
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: with a gibe for its cheapness to the successful bidder.
- 1:25:21Speaker 1: In the momentary pause, only one man detached himself from
- 1:25:25Speaker 1: the groups he had bidden in a cabbage, and when
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: it struck his hand, he instantly sat down on the curb,
- 1:25:31Speaker 1: tore it with his teeth, and hastily devoured it, unwashed
- 1:25:34Speaker 1: and uncooked. As it was. He and his fellows were
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: types of the submerged tenth, as our missionary guide told
- 1:25:41Speaker 1: us with some little satisfaction in the then new phrase,
- 1:25:44Speaker 1: and he further added that so many of them could
- 1:25:46Speaker 1: scarcely be seen in one spot save at this Saturday
- 1:25:49Speaker 1: night auction, the desire for cheap food being apparently the
- 1:25:53Speaker 1: one thing which could move them simultaneously. They were huddled
- 1:25:56Speaker 1: into ill fitting, cast off clothing, the ragged finery which
- 1:26:00Speaker 1: one sees only in East London. Their pale faces were
- 1:26:04Speaker 1: dominated by that most unlovely of human expressions, the cunning
- 1:26:08Speaker 1: and shrewdness of the bargain hunter, who starves if he
- 1:26:10Speaker 1: can not make a successful trade. And yet the final
- 1:26:13Speaker 1: impression was not of ragged, towdry clothing, nor of pinched
- 1:26:17Speaker 1: and sallow faces, but of myriads of hands, empty, pathetic, nerveless,
- 1:26:22Speaker 1: and work worn, showing white in the uncertain light of
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: the street, and clutching forward for food which was already
- 1:26:29Speaker 1: unfit to eat. Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance
- 1:26:34Speaker 1: as the human hand, this oldest tool with which man
- 1:26:37Speaker 1: has dug his way from savagery, and with which he
- 1:26:40Speaker 1: is constantly groping forward. I have never since been able
- 1:26:44Speaker 1: to see a number of hands held upward, even when
- 1:26:46Speaker 1: they are moving rhythmically in a calisthenic exercise, or when
- 1:26:50Speaker 1: they belong to a class of chubby children who waived
- 1:26:53Speaker 1: them in eager response to a teacher's query. Without a
- 1:26:56Speaker 1: certain revival of this memory, a clutching at the heart
- 1:26:59Speaker 1: rem renoscent of the despair and resentment which seized me.
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: Then for the following weeks, I went about London almost furtively,
- 1:27:07Speaker 1: afraid to look down narrow streets and alleys lest they
- 1:27:10Speaker 1: disclose again. This hideous human need and suffering I carried
- 1:27:15Speaker 1: with me for days at a time that curious surprise
- 1:27:18Speaker 1: we experience when we first come back to the streets
- 1:27:20Speaker 1: after days given over to sorrow and death. We are
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: bewildered that the world should be going on as usual,
- 1:27:26Speaker 1: and unable to determine which is real, the inner pang
- 1:27:29Speaker 1: or the outward seeming. In time, all huge London came
- 1:27:34Speaker 1: to seem unreal, save the poverty in its East end.
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: During the following two years on the continent, while I
- 1:27:40Speaker 1: was irresistibly drawn to the poorer quarters of each city,
- 1:27:43Speaker 1: nothing among the beggars of South Italy, nor among the
- 1:27:46Speaker 1: salt miners of Austria carried with it the same conviction
- 1:27:49Speaker 1: of human wretchedness which was conveyed by this momentary glimpse
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: of an East London street. It was, of course, a
- 1:27:55Speaker 1: most fragmentary and lurid view of the poverty of East London,
- 1:27:59Speaker 1: and quite unfair I should have been shown either less
- 1:28:02Speaker 1: or more, for I went away with no notion of
- 1:28:05Speaker 1: the hundreds of men and women who had gallantly identified
- 1:28:07Speaker 1: their fortunes with these empty handed people, and who in
- 1:28:10Speaker 1: church and chapel, relief works and charities were at least
- 1:28:14Speaker 1: making an effort towards its mitigation. Our visit was made
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: in November eighteen eighty three, the very year when the
- 1:28:21Speaker 1: pall Mall Gazette exposure started the bitter cry of outcast London,
- 1:28:26Speaker 1: and the conscience of England was stirred as never before
- 1:28:29Speaker 1: over this joyless city in the east end of its capital.
- 1:28:32Speaker 1: Even then, vigorous and drastic plans were being discussed, and
- 1:28:36Speaker 1: a splendid program of municipal reforms was already dimly outlined.
- 1:28:40Speaker 1: Of all these, however, I had heard nothing but the
- 1:28:43Speaker 1: vaguest rumor No comfort came to me then from any source,
- 1:28:47Speaker 1: And the painful impression was increased because at the very
- 1:28:50Speaker 1: moment of looking down the East London street from the
- 1:28:52Speaker 1: top of the omnibus, I had been sharply and painfully
- 1:28:55Speaker 1: reminded of the vision of sudden death which had confronted
- 1:28:59Speaker 1: to Quincy onea summer's night. As he was being driven
- 1:29:01Speaker 1: through rural England on a high mail coach. Two absorbed
- 1:29:05Speaker 1: lovers suddenly appear between the narrow, blossoming hedgerows in the
- 1:29:08Speaker 1: direct path of the huge vehicle, which is sure to
- 1:29:11Speaker 1: crush them to their death. De Quincey tries to send
- 1:29:14Speaker 1: them a warning shout, but finds himself unable to make
- 1:29:17Speaker 1: a sound because his mind is hopelessly entangled in an
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: endeavor to recall the exact lines from the Iliad which
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: describe the great cry with which Achilles alarmed all Asia militant.
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: Only after his memory responds as his will released from
- 1:29:31Speaker 1: its momentary paralysis, and he rides on through the fragrant night,
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: with the horror of the escaped calamity thick upon him.
- 1:29:38Speaker 1: But he also bears with him the consciousness that he
- 1:29:40Speaker 1: had given himself over so many years to classic learning
- 1:29:43Speaker 1: that when suddenly called upon for a quick decision in
- 1:29:46Speaker 1: the world of life and death, he had been able
- 1:29:48Speaker 1: to act only through a literary suggestion. This is what
- 1:29:52Speaker 1: we were all doing, lumbering our minds with literature that
- 1:29:55Speaker 1: only served a cloud the really vital situation spread before
- 1:29:59Speaker 1: our eyes. It seemed to me too preposterous that, in
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: my first view of the horror of East London, I
- 1:30:04Speaker 1: should have recalled to Quincy's literary description of the literary
- 1:30:07Speaker 1: suggestion which had once paralyzed him. In my disgust, it
- 1:30:11Speaker 1: all appeared a hateful, vicious circle, which even the apostles
- 1:30:14Speaker 1: of culture themselves admitted for had not one of the
- 1:30:17Speaker 1: greatest among the moderns plainly said that conduct, and not culture,
- 1:30:21Speaker 1: is three fourths of human life. For two years, in
- 1:30:25Speaker 1: the midst of my distress over the poverty, which thus
- 1:30:28Speaker 1: suddenly driven into my consciousness had become to me the Veltschmertz,
- 1:30:33Speaker 1: there was mingled a sense of futility, of misdirected energy,
- 1:30:37Speaker 1: the belief that the pursuit of cultivation would not, in
- 1:30:39Speaker 1: the end bring either solace or relief. I gradually reached
- 1:30:43Speaker 1: a conviction that the first generation of college women had
- 1:30:46Speaker 1: taken their learning too quickly, had departed too suddenly from
- 1:30:49Speaker 1: the active emotional life led by their grandmothers and great grandmothers.
- 1:30:53Speaker 1: That the contemporary education of young women had developed too
- 1:30:56Speaker 1: exclusively the power of acquiring knowledge and of merely receiving
- 1:30:59Speaker 1: impress that somewhere in the process of being educated they
- 1:31:04Speaker 1: had lost that simple and almost automatic response to the
- 1:31:07Speaker 1: human appeal, that old healthful reaction, resulting in activity from
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: the mere presence of suffering or of helplessness, that they
- 1:31:15Speaker 1: are so sheltered and pampered they have no chance even
- 1:31:18Speaker 1: to make the great refusal. In the German and French Pensians,
- 1:31:23Speaker 1: which twenty five years ago were crowded with American mothers
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: and their daughters who had crossed the seas in search
- 1:31:28Speaker 1: of culture, one often found the mother making real connection
- 1:31:31Speaker 1: with the life about her, using her inadequate German with
- 1:31:34Speaker 1: great fluency, gaily measuring the enormous sheets, or exchanging recipes
- 1:31:39Speaker 1: with the German house frow, visiting impartially the nearest kindergarten
- 1:31:42Speaker 1: and market, making an atmosphere of her own, hearty and
- 1:31:46Speaker 1: genuine as far as it went in the house and
- 1:31:48Speaker 1: on the street. On the other hand, her daughter was
- 1:31:51Speaker 1: critical and uncertain of her linguistic acquirements, and only at
- 1:31:55Speaker 1: ease when in the familiar, receptive attitude afforded by the
- 1:31:57Speaker 1: art gallery and opera house. In the latter she was
- 1:32:01Speaker 1: swayed and moved, appreciative of the power and charm of
- 1:32:04Speaker 1: the music, intelligent as to the legend and poetry of
- 1:32:07Speaker 1: the plot, finding use for her trained and developed powers
- 1:32:10Speaker 1: as she sat being cultivated in the familiar atmosphere of
- 1:32:14Speaker 1: the class room, which had, as it were, become sublimated
- 1:32:17Speaker 1: and romanticized. I remember a happy, busy mother who complaisant
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: with the knowledge that her daughter daily devoted four hours
- 1:32:24Speaker 1: to her music, looked up from her knitting to say,
- 1:32:27Speaker 1: if I had had your opportunities when I was young,
- 1:32:30Speaker 1: my dear, I should have been a very happy girl.
- 1:32:33Speaker 1: I always had musical talent, but such training as I had,
- 1:32:36Speaker 1: foolish little songs and waltzes, and not time for half
- 1:32:39Speaker 1: an hour's practice a day. The mother did not dream
- 1:32:42Speaker 1: of the sting her words left, and that the sensitive
- 1:32:45Speaker 1: girl appreciated only too well that her opportunities were fine
- 1:32:48Speaker 1: and unusual. But she also knew that, in spite of
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: some facility and much good teaching, she had no genuine
- 1:32:53Speaker 1: talent and never would fulfill the expectations of her friends.
- 1:32:57Speaker 1: She looked back upon her mother's girlhood with positive envy,
- 1:33:00Speaker 1: because it was so full of happy industry and extenuating obstacles,
- 1:33:04Speaker 1: with undisturbed opportunity to believe that her talents were unusual.
- 1:33:07Speaker 1: The girl looked wistfully at her mother, but had not
- 1:33:10Speaker 1: the courage to cry out what was in her heart.
- 1:33:13Speaker 1: I might believe I had unusual talent. If I did
- 1:33:15Speaker 1: not know what good music was, I might enjoy half
- 1:33:18Speaker 1: an hour's practice a day if I were busy and
- 1:33:20Speaker 1: happy the rest of the time. You do not know
- 1:33:22Speaker 1: what life means. When all the difficulties are removed, I
- 1:33:25Speaker 1: am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like
- 1:33:28Speaker 1: eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning. This, then,
- 1:33:32Speaker 1: was the difficulty, this sweet dessert in the morning, and
- 1:33:35Speaker 1: the assumption that the sheltered educated girl has nothing to
- 1:33:38Speaker 1: do with the bitter poverty and the social maladjustment which
- 1:33:41Speaker 1: is all about her, and which after all, cannot be concealed,
- 1:33:44Speaker 1: for it breaks through poetry and literature in a burning
- 1:33:47Speaker 1: tide which overwhelms her. It peers at her in the
- 1:33:50Speaker 1: form of heavy laden market women and underpaid street laborers,
- 1:33:53Speaker 1: guiding her with a sense of her uselessness. I recall
- 1:33:57Speaker 1: one snowy morning in Saxe Coburg, looking from the window
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: of our little hotel upon the town square, that we
- 1:34:03Speaker 1: saw crossing and recrossing at a single file of women
- 1:34:05Speaker 1: with semi circular, heavy wooden tanks fastened upon their backs.
- 1:34:09Speaker 1: They were carrying in this primitive fashion to a remote
- 1:34:12Speaker 1: cooling room. These tanks filled with a hot brew incident
- 1:34:15Speaker 1: to one stage of beer making. The women were bent forward,
- 1:34:19Speaker 1: not only under the weight which they were bearing, but
- 1:34:22Speaker 1: because the tanks were so high that it would have
- 1:34:24Speaker 1: been impossible for them to have lifted their heads. Their
- 1:34:27Speaker 1: faces and hands, reddened in the cold morning air, showed
- 1:34:30Speaker 1: clearly the white scars where they had previously been scalded
- 1:34:33Speaker 1: by the hot stuff, which splashed if they stumbled ever
- 1:34:35Speaker 1: so little on their way. Stung into action by one
- 1:34:39Speaker 1: of those sudden indignations against cruel conditions which at times
- 1:34:42Speaker 1: filled the young with unexpected energy, I found myself across
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: the square in company with mine host, interviewing the phlegmatic
- 1:34:50Speaker 1: owner of the brewery, who received us with exasperating indifference,
- 1:34:54Speaker 1: or rather received me, for the innkeeper mysteriously slunk away
- 1:34:57Speaker 1: as soon as the great magnet of the town began
- 1:34:59Speaker 1: to see speak. I went back to a breakfast for
- 1:35:02Speaker 1: which I had lost my appetite, as I had for
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: Grey's Life of Prince Albert and his wonderful tutor Baron Stockmar,
- 1:35:10Speaker 1: which I had been reading late the night before. The
- 1:35:12Speaker 1: book had lost its fascination. How could a good man,
- 1:35:16Speaker 1: feeling so keenly his obligation to make princely the mind
- 1:35:19Speaker 1: of his prince ignore such conditions of life for the
- 1:35:22Speaker 1: multitude of humble, hard working folk. We were spending two
- 1:35:26Speaker 1: months in Dresden that winter, given over to much reading
- 1:35:29Speaker 1: of the history of art, and after such an experience,
- 1:35:32Speaker 1: I would invariably suffer a moral revulsion against this feverish
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: search after culture. It was doubtless in such moods that
- 1:35:39Speaker 1: I founded my admiration for Albrecht Durer, taking his wonderful pictures, however,
- 1:35:44Speaker 1: in the most unorthodox manner, merely as human documents, I
- 1:35:48Speaker 1: was chiefly appealed to by his unwillingness to lend himself
- 1:35:51Speaker 1: to a smooth and cultivated view of life, by his
- 1:35:54Speaker 1: determination to record its frustrations and even the hideous forms
- 1:35:57Speaker 1: which darken the day for our human imagination, and to
- 1:36:00Speaker 1: ignore no human complications. I believed that his canvasses intimated
- 1:36:05Speaker 1: the coming religious and social changes of the Reformation, and
- 1:36:08Speaker 1: the peasants wars, that they were surcharged with pity for
- 1:36:11Speaker 1: the downtrodden, that his sad nights gravely standing guard were
- 1:36:15Speaker 1: longing to avert that shedding of blood, which is sure
- 1:36:18Speaker 1: to occur when men forget how complicated life is and
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: insist upon reducing it to logical dogmas. The largest sum
- 1:36:26Speaker 1: of money that I ever ventured to spend in Europe
- 1:36:28Speaker 1: was for an engraving of his Saint Hubert, the background
- 1:36:31Speaker 1: of which was said to be from an original Dura plate.
- 1:36:34Speaker 1: There is little doubt, I am afraid that the background
- 1:36:37Speaker 1: as well as the figures were put in at a
- 1:36:39Speaker 1: later date, but the purchase at least registered the high
- 1:36:42Speaker 1: water mark of my enthusiasm. The wonder and beauty of
- 1:36:46Speaker 1: Italy later brought healing and some relief to the paralyzing
- 1:36:49Speaker 1: sense of the futility of all artistic and intellectual effort
- 1:36:53Speaker 1: when disconnected from the ultimate test of the conduct it inspired.
- 1:36:57Speaker 1: The serene and soothing touch of history. Also around housed
- 1:37:00Speaker 1: old enthusiasms, although some of their manifestations were such as
- 1:37:04Speaker 1: one smiles over more easily in retrospection than at the moment.
- 1:37:08Speaker 1: I fancy that it was no smiling matter to several
- 1:37:11Speaker 1: people in our party, whom I induced to walk for
- 1:37:13Speaker 1: three miles in the hot sunshine beating down upon the
- 1:37:16Speaker 1: Roman Campagna, that we might enter the eternal city on
- 1:37:19Speaker 1: foot through the Porto del Popolo, as pilgrims had done
- 1:37:22Speaker 1: for centuries. To be sure, we had really entered Rome
- 1:37:25Speaker 1: the night before, but the railroad station and the hotel
- 1:37:28Speaker 1: might have been anywhere else, and we had been driven
- 1:37:31Speaker 1: beyond the walls after breakfast and stranded at the very
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: spot where the pilgrims always said Echoroma as they caught
- 1:37:37Speaker 1: the first glimpse of Saint Peter's dome. This melodramatic entrance
- 1:37:41Speaker 1: into Rome, or rather pretended entrance, was the prelude to
- 1:37:45Speaker 1: days of enchantment, and I returned to Europe two years
- 1:37:48Speaker 1: later in order to spend a winter there and to
- 1:37:50Speaker 1: carry out a great desire to systematically study the catacombs.
- 1:37:54Speaker 1: In spite of my distrust of advantages, I was apparently
- 1:37:57Speaker 1: not yet so cured, but that I wanted more of them.
- 1:38:01Speaker 1: The two years which elapsed before I again found myself
- 1:38:03Speaker 1: in Europe brought their inevitable changes. Family arrangements had so
- 1:38:07Speaker 1: come about that I had spent three or four months
- 1:38:09Speaker 1: of each of the intervening winters in Baltimore, where I
- 1:38:12Speaker 1: seemed to have reached the nadier of my nervous deppression
- 1:38:14Speaker 1: and sense of maladjustment in spite of my interest in
- 1:38:17Speaker 1: the fascinating lectures given there by Lantiani of Rome, and
- 1:38:21Speaker 1: a definite course of reading under the guidance of a
- 1:38:23Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins lecturer upon the United Italy movement. In the
- 1:38:27Speaker 1: latter I naturally encountered the influence of Mizzini, which was
- 1:38:30Speaker 1: a source of great comfort to me, although perhaps I
- 1:38:33Speaker 1: went too suddenly from a contemplation of his wonderful ethical
- 1:38:36Speaker 1: and philosophical appeal to the working men of Italy directly
- 1:38:39Speaker 1: to the lecture rooms at Johns Hopkins University. For I
- 1:38:42Speaker 1: was certainly much disillusioned at this time as to the
- 1:38:45Speaker 1: effect of intellectual pursuits upon moral development. The summers were
- 1:38:50Speaker 1: spent in the old Home in northern Illinois, and one
- 1:38:53Speaker 1: Sunday morning I received the right of baptism and became
- 1:38:56Speaker 1: a member of the Presbyterian Church in the village. At
- 1:38:59Speaker 1: this time, there was certainly no outside pressure pushing me
- 1:39:01Speaker 1: towards such a decision, and at twenty five one does
- 1:39:04Speaker 1: not ordinarily take such a step from a mere desire
- 1:39:07Speaker 1: to conform. While I was not conscious of any emotional conversion,
- 1:39:11Speaker 1: I took upon myself the outward expression of the religious
- 1:39:14Speaker 1: life with all humility and sincerity. It was doubtless true
- 1:39:17Speaker 1: that I was weary of myself and sick of asking
- 1:39:20Speaker 1: what I am and what I ought to be, and
- 1:39:23Speaker 1: that various cherished safeguards and claims to self dependence had
- 1:39:26Speaker 1: been broken into by my many piteous failures. But certainly
- 1:39:30Speaker 1: I had been brought to the conclusion that sincerely to
- 1:39:33Speaker 1: give up one's conceit or hope of being good in
- 1:39:35Speaker 1: one's own right is the only door to the universe's
- 1:39:38Speaker 1: deeper reaches. Perhaps the young clergyman recognized this as the
- 1:39:42Speaker 1: test of the Christian temper. At any rate, he required
- 1:39:45Speaker 1: little assent to dogma or miracle had assured me that
- 1:39:48Speaker 1: while both the ministry and the officers of his church
- 1:39:50Speaker 1: were obliged to subscribe to doctrines of well known severity,
- 1:39:53Speaker 1: the faith required to the laity was almost early Christian
- 1:39:56Speaker 1: in its simplicity. I was conscious of no change my
- 1:40:00Speaker 1: childish acceptance of the teachings of the Gospels. But at
- 1:40:03Speaker 1: this moment, something persuasive within me made me long for
- 1:40:06Speaker 1: an outward symbol of fellowship, some bond of peace, some
- 1:40:10Speaker 1: blessed spot where a unity of spirit might claim right
- 1:40:12Speaker 1: of way over all differences. There was also growing within
- 1:40:16Speaker 1: me an almost passionate devotion to the ideals of democracy.
- 1:40:20Speaker 1: And when in all history had these ideals been so
- 1:40:22Speaker 1: thrillingly expressed as when the faith of the fishermen and
- 1:40:25Speaker 1: the slave had been boldly opposed to the accepted moral
- 1:40:28Speaker 1: belief that the well being of a privileged view might
- 1:40:31Speaker 1: justly be built upon the ignorance and sacrifice of the many.
- 1:40:34Speaker 1: Who was I with my dreams of universal fellowship that
- 1:40:37Speaker 1: I did not identify myself with the institutional statement of
- 1:40:40Speaker 1: this belief as it stood in the little village in
- 1:40:43Speaker 1: which I was born, and without which testimony in each
- 1:40:45Speaker 1: remote hamlet of Christendom, it would be so easy for
- 1:40:48Speaker 1: the world to slip back into the doctrines of selection
- 1:40:50Speaker 1: and aristocracy. In one of the intervening summers between these
- 1:40:54Speaker 1: European journeys, I visited a western state where I had
- 1:40:57Speaker 1: formerly invested a sum of money and mortgages. I was
- 1:41:00Speaker 1: much horrified by the wretched conditions among the farmers which
- 1:41:04Speaker 1: had resulted from a long period of drought, and one
- 1:41:07Speaker 1: forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind. A number
- 1:41:10Speaker 1: of starved hogs collateral for a promissory note, were huddled
- 1:41:14Speaker 1: into an open pen. Their backs were humped in a
- 1:41:17Speaker 1: curious camel like fashion, and they were devouring one of
- 1:41:20Speaker 1: their own number, the latest victim of absolute starvation, or
- 1:41:24Speaker 1: possibly merely the one least able to defend himself against
- 1:41:27Speaker 1: their voracious hunger. The farmer's wife looked on indifferently, a
- 1:41:31Speaker 1: picture of despair, as she stood in the door of
- 1:41:33Speaker 1: the bare crude house, and the two children behind her,
- 1:41:36Speaker 1: whom she vainly tried to keep out of sight, continually
- 1:41:39Speaker 1: thrust forward, their faces almost covered by masses of coarse,
- 1:41:43Speaker 1: sun burnt hair, and their little bare feet so black,
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: so hard, the great cracks so filled with dust they
- 1:41:50Speaker 1: looked like flattened hoofs. The children could not be compared
- 1:41:53Speaker 1: to anything so joyous as satyrs, although they appeared but
- 1:41:57Speaker 1: half human. It seemed to me quite impossible to rest
- 1:42:00Speaker 1: interest from mortgages placed upon farms which might any season
- 1:42:03Speaker 1: be reduced to such conditions, And, with great inconvenience to
- 1:42:07Speaker 1: my agent, and doubtless with hardship to the farmers, as
- 1:42:10Speaker 1: speedily as possible, I withdrew all my investment. But something
- 1:42:14Speaker 1: had to be done with the money, and in my
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: reaction against unseen whoreors, I bought a farm near my
- 1:42:19Speaker 1: native village, and also a flock of innocent looking sheep.
- 1:42:23Speaker 1: My partner in the enterprise had not chosen the shepherd's
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: lot as a permanent occupation, but hoped to speedily finish
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: his college course upon half the proceeds of our venture.
- 1:42:32Speaker 1: This pastoral enterprise still seems to me to have been
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: essentially sound, both economically and morally. But perhaps one partner
- 1:42:40Speaker 1: depended too much upon the impeccability of her motives, and
- 1:42:43Speaker 1: the other found himself too preoccupied with study to know
- 1:42:46Speaker 1: that it is not a real kindness to bet a
- 1:42:47Speaker 1: sheepfold with straw. For certainly, the venture ended in a
- 1:42:50Speaker 1: spectacle scarcely less harrowing than the memory it was designed
- 1:42:54Speaker 1: to obliterate. At least, the sight of two hundred sheep
- 1:42:57Speaker 1: with four rotting hoofs each was not reassuring to one
- 1:43:00Speaker 1: whose conscience craved economic peace. A fortunate series of sales
- 1:43:04Speaker 1: of mutton, wool and farm enabled the partners to end
- 1:43:07Speaker 1: to the enterprise without loss, and they passed on one
- 1:43:11Speaker 1: to college and the other to Europe. If not wiser
- 1:43:14Speaker 1: certainly sadder for the experience. It was during this second
- 1:43:18Speaker 1: journey to Europe that I attended a meeting of the
- 1:43:20Speaker 1: London match girls, who were on strike and who met
- 1:43:23Speaker 1: daily under the leadership of well known labor men of London.
- 1:43:27Speaker 1: The low wages that were reported at the meetings, the
- 1:43:30Speaker 1: fosse jaw, which was described and occasionally exhibited the appearance
- 1:43:33Speaker 1: of the girls themselves. I did not, curiously enough in
- 1:43:37Speaker 1: any wise connect with what was called the labor movement,
- 1:43:40Speaker 1: nor did I understand the efforts of the London trades unionists,
- 1:43:43Speaker 1: concerning whom I held the vaguest notions. But of course
- 1:43:46Speaker 1: this impression of human misery was added to the others
- 1:43:49Speaker 1: which were already making me so wretched. I think that
- 1:43:52Speaker 1: up to this time I was still filled with the
- 1:43:53Speaker 1: sense which Wells describes in one of his young characters,
- 1:43:56Speaker 1: that somewhere in church or state are a body of
- 1:43:59Speaker 1: authoritative peace people who will put things to rights as
- 1:44:02Speaker 1: soon as they really know what is wrong. Such a
- 1:44:04Speaker 1: young person persistently believes that behind all suffering, behind sin
- 1:44:08Speaker 1: and want, must lie redeeming magnanimity. He may imagine the
- 1:44:13Speaker 1: world to be tragic and terrible, but it never for
- 1:44:15Speaker 1: an instant occurs to him that it may be contemptible,
- 1:44:18Speaker 1: or squalid, or self seeking. Apparently, I looked upon the
- 1:44:22Speaker 1: efforts of the trades Unionists, as I did upon those
- 1:44:24Speaker 1: of Frederick Harrison and the Positivists, whom I heard the
- 1:44:27Speaker 1: next Sunday in Newton Hall, as a manifestation of loyalty
- 1:44:31Speaker 1: to humanity and an attempt to aid in its progress.
- 1:44:35Speaker 1: I was enormously interested in the Positivists during those European years.
- 1:44:39Speaker 1: I imagined that their philosophical conception of man's religious development
- 1:44:42Speaker 1: might include all expressions of that for which so many
- 1:44:45Speaker 1: ages of man have struggled and aspired. I vaguely hoped
- 1:44:49Speaker 1: for this universal comedy when I stood in Stonehenge, or
- 1:44:52Speaker 1: on the Acropolis in Athens, or in the Sistine Chapel
- 1:44:55Speaker 1: in the Vatican. But never did I so desire it
- 1:44:57Speaker 1: as in the cathedrals of Winchester, not Dame Emien. One
- 1:45:02Speaker 1: winter's day I traveled from Munich to Ulm, because I
- 1:45:04Speaker 1: imagine from what the art books said that the cathedral
- 1:45:07Speaker 1: hoarded a medieval statement of the Positivist's final synthesis, prefiguring
- 1:45:11Speaker 1: their conception of a supreme humanity. In this I was
- 1:45:14Speaker 1: not altogether disappointed. The religious history carved on the choir
- 1:45:18Speaker 1: stalls at Ulms contained Greek philosophers as well as Hebrew prophets,
- 1:45:22Speaker 1: and among the disciples and saints stood the discoverer of
- 1:45:25Speaker 1: music and a builder of pagan temples. Even then I
- 1:45:29Speaker 1: was startled forgetting for the moment the religious revolutions of
- 1:45:32Speaker 1: South Germany, to catch sight of a window showing Luther
- 1:45:35Speaker 1: as he affixed his thesis on the door at Wittenberg,
- 1:45:38Speaker 1: the pictures shining clear in the midst of the older
- 1:45:40Speaker 1: glass of saint and symbol. My smug note book states
- 1:45:44Speaker 1: that all this was an admission that the saints but
- 1:45:47Speaker 1: embodied fine action, and it proceeds at some length to
- 1:45:50Speaker 1: set forth my hope for a cathedral of humanity, which
- 1:45:54Speaker 1: should be capacious enough to house a fellowship of common purpose,
- 1:45:58Speaker 1: and which should be beautiful enough to persuade had been
- 1:46:00Speaker 1: to hold fast to the vision of human solidarity. It
- 1:46:03Speaker 1: is quite impossible for me to reproduce this experience at Ulm,
- 1:46:06Speaker 1: unless I quote pages more from the note book in
- 1:46:08Speaker 1: which I seemed to have written half the night in
- 1:46:11Speaker 1: a fever of composition, cast in ill digested phrases from Comte.
- 1:46:15Speaker 1: It doubtless reflected also something of the faith of the
- 1:46:18Speaker 1: old Catholics, a charming group of whom I had recently
- 1:46:20Speaker 1: met in Stuttgart, and the same mood is easily traced
- 1:46:23Speaker 1: in my early hopes for the Settlement that it should
- 1:46:26Speaker 1: unite in the fellowship of the deed, those of widely
- 1:46:28Speaker 1: differing religious beliefs. The beginning of eighteen eighty seven found
- 1:46:33Speaker 1: our little party of three in very picturesque lodgings in
- 1:46:36Speaker 1: Rome and settled into a certain student's routine. But my
- 1:46:39Speaker 1: study of the Catacombs was brought to an abrupt end
- 1:46:42Speaker 1: in a fortnight by a severe tack of psiatic rheumatism,
- 1:46:45Speaker 1: which kept me in Rome with a trained nurse during
- 1:46:47Speaker 1: many weeks, and later sent me to the Riviera to
- 1:46:50Speaker 1: leave an invalid's life once more. Although my catacomb lore
- 1:46:53Speaker 1: thus remained hopelessly superficial, it seemed to me a sufficient
- 1:46:57Speaker 1: basis for a course of six lectures, which I timidly
- 1:47:00Speaker 1: offered to a deaconess's training school during my first winter
- 1:47:03Speaker 1: in Chicago, upon the simple ground that this early interpretation
- 1:47:06Speaker 1: of Christianity is the one which should be presented to
- 1:47:08Speaker 1: the poor, urging that the primitive church was composed of
- 1:47:11Speaker 1: the poor, and that it was they who took the
- 1:47:13Speaker 1: wonderful news to the more prosperous Romans. The open minded
- 1:47:17Speaker 1: head of the school gladly accepted the lectures, arranging that
- 1:47:20Speaker 1: the course should be given each spring to her graduating
- 1:47:22Speaker 1: class of home and foreign missionaries, and at the end
- 1:47:25Speaker 1: of the third year she invited me to become one
- 1:47:27Speaker 1: of the trustees of the school. I accepted and attended
- 1:47:30Speaker 1: one meeting of the board, but never another because some
- 1:47:33Speaker 1: of the older members objected to my membership on the
- 1:47:35Speaker 1: ground that no religious instruction was given at Hull House.
- 1:47:39Speaker 1: I remember my sympathy for the embarrassment in which the
- 1:47:41Speaker 1: head of the school was placed. But if I needed comfort,
- 1:47:44Speaker 1: a bit of it came to me on my way
- 1:47:46Speaker 1: home from the trustees meeting, when an Italian laborer paid
- 1:47:49Speaker 1: my street car fare according to the custom of our
- 1:47:51Speaker 1: simpler neighbors. Upon my inquiry of the conductor as to
- 1:47:55Speaker 1: whom I was indebted for the little courtesy, he replied,
- 1:47:57Speaker 1: roughly enough, I cannot tell one day from another when
- 1:48:00Speaker 1: they are in a gang, but sure any one of
- 1:48:02Speaker 1: them would do it for you as quick as they
- 1:48:03Speaker 1: would for the sisters. It is hard to tell just
- 1:48:06Speaker 1: when the very simple plan which afterward developed into the
- 1:48:09Speaker 1: settlement began to form itself in my mind. It may
- 1:48:12Speaker 1: have been even before I went to Europe for the
- 1:48:14Speaker 1: second time. But I gradually became convinced that it would
- 1:48:17Speaker 1: be a good thing to rent a house and a
- 1:48:19Speaker 1: part of the city where many primitive and actual needs
- 1:48:21Speaker 1: are found, in which young women who had been given
- 1:48:24Speaker 1: over too exclusively to study, might restore a balance of
- 1:48:27Speaker 1: activity along traditional lines and learn of life from life itself,
- 1:48:32Speaker 1: where they might try out some of the things they
- 1:48:34Speaker 1: had been taught, and put truth to the ultimate test
- 1:48:37Speaker 1: of the conduct it dictates or inspires. I do not
- 1:48:41Speaker 1: remember to have mentioned this plan to any one until
- 1:48:43Speaker 1: we reached Madrid in April eighteen eighty eight. We had
- 1:48:47Speaker 1: been to see a bull fight rendered in the most
- 1:48:49Speaker 1: magnificent Spanish style, where greatly to my surprise and horror,
- 1:48:53Speaker 1: I found that I had seen with comparative indifference, five
- 1:48:57Speaker 1: bulls and many more horses killed. The sense that this
- 1:49:00Speaker 1: was the last survival of all the glories of the amphitheater,
- 1:49:03Speaker 1: the illusion that the riders on the caparison horses might
- 1:49:05Speaker 1: have been knights of a tournament, or the matador, a
- 1:49:08Speaker 1: slightly armed gladiator facing his martyrdom, and all the rest
- 1:49:12Speaker 1: of the obscure yet vivid associations of an historic survival
- 1:49:15Speaker 1: had carried me beyond the endurance of any of the
- 1:49:18Speaker 1: rest of the party. I finally met them in the foyer,
- 1:49:21Speaker 1: stern and pale, with disapproval of my brutal endurance, but
- 1:49:24Speaker 1: partially recovered from the faintness and disgust which the spectacle
- 1:49:27Speaker 1: itself had produced upon them. I had no defense to
- 1:49:30Speaker 1: offer to their approaches, save that I had not thought
- 1:49:33Speaker 1: much about the bloodshed. But in the evening the natural
- 1:49:36Speaker 1: and inevitable reaction came, and in deep chagrin, I felt
- 1:49:39Speaker 1: myself tried and condemned, not only by this disgusting experience,
- 1:49:44Speaker 1: but by the entire moral situation which it revealed. It
- 1:49:47Speaker 1: was suddenly made quite clear to me that I was
- 1:49:49Speaker 1: lulling my conscience by a dreamer's scheme, that a mere
- 1:49:52Speaker 1: paper reform had become a defense for continued idleness, and
- 1:49:55Speaker 1: that I was making it a raison deetre for going
- 1:49:57Speaker 1: on indefinitely with study and travel. It is easy to
- 1:50:01Speaker 1: become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise
- 1:50:04Speaker 1: the future can never keep. And I had fallen into
- 1:50:06Speaker 1: the meanest type of self deception and making myself believe
- 1:50:10Speaker 1: that all this was in preparation for great things to come.
- 1:50:13Speaker 1: Nothing less than the moral reaction following the experience at
- 1:50:16Speaker 1: a bull fight had been able to reveal to me that,
- 1:50:19Speaker 1: so far from following in the wake of a chariot
- 1:50:21Speaker 1: of philanthropic fire, I had been tied to the tail
- 1:50:23Speaker 1: of the veriest ox cart of self seeking. I had
- 1:50:27Speaker 1: made up my mind that next day, whatever happened, I
- 1:50:30Speaker 1: would begin to carry out the plan, if only by
- 1:50:33Speaker 1: talking about it. I can well recall the stumbling and
- 1:50:36Speaker 1: uncertainty with which I finally set it forth to Miss Starr,
- 1:50:39Speaker 1: my old time school friend who is one of our party.
- 1:50:42Speaker 1: I even dared to hope that she might join in
- 1:50:44Speaker 1: carrying out the plan. But nevertheless I told it in
- 1:50:47Speaker 1: the fear of that disheartening experience which is so apt
- 1:50:50Speaker 1: to afflict our most cherished plans when they are at
- 1:50:53Speaker 1: last divulged, when we suddenly feel that there is nothing
- 1:50:55Speaker 1: there to talk about, and as the golden dream slips
- 1:50:58Speaker 1: through our fingers, where I left to wonder at our
- 1:51:01Speaker 1: own fatuous belief. But gradually the comfort of Miss Starr's companionship,
- 1:51:06Speaker 1: the vigor and enthusiasm which he brought to bear upon it,
- 1:51:09Speaker 1: told both in the growth of the plan and upon
- 1:51:11Speaker 1: the sense of its validity, so that by the time
- 1:51:13Speaker 1: we had reached the enchantment of the Alhambra, the scheme
- 1:51:16Speaker 1: had become convincing and tangible, although still most hazy in detail.
- 1:51:20Speaker 1: A month later we parted in Paris, Miss Starr to
- 1:51:23Speaker 1: go back to Italy, and I to journey on to
- 1:51:26Speaker 1: London to secure as many suggestions as possible from those
- 1:51:28Speaker 1: wonderful places of which we had heard, Toynbee Hall and
- 1:51:31Speaker 1: the People's Palace, so that it finally came about that
- 1:51:35Speaker 1: in June eighteen eighty eight, five years after my first
- 1:51:38Speaker 1: visit in East London, I found myself at Toynbee Hall,
- 1:51:41Speaker 1: equipped not only with a letter of introduction from cannon
- 1:51:44Speaker 1: Fra Mantle, but with high expectations and a certain belief
- 1:51:47Speaker 1: that whatever perplexities and discouragements concerning the life of the
- 1:51:50Speaker 1: poor were in store for me, I should at least
- 1:51:52Speaker 1: know something at first hand. And have the solace of
- 1:51:55Speaker 1: daily activity. I had confidence that, although life itself might
- 1:51:58Speaker 1: contain many difficulties, the period of mere passive receptivity had
- 1:52:02Speaker 1: come to an end, and I had at last finished
- 1:52:05Speaker 1: with the everlasting preparation for life, however ill prepared I
- 1:52:09Speaker 1: might be. It was not until years afterwards that I
- 1:52:12Speaker 1: came upon Tolstoy's phrase, the snare of preparation, which he
- 1:52:17Speaker 1: insists to be spread before the feet of young people,
- 1:52:19Speaker 1: hopelessly entangling them in a curious inactivity at the very
- 1:52:23Speaker 1: period of life when they are longing to construct the
- 1:52:25Speaker 1: world anew and to conform it to their own ideals.
- 1:52:30Speaker 1: End of Chapter four, Chapter five. First Days at Hull House.
- 1:52:37Speaker 1: The next January found Miss Starr and myself in Chicago,
- 1:52:41Speaker 1: searching for a neighborhood in which we might put our
- 1:52:44Speaker 1: plans into execution. In our eagerness to win friends for
- 1:52:48Speaker 1: the new undertaking, we utilized every opportunity to set forth
- 1:52:52Speaker 1: the meaning of the settlement as it had been embodied
- 1:52:54Speaker 1: at Toynbee Hall, Although in those days we made no
- 1:52:57Speaker 1: appeal for money, meaning to start with our own slender resources.
- 1:53:02Speaker 1: From the very first the plan received courteous attention and
- 1:53:06Speaker 1: the discussion, whoal often skeptical, was always friendly. Professor Swaying
- 1:53:11Speaker 1: wrote a commendatory column in the Evening Journal, and our
- 1:53:15Speaker 1: early speeches were reported quite out of proportion to their worth.
- 1:53:19Speaker 1: I recall a spirited evening at the home of Missus Wilmarth,
- 1:53:22Speaker 1: which was attended by that renowned scholar Thomas Davidson, and
- 1:53:26Speaker 1: by a young Englishman who was a member of the
- 1:53:29Speaker 1: then New Fabian Society, and to whom a peculiar glamor
- 1:53:33Speaker 1: was attached because he had scoured knives all summer in
- 1:53:36Speaker 1: a camp of high minded philosophers in the Adirondacks. Our
- 1:53:40Speaker 1: new little plan met with criticism, not to say disapproval,
- 1:53:44Speaker 1: from mister Davidson, who, as nearly as I can remember,
- 1:53:47Speaker 1: called it one of those unnatural attempts to understand life
- 1:53:52Speaker 1: through co operative living. It was in vain. We asserted
- 1:53:55Speaker 1: that the collective living was not an essential part of
- 1:53:58Speaker 1: the plan, that we would always scrupulously pay own expenses,
- 1:54:02Speaker 1: and that at any moment we might decide to scatter
- 1:54:04Speaker 1: through the neighborhood and to live in separate tenements. He
- 1:54:08Speaker 1: still contended that the fascination for most of those volunteering
- 1:54:11Speaker 1: residents would lie in the collective living aspect of the settlement.
- 1:54:15Speaker 1: His contention was, of course essentially sound. There is a
- 1:54:19Speaker 1: constant tendency for the residents to lose themselves in the
- 1:54:23Speaker 1: cave of their own companionship, as the Toynbee Hall phrase goes.
- 1:54:27Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it is doubtless true that
- 1:54:30Speaker 1: the very companionship, the give and take of colleagues, is
- 1:54:34Speaker 1: what tends to keep the settlement normal and in touch
- 1:54:37Speaker 1: with the world of things as they are. I am
- 1:54:40Speaker 1: happy to say that we never resented this, nor any
- 1:54:43Speaker 1: other difference of opinion, and that fifteen years later Professor
- 1:54:47Speaker 1: Davidson handsomely acknowledged that the advantages of a group far
- 1:54:51Speaker 1: outweighed the weaknesses he had early pointed out. He was
- 1:54:55Speaker 1: at that later moment sharing with the group of young
- 1:54:57Speaker 1: men on the East Side of New York his ripest
- 1:55:00Speaker 1: conclusions in philosophy, and was much touched by their intelligent
- 1:55:04Speaker 1: interest and absorbed devotion. I think that time has also
- 1:55:08Speaker 1: justified our early contention that the mere foothold of a house,
- 1:55:12Speaker 1: easily accessible, ample in space, hospitable and tolerant in spirit,
- 1:55:17Speaker 1: situated in the midst of the large foreign colonies which
- 1:55:20Speaker 1: so easily isolate themselves in American cities, would be in
- 1:55:24Speaker 1: itself a serviceable thing for Chicago. I am not so
- 1:55:28Speaker 1: sure that we succeeded in our endeavors to make social
- 1:55:31Speaker 1: intercourse express the growing sense of the economic unity of society,
- 1:55:36Speaker 1: and to add the social function to democracy. But Hull
- 1:55:39Speaker 1: House was soberly opened on the theory that the dependence of
- 1:55:42Speaker 1: classes on each other is reciprocal, and that as the
- 1:55:46Speaker 1: social relation is essentially a reciprocal relation, it gives a
- 1:55:49Speaker 1: form of expression that has peculiar value. In our search
- 1:55:54Speaker 1: for a vicinity in which to settle. We went about
- 1:55:57Speaker 1: with the officers of the Compulsory Education Department, with city missionaries,
- 1:56:01Speaker 1: and with the newspaper reporters, whom I recall as a
- 1:56:04Speaker 1: much older set of men than one ordinarily associates with
- 1:56:07Speaker 1: that profession. Or perhaps I was only sent out with
- 1:56:10Speaker 1: the older ones on what they must all have considered
- 1:56:12Speaker 1: a quixotic mission. One Sunday afternoon in the late winter,
- 1:56:17Speaker 1: a reporter took me to visit a so called anarchist
- 1:56:19Speaker 1: Sunday school, several of which were to be found on
- 1:56:22Speaker 1: the northwest side of the city. The young man in
- 1:56:25Speaker 1: charge was of the German student type, and his face
- 1:56:28Speaker 1: flushed with enthusiasm as he led the children singing one
- 1:56:31Speaker 1: of Kerner's poems. The newspaper man, who did not understand German,
- 1:56:36Speaker 1: asked me what abominable stuff they were singing, But he
- 1:56:39Speaker 1: seemed dissatisfied with my translation of the simple words, and
- 1:56:42Speaker 1: darkly intimated that they were deep ones, and had probably
- 1:56:46Speaker 1: fooled me. When I replied that Kerner was an ardent
- 1:56:50Speaker 1: German poet whose songs inspired his countrymen to resist the
- 1:56:53Speaker 1: aggressions of Napoleon, and that his bound poems were found
- 1:56:56Speaker 1: in the most respectable libraries, he looked at me rather
- 1:56:59Speaker 1: a scance, and I then and there had my first
- 1:57:02Speaker 1: intimation that to treat a Chicago man who was called
- 1:57:05Speaker 1: an anarchist as you would treat any other citizen is
- 1:57:08Speaker 1: to lay yourself open to deep suspicion. Another Sunday afternoon
- 1:57:12Speaker 1: in the early spring, on the way to a Bohemian
- 1:57:15Speaker 1: mission in the carriage of one of its founders, we
- 1:57:17Speaker 1: passed a fine old house standing well back from the street,
- 1:57:20Speaker 1: surrounded on three sides by a broad piazza, which was
- 1:57:24Speaker 1: supported by wooden pillars of exceptionally pure Corinthian design and proportion.
- 1:57:29Speaker 1: I was so attracted by the house that I set
- 1:57:31Speaker 1: forth to visit it the very next day. But though
- 1:57:34Speaker 1: I searched for it then and for several days after,
- 1:57:37Speaker 1: I could not find it, and at length I most
- 1:57:40Speaker 1: reluctantly gave up the search. Three weeks later, with the
- 1:57:43Speaker 1: advice of several of the oldest residents of Chicago, including
- 1:57:47Speaker 1: the ex mayor of the city, Colonel Mason, who had
- 1:57:50Speaker 1: from the first been a warm friend to our plans,
- 1:57:52Speaker 1: we decided upon a location somewhere near the junction of
- 1:57:55Speaker 1: Blue Island Avenue, Halsted Street, and Harrison Street. I was
- 1:58:00Speaker 1: prized and overjoyed on the very first day of our
- 1:58:02Speaker 1: search for quarters to come upon the hospitable old house,
- 1:58:06Speaker 1: the quest for which I had so recently abandoned. The
- 1:58:09Speaker 1: house was of course rented, the lower part of it
- 1:58:12Speaker 1: used for offices and store rooms in connection with a
- 1:58:14Speaker 1: factory that stood back of it. However, after some difficulties
- 1:58:18Speaker 1: were overcome, it proved to be possible to sub let
- 1:58:21Speaker 1: the second floor and what had been a large drawing
- 1:58:24Speaker 1: room on the first floor. The house had passed through
- 1:58:27Speaker 1: many changes since it had been built in eighteen fifty
- 1:58:29Speaker 1: six for the homestead of one of Chicago's pioneer citizens,
- 1:58:33Speaker 1: mister Charles J. Hull, and, though battered by its vicissitudes,
- 1:58:37Speaker 1: was essentially sound. Before it had been occupied by the factory,
- 1:58:42Speaker 1: it had sheltered a second hand furniture store, and at
- 1:58:44Speaker 1: one time the Little Sisters of the Poor had used
- 1:58:46Speaker 1: it for a home for the aged. It had a
- 1:58:49Speaker 1: half skeptical reputation for a haunted attic, so far respected
- 1:58:53Speaker 1: by the tenants living on the second floor that they
- 1:58:55Speaker 1: always kept a large pitcher full of water on the
- 1:58:57Speaker 1: attic stairs. Their explanation of this custom was so incoherent
- 1:59:02Speaker 1: that I was sure it was a survival of the
- 1:59:03Speaker 1: beliefs that a ghost could not cross running water. But
- 1:59:06Speaker 1: perhaps that interpretation was only my eagerness for finding folklore.
- 1:59:11Speaker 1: The fine old house responded kindly to repairs its wide
- 1:59:15Speaker 1: hall and open fireplace, always ensuring it a gracious aspect.
- 1:59:19Speaker 1: Its generous owner, Miss Helen Culver, in the following spring,
- 1:59:23Speaker 1: gave us a free leasehold of the entire house. Her
- 1:59:26Speaker 1: kindness has continued through the years until the group of
- 1:59:29Speaker 1: thirteen buildings, which at present comprises our equipment is built
- 1:59:33Speaker 1: largely upon land which Miss Culver has put at the
- 1:59:36Speaker 1: service of the settlement which bears mister Hall's name. In
- 1:59:39Speaker 1: those days, the house stood between an undertaking establishment and
- 1:59:43Speaker 1: a saloon, knight, death, and the devil. The three were
- 1:59:46Speaker 1: called by a Chicago wit. And yet any more heroics
- 1:59:50Speaker 1: which might be implied by the comparing of a settlement
- 1:59:52Speaker 1: to a knight quickly dropped away under the genuine kindness
- 1:59:55Speaker 1: and hearty welcome extended to us by the families living
- 1:59:58Speaker 1: up and down the street. We furnished the house as
- 2:00:01Speaker 1: we would have furnished it were it in another part
- 2:00:03Speaker 1: of the city, with the photographs and other impedimenta we
- 2:00:06Speaker 1: had collected in Europe, and with a few bits of
- 2:00:09Speaker 1: family mahogany. While all the new furniture which was bought
- 2:00:12Speaker 1: was enduring in quality, we were careful to keep it
- 2:00:14Speaker 1: in character with the fine old residence. Probably no young
- 2:00:18Speaker 1: matron ever placed her own things in her own house
- 2:00:20Speaker 1: with more pleasure than that with which we first furnished
- 2:00:23Speaker 1: Hull House. We believed that the settlement may logically bring
- 2:00:27Speaker 1: to its aid all those adjuncts which the cultivated man
- 2:00:30Speaker 1: regards as good and suggestive of the best of the
- 2:00:32Speaker 1: life of the past. On the eighteenth of September eighteen
- 2:00:36Speaker 1: eighty nine, Miss Starr and I moved into it with
- 2:00:39Speaker 1: Miss Mary Kaiser, who began performing the housework, but who
- 2:00:42Speaker 1: quickly developed into a very important factor in the life
- 2:00:45Speaker 1: of the vicinity as well as that of the household,
- 2:00:48Speaker 1: and whose death five years later was most sincerely mourned
- 2:00:51Speaker 1: by hundreds of our neighbors. In our enthusiasm over settling,
- 2:00:55Speaker 1: the first night, we forgot not only to Locke, but
- 2:00:57Speaker 1: to close a side door opening on Polke's, and we
- 2:01:00Speaker 1: were much pleased in the morning to find that we
- 2:01:02Speaker 1: possessed a fine illustration of the honesty and kindliness of
- 2:01:06Speaker 1: our new neighbors. Our first guest was an interesting young
- 2:01:10Speaker 1: woman who lived in a neighboring tenement, whose widowed mother
- 2:01:13Speaker 1: aided her in the support of the family by scrubbing
- 2:01:15Speaker 1: a downtown theater every night. The mother of English birth
- 2:01:19Speaker 1: was well bred and carefully educated, but was in the
- 2:01:22Speaker 1: midst of that bitter struggle which awaits so many strangers
- 2:01:24Speaker 1: in American cities who find that their social position tends
- 2:01:27Speaker 1: to be measured solely by the standards of living. They
- 2:01:30Speaker 1: are able to maintain. Our guest has long since married
- 2:01:33Speaker 1: the struggling young lawyer to whom she was then engaged,
- 2:01:36Speaker 1: and he is now leading his profession in an eastern city.
- 2:01:39Speaker 1: She recalls that month's experience always with a sense of
- 2:01:42Speaker 1: amusement over the fact that the succession of visitors who
- 2:01:45Speaker 1: came to see the new settlement invariably questioned her most
- 2:01:48Speaker 1: minutely concerning these people, without once suspecting that they were
- 2:01:52Speaker 1: talking to one who had been identified with the neighborhood
- 2:01:54Speaker 1: from childhood. I at least was able to draw a
- 2:01:57Speaker 1: lesson from the incident, and I never addressed to Chicago
- 2:02:00Speaker 1: audience on the subject of the settlement in its vicinity
- 2:02:03Speaker 1: without inviting a neighbor to go with me. That I
- 2:02:05Speaker 1: might curb any hasty generalization by the consciousness that I
- 2:02:09Speaker 1: had an auditor who knew the conditions more intimately than
- 2:02:11Speaker 1: I could hope to do. Halsted Street has grown so
- 2:02:15Speaker 1: familiar during twenty years of residence that it is difficult
- 2:02:18Speaker 1: to recall its gradual changes. The withdrawal of the more
- 2:02:21Speaker 1: prosperous Irish and Germans, and the slow substitution of Russian Jews, Italians,
- 2:02:27Speaker 1: and Greeks. A description of the street, such as I
- 2:02:30Speaker 1: gave in those early addresses, still stands in my mind
- 2:02:33Speaker 1: as sympathetic and correct. Halsted Street is thirty two miles
- 2:02:37Speaker 1: long and one of the great thoroughfares of Chicago. Polk
- 2:02:41Speaker 1: Street crosses it midway between the stockyards to the south
- 2:02:44Speaker 1: and the shipbuilding yards on the north branch of the
- 2:02:47Speaker 1: Chicago River. For the six miles between these two industries,
- 2:02:51Speaker 1: the street is lined with shops of butchers and grocers,
- 2:02:54Speaker 1: with dingy and gorgeous saloons and pretentious establishments for the
- 2:02:58Speaker 1: sale of ready made clothing. Polk Street, running west from
- 2:03:02Speaker 1: Halsted Street, grows rapidly more prosperous. Running a mile east
- 2:03:06Speaker 1: to State Street, it grows steadily worse and crosses a
- 2:03:09Speaker 1: network of vice on the corners of Clark Street and
- 2:03:12Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue. Hull House once stood in the suburbs, but
- 2:03:16Speaker 1: the city has steadily grown up around it, and its
- 2:03:18Speaker 1: site now has corners on three or four foreign colonies.
- 2:03:22Speaker 1: Between Halsted Street and the river live about ten thousand Italians, Neapolitans, Sicilians,
- 2:03:27Speaker 1: and Calabrians, with an occasional Lombard or Venetian. To the
- 2:03:31Speaker 1: south on Twelfth Street are many Germans, and side streets
- 2:03:35Speaker 1: are given over almost entirely to Polish and Russian Jews.
- 2:03:38Speaker 1: Still farther south, these Jewish colonies merge into a huge
- 2:03:42Speaker 1: Bohemian colony, so vast that Chicago ranks has the third
- 2:03:46Speaker 1: Bohemian city in the world. To the northwest are many
- 2:03:50Speaker 1: Canadian French Clannish in spite of their long residence in America,
- 2:03:54Speaker 1: and to the north are Irish and first generation Americans.
- 2:03:58Speaker 1: On the streets directly west and farther north are well
- 2:04:01Speaker 1: to do English speaking families, many of whom own their
- 2:04:03Speaker 1: own houses and have lived in the neighborhood for years.
- 2:04:06Speaker 1: One man is still living in his old farmhouse. The
- 2:04:10Speaker 1: policy of the public authorities of never taking an initiative
- 2:04:13Speaker 1: and always waiting to be urged to do their duty
- 2:04:16Speaker 1: is obviously fatal. In a neighborhood where there is little
- 2:04:19Speaker 1: initiative among the citizens, the idea underlying our self government
- 2:04:23Speaker 1: breaks down in such a ward. The streets are inexpressibly dirty,
- 2:04:28Speaker 1: the number of schools inadequate, sanitary legislation unenforced, the street
- 2:04:32Speaker 1: lighting bad, the paving miserable, and altogether lacking. In the
- 2:04:36Speaker 1: alleys and smaller streets, and the stables fowl. Beyond description,
- 2:04:41Speaker 1: hundreds of houses are unconnected with the street sewer. The
- 2:04:44Speaker 1: older and richer inhabitants seem anxious to move away as
- 2:04:47Speaker 1: rapidly as they can afford it. They make room for
- 2:04:50Speaker 1: newly arrived immigrants, who are densely ignorant of civic duties.
- 2:04:54Speaker 1: This substitution of the older inhabitants is accomplished industrially. Also
- 2:04:58Speaker 1: in the south and east of the ward, the Jews
- 2:05:02Speaker 1: and Italians do the finishing for the great clothing manufacturers,
- 2:05:05Speaker 1: formerly done by Americans, Irish and Germans, who refuse to
- 2:05:09Speaker 1: submit to the extremely low prices to which the sweating
- 2:05:11Speaker 1: system has reduced their successors. As the design of the
- 2:05:15Speaker 1: sweating system is the elimination of rent from the manufacture
- 2:05:18Speaker 1: of clothing, the outside work is begun after the clothing
- 2:05:21Speaker 1: leaves the cutter. An unscrupulous contractor regards no basement as
- 2:05:25Speaker 1: too dark, no stable loft too fowl, no rear shanty
- 2:05:30Speaker 1: too provisional, no tenement room too small for his work room.
- 2:05:34Speaker 1: As these conditions imply low rental. Hence these shops abound
- 2:05:38Speaker 1: in the worst of the foreign districts where the sweater
- 2:05:41Speaker 1: easily finds his cheap basement and his home finishers. The
- 2:05:45Speaker 1: houses of the ward, for the most part, wooden, were
- 2:05:48Speaker 1: originally built for one family and are now occupied by several.
- 2:05:52Speaker 1: They are after the type of the inconvenient frame cottages
- 2:05:55Speaker 1: found in the poor suburbs twenty years ago. Many of
- 2:05:58Speaker 1: them were built where they now stand. Others were brought
- 2:06:01Speaker 1: thither on rollers because their previous sites had been taken
- 2:06:05Speaker 1: by factories. The fewer brick tenement buildings, which are three
- 2:06:08Speaker 1: or four stories high, are comparatively new, and there are
- 2:06:12Speaker 1: few large tenements. The little wooden houses have a temporary aspect,
- 2:06:17Speaker 1: and for this reason perhaps the tenement house legislation in
- 2:06:20Speaker 1: Chicago is totally inadequate. Rear tenements flourish. Many houses have
- 2:06:25Speaker 1: no water supply save the faucet in the back yard.
- 2:06:28Speaker 1: There are no fire escapes. The garbage and ashes are
- 2:06:30Speaker 1: placed in wooden boxes which are fastened to the street pavements.
- 2:06:34Speaker 1: One of the most discouraging features about the present system
- 2:06:37Speaker 1: of tenement houses is that many are owned by sordid
- 2:06:40Speaker 1: and ignorant immigrants. The theory that wealth brings responsibility, that
- 2:06:44Speaker 1: possession entails at length. Education and refinement in these cases
- 2:06:49Speaker 1: fails utterly. The children of an Italian immigrant owner may
- 2:06:52Speaker 1: shine shoes in the street, and his wife may pick
- 2:06:55Speaker 1: rags from the street gutter, laboriously sorting them in a
- 2:06:58Speaker 1: dingy court. Wealth may do something for her self complacency
- 2:07:02Speaker 1: and feeling of consequence, it certainly does nothing for her
- 2:07:04Speaker 1: comfort or her children's improvement, nor for the cleanliness of
- 2:07:08Speaker 1: any one concerned. Another thing that prevents better houses in
- 2:07:11Speaker 1: Chicago is the tentative attitude of the real estate men.
- 2:07:15Speaker 1: Many unsavory conditions are allowed to continue, which would be
- 2:07:18Speaker 1: regarded with horror if they were considered permanent. Meanwhile, the
- 2:07:22Speaker 1: wretched conditions persist until at least two generations of children
- 2:07:25Speaker 1: have been born and reared in them. In every neighborhood
- 2:07:29Speaker 1: where poor people live, because rents are supposed to be cheaper,
- 2:07:33Speaker 1: there is an element which, although uncertain in the individual,
- 2:07:36Speaker 1: in the aggregate, can be counted upon. It is composed
- 2:07:40Speaker 1: of people of former education and opportunity, who have cherished
- 2:07:43Speaker 1: ambitions and prospects, but who are caricatures of what they
- 2:07:46Speaker 1: meant to be hollow ghosts which blame the living men.
- 2:07:50Speaker 1: There are times. In many lives where there is a
- 2:07:53Speaker 1: cessation of energy and loss of power, men and women
- 2:07:56Speaker 1: of education and refinement come to live in a cheaper
- 2:07:58Speaker 1: neighborhood because they lack the ability to make money, because
- 2:08:02Speaker 1: of ill health, because an unfortunate marriage, or for other
- 2:08:05Speaker 1: reasons which do not imply criminality or stupidity. Among them
- 2:08:09Speaker 1: are those who, in spite of undoward circumstances, keep up
- 2:08:12Speaker 1: some sort of an intellectual life, those who are great
- 2:08:16Speaker 1: for books, as their neighbors say. To such the settlement
- 2:08:19Speaker 1: may be a genuine refuge. In the very first weeks
- 2:08:22Speaker 1: of our residence, Miss Starr started a reading party in
- 2:08:26Speaker 1: George Eliot's Romola, which was attended by a group of
- 2:08:29Speaker 1: young women who followed the wonderful tale with unflagging interest.
- 2:08:32Speaker 1: The weekly reading was held in our little upstairs dining room,
- 2:08:35Speaker 1: and two members of the club came to dinner each week,
- 2:08:38Speaker 1: not only that they might be received as guests, but
- 2:08:41Speaker 1: that they might help us wash the dishes afterwards, and
- 2:08:44Speaker 1: so make the table ready for the stacks of Florentine photographs.
- 2:08:48Speaker 1: Our first resident, as she gaily designated herself, was a
- 2:08:51Speaker 1: charming old lady who gave five consecutive readings from Hawthorne
- 2:08:54Speaker 1: to a most appreciative audience, interspersing the magic tales most
- 2:08:58Speaker 1: delightfully with recollections of the elusive and fascinating author. Years before,
- 2:09:04Speaker 1: she had lived at Brook Farm as a pupil of
- 2:09:05Speaker 1: the Ripleys, and she came to us for ten days
- 2:09:08Speaker 1: because she wished to live once more in an atmosphere
- 2:09:11Speaker 1: where idealism ran high. We thus early found the type
- 2:09:15Speaker 1: of class which through all the years has remained most popular.
- 2:09:18Speaker 1: A combination of a social atmosphere with serious study. Volunteers
- 2:09:23Speaker 1: to the new undertaking came quickly. A charming young girl
- 2:09:26Speaker 1: conducted a kindergarten in the drawing room, coming regularly every
- 2:09:29Speaker 1: morning from her home in a distant part of the
- 2:09:31Speaker 1: north side of the city. Although a tablet to her
- 2:09:34Speaker 1: memory has stood upon a mantel, shelf and hull house
- 2:09:36Speaker 1: for five years, we still associate her most vividly with
- 2:09:39Speaker 1: the play of little children, first in her kindergarten and
- 2:09:42Speaker 1: then in her own nursery, which furnished a veritable illustration
- 2:09:46Speaker 1: of Victor Hugo's definition of heaven, a place where parents
- 2:09:49Speaker 1: are always young and children always little. Her daily presence
- 2:09:53Speaker 1: for the first two years made it quite impossible for
- 2:09:55Speaker 1: us to become too solemn and self conscious in our
- 2:09:58Speaker 1: strenuous routine. For her, mirth and buoyancy were irresistible, and
- 2:10:02Speaker 1: her eager desire to share the life of the neighborhood
- 2:10:05Speaker 1: never failed, although it was often put to a severe test.
- 2:10:09Speaker 1: One day at luncheon, she gaily recited her futile attempt
- 2:10:12Speaker 1: to impress temperance principles upon the mind of an Italian
- 2:10:14Speaker 1: mother to whom she had returned a small daughter of five,
- 2:10:17Speaker 1: sent to the kindergarten in quite a horrid state of
- 2:10:20Speaker 1: intoxication from the wine soaked bread upon which she had breakfasted.
- 2:10:24Speaker 1: The mother, with the gentle courtesy of a South Italian,
- 2:10:27Speaker 1: listened politely to her graphic portrayal of the untimely end
- 2:10:30Speaker 1: awaited so immature a wine bibber. But long before the
- 2:10:33Speaker 1: lecture was finished, quite unconscious of the incongruity, she hospitably
- 2:10:37Speaker 1: set forth her best wines, and when her baffled guest
- 2:10:41Speaker 1: refused one after the other, she disappeared, only to quickly
- 2:10:44Speaker 1: return with a small dark glass of whiskey, saying, reassuringly, see,
- 2:10:49Speaker 1: I have brought you the true American drink. The recital
- 2:10:52Speaker 1: ended in serio comic despair, with the rueful statement that
- 2:10:56Speaker 1: the impression I probably made on her darkened mind was
- 2:10:59Speaker 1: that it was the American custom to breakfast children on
- 2:11:02Speaker 1: bread soaked in whiskey instead of light Italian wine. That
- 2:11:06Speaker 1: first kindergarten was a constant source of education to us.
- 2:11:10Speaker 1: We were much surprised to find social distinctions even among
- 2:11:13Speaker 1: its lambs, although greatly amused with a neat formulation made
- 2:11:16Speaker 1: by the superior little Italian boy who refused to sit
- 2:11:19Speaker 1: beside uncouth little Angelina, because we eat our macaroni this way,
- 2:11:24Speaker 1: imitating the movement of a fork from a plate to
- 2:11:26Speaker 1: his mouth, and she eat macaroni this way, holding his
- 2:11:30Speaker 1: hand high in the air and throwing back his head
- 2:11:32Speaker 1: that his wide open mouth might receive an imaginary cascade.
- 2:11:36Speaker 1: Angelina gravely nodded her little head in approval of this
- 2:11:39Speaker 1: distinction between gentry and peasant. But isn't it astonishing that
- 2:11:43Speaker 1: merely table manners are made such a test all the
- 2:11:45Speaker 1: way along, was the comment of their democratic teacher. Another memory,
- 2:11:50Speaker 1: which refuses to be associated with death, which came to
- 2:11:52Speaker 1: her all too soon, is that of the young girl
- 2:11:54Speaker 1: who organized our first really successful club of boys, holding
- 2:11:58Speaker 1: their fascinated interest by the old chevalric tales, set forth
- 2:12:02Speaker 1: so dramatically and vividly that checkers and jackstraws were abandoned
- 2:12:06Speaker 1: by all the other clubs on Boys Day, that their
- 2:12:09Speaker 1: members might form a listening fringe to the young heroes.
- 2:12:13Speaker 1: I met a member of the latter club one day
- 2:12:15Speaker 1: as he flung himself out of the house and the
- 2:12:17Speaker 1: rage by which an emotional boy hopes to keep from
- 2:12:19Speaker 1: shedding tears. There is no use coming here any more.
- 2:12:23Speaker 1: Prince Roland is dead, he gruffly explained. As we passed.
- 2:12:27Speaker 1: We encouraged the younger boys in tournaments and dramatics of
- 2:12:30Speaker 1: all sorts, and we somewhat fatuously believed that boys who
- 2:12:33Speaker 1: were early interested in adventurers or explorers might later want
- 2:12:37Speaker 1: to know the lives of living statesmen and inventors. It
- 2:12:40Speaker 1: is needless to add that the boys quickly responded to
- 2:12:42Speaker 1: such a program, and that the only difficulty lay in
- 2:12:45Speaker 1: finding leaders who were able to carry it out. This
- 2:12:48Speaker 1: difficulty has been with us through all the years of
- 2:12:50Speaker 1: growth and development in boys clubs, until now, with its
- 2:12:54Speaker 1: five story building, its splendid equipment of shops, of recreation
- 2:12:57Speaker 1: and study rooms. That group alone successful which commands the
- 2:13:01Speaker 1: services of a resourceful and devoted leader. The dozens of
- 2:13:05Speaker 1: younger children who from the first came to Hull House
- 2:13:08Speaker 1: were organized into groups which were not quite classes and
- 2:13:11Speaker 1: not quite clubs. The value of these groups consisted almost
- 2:13:15Speaker 1: entirely in arousing a higher imagination and giving the children
- 2:13:18Speaker 1: the opportunity which they could not have had in the
- 2:13:20Speaker 1: crowded schools for initiative and for independent social relationships. The
- 2:13:25Speaker 1: public schools then contained little hand work of any sort,
- 2:13:28Speaker 1: so that naturally any instruction which we provided for the
- 2:13:31Speaker 1: children took the direction of this supplementary work. But it
- 2:13:34Speaker 1: required a constant effort that the pressure of poverty itself
- 2:13:37Speaker 1: should not defeat the educational aim. The Italian girls in
- 2:13:41Speaker 1: the sewing classes would count the day lost when they
- 2:13:43Speaker 1: could not carry home a garment, and the insistence that
- 2:13:46Speaker 1: it should be neatly made seemed a super refinement to
- 2:13:49Speaker 1: those in dire need of clothing. As these clubs have
- 2:13:52Speaker 1: being continued during the twenty years, they have developed classes
- 2:13:55Speaker 1: in the many forms of handicraft which the newer education
- 2:13:58Speaker 1: is so rapidly adapting for the delight of children. But
- 2:14:01Speaker 1: they still keep their essentially social character and still minister
- 2:14:05Speaker 1: to that large number of children who leave school the
- 2:14:07Speaker 1: very week they are fourteen years old, only too eager
- 2:14:10Speaker 1: to close the schoolroom door forever on a tiresome task
- 2:14:13Speaker 1: that is at last well over. It seems to us
- 2:14:16Speaker 1: important that these children shall find themselves permanently attached to
- 2:14:19Speaker 1: a house that offers them evening clubs and classes with
- 2:14:22Speaker 1: their old companions, that merges as easily as possible the
- 2:14:26Speaker 1: school life into the working life, and does what it
- 2:14:28Speaker 1: can to find places for the bewildered young things looking
- 2:14:31Speaker 1: for work. A large proportion of the delinquent boys brought
- 2:14:35Speaker 1: into the juvenile court in Chicago are the oldest sons
- 2:14:38Speaker 1: in large families whose wages are needed at home. The
- 2:14:42Speaker 1: grades from which many of them leave school, as the
- 2:14:44Speaker 1: records show, are piteously far from the seventh and eighth
- 2:14:47Speaker 1: where the very first introduction in manual training is given.
- 2:14:50Speaker 1: Nor have they been caught by any other abiding interest.
- 2:14:54Speaker 1: In spite of these flourishing clubs for children early established
- 2:14:57Speaker 1: at Hull House, and the fact that our first organ
- 2:15:00Speaker 1: undertaking was a kindergarten. We were very insistent that the
- 2:15:03Speaker 1: settlement should not be primarily for the children, and that
- 2:15:06Speaker 1: it was absurd to suppose that grown people would not
- 2:15:08Speaker 1: respond to opportunities for education and social life. Our enthusiastic
- 2:15:12Speaker 1: kindergartener herself demonstrated this with an old woman of ninety, who,
- 2:15:16Speaker 1: because she was left alone all day while her daughter
- 2:15:18Speaker 1: cooked in a restaurant, had formed such a persistent habit
- 2:15:21Speaker 1: of picking the plaster off the walls that one landlord
- 2:15:24Speaker 1: after another refused to have her for a tenant. It
- 2:15:27Speaker 1: required but a few weeks time to teach her to
- 2:15:29Speaker 1: make large paper chains, and gradually she was content to
- 2:15:33Speaker 1: do it all day long, and in the end to
- 2:15:35Speaker 1: quite as much pleasure in adorning the walls as she
- 2:15:38Speaker 1: had formerly taken in demolishing them. Fortunately, the landlord had
- 2:15:41Speaker 1: never heard the esthetic principle that exposure of basic construction
- 2:15:45Speaker 1: is more desirable than gaudy decoration. In course of time,
- 2:15:48Speaker 1: it was discovered that the old woman could speak Gaelic,
- 2:15:51Speaker 1: and when one or two grave professors came to see her,
- 2:15:54Speaker 1: the neighborhood was filled with pride that such a wonder
- 2:15:56Speaker 1: lived in their midst. To mitigate life for a woman
- 2:15:59Speaker 1: of ninety was an unfailing refutation of the statement that
- 2:16:02Speaker 1: the settlement was designed for the young. On our first
- 2:16:06Speaker 1: New Year's Day at Hull House, we invited the older
- 2:16:08Speaker 1: people in the vicinity, sending a carriage for the most feeble,
- 2:16:11Speaker 1: and announcing to all of them that we were going
- 2:16:13Speaker 1: to organize an old settler's party. Every New Year's days. Since,
- 2:16:18Speaker 1: older people in varying numbers have come together at Hull
- 2:16:20Speaker 1: House to relate early hardships and to take for the
- 2:16:23Speaker 1: moment the place in the community to which their pioneer
- 2:16:26Speaker 1: life entitles them. Many people who were formerly residents of
- 2:16:30Speaker 1: the vicinity, but whom prosperity has carried into more desirable neighborhoods,
- 2:16:34Speaker 1: come back to these meetings and often confess to each
- 2:16:37Speaker 1: other that they have never since found such kindness as
- 2:16:40Speaker 1: in early Chicago, when all its citizens came together in
- 2:16:43Speaker 1: mutual enterprises. Many of these pioneers, so like the men
- 2:16:47Speaker 1: and women of my earliest childhood that I always felt
- 2:16:49Speaker 1: comforted by their presence in the house, were very much
- 2:16:52Speaker 1: opposed to foreigners, whom they held responsible for a deprecation
- 2:16:55Speaker 1: of property and a general lowering of the tone of
- 2:16:58Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Sometimes we had a chance for companionship. I
- 2:17:01Speaker 1: recall one old man, fiercely American, who had reproached me
- 2:17:05Speaker 1: because we had so many foreign views on our walls,
- 2:17:08Speaker 1: to whom I endeavor to set forth our hope that
- 2:17:10Speaker 1: the pictures might afford a familiar island to the emigrants
- 2:17:13Speaker 1: in a sea of new and strange impressions. The old
- 2:17:16Speaker 1: settler guest taken off his guard, replied, I see they
- 2:17:21Speaker 1: feel as we did when we saw a Yankee notion
- 2:17:23Speaker 1: from down east, thereby formulating the dim kinship between the
- 2:17:26Speaker 1: pioneer and the immigrant, both buffeting the waves of a
- 2:17:30Speaker 1: new development. The older settlers, as well as their children,
- 2:17:33Speaker 1: throughout the years, have given genuine help to our various
- 2:17:36Speaker 1: enterprises for neighborhood improvement, and from their own memories of
- 2:17:39Speaker 1: early hardships, have made many shrewd suggestions for alleviating the
- 2:17:42Speaker 1: difficulties of that first sharp struggle with untoward conditions. In
- 2:17:47Speaker 1: those early days, we were often asked why we had
- 2:17:49Speaker 1: come to live on Halsted Street when we could afford
- 2:17:52Speaker 1: to live somewhere else. I remember one man who used
- 2:17:55Speaker 1: to shake his head and say it was the strangest
- 2:17:57Speaker 1: thing he had met in his experience, but who was
- 2:17:59Speaker 1: finally convinced that it was not strange but natural. In time,
- 2:18:03Speaker 1: it came to seem natural to all of us that
- 2:18:05Speaker 1: the settlement should be there. If it is natural to
- 2:18:08Speaker 1: feed the hungry and care for the sick, it is
- 2:18:11Speaker 1: certainly natural to give pleasure to the young, comfort to
- 2:18:14Speaker 1: the aged, and to minister to the deep seated craving
- 2:18:16Speaker 1: for social intercourse that all men feel. Whoever does it
- 2:18:20Speaker 1: is rewarded by something which, if not gratitude, is at
- 2:18:24Speaker 1: least spontaneous and vital, and lacks that irksome sense of
- 2:18:27Speaker 1: obligation with which a substantial benefit is all too often acknowledged.
- 2:18:33Speaker 1: In addition to the neighbors who responded to the receptions
- 2:18:35Speaker 1: and classes, we found those who were too battered and
- 2:18:38Speaker 1: oppressed to care for them. To these, however, was left
- 2:18:41Speaker 1: that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises
- 2:18:44Speaker 1: such offices into a bond of fellowship. From the first
- 2:18:48Speaker 1: it seemed understood that we were ready to perform the
- 2:18:50Speaker 1: humblest neighborhood services. We were asked to wash the newborn
- 2:18:54Speaker 1: babies and to prepare the dead for burial, to nurse
- 2:18:57Speaker 1: the sick, and to mind the children. Accasionally, these neighborly
- 2:19:01Speaker 1: offices unexpectedly uncovered ugly human traits. For six weeks after
- 2:19:05Speaker 1: an operation, we kept in one of our three bedrooms
- 2:19:08Speaker 1: a forlorn little baby, who, because he was born with
- 2:19:10Speaker 1: a cleft palate, was most unwelcome even to his mother,
- 2:19:14Speaker 1: and we were horrified when he died of neglect a
- 2:19:16Speaker 1: week after he was returned to his home. A little
- 2:19:18Speaker 1: Italian bride of fifteen sought shelter with us one November
- 2:19:22Speaker 1: evening to escape her husband, who had beaten her every
- 2:19:25Speaker 1: night for a week when he returned home from work
- 2:19:27Speaker 1: because she had lost her wedding ring. Two of us
- 2:19:30Speaker 1: officiated quite alone at the birth of an illegitimate child,
- 2:19:33Speaker 1: because the doctor was late in arriving and none of
- 2:19:35Speaker 1: the honest Irish matrons would touch the likes of her.
- 2:19:39Speaker 1: We ministered at the death bed of a young man who,
- 2:19:42Speaker 1: during a long illness of tuberculosis, had received so many
- 2:19:45Speaker 1: bottles of whiskey through the mistaken kindness of his friends,
- 2:19:48Speaker 1: that the cumulative effect produced wild periods of exultation, in
- 2:19:52Speaker 1: one of which he died. We were all so early
- 2:19:55Speaker 1: impressed with the curious isolation of many the emigrants. An
- 2:19:59Speaker 1: Italian woman once expressed her pleasure in the red roses
- 2:20:01Speaker 1: that she sow at one of our receptions, in surprise
- 2:20:04Speaker 1: that they had been brought so fresh all the way
- 2:20:06Speaker 1: from Italy. She would not believe for an instant that
- 2:20:08Speaker 1: they had been grown in America. She said that she
- 2:20:11Speaker 1: had lived in Chicago for six years and had never
- 2:20:13Speaker 1: seen any roses, whereas in Italy she had seen them
- 2:20:16Speaker 1: every summer in great profusion. During all that time. Of course,
- 2:20:20Speaker 1: the woman had lived within ten blocks of a florist's window.
- 2:20:23Speaker 1: She had not been more than a five cent car
- 2:20:25Speaker 1: ride away from the public parks, But she had never
- 2:20:27Speaker 1: dreamed of faring forth for herself, and no one had
- 2:20:30Speaker 1: taken her. Her conception of America had been the untidy
- 2:20:34Speaker 1: street in which she lived, and had made her long
- 2:20:36Speaker 1: struggle to adapt herself to American ways. But in spite
- 2:20:40Speaker 1: of some untoward experiences we were constantly impressed with a
- 2:20:44Speaker 1: uniform kindness and courtesy we received. Perhaps these first days
- 2:20:49Speaker 1: lay the simple human foundations which are certainly essential for
- 2:20:52Speaker 1: continuous living among the poor. First, genuine preference for residence
- 2:20:56Speaker 1: in an industrial quarter to any other part of the
- 2:20:58Speaker 1: city because it is interesting and makes the human appeal.
- 2:21:02Speaker 1: Then the second the conviction, in the words of Canon Barnet,
- 2:21:06Speaker 1: that the things that make men alike are finer and
- 2:21:08Speaker 1: better than the things that keep them apart, and that
- 2:21:11Speaker 1: these basic likenesses, if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend
- 2:21:16Speaker 1: the less essential differences of race, language, creed, and tradition.
- 2:21:21Speaker 1: Perhaps even in those first days, we made a beginning
- 2:21:24Speaker 1: toward that object, which was afterwards stated in our charter,
- 2:21:28Speaker 1: to provide a center for higher civic and social life,
- 2:21:31Speaker 1: to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to
- 2:21:36Speaker 1: investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.
- 2:21:42Speaker 1: End of Chapter five.
- 2:21:44Speaker 3: Chapter six, subjective Necessity for social Settlements. The Ethical Culture
- 2:21:52Speaker 3: Societies held the Summer School at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in eighteen
- 2:21:56Speaker 3: ninety two, to which they invited several people resenting the
- 2:22:00Speaker 3: then new settlement movement that they might discuss with others
- 2:22:04Speaker 3: the general theme of philanthropy and social progress. I venture
- 2:22:09Speaker 3: to produce here parts of a lecture I delivered in Plymouth,
- 2:22:13Speaker 3: both because I have found it impossible to formulate with
- 2:22:16Speaker 3: the same freshness those early motives and strivings, and because,
- 2:22:20Speaker 3: when published with other papers given that summer, it was
- 2:22:24Speaker 3: received by the settlement people themselves as a satisfactory statement.
- 2:22:29Speaker 3: I remember one golden summer afternoon, during the sessions of
- 2:22:32Speaker 3: the Summer School, that several of us met on the
- 2:22:35Speaker 3: shores of a pond in a pine wood, a few
- 2:22:37Speaker 3: miles from Plymouth to discuss our new movement. The natural
- 2:22:41Speaker 3: leader of the group was Robert A. Woods. He had
- 2:22:44Speaker 3: recently returned from a residence in Toynbee Hall, London to
- 2:22:48Speaker 3: open Andover House in Boston, and had just issued a
- 2:22:51Speaker 3: book English Social Movements, in which he had gathered together
- 2:22:56Speaker 3: and focused the many forms of social endeavor proceeding and
- 2:22:59Speaker 3: cont temporaneous with the English settlements. There were Miss Vida D.
- 2:23:04Speaker 3: Scudder and Miss Helena Dudley from the College Settlement Association,
- 2:23:09Speaker 3: Miss Julius C. Lathrop, and myself from Hull House. Some
- 2:23:13Speaker 3: of us had numbered our years as far as thirty,
- 2:23:16Speaker 3: and we all carefully avoided the extravagance of statement which
- 2:23:20Speaker 3: characterizes youth. And yet I doubt if anywhere on the
- 2:23:23Speaker 3: continent that summer could have been found a group of
- 2:23:26Speaker 3: people more genuinely interested in social development, or more sincerely
- 2:23:31Speaker 3: convinced that they had found a clue by which the
- 2:23:34Speaker 3: conditions in crowded cities might be understood and the agencies
- 2:23:39Speaker 3: for social betterment developed. We were all careful to avoid
- 2:23:43Speaker 3: saying that we had found a life work, perhaps with
- 2:23:46Speaker 3: an instinctive dread of expending all our energy in vows
- 2:23:50Speaker 3: of constancy, as so often happens. And yet it is
- 2:23:54Speaker 3: interesting to note that all the people whom I have
- 2:23:57Speaker 3: recalled as the enthusiasts at that little conference have remained
- 2:24:00Speaker 3: attached to settlements in actual residence for longer or shorter
- 2:24:04Speaker 3: periods each year during the eighteen years that have elapsed
- 2:24:08Speaker 3: since then, although they have also been closely identified as
- 2:24:12Speaker 3: publicists or governmental officials with movements outside. It is as
- 2:24:17Speaker 3: if they had discovered that the settlement was too valuable
- 2:24:20Speaker 3: as a method as a way of approach to the
- 2:24:23Speaker 3: social question to be abandoned, although they had long since
- 2:24:27Speaker 3: discovered that it was not a social movement in itself. This, however,
- 2:24:31Speaker 3: is anticipating the future, whereas the following paper on the
- 2:24:35Speaker 3: subjective necessity for social settlements should have a chance to
- 2:24:39Speaker 3: speak for itself. It is perhaps too late in the
- 2:24:42Speaker 3: day to express regret for its stilted title. This paper
- 2:24:47Speaker 3: is an attempt to analyze the motives which underlie a
- 2:24:50Speaker 3: movement based not only upon conviction, but upon genuine emotion.
- 2:24:54Speaker 3: Wherever educated young people are seeking an outlet for that
- 2:24:58Speaker 3: sentiment for universal brotherhood, which the best spirit of our
- 2:25:02Speaker 3: times is forcing from an emotion into a motive. These
- 2:25:06Speaker 3: young people accomplish little towards the solution of this social problem,
- 2:25:10Speaker 3: and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, over
- 2:25:14Speaker 3: sensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common
- 2:25:17Speaker 3: labor by which they live, which is a great source
- 2:25:20Speaker 3: of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want
- 2:25:23Speaker 3: of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack
- 2:25:27Speaker 3: of coordination between thought and action. I think it is
- 2:25:31Speaker 3: hard for us to realize how seriously many of them
- 2:25:34Speaker 3: are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly
- 2:25:38Speaker 3: they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal.
- 2:25:43Speaker 3: These young men and women longing to socialize their democracy
- 2:25:48Speaker 3: are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated,
- 2:25:53Speaker 3: that if in a democratic country, nothing can be permanently achieved.
- 2:25:57Speaker 3: Save through the masses of the people, it will be
- 2:26:00Speaker 3: impossible to establish a higher political life than the people
- 2:26:04Speaker 3: themselves crave that it is difficult to see how the
- 2:26:09Speaker 3: notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save
- 2:26:12Speaker 3: through common intercourse. That the blessings which we associate with
- 2:26:17Speaker 3: a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal,
- 2:26:21Speaker 3: and must be made universal if they are to be permanent.
- 2:26:25Speaker 3: That the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain,
- 2:26:29Speaker 3: is floating in mid air until it is secured for
- 2:26:32Speaker 3: all of us and incorporated into our common life. It
- 2:26:36Speaker 3: is easier to state these hopes than to formulate the
- 2:26:39Speaker 3: lines of motives which I believe to constitute the trend
- 2:26:42Speaker 3: of the subjective pressure towards the settlement. There is something
- 2:26:46Speaker 3: primordial about these motives, but I am perhaps overbold in
- 2:26:50Speaker 3: designating them as a great desire to share the race life.
- 2:26:55Speaker 3: We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for
- 2:26:59Speaker 3: so long made up the life of the race. Our
- 2:27:02Speaker 3: very organism holds memories and glimpses of that long life
- 2:27:06Speaker 3: of our ancestors, which still goes on among so many
- 2:27:10Speaker 3: of our contemporaries. Nothing so deadens the sympathies and shrivels
- 2:27:15Speaker 3: the power of enjoyment as the persistent keeping away from
- 2:27:19Speaker 3: the great opportunities for helpfulness, and a continually ignoring of
- 2:27:23Speaker 3: the starvation struggle which makes up the life of at
- 2:27:27Speaker 3: least half the race. To shut oneself away from that
- 2:27:30Speaker 3: half of the race life is to shut oneself away
- 2:27:33Speaker 3: from the most vital part of it. It is to
- 2:27:36Speaker 3: live out but half the humanity to which we have
- 2:27:38Speaker 3: been born heir, and to use but half our faculties.
- 2:27:42Speaker 3: We have all had longings for a fuller life, which
- 2:27:45Speaker 3: should include the use of these faculties. These longings are
- 2:27:49Speaker 3: the physical complement of the intimations of immortality, on which
- 2:27:53Speaker 3: no ode has yet been written to portray. These would
- 2:27:58Speaker 3: be the work of a poet, and it is hazard
- 2:28:00Speaker 3: for any but a poet to attempt it. And you
- 2:28:03Speaker 3: may remember the forlorn feeling which occasionally seizes you when
- 2:28:07Speaker 3: you arrive early in the morning a stranger in a
- 2:28:10Speaker 3: great city. The stream of laboring people goes past you.
- 2:28:14Speaker 3: As you gaze through the plate glass window of your hotel,
- 2:28:17Speaker 3: you see hard working men lifting great burdens. You hear
- 2:28:20Speaker 3: the driving and jostling of huge carts, and your heart
- 2:28:23Speaker 3: sinks with a sudden sense of futility. The door opens
- 2:28:27Speaker 3: behind you, and you turn to the man who brings
- 2:28:29Speaker 3: you in your breakfast with a quick sense of human fellowship.
- 2:28:33Speaker 3: You find yourself praying that you may never lose your
- 2:28:36Speaker 3: hold on it all. A more poetic prayer would be
- 2:28:39Speaker 3: that the great mother breasts of our common humanity, with
- 2:28:42Speaker 3: its labor and suffering and its homely comforts, may never
- 2:28:46Speaker 3: be withheld from you. You turn helplessly to the waiter
- 2:28:50Speaker 3: and feel that it would be almost grotesque to claim
- 2:28:53Speaker 3: from him the sympathy you crave, because civilization has placed
- 2:28:57Speaker 3: you apart. But you resent your position with a sudden
- 2:29:01Speaker 3: sense of snobbery. Literature is full of portrayals of these glimpses.
- 2:29:06Speaker 3: They come to shipwrecked men on rafts, They overcome the
- 2:29:10Speaker 3: differences of an incongruous multitude when in the presence of
- 2:29:14Speaker 3: a great danger, or when moved by a common enthusiasm.
- 2:29:18Speaker 3: They are, not, however, confined to such moments, and if
- 2:29:21Speaker 3: we were in the habit of telling them to each other,
- 2:29:24Speaker 3: the recital would be as long as the tales of
- 2:29:26Speaker 3: children are. When they sit down on the green grass
- 2:29:29Speaker 3: and confide to each other how many times they have
- 2:29:32Speaker 3: remembered that they lived once before. If these childish tales
- 2:29:36Speaker 3: are the stirring of inherited impressions, just so surely is
- 2:29:40Speaker 3: the other the striving of inherited powers. It is true
- 2:29:43Speaker 3: that there is nothing after disease, indigence, and a sense
- 2:29:47Speaker 3: of guilt so fatal to health and to life itself
- 2:29:50Speaker 3: as the want of a proper outlet for active faculties.
- 2:29:54Speaker 3: I have seen young girls suffer and grow sensibly lowered
- 2:29:57Speaker 3: in vitality in the first years after they leave school.
- 2:30:01Speaker 3: In our attempt then to give a girl pleasure and
- 2:30:03Speaker 3: freedom from care, we succeed, for the most part in
- 2:30:06Speaker 3: making her pitifully miserable. She finds life so different from
- 2:30:12Speaker 3: what she expected it to be. She is besotted with
- 2:30:15Speaker 3: innocent little ambitions, and does not understand this disparent waste
- 2:30:19Speaker 3: of herself, this elaborate preparation. If no work is provided
- 2:30:23Speaker 3: for her. There is a heritage of noble obligation which
- 2:30:27Speaker 3: young people accept and long to perpetuate. The desire for action,
- 2:30:32Speaker 3: the wish to right wrong and alleviate suffering, haunts them daily.
- 2:30:36Speaker 3: Society smiles at it indulgently, instead of making it of
- 2:30:40Speaker 3: value to itself. The wrong to them begins even farther back.
- 2:30:44Speaker 3: When we restrain the first childish desires for doing good
- 2:30:48Speaker 3: and tell them that they must wait until they are
- 2:30:50Speaker 3: older and better fitted. We intimate that social obligation begins
- 2:30:55Speaker 3: at a fixed date, forgetting that it begins at birth itself.
- 2:30:59Speaker 3: We treat them as children who, with strong growing limbs,
- 2:31:03Speaker 3: are allowed to use their legs but not their arms,
- 2:31:06Speaker 3: or whose legs are daily carefully exercised that after a
- 2:31:09Speaker 3: while their arms may be put to high use. We
- 2:31:13Speaker 3: do this in spite of the protest of the best
- 2:31:15Speaker 3: educators Locke and Pestilosi. We are fortunate in the meantime
- 2:31:21Speaker 3: if their unused members do not weaken and disappear. They do.
- 2:31:25Speaker 3: Sometimes there are a few girls who, by the time
- 2:31:28Speaker 3: they are educated, forget their old childish desires to help
- 2:31:32Speaker 3: the world and to play with poor little girls who
- 2:31:34Speaker 3: haven't playthings. Parents are often inconsistent. They deliberately expose their
- 2:31:40Speaker 3: daughters to knowledge of distress in the world. They send
- 2:31:43Speaker 3: them to hear missionary addresses on famines in India and China.
- 2:31:47Speaker 3: They accompany them to lectures on the suffering in Siberia.
- 2:31:50Speaker 3: They agitate together over the forgotten region of East London.
- 2:31:55Speaker 3: In addition to this, from babyhood, the altruistic tendencies of
- 2:31:59Speaker 3: these daughters are persistently cultivated. They are taught to be
- 2:32:03Speaker 3: self forgetting and self sacrificing, to consider the good of
- 2:32:07Speaker 3: the whole before the good of the ego. But when
- 2:32:10Speaker 3: all this information and culture show results, when the daughter
- 2:32:13Speaker 3: comes back from college and begins to recognize her social
- 2:32:17Speaker 3: claim to the submerged tenth and to evince a disposition
- 2:32:21Speaker 3: to fulfill it, the family claim is strenuously asserted. She
- 2:32:25Speaker 3: is told that she is unjustified ill advised in her efforts.
- 2:32:29Speaker 3: If she persists, the family too often are injured and unhappy,
- 2:32:34Speaker 3: unless the efforts are called missionary and the religious zeal
- 2:32:37Speaker 3: of the family carry them over their sense of abuse.
- 2:32:41Speaker 3: When this zeal does not exist, the result is perplexing.
- 2:32:46Speaker 3: It is a curious violation of what we would fain
- 2:32:49Speaker 3: believe a fundamental law that the final return of the
- 2:32:52Speaker 3: deed is upon the head of the doer. The deed
- 2:32:55Speaker 3: is that of exclusiveness and caution. But the return and
- 2:32:59Speaker 3: stead jet of falling upon the head of the exclusive
- 2:33:02Speaker 3: and cautious falls upon a young head full of generous
- 2:33:06Speaker 3: and unselfish plans. The girl loses something vital out of
- 2:33:11Speaker 3: her life to which she is entitled. She is restricted
- 2:33:15Speaker 3: and unhappy. Her elders, meanwhile, are unconscious of the situation,
- 2:33:20Speaker 3: and we have all the elements of a tragedy. We
- 2:33:23Speaker 3: have in America a fast growing number of cultivated young
- 2:33:26Speaker 3: people who have no recognized outlet for their active faculties.
- 2:33:30Speaker 3: They hear constantly of the great social maladjustment, but no
- 2:33:34Speaker 3: way is provided for them to change it, and their
- 2:33:37Speaker 3: uselessness hangs about them heavily. Huxley declares that the sense
- 2:33:42Speaker 3: of uselessness is the severest shock which the human system
- 2:33:46Speaker 3: can sustain, and that if persistently sustained, it results in
- 2:33:50Speaker 3: atrophy of function. These young people have had advantages of college,
- 2:33:55Speaker 3: of European travel, and of economic study, but they are
- 2:33:59Speaker 3: sustaining this shock of inaction. They have pet phrases, and
- 2:34:03Speaker 3: they tell you that the things that make us all
- 2:34:05Speaker 3: alike are stronger than the things that make us different.
- 2:34:08Speaker 3: They say that all men are united by needs and sympathies,
- 2:34:12Speaker 3: far more permanent and radical than anything that temporarily divides
- 2:34:15Speaker 3: them and sets them in opposition to each other if
- 2:34:19Speaker 3: they affect art. They say that the decay in artistic
- 2:34:22Speaker 3: expression is due to the decay and ethics, that art
- 2:34:26Speaker 3: one shut away from the human interests and from the
- 2:34:28Speaker 3: great mass of humanity, is self destructive. They tell their elders,
- 2:34:33Speaker 3: with all the bitterness of youth, that if they expect
- 2:34:36Speaker 3: success from them in business or politics, or in whatever
- 2:34:39Speaker 3: lines their ambition for them has run, they must let
- 2:34:42Speaker 3: them consult all of humanity, That they must let them
- 2:34:45Speaker 3: find out what the people want and how they want it.
- 2:34:49Speaker 3: It is only the stronger young people, however, who formulate this.
- 2:34:53Speaker 3: Many of them dissipate their energies in so called enjoyment. Others,
- 2:34:58Speaker 3: not content with that, go on study and go back
- 2:35:00Speaker 3: to college for their second degrees. Not that they are
- 2:35:03Speaker 3: especially fond of study, but because they want something definite
- 2:35:07Speaker 3: to do, and their powers have been trained in the
- 2:35:09Speaker 3: direction of mental accumulation. Many are buried beneath this mental accumulation,
- 2:35:14Speaker 3: with lowered vitality and discontent. Walter Besant says they have
- 2:35:19Speaker 3: the vision that Peter had when he saw the great
- 2:35:22Speaker 3: sheet let down from heaven, wherein was neither clean nor unclean.
- 2:35:26Speaker 3: He calls it the sense of humanity. It is not
- 2:35:30Speaker 3: philanthropy nor benevolence, but a thing fuller and wider than
- 2:35:34Speaker 3: either of these. This young life, so sincere in its
- 2:35:38Speaker 3: emotion and good phrases, and yet so undirected, seems to
- 2:35:42Speaker 3: me as pitiful as the other great mass of destitute lives.
- 2:35:47Speaker 3: One is supplementary to the other, and some method of
- 2:35:50Speaker 3: communication can surely be devised. Mister Barnett, who urged the
- 2:35:55Speaker 3: first settlement, Toynbee Hall in East London, recognized this need
- 2:35:59Speaker 3: of outlet for the young men of Oxford and Cambridge,
- 2:36:02Speaker 3: and hoped that the settlement would supply the communication. It
- 2:36:07Speaker 3: is easy to see why the settlement movement originated in England,
- 2:36:11Speaker 3: where the years of education are more constrained and definite
- 2:36:14Speaker 3: than they are here, where class distinctions are more rigid.
- 2:36:18Speaker 3: The necessity of it was greater there. But we are
- 2:36:21Speaker 3: fast feeling the pressure of the need and meeting the
- 2:36:24Speaker 3: necessity for settlements in America. Our young people feel nervously
- 2:36:28Speaker 3: the need of putting theory into action, and respond quickly
- 2:36:32Speaker 3: to the settlement form of activity. Other motives which I
- 2:36:36Speaker 3: believe make toward the settlement are the result of a
- 2:36:39Speaker 3: certain renaissance going forward in Christianity. The impulse to share
- 2:36:43Speaker 3: the lives of the poor, the desire to make social service,
- 2:36:46Speaker 3: irrespective of propaganda express the spirit of Christ is as
- 2:36:51Speaker 3: old as Christianity itself. We have no proof from the
- 2:36:55Speaker 3: records themselves that the early Roman Christians, who strain their
- 2:36:58Speaker 3: simple art to the point of growth testeness in their
- 2:37:01Speaker 3: eagerness to record a good news on the walls of
- 2:37:04Speaker 3: the catacombs, considered this good news a religion. Jesus had
- 2:37:08Speaker 3: no set of truths labeled religious. On the contrary, his
- 2:37:12Speaker 3: doctrine was that all truth is one, that the appropriation
- 2:37:16Speaker 3: of it is freedom. His teaching had no dogma to
- 2:37:19Speaker 3: mark it off from truth and action in general. He
- 2:37:23Speaker 3: himself called it a revelation a life. These early Roman
- 2:37:27Speaker 3: Christians received the Gospel message a command to love all
- 2:37:30Speaker 3: men with a certain joyous simplicity. The image of the
- 2:37:34Speaker 3: good Shepherd is blithe and gay, beyond the gentlest shepherd
- 2:37:37Speaker 3: of Greek mythology. The heart no longer pants, but rushes
- 2:37:41Speaker 3: to the water brooks. The Christians looked for the continuous revelation,
- 2:37:46Speaker 3: but believed what Jesus said that this revelation, to be
- 2:37:50Speaker 3: retained and made manifest, must be put into terms of action.
- 2:37:54Speaker 3: That action is the only medium man has for receiving
- 2:37:57Speaker 3: and appropriating truth. That the doctrine must be known through
- 2:38:00Speaker 3: the will. That Christianity has to be revealed and embodied
- 2:38:05Speaker 3: in the line of social progress. Is a corollary to
- 2:38:08Speaker 3: the simple proposition that man's action is found in his
- 2:38:12Speaker 3: social relationships, in the way in which he connects with
- 2:38:15Speaker 3: his fellows, that his motives for action are the zeal
- 2:38:19Speaker 3: and affection with which he regards as fellows. By this
- 2:38:23Speaker 3: simple process was created a deep enthusiasm for humanity, which
- 2:38:28Speaker 3: regarded man as at once the organ and the object
- 2:38:31Speaker 3: of revelation. And by this process came about the wonderful fellowship,
- 2:38:36Speaker 3: the true democracy of the early Church that so captivates
- 2:38:39Speaker 3: the imagination. The early Christians were pre eminently non resistant.
- 2:38:44Speaker 3: They believed in love as a cosmic force. There was
- 2:38:48Speaker 3: no iconoclasm during the minor peace of the Church. They
- 2:38:51Speaker 3: did not yet denounce, nor tear down temples, nor preach
- 2:38:54Speaker 3: the end of the world. They grew to a mighty number,
- 2:38:58Speaker 3: but it never occurred to them either in theirs. Their
- 2:39:00Speaker 3: weakness or in their strength to regard other men for
- 2:39:03Speaker 3: an instant as their foes or as aliens. The spectacle
- 2:39:07Speaker 3: of the Christians loving all men was the most astounding
- 2:39:10Speaker 3: Rome had ever seen. They were eager to sacrifice themselves
- 2:39:14Speaker 3: for the weak, for children, and for the aged. They
- 2:39:17Speaker 3: identified themselves with slaves, and did not avoid the plague.
- 2:39:21Speaker 3: They longed to share the common lot that they might
- 2:39:24Speaker 3: receive the constant revelation. It was a new treasure which
- 2:39:28Speaker 3: the early Christians added to the sum of all treasures,
- 2:39:32Speaker 3: a joy hitherto unknown in the world, the joy of
- 2:39:35Speaker 3: finding the Christ, which lieth in each man, but which
- 2:39:38Speaker 3: no man can unfold save in fellowship. A happiness ranging
- 2:39:43Speaker 3: from the heroic to the pastoral, enveloped them. They were
- 2:39:47Speaker 3: to possess a revelation as long as life had new meaning,
- 2:39:50Speaker 3: to unfold, new action to propose. I believe that there
- 2:39:55Speaker 3: is a distinct turning among many young men and women
- 2:39:58Speaker 3: towards this simple acceptance of Christ's message. They resent the
- 2:40:02Speaker 3: assumption that Christianity is a set of ideas which belong
- 2:40:05Speaker 3: to the religious consciousness, whatever that may be. They insist
- 2:40:10Speaker 3: that it cannot be proclaimed and instituted apart from the
- 2:40:13Speaker 3: social life of the community, and that it must seek
- 2:40:16Speaker 3: a simple and natural expression in the social organism itself.
- 2:40:21Speaker 3: The settlement movement is only one manifestation of that wider
- 2:40:25Speaker 3: humanitarian movement which throughout Christendom, but pre eminently in England,
- 2:40:30Speaker 3: is endeavoring to embody itself, not in a sect, but
- 2:40:33Speaker 3: in society itself. I believe that this turning, this renaissance
- 2:40:38Speaker 3: of the early Christian humanitarianism, is going on in America,
- 2:40:42Speaker 3: in Chicago, if you please, without leaders who write or
- 2:40:46Speaker 3: philosophize without much speaking, but with a bent to express
- 2:40:50Speaker 3: in social service and in terms of action the spirit
- 2:40:54Speaker 3: of Christ. Certain it is that spiritual force is found
- 2:40:58Speaker 3: in the settlement movement, and it is also true that
- 2:41:02Speaker 3: this force must be evoked and must be called into play.
- 2:41:05Speaker 3: Before the success of any settlement is assured. There must
- 2:41:10Speaker 3: be the overmastering belief that all that is noblest in
- 2:41:13Speaker 3: life is common to men as men, in order to
- 2:41:16Speaker 3: accentuate the likenesses and ignore the differences which are found
- 2:41:20Speaker 3: among the people whom the settlement constantly brings into juxtaposition.
- 2:41:25Speaker 3: It may be true, as the positivists insist that the
- 2:41:29Speaker 3: very religious fervor of man can be turned into love
- 2:41:32Speaker 3: for his race, and his desire for a future life
- 2:41:35Speaker 3: into content to live in the echo of his deeds.
- 2:41:39Speaker 3: Paul's formula of seeking for the Christ which lieth in
- 2:41:42Speaker 3: each man, and founding our likenesses on him seems a
- 2:41:46Speaker 3: simpler formula to many of us. In a thousand voices
- 2:41:50Speaker 3: singing the Allelujah Chorus and handles Messiah, it is possible
- 2:41:54Speaker 3: to distinguish the leading voices, but the differences of training
- 2:41:57Speaker 3: and cultivation between them and the voice voices in the
- 2:42:00Speaker 3: chorus are lost in the unity of purpose, and in
- 2:42:03Speaker 3: the fact that they are all human voices lifted by
- 2:42:06Speaker 3: a high motive. This is a weak illustration of what
- 2:42:09Speaker 3: a settlement attempts to do. It aims in a measure
- 2:42:13Speaker 3: to develop whatever of social life its neighborhood may afford,
- 2:42:17Speaker 3: to focus and give form to that life, to bring
- 2:42:20Speaker 3: to bear upon it the results of cultivation and training.
- 2:42:24Speaker 3: But it receives an exchange for the music of isolated
- 2:42:27Speaker 3: voices the volume and strength of the chorus. It is
- 2:42:30Speaker 3: quite impossible for me to say in what proportion or
- 2:42:33Speaker 3: degree the subjective necessity which led to the opening of
- 2:42:37Speaker 3: Hull House combined the three trends, first the desire to
- 2:42:41Speaker 3: interpret democracy in social terms, secondly the impulse beating at
- 2:42:47Speaker 3: the very source of our lives, urging us to aid
- 2:42:50Speaker 3: in the race progress, and thirdly the Christian movement toward humanitarianism.
- 2:42:56Speaker 3: It is difficult to analyze a living thing. The analysis
- 2:43:00Speaker 3: is at best imperfect. Many more motives may blend with
- 2:43:03Speaker 3: the three trends, Possibly the desire for a new form
- 2:43:06Speaker 3: of social success due to the nicety of imagination, which
- 2:43:11Speaker 3: refuses worldly pleasures unmixed with the joys of self sacrifice.
- 2:43:15Speaker 3: Possibly a love of approbation so vast that it is
- 2:43:19Speaker 3: not content with the trouble clapping of delicate hands, but
- 2:43:22Speaker 3: wishes also to hear the base notes from the toughened
- 2:43:25Speaker 3: palms may mingle with these. The settlement, then, is an
- 2:43:29Speaker 3: experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social
- 2:43:32Speaker 3: and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions
- 2:43:36Speaker 3: of life in a great city. It insists that these
- 2:43:39Speaker 3: problems are not confined to any one portion of a city.
- 2:43:43Speaker 3: It is an attempt to relieve at the same time
- 2:43:46Speaker 3: the over accumulation at one end of society and the
- 2:43:49Speaker 3: destitution at the other, but it assumes that this over
- 2:43:53Speaker 3: accumulation and destitution is most sorely felt in the things
- 2:43:57Speaker 3: that pertain to social and educational privileges. From its very nature,
- 2:44:03Speaker 3: it can stand for no political or social propaganda. It must,
- 2:44:07Speaker 3: in a sense give the warm welcome of an inn
- 2:44:10Speaker 3: to all such propaganda, if perchance one of them be
- 2:44:14Speaker 3: found an angel. The only thing to be dreaded in
- 2:44:17Speaker 3: the settlement is that it lose its flexibility, its power
- 2:44:21Speaker 3: of quick adaptation, its readiness to change its methods as
- 2:44:26Speaker 3: its environment may demand. It must be open to conviction,
- 2:44:30Speaker 3: and must have a deep and abiding sense of tolerance.
- 2:44:33Speaker 3: It must be hospitable and ready for experiment. It should
- 2:44:37Speaker 3: demand from its residents a scientific patience in the accumulation
- 2:44:41Speaker 3: of facts, and the steady holding of their sympathies as
- 2:44:45Speaker 3: one of the best instruments for that accumulation. It must
- 2:44:49Speaker 3: be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the
- 2:44:52Speaker 3: solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not
- 2:44:56Speaker 3: waver when the race happens to be represented by a
- 2:44:59Speaker 3: drunken woman or an idiot boy. Its residence must be
- 2:45:03Speaker 3: emptied of all conceit, of opinion and all self assertion,
- 2:45:07Speaker 3: and ready to arouse and interpret the public opinion of
- 2:45:10Speaker 3: their neighborhood. They must be content to live quietly side
- 2:45:14Speaker 3: by side with their neighbors until they grow into a
- 2:45:17Speaker 3: sense of relationship and mutual interests. Their neighbors are held
- 2:45:21Speaker 3: apart by differences of race and language, which the residents
- 2:45:25Speaker 3: can more easily overcome. They are bound to see the
- 2:45:29Speaker 3: needs of their neighborhood as a whole, to furnish data
- 2:45:32Speaker 3: for legislation, and to use their influence to secure it.
- 2:45:35Speaker 3: In short, residents are pledged to devote themselves to the
- 2:45:38Speaker 3: duties of good citizenship and to arousing of the social
- 2:45:42Speaker 3: energies which too largely lie dormant in every neighborhood given
- 2:45:46Speaker 3: over to industrialism. They are bound to regard the entire
- 2:45:50Speaker 3: life of their city as organic, to make an effort
- 2:45:53Speaker 3: to unify it, and to protest against its over differentiation.
- 2:45:58Speaker 3: It is always easy to make all fallowe point one
- 2:46:01Speaker 3: particular moral and all history adorn one particular tale. But
- 2:46:06Speaker 3: I may be forgiven the reminder that the best speculative
- 2:46:09Speaker 3: philosophy sets forth the solidarity of the human race. That
- 2:46:14Speaker 3: the highest moralists have taught that without the advance and
- 2:46:17Speaker 3: improvement of the whole. No man can hope for any
- 2:46:20Speaker 3: lasting improvement in his own moral or material individual condition,
- 2:46:26Speaker 3: And that the subjective necessity for social settlements is therefore
- 2:46:30Speaker 3: identical with that necessity which urges us on towards social
- 2:46:34Speaker 3: and individual salvation. End of Chapter.
- 2:46:38Speaker 1: Six, Chapter seven, Some early undertakings at Hull House. If
- 2:46:44Speaker 1: the early American settlement stood for a more exigent standard
- 2:46:48Speaker 1: and philanthropic activities, insisting that each new undertaking should be
- 2:46:52Speaker 1: preceded by carefully ascertained facts, then certainly Hull House held
- 2:46:56Speaker 1: to this standard in the opening of our new coffee house,
- 2:46:59Speaker 1: first start arded as a public kitchen. An investigation of
- 2:47:02Speaker 1: the sweat shops had disclosed the fact that sowing women
- 2:47:06Speaker 1: during the busy season paid little attention to the feeding
- 2:47:09Speaker 1: of their families, for it was only by working steadily
- 2:47:12Speaker 1: through the long day that the scanty pay of five,
- 2:47:14Speaker 1: seven or nine cents for finishing a dozen pairs of
- 2:47:18Speaker 1: trousers could be made into a day's wage, and they
- 2:47:21Speaker 1: bought from the nearest grocery the canned goods that could
- 2:47:24Speaker 1: be most quickly heated, or gave a few pennies to
- 2:47:27Speaker 1: the children with which they might secure a lunch from
- 2:47:29Speaker 1: a neighboring candy shop. One of the residents made an
- 2:47:33Speaker 1: investigation at the insistence of the United States Department of
- 2:47:36Speaker 1: Agriculture into the food values of the dietaries of the
- 2:47:40Speaker 1: various emigrants, and this was followed by an investigation made
- 2:47:43Speaker 1: by another resident for the United States Department of Labor
- 2:47:47Speaker 1: into the foods of the Italian colony, on the supposition
- 2:47:50Speaker 1: that the constant use of imported products bore a distinct
- 2:47:54Speaker 1: relation to the cost of living. I recall an Italian
- 2:47:58Speaker 1: who coming into Hull House one day, as we were
- 2:48:00Speaker 1: sitting at the dinner table, expressed great surprise that Americans
- 2:48:03Speaker 1: ate a variety of food, because he believed that they
- 2:48:06Speaker 1: partook only of potatoes and beer. A little inquiry showed
- 2:48:10Speaker 1: that this conclusion was drawn from the fact that he
- 2:48:12Speaker 1: lived next door to an Irish saloon and had never
- 2:48:15Speaker 1: seen anything but potatoes going in and beer coming out.
- 2:48:19Speaker 1: At that time, the New England Kitchen was comparatively new
- 2:48:22Speaker 1: in Boston, and Missus Richards, who was largely responsible for
- 2:48:26Speaker 1: its foundation, hoped that cheaper cuts of meat and simpler vegetables,
- 2:48:30Speaker 1: if they were subjected to slow and thorough processes of
- 2:48:33Speaker 1: cooking might be made attractive and their nutritive value secured
- 2:48:37Speaker 1: for the people who so sadly needed more nutritious food.
- 2:48:41Speaker 1: It was felt that this could be best accomplished in
- 2:48:43Speaker 1: public kitchens, where the advantage of scientific training and careful
- 2:48:47Speaker 1: supervision could be secured. One of the residents went to
- 2:48:51Speaker 1: Boston for a training under Missus Richards, and when the
- 2:48:54Speaker 1: Hull House kitchen was fitted under her guidance and direction,
- 2:48:57Speaker 1: our hopes ran high for some modification of the food
- 2:49:00Speaker 1: of the neighborhood. We did not reckon, however, with the
- 2:49:03Speaker 1: wide diversity in nationality and inherited tastes. And while we
- 2:49:06Speaker 1: sold a certain amount of the carefully prepared soups and
- 2:49:09Speaker 1: stews in the neighboring factories, a sale which has steadily
- 2:49:12Speaker 1: increased throughout the years, and were also patronized by a
- 2:49:15Speaker 1: few households. Perhaps the neighborhood estimate was best summed up
- 2:49:19Speaker 1: by the woman who frankly confessed that the food was
- 2:49:22Speaker 1: certainly nutritious, but that she didn't like to eat what
- 2:49:25Speaker 1: was nutritious, that she liked to eat what she'd ruther
- 2:49:29Speaker 1: if the dietetics were appreciated, but slowly. The social value
- 2:49:33Speaker 1: of the coffee house and the gymnasium, which were in
- 2:49:35Speaker 1: the same building, were quickly demonstrated. At that time, the
- 2:49:39Speaker 1: saloon halls were the only places in the neighborhood where
- 2:49:42Speaker 1: the emigrant could hold his social gatherings and where he
- 2:49:44Speaker 1: could celebrate such innocent and legitimate occasions as weddings and christenings.
- 2:49:49Speaker 1: These halls were rented very cheaply, with the understanding that
- 2:49:53Speaker 1: various sums of money should be passed across the bar,
- 2:49:56Speaker 1: and it was considered a mean host or guest who
- 2:49:59Speaker 1: failed to live up this implied bargain. The consequence was
- 2:50:02Speaker 1: that many a reputable party ended with a certain amount
- 2:50:05Speaker 1: of disorder, due solely to the fact that the social
- 2:50:08Speaker 1: instinct was traded upon and used as a basis for
- 2:50:11Speaker 1: money making by an adroit host. From the beginning, the
- 2:50:14Speaker 1: young people's clubs had asked for dancing, and nothing was
- 2:50:17Speaker 1: more popular than the increased space for parties offered by
- 2:50:20Speaker 1: the gymnasium, with the chance to serve refreshments in the
- 2:50:23Speaker 1: room below. We tried experiments with every known soft drink,
- 2:50:27Speaker 1: from those extracted from an expensive soda water fountain to
- 2:50:30Speaker 1: slender glasses of grape juice. But so far as drinks
- 2:50:33Speaker 1: were concerned, we never became a rival to the saloon,
- 2:50:37Speaker 1: nor indeed did anyone imagine that we were trying to
- 2:50:39Speaker 1: do so. I remember one man who looked about the
- 2:50:42Speaker 1: cozy little room and said, this would be a nice
- 2:50:44Speaker 1: place to sit in all day if one could only
- 2:50:46Speaker 1: have beer. But the coffee house gradually performed a mission
- 2:50:50Speaker 1: of its own and became something of a social center
- 2:50:53Speaker 1: to the neighborhood, as well as a real convenience. Business
- 2:50:56Speaker 1: Men from the adjacent factories and school teachers from the
- 2:50:59Speaker 1: nearest public school chools used it increasingly. The hull House,
- 2:51:02Speaker 1: students and club members sucked together in little groups or
- 2:51:05Speaker 1: held their reunions in social banquets, as to a certain
- 2:51:08Speaker 1: extent did organizations from all parts of the town. The
- 2:51:12Speaker 1: experience of the coffee house taught us not to hold
- 2:51:15Speaker 1: to preconceived ideas of what the neighborhood ought to have,
- 2:51:18Speaker 1: but to keep ourselves in readiness to modify and adapt
- 2:51:21Speaker 1: our undertakings as we discovered those things which the neighborhood
- 2:51:25Speaker 1: was ready to accept. Better food was doubtless needed, but
- 2:51:29Speaker 1: more attractive and safer places for social gatherings were also needed,
- 2:51:33Speaker 1: and the neighborhood was ready for one and not for
- 2:51:35Speaker 1: the other. We had no hint then in Chicago of
- 2:51:38Speaker 1: the small parks which were to be established fifteen years later,
- 2:51:41Speaker 1: containing the halls for dancing and their own restaurants and buildings,
- 2:51:45Speaker 1: where the natural desire of the young for gaiety and
- 2:51:47Speaker 1: social organization could be safely indulged. Yet, even in that
- 2:51:52Speaker 1: early day, a member of the Hull House Men's Club,
- 2:51:54Speaker 1: who had been appointed superintendent of Douglas Park, had secured
- 2:51:58Speaker 1: there the first public swimming pool, and his fellow club
- 2:52:01Speaker 1: members were proud of the achievement. There was in the
- 2:52:04Speaker 1: earliest undertakings at Hull House a touch of the artist's
- 2:52:07Speaker 1: enthusiasm when he translates his inner vision through his chosen material,
- 2:52:11Speaker 1: into outward form. Keenly conscious of the social confusion all
- 2:52:15Speaker 1: about us, and the hard economic struggle, we at times
- 2:52:19Speaker 1: believed that the very struggle itself might become a source
- 2:52:21Speaker 1: of strength. The devotion of the mothers to their children,
- 2:52:25Speaker 1: the dread of the men lest they fail to provide
- 2:52:27Speaker 1: for the family dependent upon their daily exertions at moments
- 2:52:30Speaker 1: seem to us the secret stores of strength from which
- 2:52:33Speaker 1: society is fed, the invisible array of passion and feeling,
- 2:52:36Speaker 1: which are the surest protectors of the world. We fatuously
- 2:52:40Speaker 1: hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself
- 2:52:43Speaker 1: a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its
- 2:52:46Speaker 1: own healing. That we might extract from life's very misfortunes
- 2:52:49Speaker 1: a power of co operation which should be effective against them.
- 2:52:53Speaker 1: Of course, there was always present the harrowing consciousness of
- 2:52:57Speaker 1: the difference in economic condition between ourselves and our neighbors.
- 2:53:00Speaker 1: Even if we had gone to live in the most
- 2:53:02Speaker 1: wretched tenement, there would have always been an essential difference
- 2:53:05Speaker 1: between them and ourselves, for we should have had a
- 2:53:08Speaker 1: sense of security in regard to illness and old age,
- 2:53:11Speaker 1: and the lack of these two securities are the specters
- 2:53:13Speaker 1: which most persistently haunt the poor. Could we, in spite
- 2:53:17Speaker 1: of this, make their individual efforts more effective through organization,
- 2:53:21Speaker 1: and possibly compliment them by small efforts of our own.
- 2:53:25Speaker 1: Some such vague hope was in our minds when we
- 2:53:27Speaker 1: started the Hull House co Operative Coal Association, which led
- 2:53:30Speaker 1: a vigorous life for three years and developed a large
- 2:53:34Speaker 1: membership under the skillful advice of its one paid officer,
- 2:53:37Speaker 1: an English workingman who had had experience in co operative
- 2:53:40Speaker 1: societies at Om. Some of the meetings of the Association,
- 2:53:44Speaker 1: in which people met to consider together their basic dependence
- 2:53:47Speaker 1: upon fire and warmth, had a curious challenge of life
- 2:53:50Speaker 1: about them, because the co operators knew what it meant
- 2:53:53Speaker 1: to bring forth children in the midst of privation, and
- 2:53:56Speaker 1: to see the tiny creatures struggle for life. Their recitals
- 2:53:59Speaker 1: cut aa cross section, as it were, in that world
- 2:54:02Speaker 1: old effort, the dying to live, which so inevitably triumphs
- 2:54:06Speaker 1: over poverty and suffering. And yet their very familiarity with
- 2:54:10Speaker 1: hardship may have been responsible for that sentiment which traditionally
- 2:54:14Speaker 1: ruins businesses. For a vote of the co operators that
- 2:54:17Speaker 1: the basket buyers be given one basket free out of
- 2:54:20Speaker 1: every six, that the presentation of five purchase tickets should
- 2:54:24Speaker 1: entitle the holders to a profit in coal instead of stock,
- 2:54:27Speaker 1: because it would be a shame to keep them waiting
- 2:54:29Speaker 1: for the diffidend was always pointed to by the conservative
- 2:54:32Speaker 1: quarter of a ton buyers as the beginning of the end.
- 2:54:35Speaker 1: At any rate. At the close of the third winter,
- 2:54:37Speaker 1: although the association occupied an imposing coal yard on the
- 2:54:41Speaker 1: southeast corner of the Hull House block, and its gross
- 2:54:44Speaker 1: receipts were between three and four hundred dollars a day.
- 2:54:46Speaker 1: It became evident that the concern should not remain solvent
- 2:54:50Speaker 1: if it continued its philanthropic policy, and the experiment was
- 2:54:53Speaker 1: terminated by the co operators taking up their stock in
- 2:54:56Speaker 1: the remaining coal. Our next cooperative excipt. Barrimot, was much
- 2:55:00Speaker 1: more successful, perhaps because it was much more spontaneous. At
- 2:55:05Speaker 1: a meeting of working girls held at Hull House during
- 2:55:07Speaker 1: a strike in a large shoe factory, the discussions made
- 2:55:10Speaker 1: it clear that the strikers who had been most easily
- 2:55:13Speaker 1: frightened and therefore first to capitulate, were naturally those girls
- 2:55:17Speaker 1: who were paying board and were afraid of being put
- 2:55:19Speaker 1: out if they fell too far behind. After a recital
- 2:55:22Speaker 1: of a case of peculiar hardship, one of them exclaimed,
- 2:55:26Speaker 1: wouldn't it be fine if we had a boarding club
- 2:55:28Speaker 1: of our own? And though we could stand by each
- 2:55:30Speaker 1: other in a time like this. After that, events moved quickly.
- 2:55:34Speaker 1: We read aloud together Beatrice Potter's Little Book on Cooperation
- 2:55:38Speaker 1: and discussed all the difficulties and fascinations of such an undertaking,
- 2:55:42Speaker 1: and on the first of May eighteen ninety one, two
- 2:55:45Speaker 1: comfortable apartments near Hull House were rented and furnished. The
- 2:55:49Speaker 1: settlement was responsible for the furniture and paid the first
- 2:55:52Speaker 1: month's rent, but beyond that the members managed the club themselves.
- 2:55:56Speaker 1: The undertaking marched, as the French say, from the very
- 2:55:59Speaker 1: first and always on its own feet. Although there were difficulties,
- 2:56:04Speaker 1: none of them proved insurmountable, which was a matter for
- 2:56:06Speaker 1: great satisfaction in the face of a statement made by
- 2:56:09Speaker 1: the head of the United States Department of Labour, who,
- 2:56:11Speaker 1: on a visit to the club when it was but
- 2:56:13Speaker 1: two years old, said that his department had investigated many
- 2:56:16Speaker 1: cooperative undertakings and that none founded and managed by women
- 2:56:20Speaker 1: had ever succeeded. At the end of the third year,
- 2:56:23Speaker 1: the club occupied all of the six apartments which the
- 2:56:25Speaker 1: original building contained, and numbered fifty members. It was in
- 2:56:30Speaker 1: connection with our efforts to secure a building for the
- 2:56:32Speaker 1: Jaine Club that we first found ourselves in the dilemma
- 2:56:35Speaker 1: between the needs of our neighbours and the kind hearted
- 2:56:37Speaker 1: response upon which we had already come to rely for
- 2:56:40Speaker 1: their relief. The adapted apartments in which the Jaine Club
- 2:56:44Speaker 1: was housed, were inevitably more or less uncomfortable, and we
- 2:56:47Speaker 1: felt that the success of the club justified the erection
- 2:56:50Speaker 1: of a building for its sole use. Up to that
- 2:56:53Speaker 1: time our history had been as the minor peace of
- 2:56:55Speaker 1: the early Church. We had had the most generous interpretation
- 2:56:59Speaker 1: of our efforts. Of course, many people were indifferent to
- 2:57:02Speaker 1: the idea of the settlement. Others looked on with tolerant
- 2:57:05Speaker 1: and sometimes cynical amusement, which we would often encounter in
- 2:57:08Speaker 1: a good story related at our expense. But all this
- 2:57:11Speaker 1: was remote and unreal to us, and we were sure
- 2:57:14Speaker 1: that if the critics could but touch the life of
- 2:57:16Speaker 1: the people, they would understand. The situation changed markedly after
- 2:57:21Speaker 1: the pullman strike, and our efforts to secure factory legislation
- 2:57:25Speaker 1: later brought upon us a certain amount of distrust and suspicion.
- 2:57:28Speaker 1: Until then we had been considered merely a kindly philanthropic
- 2:57:32Speaker 1: undertaking whose new form gave us a certain idealistic glamor.
- 2:57:36Speaker 1: But sterner tests were coming, and one of the first
- 2:57:39Speaker 1: was in connection with the new building for the Jane Club.
- 2:57:42Speaker 1: A trustee of Hull House came to see us one
- 2:57:44Speaker 1: day with the good news that a friend of his
- 2:57:46Speaker 1: was ready to give twenty thousand dollars with which to
- 2:57:49Speaker 1: build the desired new clubhouse. When, however, he divulged the
- 2:57:52Speaker 1: name of his generous friend, it proved to be that
- 2:57:55Speaker 1: of a man who was notorious for underpaying the girls
- 2:57:57Speaker 1: in his establishment, and concerning whom there were even darker stories.
- 2:58:02Speaker 1: It seemed clearly impossible to erect a clubhouse for working
- 2:58:05Speaker 1: girls with such money and be said at once that
- 2:58:07Speaker 1: we must decline the offer. The trustee of Hull House
- 2:58:10Speaker 1: was put in the most embarrassing situation. He had, of
- 2:58:13Speaker 1: course induced the man to give the money, and it
- 2:58:16Speaker 1: had no thought but that it would be eagerly received.
- 2:58:18Speaker 1: He would now be obliged to return with the astonishing,
- 2:58:21Speaker 1: not to say insulting news that the money was considered unfit.
- 2:58:25Speaker 1: In the long discussion which followed, it gradually became clear
- 2:58:28Speaker 1: to all of us that such a refusal could be
- 2:58:30Speaker 1: valuable only as it might reveal to the man himself
- 2:58:33Speaker 1: and to others public opinion in regard to certain methods
- 2:58:36Speaker 1: of money making, but that from the very nature of
- 2:58:39Speaker 1: the case, our refusal of this money could not be
- 2:58:41Speaker 1: made public. Because a representative of Hull House had asked
- 2:58:44Speaker 1: for it. However, the basic fact remained that we could
- 2:58:47Speaker 1: not accept the money, and of this the trustee himself
- 2:58:50Speaker 1: was fully convinced. This incident occurred during a period of
- 2:58:54Speaker 1: much discussion concerning tainted money, and is perhaps typical of
- 2:58:58Speaker 1: the difficulty of dealing with it. It is impossible to
- 2:59:01Speaker 1: know how far we may blame the individual for doing
- 2:59:03Speaker 1: that which all of his competitors and his associates consider legitimate.
- 2:59:06Speaker 1: At the same time, social changes can only be inaugurated
- 2:59:10Speaker 1: by those who feel the unrighteousness of contemporary conditions, and
- 2:59:14Speaker 1: the expression of their scruples may be the one opportunity
- 2:59:17Speaker 1: for pushing forward moral tests into that dubious area wherein
- 2:59:20Speaker 1: wealth is accumulated. In the course of time, a new
- 2:59:24Speaker 1: clubhouse was built by an old friend of Hull House,
- 2:59:26Speaker 1: much interested in working girls, and this has been occupied
- 2:59:29Speaker 1: for twelve years by the very successful co operating Jane Club.
- 2:59:33Speaker 1: The incident of the early refusal is associated in my
- 2:59:36Speaker 1: mind with a long talk upon the subject of questionable
- 2:59:39Speaker 1: money I held with the warden of Toynbee Hall, whom
- 2:59:42Speaker 1: I visited at Bristol, where he was then cannon in
- 2:59:44Speaker 1: the cathedral. By way of illustration, he showed me a
- 2:59:47Speaker 1: beautiful little church which had been built by the last
- 2:59:50Speaker 1: slave trading merchant in Bristol, who had been much disapproved
- 2:59:53Speaker 1: of by his fellow townsmen, and hoped, by this transmutation
- 2:59:56Speaker 1: of ill gotten money into exquisite Gothic architecture to reconcile
- 3:00:00Speaker 1: himself both to God and man. His impulse to build
- 3:00:04Speaker 1: may have been born from his own scruples, or from
- 3:00:06Speaker 1: the quickened consciences of his neighbours, who saw that the
- 3:00:09Speaker 1: world old iniquity of enslaving men must at length come
- 3:00:12Speaker 1: to an end. The abolitionists may have regarded this beautiful
- 3:00:15Speaker 1: building as the fruit of a contrite heart, or they
- 3:00:18Speaker 1: may have scorned it as an attempt to magnify the
- 3:00:20Speaker 1: goodness of a slave trader, and thus perplex the doubting
- 3:00:23Speaker 1: citizens of Bristol. In regard to the entire moral issue,
- 3:00:26Speaker 1: Canon Barnett did not pronounce judgment on the Bristol merchant.
- 3:00:30Speaker 1: He was, however, quite clear upon the point that a
- 3:00:33Speaker 1: higher moral standard for industrial life must be embodied in
- 3:00:36Speaker 1: legislation as rapidly as possible, that it may bear equally
- 3:00:39Speaker 1: upon all, and that an individual endeavoring to secure this
- 3:00:42Speaker 1: legislation must forbear harsh judgment. This was doubtless a sound position,
- 3:00:48Speaker 1: But during all the period of hot discussion concerning tainted money,
- 3:00:51Speaker 1: I never felt clear enough on the general principle involved
- 3:00:54Speaker 1: to accept the many invitations to write and speak upon
- 3:00:57Speaker 1: the subject, although I received much instruction and the many
- 3:01:00Speaker 1: letters of disapproval sent to me by radicals of various schools,
- 3:01:04Speaker 1: because I was a member of the University Extension staff
- 3:01:06Speaker 1: of the then new University of Chicago, the righteousness of
- 3:01:09Speaker 1: whose foundation they challenged. A little incident of this time
- 3:01:13Speaker 1: illustrated to me the confusion in the minds of at
- 3:01:16Speaker 1: least many older men between religious teaching and advancing morality.
- 3:01:20Speaker 1: One morning I received a letter from the head of
- 3:01:22Speaker 1: a settlement in New York expressing his perplexity over the
- 3:01:25Speaker 1: fact that his board of trustees had asked money from
- 3:01:28Speaker 1: a man notorious for his unscrupulous business methods. My correspondent
- 3:01:33Speaker 1: had placed his resignation in the hands of his board,
- 3:01:35Speaker 1: that they might accept it at any time when they
- 3:01:37Speaker 1: felt his utterances on the subject of tainted money were offensive.
- 3:01:40Speaker 1: For he wished to be free to openly discuss a
- 3:01:42Speaker 1: subject of such grave moral import. The very morning, when
- 3:01:46Speaker 1: my mind was full of the questions raised by this letter,
- 3:01:49Speaker 1: I received a call from the daughter of the same
- 3:01:51Speaker 1: business man whom my friend considered so unscrupulous. She was
- 3:01:55Speaker 1: passing through Chicago and came to ask me to give
- 3:01:58Speaker 1: her some arguments which she might later use with her
- 3:02:00Speaker 1: father to confute the charge that settlements were irreligious. She said,
- 3:02:05Speaker 1: you see, he has been asked to give money to
- 3:02:07Speaker 1: our settlement and would like to do it if his
- 3:02:09Speaker 1: conscience was only clear. He disapproves of settlements because they
- 3:02:13Speaker 1: give no religious instruction. He has always been a very
- 3:02:15Speaker 1: devout man. I remember later discussing the incident with Washington Gladden,
- 3:02:20Speaker 1: who was able to parallel it from his own experience.
- 3:02:24Speaker 1: Now that this discussion upon tainted money has subsided, it
- 3:02:27Speaker 1: is easy to view it with a certain detachment impossible
- 3:02:29Speaker 1: at the moment, and it is even difficult to understand
- 3:02:32Speaker 1: why the feeling should have been so intense. Although it
- 3:02:35Speaker 1: doubtless registered genuine moral concern, there was room for discouragement
- 3:02:39Speaker 1: in the many unsuccessful experiments and co operation which were
- 3:02:42Speaker 1: carried on in Chicago during the early nineties. A carpenter
- 3:02:45Speaker 1: shop on Van Buren Street near Halsted, a labor exchange
- 3:02:49Speaker 1: started by the unemployed, not so paradoxical an arrangement as
- 3:02:52Speaker 1: it seems, and a very ambitious plan for a country colony,
- 3:02:55Speaker 1: which was finally carried out at Ruskin, Tennessee. In spite
- 3:02:59Speaker 1: of failure, cooperative schemes went on, some of the same men,
- 3:03:02Speaker 1: appearing in one after another with irrepressible optimism. Are remembered
- 3:03:06Speaker 1: during a cooperative Congress which met at Hull House in
- 3:03:09Speaker 1: the World's Fair Summer that mister Henry D. Lloyd, who
- 3:03:13Speaker 1: collected records of cooperative experiments with the enthusiasm with which
- 3:03:16Speaker 1: other men collect coins or pictures, put before the Congress
- 3:03:20Speaker 1: some of the remarkable successes in Ireland and North England,
- 3:03:23Speaker 1: which he later embodied in his book on co Partnership.
- 3:03:27Speaker 1: One of the old time co operators denounced the modern
- 3:03:30Speaker 1: method as too much like cutthroat business, and declared himself
- 3:03:34Speaker 1: in favor of principles which may have failed over and
- 3:03:37Speaker 1: over again, but are nevertheless as sound as the law
- 3:03:39Speaker 1: of gravitation. Mister Lloyd and I agree that the fiery
- 3:03:43Speaker 1: old man presented as fine a spectacle of devotion to
- 3:03:45Speaker 1: a lost cause as either of us had ever seen,
- 3:03:48Speaker 1: although we both possessed memories well stored with such romantic attachments.
- 3:03:52Speaker 1: And yet this dream that men shall cease to waste
- 3:03:55Speaker 1: strength and competition, and shall come to pool their powers
- 3:03:58Speaker 1: of production, is coming to pass all over the face
- 3:04:01Speaker 1: of the earth. Five years later, in the same Hull
- 3:04:04Speaker 1: House Hall in which Cooperative Congress was held, an Italian
- 3:04:07Speaker 1: senator told a large audience of his fellow countrymen of
- 3:04:10Speaker 1: the successful system of cooperative banks in North Italy and
- 3:04:13Speaker 1: of their cooperative methods of selling produce to the value
- 3:04:16Speaker 1: of millions of francs annually. Still later, Sir Horace Plunkett
- 3:04:20Speaker 1: related the remarkable successes in cooperation in Ireland. I have
- 3:04:24Speaker 1: seldom been more infected by enthusiasm than I once was
- 3:04:28Speaker 1: in Dulwich at a meeting of English co operators, where
- 3:04:31Speaker 1: I was fairly overwhelmed by the fervor underlying the businesslike
- 3:04:34Speaker 1: proceedings of the Congress. And certainly when I served as
- 3:04:37Speaker 1: a juror in the Paris Exposition of nineteen hundred, nothing
- 3:04:40Speaker 1: in the entire display in the Department of Social Economy
- 3:04:43Speaker 1: was so imposing as the building housing the exhibit which
- 3:04:46Speaker 1: had been erected by cooperative trades unions without the assistance
- 3:04:49Speaker 1: of a single contractor. And so one's faith is kept
- 3:04:53Speaker 1: alive as one occasionally meets a realized ideal of better
- 3:04:57Speaker 1: human relations, at least traces of sclce sucessful co operation,
- 3:05:01Speaker 1: or found even an individualistic America. I recall my enthusiasm
- 3:05:05Speaker 1: on the day when I set forth to lecture at
- 3:05:07Speaker 1: New Harmony, Indiana. For I had been early thrilled by
- 3:05:10Speaker 1: the tale of Robert Owen, as every young person must
- 3:05:13Speaker 1: be who was interested in social reform. I was delighted
- 3:05:16Speaker 1: to find so much of his spirits still clinging to
- 3:05:18Speaker 1: the little town which had long ago held one of
- 3:05:20Speaker 1: his ardent experiments. Although the poor old co operators, who
- 3:05:24Speaker 1: for many years claimed friendship at Hull House because they
- 3:05:26Speaker 1: heard that we had once tried a co operative coal association,
- 3:05:30Speaker 1: might well have convinced me of the persistency of the
- 3:05:32Speaker 1: co operative ideal. Many experiences in those early years, although vivid,
- 3:05:37Speaker 1: seemed to contain no illumination, Nevertheless, they doubtless permanently affected
- 3:05:42Speaker 1: our judgments concerning what is called crime and vice. I
- 3:05:46Speaker 1: recall a series of striking episodes on the day when
- 3:05:48Speaker 1: I took the wife and child, as well as the
- 3:05:50Speaker 1: old godfather of an Italian convict, to visit him in
- 3:05:53Speaker 1: the state penitentiary. When we approached the prison, the side
- 3:05:57Speaker 1: of its heavy stone walls and armed sentries through the
- 3:05:59Speaker 1: god father into a paroxysm of rage. He cast his
- 3:06:02Speaker 1: hat upon the ground and stamped upon it, tore his hair,
- 3:06:06Speaker 1: and loudly fulminated in weird Italian oaths, until one of
- 3:06:09Speaker 1: the guards, seeing his strange actions, came to inquire if
- 3:06:13Speaker 1: the gentleman was having a fit. When we finally saw
- 3:06:16Speaker 1: the convict, his wife, to my extreme distress, talked of
- 3:06:19Speaker 1: nothing but his striped clothing, until the poor man wept
- 3:06:22Speaker 1: with chagrin. Upon our return journey to Chicago, the little son,
- 3:06:27Speaker 1: aged eight, presented me with two oranges, so affectionately and
- 3:06:31Speaker 1: gaily that I was filled with reflections upon the advantage
- 3:06:34Speaker 1: of each generation making a fresh start. But when the
- 3:06:37Speaker 1: train boy, finding the stolen fruit in my lap, violently
- 3:06:40Speaker 1: threatened to arrest the child. But stranger than any episode
- 3:06:44Speaker 1: was the fact that neither the convict, his wife, nor
- 3:06:46Speaker 1: his godfather for a moment considered him a criminal. He
- 3:06:49Speaker 1: had merely gotten excited over cards, and had stabbed his
- 3:06:52Speaker 1: adversary with a knife. Why should a man who took
- 3:06:55Speaker 1: his luck badly be kept forever from the sun? Was there,
- 3:06:58Speaker 1: reiterated inquiry. I recall our perplexity over the first girls
- 3:07:03Speaker 1: who had gone astray, the poor little, forlorn objects fifteen
- 3:07:07Speaker 1: and sixteen years old, with their moral natures apparently untouched
- 3:07:11Speaker 1: and unawakened. One of them, whom the police had found
- 3:07:14Speaker 1: in a professional house and asked us to shelter for
- 3:07:16Speaker 1: a few days until she could be used as a witness,
- 3:07:19Speaker 1: was clutching a battered doll, which she had kept with
- 3:07:21Speaker 1: her during her six months of an evil life. Two
- 3:07:24Speaker 1: of these prematurely aged children came to us one day
- 3:07:27Speaker 1: directly from the maternity ward of the Cook County Hospital,
- 3:07:31Speaker 1: each with the baby in her arms, asking for protection
- 3:07:34Speaker 1: because they did not want to go home for fear
- 3:07:37Speaker 1: of being licked. For them were no jewels nor idle living,
- 3:07:41Speaker 1: such as the story books portrayed. The first of the
- 3:07:43Speaker 1: older women, whom I knew, came to Hull House to
- 3:07:45Speaker 1: ask that her younger sister, who was about to arrive
- 3:07:48Speaker 1: from Germany, might live near us. She wished to find
- 3:07:51Speaker 1: her respectable work, and wanted her to have the decent
- 3:07:53Speaker 1: pleasures at Hull House afforded. After the arrangement had been completed,
- 3:07:58Speaker 1: and I had, in a measure recovered from my astonishment
- 3:08:00Speaker 1: at the business like way in which she spoke of
- 3:08:02Speaker 1: her own life, I ventured to ask her history. In
- 3:08:05Speaker 1: very few words, she told me that she had come
- 3:08:07Speaker 1: from Germany as a music teacher to an American family.
- 3:08:10Speaker 1: At the end of two years, in order to avoid
- 3:08:12Speaker 1: a scandal involving the head of the house, she had
- 3:08:15Speaker 1: come to Chicago, where her child was born, but when
- 3:08:17Speaker 1: the remittances ceased after its death, finding herself without home
- 3:08:21Speaker 1: and resources, she had gradually become involved in her present
- 3:08:25Speaker 1: mode of life. By dint of utilizing her family solicitude,
- 3:08:28Speaker 1: we finally induced her to move into decent lodgings before
- 3:08:31Speaker 1: her sister arrived, and for a difficult year she supported
- 3:08:34Speaker 1: herself by her exquisite embroidery. At the end of that time,
- 3:08:38Speaker 1: she gave up the struggle the more easily as her
- 3:08:40Speaker 1: young sister, well established in the dressmaking department of a
- 3:08:43Speaker 1: large shop, had begun to suspect her past life, but
- 3:08:48Speaker 1: discouraging as these and other similar efforts often were. Nevertheless,
- 3:08:52Speaker 1: the difficulties were infinitely less in those days when we
- 3:08:55Speaker 1: dealt with fallen girls than in the years following, when
- 3:08:58Speaker 1: the white slave traffic became gradually established, and when agonized
- 3:09:02Speaker 1: parents as well as the victims themselves were totally unable
- 3:09:05Speaker 1: to account for the situation. In the light of recent disclosures,
- 3:09:09Speaker 1: it seems as if we were unaccountably dull not to
- 3:09:11Speaker 1: have seen what was happening, especially to the Jewish girls,
- 3:09:14Speaker 1: among whom the home trade of the white slave traffic
- 3:09:17Speaker 1: was first carried on, and who were thus made to
- 3:09:19Speaker 1: break through countless generations of chastity. We early encountered the
- 3:09:23Speaker 1: difficulties of that old problem of restoring the woman, or
- 3:09:26Speaker 1: even the child, into the society she has once outraged.
- 3:09:30Speaker 1: I well remember our perplexity when we attempted to help
- 3:09:33Speaker 1: two girls straight from a Virginia tobacco factory who had
- 3:09:36Speaker 1: been decoyed into a disreputable house when innocently seeking a
- 3:09:39Speaker 1: lodging on a late evening of their arrival. Although they
- 3:09:42Speaker 1: had been rescued promptly, the stigma remained, and we found
- 3:09:46Speaker 1: it impossible to permit them to join any of the
- 3:09:48Speaker 1: social clubs connected with Hull House, not so much because
- 3:09:51Speaker 1: there was danger of contamination, as because the parents of
- 3:09:54Speaker 1: the club members would have resented their presence. Most hotly,
- 3:09:58Speaker 1: one of our trustees succeeded in persuade a repentant girl
- 3:10:01Speaker 1: fourteen years old whom he tried to give a fresh
- 3:10:03Speaker 1: start in another part of the city, to attend a
- 3:10:06Speaker 1: Sunday school class of a large Chicago church. The trustee
- 3:10:09Speaker 1: hoped that the contact with nice girls, as well as
- 3:10:12Speaker 1: the moral training, would help the poor child on her
- 3:10:14Speaker 1: hard road, but unfortunately, tales of her shortcomings reached the superintendent,
- 3:10:19Speaker 1: who felt obliged, in order to protect the other girls,
- 3:10:22Speaker 1: to forbid her the school. She came back to tell
- 3:10:25Speaker 1: us about it, defiant as well as discouraged, and had
- 3:10:28Speaker 1: it not been for the experience with our own clubs,
- 3:10:31Speaker 1: we could easily have joined her indignation over a church
- 3:10:34Speaker 1: which acted as if its Sunday school was a show
- 3:10:36Speaker 1: window for candy kids. In spite of poignant experiences, or
- 3:10:41Speaker 1: perhaps because of them, the memory of the first years
- 3:10:44Speaker 1: at Hull House is more or less blurred with fatigue,
- 3:10:47Speaker 1: for we could, of course become accustomed only gradually to
- 3:10:50Speaker 1: the unending activity and to the confusion of a house
- 3:10:53Speaker 1: constantly filling and refilling with groups of people. The little
- 3:10:56Speaker 1: children who came to the kindergarten in the morning were
- 3:10:59Speaker 1: followed by the afternoon clubs of older children, and those
- 3:11:02Speaker 1: in turn made way for the educational and social organizations
- 3:11:05Speaker 1: of adults, occupying every room in the house every evening.
- 3:11:09Speaker 1: All one's habits of living had to be readjusted, and
- 3:11:12Speaker 1: any student's tendency to sit with a book by the
- 3:11:14Speaker 1: fire was of necessity definitely abandoned. To thus renounce the
- 3:11:19Speaker 1: luxury of personal preference was, however, a mere trifle compared
- 3:11:23Speaker 1: to our perplexity over the problems of an industrial neighborhood
- 3:11:26Speaker 1: situated in an unorganized city. Life pressed hard in many directions,
- 3:11:31Speaker 1: and yet it has always seemed to me rather interesting that,
- 3:11:34Speaker 1: when we were so distressed over its stern aspects, and
- 3:11:37Speaker 1: so impressed with the lack of municipal regulations, the first
- 3:11:40Speaker 1: building erected for Hull House should have been designed for
- 3:11:43Speaker 1: an art gallery. For although it contained a reading room
- 3:11:45Speaker 1: on the first floor and a studio above, the largest
- 3:11:48Speaker 1: space on the second floor was carefully designed and lighted
- 3:11:51Speaker 1: for art exhibits, which had to do only with the
- 3:11:54Speaker 1: cultivation of that which appealed to the powers of enjoyment
- 3:11:56Speaker 1: as over against a wage earning capacity. It was also
- 3:12:00Speaker 1: significant that a Chicago business man, fond of pictures himself
- 3:12:04Speaker 1: responded to this first appeal of the new and certainly
- 3:12:06Speaker 1: puzzling undertaking, called a settlement. The situation was somewhat complicated
- 3:12:11Speaker 1: by the fact that, at the time the building was
- 3:12:13Speaker 1: erected in eighteen ninety one, our free lease of the
- 3:12:16Speaker 1: land upon which Hull House stood expired in eighteen ninety five.
- 3:12:21Speaker 1: The donor of the building, however, overcame the difficulty by
- 3:12:24Speaker 1: simply calling his gift a donation of thousand dollars a year.
- 3:12:28Speaker 1: This restriction, of course, necessitated the simplest sort of a structure.
- 3:12:31Speaker 1: Although I remember on the exciting day when the new
- 3:12:33Speaker 1: building was promised to us, that I looked up my
- 3:12:36Speaker 1: European notebook, which contained the record of my experience in Ulm,
- 3:12:40Speaker 1: hoping that I might find a description of what I
- 3:12:41Speaker 1: then thought a cathedral of humanity ought to be. The
- 3:12:45Speaker 1: description was low and wide, spreading as to include all
- 3:12:49Speaker 1: men and fellowship and mutual responsibility, even as the older
- 3:12:53Speaker 1: pinnacles and spires indicated communion with God. The description did
- 3:12:57Speaker 1: not prove of value as an architectural motive, I'm afraid,
- 3:13:00Speaker 1: although the architects who have remained our friends through all
- 3:13:03Speaker 1: the years performed marvels with a combination of complicated demands
- 3:13:06Speaker 1: and little money. At the moment when I read this
- 3:13:09Speaker 1: girlish outbreak, it gave me much comfort, for in those days,
- 3:13:12Speaker 1: in addition to our other perplexities, hull House was often
- 3:13:16Speaker 1: called irreligious. These first buildings were very precious to us,
- 3:13:21Speaker 1: and it afforded us the greatest pride and pleasure. As
- 3:13:23Speaker 1: one building after another was added to the Hull House group.
- 3:13:27Speaker 1: They clothed in brick and mortar and made visible to
- 3:13:29Speaker 1: the world that which we were trying to do. They
- 3:13:32Speaker 1: stated to Chicago that education and recreation ought to be
- 3:13:36Speaker 1: extended to the emigrants. The boys came in great numbers
- 3:13:39Speaker 1: to our provisional gymnasium, fitted up in a former saloon,
- 3:13:42Speaker 1: and it seemed to us quite as natural that a
- 3:13:44Speaker 1: Chicago man fond of athletics should erect a building for them,
- 3:13:49Speaker 1: as that the boys should clamor for more room. I
- 3:13:52Speaker 1: do not wish to give a false impression, for we
- 3:13:55Speaker 1: were often bitterly pressed for money and worried by the
- 3:13:58Speaker 1: prospect of unpaid bills, and we gave up one golden
- 3:14:01Speaker 1: scheme after another because we could not afford it. We
- 3:14:04Speaker 1: cooked the meals and kept the books and washed the
- 3:14:06Speaker 1: windows without a thought of hardship if we thereby saved
- 3:14:09Speaker 1: money for the consummation of some ardently desired undertaking. But
- 3:14:14Speaker 1: in spite of our financial stringency, I always believed that
- 3:14:17Speaker 1: money would be given when we had once clearly reduced
- 3:14:19Speaker 1: the settlement idea to the actual deed. This chapter, therefore,
- 3:14:23Speaker 1: would be incomplete if it did not record a certain
- 3:14:26Speaker 1: theory of non resistance, or rather universal good will, which
- 3:14:29Speaker 1: I had worked out in connection with the settlement idea,
- 3:14:32Speaker 1: and which was later so often and so rudely disturbed.
- 3:14:36Speaker 1: At that time I had come to believe that if
- 3:14:38Speaker 1: the activities of Hull House were ever misunderstood, it would
- 3:14:41Speaker 1: be either because there was not time to fully explain,
- 3:14:44Speaker 1: or because our motives had become mixed. For I was
- 3:14:47Speaker 1: convinced that disinterested action was like truth or beauty in
- 3:14:51Speaker 1: its lucidity and power of appeal, but more gratifying than
- 3:14:55Speaker 1: any understanding or response from without could possibly be was
- 3:14:58Speaker 1: the consciousness that a gre growing group of residents was
- 3:15:01Speaker 1: gathering at Hull House, held together in that soundest of
- 3:15:04Speaker 1: all social bonds, the companionship of mutual interests. These residents
- 3:15:09Speaker 1: came primarily because they were genuinely interested in the social
- 3:15:12Speaker 1: situation and believed that the settlement was valuable as a
- 3:15:15Speaker 1: method of approach to it. A house in which the
- 3:15:18Speaker 1: men residents lived was opened across the street, and at
- 3:15:21Speaker 1: the end of the first five years the Hull House
- 3:15:23Speaker 1: residential force numbered fifteen, a majority of whom still remained
- 3:15:27Speaker 1: identified with the settlement. Even in those early years, we
- 3:15:31Speaker 1: caught glimpses of the fact that certain social settlements, which
- 3:15:34Speaker 1: are the difficult and cumulating product of human growth, and which,
- 3:15:38Speaker 1: like all higher aims, live only by communion and fellowship,
- 3:15:41Speaker 1: are cultivated most easily in the fostering soil of community life. Occasionally,
- 3:15:46Speaker 1: I obscurely felt as if a demand were being made
- 3:15:48Speaker 1: upon us for a ritual which should express and carry
- 3:15:51Speaker 1: forward the hope of the social movement. I was constantly
- 3:15:54Speaker 1: bewildered by the number of requests I received to officiate
- 3:15:57Speaker 1: at funeral services, and by the curious can professions made
- 3:16:00Speaker 1: to me by total strangers. For a time I accepted
- 3:16:04Speaker 1: the former, and on one awful occasion, furnished the poetic
- 3:16:07Speaker 1: part of a wedding ceremony really performed by a justice
- 3:16:09Speaker 1: of the peace. But I soon learned to steadfastly refuse
- 3:16:13Speaker 1: such offices. Although I saw that for many people without
- 3:16:16Speaker 1: church affiliations, the vague humanitarianism the Settlement represented was the
- 3:16:20Speaker 1: nearest approach they could find to an expression of their
- 3:16:23Speaker 1: religious sentiments. These hints of what the Settlement might mean
- 3:16:27Speaker 1: to at least a few spirits among its contemporaries became
- 3:16:30Speaker 1: clear to me for the first time one summer's day
- 3:16:32Speaker 1: in rural England, when I discussed with John Trevor his
- 3:16:35Speaker 1: attempts to found a labor church and his desire to
- 3:16:38Speaker 1: turn the toil and danger attached to the life of
- 3:16:40Speaker 1: the working man into the means of a universal fellowship.
- 3:16:44Speaker 1: That very year, a papyrus leaf brought to the British
- 3:16:47Speaker 1: Museum from Egypt, containing, among other sayings, of Jesus, raise
- 3:16:51Speaker 1: the stone, and there thou shalt find me, cleave the wood,
- 3:16:54Speaker 1: and I am There was a powerful reminder to all
- 3:16:57Speaker 1: England of the basic relations between daily labor and Christian teaching.
- 3:17:03Speaker 1: In those early years at Hull House, we were, however,
- 3:17:05Speaker 1: in no danger of losing ourselves in mazes of speculation
- 3:17:08Speaker 1: or mysticism, and there was shrewd penetration in a compliment
- 3:17:12Speaker 1: I received from one of our Scotch neighbors. He came
- 3:17:15Speaker 1: down Polk Street as I was standing near the foundations
- 3:17:17Speaker 1: of our new gymnasium, And in response to his friendly
- 3:17:20Speaker 1: remark that Hull House was spreading out I replied that
- 3:17:24Speaker 1: perhaps we were spreading out too fast. Oh no, he rejoined,
- 3:17:28Speaker 1: you can afford to spread out wide, you were so
- 3:17:30Speaker 1: well planted in the mud, giving the compliment, however, a
- 3:17:34Speaker 1: practical turn, as he glanced at the deep mire upon
- 3:17:37Speaker 1: the then unpaved street. It was this same condition of
- 3:17:40Speaker 1: Polk Street which had caused the Crown Prince of Belgium,
- 3:17:43Speaker 1: when he was brought upon a visit to Hull House,
- 3:17:45Speaker 1: to shake his head and meditatively remark, there is not
- 3:17:48Speaker 1: such a street, No, not one in all the territory
- 3:17:52Speaker 1: of Belgium. At the end of five years the residence
- 3:17:55Speaker 1: of Hull House published some first found facts in our
- 3:17:58Speaker 1: reflections thereon in a bookok called Hull House Maps and Papers.
- 3:18:03Speaker 1: The maps were taken from information collected by one of
- 3:18:05Speaker 1: the residents for the United States Bureau of Labor in
- 3:18:08Speaker 1: the investigation into the slums of Great Cities, and the
- 3:18:12Speaker 1: papers treated of various neighborhood matters with candor and genuine concern,
- 3:18:16Speaker 1: if not with skill. The first edition became exhausted in
- 3:18:20Speaker 1: two years, and apparently the Boston publisher did not consider
- 3:18:24Speaker 1: the book worthy of a second. End of chapter seven.
- 3:18:28Speaker 4: Chapter eight, problems of poverty that neglected and forlorn old
- 3:18:34Speaker 4: age is daily brought to the attention of a settlement
- 3:18:36Speaker 4: which undertakes to bear its share of the neighborhood burden
- 3:18:39Speaker 4: imposed by poverty, was pathetically clear to us during our
- 3:18:43Speaker 4: first months of residence at Hull House. One day a
- 3:18:46Speaker 4: boy of ten led a tottering old lady into the house,
- 3:18:49Speaker 4: saying that she had slipped for six weeks in their
- 3:18:51Speaker 4: kitchen on a bed made up next to the stove.
- 3:18:54Speaker 4: That she had come when her son died, although none
- 3:18:57Speaker 4: of them had ever seen her before. Because her son
- 3:19:00Speaker 4: had once worked in the same shop with Paw, she
- 3:19:03Speaker 4: thought of him when she had nowhere to go. The
- 3:19:06Speaker 4: little fellow concluded by saying that our house was so
- 3:19:09Speaker 4: much bigger than theirs, that he thought we would have
- 3:19:11Speaker 4: more room for beds. The old woman herself said absolutely nothing,
- 3:19:16Speaker 4: but looking on with that gripping fear of the boorhouse
- 3:19:18Speaker 4: in her eyes. She was a living embodiment of the dread,
- 3:19:22Speaker 4: which is so heartbreaking that the occupants of the County
- 3:19:24Speaker 4: Infirmary themselves seemed scarcely less wretched than those who are
- 3:19:28Speaker 4: making their last stand against it. This look was almost
- 3:19:32Speaker 4: more than I could bear. For only a few days
- 3:19:34Speaker 4: before some frightened woman had bidden me come quickly to
- 3:19:37Speaker 4: the house of an old German woman whom two men
- 3:19:40Speaker 4: from the County Agent's office were attempting to remove to
- 3:19:43Speaker 4: the County Infirmary. The poor old creature had thrown herself
- 3:19:47Speaker 4: bodily upon a small and battered chest of drawers, and
- 3:19:50Speaker 4: clung there, clutching it so firmly that it would have
- 3:19:53Speaker 4: been impossible to remove her without also taking the piece
- 3:19:57Speaker 4: of furniture. She did not weep, nor moan, nor indeed
- 3:20:00Speaker 4: make any human sound, but between her broken gas for breath,
- 3:20:04Speaker 4: she squealed shrilly, like a frightened animal caught in a trap.
- 3:20:08Speaker 4: The little group of women and children gathered at her door,
- 3:20:11Speaker 4: stood aghast at this realization of the black dread which
- 3:20:14Speaker 4: always clouds the lives of the very poor when work
- 3:20:17Speaker 4: is slack, but which constantly grows more imminent and threatening
- 3:20:20Speaker 4: as old age approaches. The neighborhood women and I hastened
- 3:20:24Speaker 4: to make all sorts of promises as to the support
- 3:20:26Speaker 4: of the old woman, and the county officials, only too
- 3:20:29Speaker 4: glad to be rid of their unhappy duty, left her
- 3:20:31Speaker 4: to our ministrations. This dread of the poor house, the
- 3:20:35Speaker 4: result of centuries of deterrent poor law administration, seemed to
- 3:20:39Speaker 4: me not without some justification one summer when I found
- 3:20:42Speaker 4: myself perpetually distressed by the unnecessary idleness and forlornness of
- 3:20:47Speaker 4: the old women in the Cook County Infirmary, many of
- 3:20:50Speaker 4: whom I had known in the years when activity was
- 3:20:52Speaker 4: still a necessity, and when they yet felt bustingly important.
- 3:20:57Speaker 4: To take away from an old woman, whose life has
- 3:20:59Speaker 4: been spent in household cares all the foolish little belongings
- 3:21:03Speaker 4: to which her affections cling and to which her very
- 3:21:05Speaker 4: fingers have become accustomed, is to take away her last
- 3:21:09Speaker 4: incentive to activity. Almost to life itself. To give an
- 3:21:13Speaker 4: old woman only a chair and a bed, to leave
- 3:21:15Speaker 4: her no cupboard in which her treasures may be stowed,
- 3:21:18Speaker 4: not only that she may take them out when she
- 3:21:20Speaker 4: desires occupation, but that their mind may dwell upon them
- 3:21:24Speaker 4: in moments of revery, is to reduce living almost beyond
- 3:21:27Speaker 4: the limit of human endurance. The poor creature who clung
- 3:21:31Speaker 4: so desperately to her chest of drawers was really clinging
- 3:21:33Speaker 4: to the last remnant of normal living, a symbol of
- 3:21:36Speaker 4: all she was asked to renounce. For several years after
- 3:21:40Speaker 4: this summer, I invited five or six old women to
- 3:21:42Speaker 4: take a two weeks vacation from the poorhouse, which was
- 3:21:45Speaker 4: eagerly and even gaily accepted. Almost all the old men
- 3:21:48Speaker 4: in the county infirmary wander away each summer, taking their
- 3:21:52Speaker 4: chances for finding food or shelter, and return much refreshed
- 3:21:55Speaker 4: by the little tramp. But the old women cannot do
- 3:21:58Speaker 4: this unless they have some help from them outside. And
- 3:22:01Speaker 4: yet the expenditure of very little money secures for them
- 3:22:04Speaker 4: the coveted vacation. I found that a few pennies paid
- 3:22:07Speaker 4: their car fare into town a dollar a week, procured
- 3:22:10Speaker 4: lodging with an old acquaintance. Assured of two good meals
- 3:22:13Speaker 4: a day in the hull House coffee house, they could
- 3:22:16Speaker 4: count upon numerous cups of tea among old friends, to
- 3:22:19Speaker 4: whom they would airily state that they had come out
- 3:22:22Speaker 4: for a little change and hadn't yet made up their
- 3:22:25Speaker 4: minds about going in again for the winter. They thus
- 3:22:28Speaker 4: enjoyed a two weeks vacation to the top of their bent,
- 3:22:31Speaker 4: and returned with wondrous tales of their adventures, with which
- 3:22:34Speaker 4: they regaled the other paupers during the long winter. The
- 3:22:38Speaker 4: reminiscences of these old women, their shrewd comments upon life,
- 3:22:42Speaker 4: their sense of having reached a point where they may
- 3:22:44Speaker 4: at last speak freely with nothing to lose because of
- 3:22:47Speaker 4: their frankness, makes them often the most delightful of companions.
- 3:22:52Speaker 4: I recall one of my guests, the mother of many
- 3:22:55Speaker 4: scattered children, whose one bright spot through all the dreary
- 3:22:58Speaker 4: years had been the wedding fees of her son Mike,
- 3:23:01Speaker 4: a feast which had become transformed through long meditation into
- 3:23:05Speaker 4: the nectar and Ambroisia of the very gods. As a
- 3:23:08Speaker 4: farewell fling before she went in again, we dined together
- 3:23:12Speaker 4: upon chicken pie, But it did not taste like the
- 3:23:14Speaker 4: chicken pie at Mike's wedding, and she was disappointed. After all,
- 3:23:19Speaker 4: even death itself sometimes fails to bring the dignity and
- 3:23:22Speaker 4: serenity which one would fain associate with old age. I
- 3:23:25Speaker 4: recall the dying hour of one old scotchwoman whose long
- 3:23:28Speaker 4: struggle to keep respectable had so embittered her that her
- 3:23:32Speaker 4: last words were gibes and taunts for those who were
- 3:23:35Speaker 4: trying to minister to her. So you came in yourself
- 3:23:39Speaker 4: this morning? Did you? You only sent things yesterday? I
- 3:23:43Speaker 4: guess you knew when the doctor was coming. Don't try
- 3:23:46Speaker 4: to warm my feet with anything but that old jacket
- 3:23:48Speaker 4: that I've got there. It belonged to my boy who
- 3:23:50Speaker 4: was drowned at sea nigh thirty years ago. But it's
- 3:23:53Speaker 4: warmer yet with human feelings than any of your damned
- 3:23:56Speaker 4: charity hot water bottles. Suddenly, the harsh, gasping voice was
- 3:24:00Speaker 4: stilled in death, and I awaited the doctor's coming, shaken
- 3:24:03Speaker 4: and horrified. The lack of municipal regulation already referred to,
- 3:24:08Speaker 4: was in the early days of Hull House, paralleled by
- 3:24:11Speaker 4: the inadequacy of the charitable efforts of the city and
- 3:24:15Speaker 4: an unfounded optimism that there was no real poverty among us.
- 3:24:19Speaker 4: Twenty years ago, there was no charity organization society in Chicago,
- 3:24:24Speaker 4: and the Visiting Nurse Association had not yet begun its
- 3:24:26Speaker 4: beneficial work, while the relief societies, although conscientiously administered, were
- 3:24:32Speaker 4: inadequate in extent and antiquated in method. As social reformers
- 3:24:37Speaker 4: gave themselves over to discussion of general principles, so the
- 3:24:40Speaker 4: poor invariably accused poverty itself of their destruction. I recall
- 3:24:45Speaker 4: certain missus Moran, who was returning one rainy day from
- 3:24:49Speaker 4: the office of the County Agent with her arms full
- 3:24:52Speaker 4: of paper bags containing beans and flour, which alone lay
- 3:24:55Speaker 4: between her children and starvation. Although she had no money,
- 3:24:59Speaker 4: she boarded a street in order to save her booty
- 3:25:01Speaker 4: from complete destruction by the rain, and as the burst
- 3:25:05Speaker 4: bags dropped flour on the ladies, dresses and beans all
- 3:25:09Speaker 4: over the place, she was sharply reprimanded by the conductor,
- 3:25:13Speaker 4: who was the further exasperated when he discovered she had
- 3:25:16Speaker 4: no fare. He put her off as she had hoped
- 3:25:19Speaker 4: he would. Almost in front of Hull House. She related
- 3:25:22Speaker 4: to us her state of mind as she stepped off
- 3:25:24Speaker 4: the car and saw the last of her wares disappearing.
- 3:25:27Speaker 4: She admitted she forgot the proprietaries and cursed a little.
- 3:25:30Speaker 4: But curiously enough, she pronounced her malediction not against the rain,
- 3:25:34Speaker 4: nor the conductor, nor yet against the worthless husband who
- 3:25:37Speaker 4: had been set up to the city prison. But true
- 3:25:41Speaker 4: to the Chicago spirit of the moment, went to the
- 3:25:43Speaker 4: root of the matter and roundly cursed poverty. This spirit
- 3:25:47Speaker 4: of generalization and lack of organization among the charitable forces
- 3:25:51Speaker 4: of the city was painfully revealed in that terrible winter
- 3:25:54Speaker 4: after the World's Fair, when the general financial depression throughout
- 3:25:57Speaker 4: the country was much intensified in by the numbers of
- 3:26:01Speaker 4: unemployed stranded at the close of the exposition. When the
- 3:26:05Speaker 4: first cold weather came, the police stations in the very
- 3:26:07Speaker 4: corridors of the City Hall were crowded by men who
- 3:26:09Speaker 4: could afford no other lodging. They made huge demonstrations on
- 3:26:12Speaker 4: the lake front, reminding one of the London gatherings in
- 3:26:16Speaker 4: Chfogar Square. It was the winter in which mister Stead
- 3:26:19Speaker 4: wrote his Indictment of Chicago. I can vividly recall his
- 3:26:23Speaker 4: visits to Hull House, some of them between eleven and
- 3:26:26Speaker 4: twelve o'clock at night, when he would come in wet
- 3:26:29Speaker 4: and hungry from an investigation of the Levee district, and
- 3:26:32Speaker 4: while he was drinking hot chocolate before an open fire,
- 3:26:35Speaker 4: would relate in one of his curious monologues his experience
- 3:26:38Speaker 4: as an out of door laborer standing in line without
- 3:26:41Speaker 4: an overcoat for two hours than the sleet that he
- 3:26:44Speaker 4: might have a chance to sweep the streets, or his
- 3:26:47Speaker 4: adventures with a crook who mistook him for one of
- 3:26:49Speaker 4: his own kind and offered him a place as an
- 3:26:51Speaker 4: agent for a gambling house, which he promptly accepted. Mister
- 3:26:55Speaker 4: Steed was much impressed with the mixed goodness in Chicago,
- 3:26:59Speaker 4: the lack of rectitude in many high places, the simple
- 3:27:02Speaker 4: kindness of the most wretched to each other. Before he
- 3:27:05Speaker 4: published If Christ Came to Chicago, he made his attempt
- 3:27:08Speaker 4: to rally the diverse moral forces of the city in
- 3:27:11Speaker 4: a huge mass meeting, which resulted in a temporary organization
- 3:27:15Speaker 4: later developing into the Civic Federation. I was a member
- 3:27:19Speaker 4: of the committee of five appointed to carry out the
- 3:27:22Speaker 4: suggestions made in this remarkable meeting, and our first concern
- 3:27:25Speaker 4: was to appoint a committee to deal with the unemployed.
- 3:27:28Speaker 4: But one has a committee ever dealt satisfactorily was the unemployed.
- 3:27:32Speaker 4: Relief stations were opened in various parts of the city.
- 3:27:36Speaker 4: Temporary lodging houses were established hull house undertaking to lodge
- 3:27:40Speaker 4: the homeless women who could be received nowhere else. Employment
- 3:27:44Speaker 4: stations were opened giving sewing to the women, and street
- 3:27:47Speaker 4: sweeping for the men was organized. It was in connection
- 3:27:51Speaker 4: with the latter that the perplexing question of the danger
- 3:27:54Speaker 4: of permanently lowering wages at such a crisis in the
- 3:27:58Speaker 4: praiseworthy effort to bring speed relief was brought home to me.
- 3:28:02Speaker 4: I insisted that it was better to have the men
- 3:28:04Speaker 4: work half a day for seventy five cents than a
- 3:28:07Speaker 4: whole day for a dollar, better that they should earn
- 3:28:10Speaker 4: three dollars in two days than in three days. I
- 3:28:13Speaker 4: resigned from the street cleaning committee in despair of making
- 3:28:16Speaker 4: the rest of the committee understand that, as our real
- 3:28:19Speaker 4: object was not street cleaning but the help of the unemployed,
- 3:28:23Speaker 4: we must treat the situation in such wise that the
- 3:28:26Speaker 4: men would not be worse off when they returned to
- 3:28:28Speaker 4: their normal occupations. The discussion opened up situations new to
- 3:28:32Speaker 4: me and carried me far afield and perhaps the most
- 3:28:35Speaker 4: serious economic reading I have ever done. A beginning also
- 3:28:39Speaker 4: was then made toward a bureau of organized charities, the
- 3:28:43Speaker 4: main office being put in charge of a young man
- 3:28:45Speaker 4: recently come from Boston who lived at Hull House. But
- 3:28:49Speaker 4: to employ scientific methods for the first time at such
- 3:28:51Speaker 4: a moment involved difficulties, and the most painful episode of
- 3:28:55Speaker 4: the winter came for me from an attempt on my
- 3:28:58Speaker 4: part to conform to carefully recast instructions. A shipping clerk
- 3:29:02Speaker 4: who I had known for a long time, had lost
- 3:29:05Speaker 4: his place, as so many people had that year, and
- 3:29:08Speaker 4: came to the relief station established at a Hull House
- 3:29:10Speaker 4: four or five times to secure help for his family.
- 3:29:14Speaker 4: I told him one day of the opportunity for work
- 3:29:17Speaker 4: on the drainage canal, and intimated that if any employment
- 3:29:20Speaker 4: were obtainable, he ought to exhaust that possibility before asking
- 3:29:24Speaker 4: for help. The man replied that he had always worked
- 3:29:28Speaker 4: indoors and that he could not endure outside work in winter.
- 3:29:32Speaker 4: I am grateful to remember that I was too uncertain
- 3:29:34Speaker 4: to be severe, although I held to my instructions. He
- 3:29:38Speaker 4: did not come back again for relief, but worked for
- 3:29:40Speaker 4: two days digging on the canal, where he contracted pneumonia
- 3:29:44Speaker 4: and died a week later. I have never lost trace
- 3:29:47Speaker 4: of the two little children he left behind him, although
- 3:29:50Speaker 4: I could not see them without a bitter consciousness that
- 3:29:53Speaker 4: it was at their expense. I learned that life cannot
- 3:29:55Speaker 4: be administered by definite rules and regulations, that wisdom to
- 3:29:59Speaker 4: deal with am Man's the difficulties comes only through some
- 3:30:02Speaker 4: knowledge of his life and habits as a whole, and
- 3:30:05Speaker 4: that to treat an isolated episode is almost sure to
- 3:30:08Speaker 4: invite blundering. It was also during this winter that I
- 3:30:12Speaker 4: became permanently impressed with the kindness of the poor to
- 3:30:14Speaker 4: each other. The woman who lives upstairs will willingly share
- 3:30:18Speaker 4: her breakfast with the family below, because she knows they
- 3:30:20Speaker 4: are hard up. The man who boarded with them last
- 3:30:25Speaker 4: winter will give a month's rent because he knows the
- 3:30:27Speaker 4: father of the family is out of work. The baker
- 3:30:31Speaker 4: across the street, who is fast being pushed to the
- 3:30:33Speaker 4: wall by his downtown competitors, will send across three loaves
- 3:30:37Speaker 4: of stale bread because he has seen the children looking
- 3:30:40Speaker 4: longingly into his window and suspects they are hungry. There
- 3:30:43Speaker 4: are also families who, during times of business depression, are
- 3:30:46Speaker 4: obliged to seek help from the county or some benevolent society,
- 3:30:51Speaker 4: but who are themselves most anxious not to be confounded
- 3:30:54Speaker 4: with the popper class, with whom indeed they do not
- 3:30:57Speaker 4: in the least belong. Charles Booth, in his brilliant chapter
- 3:31:01Speaker 4: on the Unemployed, expressed his regret that the problems of
- 3:31:04Speaker 4: the working class are so often confounded with the problems
- 3:31:07Speaker 4: of the inefficient and the idol that although working people
- 3:31:11Speaker 4: live in the same street with those in need of charity,
- 3:31:15Speaker 4: to thus confound two problems is to render the solution
- 3:31:18Speaker 4: of both impossible. I remember one family in which the
- 3:31:22Speaker 4: father had been out of work for this same winter.
- 3:31:26Speaker 4: Most of the furniture had been pawned, and as the
- 3:31:29Speaker 4: worn out shoes could not be replaced, the children could
- 3:31:31Speaker 4: not go to school. The mother was ill and barely
- 3:31:34Speaker 4: able to come for the supplies and medicines. Two years
- 3:31:38Speaker 4: later she invited me to supper one Sunday evening in
- 3:31:41Speaker 4: the little home, which had been completely restored, and she
- 3:31:44Speaker 4: gave as a reason for the invitation that she couldn't
- 3:31:47Speaker 4: bear to have me remember them as they had been
- 3:31:49Speaker 4: during that one winter, which she insisted had been unique
- 3:31:52Speaker 4: in her twelve years of married life. She said that
- 3:31:56Speaker 4: it was as if she had met me, not as
- 3:31:58Speaker 4: I am ordinarily, but as if I should appear misshapen
- 3:32:01Speaker 4: with rheumatism or with a face distorted by neurolagic pain.
- 3:32:05Speaker 4: That it was not fair to judge poor people that way.
- 3:32:08Speaker 4: She perhaps unconsciously illustrated the difference between the relief station
- 3:32:13Speaker 4: relation to the poor and the settlement relation to its neighbors,
- 3:32:17Speaker 4: the latter wishing to know them through all the varying
- 3:32:20Speaker 4: conditions of life, to stand by when they are in distress,
- 3:32:24Speaker 4: but by no means to drop intercourse with them when
- 3:32:26Speaker 4: normal prosperity has returned, enabling their relation to become more
- 3:32:31Speaker 4: social and free from economic disturbance. Possibly something of the
- 3:32:35Speaker 4: same effort has to be made with the settlement itself
- 3:32:37Speaker 4: to keep its own sense of proportion in regard to
- 3:32:40Speaker 4: the relation of the crowded city quarter to the rest
- 3:32:43Speaker 4: of the country. It was in the spring following this
- 3:32:45Speaker 4: terrible winter, during a journey to meet lecture engagements in California,
- 3:32:50Speaker 4: that I found myself amazed at the large stretches of
- 3:32:52Speaker 4: open country and prosperous towns through which we passed day
- 3:32:56Speaker 4: by day, whose existence I had quite forgotten. Part of
- 3:33:00Speaker 4: the summer of eighteen ninety five, I served as a
- 3:33:03Speaker 4: member on a commission appointed by the Mayor of Chicago
- 3:33:06Speaker 4: to investigate conditions in the County Poorhouse, public attention having
- 3:33:10Speaker 4: become centered on it through one of those distressing stories
- 3:33:13Speaker 4: which exaggerates the wrong in a public institution, while at
- 3:33:16Speaker 4: the same time it reveals conditions which need to be rectified.
- 3:33:20Speaker 4: However necessary publicity is for securing reformed administration, however useful
- 3:33:25Speaker 4: such exposures may be for political purposes, the whole is
- 3:33:29Speaker 4: attended by such a waste of the most precious human emotions,
- 3:33:33Speaker 4: by such a tearing of a living tissue, that it
- 3:33:36Speaker 4: can scarcely be endured. Every time I entered Hull House
- 3:33:39Speaker 4: during the days of the investigation, I would find waiting
- 3:33:42Speaker 4: for me from twenty to thirty people whose friends and
- 3:33:45Speaker 4: relatives were in the suspected institution, all in such acute
- 3:33:49Speaker 4: distress of mind that to see them was to look
- 3:33:53Speaker 4: upon the victims of a delibered torture. In most cases,
- 3:33:56Speaker 4: my visitor would state that it seemed impossible to put
- 3:33:58Speaker 4: their invalids in any other place. But if these stories
- 3:34:02Speaker 4: were true, something must be done. Many of the patients
- 3:34:05Speaker 4: were taken out, only to be returned after a few
- 3:34:08Speaker 4: days or weeks to meet the sullen hostility of their attendants,
- 3:34:11Speaker 4: and with their own attitude change from confidence to timidity
- 3:34:15Speaker 4: and alarm. This piteous dependence of the poor upon the
- 3:34:19Speaker 4: good will of public officials was made clear to us
- 3:34:22Speaker 4: in an early experience with a peasant woman straight from
- 3:34:25Speaker 4: the fields of Germany, whom we met during our first
- 3:34:28Speaker 4: six months at Hull House. Her four years in America
- 3:34:31Speaker 4: had been spent in patiently carrying water up and down
- 3:34:34Speaker 4: two flights of stairs, and in washing the heavy flannel
- 3:34:37Speaker 4: suits of iron foundry workers. For this, her pay had
- 3:34:41Speaker 4: averaged thirty five cents a day. Three of her daughters
- 3:34:44Speaker 4: had fallen victims to the vice of the city. The
- 3:34:47Speaker 4: mother was bewildered in distress, but understood nothing. We were
- 3:34:51Speaker 4: able to induce the betrayer of one daughter to marry her.
- 3:34:54Speaker 4: The second, after a tedious lawsuit, supported his child with
- 3:34:58Speaker 4: the third. We were able to do nothing. This woman
- 3:35:02Speaker 4: is now living with her family in a little house
- 3:35:04Speaker 4: seventeen miles from the city. She has made two payments
- 3:35:07Speaker 4: on her land, and has listened to all beholders as
- 3:35:10Speaker 4: she pastures her cow up and down the railroad tracks
- 3:35:13Speaker 4: and makes money from her ten acres. She did not
- 3:35:16Speaker 4: need charity, for she had an immense capacity for hard work,
- 3:35:21Speaker 4: but she sadly needed the service of the state's attorney
- 3:35:23Speaker 4: office enforcing the law designed for the protection of such
- 3:35:27Speaker 4: girls as her daughters. We early found ourselves spending many
- 3:35:31Speaker 4: hours in efforts to secure support for deserted women, insurance
- 3:35:34Speaker 4: for bewildered widows, damages for injured operators, furniture from the
- 3:35:39Speaker 4: clutches of the installment store. The Settlement is valuable as
- 3:35:43Speaker 4: an information and interpretation bureau. It constantly acts between the
- 3:35:47Speaker 4: various institutions of the city and the people for whose
- 3:35:50Speaker 4: benefit these institutions were erected. The hospitals, the county agencies,
- 3:35:55Speaker 4: and state asylums are often but vague rumors to the
- 3:35:58Speaker 4: people who need them most. Another function of the Settlement
- 3:36:01Speaker 4: to its neighborhood resembles that of the big brother, whose
- 3:36:04Speaker 4: mere presence on the playground protects the little one from bullies.
- 3:36:08Speaker 4: We early learned to know the children of hard driven
- 3:36:11Speaker 4: mothers who went out to work all day, sometimes leaving
- 3:36:14Speaker 4: the little things in the casual care of a neighbor,
- 3:36:16Speaker 4: but often locking them into their tenement rooms. The first
- 3:36:20Speaker 4: three crippled children we encountered in the neighborhood had all
- 3:36:23Speaker 4: been injured while their mothers were at work. One had
- 3:36:26Speaker 4: fallen out of a third story window, another had been burned,
- 3:36:30Speaker 4: and the third had a curved spine due to the
- 3:36:33Speaker 4: fact that for three years he had been tied all
- 3:36:35Speaker 4: day long to the leg of the kitchen table, only
- 3:36:38Speaker 4: released at noon by his older brother, who hastily ran
- 3:36:41Speaker 4: in from the neighboring factory to share his lunch with him.
- 3:36:45Speaker 4: When the hot weather came, the restless children could not
- 3:36:47Speaker 4: brook the confinement of the stuffy rooms, and as it
- 3:36:52Speaker 4: was not considered safe to leave the doors open because
- 3:36:54Speaker 4: of sneak thieves, many of the children were locked out.
- 3:36:58Speaker 4: During our first summer, an increased number of these poor
- 3:37:00Speaker 4: little mites would wander into the cool hallway of Hull House.
- 3:37:05Speaker 4: We kept them there and fed them at noon, in
- 3:37:07Speaker 4: return for which we were sometimes offered a hot penny
- 3:37:10Speaker 4: which had been held in a tight little fist ever
- 3:37:13Speaker 4: since mother left this morning to buy something to eat
- 3:37:16Speaker 4: with out of kindergarten hours. Our little guests noisily enjoyed
- 3:37:20Speaker 4: the hospitality of our bedrooms under the so called care
- 3:37:23Speaker 4: of any resident who volunteered to keep an eye on them,
- 3:37:27Speaker 4: But later they were moved into a neighboring apartment under
- 3:37:30Speaker 4: more systematic supervision. Hull House was thus committed to a
- 3:37:33Speaker 4: day nursery, which we sustained for sixteen years, first in
- 3:37:37Speaker 4: a little cottage on a side street, and then in
- 3:37:39Speaker 4: a building designed for its use called the Children's House.
- 3:37:43Speaker 4: It is now carried on by the United Charities of
- 3:37:45Speaker 4: Chicago in a finally equipped building on our block, while
- 3:37:48Speaker 4: the immigrant mothers are cared for as well as the children,
- 3:37:51Speaker 4: and where they are taught the things which will make
- 3:37:54Speaker 4: life in America more possible. Our early day nursery brought
- 3:37:58Speaker 4: us into natural relations with the poor women of the neighborhood,
- 3:38:01Speaker 4: many of whom were bearing the burden of dissolute and
- 3:38:03Speaker 4: incompetent husbands in addition to the support of their children.
- 3:38:07Speaker 4: Some of them presented an impressive manifestation of that miracle
- 3:38:11Speaker 4: of affection which outlives abuse, neglect, and crime, the affection
- 3:38:15Speaker 4: which cannot be plucked from the heart where it has lived,
- 3:38:18Speaker 4: although it may serve only to torture and torment. Has
- 3:38:22Speaker 4: your husband come back? You inquire of Missus S, whom
- 3:38:25Speaker 4: you have known for eight years, as an overworked woman,
- 3:38:28Speaker 4: bringing her three delicate children every morning to the nursery.
- 3:38:32Speaker 4: She is bent under the double burden of earning the
- 3:38:34Speaker 4: money which supports them and giving them the tender care
- 3:38:37Speaker 4: which alone keeps them alive. The oldest two children have
- 3:38:41Speaker 4: at last gone to work, and Missus S has allowed
- 3:38:43Speaker 4: herself the luxury of staying at home two days a week.
- 3:38:46Speaker 4: And now the worthless husband is back again, the gentlemanly
- 3:38:49Speaker 4: gambler type who through all vicissitudes manages to present a
- 3:38:53Speaker 4: white shirt front and a gold watch to the world,
- 3:38:56Speaker 4: but who is dissolute, idle, and extravagant. He dread to
- 3:39:00Speaker 4: think how much his presence will increase the drain upon
- 3:39:03Speaker 4: the family exchequer. And you know that he has stayed
- 3:39:06Speaker 4: away until he was certain that the children were old
- 3:39:09Speaker 4: enough to earn money for his luxuries. Missus S. Does
- 3:39:12Speaker 4: not pretend to take his return lightly, but she replies
- 3:39:15Speaker 4: in all seriousness and simplicity, you know my feeling for
- 3:39:18Speaker 4: him has never changed. You may think me foolish, but
- 3:39:21Speaker 4: I was always proud of his good looks and educated appearance.
- 3:39:25Speaker 4: I was lonely and homesick during those eight years when
- 3:39:28Speaker 4: the children were little and needed so much doctoring, but
- 3:39:31Speaker 4: I could never bring myself to feel hard toward him,
- 3:39:34Speaker 4: and I used to pray the Good Lord to keep
- 3:39:36Speaker 4: him from harm and bring him back to us. So,
- 3:39:38Speaker 4: of course I am thankful. Now she passes on with
- 3:39:42Speaker 4: a dignity which gives one a new sense of the
- 3:39:44Speaker 4: security of affection. I recall a similar case of a
- 3:39:48Speaker 4: woman who had supported her three children for five years,
- 3:39:51Speaker 4: during which time her dissolute husband constantly demanded money for
- 3:39:54Speaker 4: drink and kept her perpetually worried and intimidated. One Saturday
- 3:39:58Speaker 4: before the Blessed Easter, he came back from a long debouch,
- 3:40:01Speaker 4: ragged and filthy, but in a state of lacrymorre's repentance.
- 3:40:05Speaker 4: The poor wife received him as a returned prodigal, believed
- 3:40:09Speaker 4: that his remorse would prove lasting, and felt sure that
- 3:40:12Speaker 4: if she and the children went to church with him
- 3:40:14Speaker 4: on Easter Sunday and he could be induced to take
- 3:40:17Speaker 4: the pledge before the priests, all their troubles would be ended.
- 3:40:21Speaker 4: After hours of vigorous effort and the expenditure of all
- 3:40:24Speaker 4: her savings, he finally sat on the front doorstep the
- 3:40:27Speaker 4: morning of Easter Sunday, bathed, shaved, and arrayed in a
- 3:40:31Speaker 4: fine new suit of clothes. She left him sitting there
- 3:40:34Speaker 4: in the reluctant spring sunshine while she finished washing and
- 3:40:38Speaker 4: dressing the children. When she finally opened the front door
- 3:40:41Speaker 4: with the three shining children, that they might all set
- 3:40:44Speaker 4: forth together, the return prodigal had disappeared and was not
- 3:40:48Speaker 4: seen again until midnight, when he came back, in a
- 3:40:50Speaker 4: glorious state of intoxication from the proceeds of his pond clothes,
- 3:40:55Speaker 4: and clad once more in the dingious attire. She took
- 3:40:58Speaker 4: him in without comment, only to begin again the wretched cycle.
- 3:41:02Speaker 4: There were, of course, instances of the criminal husband as
- 3:41:05Speaker 4: well as of the merely vicious. I recall one woman who,
- 3:41:10Speaker 4: during the seven years, never missed a visiting day at
- 3:41:13Speaker 4: the penitentiary when she might see her husband, and whose
- 3:41:17Speaker 4: little children in the nursery proudly reported the messages from father,
- 3:41:21Speaker 4: with no notion that he was in disgrace. So absolutely
- 3:41:25Speaker 4: did they reflect the gallant spirit of their mother. While
- 3:41:28Speaker 4: one was filled with admiration for these heroic women, something
- 3:41:32Speaker 4: was also to be said for some of the husbands,
- 3:41:34Speaker 4: for the sorry men who, for one reason or another
- 3:41:37Speaker 4: had failed in the struggle of life. Sometimes this failure
- 3:41:40Speaker 4: was purely economic, and the men were competent to give
- 3:41:43Speaker 4: the children whom they were not able to support, the
- 3:41:46Speaker 4: care and guidance and even education, which were of the
- 3:41:49Speaker 4: highest value. Only a few months ago I met upon
- 3:41:52Speaker 4: the street one of the early nursery mothers, who for
- 3:41:55Speaker 4: five years had been living in another part of the city,
- 3:41:59Speaker 4: and in response to my query as to the welfare
- 3:42:01Speaker 4: of her five children, she bitterly replied, all of them
- 3:42:05Speaker 4: except Mary, have been arrested at one time or another.
- 3:42:07Speaker 4: Thank you, and replied to my remark that I thought
- 3:42:11Speaker 4: her husband had always had such admirable control over them,
- 3:42:14Speaker 4: she burst out, that has been the whole trouble. I
- 3:42:18Speaker 4: got tired taking care of him and didn't believe that
- 3:42:21Speaker 4: his laziness was all due to his health, as he said,
- 3:42:24Speaker 4: So I left him and said that I would support
- 3:42:26Speaker 4: the children, but not him. From that minute, the trouble
- 3:42:29Speaker 4: with the four boys began. I never knew what they
- 3:42:33Speaker 4: were doing, and after every sort of scrape, I finally
- 3:42:35Speaker 4: put Jack and the twins into institutions where I pay
- 3:42:38Speaker 4: for them. Joe has gone to work at last, but
- 3:42:42Speaker 4: with a disgraceful record behind him. I tell you I
- 3:42:45Speaker 4: ain't so sure that because a woman can make big money,
- 3:42:48Speaker 4: that she can be both father and mother to her children.
- 3:42:52Speaker 4: As I walked on, I could but wonder in which
- 3:42:54Speaker 4: particular we are most stupid to judge a man's worth
- 3:42:58Speaker 4: so solely by his wage earning, that a good wife
- 3:43:01Speaker 4: feels justified in leaving him, or in holding fast to
- 3:43:04Speaker 4: that wretched delusion that a woman can both support and
- 3:43:07Speaker 4: nurture her children. One of the most piteous revelations of
- 3:43:11Speaker 4: the futility of the latter attempt came to me through
- 3:43:14Speaker 4: the mother of Goosey, as the children for years called,
- 3:43:17Speaker 4: a little boy who, because he was brought to the
- 3:43:20Speaker 4: nursery wrapped up in his mother's shawl, always had his
- 3:43:23Speaker 4: hair filled with the down and small feathers from the
- 3:43:26Speaker 4: feather brush factory where she worked. One March morning, Goosey's
- 3:43:31Speaker 4: mother was hanging out the washing on a shed roof
- 3:43:33Speaker 4: before she left for the factory. Five year old Goosey
- 3:43:37Speaker 4: was trotting at her heels handing her clothes pins when
- 3:43:39Speaker 4: he was suddenly blown off the roof by the high
- 3:43:42Speaker 4: wind into the alley below. His neck was broken by
- 3:43:46Speaker 4: the fall, and as he lay piteous and limp on
- 3:43:49Speaker 4: a pile of frozen refuse, his mother cheerily called him
- 3:43:52Speaker 4: to climb up again. So confident do overworked mothers become
- 3:43:56Speaker 4: that their children could not get hurt. After the funeral,
- 3:43:59Speaker 4: as the poor mother sat in the nursery, postponing the
- 3:44:02Speaker 4: moment when she must go back to her empty rooms,
- 3:44:05Speaker 4: I asked her, in a futile effort to be of comfort,
- 3:44:09Speaker 4: if there was anything more we could do for her.
- 3:44:12Speaker 4: The overwort, sorrow stricken woman looked up and replied, if
- 3:44:16Speaker 4: you give me my wages for tomorrow, I would not
- 3:44:19Speaker 4: go to work in the factory at all. I would
- 3:44:22Speaker 4: like to stay at home all day and hold the baby.
- 3:44:25Speaker 4: Gucy was always asking me to take him, and I
- 3:44:27Speaker 4: never had any time. This statement revealed the condition of
- 3:44:31Speaker 4: many nursery mothers, who are obliged to forego the joys
- 3:44:35Speaker 4: and solaces which belong to even the most poverty stricken.
- 3:44:39Speaker 4: The long hours of factory labor necessary for earning the
- 3:44:41Speaker 4: support of a child, leave no time for the tender
- 3:44:45Speaker 4: care and caressing which may enrich the life of the
- 3:44:47Speaker 4: most piteous baby. With all the efforts made by modern
- 3:44:51Speaker 4: society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid is
- 3:44:54Speaker 4: it to permit the mothers of young children to spend
- 3:44:57Speaker 4: themselves in the coarser work of the world. It is
- 3:45:00Speaker 4: curiously inconsistent that, with the emphasis which this generation has
- 3:45:04Speaker 4: placed upon the mother and upon the prolongation of infancy,
- 3:45:08Speaker 4: we constantly allow the waste of the most precious material.
- 3:45:13Speaker 4: I cannot recall without indignation a recent experience. I was
- 3:45:18Speaker 4: detained late one evening in an office building by a
- 3:45:20Speaker 4: prolonged committee meeting of the Board of Education. As I
- 3:45:23Speaker 4: came out at eleven o'clock, I met in the corridor
- 3:45:26Speaker 4: of the fourteenth floor a woman whom I knew, on
- 3:45:29Speaker 4: her knees scrubbing the marble tiling. As she straightened up
- 3:45:32Speaker 4: to greet me, she seemed so wet from her feet
- 3:45:35Speaker 4: up to her chin that I hastily inquired the cause.
- 3:45:39Speaker 4: Her reply was that she left home at five o'clock
- 3:45:41Speaker 4: every night and had no opportunity for six hours to
- 3:45:44Speaker 4: nurse her baby, her mother's milk mingled with the very
- 3:45:48Speaker 4: water with which she scrubbed the floors, until she should
- 3:45:50Speaker 4: return at midnight, heated and exhausted, to feed her screaming
- 3:45:54Speaker 4: child with what remained within her breasts. These are only
- 3:45:58Speaker 4: a few of the problems cannected with the lives of
- 3:46:00Speaker 4: the poorest people, with whom the residents in a settlement
- 3:46:04Speaker 4: are constantly brought in contact. I cannot close this chapter
- 3:46:08Speaker 4: without a reference to the gallant company of men and women,
- 3:46:10Speaker 4: among whom my acquaintance is so large, who are fairly
- 3:46:13Speaker 4: indifferent to starvation itself because of their preoccupation with higher ends.
- 3:46:19Speaker 4: Among them are visionaries and enthusiasts, unsuccessful artists, writers, and reformers.
- 3:46:25Speaker 4: For many years at Hull House, we knew a well
- 3:46:27Speaker 4: bred German woman who was completely absorbed in the experiment
- 3:46:31Speaker 4: of expressing musical phrases and melodies by means of colors.
- 3:46:34Speaker 4: Because she was small and deformed, she stowed herself into
- 3:46:37Speaker 4: her trunk every night, where she slept on a canvas
- 3:46:40Speaker 4: stretched hammock wise from the four corners, and her food
- 3:46:44Speaker 4: was of the meagerest. Nevertheless, if a visitor left an
- 3:46:48Speaker 4: offering upon her table. It was largely spent for apparatus
- 3:46:51Speaker 4: or doically colored silk floss with which to pursue the
- 3:46:55Speaker 4: fascinating experiment. Another sadly crippled old woman, the widow of
- 3:47:00Speaker 4: a sea captain, although living almost exclusively upon malted milk
- 3:47:04Speaker 4: tablets as affording a cheap form of prepared food, was
- 3:47:08Speaker 4: always eager to talk of the beautiful illuminated manuscripts she
- 3:47:11Speaker 4: had sought out in her travels, and to show specimens
- 3:47:14Speaker 4: of her own work as an illuminator. Still, another of
- 3:47:18Speaker 4: these impressive old women was an inveterate inventor. Although she
- 3:47:22Speaker 4: had seen prosperous days in England when we knew her,
- 3:47:25Speaker 4: she subsisted largely upon the samples given way at the
- 3:47:28Speaker 4: demonstration counters of the department stores, and on bits of
- 3:47:31Speaker 4: food which she cooked on a cold shovel in the
- 3:47:34Speaker 4: furnace of the apartment house whose basement back room she occupied.
- 3:47:38Speaker 4: Although her inventions were not practicable, various experts to whom
- 3:47:43Speaker 4: they were submitted always pronounced them suggestive and ingenious. I
- 3:47:48Speaker 4: once saw her receive this complimentary verdict, this ribbon to
- 3:47:52Speaker 4: stick in her coat, with such dignity and gravity that
- 3:47:56Speaker 4: the words of condolence for her financial disappointment died upon
- 3:47:59Speaker 4: my life lips. These indomitable souls are but three out
- 3:48:04Speaker 4: of many who I might instance to prove that those
- 3:48:07Speaker 4: who are handicapped in the race for life's goods sometimes
- 3:48:11Speaker 4: play a magnificent trick upon the jade life herself by
- 3:48:15Speaker 4: ceasing to know whether or not they possess any of
- 3:48:17Speaker 4: her tawdry goods and chtels. End of Chapter eight, Chapter nine.
- 3:48:25Speaker 1: A decade of economic discussion. The Hull House residents were
- 3:48:30Speaker 1: often bewildered by the desire for constant discussion which characterized
- 3:48:35Speaker 1: Chicago twenty years ago. For although the residents in the
- 3:48:38Speaker 1: early settlements were in many cases young persons who had
- 3:48:42Speaker 1: sought relief from the consciousness of social maladjustment in the
- 3:48:45Speaker 1: anodyne of work afforded by philanthropic and civic activities, their
- 3:48:50Speaker 1: former experiences had not thrown them into company with radicals.
- 3:48:54Speaker 1: The decade between eighteen ninety to nineteen hundred was in
- 3:48:58Speaker 1: Chicago a period of propaganda as over against constructive social effort.
- 3:49:04Speaker 1: The moment for marching and carrying banners, for stating general
- 3:49:08Speaker 1: principles and making a demonstration, rather than the time for
- 3:49:11Speaker 1: uncovering the situation and for providing the legal measures and
- 3:49:14Speaker 1: civic organization through which new social hopes might make themselves felt.
- 3:49:20Speaker 1: When Hull House was established in eighteen eighty nine, the
- 3:49:23Speaker 1: events of the Hay Market Riot were already two years old.
- 3:49:26Speaker 1: But during that time Chicago had apparently gone through the
- 3:49:29Speaker 1: first period of repressive measures, and in the winter of
- 3:49:33Speaker 1: eighteen eighty nine to eighteen ninety, by the advice and
- 3:49:36Speaker 1: with the active participation of its leading citizens, the city
- 3:49:40Speaker 1: had reached the conclusion that the only cure for the
- 3:49:42Speaker 1: acts of anarchy was free speech and an open discussion
- 3:49:46Speaker 1: of the ills of which the opponents of government complained.
- 3:49:49Speaker 1: Great open meetings were held every Sunday evening in the
- 3:49:52Speaker 1: recital hall of the then new Auditorium, presided over by
- 3:49:56Speaker 1: such representative citizens as Lyme Engage, and every possible shade
- 3:50:01Speaker 1: of opinion was freely expressed. A man who spoke constantly
- 3:50:05Speaker 1: at these meetings used to be pointed out to the
- 3:50:07Speaker 1: visiting stranger as one who had been involved with a
- 3:50:10Speaker 1: group of convicted anarchists, and who doubtless would have been
- 3:50:13Speaker 1: arrested and tried but for the accident of his having
- 3:50:17Speaker 1: been in Milwaukee when the explosion occurred. One cannot imagine
- 3:50:21Speaker 1: such meetings being held in Chicago to day, nor that
- 3:50:25Speaker 1: such a man should be encouraged to raise his voice
- 3:50:27Speaker 1: in a public assemblage presided over by a leading banker.
- 3:50:31Speaker 1: It is hard to tell just what change has come
- 3:50:33Speaker 1: over our philosophy or over the minds of those citizens
- 3:50:36Speaker 1: who were then convinced that if these conferences had been
- 3:50:39Speaker 1: established earlier, the Haymarket riot and all its sensational results,
- 3:50:44Speaker 1: might have been avoided. At any rate, there seemed a
- 3:50:47Speaker 1: further need for smaller clubs, where men who differed widely
- 3:50:51Speaker 1: in their social theories might meet for discussion, where representatives
- 3:50:55Speaker 1: of the various economic schools might modify each other and
- 3:50:58Speaker 1: at least learn tall Lerance and the futility of endeavoring
- 3:51:02Speaker 1: to convince all the world of the truth of one position.
- 3:51:05Speaker 1: Fanaticism is engendered only when men, finding no contradiction to
- 3:51:09Speaker 1: their theories, at last believe that the very universe lends
- 3:51:13Speaker 1: itself as an exemplification of one point of view. The
- 3:51:17Speaker 1: Working People's Social Science Club was organized at Hull House
- 3:51:20Speaker 1: in the spring of eighteen ninety by an English Workingman,
- 3:51:24Speaker 1: and for seven years it held a weekly meeting at
- 3:51:27Speaker 1: eight o'clock every Wednesday night. The secretary called to order
- 3:51:30Speaker 1: from forty to one hundred people, a chairman for the
- 3:51:34Speaker 1: evening was elected. A speaker was introduced, who was allowed
- 3:51:37Speaker 1: to talk till nine o'clock. His subject was then thrown
- 3:51:40Speaker 1: open to discussion, and a lively debate ensued until ten o'clock,
- 3:51:44Speaker 1: at which hour the meeting was declared adjourned. The enthusiasm
- 3:51:48Speaker 1: of this club seldom lagged, Its zest for discussion was unceasing,
- 3:51:53Speaker 1: and any attempt to turn it into a study or
- 3:51:55Speaker 1: reading club always met with the strong disapprobation of the members.
- 3:52:00Speaker 1: In these weekly discussions in the Hull House drawing room,
- 3:52:03Speaker 1: everything was thrown back upon general principles, and all discussions,
- 3:52:07Speaker 1: save that which went to the root of things, was
- 3:52:10Speaker 1: impatiently discarded as an unworthy half way measure. I recall
- 3:52:15Speaker 1: one evening in this club, when an exasperated member had
- 3:52:18Speaker 1: thrown out the statement that mister B believes that socialism
- 3:52:21Speaker 1: will cure the toothache. Mister B promptly rose to his
- 3:52:25Speaker 1: feet and said that it certainly would that when every
- 3:52:28Speaker 1: child's teeth were systematically cared for from the beginning, toothaches
- 3:52:31Speaker 1: would disappear from the face of the earth, belonging as
- 3:52:34Speaker 1: it did, to the extinct competitive order, as the black
- 3:52:38Speaker 1: plague had disappeared from the earth with the ill regulated
- 3:52:40Speaker 1: feudal regime of the Middle Ages. But he added, why
- 3:52:45Speaker 1: do we spend time discussing trifles like the toothache when
- 3:52:49Speaker 1: great social changes are to be considered? Whtull of themselves
- 3:52:52Speaker 1: reform these minor ills. Even the man who had been
- 3:52:56Speaker 1: humorous fell into the solemn tone of the gathering. It
- 3:52:59Speaker 1: was perhaps here that the socialists surpassed everyone else in
- 3:53:03Speaker 1: the fervor of economic discussion. He was usually a German
- 3:53:07Speaker 1: or a Russian with a turn for logical presentation, who
- 3:53:10Speaker 1: saw in the concentration of capital and the growth of
- 3:53:13Speaker 1: monopolies an inevitable transition to the socialist state. He pointed
- 3:53:18Speaker 1: out that the concentration of capital in fewer hands but
- 3:53:21Speaker 1: increased the mass of those whose interests were opposed to
- 3:53:24Speaker 1: a maintenance of its power, had vastly simplified its final
- 3:53:27Speaker 1: absorption by the community. That monopoly, when it is finished,
- 3:53:31Speaker 1: doth bring forth socialism, opposite to him, springing up in
- 3:53:36Speaker 1: every discussion was the individualist, or as the socialist called him,
- 3:53:41Speaker 1: the anarchist, who insisted that we shall never secure just
- 3:53:44Speaker 1: human relations until we have equality of opportunity, that the
- 3:53:48Speaker 1: sole function of the state is to maintain the freedom
- 3:53:50Speaker 1: of each guarded by the like freedom of all, in
- 3:53:53Speaker 1: order that each man may be able to work out
- 3:53:56Speaker 1: the problems of his own existence. That first win was
- 3:54:00Speaker 1: within three years of the Henry George campaign in New York,
- 3:54:03Speaker 1: when his adherents all over the country were carrying on
- 3:54:06Speaker 1: a successful and effective propaganda. When Henry George himself came
- 3:54:10Speaker 1: to Hull House one Sunday afternoon, the gymnasium, which was
- 3:54:13Speaker 1: already crowded with men to hear Father Huntington's address on
- 3:54:16Speaker 1: why should a free thinker Believe in Christ, fairly rocked
- 3:54:20Speaker 1: on its foundations under the enthusiastic and prolonged applause which
- 3:54:24Speaker 1: greeted this great leader and constantly interrupted his stirring address,
- 3:54:28Speaker 1: filled as all of his speeches were, with high moral
- 3:54:31Speaker 1: enthusiasm and humanitarian fervor. Of the remarkable congresses held in
- 3:54:36Speaker 1: connection with the World's fair perhaps those inaugurated by the
- 3:54:39Speaker 1: advocates of a single tax exceeded all others in vital enthusiasm.
- 3:54:44Speaker 1: It was possibly significant that all discussions in the Department
- 3:54:47Speaker 1: of Social Science had to be organized by partisans in
- 3:54:50Speaker 1: separate groups. The very committee itself on Social Science, composed
- 3:54:54Speaker 1: of Chicago citizens, of whom I was one, changed from
- 3:54:58Speaker 1: week to week as partisan members had their feelings hurt
- 3:55:01Speaker 1: because their cause did not receive due recognition. And yet
- 3:55:05Speaker 1: in the same building, adherents of the most diverse religious
- 3:55:09Speaker 1: creeds Eastern and Western, met in amity and good fellowship.
- 3:55:14Speaker 1: Did it perhaps indicate that their presentation of the eternal
- 3:55:17Speaker 1: problems of life were cast in an older and less
- 3:55:20Speaker 1: sensitive mold than this presentation in terms of social experience?
- 3:55:24Speaker 1: Or was it rather that the new social science was
- 3:55:26Speaker 1: not yet a science at all, but merely a name
- 3:55:29Speaker 1: under cover of which we might discuss the perplexing problems
- 3:55:32Speaker 1: of the industrial situation. Certainly, the difficulties of our committee
- 3:55:36Speaker 1: were not minimized by the fact that the then new
- 3:55:38Speaker 1: science of sociology had not yet defined its own field.
- 3:55:42Speaker 1: The University of Chicago, opened only the year before the
- 3:55:45Speaker 1: World's Fair, was the first great institution of learning to
- 3:55:48Speaker 1: institute a department of sociology. In the meantime, the Hull
- 3:55:53Speaker 1: House Social Science Club grew in numbers and fervor, as
- 3:55:57Speaker 1: various distinguished people who were visiting the World's Fair came
- 3:56:00Speaker 1: aim to address it. I recall a brilliant frenchwoman who
- 3:56:03Speaker 1: was filled with amazement because one of the shabbiest men
- 3:56:06Speaker 1: reflected a reading of Schopenhauer. She considered the statement of
- 3:56:09Speaker 1: another member most remarkable that when he saw a carriage
- 3:56:12Speaker 1: driving through the streets occupied by a capitalist who was
- 3:56:15Speaker 1: no longer even an entromponneur, he felt quite as sure
- 3:56:19Speaker 1: that his days were numbered and that his very lack
- 3:56:21Speaker 1: of function to society would speedily bring him to extinction,
- 3:56:25Speaker 1: as he did when he saw a drunkard reeling along
- 3:56:27Speaker 1: the same street. The club, at any rate, convinced the
- 3:56:30Speaker 1: residence that no one so poignantly realizes the failures in
- 3:56:33Speaker 1: the social structure as the man at the bottom, who
- 3:56:36Speaker 1: has been most directly in contact with those failures and
- 3:56:39Speaker 1: has suffered most. I recall the shrewd comments of a
- 3:56:43Speaker 1: certain sailor who had known the disinherited in every country,
- 3:56:46Speaker 1: of a Russian who had served his term in Siberia,
- 3:56:49Speaker 1: of an old irishman who called himself an atheist, but
- 3:56:52Speaker 1: who in moments of excitement, always blamed the Good Lord
- 3:56:55Speaker 1: for setting supinely when the world was so horribly out
- 3:56:59Speaker 1: of joint. It was doubtless owing largely to this club
- 3:57:02Speaker 1: that Hull House contracted its early reputation for radicalism. Visitors
- 3:57:07Speaker 1: refused to distinguish between the sentiments expressed by its members
- 3:57:10Speaker 1: in the heat of discussion and the opinions held by
- 3:57:13Speaker 1: the residents themselves. At that moment. In Chicago, the radical
- 3:57:17Speaker 1: of every shade of opinion was vigorous and dogmatic, of
- 3:57:20Speaker 1: the sort that could not resign himself to the slow
- 3:57:23Speaker 1: march of human improvement, of the type who knew exactly
- 3:57:26Speaker 1: in what part of the world utopia standeth. During this decade,
- 3:57:31Speaker 1: Chicago seemed divided into two classes, those who held that
- 3:57:35Speaker 1: business is business and who were therefore annoyed at the
- 3:57:38Speaker 1: very notion of social control, and the radicals, who claimed
- 3:57:42Speaker 1: that nothing could be done to really moralize the industrial
- 3:57:45Speaker 1: situation until society should be reorganized. A settlement is, above
- 3:57:50Speaker 1: all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those
- 3:57:54Speaker 1: who have a passion for the equalization of human joys
- 3:57:56Speaker 1: and opportunities are early attracted. It is this type of
- 3:58:00Speaker 1: mind which is in itself so often obnoxious to the
- 3:58:03Speaker 1: man of conquering business faculty, to whom the practical world
- 3:58:06Speaker 1: of affairs seems so supremely rational that he would never
- 3:58:09Speaker 1: vote to change the type of it even if he could.
- 3:58:12Speaker 1: The man of social enthusiasm is to him an annoyance
- 3:58:15Speaker 1: and an affront. He does not like to hear him talk,
- 3:58:18Speaker 1: and considers him per se unsafe. Such a business man
- 3:58:22Speaker 1: would admit as an abstract proposition that society is susceptible
- 3:58:26Speaker 1: of modification, and would even agree that all human institutions
- 3:58:30Speaker 1: imply progressive development. But at the same time he deeply
- 3:58:34Speaker 1: distrusts those who seek to reform existing conditions. There is
- 3:58:38Speaker 1: a certain common sense foundation for this distrust, for too
- 3:58:41Speaker 1: often the reformer is the rebel who defies things as
- 3:58:44Speaker 1: they are because of the restraints which they impose upon
- 3:58:47Speaker 1: his individual desires, rather than because of the general defects
- 3:58:50Speaker 1: of the system. When such a rebel poses for a reformer,
- 3:58:54Speaker 1: his shortcomings are heralded to the world, and his downfall
- 3:58:57Speaker 1: is cherished as an awful warning to those who refuse to work.
- 3:59:00Speaker 1: Worship the God of things as they are. And yet,
- 3:59:03Speaker 1: as I recall, the members of this early club, even
- 3:59:06Speaker 1: those who talked the most and the least rationally, seemed
- 3:59:10Speaker 1: to me to have been particularly kindly and safe. The
- 3:59:14Speaker 1: most pronounced anarchist among them has long since become a
- 3:59:17Speaker 1: convert to a religious sect, holding Buddhistic tenets which apply
- 3:59:21Speaker 1: little food and distrust of all action. He has become
- 3:59:24Speaker 1: a wraith of his former self, but he still retains
- 3:59:27Speaker 1: his kindly smile in the discussion of these themes. Hull
- 3:59:31Speaker 1: House was, of course, quite as much under the suspicion
- 3:59:33Speaker 1: of one side as the other. I remember one night
- 3:59:36Speaker 1: when I addressed a club of secularists which met at
- 3:59:38Speaker 1: the corner of South Halstead and Madison Streets. A rough
- 3:59:41Speaker 1: looking man called out, you are all right now, but
- 3:59:45Speaker 1: mark my words, when you were subsidized by the millionaires,
- 3:59:48Speaker 1: you will be afraid to talk like this. The defense
- 3:59:51Speaker 1: of free speech was a sensitive point with me, and
- 3:59:54Speaker 1: I quickly replied that while I did not intend to
- 3:59:56Speaker 1: be subsidized by millionaires, neither did I propose to be
- 3:59:59Speaker 1: bullied by working men, and that I should state my
- 4:00:02Speaker 1: honest opinion without consulting either of them. To my surprise,
- 4:00:05Speaker 1: the audience of radicals broke into applause, and the discussion
- 4:00:09Speaker 1: turned upon the need of resisting tyranny whenever found if
- 4:00:12Speaker 1: democratic institutions were to endure. This desire to bear independent
- 4:00:17Speaker 1: witness to social righteousness often resulted in a sense of compromise,
- 4:00:20Speaker 1: difficult to endure, and at many times it seemed to
- 4:00:23Speaker 1: me that we were destined to alienate everybody. I should
- 4:00:27Speaker 1: have been most grateful at that time to accept the
- 4:00:29Speaker 1: tenets of socialism, and I conscientiously made my effort, both
- 4:00:33Speaker 1: by reading and by many discussions with the comrades. I
- 4:00:36Speaker 1: found that I could easily give an affirmative answer to
- 4:00:39Speaker 1: the heated question, don't you see that just as the
- 4:00:41Speaker 1: hand mill created a society with a feudal lord, so
- 4:00:44Speaker 1: the steam mill creates a society with an industrial capitalist.
- 4:00:48Speaker 1: But it was a little harder to give an affirmative
- 4:00:50Speaker 1: reply to the proposition that the social relation, thus established,
- 4:00:54Speaker 1: proceeds to create principles, ideas, and categories as merely historical
- 4:00:58Speaker 1: and transitory products. Of course, I use the term socialism
- 4:01:03Speaker 1: technically and do not wish to confuse it with the
- 4:01:05Speaker 1: growing sensitiveness which recognizes that no personal comfort, nor individual
- 4:01:09Speaker 1: development can compensate a man for the misery of his neighbors,
- 4:01:12Speaker 1: nor with the increasing conviction that social arrangements can be
- 4:01:15Speaker 1: transformed through man's conscious and deliberate effort. Such a definition
- 4:01:20Speaker 1: would not have been accepted for a moment by the
- 4:01:22Speaker 1: Russians who then dominated the Socialist Party in Chicago, and
- 4:01:26Speaker 1: among whom a crude interpretation of the class conflict was
- 4:01:28Speaker 1: the test of faith. During those first years on Halsted Street,
- 4:01:33Speaker 1: nothing was more painfully clear than the fact that pliable
- 4:01:37Speaker 1: human nature is relentlessly pressed upon by its physical environment.
- 4:01:41Speaker 1: I saw nowhere a more devoted effort to understand and
- 4:01:44Speaker 1: relieve that heavy pressure than the Socialists were making, and
- 4:01:47Speaker 1: I should have been glad to have had the comradeship
- 4:01:49Speaker 1: of that gallant company, had they not firmly insisted that
- 4:01:52Speaker 1: fellowship depends upon identity of creed. They repudiated similarity of
- 4:01:57Speaker 1: aim and social sympathy as tests which were much too
- 4:02:00Speaker 1: loose and wavering. As they did that vague socialism, which
- 4:02:03Speaker 1: for thousands has come to be a philosophy, or rather religion,
- 4:02:06Speaker 1: embodying the hope of the world and the protection of
- 4:02:09Speaker 1: all who suffer. I also longed for the comfort of
- 4:02:12Speaker 1: a definite social creed, which should afford, at one and
- 4:02:16Speaker 1: the same time an explanation of the social chaos and
- 4:02:18Speaker 1: the logical steps toward its better ordering. I came to
- 4:02:22Speaker 1: have an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the poverty in
- 4:02:25Speaker 1: the midst of which I was living, and which the
- 4:02:27Speaker 1: socialists constantly forced me to defend. My plight was not
- 4:02:32Speaker 1: unlike that which might have resulted in my old days
- 4:02:34Speaker 1: of skepticism regarding foreordination, had I then been compelled to
- 4:02:38Speaker 1: defend the confusion arising from the clashing of free wills
- 4:02:42Speaker 1: as an alternative to an acceptance of the doctrine. Another
- 4:02:45Speaker 1: difficulty in the way of accepting this economic determinism, so
- 4:02:49Speaker 1: baldly dependent upon the theory of class consciousness, constantly arose
- 4:02:53Speaker 1: when I lectured in country towns, and there had opportunities
- 4:02:57Speaker 1: to read human documents of prosperous people as well as
- 4:03:00Speaker 1: those of my neighbors who were crowded into the city.
- 4:03:03Speaker 1: The former were stoutly unconscious of any classes in America,
- 4:03:06Speaker 1: and the class consciousness of the immigrants was fast being
- 4:03:09Speaker 1: broken into by the necessity for making new and unprecedented
- 4:03:13Speaker 1: connections in the industrial life all about them. In the meantime,
- 4:03:17Speaker 1: although many men of many minds met constantly at our conferences,
- 4:03:21Speaker 1: it was amazing to find the incorrigible good nature which prevailed.
- 4:03:25Speaker 1: Radicals are accustomed to hot discussion and sharp differences of opinion,
- 4:03:29Speaker 1: and take it all in the day's work. I recall
- 4:03:32Speaker 1: that the secretary of the Hull House Social Science Club,
- 4:03:34Speaker 1: at the anniversary of the seventh year of its existence,
- 4:03:37Speaker 1: read a report in which he stated that, so far
- 4:03:40Speaker 1: as he could remember, but twice during that time had
- 4:03:43Speaker 1: a speaker lost his temper, and in each case it
- 4:03:46Speaker 1: had been a college professor who wasn't accustomed to being
- 4:03:49Speaker 1: talked back to. He also added that but once had
- 4:03:53Speaker 1: all the club members united in applauding the same speaker.
- 4:03:56Speaker 1: Only Samuel Jones, who afterwards became the Golden Rule Mayor
- 4:04:00Speaker 1: of Toledo, had been able to overcome all their dogmatic
- 4:04:04Speaker 1: differences when he had set forth a plan of endowing
- 4:04:06Speaker 1: a group of working men with a factory plant and
- 4:04:08Speaker 1: a working capital for experimentation in hours and wages, quite
- 4:04:12Speaker 1: as groups of scholars are endowed for research. Chicago continued
- 4:04:16Speaker 1: to devote much time to economic discussion and remained in
- 4:04:19Speaker 1: a state of youthful glamour throughout the nineties. I recall
- 4:04:23Speaker 1: a young Methodist minister who, in order to free his
- 4:04:26Speaker 1: denomination from any entanglement in his discussion of the economic
- 4:04:29Speaker 1: and social situation, moved from his church building into a
- 4:04:32Speaker 1: neighboring hall. The congregation and many other people followed him there,
- 4:04:36Speaker 1: and he later took to the street corners because he
- 4:04:38Speaker 1: found that the shabbiest men liked that best. Professor Heron
- 4:04:42Speaker 1: filled to overflowing a downtown hall every noon with a
- 4:04:45Speaker 1: series of talks entitled Between Caesar and Jesus, an attempt
- 4:04:50Speaker 1: to apply the teachings of the Gospel to the situations
- 4:04:52Speaker 1: of modern commerce. A half dozen publications, edited with some
- 4:04:56Speaker 1: ability and much moral enthusiasm, have passed away, perhaps because
- 4:05:00Speaker 1: they represented pamphleteering rather than journalism, and came to a
- 4:05:04Speaker 1: natural end when the situation changed. Certainly, their editors suffered
- 4:05:08Speaker 1: criticism and poverty on behalf of the causes which they represented.
- 4:05:12Speaker 1: Trades unionists, unless they were also socialists, were not prominent
- 4:05:16Speaker 1: in those economic discussions, although they were steadily making an
- 4:05:19Speaker 1: effort to bring order into the unnecessary industrial confusion. They
- 4:05:23Speaker 1: belonged to the second of the two classes into which
- 4:05:26Speaker 1: Mill divides all those who are dissatisfied with human life
- 4:05:29Speaker 1: as it is, and whose feelings are wholly identified with
- 4:05:31Speaker 1: its radical amendment. He states that the thoughts of one
- 4:05:35Speaker 1: class or in the region of ultimate aims of the
- 4:05:37Speaker 1: highest ideals of human life, while the thoughts of the
- 4:05:40Speaker 1: other are in the region of the immediately useful and
- 4:05:43Speaker 1: practically attainable. The meetings of our Social Science Club were
- 4:05:46Speaker 1: carried on by men of the former class, many of
- 4:05:49Speaker 1: them with a strong religious bias, who constantly challenged the
- 4:05:52Speaker 1: church to assuage the human spirit. Thus torn and bruised
- 4:05:55Speaker 1: in the tumult of a time disconsolate, these men were
- 4:05:59Speaker 1: so serious in their demand for religious fellowship, and several
- 4:06:02Speaker 1: young clergymen were so ready to respond to the appeal
- 4:06:05Speaker 1: that various meetings were arranged at Hull House, in which
- 4:06:07Speaker 1: a group of people met together to consider the social question,
- 4:06:11Speaker 1: not in a spirit of discussion, but in prayer and meditation.
- 4:06:15Speaker 1: These clergymen were making heroic efforts to induce their churches
- 4:06:18Speaker 1: to formerly consider the labor situation, and during the years
- 4:06:21Speaker 1: which have elapsed since then, many denominations of the Christian
- 4:06:24Speaker 1: Church have organized labor committees, but at that time there
- 4:06:27Speaker 1: was nothing of the sort beyond the Society an established
- 4:06:30Speaker 1: Church of England to consider the conditions of labor. During
- 4:06:34Speaker 1: that decade, even the most devoted of that pioneer church
- 4:06:37Speaker 1: society failed to formulate the fervid desire for juster social
- 4:06:40Speaker 1: conditions into anything more convincing than a literary statement. And
- 4:06:44Speaker 1: the Christian Socialists, at least, when the American Branch held
- 4:06:47Speaker 1: its annual meeting at Hull House, afforded but a striking
- 4:06:50Speaker 1: portrayal of that between age mood in which so many
- 4:06:54Speaker 1: of our religious contemporaries are forced to live. I remember
- 4:06:57Speaker 1: that I received the same impression when I attended a
- 4:06:59Speaker 1: meeting called by the canon of an English cathedral to
- 4:07:02Speaker 1: discuss the relation of the Church to labor. The men
- 4:07:05Speaker 1: quickly indicted the cathedral for its uselessness, and the canon
- 4:07:08Speaker 1: asked them what in their minds should be its future.
- 4:07:12Speaker 1: The men promptly replied that any new social order would wish,
- 4:07:15Speaker 1: of course, to preserve the beautiful historic buildings, that although
- 4:07:18Speaker 1: they would dismiss the bishop and all the clergy, they
- 4:07:20Speaker 1: would want to retain one or two scholars as custodians
- 4:07:23Speaker 1: and interpreters. And what next, the imperturbable ecclesiastic asked. We
- 4:07:29Speaker 1: would democratize it, replied the men. But when it came
- 4:07:33Speaker 1: to a more detailed description of such an undertaking, the
- 4:07:35Speaker 1: discussion broke down into a dozen bits, although illuminated by
- 4:07:39Speaker 1: much shrewd wisdom, and affording a clue perhaps as to
- 4:07:42Speaker 1: the destruction of the bishop's palace by the citizens of
- 4:07:45Speaker 1: this same town, who had attacked it as a symbol
- 4:07:47Speaker 1: of swollen prosperity during the bread riots of the earlier
- 4:07:51Speaker 1: part of the century. On the other hand, the working
- 4:07:54Speaker 1: men who continue to demand help from the Church thereby
- 4:07:57Speaker 1: acknowledge their kinship, as does the son who continue to
- 4:08:00Speaker 1: ask bread from the father who gives him a stone.
- 4:08:03Speaker 1: I recall an incident connected with a prolonged strike in
- 4:08:05Speaker 1: Chicago on the part of the typographical unions for an
- 4:08:08Speaker 1: eight hour day. The strike had been conducted in a
- 4:08:11Speaker 1: most orderly manner, and the union men, convinced of the
- 4:08:14Speaker 1: justice of their cause, had felt aggrieved because one of
- 4:08:17Speaker 1: their religious publishing houses in Chicago had constantly opposed them.
- 4:08:21Speaker 1: Some of the younger clergymen of the denominations who were
- 4:08:23Speaker 1: friendly to the striker's cause came to a luncheon at
- 4:08:26Speaker 1: Hull House, where the situation was discussed by the representatives
- 4:08:29Speaker 1: of all sides. The clergyman, becoming much interested in the
- 4:08:33Speaker 1: idealism with which an officer of the State Federation of
- 4:08:35Speaker 1: Labor presented the cause, drew from him the story of
- 4:08:38Speaker 1: his search for fraternal relation. He said that, at fourteen
- 4:08:41Speaker 1: years of age, he had joined a church, hoping to
- 4:08:43Speaker 1: find it there. He had later become a member of
- 4:08:46Speaker 1: many fraternal organizations and mutual benefit societies, and although much
- 4:08:50Speaker 1: impressed by their rituals, he was disappointed in the actual
- 4:08:53Speaker 1: fraternity he had finally found. So it seemed to him,
- 4:08:57Speaker 1: in the cause of organized labor what these other organizations
- 4:09:00Speaker 1: had failed to give him an opportunity for sacrificial effort.
- 4:09:05Speaker 1: Chicago thus took a decade to discuss the problems inherent
- 4:09:08Speaker 1: in the present industrial organization, and to consider what might
- 4:09:12Speaker 1: be done, not so much against deliberate aggression as against
- 4:09:16Speaker 1: brutal confusion and neglect. Quite as the youth of promise
- 4:09:20Speaker 1: passed through a mist of rose colored hope, before he
- 4:09:22Speaker 1: settles in the land of achievement, where he becomes all
- 4:09:25Speaker 1: too dull and literal minded. And yet, as I hastily
- 4:09:28Speaker 1: review the decade in Chicago which followed this one given
- 4:09:31Speaker 1: over to discussion, the actual attainment of these early hopes,
- 4:09:35Speaker 1: so far as they had been realized at all, seemed
- 4:09:37Speaker 1: to have come from men of affairs, rather than from
- 4:09:40Speaker 1: those given to speculation. Was the whole decade of discussion
- 4:09:43Speaker 1: and illustration of that striking fact which has been likened
- 4:09:46Speaker 1: to the changing of swords in Hamlet, that the abstract
- 4:09:49Speaker 1: minds at length yield to the inevitable, or at least
- 4:09:52Speaker 1: grow less ardent in their propaganda, while the concrete minds,
- 4:09:56Speaker 1: dealing constantly with daily affairs, in the end demonstrate the
- 4:09:59Speaker 1: reas reality of abstract notions. I remember when Frederick Harrison
- 4:10:04Speaker 1: visited Hull House that I was much disappointed to find
- 4:10:07Speaker 1: that the positivists had not made their ardor for humanity
- 4:10:10Speaker 1: a more potent factor in the English social movement, as
- 4:10:13Speaker 1: I was surprised during a visit from John Morley to
- 4:10:16Speaker 1: find that he, representing perhaps the type of man whom
- 4:10:19Speaker 1: political life seems to have pulled away from the ideals
- 4:10:21Speaker 1: of his youth, had yet been such a champion of
- 4:10:24Speaker 1: democracy in the full tide of reaction. My observations were
- 4:10:28Speaker 1: much too superficial to be of value, and certainly both
- 4:10:31Speaker 1: men were well grounded in philosophy and theory of social reform,
- 4:10:34Speaker 1: and had long before carefully formulated their principles. As the
- 4:10:37Speaker 1: new English Labor Party, which is destined to break up
- 4:10:40Speaker 1: the reactionary period, is now being created by another set
- 4:10:44Speaker 1: of theorists. There were certainly moments during the heated discussions
- 4:10:48Speaker 1: of this decade when nothing seemed so important as right theory.
- 4:10:52Speaker 1: This was borne in upon me one brilliant evening at
- 4:10:54Speaker 1: Hull House, when Benjamin Kidd, author of the much read
- 4:10:58Speaker 1: Social Evolution, was pitted against Victor Berger of Milwaukee, even
- 4:11:02Speaker 1: then considered a rising man of the Socialist Party. At
- 4:11:06Speaker 1: any rate, the residents of Hull House discovered that while
- 4:11:08Speaker 1: their first impact with city poverty allied them to groups
- 4:11:12Speaker 1: given over to discussion of social theories, their sober efforts
- 4:11:15Speaker 1: to heal neighborhood ills allied them to general public movements
- 4:11:19Speaker 1: which were without challenging creeds. But while we discovered that
- 4:11:23Speaker 1: we most easily secured the smallest of much needed improvements
- 4:11:26Speaker 1: by attaching our efforts to those of organized bodies. Nevertheless,
- 4:11:30Speaker 1: these very organizations would have been impossible had not the
- 4:11:33Speaker 1: public conscience been aroused and the community's sensibility quickened by
- 4:11:37Speaker 1: these same ardent theorists. As I review these very first
- 4:11:41Speaker 1: impressions of the workers in unskilled industries living in a
- 4:11:44Speaker 1: depressed quarter of the city, I realized how hard it
- 4:11:48Speaker 1: was for us to see exceptional cases of hardship as
- 4:11:50Speaker 1: typical of the average lot. And yet, in spite of
- 4:11:53Speaker 1: alleviating philanthropy and labor legislation, the indictment of Tolstoy, applied
- 4:11:58Speaker 1: to Moscow thirty years ago, still fits every American city,
- 4:12:02Speaker 1: wherever we may live. If we draw a circle around
- 4:12:05Speaker 1: us of a hundred thousand, or a thousand, or even
- 4:12:08Speaker 1: of ten miles circumference, and look at the lives of
- 4:12:11Speaker 1: those men and women who are inside our circle, we
- 4:12:14Speaker 1: shall find half starved children, old people, pregnant women, sick
- 4:12:18Speaker 1: and weak persons working beyond their strength, who have neither
- 4:12:22Speaker 1: food nor rest enough to support them, and who for
- 4:12:26Speaker 1: this reason die before their time. We shall see others,
- 4:12:30Speaker 1: full grown, who are injured and needlessly killed by dangerous
- 4:12:34Speaker 1: and hurtful tasks, as the American city is awakening to
- 4:12:38Speaker 1: self consciousness, it slowly perceives the civic significance of these
- 4:12:42Speaker 1: industrial conditions. And perhaps Chicago has been foremost in the
- 4:12:46Speaker 1: effort to connect the unregulated overgrowth of the huge centers
- 4:12:50Speaker 1: of population with the astoundingly rapid development of industrial enterprises,
- 4:12:54Speaker 1: quite as Chicago is foremost to carry on the preliminary
- 4:12:57Speaker 1: discussion through which a basis was laid for like mind,
- 4:13:00Speaker 1: mindedness and the coordination of diverse wills. I remember an
- 4:13:04Speaker 1: astute English visitor who had been a guest in a
- 4:13:06Speaker 1: score of American cities, observed that it was hard to
- 4:13:09Speaker 1: understand the local pride he constantly encountered, for, in spite
- 4:13:13Speaker 1: of the boasting on the part of leading citizens in
- 4:13:15Speaker 1: the western, Eastern, and southern towns, all American cities seemed
- 4:13:19Speaker 1: to him essentially alike, and all equally the results of
- 4:13:22Speaker 1: an industry totally unregulated by well considered legislation. I am
- 4:13:27Speaker 1: inclined to think that perhaps all this general discussion was
- 4:13:31Speaker 1: inevitable in connection with the early settlements, as they in
- 4:13:34Speaker 1: turn were the inevitable result of theories of social reform, which,
- 4:13:37Speaker 1: in their full enthusiasm reached America by way of England
- 4:13:40Speaker 1: only in the last decade of the century. There must
- 4:13:44Speaker 1: have been tough fiber somewhere, for although the residents of
- 4:13:47Speaker 1: Hull House were often baffled by the radicalism within the
- 4:13:50Speaker 1: Social Science Club and harassed by the criticism from outside,
- 4:13:54Speaker 1: we still continued to believe that such discussion should be
- 4:13:56Speaker 1: carried on, for if the settlement seeks its expression through
- 4:14:00Speaker 1: social activity, it must learn the difference between mere social
- 4:14:03Speaker 1: unrest and spiritual impulse. The group of Hull House residents,
- 4:14:08Speaker 1: which by the end of the decade comprised twenty five,
- 4:14:11Speaker 1: differed widely in social beliefs, from the girl direct from
- 4:14:14Speaker 1: the country, who looked upon all social unrest as mere anarchy,
- 4:14:18Speaker 1: to the resident who had become a socialist when a
- 4:14:20Speaker 1: student in Zurich and who had long before translated from
- 4:14:23Speaker 1: the German angles conditions of the working class in England,
- 4:14:27Speaker 1: although at this time she had been read out of
- 4:14:29Speaker 1: the Socialist Party because the Russian and German impossibilists suspected
- 4:14:33Speaker 1: her fluent English, as she always lightly explained. Although thus
- 4:14:37Speaker 1: diversified in social beliefs, the residence became solidly united through
- 4:14:41Speaker 1: our mutual experience in an industrial quarter, and we became
- 4:14:45Speaker 1: not only convinced of the need for social control and
- 4:14:47Speaker 1: protective legislation, but also of the value of this preliminary argument.
- 4:14:52Speaker 1: This decade of discussion between eighteen ninety and nineteen hundred
- 4:14:56Speaker 1: already seems remote from the spirit of Chicago of to day.
- 4:15:00Speaker 1: So far as I have been able to reproduce this
- 4:15:01Speaker 1: earlier period, it must reflect the essential provisionality of everything,
- 4:15:06Speaker 1: the perpetual moving on to something future which shall supersede
- 4:15:09Speaker 1: the present, that paramount impression of life itself, which affords us,
- 4:15:14Speaker 1: at one and the same time ground for despair and
- 4:15:17Speaker 1: for endless and varied anticipation. End of Chapter nine.
- 4:15:22Speaker 2: Chapter ten Pioneer labor legislation in Illinois. Our very first
- 4:15:30Speaker 2: Christmas at Hull House, when we, as yet knew nothing
- 4:15:33Speaker 2: of child labor. A number of little girls refused the
- 4:15:36Speaker 2: candy which was offered them as part of the Christmas
- 4:15:39Speaker 2: good cheer, saying simply that they worked in a candy
- 4:15:43Speaker 2: factory and could not bear the sight of it. We
- 4:15:47Speaker 2: discovered that for six weeks they had worked from seven
- 4:15:50Speaker 2: in the morning until nine at night, and they were
- 4:15:54Speaker 2: exhausted as well as satiated. The sharp consciousness of stern
- 4:15:59Speaker 2: econo conditions was thus thrust upon us in the midst
- 4:16:03Speaker 2: of the season of good will. During the same winter,
- 4:16:07Speaker 2: three boys from a hull house club were injured at
- 4:16:11Speaker 2: one machine in a neighboring factory for lack of a guard,
- 4:16:15Speaker 2: which would have cost but a few dollars. When the
- 4:16:18Speaker 2: injury of one of these boys resulted in his death,
- 4:16:22Speaker 2: we felt quite sure that the owners of the factory
- 4:16:25Speaker 2: would share our horror and remorse, and that they would
- 4:16:28Speaker 2: do everything possible to prevent the recurrence of such tragedy.
- 4:16:33Speaker 2: To our surprise, they did nothing whatever, And I made
- 4:16:37Speaker 2: my first acquaintance then with those pathetic documents signed by
- 4:16:41Speaker 2: the parents of working children that they will make no
- 4:16:45Speaker 2: claim for damages resulting from carelessness. The visits we made
- 4:16:51Speaker 2: in the neighborhood constantly discovered women sewing upon sweatshop work,
- 4:16:55Speaker 2: and often they were assisted by incredibly small children. I
- 4:17:00Speaker 2: remember a little girl of four who pulled out basting
- 4:17:04Speaker 2: threads hour after hour, sitting on a stool at the
- 4:17:07Speaker 2: feet of her bohemian mother, a little bunch of human misery.
- 4:17:12Speaker 2: But even for that, there was no legal redress for
- 4:17:15Speaker 2: the only child labor law in Illinois, with any provision
- 4:17:20Speaker 2: for enforcement, had been secured by the coal miners unions
- 4:17:24Speaker 2: and was confined to children employed in mines. We learned
- 4:17:29Speaker 2: to know many families in which the working children contributed
- 4:17:32Speaker 2: to the support of their parents, not only because they
- 4:17:36Speaker 2: spoke English better than the older emigrants and were willing
- 4:17:40Speaker 2: to take lower wages, but because their parents gradually found
- 4:17:44Speaker 2: it easier to live upon their earnings. A South Italian
- 4:17:48Speaker 2: peasant who has picked olives and packed oranges from his
- 4:17:51Speaker 2: toddling babyhood cannot see at once the difference between the
- 4:17:56Speaker 2: out door, healthy work which he had performed in the
- 4:17:58Speaker 2: varying seasons, and the long hours of monotonous factory life
- 4:18:03Speaker 2: which his child encounters when he goes to work. In Chicago,
- 4:18:07Speaker 2: an Italian father came to us in great grief over
- 4:18:10Speaker 2: the death of his eldest child, a little girl of twelve,
- 4:18:15Speaker 2: who had brought the largest wages into the family fund.
- 4:18:19Speaker 2: In the midst of his genuine sorrow, he said, she
- 4:18:22Speaker 2: was the oldest kid I had. Now I shall have
- 4:18:25Speaker 2: to go back to work again until the next one
- 4:18:27Speaker 2: is able to take care of me. The man was
- 4:18:30Speaker 2: only thirty three and had hoped to retire from work
- 4:18:33Speaker 2: at least during the winters. No foreman cared to have
- 4:18:37Speaker 2: him in a factory. Untrained and unintelligent as he was.
- 4:18:42Speaker 2: It was much easier for his bright, English speaking little
- 4:18:45Speaker 2: girl to get a chance to paste labels on a
- 4:18:48Speaker 2: box than for him to secure an opportunity to carry
- 4:18:51Speaker 2: pig iron. The effect on the child was what no
- 4:18:55Speaker 2: one concerned thought about in the abnormal effort she made,
- 4:18:58Speaker 2: thus prematurely to bear the weight of life. Another little
- 4:19:03Speaker 2: girl of thirteen, a Russian Jewish child employed in a
- 4:19:06Speaker 2: laundry at a heavy task beyond her strength, committed suicide
- 4:19:12Speaker 2: because she had borrowed three dollars from a companion, which
- 4:19:16Speaker 2: she could not repay unless she confided the story to
- 4:19:19Speaker 2: her parents and gave up an entire week's wages. But
- 4:19:24Speaker 2: what could the family live upon that week in case
- 4:19:26Speaker 2: she did. Her child mind, of course, had no sense
- 4:19:30Speaker 2: of proportion, and carbolic acid appeared inevitable. While we found
- 4:19:37Speaker 2: many pathetic cases of child labor and hard driven victims
- 4:19:40Speaker 2: of the sweating system who could not possibly earn enough
- 4:19:44Speaker 2: in the short busy season to support themselves during the
- 4:19:47Speaker 2: rest of the year, it became evident that we must
- 4:19:50Speaker 2: add carefully collected information to our general impression of neighborhood
- 4:19:55Speaker 2: conditions if we would make it of any genuine value.
- 4:20:00Speaker 2: There was at the time no statistical information on Chicago
- 4:20:04Speaker 2: industrial conditions, and Missus Florence Kelly, an early resident of
- 4:20:09Speaker 2: Hull House, suggested to the Illinois State Bureau of Labor
- 4:20:14Speaker 2: that they investigate the sweating system in Chicago with its
- 4:20:17Speaker 2: attendant child Labor. The head of the Bureau adopted this
- 4:20:22Speaker 2: suggestion and engaged Missus Kelly to make the investigation. When
- 4:20:27Speaker 2: the report was presented to the Illinois legislature, a special
- 4:20:30Speaker 2: committee was appointed to look into the Chicago conditions. I
- 4:20:34Speaker 2: well recall that on the Sunday the members of this
- 4:20:37Speaker 2: commission came to dine at Hull House. Our hopes ran high,
- 4:20:42Speaker 2: and we believed that at last some of the worst
- 4:20:44Speaker 2: ills under which our neighbors were suffering would be brought
- 4:20:48Speaker 2: to an end. As a result of its investigations, this
- 4:20:53Speaker 2: committee recommended to the legislature the provisions which afterward became
- 4:20:57Speaker 2: those of the first Factory Law in Illae, Illinois, regulating
- 4:21:01Speaker 2: the sanitary conditions of the sweatshop and fixing fourteen as
- 4:21:06Speaker 2: the age of which a child might be employed. Before
- 4:21:09Speaker 2: the passage of the law could be secured, it was
- 4:21:12Speaker 2: necessary to appeal to all elements of the community, and
- 4:21:16Speaker 2: a little group of us addressed the open meetings of
- 4:21:19Speaker 2: trades unions and of benefit societies, church organizations, and social
- 4:21:24Speaker 2: clubs literally every evening for three months. Of course, the
- 4:21:29Speaker 2: most energetic help, as well as intelligent understanding, came from
- 4:21:33Speaker 2: the trades unions. The central labor body of Chicago, then
- 4:21:38Speaker 2: called the Trades and Labor Assembly, had previously appointed a
- 4:21:42Speaker 2: committee of investigation to inquire into the sweating system. This
- 4:21:46Speaker 2: committee consisted of five delegates from the unions and five
- 4:21:50Speaker 2: outside their membership. Two of the latter were residents of
- 4:21:54Speaker 2: Hull House, and continued with the unions in their well
- 4:21:57Speaker 2: conducted campaign until the passage of a bas Illinois First Factory
- 4:22:01Speaker 2: Legislation was secured, a statute which has gradually been built
- 4:22:05Speaker 2: upon by many public spirited citizens until Illinois stands well
- 4:22:10Speaker 2: among the states, at least in the matter of protecting
- 4:22:13Speaker 2: her children. The Hull House residents that winter had their
- 4:22:17Speaker 2: first experience in lobbying. I remember that I very much
- 4:22:21Speaker 2: disliked the word, and still more the prospect of the
- 4:22:25Speaker 2: lobbying itself, and we insisted that well known Chicago women
- 4:22:29Speaker 2: should accompany this first little group of settlement folk, who,
- 4:22:33Speaker 2: with trades unionists, moved upon the state Capitol in behalf
- 4:22:37Speaker 2: of factory legislation. The National Ore, to use its formal name,
- 4:22:43Speaker 2: the General Federation of Women's Clubs, had been organized in
- 4:22:47Speaker 2: Chicago only the year before this legislation was secured. The
- 4:22:51Speaker 2: Federation was then timid in regard to all legislation because
- 4:22:55Speaker 2: it was anxious not to frighten its new membership. Although
- 4:22:59Speaker 2: its second press, Missus hen Rawten, was most untiring in
- 4:23:04Speaker 2: her efforts to secure this law, it was perhaps a
- 4:23:08Speaker 2: premature effort, though certainly founded upon a genuine need to
- 4:23:13Speaker 2: urge that a clause limiting the hours of all women
- 4:23:16Speaker 2: working in factories or workshops to eight a day or
- 4:23:20Speaker 2: forty eight a week should be inserted in the first
- 4:23:24Speaker 2: factory legislation of the state. Although we had lived at
- 4:23:28Speaker 2: Hull House but three years when we urged this legislation,
- 4:23:33Speaker 2: we had known a large number of girls who were
- 4:23:35Speaker 2: constantly exhausted by night work. For whatever may be said
- 4:23:40Speaker 2: in defense of night work for men, few women are
- 4:23:43Speaker 2: able to endure it. A man who works by night
- 4:23:46Speaker 2: sleeps regularly by day, but a woman finds it impossible
- 4:23:50Speaker 2: to put aside the household duties which crowd upon her,
- 4:23:54Speaker 2: and a conscientious girl finds it hard to sleep with
- 4:23:58Speaker 2: her mother washing and scrubbing within a few feet of
- 4:24:01Speaker 2: her bed. One of the most painful impressions of those
- 4:24:04Speaker 2: first years is that of pale, listless girls who worked
- 4:24:08Speaker 2: regularly in a factory of the Vicinity, which was then
- 4:24:13Speaker 2: running full night time. These girls also encountered a special
- 4:24:18Speaker 2: danger in the early morning hours, as they return from work,
- 4:24:21Speaker 2: debilitated and exhausted, and only too easily convinced that a
- 4:24:26Speaker 2: drink and a little dancing at the end of the
- 4:24:28Speaker 2: balls in the saloon dance halls was what they needed
- 4:24:32Speaker 2: to brace them. One of the girls whom we then knew,
- 4:24:36Speaker 2: whose name Chloe seemed to fit her delicate charm, craving
- 4:24:41Speaker 2: a drink to dispel her lassitude before her tired feet
- 4:24:44Speaker 2: should take the long walk home, had thus been decoyed
- 4:24:48Speaker 2: into a saloon where the soft drink was followed by
- 4:24:51Speaker 2: an alcoholic one containing knockout drops, and she awoke in
- 4:24:56Speaker 2: a disreputable rooming house too frightened, disgraced to return to
- 4:25:01Speaker 2: her mother. Thus confronted by that old conundrum of the
- 4:25:06Speaker 2: interdependence of matter and spirit, the conviction was forced upon
- 4:25:11Speaker 2: us that long and exhausting hours of work are almost
- 4:25:15Speaker 2: sure to be followed by lurid and exciting pleasures. That
- 4:25:18Speaker 2: the power to overcome temptation reaches its limit almost automatically
- 4:25:23Speaker 2: with that of physical resistance. The eight hour clause in
- 4:25:27Speaker 2: this first factory law met with much less opposition in
- 4:25:31Speaker 2: the legislature than was anticipated, and was enforced for a
- 4:25:35Speaker 2: year before it was pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
- 4:25:39Speaker 2: of Illinois. During the halcyon months when it was a law,
- 4:25:44Speaker 2: a large and enthusiastic eight hour club of working women
- 4:25:47Speaker 2: met at Hull House to read the literature on the subject,
- 4:25:51Speaker 2: and in every way to prepare themselves to make public
- 4:25:53Speaker 2: sentiment in favor of the measure which meant so much
- 4:25:57Speaker 2: to them. The adverse decision in the test case, the
- 4:26:01Speaker 2: progress of which they had most intelligently followed, was a
- 4:26:05Speaker 2: matter of great disappointment. The entire experience left on my
- 4:26:09Speaker 2: mind a mistrust of all legislation which was not preceded
- 4:26:14Speaker 2: by full discussion and understanding. A premature measure may be
- 4:26:19Speaker 2: carried through a legislature by perfectly legitimate means and still
- 4:26:23Speaker 2: failed to possess vitality and a sense of maturity. On
- 4:26:27Speaker 2: the other hand, the administration of an advanced law acts
- 4:26:31Speaker 2: somewhat as a referendum. The people have an opportunity for
- 4:26:36Speaker 2: two years to see the effects of its operation. If
- 4:26:40Speaker 2: they choose to reopen the matter at the next General Assembly,
- 4:26:43Speaker 2: it can be discussed with experience and conviction. The very
- 4:26:47Speaker 2: operation of the law has performed the function of the
- 4:26:51Speaker 2: referendum in a limited use of the term founded upon
- 4:26:57Speaker 2: some such compunction. The sense that the passage of the
- 4:27:01Speaker 2: child Labor Law would in many cases work hardship was
- 4:27:04Speaker 2: never absent from my mind. During the earliest years of
- 4:27:07Speaker 2: its operation. I addressed as many mothers, meetings and clubs
- 4:27:12Speaker 2: among working women as I could, in order to make
- 4:27:15Speaker 2: clear the object of the law and the ultimate benefit
- 4:27:18Speaker 2: to themselves as well as to their children. I am
- 4:27:21Speaker 2: happy to remember that I never met with lack of
- 4:27:25Speaker 2: understanding among the hard working widows in whose behalf many
- 4:27:29Speaker 2: prosperous people were so eloquent. These widowed mothers would say, why,
- 4:27:34Speaker 2: of course, that is what I am working for, to
- 4:27:38Speaker 2: give the children a chance. I want them to have
- 4:27:40Speaker 2: more education than I had or another. That is why
- 4:27:45Speaker 2: we came to America. And I don't want to spoil
- 4:27:48Speaker 2: his start, even although his father is dead or it's different.
- 4:27:54Speaker 2: In America. A boy gets left if he isn't educated.
- 4:27:59Speaker 2: There was always a will, willingness, even among the poorest women,
- 4:28:02Speaker 2: to keep on with the hard night scrubbing or the
- 4:28:05Speaker 2: long days of washing for the children's sake. The bitterest
- 4:28:09Speaker 2: opposition to the law came from the large glass companies,
- 4:28:13Speaker 2: who were so accustomed to use the labor of children
- 4:28:17Speaker 2: that they were convinced the manufacturing of glass could not
- 4:28:21Speaker 2: be carried on without it. Fifteen years ago, the state
- 4:28:25Speaker 2: of Illinois, as well as Chicago, exhibited many characteristics of
- 4:28:29Speaker 2: the pioneer country, in which untrammeled energy and an early
- 4:28:34Speaker 2: start were still the most highly prized generators of success.
- 4:28:39Speaker 2: Although this first labor legislation was but bringing Illinois into
- 4:28:43Speaker 2: line with the nations in the modern industrial world, which
- 4:28:47Speaker 2: have long been obliged for their own sakes to come
- 4:28:50Speaker 2: to the aid of the workers by which they live.
- 4:28:54Speaker 2: That the child, the young person, and the woman may
- 4:28:57Speaker 2: be protected from their own weakness. And nevertheless, from the
- 4:29:02Speaker 2: first it ran counter to the instinct and tradition, almost
- 4:29:06Speaker 2: the very religion of the manufacturers of the state, who
- 4:29:10Speaker 2: were for the most part self made men. The first
- 4:29:15Speaker 2: attempt in Illinois for adequate factory legislation also was associated
- 4:29:20Speaker 2: in the minds of business men with radicalism, because the
- 4:29:23Speaker 2: law was secured during the term of Governor Altgeld and
- 4:29:28Speaker 2: was first enforced during his administration. While nothing in its
- 4:29:32Speaker 2: genesis or spirit could be further from anarchy than factory legislation,
- 4:29:37Speaker 2: and while the first law in Illinois was still far
- 4:29:41Speaker 2: behind Massachusetts and New York, the fact that Governor Altgeld
- 4:29:45Speaker 2: pardoned from the state's prison the anarchists who had been
- 4:29:49Speaker 2: sentenced there after the Haymarket riot gave the opponents of
- 4:29:53Speaker 2: this most reasonable legislation a quickly utilized opportunity to couple
- 4:29:59Speaker 2: it with that detested word. The state document which accompanied
- 4:30:03Speaker 2: Governor Altgeld's pardon gave these ungenerous critics a further opportunity,
- 4:30:09Speaker 2: because a magnanimous action was marred by personal rancor, betraying
- 4:30:15Speaker 2: for the moment the infirmity of a noble mind. For
- 4:30:19Speaker 2: all of these reasons, this first modification of the undisturbed
- 4:30:24Speaker 2: control of the aggressive captains of industry could not be
- 4:30:28Speaker 2: enforced without resistance marked by dramatic episodes and revolts. The
- 4:30:33Speaker 2: inception of the law had already become associated with Hull House,
- 4:30:37Speaker 2: and when its ministration was also centered there, we inevitably
- 4:30:42Speaker 2: received all the odium which these first efforts entailed. Missus
- 4:30:47Speaker 2: Kelly was appointed the first factory inspector, with a deputy
- 4:30:51Speaker 2: and a force of twelve inspectors to enforce the law.
- 4:30:54Speaker 2: Both Missus Kelly and her assistant, Missus Stevens, lived at
- 4:30:58Speaker 2: Hull House. The office was on Polk Street, directly opposite,
- 4:31:03Speaker 2: and one of the most vigorous deputies was the president
- 4:31:06Speaker 2: of the Jaine Club. In addition, one of the early
- 4:31:10Speaker 2: men residents since dean of a state law school, acted
- 4:31:15Speaker 2: as prosecutor in the cases brought against the violators of
- 4:31:18Speaker 2: the law. Chicago had for years been notoriously lax in
- 4:31:23Speaker 2: the administration of law, and the enforcement of an unpopular
- 4:31:27Speaker 2: measure was resented equally by the president of a large
- 4:31:31Speaker 2: manufacturing concern and by the former victim of a sweatshop
- 4:31:35Speaker 2: who had started a place of his own. Whatever the
- 4:31:39Speaker 2: sentiments toward the new law on the part of the employers,
- 4:31:42Speaker 2: there was no doubt of its enthusiastic reception by the
- 4:31:46Speaker 2: trades unions, as the securing of the law had already
- 4:31:50Speaker 2: come from them, and through the years which have elapsed
- 4:31:54Speaker 2: since the experience of the Hull House residents would coincide
- 4:31:58Speaker 2: with that of an English bish statesmen who said that
- 4:32:02Speaker 2: a common rule for the standard of life and the
- 4:32:05Speaker 2: condition of labor may be secured by legislation, but it
- 4:32:10Speaker 2: must be maintained by trades unionism. This special value of
- 4:32:15Speaker 2: the trades unions first became clear to the residence of
- 4:32:19Speaker 2: Hull House. In connection with the sweating system, we early
- 4:32:23Speaker 2: found that the women in the sewing trades were sorely
- 4:32:26Speaker 2: in need of help. The trade was thoroughly disorganized, Russian
- 4:32:31Speaker 2: and Polish tailors competing against English speaking tailors, unskilled Bohemian
- 4:32:36Speaker 2: and Italian women competing against both. These women seem to
- 4:32:40Speaker 2: have been best helped through the use of the label.
- 4:32:43Speaker 2: When unions of specialized workers in the trade are strong
- 4:32:47Speaker 2: enough to insist that the manufacturers shall give out work
- 4:32:52Speaker 2: only to those holding union cards, it was certainly impressive
- 4:32:56Speaker 2: when the garment makers themselves in this way finally succeeded
- 4:33:01Speaker 2: in organizing six hundred of the Italian women in our
- 4:33:04Speaker 2: immediate vicinity who had finished garments at home for the
- 4:33:08Speaker 2: most wretched and precarious wages. To be sure, the most
- 4:33:12Speaker 2: ignorant women only knew that you couldn't get clothes to
- 4:33:16Speaker 2: sew from the places where they paid the best unless
- 4:33:20Speaker 2: you had a card. But through the veins of most
- 4:33:23Speaker 2: of them there pulsed a quickened blood of a new fellowship,
- 4:33:28Speaker 2: a sense of comfort and aid which had been laid
- 4:33:31Speaker 2: out to them by their fellow workers. During the fourth
- 4:33:35Speaker 2: year of our residence at Hull House, we found ourselves
- 4:33:39Speaker 2: in a large mass meeting ardently advocating the passage of
- 4:33:43Speaker 2: a federal measure called the Sultzer Bill. Even in our
- 4:33:48Speaker 2: short struggle with the evils of the sweating system, it
- 4:33:52Speaker 2: did not seem strange that the center of the effort
- 4:33:54Speaker 2: had shifted to Washington, For by that time we had
- 4:33:57Speaker 2: realized that the sanitary regulation of sweatshops by city officials
- 4:34:02Speaker 2: and a careful enforcement of factory legislation by state factory
- 4:34:06Speaker 2: inspectors will not avail unless each city and state shall
- 4:34:11Speaker 2: be able to pass and enforce a code of comparatively
- 4:34:15Speaker 2: uniform legislation. Although the Sultzer Act failed to utilize the
- 4:34:20Speaker 2: interstate Commerce legislation for its purpose, many of the national
- 4:34:25Speaker 2: representatives realized for the first time that only by federal
- 4:34:29Speaker 2: legislation could their constituents in remote country places be protected
- 4:34:34Speaker 2: from contagious diseases raging in New York or Chicago. For
- 4:34:38Speaker 2: many country doctors testify as to the outbreak of scarlet
- 4:34:41Speaker 2: fever in rural neighborhoods after the children have begun to
- 4:34:46Speaker 2: wear the winter overcoats and cloaks which have been sent
- 4:34:49Speaker 2: from infected city sweatshops. Through our effort to modify the
- 4:34:54Speaker 2: sweating system, the hull house residents gradually became committed to
- 4:34:58Speaker 2: the fortunes of the Consumers League, an organization which for
- 4:35:03Speaker 2: years has been approaching the question of the underpaid sewing
- 4:35:07Speaker 2: women from the point of view of the ultimate responsibility
- 4:35:11Speaker 2: lodged in the consumer. It becomes more reasonable to make
- 4:35:15Speaker 2: the presentation of the sweatshop situation through this league, as
- 4:35:19Speaker 2: it is more effectual to work with them for the
- 4:35:22Speaker 2: extension of legal provisions. In the slow upbuilding of that
- 4:35:26Speaker 2: code of legislation, which is alone sufficient to protect the
- 4:35:30Speaker 2: home from the danger's incident to the sweating system, the
- 4:35:34Speaker 2: Consumers League seems to afford the best method of approach
- 4:35:38Speaker 2: for the protection of girls in department stores. I recall
- 4:35:42Speaker 2: a group of girls from a neighboring emporium who applied
- 4:35:46Speaker 2: to Hull House for dancing parties on alternate Sunday afternoons.
- 4:35:51Speaker 2: In reply to our protest, they told us they not
- 4:35:54Speaker 2: only worked late every evening in spite of the fact
- 4:35:58Speaker 2: that each was supposed to have two two nights a
- 4:36:00Speaker 2: week off and every Sunday morning, but that on alternate
- 4:36:05Speaker 2: Sunday afternoons they were required to sort the stock over
- 4:36:11Speaker 2: and over again. Meetings called by the Clerks Union and
- 4:36:14Speaker 2: others have been held at Hull House protesting against these
- 4:36:18Speaker 2: incredibly long hours. Little modification has come about, however, during
- 4:36:23Speaker 2: our twenty years of residence. Although one large store in
- 4:36:27Speaker 2: the Bohemian Quarter closes all day on Sunday and many
- 4:36:31Speaker 2: of the others for three nights a week. In spite
- 4:36:34Speaker 2: of the Sunday work, these girls prefer the outlying department
- 4:36:37Speaker 2: stores to those downtown. There is more social intercourse with
- 4:36:42Speaker 2: the customers, more kindliness and social equality between the saleswomen
- 4:36:47Speaker 2: and the managers. And above all, the girls have the
- 4:36:50Speaker 2: protection naturally afforded by friends and neighbors, and they are
- 4:36:53Speaker 2: free from that suspicion which so often haunts the girls
- 4:36:57Speaker 2: downtown that their fellow workers may not be nice girls.
- 4:37:03Speaker 2: In the first years of Hull House, we came across
- 4:37:06Speaker 2: no trades unions among the women workers, and I think
- 4:37:10Speaker 2: perhaps that only one union composed solely of women was
- 4:37:14Speaker 2: to be found in Chicago, then that of the bookbinders.
- 4:37:18Speaker 2: I easily recall that evening when the president of this
- 4:37:22Speaker 2: pioneer organization accepted an invitation to take dinner at Hull House,
- 4:37:27Speaker 2: she came in a rather recalcitrant mood, expecting to be patronized,
- 4:37:33Speaker 2: and so suspicious of our motives that it was only
- 4:37:36Speaker 2: after she had been persuaded to become a guest of
- 4:37:38Speaker 2: the house for several weeks in order to find out
- 4:37:41Speaker 2: about us for herself, that she was convinced of our
- 4:37:45Speaker 2: sincerity and of the ability of outsiders to be of
- 4:37:49Speaker 2: any service to working women. She afterward became closely identified
- 4:37:54Speaker 2: with Hull House, and her hearty cooperation was assured until
- 4:37:58Speaker 2: she moved to Boston and became became a general organizer
- 4:38:02Speaker 2: for the American Federation of Labor. The Women shirt Makers
- 4:38:07Speaker 2: and the Women cloak Makers were both organized at Hull House,
- 4:38:11Speaker 2: as was also the Dorcas Federal Labor Union, which had
- 4:38:15Speaker 2: been founded through the efforts of a working woman, then
- 4:38:19Speaker 2: one of the residents. The latter union met once a
- 4:38:23Speaker 2: month in our drawing room. It was composed of representatives
- 4:38:26Speaker 2: from all the unions in the city, which included women
- 4:38:30Speaker 2: in their membership, and also received other women in sympathy
- 4:38:33Speaker 2: with unionism. It was accorded representation in the central labor
- 4:38:38Speaker 2: body of the city, and later it joined its efforts
- 4:38:41Speaker 2: with those of others to found the Women's Union Label League.
- 4:38:46Speaker 2: In what we consider a praiseworthy effort to unite it
- 4:38:50Speaker 2: with other organizations, the president of a leading women's club
- 4:38:54Speaker 2: applied for membership. We were so sure of her election
- 4:38:58Speaker 2: that she stood just outside the draw drawing room door,
- 4:39:01Speaker 2: or in trades union language, the wicket gate, while her
- 4:39:05Speaker 2: name was voted upon. To our chagrin, she did not
- 4:39:09Speaker 2: receive enough votes to secure her admission, not because the
- 4:39:13Speaker 2: working girls, as they were careful to state, did not
- 4:39:16Speaker 2: admire her, but because she seemed to belong to the
- 4:39:21Speaker 2: other side. Fortunately, the big minded woman so thoroughly understood
- 4:39:26Speaker 2: the vote, and her interest in working women was so
- 4:39:30Speaker 2: genuine that it was less than a decade afterward when
- 4:39:33Speaker 2: she was elected to the presidency of the National Women's
- 4:39:37Speaker 2: Trades Union League. The incident and the sequel registers perhaps
- 4:39:43Speaker 2: the change in Chicago toward the labor movement the recognition
- 4:39:47Speaker 2: of the fact that it is a general social movement
- 4:39:50Speaker 2: concerning all members of society, and not merely a class struggle.
- 4:39:56Speaker 2: Some such public estimate of the labor movement was brought
- 4:39:59Speaker 2: home to Chicago during several conspicuous strikes. At least labor
- 4:40:03Speaker 2: legislation has twice been inaugurated because its need was thus
- 4:40:08Speaker 2: made clear. After the Pullman strike, various elements in the
- 4:40:12Speaker 2: community were unexpectedly brought together that they might soberly consider
- 4:40:17Speaker 2: and rectify the weakness in the legal structure which the
- 4:40:21Speaker 2: strike had revealed. These citizens arranged for a large and
- 4:40:25Speaker 2: representative convention to be held in Chicago on Industrial Conciliation
- 4:40:31Speaker 2: and Arbitration. I served as secretary of the committee from
- 4:40:35Speaker 2: the New Civic Federation having the matter in charge, and
- 4:40:39Speaker 2: our hopes ran high when, as a result of the agitation,
- 4:40:43Speaker 2: the Illinois legislature passed a law creating a state Board
- 4:40:47Speaker 2: of Conciliation and Arbitration. But even a state board cannot
- 4:40:51Speaker 2: accomplish more than public sentiment authorizes and sustains. And we
- 4:40:57Speaker 2: might easily have been discouraged in those early days, could
- 4:41:00Speaker 2: we have foreseen some of the industrial disturbances which have
- 4:41:04Speaker 2: since disgraced Chicago. This law embodied the best provisions of
- 4:41:09Speaker 2: the then existing laws for the arbitration of industrial disputes.
- 4:41:14Speaker 2: At the time, the word arbitration was still a word
- 4:41:17Speaker 2: to conjure with, and many Chicago citizens were convinced not
- 4:41:21Speaker 2: only of the danger and futility involved in the open
- 4:41:24Speaker 2: warfare of opposing social forces, but further believed that the
- 4:41:29Speaker 2: search for justice and righteousness in industrial relations was made
- 4:41:34Speaker 2: infinitely more difficult thereby. The Pullmans strike afforded much illumination
- 4:41:41Speaker 2: to many Chicago people. Before it, there had been nothing
- 4:41:45Speaker 2: in my experience to reveal that distinct cleavage of society
- 4:41:49Speaker 2: which a general strike at least momentarily affords. Certainly, during
- 4:41:54Speaker 2: all those dark days of the Pullman strike, the growth
- 4:41:57Speaker 2: of class bitterness was most obvious the fact that the
- 4:42:01Speaker 2: settlement maintained avenues of intercourse with both sides seemed to
- 4:42:05Speaker 2: give it opportunity for nothing but a realization of the
- 4:42:09Speaker 2: bitterness and division along class lines. I had known mister
- 4:42:14Speaker 2: Pullman and had seen his genuine pride and pleasure in
- 4:42:17Speaker 2: the model town he had built with so much care,
- 4:42:21Speaker 2: And I had an opportunity to talk to many of
- 4:42:24Speaker 2: the Pullman employees during the strike, when I was sent
- 4:42:28Speaker 2: from a so called citizen's arbitration committee to their first meetings,
- 4:42:32Speaker 2: held in a hall in the neighboring village of Kensington,
- 4:42:36Speaker 2: and when I was invited to the modest supper tables
- 4:42:39Speaker 2: laid in the model houses. The employees then expected a
- 4:42:44Speaker 2: speedy settlement, and no one doubted but that all the
- 4:42:47Speaker 2: grievances connected with the Straw Bosses would be quickly remedied,
- 4:42:52Speaker 2: and that the benevolence which had built the model town
- 4:42:55Speaker 2: would not fail them. They were sure that the Straw
- 4:42:59Speaker 2: Bosses had made represented the state of affairs, for this
- 4:43:03Speaker 2: very first awakening to class consciousness bore many traces of
- 4:43:07Speaker 2: the servility on one side and the arrogance on the
- 4:43:10Speaker 2: other which had so long prevailed in the model town.
- 4:43:15Speaker 2: The entire strike demonstrated how often the outcome of far
- 4:43:19Speaker 2: reaching industrial disturbances is dependent upon the personal will of
- 4:43:24Speaker 2: the employer or the temperament of a strike leader. Those
- 4:43:28Speaker 2: familiar with strikes know only too well how much they
- 4:43:32Speaker 2: are influenced by poignant domestic situations, by the troubled consciences
- 4:43:37Speaker 2: of the minority directors, by the suffering women and children,
- 4:43:41Speaker 2: by the keen excitement of the struggle, by their religious
- 4:43:45Speaker 2: scruples sternly suppressed but occasionally asserting themselves now on one
- 4:43:50Speaker 2: side and now on the other, And by that undefined
- 4:43:54Speaker 2: psychology of the crowd which we understand so little. All
- 4:43:59Speaker 2: of these factors also influenced the public and do much
- 4:44:02Speaker 2: to determine popular sympathy and judgment. In the early days
- 4:44:07Speaker 2: of the Pullman strike, as I was coming down in
- 4:44:10Speaker 2: the elevator of the Auditorium Hotel from one of the
- 4:44:13Speaker 2: futile meetings of the arbitration committee, I met an acquaintance
- 4:44:18Speaker 2: who angrily said that the strikers ought all to be shot.
- 4:44:24Speaker 2: As I had heard nothing so bloodthirsty as this, either
- 4:44:27Speaker 2: from the most enraged capitalist or from the most desperate
- 4:44:31Speaker 2: of the men, and was interested to find the cause
- 4:44:34Speaker 2: of such a senseless outbreak. I finally discovered that the
- 4:44:38Speaker 2: first ten thousand dollars which my acquaintance had ever saved, requiring,
- 4:44:43Speaker 2: he said, years of effort from the time he was
- 4:44:46Speaker 2: twelve years old until he was thirty, had been lost
- 4:44:49Speaker 2: as a result of the strike. He clinched his argument
- 4:44:53Speaker 2: that he knew what he was talking about with the
- 4:44:56Speaker 2: statement that no one need expect him to have of
- 4:45:00Speaker 2: any sympathy with strikers or with their affairs. A very
- 4:45:05Speaker 2: intimate and personal experience revealed, at least to myself, my
- 4:45:09Speaker 2: constant dread of the spreading ill will. At the height
- 4:45:13Speaker 2: of the sympathetic strike, my oldest sister, who was convalescing
- 4:45:17Speaker 2: from a long illness in a hospital near Chicago, became
- 4:45:21Speaker 2: suddenly very much worse. While I was able to reach
- 4:45:25Speaker 2: her at once, every possible obstacle of a delayed and
- 4:45:29Speaker 2: blocked transportation system interrupted the journey of her husband and children,
- 4:45:34Speaker 2: who were hurrying to her bedside from a distant state.
- 4:45:38Speaker 2: As the end drew nearer and I was obliged to
- 4:45:41Speaker 2: reply to my sister's constant inquiries that her family had
- 4:45:45Speaker 2: not yet come, I was filled with a profound apprehension,
- 4:45:49Speaker 2: lest her last hour should be touched with resentment toward
- 4:45:53Speaker 2: those responsible for the delay, lest her unutterable longing should be,
- 4:45:59Speaker 2: at the very end be tinged with bitterness. She must
- 4:46:03Speaker 2: have divined what was in my mind for at last,
- 4:46:06Speaker 2: she said, each time after the repetition of my sad news,
- 4:46:11Speaker 2: I don't blame anyone. I'm not judging them. My heart
- 4:46:15Speaker 2: was comforted and heavy at the same time. But how
- 4:46:20Speaker 2: many more such moments of sorrow and death were being
- 4:46:23Speaker 2: made difficult and lonely throughout the land, And how much
- 4:46:27Speaker 2: would these experiences add to the lasting bitterness, the touch
- 4:46:32Speaker 2: of self righteousness which makes the spirit of forgiveness well
- 4:46:36Speaker 2: nigh impossible. When I returned to Chicago from the Quiet Country,
- 4:46:42Speaker 2: I saw the federal troops encamped about the post office,
- 4:46:46Speaker 2: almost everyone on Halsted Street wearing a white ribbon, the
- 4:46:50Speaker 2: emblem of the striker's side. Their residence at Hull House
- 4:46:54Speaker 2: divided in opinion as to the righteousness of this or
- 4:46:57Speaker 2: that measure, and no one able to secure any real
- 4:47:01Speaker 2: information as to which side was burning the cars. After
- 4:47:05Speaker 2: the pullman strike, I made an attempt to analyze in
- 4:47:08Speaker 2: a paper which I called the modern King lear the
- 4:47:12Speaker 2: inevitable revolt of human nature against the plans mister Pullman
- 4:47:16Speaker 2: had made for his employees, the miscarriage of which appeared
- 4:47:20Speaker 2: to him such black ingratitude it seemed to me unendurable
- 4:47:26Speaker 2: not to make some effort to gather together the social
- 4:47:29Speaker 2: implications of the failure of this benevolent employer, and its
- 4:47:34Speaker 2: relation to the demand for a more democratic administration of industry.
- 4:47:40Speaker 2: Doubtless the paper represented a certain excess of participation, to
- 4:47:45Speaker 2: use a gentle phrase of Charles Lamb's in preference to
- 4:47:48Speaker 2: a more emphatic one used by mister Pullman himself. The
- 4:47:52Speaker 2: last picture of the Pullman strike, which I distinctly recall,
- 4:47:56Speaker 2: was three years later, when one of the strike leaders
- 4:47:59Speaker 2: came to see me. Although out of work for most
- 4:48:02Speaker 2: of the time since the strike, he had been undisturbed
- 4:48:06Speaker 2: for six months in the repair shops of a street
- 4:48:08Speaker 2: car company under an assumed name, but he had at
- 4:48:13Speaker 2: that moment been discovered and dismissed. He was a superior
- 4:48:17Speaker 2: type of English workingman. But as he stood there, broken
- 4:48:22Speaker 2: and discouraged, believing himself so blacklisted that his skill could
- 4:48:26Speaker 2: never be used again, filled with sorrow, over the loss
- 4:48:30Speaker 2: of his wife, who had recently died after an illness
- 4:48:33Speaker 2: with distressing mental symptoms. Realizing keenly the lack of the
- 4:48:38Speaker 2: respectable way of living he had always until now been
- 4:48:42Speaker 2: able to maintain, he seemed to me an epitome of
- 4:48:45Speaker 2: the wretched human waste such as strike implies. I fervently
- 4:48:50Speaker 2: hoped that the new arbitration law would prohibit in Chicago
- 4:48:54Speaker 2: for evermore such brutal and ineffective methods of settling industrial disputes.
- 4:49:00Speaker 2: And yet even as early as eighteen ninety six we
- 4:49:04Speaker 2: found the greatest difficulty in applying the arbitration law to
- 4:49:08Speaker 2: the garment workers strike, although it was finally accomplished after
- 4:49:12Speaker 2: various mass meetings had urged it. The cruelty and waste
- 4:49:16Speaker 2: of the strike as an implement for securing the most
- 4:49:19Speaker 2: reasonable demands came to me at another time. During the
- 4:49:23Speaker 2: long strike of the clothing cutters, they had protested not
- 4:49:28Speaker 2: only against various wrongs of their own, but against the
- 4:49:31Speaker 2: fact that the tailors employed by the custom merchants were
- 4:49:35Speaker 2: obliged to furnish their own workshops and thus bore a
- 4:49:39Speaker 2: burden of rent which belonged to the employer. One of
- 4:49:43Speaker 2: the leaders in this strike, whom I had known for
- 4:49:45Speaker 2: several years as a sober, industrious and unusually intelligent man
- 4:49:51Speaker 2: I saw gradually break down during the many trying weeks,
- 4:49:55Speaker 2: and at last suffer a complete moral collapse. He was
- 4:50:00Speaker 2: a man of sensitive organization, under the necessity, as is
- 4:50:04Speaker 2: every leader during a strike, to address the same body
- 4:50:07Speaker 2: of men day after day, with an appeal sufficiently emotional
- 4:50:12Speaker 2: to respond to their sense of injury, to receive callers
- 4:50:16Speaker 2: at any hour of the day or night, to sympathize
- 4:50:20Speaker 2: with all the distress of the strikers who see their
- 4:50:22Speaker 2: families daily suffering. He must do it all with the
- 4:50:26Speaker 2: sickening sense of the increasing privation in his own home,
- 4:50:31Speaker 2: and in this case, with the consciousness that failure was
- 4:50:35Speaker 2: approaching nearer each day. This man, accustomed to the monotony
- 4:50:40Speaker 2: of his work bench and suddenly thrown into a new situation,
- 4:50:44Speaker 2: showed every sign of nervous fatigue before the final collapse came.
- 4:50:49Speaker 2: He disappeared after the strike, and I did not see
- 4:50:52Speaker 2: him for ten years. But when he returned, he immediately
- 4:50:57Speaker 2: began talking about the old grievances, which he had repeated
- 4:51:00Speaker 2: so often that he could talk of nothing else. It
- 4:51:05Speaker 2: was easy to recognize the same nervous symptoms which the
- 4:51:08Speaker 2: broken down lecturer exhibits, who has depended upon the exploitation
- 4:51:14Speaker 2: of his own experiences to keep himself going. One of
- 4:51:18Speaker 2: his stories was indeed pathetic. His employer during the busy season,
- 4:51:23Speaker 2: had met him one Sunday afternoon in Lincoln Park, whither
- 4:51:27Speaker 2: he had taken his three youngest children, one of whom
- 4:51:30Speaker 2: had been ill. The employer scolded him for thus wasting
- 4:51:34Speaker 2: his time, and roughly asked why he had not taken
- 4:51:38Speaker 2: home enough work to keep himself busy through the day.
- 4:51:42Speaker 2: The story was quite credible because the residents of Hull
- 4:51:45Speaker 2: House have had many opportunities to see the worker driven
- 4:51:48Speaker 2: ruthlessly during the season and left in idleness for long
- 4:51:52Speaker 2: weeks afterward. We have slowly come to realize that periodical idleness,
- 4:51:58Speaker 2: as well as the payment of wayges insufficient for maintenance
- 4:52:02Speaker 2: of the manual worker in full industrial and domestic efficiency,
- 4:52:07Speaker 2: stand economically on the same footing with the sweated industries,
- 4:52:11Speaker 2: the overwork of women and employment of children. But of
- 4:52:17Speaker 2: all the aspects of social misery, nothing is so heartbreaking
- 4:52:21Speaker 2: as unemployment. And it was inevitable that we should see
- 4:52:25Speaker 2: much of it in a neighborhood where low rents attracted
- 4:52:29Speaker 2: the poorly paid worker and many newly arrived immigrants who
- 4:52:33Speaker 2: were first employed in gangs upon railroad extensions and similar undertakings.
- 4:52:38Speaker 2: The sturdy peasants eager for work were either the victims
- 4:52:42Speaker 2: of the padrone, who fleeced them unmercifully both in securing
- 4:52:47Speaker 2: a place to work and then in supplying them with food,
- 4:52:51Speaker 2: or they became the mere sport of unscrupulous employment agencies.
- 4:52:55Speaker 2: Hull House made an investigation both of the padrone and
- 4:52:59Speaker 2: of the agencies in our immediate vicinity, and the outcome
- 4:53:03Speaker 2: confirming what we already suspected. We eagerly threw ourselves into
- 4:53:08Speaker 2: a movement to procure free employment bureaus under state control,
- 4:53:13Speaker 2: until a law authorizing such bureaus and giving the officials
- 4:53:17Speaker 2: entrusted with their management power to regulate private employment agencies
- 4:53:23Speaker 2: past the Illinois legislature in eighteen ninety nine. The history
- 4:53:28Speaker 2: of these bureaus demonstrates the tendency we all have to
- 4:53:32Speaker 2: consider a legal embacment in itself an achievement, and to
- 4:53:36Speaker 2: grow careless in regard to its administration. And actual results
- 4:53:41Speaker 2: for an investigation into the situation ten years later discovered
- 4:53:45Speaker 2: that immigrants were still shamefully imposed upon. A group of
- 4:53:49Speaker 2: Bulgarians were found who had been sent to work in Arkansas,
- 4:53:53Speaker 2: where their services were not needed. They walked back to
- 4:53:57Speaker 2: Chicago only to secure their next job in Oklahoma and
- 4:54:01Speaker 2: to pay another railroad fare as well as another commission
- 4:54:05Speaker 2: to the agency. Not only was there no method by
- 4:54:08Speaker 2: which the men not needed in Arkansas could know that
- 4:54:12Speaker 2: there was work in Oklahoma unless they came back to
- 4:54:15Speaker 2: Chicago to find it out, but there was no certainty
- 4:54:19Speaker 2: that they might not be obliged to walk back from
- 4:54:21Speaker 2: Oklahoma because the Chicago agency had already sent out too
- 4:54:25Speaker 2: many men. This investigation of the Employment Bureau resources of
- 4:54:31Speaker 2: Chicago was undertaken by the League for the Protection of Immigrants,
- 4:54:36Speaker 2: with whom it is possible for Hull House to cooperate
- 4:54:40Speaker 2: whenever an investigation of the immigrant colonies in our immediate
- 4:54:43Speaker 2: neighborhood seems necessary, as was recently done in regard to
- 4:54:48Speaker 2: the Greek colonies of Chicago. The superintendent of this League,
- 4:54:53Speaker 2: Miss Grace Abbott, is a resident of Hull House, and
- 4:54:57Speaker 2: all of our later attempts to secure justice and opportunity
- 4:55:01Speaker 2: for immigrants are much more effective through the League, and
- 4:55:05Speaker 2: when we speak before a Congressional committee in Washington concerning
- 4:55:09Speaker 2: the needs of Chicago immigrants, we represent the League as
- 4:55:13Speaker 2: well as our own neighbors.
- 4:55:15Speaker 1: It is in.
- 4:55:16Speaker 2: Connection with the first factory employment of newly arrived immigrants
- 4:55:20Speaker 2: and the innumerable difficulties attached to their first adjustment, that
- 4:55:25Speaker 2: some of the most profound industrial disturbances in Chicago have
- 4:55:28Speaker 2: come about. Under any attempt at classification, these strikes belong
- 4:55:34Speaker 2: more to the general social movement than to the industrial conflict.
- 4:55:39Speaker 2: For the strike is an implement used most rashly by
- 4:55:43Speaker 2: unorganized labor, who, after they are in difficulties, call upon
- 4:55:47Speaker 2: the trades unions for organization and direction. They are similar
- 4:55:52Speaker 2: to those strikes which are inaugurated by the unions on
- 4:55:55Speaker 2: behalf of unskilled labor. In neither case do the hastily
- 4:55:59Speaker 2: organized unions usually hold after the excitement of the moment
- 4:56:02Speaker 2: has subsided. The most valuable result of such strikes is
- 4:56:06Speaker 2: the expanding consciousness of the solidarity of the workers. This
- 4:56:11Speaker 2: was certainly the result of the Chicago stockyard strike in
- 4:56:15Speaker 2: nineteen o five, inaugurated on behalf of the immigrant laborers,
- 4:56:20Speaker 2: and so conspicuously carried on without violence that although twenty
- 4:56:24Speaker 2: two thousand workers were idle during the entire summer, there
- 4:56:28Speaker 2: were fewer arrests in the stockyards district than the average
- 4:56:32Speaker 2: summer months afford. However, the story of this strike should
- 4:56:37Speaker 2: not be told from Hull House, but from the University
- 4:56:40Speaker 2: of Chicago Settlement, where Miss Mary mcnowell performed such signal
- 4:56:45Speaker 2: public service during that trying summer. It would be interesting
- 4:56:50Speaker 2: to trace how much of the subsequent exposure of conditions
- 4:56:54Speaker 2: and attempts at government control of this huge industry had
- 4:56:57Speaker 2: their genesis in this first attempt of the unskilled workers
- 4:57:02Speaker 2: to secure a higher standard of living. Certainly, the industrial conflict,
- 4:57:06Speaker 2: when epitomized in a strike, centers public attention on conditions
- 4:57:11Speaker 2: as nothing else can do. A strike is one of
- 4:57:14Speaker 2: the most exciting episodes in modern life, and as it
- 4:57:17Speaker 2: assumes the characteristics of a game, the entire population of
- 4:57:21Speaker 2: a city becomes divided into two cheering sides. In such moments,
- 4:57:26Speaker 2: the fair minded public, who ought to be depended upon
- 4:57:30Speaker 2: as a referee, practically disappears. Anyone who tries to keep
- 4:57:35Speaker 2: the attitude of nonpartisanship, which is perhaps an impossible one,
- 4:57:40Speaker 2: is quickly under suspicion by both sides. At least, that
- 4:57:44Speaker 2: was the fate of a group of citizens appointed by
- 4:57:46Speaker 2: the Mayor of Chicago to arbitrate during the Stormy Teamster Strike,
- 4:57:50Speaker 2: which occurred in nineteen o five. We sat through a
- 4:57:54Speaker 2: long Sunday afternoon in the Mayor's office in the City Hall,
- 4:57:57Speaker 2: talking first with the labor men and then with the
- 4:58:00Speaker 2: group of capitalists. The undertaking was the more futile in
- 4:58:05Speaker 2: that we were all practically the dupes of a new
- 4:58:08Speaker 2: type of industrial conspiracy, successfully inaugurated in Chicago by a
- 4:58:14Speaker 2: close compact between the Coal Teamsters Union and the Coal
- 4:58:18Speaker 2: team Owners Association, who had formed a kind of monopoly
- 4:58:22Speaker 2: hitherto new to a monopoly ridden public. The Stormy Teamsters strike,
- 4:58:28Speaker 2: ostensibly undertaken in defense of the garment workers, but really
- 4:58:32Speaker 2: arising from causes so obscure and dishonorable that they have
- 4:58:37Speaker 2: never yet been made public, was the culmination of a
- 4:58:40Speaker 2: type of trades unions which had developed in Chicago during
- 4:58:44Speaker 2: the preceding decade, in which corruption had flourished almost as
- 4:58:49Speaker 2: openly as it had previously done in the city Hall.
- 4:58:53Speaker 2: This corruption sometimes took the form of grafting after the
- 4:58:56Speaker 2: manner of Samuel Parks in New York, sometimes of political
- 4:59:01Speaker 2: deals in the delivery of the labor vote, and sometimes
- 4:59:05Speaker 2: that of a combination between capital and labor hunting together.
- 4:59:10Speaker 2: At various times during these years, the better type of
- 4:59:13Speaker 2: trades unionists had made a firm stand against this corruption
- 4:59:18Speaker 2: and a determined effort to eradicate it from the labor movement.
- 4:59:22Speaker 2: Not unlike the general reform effort of many American cities
- 4:59:25Speaker 2: against political corruption, this reform movement in the Chicago Federation
- 4:59:30Speaker 2: of Labor had its martyrs, and more than one man
- 4:59:33Speaker 2: nearly lost his life through these slugging methods employed by
- 4:59:37Speaker 2: the powerful corruptionists. And yet even in the midst of
- 4:59:42Speaker 2: these things were found touching examples of fidelity to the
- 4:59:45Speaker 2: earlier principles of brotherhood, totally untouched by the corruption. At
- 4:59:51Speaker 2: one time, the scrub women in the downtown office buildings
- 4:59:54Speaker 2: had a union of their own, affiliated with the elevator
- 4:59:58Speaker 2: men and the janitors. Although the union was used merely
- 5:00:02Speaker 2: as a weapon in the fight of the coal teamsters
- 5:00:04Speaker 2: against the use of natural gas in downtown buildings, it
- 5:00:09Speaker 2: did not prevent the women from getting their first glimpse
- 5:00:11Speaker 2: into the fellowship and sense of protection which is the
- 5:00:15Speaker 2: great gift of trade unionism to the unskilled, unbefriended worker.
- 5:00:21Speaker 2: I remember in a meeting held at Hull House one
- 5:00:24Speaker 2: Sunday afternoon, that the president of a local of scrub
- 5:00:28Speaker 2: women stood up to relate her experience. She told first
- 5:00:32Speaker 2: of the long years in which the fear of losing
- 5:00:34Speaker 2: her job and the fluctuating pay were harder to bear
- 5:00:38Speaker 2: than the hard work itself, when she had regarded all
- 5:00:42Speaker 2: the other women who scrubbed in the same building merely
- 5:00:45Speaker 2: as rivals, and was most afraid of the most miserable,
- 5:00:49Speaker 2: because they offered to work for less and less as
- 5:00:52Speaker 2: they were pressed harder and harder by debt. Then she
- 5:00:56Speaker 2: told of the change that had come when the elevator
- 5:00:58Speaker 2: men and even the laws lordly janitors had talked to
- 5:01:02Speaker 2: her about an organization and had said that they must
- 5:01:05Speaker 2: all stand together. She told how gradually she came to
- 5:01:10Speaker 2: feel sure of her job and of a regular pay,
- 5:01:14Speaker 2: and she was even starting to buy a house now
- 5:01:17Speaker 2: that she could calculate how much she could have for sure.
- 5:01:21Speaker 2: Neither she nor any of the other members knew that
- 5:01:24Speaker 2: the same combination which had organized the scrubwomen into a
- 5:01:29Speaker 2: union later destroyed it during a strike inaugurated for their
- 5:01:33Speaker 2: own purposes. That a settlement is drawn into the labor
- 5:01:38Speaker 2: issues of its city can seem remote to its purpose
- 5:01:43Speaker 2: only to those who failed to realize that, so far
- 5:01:46Speaker 2: as the present industrial system thwarts our ethical demands not
- 5:01:51Speaker 2: only for social righteousness but for social order, a settlement
- 5:01:56Speaker 2: is committed to an effort to understand and as far
- 5:01:59Speaker 2: as possible to alleviate it. That in this effort it
- 5:02:04Speaker 2: should be drawn into fellowship with the local efforts of
- 5:02:07Speaker 2: trades unions is most obvious. This identity of aim apparently
- 5:02:12Speaker 2: commits the settlement in the public mind to all the
- 5:02:15Speaker 2: faiths and works of actual trades unions. Fellowship has so
- 5:02:21Speaker 2: long implied similarity of creed that the fact that the
- 5:02:24Speaker 2: settlement often differs widely from the policy pursued by trades
- 5:02:29Speaker 2: unionists and clearly expresses that difference, does not in the
- 5:02:34Speaker 2: least change public opinion in regard to its identification. This
- 5:02:38Speaker 2: is especially true in periods of industrial disturbance, although it
- 5:02:42Speaker 2: is exactly at such moments that the trades unionists themselves
- 5:02:47Speaker 2: are suspicious of all but their own kind. It is
- 5:02:51Speaker 2: during the much longer periods between strikes that the settlement's
- 5:02:55Speaker 2: fellowship with the trades unions is most satisfactory in the
- 5:03:00Speaker 2: agitation for labor legislation and similar undertakings. The first officers
- 5:03:06Speaker 2: of the Chicago Women's Trades Union League were residents of settlements,
- 5:03:11Speaker 2: although they can claim little share in the later record
- 5:03:14Speaker 2: the League made in securing the passage of the Illinois
- 5:03:17Speaker 2: ten hour Law for women and in its many other
- 5:03:21Speaker 2: fine undertakings. Nevertheless, the reaction of strikes upon Chicago's settlements
- 5:03:28Speaker 2: affords an interesting study in social psychology. For whether hull
- 5:03:33Speaker 2: House is in any wise identified with the strike or
- 5:03:36Speaker 2: not makes no difference. When labor is in disgrace, we
- 5:03:42Speaker 2: are always regarded as belonging to it, and share the
- 5:03:45Speaker 2: approbrium in the public excitement following the Pullman strike, hull
- 5:03:51Speaker 2: House lost many friends. Later, the Teamsters strike caused another
- 5:03:56Speaker 2: such defection. Although my office in both cases had been
- 5:04:00Speaker 2: solely that of a duly appointed arbitrator. There is, however,
- 5:04:05Speaker 2: a certain comfort in the assumption I have often encountered
- 5:04:09Speaker 2: that wherever one's judgment might place the justice of a
- 5:04:12Speaker 2: given situation. It is understood that one's sympathy is not
- 5:04:17Speaker 2: alienated by wrongdoing, and that through this sympathy one is
- 5:04:21Speaker 2: still subject of vicarious suffering. I recall an incident during
- 5:04:26Speaker 2: a turbulent Chicago strike which brought me much comfort. On
- 5:04:30Speaker 2: the morning of the day of a luncheon to which
- 5:04:32Speaker 2: I had accepted an invitation, the waitress, whom I did
- 5:04:36Speaker 2: not know, said to my prospective hostess that she was
- 5:04:40Speaker 2: sure I could not come. Upon being asked for her reason,
- 5:04:44Speaker 2: she replied that she had seen in the morning paper
- 5:04:47Speaker 2: that the strikers had killed a scab, and she was
- 5:04:50Speaker 2: sure that I would feel quite too badly about such
- 5:04:53Speaker 2: a thing to be able to keep a social engagement.
- 5:04:56Speaker 2: In spite of the confused issues. She evidently read reed
- 5:05:00Speaker 2: my despair over the violence in a strike, quite as
- 5:05:04Speaker 2: definitely as if she had been told about it. Perhaps
- 5:05:07Speaker 2: that sort of suffering and the attempt to interpret opposing
- 5:05:10Speaker 2: forces to each other will long remain as function of
- 5:05:15Speaker 2: the settlement, unsatisfactory and difficult as the role often becomes.
- 5:05:21Speaker 2: There has gradually developed between the various settlements of Chicago,
- 5:05:25Speaker 2: a warm fellowship founded upon a like mindedness, resulting from
- 5:05:30Speaker 2: similar experiences, quite as identity of interest and endeavor develop
- 5:05:35Speaker 2: an enduring relation between the residents of the same settlement.
- 5:05:39Speaker 2: This sense of comradeship is never stronger than during the
- 5:05:43Speaker 2: hardships and perplexities of a strike of unskilled workers revolting
- 5:05:48Speaker 2: against the conditions which drag them even below the level
- 5:05:51Speaker 2: of their European life. At such times, the residents in
- 5:05:56Speaker 2: various settlements are driven to a standard of life argument
- 5:06:00Speaker 2: running somewhat in this wise that as the very existence
- 5:06:04Speaker 2: of the state depends upon the character of its citizens, therefore,
- 5:06:09Speaker 2: if certain industrial conditions are forcing the workers below the
- 5:06:12Speaker 2: standard of decency, it becomes possible to deduce the right
- 5:06:17Speaker 2: of state regulation. Even as late as the stockyard strike,
- 5:06:22Speaker 2: this line of argument was denounced as socialism, although it
- 5:06:25Speaker 2: has since been confirmed as wise statesmanship by a decision
- 5:06:30Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court of the United States, which was
- 5:06:33Speaker 2: apparently secured through the masterly argument of the Brandeis Brief
- 5:06:38Speaker 2: in the Oregon ten hour case. In such wise, the
- 5:06:42Speaker 2: residents of an industrial neighborhood gradually comprehend the close connection
- 5:06:47Speaker 2: of their own difficulties with national and even international movements.
- 5:06:52Speaker 2: The residents of the Chicago settlements became pioneer members in
- 5:06:56Speaker 2: the American branch of the International League for Labour Legislation
- 5:07:01Speaker 2: because their neighborhood experiences had made them only too conscious
- 5:07:05Speaker 2: of the dire need for protective legislation. In such a league,
- 5:07:10Speaker 2: with its ardent members in every industrial nation of Europe,
- 5:07:14Speaker 2: with its encouraging reports of the abolition of all night
- 5:07:17Speaker 2: work for women in six European nations, with its careful
- 5:07:21Speaker 2: observations on the results of employers liability legislation and protection
- 5:07:26Speaker 2: of machinery, one becomes identified with a movement of worldwide
- 5:07:31Speaker 2: significance and manifold manifestation. End of Chapter ten.
- 5:07:39Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, Immigrants and their Children.
- 5:07:44Speaker 3: From our very first months at Hull House, we found
- 5:07:48Speaker 3: it much easier to deal with the first generation of
- 5:07:51Speaker 3: crowded city life than with the second or third, because
- 5:07:55Speaker 3: it was more natural and cast in a simpler mold.
- 5:08:00Speaker 3: The Italian and Bohemian peasants who live in Chicago still
- 5:08:05Speaker 3: put on their bright holiday clothes on a Sunday and
- 5:08:08Speaker 3: go to visit their cousins. They tramp along with at
- 5:08:12Speaker 3: least a suggestion of having once walked over plowed.
- 5:08:16Speaker 4: Fields and breathed country air, the second generation of city
- 5:08:22Speaker 4: boar to often have no holiday clothes and consider their
- 5:08:26Speaker 4: relations a bad lot.
- 5:08:29Speaker 3: I have heard a drunken man in a maudlin state
- 5:08:32Speaker 3: babble of his good country mother, and imagine he was
- 5:08:36Speaker 3: driving the cows home, and I knew that his little son,
- 5:08:40Speaker 3: who laughed loud at him, would be drunk earlier in
- 5:08:44Speaker 3: life and would have no pastoral interlude to his ravings.
- 5:08:50Speaker 4: Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under
- 5:08:56Speaker 4: false pride among the poorest Americans. One thing seemed clear
- 5:09:01Speaker 4: in regard to entertaining immigrants.
- 5:09:04Speaker 3: To preserve and keep whatever of value their past life contained,
- 5:09:10Speaker 3: and to bring them in contact with a better type
- 5:09:13Speaker 3: of Americans.
- 5:09:15Speaker 4: For several years, every Saturday evening, the entire families of
- 5:09:20Speaker 4: our Italian neighbors were our guests. These evenings were very
- 5:09:25Speaker 4: popular during our first winters at Hull House.
- 5:09:29Speaker 3: Many educated Italians helped us, and the house became.
- 5:09:33Speaker 4: Known as a place where Italians were welcome and where
- 5:09:37Speaker 4: national holidays were observed. They come to us with their
- 5:09:41Speaker 4: petty lawsuits, sad relics of the vendetta, with their incorrigible boys,
- 5:09:48Speaker 4: with their hospital cases, with their.
- 5:09:50Speaker 3: Aspirations for American clothes and with their needs for an
- 5:09:55Speaker 3: interpreter an editor of an Italian paper made made a
- 5:10:00Speaker 3: genuine connection between US and the Italian colony, not only
- 5:10:04Speaker 3: with the Neapolitans and the Sicilians of the
- 5:10:08Speaker 4: Immediate neighborhood, but with the educated Connazunale throughout the city
- 5:10:13Speaker 4: until he went south to start an agricultural co