The settlement horizon; a national estimate

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Preface

THE writers, who began this study at the suggestion of a representative group of fellow-workers in different parts of the country, have to express their deep appreciation of ready and thorough aid received from nearly all the American settlement houses. Many head residents have given us the fullest value of personal reminiscence and judgment. A large store of significant private data, in addition to every sort of printed matter, has been placed in our hands. Burdensome questionnaires, and a great variety of special inquiries, have been carefully answered. The visits which it has been our privilege to make to not less than four hundred of the five hundred settlements in the United States have kept us continuously in a rare atmosphere of loyalty to settlement aims, while in each instance providing vital information and suggestion in a field of effort qualified so largely by individual vision and power, whether among veterans or recruits. In connection with these visits, frequent opportunity of conference was afforded with men and women who possess that decisive acquaintance with the settlement which comes to its sagacious neighbors. For the past decade, as joint secretaries of the National Federation of Settlements, we have had the opportunity of arranging for and responsibly participating in its annual meetings and of editing its reports; and have thus enjoyed close association with those giving expression, from year to year, to the most recent developments of specific experience and the most timely precipitants of conviction and purpose. Part of the official duties of the enterprise has been to keep in unbroken communication with staff and board members of neighborhood agencies throughout the United States and in many foreign countries. One of us has at different times visited the original as well as the more recent English establishments, and has had the privilege of seeing something of the new embodiments of settlement motive that are springing up at various points on the continent of Europe and in the Orient.

HI

PREFACE

In addition to all that has come through these more comprehensive undertakings, we are specially indebted to Miss Alice E. Robbins and Miss Elizabeth S. Williams, who, in the early stages of the study, gathered and arranged the results of a systematic inquiry into the work of the numerous and widely suggestive settlements of New York City, a field familiar to them through long and successful experience. Later we served as editors of a productive national inquiry, in which there was the broadest settlement participation, into neighborhood work among adolescent girls. For New York, in organizing and interpreting the material thus collected, we had the valuable assistance of Miss Harriet McD. Daniels.

Dr. Jane E. Robbins has reviewed with special care the story of the beginnings on this side of the water. Miss Ethel W. Dougherty has given the presentation of club work among girls and women the benefit of her wide experience. Professor Henry G. Pearson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with practised skill has aided in clearing the reader's path of obstacles in expression and substance.

Indispensable assistance at many points has come from association with our immediate colleagues at South End House and from the larger fellowship of the Boston settlements.

Settlement work, though predominantly localized, covers a range of active interests as wide as civilization, all of them in course of development. It will be understood, therefore, that each phase of a subject so many-sided will have bearings that cannot be covered under any one head. We therefore suggest reference to the Index by those who would follow up any specific topic in the settlement program. A selection of authoritative books and articles on the different phases of settlement work is presented in the Bibliography at the end of the volume. For an ordered outline of the work of individual houses our Handbook of Settlements, published in 1910 by the Russell Sage Foundation, should be consulted.

IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS ORIGINS

PAGE

I . Antecedents in England , i

II. English Beginnings ^ 17

III. American Background 30

IV. American Pioneers 40 V. The Settlement in Being 53

VI. The Local Impress 64

NEIGHBORHOOD GUILD

VII. Clubs: Boys and Men

VIII. Cubs: Girls and Women ^1^

IX. Mixed Company 100

X. Summer in the City 1 1 1

XI. Country Vacation Centers 121

CULTURE AND REALITY

XII. Educational Approach 1 3 1

XIII. Training in Handwork 138

XIV. The Three Arts 146 XV. Neighborhood Humanities 162

NEXT-DOOR TO LABOR

XVI. The Labor Cause 169

XVII. Women and Children in Industry^— 177

XV 1 1 1 . Below the Poverty Line 1 89

XIX. Standards of Well-Being 200

XX. The Co-operative Man 208

COMMON WEAL

XXI. Tammany Leads the Way 223

XXII. Home and Street 231

XXI II. Health 243

XXIV. Law and Order 260 XXV. School 274

XXVI. Recreation 285

XXVII. Wartime Regimen 297

Table Of Contents

COMMON WILL pace

XXVI n. Family of Families 305

XXIX. I nst it utions and Neighborhood 3 1 6

Appendix

1. Sex Education 409

1 1 . Playtime Activities for Children 411

III. Window-Box Gardening 412

IV. Vacant Lot and School Gardens 413 V. Vacation Schools 413

VI. Cooking Qasses, Kitchen Gardens, and Other Household Matters 414 VII. Settlement Assistance in Legislation 417 VI II. Settlement Milk Depots, Laundries, and Sales of

Qothing 418 IX. Infant Saving in Chicago 418 X. An Experimental Definition of the American Standard of Living 419 XI. Radicalism and Misunderstanding 420 XII. Italian Contributions to American Culture 42 1

XIII. Records 422

XIV. Settlement Buildings 422 XV. Group Altruism 423

XVI. Festivals 423

XVII. Initiating Forces 427

XVI 1 1. Resident Personnel 428

XIX. Interpla)^ of Religious Loyalties 435

XX. Non-kesident Associates 436

XXI. Boards 437

XXII. Head Residents 440

XXI II. Financial Associations 441

XXIV. Street Trades 442 XXV. Commercial Amusement Resorts 443

XXVI. Interpretation Through Conference and Print 443

'XXVII. Organizations to Promote Local Welfare 444

Index 475

vi

I

ORIGINS

CHAPTER-' r-V.-.

ANTECEDENTS IN ENG^JV^*p

• • • •

THE university settlement came as the respohse.of spiritual enlightenment to elemental changes in the life cif t^^J^nglish people. 1 1 had its origins in the work of some of thef^^f^most moral leaders of the nation, as singly or in rare fellowship th^y passed in succession through the last century. These men had'ptbr**. ^ found influence in remodeling institutions shaken by the industrial:'* : . revolution ; they played an indispensable part in devising and es- * tablishing new forms of collective enterprise. Gradually there was outlined a project which seemed to epitomize all that they proposed. It was one of those conceptions whose simplicity is its power. Though creating in some sort a missionary order of the new humanities, it provided for no apostles; it relied solely upon a discipleship pledged to a way of life. Within two decades this propaganda of deed was commanding the energies of hundreds of loyal companies throughout the English-speaking world.

The especial mark of the historic processes which led up to this development was the endeavor on the part of men of the highest gifts and training to share working-class interests. 1 1 was thus that factory legislation had its beginnings. In its early struggles some of the best intelligence of the country joined hands with the labor movement. Recurrent and increasing emphasis was laid upon the necessity of a changed community background for working-class life. Several pioneer efforts were made to establish industrial villages among whose inhabitants obligations based on income and education should traverse all grades and distinctions. In the end it was discovered that the most fertile soil for participation between separated groups lay in the midst of working-class neighborhoods. Here, compassed about by all the problems of advancing democracy, university men might make their home. Here, under immemorial sanctions, might be formed between scholar and toiler the tie of neighbor.

The nuxlem humanitarian movement was made possible by the increased material prosperity whicfar appeared with factory production, even as it was made tr^ssary by evils incident to the new industrial order. Its tr^e Impetus, however, came out of the Wesleyan revival, which, during the second half of the eighteenth century, wrought .results so elemental in English life. Thoughtful people became more sensitive to the appeal of misery. The achievements of J<)hn* Howard (1726-1790) in securing progressive prison legislation, ^nd of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) in bringing about'tlte stbolition of Negro slavery, helped to revive the old-establi^hed'tradition of protective legislation for workers. A long series .•\of factory bills, promoted chiefly under the leadership of Lx)rd ; " :5haftesbury (1801-1885), gradually gained for wage-earners a suflfi- ' cient foothold, in respect of physical vitality, education, and leisure, to make it possible for them to undertake constructive measures of self-help.

While laws restricting the exploitation of laborers were being added to the statute book, Robert Owen (1771-1858), a successful factory manager, was opening up some of the far-reaching possibilities of readjustment which lay in the factory itself and in the mode of life of its whole related personnel. Bom of humble parents, Owen rose through his own exertions to ever more responsible positions, bought tfi Interest in his employer's business and married his daughter, thus progressing through the orthodox British degrees toward success.

Owen was far ahead of his time in perceiving that the health and happiness of his operatives and their attitude toward work were important factors in production. He astonished his competitors by raising wages and shortening hours. He reduced child labor to a minimum. Finally he captured the imagination of his force by paying them their wages through a three-month period of unemployment caused by a shortage of cotton.

For the factory village of New Lanark, Owen outlined and enforced wholesome sanitary regulations, supplied skilled medical attendance, opened a model provision store, established a savings bank, and encouraged the organization of a sick-benefit society.

The possibilities inherent in the rising generation also caught Owen's imagination. He worked out and put into operation a scheme of elementary education which, in its emphasis on freedom, on those physical and mental activities best suited to counteract the effects of machine industry on growth of body and mind, and in its demand that children be prepared to earn as well as to spend a living, has never been bettered. He organized evening classes for adults, provided a village park, a playground, a hall for meetings and dancing, and encouraged wholesome recreation. The combination of good pay, provision for healthy family life, recreation, and a sound public spirit practically eradicated the drunkenness and lawlessness characteristic of mill villages. These experiments at the beginning of industrialism were of epochal significance because they proved conclusively that fair conditions of life were by no means incompatible with profitable industry.

The success of his experiments at New Lanark led Owen to put forth some bold speculations about the causes and cure of vice and poverty. He became convinced that character was largely if not altogether the result of environment and training, and could be formed by a proper system of education. The school, therefore, was always the heart of his broad plans for social regeneration. He also saw the anomaly of a population in danger of starving because machinery enabled goods to be produced faster than they could be consumed. His remedy was a mixed agricultural manufacturing communism organized on a village basis. For he understood the fundamental quality of village organization and its human and associational possibilities as few social philosophers have done. Colonies based on his ideas were founded in 1 reland and America, none of which, however, was ultimately successful.

Though the establishment of communistic labor colonies was a chief interest with Owen he gave generous assistance to various other efforts for social reform. He was in a large measure responsible for the Factory Act of 1 819, the first in which the state definitely recognized its guardianship of children, and hence one of the most important in the entire series of factory enactments. His school at New Lanark had a profound effect on the development of public education in England and in America. He encouraged groups of workingmen to open co-operative stores as a means of accumulating capital with which to found one of his colonies. These stores laid the basis for later growth of consumers' co-operation. He lent his aid to the pioneer trade unions, and the first proposal for a universal eight-hour day came from him. But his great service consisted in forcing operatives and well-to-do alike to look at industry in terms of its effect on the total life of a nation ; in pointing out to wage-earners that the determining factor in the new system of industry was not machinery but the principle of association ; and in making it clear that they could protect their interests only by laming the mastery of that principle.*

While Owen was thus engaged in working out his plan of a model mill town, the Scottish divine, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), at the beginning of his career was bringing to the organization of a city working<Iass community a remarkable combination of disciplined evangelical fervor, comprehension of economic law, and power of leadership. In 181 9, as a partial response to his declaration that twenty new churches were required to care adequately for the people's spiritual life, the Glasgow town council laid off for him a large and needy parish.' Establishing his home in the midst of it, he gathered about him, principally from the parish, a staff of volunteer assistants. He divided the district into twenty-five small^neighborhoods, each containing from sixty to one hundred families. To each of these subdivisions he assigned an elder and a deacon; one to look after its spiritual interests, the other to provide for relief of the poor and the education of children. In addition to regular weekday schools, he established here and there throughout the district more than forty small Sunday schools for both religious and secular instruction.

^ Owen was an autocrat in mind and method, with a basis of theoretical democracy of the eighteenth century sort. His limitations were those of the typical captain of industry — he wanted to create his world de nooo. His system, founded on village life in New Lanark, was indeed little more than the indefinite multiplication of that community.

All things considered, Owen achieved an astonishing measure of influence even in his own day. The chief opposition to hb proposals srew out of hb supposed attitude toward religion, which was greatly misjudged. He pointed out the waste and evil involved in sectarianism, and mapped out a kind of church union very similar to that later advocated by Arnold Toynbee. If he could have suppressed some very just but extremely (considering the age) untimely criticism of ecclesiasticism in general, Owen might have carried his plans further. Nevertheless his influence on all classes was very great.

' His ministry in Glasgow extended from 181$ to 1823.

In everything Chalmers did he insisted upon the necessity and value of thoroughgoing neighborly relations. He went about through his district constantly in order to be on personal terms with all sorts of men, women, and children. "Man," he said, "will at length learn to be more practical and less imaginative. He will hold it to be a worthier achievement to do for a little neighborhood than to devise for a whole world."* He urged, in fact, that unless the helpful approach was that of the discerning neighbor, assistance might stifle rather than arouse the initiative of people. His " principle of locality" was a logical outgrowth of his endeavor to be at once human and thorough.

Though limited in his views about many industrial problems by theories of the day, Chalmers held it to be the church's duty to meet new issues which the factory system was projecting into the life of the people. He believed that through the neighborly inclination of each to do his part with all others, every working-class community could become sufficient to its own economic needs and pauperism might be abolished; and he well-nigh proved this contention. His faculty for fresh practical insights into human nature, inseparable from his power of invention and organization in human relations, gave a peculiarly stimulating quality to the influence which he continued to exert during his later career.

The concrete suggestions of Owen and Chalmers for meeting new issues of industrialism found reinforcement in the teachings of two great thinkers. Bred, like Chalmers, in the vigorous Scottish tradition, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) beg^n to unfold a thesis, pieced out of clues drawn primarily from the German philosophers, at the time both novel and intangible. Carlyle taught that society is a moral organism, a living unity and fellowship; that "all social growths in this world have required organizing; and work, the greatest of human interests, does now require it." He challenged with all his power of thought and purpose the national policy of unrestricted competition, of industrial leadership indifferent to the welfare of the industrial army. Sartor Resartus, first published in 1833-1834, and Past and Present in 1843, exercised a profound in-

^ The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, p. 133. Abridged, with Introduction by C. R. Henderson. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900.

fluence upon the younger generation of leaders who were coming to consciousness of the real state of the nation.

Tendencies thus developing were notably reinforced, especially among conservatives, by the writings of John Stuart Mill (1806- 1873), the most broadly human of the classical economists. In his Political Economy, published in 1848, Mill challenged the attention of the universities with a demand for the more equitable distribution of wealth. Every phase of his life work, however abstract, is found upon analysis to have been dictated by his desire to see the lot of working people ameliorated. During his last years he exerted a profound influence in the radical reshaping of the national economic purpose.

Meanwhile, reform of factory evils by legislation had been carried triumphantly to the end of its first stage in the Factory Act of 1844, which abolished night work for women and children in spinning and weaving mills; restricted working hours for young persons and women to twelve per day and prohibited their employment on Sunday; reduced working hours of children between the ages of eight and thirteen to six and a half a day, and required that they attend school three hours daily during the first five days of the week. Lord Shaftesbury, the unflagging leader in this legislation, was moved, not by considerations of philosophy or economics, but through the sense of pity and of duty which went with his evangelical faith. He continued to the end of a long life his many-sided activity throughout the congested centers of poverty and ignorance in Lx)ndon, devotedly, and it must be confessed, solemnly, laying the foundations upon which many later and better considered forms of charity and public education were to build.

Caring quite as deeply for the same sort of human beings, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) exemplified toward them always the liveliest sense of comradeship. One of his earliest essays was entitled "The Parish," and this was followed by another on "Our Parish." The scene of nearly all his stories was set amid some group of humble neighbors. By imparting to his readers an abiding feeling of having been in and of every circle of life he depicted, he prepared the minds of large numbers everywhere for more personal approach on their part to the unprivileged of all degrees. Even less moved than Shaftesbury by the historic meanings of a changing order, yet by the very accumulation of his influence Dickens affected it in supreme degree. No follower of his failed to have a keener sense of the claim of human nature under stress of poverty and of the elemental virtue and nobility, then hardly suspected, that are the treasures of labor. He was an ardent and vital champion of reform in education, in housing, in the administration of relief, and the care of prisoners. Shaftesbury said, " God gave Charles Dickens a general retainer against all suffering and oppression."

While the upper classes were slowly waking to the extent and seriousness of the suffering brought about by the factory system, the unrest of labor had become i n tense and widespread . Disappointment that improvement in living and working conditions failed to follow the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, on which so many hopes had been built, and growing distress due to constant crises, created a spirit of revolt which became increasingly self-conscious and vocal during the " hungry forties." The February revolution of 1848 in Paris inflamed workingmen all over the continent and led to profoundly influential demonstrations in the principal industrial cities of Europe, some of which were accompanied by violence. Doubtless the most dramatic and, as it turned out, one of the most far-reaching manifestations in behalf of popular rights in England during the nineteenth century was the attempt on April 10, 1 848, to convey to the Houses of Parliament, under escort of a great army of workers, a monster petition in favor of a People's Charter. The chief tenet of this document was manhood suffrage with attendant representation. The government, at once hampering and emphasizing working-class expression, fllled London with troops and swore in thousands among the upper and middle classes as special constables.

The threat involved in these several uprisings flxed the attention of the moneyed and governing class of all nations on the seriousness of underlying industrial conditions as nothing else could have done. While the first effect was a conservative reaction, a number of idealistically minded men of education were led, as it were, out of the heart of the revolt, to seek measures of amelioration.

It is significant that the year 1848 saw the birth of the two most influential forms which the modem movement for social reform has taken. Both were in part designated by the word "socialism,"

which had first appeared in connection with Owen's model communities, and both were to have an influence hardly to be overestimated upon the subsequent progress of democratic civilization.

"The Q)mmunist Manifesto" of Marx (181&-1883) and Engels (1 820-1 895)» published early in 1848 in Lx)ndon, contains in germ Marx's broad generalization that the political, legal, and social structure of a nation is an outgrowth of its economic organization. Although based largely on English conditions, this theory was of course in no sense the outcome of an English point of view. His continued study of the results of private control even of the instruments of production led Marx to prophesy the inevitable concentration of capital in the hands of a few, continued overproduction with attendant crises, ever-growing poverty, the rise in self-defense of wage-earners, and the final nationalization of all land, machinery, and capital. Marx and his disciples despaired utterly of things as they were, and centered their energy on the task of securing a solid working-class front for far-reaching and drastic action. The theory of " class struggle," with its watchword, " Proletarians of all countries, unite!" represented for many years the sole appeal of what has come to be known as Marxian Socialism. Not until after his death did it, with profound modification, become a direct force in English life.

Christian Socialism was characteristically English, embodying as it did the national genius for compromise. It was less a system of ideas than a moral impulse. Examined closely it turns out to be in the first instance a synthesis of existing beginnings toward social reform. Its exponents were, and continued to be, filially attached to university and church. Perhaps its most important achievements came of the fact that some adherents actually joined working-class organizations and gave time, strength, and money to developing the effectiveness of these bodies and to interpreting their aims to the public. Though it had a relatively brief organized career, its exponents, during the following half century, continued to have a widespread and potent influence in promoting a more just and fraternal ordering of civilization.

The spiritual guide of Christian Socialism was Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872). Influenced directly by Carlyle, and in general by Hegelian teaching as to the organic unity of mankind,

Maurice set forth the Kingdom of God on earth and among men as at once the basis of Christian doctrine and the touchstone of Christian action. He had the high distinction of drawing about himself perhaps the rarest group of young men to be found in any such personal allegiance during the whole nineteenth century. His wide experience and varied connections doubtless helped to soften the reaction against what, in the late forties and early fifties, must have seemed to the stock British mind a monstrous desertion of class and professional ties on the part of barristers and clergy. The persona] reverence which he inspired, and the never-swerving loyalty of his followers, frequently made him appear the creative mind in specific activities to which he was by no means whole-heartedly committed. If in the pioneering stage of the movement this fact drew toward him the onus of public blame, it later brought him, in comparison with others, disproportionate praise.

Next to Maurice, Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) was, because of his power of cogent presentation, the most influential member of the group. But John Malcolm Ludlow, Thomas Hughes, Edward Vansittart Neale, and Frederick James Fumival will always be remembered as having most definitely and persistently carried out the practical proposals of Christian Socialism. While other exponents were soon too absorbed by professional duties to continue active propaganda, these four devoted a large part of their lives to the furtherance, on the basis of educational standards, of working-class organizations.

The beginnings of Christian Socialism go back to 1846, when Ludlow, a law student at Lincoln's Inn, called on Maurice, who had just been appointed its chaplain, for assistance in " bringing to bear the leisure and good feeling of the Inns of Court upon the destitution and vice of the neighborhood.'' A system of visiting and relief was undertaken by the students which led to their establishing an elementary day and evening school. The men who assumed these duties were in the habit of meeting weekly at the home of Maurice for discussion and religious fellowship. It may be pointed out that this work, carried on in and limited to a neighborhood, was apart from direct parochial connection, and was engaged in by young laymen fresh from the universities. Meanwhile Kingsley, who had been attracted from law to the church largely by the writings of

Maurice, had fairiy begun, in a neglected country parish, a pastorate illustrating in the highest degree the human meaning of Christianity.

The Chartist demonstration of April, 1848, incited the Brotherhood thus formed to a wider range of activity. Fearing a serious outcome, Kingsley had hastened up to London from his parish at Eversley. With Ludlow and Maurice he sought for some way by which the moral impulse behind Chartism might be saved and the church awakened to a realization of its responsibility. The immediate result was a public appeal addressed to the "Workmen of England,"' pledging assistance of many outside friends and calling the men to a more righteous personal life. An important part of the Christian Socialist program as it began to take form was the allaying of class prejudice through deepening and extending the religious sense of brotherhood and through promoting in new ways the spread of higher standards of culture and conduct.

A penny paper under the editorship of Ludlow was projected, the first number of which appeared on May 6, 1848, with the title. Politics far the People, Kingsley's " Parson Lot" articles came out in it, as well as much of the freshest and most forceful writing produced by the group. After seventeen numbers, publication was discontinued. The paper was followed by a series of tracts and a second journal, the Christian Socialist. The stimulus of this kind of writing drew from Kingsley two stirring novels. Yeast, and Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet. The direct and indirect effect of these literary labors in promoting a vital and sympathetic knowledge of the hardships suffered by great numbers of working people can hardly be overestimated.

The unique distinction of the Christian Socialist group was the ingenuity, devotion, and persistence with which members constantly tested their large aims by the close-range demands of actual local situations. Kingsley's bitter experience with disease-breeding ways of life in the cottages of his parish, and with bad drains in his own parsonage, prepared him to discern and led him to set forth in terms of human degradation all that went with neglected and over-

^ " Maurice is in great excitement. He has sent me to Ludlow, and we are getting out placards for the walls, to speak a word for God with." — Kingsley, Charles: His Letters and Memories of His Life, Vol. 1, p.i 16. London, C. Kegan Paul and Co., 1880.

crowded tenements. Such teachings, continued year after year, helped to raise the reform of sanitation and housing into public necessities that should be undertaken by municipalities and even by Parliament.* Yet when a member of the group, recognizing the importance of organized action, proposed a National Health League, the suggestion was vetoed by Maurice in favor of beginning close at home in an ill-favored neighborhood called Little Ormond Yard; and the Brotherhood until the very end continued to emphasize the moral responsibility of every individual both for drains and conduct.^

In January, 1850, a new practical step was taken by the organization of a Society for Promoting Workingmen's Associations. Ludlow had spent the summer of 1849 in Paris and had come back full of the accomplishments of the Associations Ouvriers. He converted the entire Brotherhood to a system of modified or group capitalism under which workingmen were to own or hire the machinery and money for an enterprise, choose the management from their own number, and divide the returns.' It was recognized that such undertakings were not immediately adapted to unskilled laborers, nor applicable to industries demanding large capital. The trades selected for experiment, therefore, were tailoring and shoemaking.