THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY cop. "2. UBint iisTAiiiMt una HULL- HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS A PRESENTATION OF NATIONALITIES AND WAGES IN A CONGESTED DISTRICT OF CHICAGO, TOGETHER WITH COMMENTS AND ESSAYS OX PROBLEMS GROWING OUT OF THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS BY RESIDENTS OF HULL-HOUSE A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT At 335 South Halsted Street, Chicago, III. New York : 46 East Fourteenth Street THO>L\S Y. CROWELL & CO. Boston: 100 Purchase Street «*f Copyright, 1S05, By Thomas Y. Ckowell & Company. ttrogeaphy 15y c. j. peters & son, Boston. TAliLE OF CONTEXTS. rKKFATUllY XOTK V lilj fJANK AnHAMS. I. Map Xotks and Commkxts 3 />'»/ Areserved, except within the lot. where each individ- ual in the one case, and e;u.di rei)resentative of a family in the other, receives e(imil recognition, whether he shares with half a dozen otlnM-s a room in the rear of the third story, or occujties in solitary state the entire ground floor. No clew to the density of population is therefiue given, except indirectly, in such a case as occurs on the GEXEIIAL COMMENTS. 9 corner of Polk and Clark Streets, where one might rea- sonably infer large numbers from the presence of negroes, Italians, Chinamen, Russians, Poles, Germans, Swiss, French-Canadians, Irish, and Americans in one house. In general, however, the solid blue blocks of Italians on Ewing Street, and the black phalanx of negroes on Plymouth Place represent more people to the square inch than any other lots — a fact Avhich is in no way indicated on the diagrams. The United States Department of Labor states the exact figures as part of the report on Tlie Slam I/ivesti- gatlon, and all the statistics relating to this subject are officially published. But the partial presentation here offered is in more graphic and minute form ; and the view of each house and lot in the charts, suggesting just how members of various nationalities are grouped and dis- posed, and just what rates of wages are received in the different streets and sections, may have its real as well as its picturesque value. A comparison of the two sets of outlines may also be of interest, showing in a general way which immigrants receive the highest, and Avhich the lowest rates, and furnishing points for and against the restriction of immigration. / The poor districts of Chicago present features of peculiar interest, not only because in so young a city history is easily traced, but also because their perma- nence seems less inevitable in a rapidly changing and growing municipality than in a more immovable and tradition-bound civilization. ISfany conditions have been allowed to persist in the crowded quarters west of the river because it was thought the neighborhood would soon be filled with factories and railroad terminals, and 10 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AyD PAPERS. any improvemeut ou property "n-oukl only be money throAVTi away. But it is seen that as factories are built people crowd more and more closely into the houses about them, and rear tenements fill up the iew open spaces left. Although poor buildings bring in such high rents that there is no business profit in destroying them to build new ones, the character of many of the houses is such that they literally rot away and fall apart while occupied. " Xew brick tenement houses constantly going up replace wooden ramshackle ones fallen into an uninhabitable state. The long, low house on the north- east corner of Taylor and Jefferson cannot last long. Xo. 305 Ewing is in a desperate condition, and Xo. 958 Polk is disintegrating day by day and has been abandoned. Other cases might be cited, and disappearances one after another of the old landmarks are not infrequent. As fast as they drop away their places are filled, and the precarious condition of many old dwellings rencl,ers a considerable change in the aspect of the neighborhood only a question of a decade or so. Where temporary shanties of one or two stories are replaced by substantial blocks of three or four, the gain in solidity is too often accompanied by a loss in air and light which makes the very permanence of the houses an evil. The advantages of indifferent plumbing over none at all, and of the temporary cleanliness of new buildings over old, seem doubtful compensation for the increased crowding, the more stifling atmosphere, and the denser darkness in the later tenements. In such a transitional stage as the present, there is surely great reason to sup- pose that Chicago will take warning from the experience of older cities whose crowded quarters have become a GENERAL COMMENTS. 11 menace to the public health and security. The possi- bility of helping toward an iniprovemcMit in tlie sanita- tion of the neighborhood, and toward an introduction of some degree of comfort, has given purpose and conli- dence to this undertaking. It is also hoped that the set- ting forth of some of the conditions shown in the nuips and papers may be of value, not only to the people of Chicago who desire correct and accurate information con- cerning the foreign and populous parts of the town, but to the constantly increasing body of sociological students more widely scattered. The great interest and significance attached to Mr. Charles Booth's maps of London have served as warm encouragement; and although the eyes of the world do not centre upon this third of a square mile in the heart of Chicago as iipon East London when looking for the very essence of misery, and although the ground exam- ined here is very circumscribed compared with the vast area covered by Mr. Booth's incomparable studies, tlie two works have much in common. It is thought the aim and spirit of the present publication will recommend it as similar to its predecessor in essential respects ; while the greater minuteness of this survey will entitle it to a rank of its own, both as a photographic reproduction of Chicago's poorest quarters on the west, and her worst on the east of the river, and as an illustration of a method of research. The manner of investigation has been painstaking, and the facts set forth are as trust- worthy as personal inquiry and intelligent effort could make them. Not only was each house, tenement, and room visited and inspected, but in numy cases the reports obtained from one jjerson were corroborated by many 12 JIULL-nOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. others, and statements from different workers at the same trades and occupations, as to wages and unem- ployed seasons, served as mutual confirmation. Although experience in similar investigation and long residence in the neighborhood enabled the expert in charge to get at all particulars with more accuracy than could have attended the most conscientious efforts of a novice, it is inevitable that errors should have crept in. Carelessness and indifference on the part of those ques- tioned are undoubtedly frequent, and change of occupa- tion as well as irregularity of employment entail some confusion and uncertainty. Then, too, the length of time covered by the investigation is so great — one year — that neitlier buildings nor tenants remain the same throughout. West of the river the great majority of the dwellings are wooden structures of temporary aspect and uncertain moorings ; and almost any day in walking through a half- dozen blocks one will see a frame Imilding, perhaps two or three, being carried away on rollers to make room for some factory to be erected on the old site. Suburban cottages of remote date, with neither foundations nor plumbing, travel from place to place, and even three- story tenements make voyages toward the setting sun. Like rank weeds in a fresh soil, these unsubstantial houses sprang up in Chicago's early days ; and now they are being gradually supplanted by the more sturdy growth of brick blocks for industrial purposes. When thus thrown out, they find a precarious foothold in some rear yard that is not entirely filled up with stables and outhouses, or move into one of the rare vacant lots, generally farther out from the business centres. Fre- GENERAL COMMENTS. 13 quent liouso-movings of tliis sort alter the face of the district more or less within a year, and some neighbor- hoods put oil a smarter look, wliile increased crowding continues in all. Families also move about constantly, going from tene- ment to tenement, iinding more comfortable, apartments "when they are able to pay for them, drifting into poorer quarters in times of illness, enforced idleness, or " bad luck.'' Tenants evicted for non-j)aymeiit of rent form a floating i)opulation of some yuignitude, and a k(jdak view of such a shifting scene must necessarily b(3 blurred and imperfect here and there. lint special details vary while general conditions persist; and in spite of undetected mistakes and una- voidable inaccuracies, the charts paint faithfully the character of the region as it existed during the year recorded. These notes and comments are designed rather to make the maps intelligible than to furnish independent data; and the aim of both maps and notes is to i)resent conditions rather than to advance theories — to bring within reach of the public exact information concerning this quarter of Chicago rather than to ail vise methods by . which it may be improved. v^While vitally interested in every question connected with this part of the city, and especially concerned to enlarge the life and vigor of the immediate neighborhood, Hull-IIou.se offers these facts more with the h(jpe of stimulating inquiry and action, and evolving new thoughts and methods, than with the idea of recommending its own manner of effort. ) Insistent probing into the lives of the ])oor would come with bad grace even from government officials, were the 14 IiriJ.-IIOUSE MAPS AM) I'Al'KIiS. statistics ol)taine(l so inconsiderable a.s to afford no work- in},' basis for further improvement. The determination to turn on the searchlight of infjuiry must be steady and jiersisteiit to accomplish definite results, and all spas- modic and sensational throbs of curious interest are ineffectual as well as unjustifiable. The painful nature of minute investigation, and the jjersonal impertinence of many of the questions asked, would be unendurable and unpardonable were it not for the conviction that the i)ublic conscience when roused must demand bet- ter surroundings for the most inert and long-suffering citizens of the commonwealth. Merely to state symji- toms and go no farther would be idle ; but to state symptoms in order to ascertain the nature of disease, and apply, it may be, its cure, is not only scientific, but in the highest sense humanitarian. COMME^TS ON MAP OF NATIONALITIES. 15 II. COMMENTS ON MAP OF NATIONALITIES. Ix classifying the people from so many corners of the earth, au effort has been made to distinguish be- tween the groups forming different elements in social and industrial life, without confusing the mind by a sep- arate recognition of the people of every country. The English-speaking class (white) embraces English, English-Canadians, Scotch, all Americans of native parentage, and such children born in this country of foreign parents as are over ten years of age, or, if younger, are in attendance upon any public school. It would be misleading to include children under ten years living in a foreign colony, not in attendance upon schools where English is sure to l)e used, speaking a foreign language, and, although born in this country, ignorant of American life, manners, people, and of the English tongue. West of the river the English-speak- ing element is composed of American-born children, rarely over twenty years of age, whose parents are foreigners, and who bear so plainly the impress of the Old World that they may more truly be designated as second-generation immigrants than first-generation Americans. East of the river the majority of the white lots are filled with genuine Americans, most of them men and girls under thirty, who have come to Chicago from towns and country districts of Illinois, and from 16 IIULL-IIOUSE MAPS AXB PAPERS. Wisconsin, Micliigan, and other neighboring States, most of Avhoni lead irregular lives, and very few of whom are found in families. One English-speaking nation has been marked off from the class to which it would seem at first sight to belong, and allotted peculiar recognition and the color of the Emerald Isle. The Irish (green) form so distinct and important an element in our politics and civic life that a separate representation has been accorded them. The negroes (black) are natives of the United States, a great number coming from Kentucky. The Bohemians (yellow) are very numerous in the southwestern part of the district under consideration. The Scandinavians (yellow stripe) include Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. The Russians (red) and Poles (red stripe) are closely related, and uniformly Jewish ; a few Roumanians are found among the former. The Germans (mauve) are re-enforced by a not in- considerable number of Hungarians and Austrians ; but neither they nor the Dutch (mauve stripe) are found in large numbers. The remaining divisions of the classification accord- ing to birthplace are : — Italian (blue). Swiss (blue stripe). French (brown). French Canadian . (brown stripe). Greek (olive). Syrian (olive stripe). Chinese (orange). Arabian (orange stripe). Turk (white crescent on red). COMMEXrs O.V MAP OF SATJOyALITIES. 17 Eighteen nations are thus represented in this small section of Chicago. They are more or less intermingled, but a decided tendency to drift into little colonies is ap- parent. The Italians are almost solidly packed into the front and rear tenements on Ewing and Polk Streets, especially between Halsted and Jefferson, and outnum- ber any single class in the district. The Russian and Po- lish Jews cluster about Polk and Twelfth Streets, on the edge of the " Ghetto,"' extending south beyond Twelfth. The Bohemians form the third great group, and occui)y the better streets toward the corner of Twelfth and Hal- sted, extending south and west beyond the limits of the map. The Irish, although pretty well sprinkled, are most numerous on Fon^uer Street, which is a shade better than Ewing or l*olk. A few French pepper the west- ern edge of the section, the poorer members of a large and Avell-to-flo French colony, of Avhich the nucleus is the French church near Vernon Park. Only two colored people are found west of the river, while large numbers are wedged in Ph'mouth Place and Clark Street. The Italians, the Russian and Polish Jews, and the Bohemians lead in niimbers and importance. The Irish control the polls ; while the Germans, although they make up more than a third of Chicago's population, are not very numerous in this neighborhood ; and the Scan- dinavians, who fill north-west Chicago, are a mere hand- ful. Several Chinese in basement laundries, a dozen Arabians, about as many Greeks, a few Syrians and seven Turks engaged in various occupations at the World's Fair, give a cosmopolitan flavcn- to the region, but are comparatively inconsiderable in interest. 18 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. Americans of native ^Ktrei^fs are almost entirely con- fined to the part of the district east of the river ; and it should be borne in mind that the white patches on the west side represent children who are as foreign, in appearance at least, as their Neapolitan or Muscovite parents. The white portions representing the aggregate num- bers of English speaking-people found in the house or houses on each city lot, including American-born children (often belonging to a dozen different families), are uniformly placed next the street-front, so that the eye readily determines the proportion in any street or block, as well as in the space covered by one lot. The green (Irish) come next behind ; the yellow (Bohemian) follow ; and the blue (Italian), red (Russian), and red stripe (Polish) occupy the rear of the lot in the order named ; while the other colors there maybe hover be- tween the two extremes. Since it is impossible in so small a map of two dimensions to represent accurately the position of the tenements occupied by members of va- rious nationalities when the houses are two, three, and four stories high, the arrangement of colors is designed to suggest the mass, rather than the location, of the vari- ous peoples indicated by them. In some respects, however, there is a certain corre- spondence between this disposition of colors and the lo- cation of tenants thereby represented, when many born in different covmtries occupy rooms and houses on the same lot. Italians, if present, are invariably found in the rear tenements, and the same is true of Russian and Polish Jews ; however, in most cases where one apartment con- tains Italians or Jews, the whole tenement house is given COMMEXTS OX MAP OF XATIOXALITIES. 19 over to them ; for the arrival of either one is foHowed by the prompt departure of all tenants of other nationality who can manage to get (piarters elsewhei'e, in iiHich the same way that the ai)i)earani'e of a cheap money is the signal for a scarcity of dearer coins. It is rare that one will find Italians and Jews in the same house, moreover; for the lofty disdain Avith which the Daijo regards the Sheenif cannot be measured except by the scornful con- tempt with which the Sheeny scans the Dago. Further discussion of these two important factions, and of the Bohemians, is found in separate chapters devoted en- tirely to their consideration. 20 HULL-HOUSE 2^1 APS xiND PAPERS. III. COMMENTS ON THE WAGE-MAP. Ix turning from the nationality-map to the ^vage-map, the difference between the bases of representation in the two may again be called to mind. While in the former case the individual is the unit, in the latter it is the family, — head, wife, children, and such parents brothers, cousins, and other relatives as live in the same dwelling, and are scheduled as one household. It is not easy to sa}' just what constitutes "family life" in this connection. It is not a common table — often enough there is, properly speaking, no table at all. It is not even a common cooking-stove, for several families fre- quently use the same. The only constant factor in the lives of the members of such a circle, beyond the tie of kinship, is the more or less irregular occupancy of the same tenement, at least at night. Every boarder, and each member of the family who pays board, ranks as a self-supporting individual, and is therefore classed as a separate wage-earner. East of the river almost every- body boards, and a large proportion of the families on the west side keep boarders and lodgers ; Avhile there are also frequent boarding and lodging houses containing large numbers of people. At the time of scheduling, sixty men sleep every night in one basement room at Xo. 133 Ewing Street ; and similar instances of less serious crowding are found. COMMEXTS ON THE WAGE-MAP. 21 It may seem at first sight misleading to call each single man of over twenty-one a " family," and accord him the same representation as is given his father with six, eight, or ten children or other dependants whom he must support. But in this neighborhood, generally a wife and children are sources of income as well as avenues of expense ; and the women wash, do '' home finishing" on ready-made clothiiig, or pick and sell rags ; the boys run errands and " shine ; " the girls work in factories, get places as cash-girls, or sell papers on the streets ; and the very babies sew buttons on knee- pants and shirt-waists, each bringing in a trifle to fill out the scanty income. The theory that "every man supports his own family" is as idle in a district like this as the fiction that " every one can get work if he wants it." A glance at the black lots on the map, representing an average Aveekly family income of $5.00 or less, will show roughly the proportion of families unable to get together $260 dollars a year. The Italian, who is said to derive his nickname, ''Dago," from his characteristic occupa- tion of digging on the ferra via, is, as a rule, emplo3^ed on the railroads from twenty to thirt}* weeks in the year at $1.25 a day ; that is, he receives $150.00 to $225.00 a year on the average. The fact that this is not an in- come of $4.32 a week, or even $2.88 a week, throughout the year, but of $7.50 a week half the year, and nothing the other half, makes it more difticult for the laborer to expend wisely the little he has than if the wages were smaller and steady. This irregularity of employment, whether caused by the season, weather, fashion, or the caprices of the law of supply and demand, affects not 22 UULL-UOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. only the unskilled, but to a considerable degree the employee of the manufactories, and the artisan. The poorest suffer from intermittent work, of course, the most. Many paupers, and old people living " with their friends," are found among these black spots in darkest Chicago. The next class is colored blue, and embraces families earning from $5.00 to $10.00 a week, including $10.00. This is probably the largest class in the district. Red indicates $10.00 to $15.00, including $15.00 ; green, $15.00 to $20.00, including $20.00; and yellow, anything over $20.00. Mauve signifies unknown. The wage-earners proper are confined largely to the first four classes. The fifth (yellow) is largely composed of land and property owners, saloon and shop keepers, and those in business for themselves. All such proper- tied people are included in the fifth class, even if they declined to make a statement as to their income, it being reasonable to suppose them well-to-do. Members of the sixth class are chiefly pedlers, occasionally musicians and street-players, and almost invariably live from hand to mouth, keeping up a precarious existence by ir- regular and varied occupations. Most of this class are ver}' poor indeed, and in point of income would probably come under one of the first two classes ; that is, they generally receive less than $10.00 a week, many less than $5.00. The white lots that are so numerous east of the river indicate brothels. These houses are separately classed, both because their numbers and whereabouts are of im- portance, and because it would be unfortunate to confuse them with laboring-people by estimating their incomes COMMEXTS OX THE WAGE-MAP. 23 in the same way. Usually the schedules eoiitaiii no in- furnuitiou as to the amount of money taken in ; but, ac- cording to the few entries made, the gains vary widely, from $5.00 to $50.00 a week. The most interesting fact brought out by the investigation in this connection is that the brothels in this section are almost invariably occupied by American girls. A comparison of the na- tionality-map with the one under consideration will make this plain. Few of the girls are entered on the schedules as Chicago-born, and the great majority come from the central-eastern States. There are many colored women among them, and in some houses the whites and blacks are mixed. Only such places as report themselves brothels are so entered in the maps, the many doubtful *' dressmakers " in the same region being classified as wage-earners, according to their own statements. There are no declared brothels in the region west of the river. II. THE S WE A TINGS YSTE3L THE SWEATING-SYSTEM. BV FLOlilCNCK KKI.I.ICY, State Inspector of Factories and Workshops for Illinois, TnE sweating-sj'stem is confined in Chicago to the garment trades, which employ some 25,000 to 30,000 people (as nearly as we can estimate), among whom this system is found in all its modes and tenses. The manufacture of garments is in the hands of wholesale firms. Their factories are grouped in the first ward of the city, within a radius of four blocks, where they have large, well-lighted, fairly wholesome workrooms, in which the garments for the entire trade are cut. The cutters, having a strong organization, refuse to work ex- cept under conditions more or less equal with the con- ditions of work usual in the well-organized trades. The hours and wages prevailing in the cutters' shops, there- fore, do not differ much from the hours and wages usual in the well-organized trades. Some of the wholesale manufacturers have not only the cutters' shops, but also large workrooms, in which all the processes of clothing manufacture are carried on. These latter are known as " inside shops," or garment factories ; and in them the employees work under conditions vastly better than are imposed upon the sweaters' victims, though still farther than the cutters below the standard of hours and wages maintained in the well-organized trades. In the inside shops the sanitary conditions are fairly good ; and power is frequently, though Ijy no means uid- 27 28 UULL-HOLSE MAPS ANB PAPERS. formly, furnished for running machines. The same division of hibor prevails as in the smaller shops ; and the garment, after being cut, goes to the operator, who stitches the seams, to the buttonholer, the finisher, and the presser. In the inside shop the presser is usually also a skilled cleaner, and adds to his function of press- ing the garment made on the premises the duty of re- moving grease and other soils from the garments returned from the sweaters' shops. There are also usually em- ployed in these shops both basters and girls who pull bast- ings out of the lijiished garments. Formerly the operator was often an " all around worker," who received the gar- ment from the cutters, and handed it finished to the ex- aminer ; but the competition of the sweaters has led to a very general introduction of hand-girls, one of whom works with each operator, doing the hand-finishing on the garment as it comes from the operator. The sweat- ing-system has affected disastrously the condition of the employees in the inside shops, since any demand of the inside hands for increased wages or shorter hours is promptly met by transfer of work from the inside shop to a sweater ; and the cutters alone remain secure from this competition. A very important functionary in the inside clothing shops is the examiner, who receives finished garments both from the inside hands and the sweaters, and passes upon the satisfactoriness of the work. Incidentally, it is a painful duty of the examiner to find and destroy the vermin commonly infesting garments returned from out- side workers. Children are not employed to any considerable extent in the inside shops, and the employees are usually Eng- THE sn'EAriyG-svsrEM. 29 lish-speaking workers, though comparatively few native Americans are left in the garment trades, even in the inside shops. The organizations of employees are fee- ble, both numerically and financially, except the cutters' union ; and wages in the best inside shops are far below the rates common in well-organized trades, and are rap- idly and steadily falling. (With two exceptions, every manufacturer of garments in Chicago gives out clothing to be made in tenement houses. This is true of white underwear and custom- made outer wear, quite as much as of the ready-made clothing ordinaril}- associated in the public mind with the sweating-system. There are three common varia- tions in the manner of giving out goods. jNIany manu- facturers have closed their inside shoi)S, and retain only their cutting-rooms. These give garments directly to large numbers of individual employees, who make them up in their dwellings ; or to sweaters, or to both. INIan- ufacturers Avho retain their inside shops commonly give out garments in both these Avays ; and many of them also make a practice of requiring employees who work b}^ day to take home garments at night, and on Saturday, to be made at home on Sunday. Every manufacturer keeps a list of the names and ad- dresses of the people to whom he gives ovit garments to 1)6 ma ably shorter than prevails in any other occupation ;j and the employees are always on the verge of pauperism, and fall into the abyss with every illness or particularly bad season. If the sweaters' victim or any member of his famil}* fall ill, his only hope is in the county doctor and the visiting nurse supported by charity, unless the patient be taken outright to the Michael Eeese or County Hos- pital. If the illness prove a long one, recourse must THE SWEATIXG-SYSTEM. 37 be had to the various charities ; and death brings a funeral ending in the potter's field, unless some prosper- ous brother of the faith provide for ])rivate burial. A typical example is the experience of a cloakmaker who began work at his machine in this ward at the age of fourteen years, and was found, after twenty years of temperate life and faithful work, living in a rear base- ment, with four of his children apparently dying of pneumonia, at the close of a winter during which they had had, for weeks together, no food but bread and water, and had been four days without bread. The visit- ing nurse had two of the children removed to a hospital, and nursed the other two safely through their illness, feeding the entire family nearly four months. Place after place was found for the father ; but he was too feeble to be of value to any sweater, and was constantly told that he was not worth the room he took up. A place being found for him in charge of an elevator, he could not stand ; and two competent physicians, after a careful examination, agreed that he was suffering from old age. Twenty years at a machine had made him an old man at thirty-four. During these twenty years his earnings had ranged from 3260 to $300 per annum. Even without illness in his family, the sweaters' vic- tim is regularly a pauper during a part of the year. The two seasons of the trade in each year are followed V)y long pauses, during which nothing can be earned, and debts are incurred. If the " slack " season is phenome- nally short, in a year of unusual commercial prosperity, the sweaters' victim may perhaps live through it, by means of the credit given him by the landlord and grocer, without applying for aid to the Charities or the 38 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. County Kelief. But in the ordinary years of merely average prosperity, the sweaters' victim is inevitably an applicant for relief, to supplement, during three to five months, the earnings made during the busy season. This fact effectively disposes of the favorite human- itarian argument on behalf of tenement-house manufac- ture ; namely, that widows with children to support must be permitted to work at home. Even if these Avidows made a sufficient living for themselves and their children, the price paid for their prosperity, in the spread of disease and the demoralization of a vast trade, might be considered exorbitant. As a matter of fact, however, no tenement-house garment maker earns a suf- ficient living for a family, least of all the widow whose housework and care of her children interrupt her sew- ing, and whose very necessities are exploited by the sweater in his doling out of work and pay. What we really get in the case of the widow is the worst conceiv- able form of tenement-house manufacture, with full- fledged pauperism thrown into the bargain. V^t is preposterous, on the face of it, that a trade em- ploying from 25,000 to 30,000 persons in a single city, with an annual output of many millions of dollars, should be carried on with the same primitive machines which were used thirty years ago. In every other branch of manufacture the watchword of the present generation has been concentration. ^ Everywhere steam, electricity, and human ingenuity have been pressed into service for the purpose of organization and centraliza- tion; but in the garment trades this process has been reversed, "^and the division of labor has been made a means of demoralization, disorganization, and degrada- THE SWEATIXG-SYSTEM. 39. tion, carried to a point beyond whic-li it is impossible to go. While the textile mills in Avhich the material for garments is spnn and woven have been constantly en- larged and improved, both as to the machinery used and as to the healthfuljiess of the surroundings of the Avork- people. the garment trade has been enriched merely by the addition of the buttonhole machine ; and this lone, lorn improvement has been made the means of deform- ing the illiterate children employed at it A Thirty years ago the shoemaker atid the tailor were more or less equally placed. Each went through the experience of the apprentice, the journeyman, the master, working for a limited market, and more or less in per- sonal contact with the individual customer. To-day the shoe industry possesses a wealth of perfected machinery, such that a tanned hide can be carried through all the processes of manufacture under a single roof and with incredible speed. The shoemaker's shop, with its little group of workers, has become the shoemaking town, with a vast organization, both of capital and of labor, and a very high degree of intelligence and class consciousness pervading the thousands of employees. The garment worker, on the contrary, still works in his kitchen, per- haps with the aid of his wife, performing one of the dozen subdivisions of the labor of making garments. He rarely belongs to an organization, and if he does it is so weak as to be almost useless to him either for edu- cation or defence. If he is an " all-round garment worker," whatever his skill may be, he has little use for it ; since, in competition with him. the cutter cuts, the operator stitches, the seam-binder binds seams, the hand-girl fells, the presser presses, the buttonholcr 40 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AXD PAPERS. makes buttonholes by the thousand gross. Whatever the disadvantages of the division of labor, the garment worker suffers them all. Of its advantages he has never had a taste. A curious example of the isolation of the garment worker is found in a crowded tenement house in Ewing Street, known as " Poverty Flat," where live different women were found sewing, each in her own kitchen, five different bundles of knee-pants for the same sweater. The knee-pants were of the same size and quality, with the same amount of work to be done i;pon them ; but the prices paid were five cents, seven cents, nine cents, eleven and thirteen cents per dozen, rising in accordance with the skill in haggling of the home finisher, and with no relation to her skill in sewing on buttons. A millionnaire philanthropist, at the head of one of the largest clothing-houses in the world, was once asked why he did not employ directly the people who made his goods, and furnish them with steam-yjower, thus saving a heavy drain u.pon their health, and reducing the number of sweaters' victims found every winter in his pet hospital. " So far," he replied, " we have found leg-poAver and the sweater cheaper." In the shoe industry the products have been cheap- ened by developing the plant, perfecting the machinery, and employing relatively well-paid, high-grade lai»or. In the garment trade there is no plant. Under the sweating-system, with the foot-power sewing-machine, cheapness is attained solely at the cost of the victim. Even the inside shops are often located in rented quarters, and frequently the operator is required to supply his own machine, or to pay the rent of a hired THE SWEATING-SYSTEM. 41 one ; and even with these niggardly provisions the man- ufacturers find it profitable to shift the burden of rent upon the sweaters, who, in turn, reduce the size of their shops by giving out garments to the buttonholer and tlie home finisher. The intimate connection between this decentralization of the trade and the danger of infecting the purchaser with disease prevalent in tenement-house districts, is too palpable to need comment, and emphasizes the question Avhy the clothing manufacturer should be permitted to eliminate the item of rent from his expenses, at the cost of the trade and of the piu'chasing community. All other manufacturers have to include rent in their calculations, why not he ? The condition of the sweaters' victim is a conclusive refutation of the ubiquitous argument that poverty is the result of crime, vice, intemperance, sloth, and unthrift; for the Jewish sweaters' victims are probably more tem- perate, hard-working, and avaricious than any equally large body of wage-earners in America. Drunkenness is unknown among them. So great is their eagerness to improve the social condition of their children, that they willingly suffer the utmost privation of clothing, food, and lodging, for the sake of keeping their boys in school. Yet the reward of work at their trade is grind- ing poverty, ending only in death or escape to some more hopeful occupation. Within the trade there has been and can be no improvement in wages while tene- ment-house manufacture is tolerated. On the contrary, there seems to be no limit to the deterioration now in progress. 42 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPEBS. MERCHANT TAILORS. It is a fact of which the public has remained curi- ously ignorant, that the worst forms of danger to the wearers of garments are found in heavier proportion in the manufacture of expensive custom-made clothing than in the ready-made clothing trade ; since there are no in- side factories for the manufacture of custom-made cloth- ing, and merchant tailors employ only cutters on their premises, and never have any garments completed there, but always give them out to be finished in the sweater- shoi3, or in the individual tailor's own home. Throughout the agitation carried on for some years past against the sweating-system, the merchant tailors have enjoyed a wholly undeserved immunity from the accusation of spreading infectious and contagious dis- ease by means of the tenement-house manufacture of garments. A striking example may serve to illustrate the point. I have myself found on Bunker Street a brick tenement house filled with Bohemian and Jewish tenants engaged in the tailoring trade and in peddling. In the ground floor, front flat, which was exceedingly clean, I found a tailor at work one Sunday afternoon upon a broadcloth dress-coat belonging to an evening suit of the finest quality, s,uch as sell for from $70 to $100. On a bed about five feet from the table at which the tailor was working, his son lay dying of typhoid- fever. The boy died on the following day ; and the coat when finished was returned to the merchant tailor, and delivered to the customer without fumigation or other precaiition. Tliis was before the passage of the pres- ent factory law, and at a time when no authority of THE SWEATING-SYSTEM. 43 the State of Illinois had power to interfere in such a case. Even where the home tailor, by twenty years of work, has come to own his house, this prosperity is no guar- anty of clean goods for the purchaser. At 135 Forquer Street, there stands a two-story frame building swarming with Russian, Jewish, and Italian families, the ground floor occupied by a most disorderly and repulsive gro- cery. The premises belong to a tailor who lives in a shanty in the rear, where his old mother, dying of cancer, occupies a bed in the kitchen, in which this landlord has been repeatedly found working with his wife upon uniforms for the officers of the Chicago police and the Illinois militia, while his children and a number of chickens swarmed upon the floor. This man, after nineteen years of instalment payments upon his prop- erty, is still guilty of all the vices of thrift, in the hope of finally lifting the mortgage indebtedness during the present year. LAW. The sweating-system in Chicago has been a subject of investigation since 1891, Avhen ]\Irs. Thomas J. Morgan, on behalf of the Chicago Trades and Labor Assembly, made the first inspection that attracted public attention ' to the subject, upon the publication in pamphlet form of the results of her investigations. From 1891 to the passage of the law of 1893 under the leadership of Hull House, the organizations of gar- ment workers, including the shirtmakers, the men's shop-tailors' union, the women's protective union of cloakmakers, the custom-tailors' union, the cloakmakers and the shoemakers, kept up an unwearied agitation for 44 HULL-UOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. the abolition by law of the sweating-system, and obtained results proportioned to their good tactics, zeal, and en- ergy, rather than to their numbers. They urged on every public occasion that tenement- house manufacture is a public injury ; and they availed themselves of the solidarity of the unions throughout the State, to bring the facts of the case home to legislators with the emphasis of the labor vote. Their claim on behalf of the public health is an unanswerable one ; and their appeal for themselves, in their effort to place the garment trades upon the same modern business basis as the factory trades, finds ready response in the minds of intelligent people. Opposition to legislation looking towards the abolition of the sweating-system came from the manufacturers, less than one hundred in number, whose interests are affected, and from a few kind-hearted persons apprehensive of possible injury to the home fin- ishing widow, because they do not know her well enough to judge correctly her present irreparable situation. In July, 1893, the present Workshop and Factories Act went into effect, and this essay is w^ritten after eight months of effort to enforce it. The results obtained may be briefly summed up as consisting of the reduction in number of the small children in shops ; the partially successful separation of the homes from the shops, and the partially successful enforcement of the eight-hour day for the women and girls. These results are not wholly unsatisfactory, in view of the fact that the law is not yet a year old; but they indicate that this initial, tentative measure is inadequate for the eifective protec- tion of the health of either the public or the employees of the garment trades. Its chief value lies in its use as / THE SWEATING-SYSTEM. 45 a transition measure, paving the way for the abolition of tenement-house manufacture. This shoukl be a comparatively easy matter in a new city Avhere there is no long-standing tradition of genera- tions of handloom weaving in the worker's home, or in- deed of home manufacture of any sort. In Chicago, where all industry is on a large scale, and the cheajD land available for building factories is ample, there is not even the excuse afforded by the traditions of London or the overcrowding of Manhattan Island. If we tolerate tenement-house manufacture, we do so in the face of the experience of older cities, and in spite of industrial con- ditions which invite us to its abolition. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Pamphlet on the Sweating-System, published by the Chicago Trades Assembly, 1892. Investigation of the Sweating-System by Committee of the United States House of Representatives, Sherman Hoar, Chair- man, 1892. Report of Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1892. Report Joint Special Committee Senate and House of Repre- sentatives of Illinois to Investigate the Sweating-System in Chicago, March 1, 1893. Reports State Factory Inspectors of Illinois. III. WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. BY FLOREXOE KKLLKY AXD ALZIXA P. STEVEXS, State Inspector and Assistant Inspector of Works/tops and Factories for Illinois. Is a discussion of child-labor in Chicago, it may sim- plify matters to point out, at the outset, what things are not to be looked for. Thus, there is in Chicago vir- tually no textile industry ; and the cotton-mill child of Massachusetts, or the carpet-mill child of Philadelphia, has no counterpart here. There is iio industry in which, as in the spinning and weaving of silk, the deft fingers of young children have been for generations regarded as essential. With the large exception of the cigar, to- bacco, and paper trades (including both the manufacture of paper boxes and the printing and binding industries), and with the further exception of the utterly disorgan- ized and demoralized garment trades, the industries of Illinois are essentially men's trades. The wood, metal, and food industries employ a heavy majority of men. The vast army of fathers employed in transportation and in the building-trades demand, and as a rule obtain, wages sufficient to support their young children, who are therefore not crowded into factories. As the work of factory inspection in the State is of extremely recent date, and the inspection records are of less than a year's standing, it is impossible to trace the growth of child- labor in Chicago. Its status has, however, been care- fully investigated during the present year. 49 50 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. The census of 1880 gave the total number of wage- earning children in the United States in all occupations and industries as 1,118,258. The census of 1890, in sections devoted to " Statistics of Manufactures," gives returns upon child-labor in this division of industry, some of -which will be used in this essay. Before any of these are quoted, the reader must be warned that cen- sus figures upon the employment of children are inva- riably too low. They are here used merely as a basis for comparison. The method by which statistics of em- ployees are gathered, leaves it possible for employers and parents to make false returns concerning children. Inclination and interest prompt both to " raise " the age of the child at work ; and most employers are so far ashamed of the practice of employing children, that each returns less than the actual number. All persons who have been officially engaged under municipal. State, or national authority, in gathering statistics of the em- ployed, know that this is true. In the census bulletin upon manufactures of 1890, the total number of employees in the United States, of both sexes and all ages, is given as 4,711,831 ; the total number of children as 121,494, or a little more than three per cent of all employed. In census reports, " children " are all males under sixteen years, and all females under fifteen years. The table giving manu- factures by States shows that it is not where labor is scarce, but where competition for work is keenest, that the per cent of children is largest in the total number employed. Thus, 5 children are credited to Wyoming; 9 to Arizona ; 1 only to Nevada ; while Pennsylvania has 22,417; New York, 12,413; Massachusetts, 8,877. WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. 61 Certainly tlie older and densely poi)ulated States report on a greater number of establishments and employees ; but that does not affect the comparison between States as to the ratio of children to adults. For example : the Nevada report is upon 95 establishments, employing G20 persons, only one a child ; while Pennsylvania's report is upon 39,oGG establishments, employing 020,484 persons, of whom 22,417 — or about one in 23 — are children. CIIILD-LABOK AND TIIP: ILLINOIS LAW. The Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, established in 1879, which has issued seven biennial reports, has never furnished any information relative to the employ- ment of children in the State. The Workshop and Fac- tories Act was enacted by the Thirty-Eighth General Assembly, and received the signature of Governor Alt- geld on July 1, 1893. It provided for the appointment of an inspector, assistant inspector, and ten deputy in- spectors, five of whom should be women ; and it requires an aniuial report of their work, to be submitted to the governor of the State on December 15. From the first official report, which covers the five months between July 15 and December 15, 1893, the statistics used in this paper concerning working children in this State are taken. The census of 1890 reports 20.482 manufacturing establishments in the State, and gives the total num- ber of children employed in them as 5,420. In five months' work in 1894 we found 0,570 children in 2,452 establishments employing 08,081 persons, or about 1 in 10^ so employed, a reason for once more challenging census figures ; although in our work girls under sixteen, 62 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. as Avell as boys, are counted cliildren. It Avill be remem- bered that the census returns phace girls over fifteen years among adults, but reckon boys as children until sixteen years. The sections of the Illinois law regulating the employ- ment of children are the following : — § 4. Xo child untlor fourteen years of age shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment, factory, or workshop Mithin this State. It shall be the duty of every person, firm, corpora- tion, agent, or manager of any corporation employing children, to keep a register in which shall be recorded the name, birthplace, age, and place of residence of every person employed by him, them, or it, iinder the age of sixteen years ; and it shall be un- lawful for any person, firm, or corporation, or any agent or manager of any corporation, to hire or employ in any manufac- turing establishment, factory, or workshop, any child over the age of fourteen years and under the age of sixteen years, unless there is first provided and placed on file an affidavit made by the parent or guardian, stating the age, date, and place of birth of said child ; if said child have no parent or guardian, then sucTi affidavit shall be made by the child, which affidavit shall be kept on file by the employer, and which said register and affidavit shall be produced for inspection on demand by the inspector, assistant inspector, or any of the deputies appointed under this act. The factory inspector, assistant inspector, and deputy insi>ectors shall have poM'er to demand a certificate of physical fitness from some regular physician of good standing in case of children who may appear to him or her physically unable to perform the labor at which they may be engaged, and shall have power to prohibit the employment of any minor that cannot obtain such a certificate. § 5. No female shall be employed in any factory or workshop more than eight hours in any one day, or forty-eight hours in any one week. § 6. Every person, firm, or corporation, agent or manager of a corporation, employing any female in any manufacturing estab- lishment, factory, or workshop, shall post and keep posted in a WAGE-EARXIXG ClIILDIiEX. 53 conspicuous place in every room where such help is employed, a printed notice stating the hours for each day of the week between which work is required of such persons ; and in every room where children under sixteen years of age are employed a list of their names, ages, and places of residence. An immediate good result from the enforcement of § 4 was that several hundred children under fourteen years of age were taken from the factories after the opening of the school year, September 1. In Chicago, a daily report of these children, giving their names, ages, and places of residence, Avas forwarded to the compul- sory department of the Board of Education, that truant- officers might see that the children did not go from the factory to the street, but to school. In " hardship " cases, where there was extreme poverty in the child's family, appeal was made for the child by the inspector to the School-Children's Aid Society, or some kindred organization.^ Before the law of 1893 took effect, chil- dren seeking v.ork in Chicago secured from the city Board of Education permits, the purport of which Avas that, for reasons deemed sufficient, the child was granted permission to work under fourteen years of age. As these permits were secured on the mere statement of child or parent, false statements were common ; and we therefore found hundreds of children in factories who ought to have been in school. The law of 1893 applying only to workshops and factories, the Board of Education still issues permits for children under fourteen years of age to work in other than manufacturing occupations. A second good result from our system of handling * No good result liaving followed these appeals, they are no longer made [18iW]. 54 UULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. affidavits, and the requirements of the law regarding office registers and wall records, is that the number of children employed between the ages of fovxrteen and sixteen years is somewhat reduced. Many children to whom age affidavits were issued in the first months of our work, were found to have been employed two, three, and four years, although not yet sixteen. To-day no employer in workshop or factory in Chicago wittingly puts to work a child under fourteen years of age, and some employers are refusing to hire any boy or girl who has not passed the age of sixteen. They "will not be bothered," they say, with employees who come under §§4 and 6 of the law. THE WORKING CHILD OF THE NINETEEXTH WARD. The Nineteenth Ward of Chicago is perhaps the best district in all Illinois for a detailed study of child-labor, both because it contains many factories in which chil- dren are employed, and because it is the dwelling-place of wage-earning children engaged in all lines of activity. The Ewing Street Italian colony furnishes a large contingent to the army of bootblacks and newsboys ; lads who leave home at 2.30 a.m. to secure the first edition of the morning paper, selling each edition as it appears, and filling the intervals with blacking boots and tossing pennies, until, in the winter half of the year, they gather in the Polk Street Night-School, to doze in the warmth, or torture the teacher with the gamin tricks acquired by day. For them, school is "a lark," or a peaceful retreat from parental beatings and shrieking juniors at home during the bitter nights of the Chicago winter. WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. 65 There is no body of self-supporting chiklreii more in need of effective care llian tliese newsboys and boot- blacks. They are ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, illiterate, and wholly untrainetl and unfitted for any occupation. The only useful thing they learn at their work in com- mon with the children who learn in school, is the rapid calculation of small sums in making change ; and this does not go far enough to be of any practical value. In the absence of an effective compulsory school-attendance law, they should at least be required to obtain a license from the city ; and the granting of this license should be in the hands of the Board of Education, and contin- gent upon a certain amount of da3'-school attendance accomplished. In this ward dwells, also, a large body of cash-chil- dren, boys and girls. Their situation is illustrated by the Christmas experience of one of their number. A little girl, thirteen years of age, saw in an evening paper of December 23d last, an advertisement for six girls to work in one of the best-known candy stores, candidates to apply at seven o'clock the next morning, at a branch store on the West Side, one and a half miles from the child's home. To reach the place in time, she spent five cents of her lunch money for car-fare. Arriving, she found other children, while but one was wanted. She was engaged as the brightest of the group, and sent to a down-town branch of the establishment, at a dis- tance of two and a qiiarter miles. This time she walked ; then worked till midnight, paying for her dinner, and going without supper. She was paid fifty cents, and discharged with the explanation that she was only re- quired for one day. Xo cars were running at that hour, 56 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPEliS. and the little girl walked across the worst district of Chicago, to reach her home and her terrified mother at one o'clock on Christmas morning.^ No law Avas violated in this transaction, as mercantile establishments are not yet subject to the provisions of the factory act. Fortunately the development of the pneumatic tube has begun to supersede the cash-children in the more respectable of the retail stores ; and a movement for ex- tending the workshop law to the mercantile establish- ments would, therefore, meet with less opposition now than at any previous time. The need for this legisla- tion will be acknowledged by every person who will stand on any one of the main thoroughfares of Chicago on a morning between 6.30 and 7.30 o'clock, and watch the processions of puny children filing into the dry- goods emporiums to run, during nine or ten hours, and in holiday seasons twelve and thirteen hours, a daj^ to the cry, " Cash ! " In the stores on the West Side, large numbers of young girls are employed thirteen hours a day through- out the Aveek, and fifteen hours on Saturday ; and all efforts of the clothing-clerks to shorten the working- time by trade-union methods have hitherto availed but little. While the feeble unions of garment-makers have addressed tliemselves to the legislature, and ob- tained a valuable initial measure of protection for the young garment-workers, the retail-clerks, depending upon public opinion and local ordinances, have accomplished little on behalf of the younger clothing-sellers. In dealing Avith ncAVsboys, bootblacks, and cash-chil- 1 Incidentally it is of interest that this firm was one of the most liberal givers of Christmas candy to the poor. WAGE-EAliXIXG CHILDREN. 57 dren, we have been concerned with those who live iu the nineteenth ward, and work perhaps there or perhaps elsewhere. We come now to the children who work in the factories of the nineteenth ward. The largest number of children;lit, coTitain tlio measn nicnts of ten cliililren each, tlie si.xteeiith st|uaie rontain.s four. The meusiiremeiit.- the individual child are found directly over eaeli other. CHART II. Porter's averages were made on :uj,000 school children of St. Louis. The ligh lines represent these averages, and the darker those of the factory children. P were made in the same year. WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. 75 out by the stamping-works ? or than the maintenance of the families of those who will be superannuated at thirty-five, because they are now allowed to do in the clothing-shops the work of men, in the years when they ought to be laying up a store of energy to last a normal lifetime ? The key to the child-labor question is the enforce- ment of school attendance to the age of sixteen, and the granting of such ample help to the poorest of the work- ing children as shall make our public schools not class institutions, but in deed and in truth the schools of the people, by the people, for the people. Only when every child is known to be in school can there be any security against the tenement-house labor of children in our great cities. The legislation needed is of the simplest but most comprehensive description. AVe need to have : (1) The minimum age for work fixed at sixteen ; (2) School attendance made compulsory to the same age ; (3) Fac- tory inspectors and truant officers, both men and women, equipped with adequate salaries and travelling expenses, charged with the duty of removing children from mill and workshop, mine and store, and placing them at school ; (4) Ample provision for school accommoda- tions ; money supplied by the State through the school authorities for the support of such orphans, half orphans, and children of the unemployed as are now kept out of school by destitution. Where they are, the wage-earning children are an unmitigated injury to themselves, to the community upon which they will later be burdens, and to the trade which they demoralize. They learn nothing valuable \ 76 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. they shorten the average of the trade life, and they lower the standard of living of the adults with whom they compete. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHILD-LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES. Third Special Report of United States Commissioner of Labor, 1893, pp. 254-258. References cover official data to Nov. 30, 1892. Report Cliief of Massachusetts District Police, 1893. New York Factory Inspector's Report, 1893. Illinois Factory Inspector's Report, 1893. Report Convention International Factory Inspectors' Associa- tion, 1893. Symposium on Child Labor, Arena, June, 1894: Assistant Inspector Stevens of Illinois ; Miss Alice L. Woodbridge, Secre- tary New York Working Women's Society; and Prof. Thomas E. Will. Factory Children — White Child Slavery, Helen Campbell and others. Arena, i. 589. Prisoners of Poverty, Helen Campbell, Boston, 1887. Labor of Children, W. F. Willoughby and Clare de Graffen- reid, American Economic Association, v. 5. Our Toiling Children, F. K. Wischnewetzky, pamphlet; Women's Christian Temperance Publishing Association, 1889. Report of Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1889. IV. RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES OF CLOAK- MAKERS IN CHICAGO, COMPARED WITH THOSE OF THAT TRADE IN NEW YORK. RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES OF CLOAKMAKERS IN CHICAGO, COMPARED WITH THOSE OF THAT TRADE IN NEW YORK.' BY ISAHEL EATOX. Dutton Fellotv, College Settlements Association. As a basis of comparison in studying the conditions of the cloakmaking trade in the two cities, the New York figures are given first. The information in both cases has been obtained at first-hand from the unions and through a tour of the sweat-shops, as well as by the assistance of certain leading workingmen of unquestion- able trustworthiness within these trades. NEW YD UK. The computations in Xew York were made on one hundred and fifty schedules, indicating the following averages of income and expense of living : — Regular weekly wage previous to 1893 Sll.G.'i Fallen in 1S93-1894 to 4.92 Regular yearly income of family (of 4.4 persons) . 323.07 Fallen in 1803-1894 to 127.92 Regular weekly income (distinguished from weekly M'age)2 6.21 Fallen in 1893-1894 to 2.46 The one hundred and fifty schedules embraced infor- 1 Taken from material collected during three months' residence at Hull-House. 2 Weekly icar/p sliould he distinguished from vjeekly income, the first being the average auiounl earned in a week of the working-seasoti, 79 80 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. mation as to the number of cloakmakers who increase their income by taking lodgers, or by other methods. The number thus having increased incomes amounted to 26% of the whole, and the regular yearly income thus increased was, previous to 1893, $455.19 ; fallen in 1893-1894, to $260.04. Weekly income of this 26%, |8.75 ; fallen in 1893- 1894 to $5.00. Average number in family, 4.4 per- sons. The following tabular statement relates to average incomes : — Average yearly individual income $73.43 Average weekly individual income 1.41 Average yearly individual income of the 26% hav- ing increased incomes, previous to 1893 . . . 103.45 Average weekly individual income of the 26% hav- ing increased incomes, previous to 1893 . . . 1.98 Average yearly income of individual for the year 1893-1894 29.12 Average weekly income of individual for the year 1893-1894 56 Months in the working year, 6.4. Daily hours of work (reported), 12.3.^ while the second is z\ of the yearly income. As the working-year sel- dom lasts more than eight months, the M^eekly income would range from two-thirds (i'«) of the weekly wage downward. This eight months' working-year accounts also for the fact that the yearly in- come (including wages and other sources of income) appears to be less than a reckoning based on weekly wages alone would show. The ap- parent discrepancy between the amounts reported as weekly wages and those reported as yearly incomes clears itself up at once, in view of the eight months' working-year. 1 The Secretary of the Union in New York states that the average of daily hours in the season is more than sixteen. RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES. 81 The following shows the cost of living: — Average yearly cost of food for a family of 4.4 persons (*."). (JO a week) $291.20 Average yearly cost of clothing for a family of 4.4 persons 56.24 Average yearly rent ($10.31 a month) .... 123.72 Average number of rooms, 2.7. Percentage of total income spent in rent, previous to 1893, 38%. Percentage of total income spent in rent during 1893-1894, when practically no cloaks were made, 96%.^ Of 150 persons scheduled, 67% reported indebtedness. CHICAGO. In Chicago, Mr. Abram Bisno, for ten years a cloak- maker, at present a State deputy factory inspector, has made a careful study of conditions in his trade, and for that purpose made averages on the wage record-books of 250 cloakmakers in his union. These wage record- books give amounts actually paid through an entire year to each of 250 cloakmakers. The yearly incomes so obtained ranged between $408, the lowest, to $450, the highest amount earned in a year by machine-workers in the trade. The average was very near $430. The amount earned by hand-workers is less. Their yearly incomes range between $300 and $350, the average being very near $325. The wages paid to girls em- ployed in the trade are $G.50 or $7.00 weekly. Obtain- ing from this estimate a mean wage, and computing from 1 In many rases the coniimt.ations show S108 yearly rent, and between S7.5 and SlOO yearly earninj^s, these being, of course, cases of men who have been out of work ten months or more. 82 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. it the yearly income, gives $236.25 as the average yearly income of girls in the cloak trade. The following table gives weekly wage, yearly income, and weekly income, based on the two hundred and fifty wage record-books already referred to : — Cloakmakf.es in Chicago. Yearly Income. Weekly Wage. Weekly Income. Machine Work $430.00 325.00 236.25 330.42 $12.28 9.29 6.75 9.44 $8.27 6.25 4.54 6..35 Hand-workers on Cloaks Girls employed as finishers .... Average rec'd by those engaged in the trade This may properly be followed by a table of compu- tations comparing the yearly income of cloakmakers in Chicago (family men and single men being given to- gether, as they get practically the same wages in this city) with the yearly expenditure of family men and of single men separately : — Yearly income of cloakmakers in Chicago (family men and single men) $330.42 Yearly expenditure of cloakmakers (family men) . 440.04 Yearly expenditure of cloakmakers (single men) . . 25.5.44 This table represents current rates paid before the panic of 1893 ; but during the extreme depression of trade following this panic, the pay of garment workers in nearly every branch of the trade, and in the cloak- making trade among others, was cut down about one- half. This statement is supported by the following definite enumeration of prices paid to workmen before and after the panic. A plush cloak for which the tailor received $1.25 before the crisis, in August, 1894, brought RECEIPTS AND EXPEXDITriiES. 83 60 or 75 cents. A street jacket which formerly brought the tailor 45 cents, brought in August, 1894, 25 cents. One that brouglit G5 cents, brought in August, 1S94, .35 cents. A coat which brought ^1.1-, brought in August, 1894, 72^ cents ; and an overcoat which formerly paid the tailor ^2.75, brought in August, 1894, $1.40 to $1.50. In contrast with these half-rates of 1893-1894, wages in October, 1894, when all the shops resumed work, under unusual pressure, show a rise which is a slight advance even on the usual rate. The following table of averages, based on one hundred records taken in October, 1894, from Hull-House, indicates cloakmakers' wages, rents, and number in debt. The wages will be seen to run slightly in advance even of the regular wages, pre- vious to 1893-1894 : — ■^ , 7, ia sa ai n S5» . 6j< s85 = 2: OS 2p h «2 ""« ■f. =4 = 2 4.77 1.19 S0.59 S3.'».(x) .?6.4.-) 11 4.38 3.41 .?8.47 -fllr Mr. liisno's estimate that the length of the working year in the cloakmaking trade is " usually about eight months in Chicago, but has only been four months or less during 1893-1894," agrees with this table; and the average wage as here reckoned will also be seen to agree with the average wage which he reports. The yearly in- comes also show $330.42 in the case of the two hundred and fifty records taken by !Mr. Bisno, and $335.65 in the one hundred schedules taken from Hull House in 84 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. October, 1894; both Avhich yearly amounts will be seen to agree quite closely with the ^New York yearly total of $323.07. The Chicago cloakmaker thus has the ad- vantage of the New Yorker, and a further advantage, as will be seen when rents come under consideration. HOURS OF WM)KK. In this regard there appears to be little difference in the two cities. However, it seems impossible to get the truth. An occasional reckless spirit will tell his real hours, even when contradicted by the sweater ; but usvially before answering, the workman looks at the sweater, Avho stands behind the statistician's shoulder (ostensibly interested in examining his record), and from him seems to discover in one glance hoAV to com- pute his daily hours. They are generally ten or twelve when so given. On coming out of a sweating-establish- ment in New York, Mr. Glass, who is secretary of the New York Cloakmakers' Union, would frequently say, " That was all right but the hours. They all lie about the hours." Mr. Goldberg, an ex-officer of the United Garment Workers, says, " They won't tell any one, even their neighbors, the hour they begin work, and the amount they take home to do." At another time he said, " If a man (doing task-work) works from five o'clock until midnight, he can do a ' day's work ' in a day." He says, " They always begin at five o'clock ; " and Mr. Osias Rosenthal, secretary of the Knee Pants Union, says, " If you look into the streets any morning at four o'clock you will see them full of people going to work. They raise themselves up at three o'clock, and are often at their machines at four. The latest is sure to be there RECEIPTS AND EXPEXDITUIiES. 85 at five. The s^^eneral time is iive o'clock all the year aiouiid in good times, winter and snmmer ; and if the boss will give them gaslight some Avill go even earlier than three o'clock." In regard to extreme cases of long houis Mr. Glass says the following : " I know a man who works in this place we are passing, and the way they do there is this : they work all the week except part of a holi- day Saturday ; but they come back Saturday afternoon and work until four o'clock in the morning, to make uj) for the holiday." He says this is the usual thing in this particular Bowery sw^eat-shop. In speaking of this friend of his he said further : '' Once he told me that he had been working thirty-eight hours steady. Pie went to work Thursday morning at seven, and did not come home until Friday night at nine." In talking to Mr. Jensen, for many years secretary of the Custom Tailors' Union in Chicago, I learned in regard to hours that "It takes from forty-five to fifty hours for a custom-tailor to make a dress coat ; but when it has to be done at a cer- tain time they will often work forty-eight hours at a time." — " You don't mean at one sitting, do you ? " — " Yes." — " Have you ever done that yourself ? " — " Yes." — " How often ? " — " I did it the first time when I was fourteen, and I can't tell you how often since, — many times since ; but I have not kept account of the times, because it is a common thing." Mr. Bisno says that in Cliicago during the busy sea- son there is no limit ; that men frequently work all night, and that even in the slack season there are those "who work fifteen and sixteen hours daily, — from 5 a.m. to 9 I'.M. 86 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. INDEBTEDNESS. Mr. Ehrenpreis of the Chicago Cutters' Union agrees with others iu saying that among the Chicago garment workers " every man is in debt." He is " owing the grocer and the butcher, and generally the pawn-shop too." The pawnbroker in Chicago is far worse than in Xew York, which fact is accounted for by the lack of proper legislation in the former city. The folloAving case came under the notice of a Hull House resident, during the winter of 181)3-1894 : a loan of .f25 made on household furniture was drawing $2 a week inter- est, and at the time that Hull House bought up this mortgage, ^42 had already been paid for a little over four months' use of $25 ; that is to say, the broker was taking interest on the loan at the rate of 416 per cent yearly. Those who are familiar with the condition among garment workers in Chicago during the winter of 1893-1894, agree that it is impossible that so small a per- centage as 52 per cent should be in debt. Statistics on indebtedness must be distrusted, under whatever circum- stances they may be given. Single men in Chicago have not yet resorted in the same degree as in New York to cutting under the family man in the matter of Avages, so that their yearly income is practically the same as that of married men ; but their living costs are much less, so that it is the exception when the single man is not solvent. For board and lodging, which they customarily engage at the same place, they pay, on the average, $3.95 a week, $17.12 a month, and with the additional item of $50 for clothing, RECEIPTS AXD EXPENDITURES. 87 which liere, as in New York, api)ears to be very near tlie average, amounts to $255.44 for living expenses in the year. Setting this against the singk^ man's yearly income of $330.42, shows a balance to his credit of $74.98. Figuring on the New York basis of expendi- ture for food and cdothing for a family of 4.4, we have for a Chicago family of 4.77, a weekly expenditure for food and clothing amounting to $7.15, which, augmented by the monthly rent paid in Chicago, $8.47, shows a total of $37.07 monthly expense of a family. A com- parison of this yearly expenditure with the average yearly income of $330.42, shows the Chicago cloakmaker a bankrupt to the extent of $114.42, while the shortage in the case of the Xew Y''ork cloakmaker is $148.09, — an advantage of about $30 to the Chicagoau. RENTS. The dwelling-rooms of the cloakmakers in Chicago are better than those in New Y''ork in point of size and facilities for light and ventilation. Three hundred and fifty-two records of rent and number of rooms, taken on Bunker and De Koven Streets in Chicago, irrespective of the trades of the occupants, show the average number of rooms to be 3.46. The average rent for this number of rooms is $8.05. The Chicagoan jmys $8.05 where the New Yorker pays $10, and gets three and a half rooms where the New Yorker gets two and a half. This would make the percentage of cloakmakers' total income going for rent in Chicago, 29 per cent, as o])posed to 38 per cent in New York. A comparison of these percent- ages with the approved j^ercentage of income paid for 88 IIULL-IIOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. rent in France, and that accepted by our own Labor Department, which is 14 5 per cent of the total income, leads inevitably to the conclusion that there is something very seriously wrong in the proportion of rent and wages in the cloakmaking trade. V. THE CHICAGO GHETTO. THE CHICAGO GHETTO. BY CHAKLKS ZKl'liLIX. Two families constituted the Jewish population of Chicago in 1843, Avhen the tirst refugees from the Ger- man persecution of 1830-1840 found their way to Illi- nois. The Jewish Colonization Society had purchased a hundred and sixty acres of land at Shaumburg, Cook County; but only a few of the settlers took farms. Those who located in Chicago organized the first Jewish religious society in 1845. The history of the religious organizations forms the history of the colony for many years. In 1848 a society was chartered luider the name Kehillath Anshe Maariv (Congregation of the Men of Obscurity). The tirst religious services were held at the corner of Lake and Wells Streets. In 1849 a syna- gogue was erected on Clark Street, between Quiucy and Jackson. It was from the ranks of the Kehillath Anshe Maariv Congregation that Reform Judaism in Chicago sprung. A few young men in this congregation formed a society called the Reform Association, to introduce changes into the services and doctrines. Unsuccessful in this, they seceded in 18G1, and organized the Sinai Congregation, the tirst Chicago organization of Reform Judaism. The location of the synagogues marks the region occupied by the Jewish colony. Before the tire they were situated in what is now the chief business district of the city. A whole chapter of social development yi 92 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. might be found in the fact that the leading wholesale houses of the prosperous and influential Jews of Chicago mark the former site of the homes of the refugees from Germany ; while the earlier " houses of prayer," on South Clark Street, have literally yielded to " dens of thieves." The dispersion, which took place as a result of the fire of 1871, was already presaged by the removal of many of the Jewish families to the West Side, as is indicated by the purchase of a church building on Desplaines Street, between Madison and Washington Streets, in 1864, by the newly organized Zion Congregation, and by their removal in 1869 to an edifice of their own, at the corner of Jackson and Sangamon Streets. Previous to 1871 all of the synagogues, with one exception, were those of German Jews ; and the exception was that of a Prussian Polish Congregation, B'nai Sholoni (Sons of Peace). Although there were reported to be 12,000 Jews in Chicago in 1868, the recent growth of the pres- ent Ghetto is seen Avhen it is remembered that it is composed largely of Russians ; while at the time of this estimate of the Jewish population, there were in Chicago but 118 Russians of all faiths. The last item of inter- est in the present discussion, which relates to the colony before the fire, is the organization in 1868 of the West- ern Hebrew Christiaii P)rotherhood. This is worthy of passing note, this proselyting propaganda of zealous Christians, because almost every effort to reach the " chosen people " as a people, and not as individuals, has been by narrow-minded theologians, who have been " in- stant in season and out of season," even to the extent of using the most pernicious methods of bribery in secur- ing converts, thereby producing a social injur}- which it THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 93 is within the province of this article to consider. The official report of the " Brotherhood " speaks for itself. In 18G9, at the first annual meeting, expenditures to the amount of $1,457 were reported ; conversions, four. At the next annual meeting, 1870, the expendi- tures were reported, $2,375 ; conversions, none. If anti- Semitism has been escaped by the Jewish refugee, he has not failed to suffer at the hands of his "' friends." At the present time there is a greater and a lesser Ghetto on the West Side of Chicago. The wider circum- ference, including an area of about a square mile, and a population of perhaps 70,000, contains as nearly as can be estimated 20,000 Jews. This comprises parts of the nineteenth, seventh, and eighth wards, and is bounded by Folk Street on the north, Blue Island Avenue on the west, Fifteenth Street on the south, and Stewart Ave- nue on the east. The lesser Ghetto is found in the seventh ward, bounded by Twelfth, Halsted, and Fif- teenth Streets, and Stewart Avenue, where in a popula- tion of fifteen or sixteen thousand, nine-tenths are Jews. There is no record of statistics accessible, either through the federal or local governments. Estimates must be made from election registration, involving much un- certainty. The extent of the Jewish population has been greatly over-estimated. The present figures are derived by counting the Jewish names on the registration slips, and making the most liberal calculations possible. The number of residents entitled to and using the franchise is limited by the short period of residence of a large part of the population, the ignorance of the language among many of the older residents, and the inesence of 94 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. an anarchistic contingent, whicli discourages many from voting who are nevertheless not opposed on principle to the ballot. The physical characteristics of the Ghetto do not differ materially from the surrounding districts. The streets may be a trifle narrower ; the alleys are no lilthier. There is only one saloon to ten in other dis- tricts, but the screens, side-doors, and loafers are of the ubiquitous type ; the theatre bills a higher grade of performance than other cheap theatres, but checks are given between the acts, whose users find their way to the bar beneath. The dry-goods stores have, of course, the same Jewish names over them which may be found elsewhere, and the same " cheap and nasty " goods within. The race differences are subtle ; they are not too apparent to the casual observer. It is the religious distinction which every one notices ; the synagogues, the Talmud schools, the " Kosher " signs on the meat- markets. • Among the dwelling-houses of the Ghetto are found the three types which curse the Chicago work- ingman, — the small, low, one or two story '' pioneer " wooden shanty, erected probably before the street Avas graded, and hence several feet below the street level ; the brick tenement of three or four stories, with insuffi- cient light, bad drainage, no bath, built to obtain the highest possible rent for the smallest possible cubic space ; and the third type, the deadly rear tenement, with no light in front, and with the frightful odors of the dirty alley in the rear, too often the Avorkshop of the " sweater," as well as the home of an excessive population. On the narrow pavement of the narrow street in front is found the omnipresent garbage-box, Avith fidl measure, THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 95 pressed down and running over^ In all but the severe^jC weather the streets swarm with children day and nig!it. On bright days groups of adults join the multitude, v spe- cially on Saturday and Sunday, or on the Jewish holi- days. In bad weather the steaming windows show the over-crowded rooms within. ^ A morning walk inrjresses one with the density of, the population, but an evening visit reveals a hive. As has been said before, how- ever, this is not unlike other poor quarters. There are, though, some physical facts startling in their contrast with other districts. An interesting comparison may be made between the vital statistics of the seventh, six- teenth, and nineteenth wards. Tne figures of the Board of Health are not min^..e enough to enable one to com- pare smaller areas than wards, but these are sufficiently instructive. The seventh ward contains the largest Jew- ish population in the citJ^ The sixteenth ward's popu- lation is chiefly Polish and German, which elements are also in the seventh ward ; but in the latter they are also Jews. In the nineteenth ward, which adjoins the seventh on the north, and which in a homogeneous population could not be vitally different from it, there are some Jews, some Germans, many Italians, many Irish, and representatives of several other nationalities. The vital statistics ought not to be very different be- tween neighboring wards with similar material charac- teristics, nor between wards composed of people from the same European countries and of the same social stratum : but the following figures speak for themselves. In each thousand of the population there are : — 96 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. OVEE 21 YEAES. Between 4 AHV 21. Undee 4. Death Rate. Geneeal. Um>ee 5 Yeaes. Wa-d VII. Ward XVI. Ward XIX. 600 550 600 300 310 310 100 140 90 14.18 19.46 17.13 7.88 12.24 8.91 Whether it is due to his religious observances or his exclusiveiiess, the vitality of the Jew is incontestable. A closer study of the institutions and habits of this community may give us a standard of judgment, a de- sideratum not 'lOnly that we may do justice to the Jew in these latter days of anti-Semitism, but also because of the magnitude of the j^rnblem forced on the city and the country in the necessity of absorbing these foreign elements. Both by the persistence of their traits when segregated, and the readiness with which they assimilate when encouraged, the Jews furnish the most instructive element in our population. We shall find that although the Jew would be characterized by many Americans in the Shakespearian utterance, " God made him, let him 2yass for a man," the open sesame for the inhabit- ant of the Ghetto is, " God made him, let him pass for a man." Opportunity is what the foreigner in our cities needs. So much has been written lately on the general fea- tures of Jewish life in crowded city quarters, that the reader's familiarity with these facts may be presupposed.^ 1 Gregorovius, " Der Ghetto iind die Juden iu Rom " (Waiider- jahre, i.); Booth, " Labor and Life of the People in London," vol. 1. (chap, on the Jews by Beatrice Potter Webb) ; Century 3Iar/azine, 1892, " The Jews in New York; " Riis, " How the Other Half Lives," chaps. X., xi.; Forum, July, 1893, "The Russian Jew;" Zangwill, "Chil- dren of the Ghetto," 2 vols. Philipsoii, " Old European Jewries." THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 97 "What are the habits and institutions peculiar to the Chicago Ghetto ? Industrial. The features of Jewish industry may be classified under the heads of stores and trades. The .usual stores of the meaner sort abound for the supply of the daily necessaries. The provisions of the " ortho- dox " are bought at ^' Kosher " (ceremonially clean) shops. It is needless to say that these articles are only ceremonially clean. The more rigidly *' fromm " (pious, in the best sense) are very suspicious even of these stores of their own religionists. But one must eat. It is said that at one time the distress of the '• orthodox " was great over the inability to secure meat which had certainly been prepared according to the ]\Iosaic code. One of the philanthropic packers of Chicago came to their rescue by hiring Jews to slaughter a certain num- ber of cattle, cutting their throats as the law demands, instead of employing the method usual at the stock- yards of striking them on the head with a mallet. He was thus enabled to satisfy the consciences of a large number of his fellow-citizens, and incidentally to sell his toughest meat. " Kosher " restaurants also minister to the wants of the Jewish community. These, when public, are only patronized by the more lax ; many even of the indifferent or agnostic class preferring to eat where dishes are prepared according to their inherited tastes. The strict religionists, when not able to eat at home, frequent only private restaurants which can be fully trusted. These are not to be found opening on the street, but in an upper story, where privacy can be had, and the patronage is select. The proprietor of the down-town clothing-store does 98 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AXD PAPEIIS. not as a nile live in the Ghetto. He, as well as the owner of the pawn-shop, lives over, behind, or near his place of business. This being true, it is hard to find a pawnbroker in the Ghetto. The scarcity of pawn-shops in such a poor district is one of the astonishing features. The greatest enterprise to be placed under the head of stores is the junk-shop. This assumes mammoth and vile proportions. An old storeroom, the cellar or the rear of a house, is made to contain a huge collection of promiscuous pickings which seem useless, but when as- sorted prove to have a value not to be despised. The pertinacit}' and vitality of the Jew are seen in his ability to labor in such disagreeable and dangerous surround- ings, to put his children through such experiences with the waste and filth of a city, and bring himself and them out into a life many grades above the Italian rag- picker. The chief trades in which the Jew is found here, as elsewhere, are peddling, cigarmaking, and tail- oring. The last is a sweated trade. The most pitiable thing about the sweat-shops in this district is the oppression of Jew by Jew. Eighteous recompense has disappeared when the trading instinct inherited from centuries of Christian persecution is di- rected to the crushing of '• the weaker brother.'' instead of turning iipon the persecutor. A pedler's license is the ransom of the unskilled Jew. This enables him to spend the day in the open air. though his lodging may be in no way more healthful than the sweater's den to which his fellow is doomed day and night. It makes of him also an independent capitalist, whose hoardings soon lead to an expansion of business, often to the det- riment of the small settled traders. Peddling is an THE CHICAGO (illKTTO. 09 individual benefit, hut a social ill which can only be excused when contrasted with the slavery of the sweat- ers' victim. In this connection must be mentioned the efforts of the Employment Bureau connected with the United Hebrew Charities, by far the most satisfactory and praiseworthy department of that organization. In the ten years, 1883-1893, there were recorded 5,457 appli- cants for work. Work was provided for 4,5'.)0 ; 711 ohemians in the city ; and Chicago has the distinction 115 IIG HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. of containing within itself the third largest city of Bohemians in the world. The last element of the rapidly growing settlement is now forming west of Donglas Park. The first Bohemian emigrants came to Chicago in 1851 and 1852, and possibly even earlier. Soon after the revolution in 1848, many of the enthusiastic patriots, young men with large, liberty-loving hearts, forced to flee from their fatherland, sought horues in this country. Among those earlier emigrants were men of cultivation and energy, who loved liberty so well that they were ready to undertake all manner of menial service for her sake ; and thus one would often find men of education and high social standing engaged in street-sweeping, cigarmaking, and other humble occupations; and grad- uates of the University of Prague working lor $2.50 and $4.00 per week. The emigration from Bohemia increased after every Continental war, and especially after the Austro-ltalian wars of the '60's. This time not only the political refugees sought new homes, but artisans and peasants also began emigrating. People were tired of constant wars that werp sapping the best blood of their nation, wasting their fields, and fastening still more grievous tax burdens upon the shoulders that were already crushed beneath those they had. This was the case in most European countries, and especially in Bohemia. Tlie social and political upheavals, the exaggerated stories of American wealth, and the natural feeling of self-preservation, were, and still are, the causes of Bohe- mian emigration. One of the chief causes now is the military law, Avhich drives into this countr}' a stead}' THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IX CHICAGO. 117 stream uf strong, healthy, and able-bodied men. Hohemia has never sent her " slums," as some politicians assert, because her slums, like the slums of other nations, never like to ''move on;" they are too contented in their in- dolence and filth to be willing to go to work, or to take the trouble of a searvoyage. Besides, the Austrian money, although exceedingly hard to get in that coun- try, is so depreciated in value, that it takes about one thousand gulden to move a family of eight to America. Often good artisans were compelled to work for low wages, even $1.25 a day ; still, out of this meagre re- muneration they managed to lay a little aside for that longed-for possession, — a house and lot that they could call their own. "When that was paid for, then the house received an additional story, and that was rented, so that it began earning money. AVhen more was saved, the house was pushed in the rear, the garden sacrificed, and in its place an imposing brick or stone building was erected, containing frequently a store, or more rooms for tenants. The landlord, who had till then lived in some unpleasant rear rooms, moved into the best part of the house ; the bare but well-scrubbed floors Avere covered with Brussels carpets, the wooden chairs replaced by upholstered ones, and the best room received the added luxury of a piano or violin. In those early days rent was high and flour ten dollars a barrel, but they bought cheap meat at four cents a pound, coffee at twelve cents ; and thus by dint of great economy many were able to lay aside money each year, and some of those early settlers now own property ran- ging in value from fifty thousand to two hundred thou- sand dollars. 118 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPEBS. To form at least a small, even if very iusufficient, es- timate of the value of property owned by the Chicago Bohemians, it may be interesting to note how much the working-people have invested in property Avithin the last eight years. They have saved it in the Bohemian build- ing and loan associations. Before these societies began their activities, the Bohemians had already a large com- munity of not less than fifty thousand inhabitants, and owned property running into hundreds of thousands of dollars in value. The reports are quoted of five Bohe- mian building and loan associations, out of the forty or more societies that are in existence. From the year 1885 to 1893 : — The society " Borivoj "... has paid $107,795.74 The society " Our ' .... " 121,224.34 The society " Boliemia " ... " 78,370.00 The society " Domov " ... " 80,247.47 The society " Slavic " .... " 806,454.24 Total §694,092.09 We can safely estimate that within the last eight years these societies have disbursed over four millions of dol- lars, which is all invested in property by the working- people. Before 1878 the majority of the Bohemians Avere engaged in the various building-trades, as carpenters, bricklayers, painters ; others, again, Avere tailors, and many ordinary laborers Avorking in the lumber-yards ; but after 1878 they began entering as clerks into stores, law offices, and A^arious other business enterprises, so that to-day there is not a profession in Avhich Bohemians are not to be found. Tlie majority of the Bohemians are THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHICAGO. 119 artisans, and only some of the jjeasants are contented to be ordinary laborers. The Bohemian business-men command the respect of the very best firms in the city on account of their honesty and integrity in all of their business relations. Ikisiness-men dealing with them readily acknowledge the *' bad debt " among the Bohe- mians to be very rare. THK LABOR MOVEMENT. The condition of the ordinary workingman is the same as that of his German, Irish, or Swedish brother, the only probable difference being that the Bohemian workingman is frequently more patient, more conserva- tive, and less progressive in reforms. The labor move- ment, until recently, has made very slow progress among them. This may be accounted for partly by the mis- trust which the majority of the people have of strangers who come to agitate among them, and also because cer- certain so-called leaders were neither wise nor honest. One of the chief reasons for the advance made of late by the Bohemian working-people in Chicago, is the fact that since 1880 some leaders have come from the native land, where the labor movement has been more success- ful ; and many of the immigrants who have arrived here recently are better accustomed to labor unions, and know the power of organization. Then, too, the various news- papers that have been started to agitate reform have grown more popular. The result is, that there are now about twenty-three labor organizations ; and, what is more encouraging, the majority of these societies are auxiliary to American labor unions, such as the brick- layers' and other building-trades, or the clothing unions. 120 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. Two typographical co-operative associations publish dailies ; one the Pravo-Lidu (" Eights of the People "), the other, Denni-Hlasatel ("Daily Herald "), which has the largest circulation of all the Bohemian dailies. The ma- jority of the workingmen favor the eight-hour move- ment, and many object to child-labor. The wages earned are the same as those paid to other nationalities. There is not a single working-women's union ; in fact, nothing whatever has been done for the Bohemian working- woman. No one has deemed her worthy of any effort ; and with the exception of the few Americanized tailor- esses w^ho belong to the Tailors' Union, the whole mass of girls who work in tailor-shops, cigar-factories, and candy-factories have seldom been near a "union meet- ing." This is an interesting fact ; for as long as these 'hundreds and thousands of girls shall be left unorgan- ized and uninformed, they will always be a great stum- bling-block in the path of the working-woman of Chicago. SOCIAL LIFE. Although the Bohemians have better food and more of it than they had at home, they lack the social life. They miss the free garden concerts that are given in almost every large city in Bohemia ; the Sunday walks, the reading-rooms, and various holiday feasts that are almost indispensable to the Bohemian temperament. This yearning after more social life has led them into various schemes for entertainment which are not always wholesome. The picnics, with uniformed processions, led by brass bands, that are so common and perfectly proper in Bohemia, appear strange and almost ridiculous. The Sunday dances, theatres, and concerts that stand sub- THE BO^E^^TAX PEOPLE IX CHICAGO. 121 stitute for the walks iu the tiehls ; the home entertain- ments, when families make calls, and amuse themselves by singing, eating, drinking, and telling stories — are to the conservative American desecrations of the Sabbath. Similar amusements are popular with the newcomers; but as they live here longer, and become more American- ized, this social life changes and becomes more formal, more affected, and gradually becomes a mixture of American and European, something unlike the real Bohemian, and foreign to the American ; entirely origi- nal, the " Bohemian-American." The love of social life is the predominating feature in the Bohemian settlement. Almost every Bohemian, man and woman, belongs to some society, and many are members of several orders. Unlike any other Slavonic nation, the Bohemian women have a great many organ- izations, both educational and benevolent. The secret societies of '' Jednota Ceskych Dam " are among the most popular and influential. Their object is at once educational, social, and benevolent ; and they pay yearly thousands of dollars to aid the orphan children of their former members. xVmong the younger women the gym- nastic societies, known as *' Sokolky," are best organ- ized. Women, like men, also separate their social from their religous life, and have organizations of freethink- ing and catholic women. FAMILY LIFE. The family life, like that of all Slavonic peoples, is very affectionate. It is a prevailing custom among the working-class that the father and children should give all their wasres to the wife or mother. Seldom do the 122 HULL-UOUSE MAPS AXD PAPERS. children keep their earnings and pay board ; they usu- ally all work and live together, and then at marriage each child receives a portion, or after the death of the parents all is equally divided among the children. The Bohemian women are clean and thrifty, economical housekeepers, and very good cooks. They know the art of making a little go far ; and this enables them to feed large families with comparatively meagre sums. The Illinois State factory inspector has said that of all the children who come to her for medical examination, the Bohemian and Jewish children are the best fed ; al- though these " best-fed " children who work in the factories are usually from the poorest families, where frequently as many as six are fed on less than five dollars a week. It is not the general custom for the mothers and wives of Bohemians to go out working ; but more and younger children go out to work here than in any other Bohe- mian community. The reason for this is that there is a greater demand for child-labor in Chicago, the supply for which is recruited from the ranks of the needy fami- lies of all nationalities. It is a great temptation to all foreigners to sacrifice their children ; for the little ones can often get work when grown people, slow to learn a new language, are forced to be idle. The Bohemian press is doing all in its power to discourage this objec- tionable child-labor, and urges compulsory educational laws. RELIGIOX. It is estimated that the larger half of the Bohemian population in Chicago is Catholic, while the rest are non-church-goers. The Catholic Bohemians have in Chicago eight parishes, with fine church edifices, of THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE I .\ ClIirACO. 123 which tliat of St. I'rokoijius, conicr of All|ioi-t aiitl lOi^li- teeuth Streets, is the largest and most eostly. With the school-buihliiigs, convent, clmrch, and rich farms, it has property the value of which exceeds a million dol- lars. In every parish there is a l^ohemian school, where a half-day is devoted to teaching the English branches, and the afternoon to teaching the Bohemian language, grammar, and catechism. The pupils in these numticr not less than two thousand seven hundred. The Bohemian order of Benedictines of St. J^iokopius parish has founded a Bohemian College, whi(di is equiv- alent to the common high school, offering the same cur- riculum ; and it has also a business course, all in the Bohemian language. In each parish tliere are organ- izations of men and women, many being benevolent, others more purely social and religious. Tliere are four Catholic Bohemian newspapers pvdjlished in ( -hicago, — one daily, one children's ])aper, the other two weeklies. The Catholics have their own halls, theatres, schools, and cemetery. The Protestants have two Bohemian churches : one the Congregational "Bethlehem," and the other the "John Huss " Methodist Episcopal church, and two Methodist Episcopal missions. They publish two papers : one the Pravda, Congregational ; and the other the Kresfdnski Posel, published by the Bohemian Methodist pastors. These churches have about fifteen hundred members. One of the many reasons why the Protestant move- ment has not gained a stronger hold on the Bohemians is that it was initiated by strangers or foreigners ; but now that the native Bohemians are taking hold of the work themselves, they are naturally more successful. 124 HULL-HOUSE MAI'S AND PAPERS. and their fellow-countrymen are moi'e willing to listen to the message uttered in their own tongue by their own people. There is a secular society known as the " Svobodna Olbec," which has its speaker, and is pronounced in its agnostic philosophy. One of its chief objects is to pulilish agnostic literature and arrange anti-religious lectures. This society numbers about one hundred members. The remainder of the Bohemian people are simply non-church-goers, and call themselves "freethinkers," most of them -having no definite philosophy, only cher- ishing antagonism against church institutions. Of these, the greater part merely imitate and repeat the sayings of the newspapers, many of which are edited by agnos- tics. These people have suffered so much in Bohemia from the state and the clergy, that when they once feel themselves relieved from the "yoke of bondage," they are not afraid to voice their sentiments, and are very bitter in their hatred. They have learned to associate the Roman Catholic Church with the Austrian house of Hapsburg ; and the oppressions of these two powers have been the chief reason why so many intelligent people in Bohemia, especially the " Young Czechs," are hostile to the church, and have accepted so readily the materialism of Western Europe. The freethinkers have four Bohemian-English schools, where both l^ohemian and English are taught. They are devoted to the public school, and have the Bohe- mian schools only as an offset to the parochial schools. The children usually go for a year or two to the Bo- hemian school, where they learn to read and write in THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE L\ (IllCAdO. 125 Bohemian, and then enter the public schools. They have separate halls, theatres, and societies. When tlie priests refused to baptize, marry, or bury the members of these societies, they separated entirely, and now even have their own cemetery. There are one hundred and sixty societies, all of which have some benevolent object, such as paying death-benefits, supporting schools, etc. Besides these, there are eleven singing and dranuitic clubs. The latter clubs give several plays during the season, and the money made is donated to some good cause. There is a great deal of rivalry between these amateur actors, and they do not hesitate to try their abilities on the best of Shakespeare's or Sardou's dramas. The freethinkers publish three daily newspapers and seven weeklies, so that the Bohemians publish in all six- teen newspapers in Chicago. CITIZENSHIP. In 1860 several of the Bohemian-Slavonian young men organized a Lincoln Kifle Company, and this was the first regiment that Avent from Chicago to fight for the Union ; and to-day the best monument in the Bohe- mian cemetery speaks of the patriotism of those early immigrants, who had already learned to love their adopted country so well as to be ready to lay down their lives for its preservation. Year after year their fellow-countrymen gather about this monument, and with flowers and addresses honor the memory of their fallen brethren. In political life almost all the old settlers, before and 126 UULL-nOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. after the war, were Republicans. After the year 1880 some began to vote tlie Democratic ticket ; and when in 1883 this party nominated a Bohemian for the office of aklerman, it got the lirst real hold on the people in Chi- cago. The first political recognition given them was a stroke on the part of the Democratic wire-pullers to win the Bohemian vote. It " took ; " and the result was that to-day out of the twelve thousand Bohemian votes cast, eight thousand are Democratic. The politicians work on the people's feelings, incite them against the men of the other party as their most bitter enemies; and if this doesn't succeed, they go to work deliberately to buy some. Thus adding insult to injury, they go off and set up a Pharisaic cry about the ignorance and corruption of the foreign voters. As everything in the old country has its price, it is not at all surprising that the foreigners believe such to be the case in this also. But Americans are to blame for this ; for the better class of citizens, the men who preach so much about corruption in political life, and advocate reforms, never come near these foreign voters. They do not take pains to become acquainted with these recruits to American citizenship ; they never come to their politi- cal clubs and learn to know them personally ; they simply draw their estimates from the most untrust- worthy source, the newspapers, and then mercilessly condemn as hopeless. The Bohemian citizens in Chicago have been or are represented in the following offices : alderman, county commissioner, school-board, public-library board, cor- poration counsel, assessor, and State legislature ; while about one hundred and fifty Bohemians are employed in THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHICAGO. 127 the service of the city government, engaged in almost every department. Since 1874 tliere has been a liohemian department in the Public Library, which now numbers four thousand books. The Bohemian Republican League publishes a very good politico-economic j(jurnal called the American Citi- zen ; and many of the younger politicians are men of culture, who take vital interest in social and economic questions, and are thoroughly Americanized. This is very cheering, and promises better things for the future. The Bohemian people in Chicago are called " clan- nish." They may deserve that epithet ; but who is to be blamed for that ? In the early days it was natural that they should settle near their kinsmen or relations. Their language, being Slavonic, was unlike any other about them ; and they were at a disadvantage as com- pared with the Germans, whose native tongue is so closely allied to the English that they learn the latter readil}', and thus appear superior to their Bohemian brethren. Then, too, the Germans, being their tradi- tional enemies, took no pains to enlighten the Ameri- can in regard to them, but rather tried to disparage them in every way, until the poor inoffensive Bohemian was insulted by all around him ; so that in time he began to regard every one non-Bohemian as his enemy. As was said before, a goodly portion of the blame for this rests upon the American press ; for in times of po- litical campaigns it heaps insult or flattery without dis- crimination. "We ought not to cater to the foreigners at the cost of truth, any more than we would do so to our own children ; yet we should not allow our own pre- 128 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. judices to iindermine the future good of this republic. Left alone, the foreigners are harmless, for they are too divided by their petty traditional national hatreds ; but this constant aimless baiting of the American pn-ess gives these great masses one theme, one bond of sympathy, on which they can all unite ; and that is, — hatred of Americans. So far, the Boheinians are free from any sucli feeling, and, to the sorrow of their European brothers, Ameri- canize almost too rapidly ; so that frequently the second and third generations do not even speak their own native language. They constitute only a drop in the mighty artery of foreign blood in America; but their leaders are anxious that this shall be pure and healthy, and in its way contribute the very best to the life of this new and mighty nation. VII. REMARKS UPON THE ITALIAN COLONY IN CHICAGO. REMARKS UPON THE ITALIAN COLONY IN CHICAGO. BY ALESSANDRO MASTRO-VALKKU). Italians do not come to America to find a home, as do the British, Teutons, Slavs, and Scandinavians, but to repair the exhausted financial conditions in which they were living in Italy, or to make more money if they were well-to-do. They leave the mother-country with the firm intention of going back to it as soon as their scarsellas shall sound with plenty of quihus. And if they remain here, they do so as a result of unforeseen circumstances which surprise even themselves, and which they finally accept. At their emljarkation for America they might be clas- sified as temporary immigrants; but Avhen they are here, in the majority of cases they become permanent ones. The sons of Italy in emigrating do not sell the home, but mortgage it for money to pay for the passage, because they dream of a return home with plenty of money. They plan the improvements they will make, and that they will spend the remainder of the happy life there. How different from the people of other national- ities, who sell everything before emigrating ! Italians leave the members of the family behind, with the promise that they will send money to them to live on, to pay debts, to raise the mortgage. But after some years they send for the family, and settle in America permanently, sometimes becoming American citizens, but always rc- 131 132 IIULL-IIOUSE MAPS AND FAPERS. maining Italians. Their children, though American- born, will always be " incorrigible " Italians becanse of their distinct individuality, and of their sonorous and difficult Italian names. On arriving in this country they swear to impose upon themselves all sorts of sacrifices, by limiting their per- sonal expenses to the minimum, in order to hasten the realization of the dream of a happy and moneyed return. Therefore, if their way of living in the crowded tene- ment houses of the American cities has been found ob- jectionable, it is to be ascribed to this proposed economy, which is carried to the extreme limit of the possible or the imaginable. I must state, before going farther, that I am writing of the Italians of the peasant class, and particularly of the provinces of Southern Italy, which furnish the bulk of the Italian immigration ; also that I make honorable exceptions, and that I do not wish to offend against the Italian name, since there is not in America an Italian more incorrigible than I, and a Southern Italian too. The Italian immigrants, in the majority of instances, are regarded as unskilled laborers, and are employed, accordingly, in building railroads, and in earthwork, such as excavation, bedding, etc. ; and as carriers. For this reason they lind work during only a portion of the year, when the clemency of the weather allows such work to be done. The rest of the year they remain idle in the American towns whither they have floated, and where they sometimes find work, incident- ally, as snow and street sweepers. During these winter months they sometimes experience hardship, and partic- ularly when work begins very late ; so much so that a great many of them leave for Italy in time to be there THE ITALIAN COLONY IN CHIC AGO. 133 for Christmas, and return in ]\larcli or April, ready to work as before. This last year, owing to the financial conditions which afflicted this country, the exodus of Italians has been great. It is also partly due to the fact that the price of passage on the half-dozen steam- ship lines which carry Italian immigrants lias been very low, owing to competition. Here I beg to be allowed to defend the Italian immi- grants from the classification to which they are con- demned ; viz., of unskilled laborers. In America they might be very good farmers, vine-growers, gardeners, olive and fruit growers, and stock-farmers, just as they were in Italy, in their own home, which comprised a field for grain and a vineyard, a fruit orchard, and a little stockyard. Or they may have been employed in the same capacity by large farmers, as vine-growers, fruit-raisers, olive-growers, and stock-farmers. In cer- tain parts of Southern Italy, owing to the large emi- gration of peasants, these farmers find it at present difficult to carry on their industries. But the Italian immigrants, unfortunately, when they arrive in America do not continue the work to which they were used in Italy. They do not apply themselves to tilling the soil, in which they would not only prove skilful labor- ers, but examples to other nationalities (Frenchmen excepted), as those who have happily followed this prac- tice have fully demonstrated. It would be a fortunate movement, that of inducing the Italian immigrants to leave American towns for farming pieces of land in a climate congenial to them and like that of their native country, and where the land would yield a variety of crops all the year round. Then their instinct of picking 134 HULL-HOUSE MAPS ANL> PAPERS. would have full sway in a more decent manner than now, when many of tlieni, finding in the American towns nothing comely to pick, pick rags, cigar-stumps, bones, and other filthy things from alleys and ash and garbage boxes. It must be added that such filthy trades are practised with ingenuousness and nonchalant persistence worthy of a better cause. The Italian instinct for picking is notable. In Italy they are used to pick wood from the forest, weeds from the fields, wheat and grain after the mowers, fruit from the trees, insects from the bark of the trees and vines, for which they are paid so much per hundred ; herbs, beans, pease, and other truck-farm products from the plants ; the seeds of weeds from wheat, oats, rye, etc. ; herbs from the woods, and many other things which the average American would never think of using in any way. In my opinion the only means for the regeneration of the Italian immigrants from the state in which they nowadays find themselves in the crowded districts of the American cities, is to send them to farming. Ail other means are mere palliatives. Then they will begin to belong to the same class of citizens to which they did at home, the first producers ; that class which is the backbone of the country-, and most worthy of respect. The result of the present combination of circumstances of the Italian peasant is in Chicago the same as in an}' other American town, except on the Pacific coast. The Italians of Chicago number 25,000, mostly be- longing to the peasant class. Those Avho have grown with the town are in prosperous circumstances ; and, with few exceptions, they came from the north of Italy, THE ITALIAN COLONY IN CHICAGO. 135 and particularly from the Riviera. They do not, for the most part, form an intelligent class. They are neither entrejireneurs nor producers. They have not been identi- fied with the wonderful, intelligent progress of the city ; but they have grown rich with it from the increase in value of real estate, or from their business of selling fruit. The children are no better than their parents. A case was discovered recently of a young Italian worth 8100,000 who was contented to be simply a policeman. Behind bar-room counters, there are young Italians who are worth even more money. Some of the present gen- eration deserve praise because they have entered the lib- eral professions or legitimate manufacturing enterprises. The Italian colony consists of professional men, — news- paper-men, bankers, publicans, employment agents, law- yers, interpreters, midwives, musicians, artisans, laborers, sweaters' victims, grocers, bakers, butchers, barbers, mer- chants, etc., all of which are necessary one to another, and cannot bear separation without disorganization. It is a town Avithin a town, a stream, a rivulet in the sea, of such intense force of cohesion that it cannot be broken, as the mighty ocean cannot break the Gulf Stream. The immigrant Italians are lodged by Italian inn- keepers, and fed by Italian restaurateurs. Italian publi- cans quench their thirst. Italian employment agents or " bosses " find them work, and group them and take them to the country, where, in the majority of cases, they board them, and act as interpreters between the contractor and them. Italian agents or bankers send their money to their families in Italy, and sell them tickets for the latter when they come to join them in 136 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. America. Italian doctors are called in case of sickness, and Italian druggists furnish the curative drugs, which must bear Italian names in order to be trusted. Italians manufacture macaroni as nearly as possible like that of Italy; and Italian grocers furnish cheese, oil, olives, bologna, bread, and many other Italian delicacies or necessaries. Their priests must be Italians ; also their lawyers and their undertakers. These streams and rivulets run into the midst of the mare viagnum of Chicago, about South Clark Street, and Third, Fourth, Pacific, and Sherman Avenues, and Dearborn Street be- tween Harrison and the Twelfth Street viaduct ; about Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and La Salle Streets, where the Italian Church of the Assumption is located ; about West Indiana, Ohio, Huron, Sangamon, and North Hal- sted Streets, and Milwaukee and Austin Avenues ; about South Halsted, Ewing, Forquer, Delvoven, and Twelfth Streets and the river. Smaller streams run in other directions. Each is well marked, and bears, more or less, a reputation of its own. The charge of filthiness, so often made against Ital- ians of this class, is to be attributed partly to their special condition of life in the crowded tenement houses of our American towns, which are the reverse of hy- gienic in their construction, both in regard to the material used, which is poor and easily impregnable, and as to the disposition of space, which does not con- duce to healthful living. The accusers ought to consider that those Italian immigrants come from the open country, or from villages where the houses are built of stonemasonry less easily heated and cooled, and hav- ing wide corridors differently disposed with doors and THE ITALIAN COLOyV 7A' VIIU AdO. 137 windows, which give room for plenty of light and air. The promiscuity of sex and of strange peoph3 force sighs from the hearts of Italian women, mothers of girls, on first setting foot into the " infernal bolges " of South Clark Street and Fourth Avenue. '■'^ Aladonnaviia, qxii dehho vivere?^' I have heard sigh an Italian woman on one of these occasions, looking at her girls, while her heart was full of dismay. It is the custom of my part of Italy to whitewash the houses with lime in Sep- tember, and before Easter, or in May, at the time of moving. It is also the custom that, on the Saturday before Easter, the priest goes in ponipa magna to bless the houses of the district assigned to him, one by one. For such an occasion the houses of even the poorest people are made clean from roof to cellar in honor of the sanctity of the visitor who comes to bless the build- ings, the persons, and the animals in the stable, in the name of God ; therefore he is received with marked and religious reverence. Presents of eggs and money are made to him ; the eggs are taken care of by the priest's servant maid, who attends in her picturesque peasant's costume, and puts them in a straw basket. A boy re- sponds to the Latin prayers, and puts the money into a silver bucket containing the blessed water and the sprinkler. When a boy, I often attended to act in this capacity, and I remember with pleasure the neat appeai- ance of the poorest houses. When I found myself in an American tenement house, inhabited by Italians, at the sight of the filth that appeared before me I could not help thinking with a sense of riplanto amarisslmo of the houses of the same people as I have seen them on those good Saturdaj'^s. Most certainly the same condi- 138 UULL-IIOrsE MAPS Ayj) PAPERS. tions would uot exist among these people on a farm in the country. The greed of gain which has developed among the Italians causes most of the women to employ all their spare time in sewing clothing, in order to add their little share to the earnings of the husband and sons. This is a serious detriment to them, and is one cause of their filthy homes, which they have no time to care for. B}'' reason of the same greed, boys and girls are sent to sell newspapers in the streets, and sometimes to beg. The skilled Italian in Chicago gets as much money as the American skilled laborer. The unskilled Italian laborer gets from SI. 00 to §1.75 a day. As I have stated before, they economize in every way they can ; but when the occasion arises which pleases them, they spend their money like water. They are hard workers, and not inclined to be vicious. Their women are notably virtuous. Vltalia, the leading Italian newspaper of Chicago, inaugurated with its first number a veritable crusade against the two offences of ragpicking and sending boys and girls in the streets, and was instrumental in holding a mass-meeting for compulsory education in Chicago, which was part of a movement in the course of which the principle of compulsory education was adopted by the Board of Education, led by the late Charles Komin- sky. The mass-meeting ended in the appointment of a committee of prominent Italians to call upon Ma^'or Cregier and upon the council, requesting the interfer- ence of the police in the ragpicking of the Italians. Briefly speaking, an ordinance was passed and enforced ; but the ragpickers formed a sort of political association, THE ITALIAN COLONY IN CHICAGO. 139 and let the party in power understand that they were voters who would vote against that party at the next election if the interference of the police in their occupa- tion was not stopped. Immediately the police, by secret orders, let the ragpickers alone. No lobbyists at Wash- ington could have worked the scheme more effectually. This Avill answer the question whether Italians have Americanized themselves, and to what extent. YIII. THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES. THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES. I5Y JULIA C. LATHllor, Member of the Illinois State Board of Charities. As the study of these maps reveals an overwhelming proportion of foreigners, and an average wage-rate so low as to render thrift, even if it existed, an ineffective insurance against emergencies, we are led at once to in- quire what happens when the power of self-help is lost. This district was chosen by the government for investi- gation because it was believed to represent fairly the most untoward conditions of life in Chicago ; it was selected as a " slum," and is that portion of the city containing on its western side the least adaptable of the foreign populations, and reaching over on the east to a territory where the destructive distillation of mod- ern life leaves waste products to be cared for inevitably by some agency from the outside. The preponderance of unskilled labor necessarily means the weakness of trade unions and mutual benefit societies ; in short, the inability to organize and co-operate. When we inquire, then, what provision is made to meet sickness, accident, non-employment, old age, and that inevitable accident, death, we are asking wluit some outside agency per-~ forms. Here is a foreign population, living in every sort of mal-adjustment, — rural Italians, in shambling wooden tenements ; Russian Jews, whose two main re- sources are tailoring and peddling, quite incapable in 143 144 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. general of applying themselves to severe manual labor or skilled trades, and hopelessly unemployed in hard times ; here are Germans and Irish, larggly of that type which is reduced by .drink to a sqnalor it is otherwise far above. Here amongst all, save the Italians, flour- ishes the masculine expedient of temporary disap- pearance in the face of non-employment Or domestic complexity, or both ; paradoxically enough the intermit- tent husband is a constant factor in the economic prob- lem of many a household. In this region west of the river, and stretching on into the seventh, eighth, and eighteenth wards, there are many streets where foreign tongues are more spoken than English ; thousands of people who, having their own shops and churches and theatres and saloons, may be said hardly to come in touch with the commonwealth of which some immigra- tion company has made them an unconscious part until they are given over as the wards of its charity. To meet the needs of such a city population, a whole system of charitable institutions has grown up ; though they are carried on, not by the city of Chicago, but by the county of Cook. It is true, of course, that much private char- ity supplements the county's efforts, or rather that the county's provision is accepted when all the resources of private charity and of neighborly aid have been ex- hausted. Indeed, one may as well admit in starting, that the capacious bosom of the county is sought with much reluctance, even by the population of which we speak ; and while this population represents the last de- gree of social submergence, the county is in turn its der- nier ressorf. There is, doubtless, a certain satisfaction to the philanthropist and the sociologist alike, in having THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES. 145 touched bottom, reached uhimate facts ; and this in a sense \ve have done when we have reached the county institutions. These are the iuhrniary, the insane asy- lum, the hospital, the detention hospital, and the county agency. The county maintains at Dunning, just across the city limits line on the north-west, the infirmary and the insane asylum, together constituting the poorhouse ; the intirmary with an average population of about 1,500, and the asylum with from 800 to 1,000 inmates. To show the relation of the infirmary population to the population of this district, it is enough to state that of its 5,051 admissions during the year 189.3, there were 3,5Go persons of foreign birth. The nativity records show that of this number Ireland furnishes 1,457 ; Ger- many, 727 ; England, 299 ; Sweden, 202 ; Canada, 183 ; Scotland, 135 ; Norway, 116; Poland, 80 ; Bohemia, 53 ; Austria, 61 ; Denmark, 53 ; Switzerland, 41 ; Italy, 40 ; Eussia, 37 ; France, 28 ; Holland, 23 ; the balance being made up from thirteen countries. The infirmary is a great brick building, witli many well-lighted wards, steam-heated and clean. It is fronted by a grass plat, with trees and fiower-beds, and the open country stretches back for miles, giving a good sweep for air and sunshine. There is a se})arate mater- nity ward, an attractive and comfortable brick cottage, at a distance of several hundred feet from the main building. A very little work is required of etudi inmate to keep the place in order. There is a hired attendant in every ward, and over the men a supervisor, and over the women a supervisoress. The infirmary and the insane asylum are both under the control of one su])(Mintendent ; 146 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. and there is a corps of book-keepers and clerks who are necessary to keep accounts and registers, and do the office work required in carrying on the affairs of a community of this size. The head cooks are regiilar employees, as are all the directing powers ; but most of the work of the laundry, the wards, the bakery, the dining-room, the sewing- room, is performed by the inmates. In the work of the farm of one hundred and sixty acres, as many men in- mates as possible of both the infirmary and the insane asylum are utilized. Divided among such numbers, there are still many hours of listless idleness for hundreds of these people, men and Avomen alike. It is to be noted at once that there are no shops, no provision for in- dustries. The clothing is the usual cotton found in such institutions; and that, together with the bedding furnished, is under ordinary circumstances abundant for warmth in buildings well heated by steam as are these. The women's wards are never crowded as are the men's. By some curious law of pauperism and male ir- responsibility, whose careful study offers an intermin- able task to any loving collector of data, men are in a great majority in poorhouses. In the Cook County infirmary we find the following proportions : — January 4, 1894, 1,455 men and oOG women. January 4, 189:}, 1,15(5 men and 380 women. January 4, 1892, 1,108 men and 321 women. January 4, 1891, 1,021 men and 409 women. A curious indication of the effect of hard times is shown in the sudden increase of 299 in the male popula- THE COOK COU^^TV CUARITIES. 147 tion, ami of only 10 among the woinen, — nearly 25 per cent in the first case, and a little over 4 per cent in the second, from January, 1893, to January, 1894. There is a ohaj)el, in ^vhich a kindly old Catholic priest and various I'rotestant clergymen alternately officiate. The solemn little room is always open ; and after the early winter supper, old people clamber painfully up- stairs to say their evening prayers before its altar. For one instant the visitor is hushed as he stands before the door, watching the straggling little procession of human wastage entering the dim apartment, and feels a thrill of thankfulness that these poor evidences of defeat and failure cherish a belief in some divine accounting more individual and generous than that of tlie sociologist and statistician. In a winter so unprecedented as that of 189.3-1894, the men's wards are always full, many of them fearfully over-crowded, and certain of the hallways are some- times nightly filled with straw ticks for sleepers who can- not be accommodated in the wards. In the men's and women's Avards alike, the beds are set closely, and at best allow only a chair and a few feet by the window for each occupant. Ward o B, with beds crowded together, others made on the floor, and filled with a melancholy company of feeble and bedridden men and idiot chil- dren, must haunt the memory of whoever has seen it. The surgical wards are of course less crowded, and are clean. The men's and women's consumptive wards are sunny and clean, and not painfully crowded. There are two resident physicians, a man and a woman, and their services are needed for the chronic and hopeless cases sent to the iniirnuiry from the Cook County Hos- 148 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. pital, and these would alone fill a small hospital. There are here usually from fifty to seventy-five children, of whom a large proportion are young children with their mothers, and very few of whom are for adoption. The remainder, perhaps a third, are the residiiiun of all the orphan asylums and hospitals, children whom no one cares to adopt because they are unattractive or scarred or sickly. These children are sent to the public school across the street from the poor-farm. Of course they wear hideous clothes, and of course the outside children sometimes jeer at them ; and then if they are stout little lads like Jim Crow, they doubtless, as did he one day? teach courtesy to their tormentors with their fists. And now what impression does the visitor receive who sees the infirmary, not as to the great problems of pauperism and crime, for the study of which this place offers infinite opportunity; not upon the value or effi- ciency of our system of caring for the dependent, but simply as to whether the work undertaken is adequately and reasonably performed ? Do we have difficulty in un- derstanding the universal dread of the '' County " ? ^ Let us leave quite one side considerations as to the moral deserts of these people, admitting even that most are brought here by their own misbehavior or that of those responsible for them. The county of Cook has them as wards. The determining standard of treatment is not •' what they have been accustomed to," but what 1 The one exception in the range of my acquaintance to this dislike of the infirmary is on' the part of a little Irisli woman, a soldier's widow, who is lame and feeble, but who by the aid of a small pension is able to fee the attendants a bit, and who moves from the infirmary to some humble friend in the city and back asain with the elegance and dignity which only leisure and money can bestow. THE COOK COUXTl" ClIAIlITIES. 149 experience and modern science show to be essential to the proper care of such a mass. The absolute lack of privacy, the monotony and dulness, the discipline, the enforced cleanliness, — these are the inevitable and, in the opinion of some, the wholesome disadvantages of the infirmary from the standpoint of the inmate. There is not a common sitting-room for men or for women in the whole great place ; the supply of books and papers is so small as scarcely to be visible. Occasionally one may see a group of men playing cards upon a bed in one corner of a ward, and the old fellows have a tobacco allowance ; but any provision for homely comfort, for amusements or distractions from themselves and their compulsory neighbors, is wanting alike for the most decent and the most worthless. If husbands and wives are obliged to come to the infirmary, they are always separated, no matter how aged and infirm, nor how blameless. How painful this separation may be, is indicated by the attitude of an old Irish couple of my acquaintance. They are past the power of self-support ; their onl}^ child, a son, is an in- curable lunatic, confined at Dunning. At one time they held title to a house and lot, — '■ worth $6,000 now," the old woman says with mournful pride, — and are, to judge from internal evidence, and from the testimony of the neighbors, honest, decent people. AVhen Dunning was suggested to them they were panic-stricken ; and the old woman ; who is ninety odd, said, " Oh, he'll have to go in with the men ; I'll have to go in with the women, and all our own clothes will be taken away from us. I can somehow sort o' do for myself; but he is somehow sort o' shiftless like, and he can't. I'll feel 150 HULL-HOUSE 31 APS AXD PAPEBS. sorrier for liim than for me. I am older than he is, but I can get along better'n he. Let us stay here." The meals are served three times daily, in a common dining-room, from bare tables scrubbed white, and the seats are backless benches. The room is so small that the benches are filled and refilled, first with the women and then with the men, until all have eaten. The food is perhaps more nourishing than many had at home, but that has nothing to do with the case. Its original quality is, in fact, good or aggressively bad, depending upon the administration. The cooking is bad, — tea boiled forty-five minutes, mushes cooked very hard, three-quarters of an hour, cheap cuts of meat kept madly jumping in the pot for an hour or less, fats almost eliminated ; such cooking cannot give from the materials employed a wholesome dietary. But in the infirmary, as in the three other county in- stitutions, the pivot upon which turns the question of sweet or tainted meat, as well as the care and nursing of all these feeble beings, is the change in the personnel of the county board, which annually, and hereafter bien- nially, means a change in practically all the officers of this institution. Is it strange that now and again grave scandals reach even the deaf ear of the indifferent pub- lic, when we realize that the appointment of all the per- sons who have charge of this community is made and changed solely according to political preference ? " Not fi.tness, but ' pull,' " is necessarily their motto. It is this irresponsible supervision which must entail the greatest hardship upon this feeble-minded and irresponsible pop- ulation. The insane hospital is upon the same grounds as the THE COOK couxry cuaiuties. 151 • intinnary, about a thousand feet distant. Here are gathered usually about eight hundred men and women, paupers, incurably insane. Can words express more piti- able condition ? Certainly there are no creatures in a state of more painful helplessness. Here, as in the in- tirmary, all appears immaculately clean, and fortunately so, for the construction of the wards is such that only their perfect cleanliness makes them tolerable. Many are long, dark tunnels, in which it is the simple truth to say that sunshine can never penetrate, save for a short distance at either end. The plan is the old one of long interior corridors, from which open the sleeping-rooms on either side, with a dining-room also off the corridor. These rooms, together with bath-room and clothes-room, constitute the usual ward. On some of the wards the corridor broadens out transversely into a sitting-room, and on a few there is only a single row of sleeping- rooms, thus giving outside windows for the corridor ; but the usual arrangement is the dark, narrow inside corridor. In this the patients must spend their waking hours. In such a hospital, there are a large proportion of patients sunk in various stages of dementia, who are dead to any save the most primal physical sensations ; but, on the other hand, there are unfortunately a propor- tion of curable patients even here, and there are chronic cases not demented. For the year 1893, there are re- ported seventy-two recoveries, which is in itself a proof that the county is obliged to care for more than its legal charge ; i.e., the incurable insane. The admissions to the insane asylum for. the year 1893 were 442, of Avhom 109 are entered as born in the United States ; of the remaining three-quarters, Ger- 152 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. many is charged with 96 ; Sweden and Xorway with 45 ; Ireland, 74 ; Poland, 13 ; Bohemia, 8 ; Russia, 5 ; Austria, 8 ; unknown, 20 ; while the others are contributed from fifteen different countries. Here, as in the infirmary and other institutions where birthplace only is entered, with- out lineage, it is not possible to state from the records how many are Jewish ; but it is certain that a consider- able proportion are, probably, for instance, all of those born in Russia. Of the admissions for 1893, 288 were men and 154 were women, a preponderance of men far beyond the usual proportion in insane hospitals. In the State hospitals, in 1892, out of a total population of 5,177, there were only one-tenth more men than women. Two physicians, a man and a woman, have charge of the medical side of the asylum. In addition to the main building, there are already four cottages, two for men and two for women, receiving about fifty patients each. ■ Two of these are used as infirmary wards, and the others for quiet inmates. The "Wines cottage has the lightest and most spacious sitting-room, and the darkest and most unattractive cellar dining-room im- aginable. This is an illustration of the irregularity with which work is done for public purposes ; for there is a still unexecuted conception of a great general din- ing-room, lacking which, this honest cellar is made to do duty. The ward dining-rooms have many disadvantages, and a general dining-hall would be a most wholesome improvement. It is intended that the food of the as}-- lum shall be somewhat more liberal than that of the infirmary ; but here, as there, the cooking methods are absolutely unscientific. The chief additional items are, that butter is allowed for all meals, and that pudding is THE COOK VOryTY CllAinTlES. 153 given for dinner. There is mush for breakfast ; for dinner, beef and potato and another vegetable — often cabbage ; for supper, stewed apples or rice ; with coffee or tea for breakfast and dinner, and tea for supper, and bread and biitter for all meals. Unfortunately, this sounds better than it is in fact. Few i^ersons could see the food as prepared and served (excepting the bread) without a sense of ])hysical revolt. The attendants are too few in number to give the pa- tients proper out-door exercise, which they especially need, because of the darkness of the Avards and the fact that they are seriously overcrowded according to mod- ern hospital standards. There is no system of employ- ment here for the patients, save some work in keeping the wards in order and about the house. The monotony and idleness, the unutterable dreariness, dull the facul- ties of those not already beyond change. But if, the constant succession of new attendants is prejudicial to the proper work of the infirmary, what must it be here, where insane people are to be cared for ? A man or a woman overcome with an infirmity, which the laws of Illinois at last recognize as a dis- ease, is placed in constant care" night and day of — nurses trained for such care ? Xot at all. But of some one who has a "pull." I chanced to be standing in the asylum corridor one day just after there had been a revolution of the county wheel, when a stout, aggressive and excited Irish woman, evidently an attendant, bore down upon one of the commissioners present, who was also of foreign birth, and said, " Mr. Blank, I want to see you." To which he replied with a helpless gesture, *' Well, I hope you don't want anything, because I haven't 154 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. got anything left." — " Aw, don't tell that to me, Mr. Blank ! Do you know I live only two blocks from your house, and we've got nine men in our house that worked mighty hard for you?" — "Well, I can't help it ; I haven't got anything left. Can't you see I am busy talking now ? " To which the attendant replied more imperatively than ever, " Well, I want to see you ; I want to see you alone. Where is Mr. So-and-So ? " with which she flounced on, to return later. The re- markable thing with our present system of appoint- ments is, not that abuses occur, but that more do not occur. It gives one, after all, a new confidence in hu- man nature, that the demands of helplessness and in- sanity develop in unpromising material such excellent qualities of patience and self-control as are sometimes shown. Down in the city of Chicago the county carries on its remaining charitable undertakings. Out on Harrison Street, a little over two miles from the lake, stands the Cook County Hospital, to which were admitted in the year 1893 more than eleven thousand cases, while more than two thousand were dressed and sent home. It is due to the substitution of trained nurses for the former political-appointee attendants, that this hospital now stands in the front rank of American public hospitals, so far as the nursing care of the wards is concerned. Its benefits are given free of charge. The position of an interne in this hospital is only obtained after com- petitive examination, and it is much coveted. One reason why it is coveted may be found in the statement of an interne, whose naivete can no more be ques- tioned than his truthfulness. " I like my position. Till-: COOK COlJyTY fllAniTlKS. loo In fact, I much prefer it to a similar iilace in a New York hospital. There about all an interne can do is to follow after the outside doctors on tlieir rounds, and watch them, and hear what they sa}', and see their pre- scriptions. TUit here the outside doctors do not visit regularly, and do not interfere with the interne's treat- ment." There may be carjjcrs who would pick a flaw in the county's method of educating doctors by self-in- struction ; but it would seem that no paternalist could question its care — for the medical profession. Yet just at this point the paternalist and the man of medical science do agree in questioning this care, and that on the ground of the best service for the hospital wards. They say that the attending physicians, who are now forbidden to l)ring students upon the wards, should be allowed to do so, on the same principle that the surgeons bring the students into the amphitheatre ; that if the physician had this i)rivilege, they would give the wards all due attention, and the education of the interne and the student would be better in proportion to the skill the attending physician could offer the patient. Neither the physicians nor the surgeons of the Cook County Hospital staff are salaried ; and the appointments are valued for prestige, and for clinical advantages. As the physician and surgeon gain prestige through the reputations of their clinics, and as the forbidding of students upon the wards practically forbids the physi- cian having an}^ clinical advantages from the hospital, it is easy to understand why the salaried internes have full sway. Moreover, there can be no doubt that the practitioner feels' himself spurred to his best efforts by the presence of students, the most mercilessly critical 156 HULL-HOUSE 31 APS AND PAP BUS. beings in existence; and thus incidentally the patient might be bejieiited. We are told that the opening of the wards of the free hospital of New Orleans to stu- dents resulted in a diminished death-rate. The great foreign free hospitals are open, and it would be difficult to find any sound reason for the closing of Cook County. Here, again, the food problem is unsolved, save that here, again, the bread is of the average baker's quality. The Avard cooking, done by convalescents, cannot be sat- isfactory. The old kitchen is unwholesome in odor and appearance, and the whole culinary department shows an inattention to scientific methods more painful in a hospital than anywhere else. The constant change in the business management entailed by the constant suc- cession of administrative officers of course makes it expensive and really impossible to carry on the business side of this hospital in the best manner. Unfortunately the hospital is obliged to discharge many patients before they are strong enough to work, and oftentimes patients who are without money or home. The only place where a person without money or a home can go is Dunning; and self-respecting people decline that, and stagger along, beginning work too soon. This is, in the long run, financially expensive to the county, as it destroys or impairs the power of the individual to supjjort himself. A proper convalescents' home would lengthen the working-life of many a man and woman, to say nothing of its increasing their comfort. And an establishment of this sort in country surroundings would be justified by the success of the Boston Convalescents' Home. • The detention hospital stands upon the same plat of THE COOK COUNTY CHAUITIES. 157 ground with the hospital. Here the insane are brought and confined for periods of from tAventy-four liours to eight days (in exceptional cases even two or three weeks), pending the weekly hearing of insane cases. The court sits in this building, so that no exposure is necessary in carrying patients to and from a down-town courtroom. This building, too, is immaculately clean. Indeed, it sometimes seems as though this were the age of institu- tional tidiness ; and that in itself is a cheering sign of advancing care, though the polished outside of cup and platter may be delusive. Through this detention hospital must pass in turn the insane persons of Cook County ; and she now contributes more than twenty-five hundred to the insane population of the State. When this hospital was built, it was fondly hoped that many hysterical and recent cases might be cured by a few days or weeks of its tender care; but the facts, as shown by the investigation of the Avinter of 1894, prove how far from curative the institu- tion is, and must be so long as it is managed upon its present basis. The attendants are political appointees. It is useless to enter into brutal particulars ; it is enough to say that they are and must be ill-fitted for the care of insane patients who are received here at the most critical and violent periods of their malady. The detention hos- pital should be treated as a ward of the Cook County hospital, and trained nurses with specific teaching in the care of the insane placed in charge. There is at present no training-school for nurses for the insane in this State ; aiul if one could be thus established, which should have in charge the detention hospital, it would be a starting-point for better work 158 JIULL-UOUSE MAPS AND PAPEBS. eveiywhere. In connection with the training-school for nurses, "which has in charge most of the wards of the Cook County hospital, this is an entirely feasible plan. In fact, it only requires the taking of twelve appoint- ments out of politics, and some changes in the medical attendance, not requiring more money, to make this hospital as nearly a model as its cramped quarters will allow. The most spectacular proof of the poverty entailed upon Chicago by the general business depression of 1893, and locally by the inevitable human debris left by the World's Fair, could be daily seen during all the se- verer months of the winter of 1893 and 1894. It was a solid, pressing crowd of hundreds of shabby men and shawled or hooded women, coming from all parts of a great city whose area is over one hundred and eighty-six square miles, standing hour after hour with market- baskets high above their heads, held in check by police- men, polyglot, but having the common language of their persistency, their weariness, their chill and hunger. This crowd stood daily, unsheltered from the weather, before 130 South Clinton Street. Now and again a woman was crushed, — in one instance it is reported was killed, and the ambulance, was called to take her away. Once a case of smallpox was discovered, and a sign hung out, and the office closed for a day or two ; but this did not frighten away the crowd outside. It only served to give the clerks inside a little chance to get their work up. When once the applicant penetrates the office, he is in the great dingy waiting-room of the Cook County Agency, from whence is dispensed out-door relief. He furnishes his name and address, and is called upon THE COOK COUNTY CIIAIilTIfJS. 159 later by a paid visitor, upon whose report the fuel and ration are allowed or refused. Or, if the api)lication has been granted, the market basket discloses its ntisofi d'etre, and the allowance of food and one bar of hard soap is carried hence, the coal being sent later from the contractor. It is hard to go to tlio infirmary, hard to get relief from the county ; but it is esteemed hardest of all to be buried by the county. The abhorrence of a pauper burial cannot 1)6 better indicated than by the fact that of the 607 inmates who died at Dunning in 1893, the funerals of 251 were provided by friends. Indeed, the one gen- eral effort at saving in this district is that sorry spec- ulation in futures called burial-insurance. Of course there are numberless lapses of the policies, which nuike the business profitable. The dread of pauper burial is twofold. First, the lack of religious ceremony, and, secondly, the loss of a great social function, far exceed- ing in magnificence a wedding or a christening. The necessary cost of sickness and death is vastly in- creased by absolutely unnecessary items on the un- dertakers bill. It is the hope of this anticipated pageantry which makes the burial-insurance collector a constant figure, threading in and out among the tene- ments, and collecting his weekly premiums. " And to think," exclaimed a mother, in a spasm of baffled pru- dence and grief, " that this child I've lost was the only one that wasn't insured I " There is a constant criticism of the county relief office from the recipient's point of view. He says the coal is delivered slowly and in scant measure, that favoritism is shown by visitors, that burials are tardy and cruel ; 160 UULL-nOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. and the facts justify liim. But any one acquainted with the daily work of this office must feel that the wonder is that the $100,000 allotted for its work is really as fairly divided as we find it. The methods of this office, with its records kept as each changing administration chooses, its doles subject to every sort of small political influence, and its failure to co-operate with private charities, are not such as science can approve. These institutions cost the county for running ex- penses alone, nearly $700,000 annually, providing sal- aried positions for five hundred persons or more, and of course do in some degree meet the necessities of a great dependent population which is at present an unavoidable factor in our social problem. Yet such a state of irresponsibility as investigation now and again discloses must discourage us. AVe are impressed with the lack of system and classification among the benefi- ciaries of the infirmary and the county agency for out- door relief. We are shocked by the crudeness of the management which huddles men, women, and children, the victims of misfortune and the relics of dissipation, the idle, the ineffective criminal, the penniless convales- cent, under one roof and one discipline. On purely economic grounds we need a children's home, or some provision so that no child shall be in a poorhouse. AVe need a home for convalescents. Both humanity and economy demand that there be workshops provided at Dunning for the sane and the insane paupers. Then there is that small remnant of blameless poor for whom we can surely make more dignified provision without pauperizing society. It is painful enough to see " de- sert a beggar," without seeing her thrust in to die dis- THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES. 161 graced by the association of a public poorliouse. Yet these measures, unfortunately, will be considered prima- rily only as furnishing certain " places " to be filled by political preferment. The comfort, the recovery, the lives, of all these thousands of dependent people, hang upon the knowledge, the kindliness, the honesty, and good faith of those hired to care for them. How are these people hired, — in the open labor market, for fitness, by examination ? Not even an Altrurian would waste words on such a question. These places are scheduled, with the salaries attached, and each commissioner disposes of his share of the patronage. Commissioners are not responsible for this method ; it is not unlawful, and it is convenient for them. They act from the pressure of public opinion translatable into votes, and modify their actions according to the strength of such pressure. How many persons in the city of Chicago whose incomes make them safe from the possi- bility of a personal interest in these places ever visit them, or perhaps know where they are ? More, how many of them realize that their visits, their intelligent interest, are all that is necessary to make these institutions give really good servicfe ? There is no mal-administration so strong that it can persist in the face of public knowledge and attention. The public now has and will have ex- actly such institutions as it demands, managed exactly as its discrimination requires. It is as tiresome as that Carthage must be destroyed, but it is as true, that the charities of Cook County will never properly perform their duties until politics are divorced from them. IX. ART AND LABOR. ART AND LABOR. BY ELLKN GATKS STARR. To any one living in a working-class district of a great city to-day, the question must arise whether it be at all worth the cost to try to perpetuate art under con- ditions so hopeless, or whether it be not the only ra- tional or even possible course to give up the struggle from that point, and devote every energy to " the purifi- cation of the nation's heart and the chastisement of its life." Only by re-creation of the source of art can it be restored as a living force. But one must always re- member the hungering individual soul which, • without it, will have passed unsolaced and unfed, followed by other souls who lack the impulse his shoiild have given. And Avhen one sees how almost miraculously the young mind often responds to what is beautiful in its environ- ment, and rejects what is ugly, it renews courage to set the leaven of the beautiful in the midst of the ngly, instead of waiting for the ugly to be first cleared away. A child of two drunken parents one day brought to Hull-House kindergarten and presented to her teacher a wretched print, with the explanation, '' See the Lady Moon." The Lady ]\Ioon, so named in one of the songs the children sing, was dimly visible in an extreme corner of the print otherwise devoted to murder and sudden death ; but it was the only thing the child really saw. The nourishment to life of one good picture to sup- 165 166 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. plant in interest vicious story-papers and posters ; of one good song to take the place of vulgar street jingles, can- not, I believe, be estimated or guessed. A good picture for every household seems unattainable until households can produce, or at least select, their own ; but certainly a good one in every schoolroom would not be unattainable, if the public should come to regard it as a matter of moment that the rooms in which the children of the land spend their most impressionable days be made beautiful and suggestive, instead of barren and repellant. Mr. T. C. Horsfall, of Manchester, England, who has developed a system of circulating collections of pictures in the schools ^ of that unhappy city, says that the de- cision as to whether art shall be used in education is, to modern communities, a decision as to whether the mass of the people shall be barbarian or civilized. As- suredly it has a direct bearing upon the art-producing possibilities of the communities in question. Let us consider what is the prospect for an '' art of the people " in our great cities. And first let us admit that art must be of the people if it is to be at all. AYe must admit this whether we look into the life of the past or into our own life. If we look to any great na- tional art, that of Athens or of Venice or of Florence, we see that it has not been produced by a few, living apart, fed upon conditions different from the common life ; but that it has been, in great part, the expression of that common life. If it has reached higher than 1 The principles and plan of INTr. Horsfall's beneficent vrork may be found in his papers entitled, " Tlio Use of Pictures in Schools," '-Art in Large Towns," and "The AYork of the Manchester Art Museum." J. E. Cornish, St. Ann's Square, Manchester. ART AND LABOR. 167 the common life, it lias done so only by rising through it, never by springing up outside it and apart from it. When Florence decked herself with reliefs of the Madonna and the Infant, the life of Florence was a devotion to these shrines. Giotto and Donatello only expressed with a power and grace concentred in them what all the people felt ; and more than that, had not the people felt thus, there could have been no medium for that grace and power. If we are to have a national art at all, it must be art of the people ; and art can only come to a free people. The great prophet of art in oiir day, John Ruskin, has said that " all great art is praise," showing man's pleas- ure in God's work ; and his disciple, William Morris, expresses another side of the same truth when he says that " to each man is due the solace of art in his labor, and the opportunity of expressing his thoughts to his fellows through that labor." Now, only a free man can express himself in his work. If he is doing slave's work, under slavish conditions, it is doubtful whether he will ultimately have many thoughts worth the name ; and if he have, his work can in no wise be their vehicle. It is only when a man is doing work which he wishes done, and delights in doing, and Avhich he is free to do as he likes, that his work becomes a language to him. As soon as it does so become it is artistic. Every man working in the joy of his heart is, in some measure, an artist. Everything wrought with delight in the work itself is, in some measure, lovely. The destructive force of the ugly is its heartlossness. The peasant's cottage in the Tyrol, built with its owner's hands, decorated with his taste, and propounding his morals 168 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. and religion in inlaid sentences under its broad eaves, blesses the memory with a beauty but half obliterated by daily sight of dreary parallelograms and triangles, joylessly united, which make up the streets of our work- ing-people. The streets of Venice, of Verona, of Rouen, were built by men working in freedom, at liberty to vary a device or to invent one. They were not built by lawlessness or caprice, but under a willing service, which alone is perfect freedom. The same men who built so nobly the cathedrals and council-halls of Eouen and Venice, built as harmoni- ously, though more simply and modestly, as was fit, their own dwellings. Had they been capable of making their own houses ugly, they would have been incapa- ble of housing beautifully the rulers of their city or the King of kings. This is the fatal mistake of our modern civilization, which is causing it to undo itself and become barbarous in its unloveliness and discord. AVe have believed that we could force men to live without beauty in their own lives, and still compel them to make for us the beauti- ful things in which we have denied them any part. We have supposed that we could teach men, in schools, to produce a grace and harmony which they never see, and which the life that we force them to live utterly pre- cludes. Or else we have thought — a still more hope- less error — that they, the workers, the makers, need not know what grace and beauty and harmony are ; that artists and architects may keep the secrets, and the builders and makers, not knowing them, can slavishly and mechanically execute what the wise in these mys- teries plan. ART Ayi) LABOR. 169 The results slioukl long ago luive taught us our mis- take. l>ut only now are we learning, partly from dis- mal experience of life barren of beauty and variety, and partly from severe but timely teaching from such prophets as Ruskin and IMorris, that no man can execute artistically what another man plans, unless the work- man's freedom has been part of the plan. The prodiict of a machine may be useful, and may serve some pur- jjoses of information, but can never be artistic. As soon as a machine intervenes between the mind and its pro- duct, a hard, impassable barrier — a non-conductor of thought and emotion — is raised between the speaking and the listening mind. If a man is made a machine, if his part is merely that of reproducing, with mechani- cal exactness, the design of somebody else, the effect is the same. The more exact the reproduction, the less of the personality of the man who does the work is in the product, the more uninteresting will the product be. A demonstration of how uninteresting this slavish ma- chine-work can become may be found in the carved and upholstered ornamentation of any drawing-room car — one might also say of any drawing-room one enters. I have never seen in a city anything in the way of decoration upon the house of an American citizen Avhich he had himself designed and wrought for pleasure in it. In the house of an Italian peasant immigrant in our own neighborhood, I have seen wall and ceiling decora- tions of his own design, and done by his own hand in colors. The designs were very rude, the colors coarse ; but there was nothing of the \'ulgar in it, and there was something of hope. The peasant immigrant's surround- ings begin to be vulgar precisely at the point where he 170 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AXD PAPEIIS. begins to buy and adorn his dwelling with the products of American manufacture. What he brings with him in the way of carven bed, wrought kerchief, enamel in- laid picture of saint or angel, has its charm of human touch, and is graceful, however childish. The peasants themselves secretly prefer their old pos- sessions, but are sustained by a proud and virtuous con- sciousness of having secured what other people have and what the world approves. A dear old peasant friend of Hull House once conceived the notion that the dignity of his wife — whom he called " my lady " — required that she have a dress in the American mode. Many were the mediatorial struggles which we enacted before this "American dress" was fitted and done. And then, by the mercy of Heaven, her courage gave out, and she never wore it. She found it too uncomfortable, and I know that in her inmost heart she found it too ugly. Could men build their own houses, could they carve or fresco upon casing, door, or ceiling any decoration which pleased them, it is inconceivable that, under con- ditions of freedom and happiness, they should refrain from doing so. It is inconceivable that, adorning their own dwellings in the gladness of their hearts, they should not develop something of grace, of beauty, of meaning, in what their hands wrought ; impossible that their hands should work on unprompted by heart or brain ; impossible then, as inevitable now, that most men's houses should express nothing of themselves save a dull acceptance of things commercially and industrially thrust upon them. A workingman must accept his house as he finds it. AUr AM) LABOR. 171 He not only cannot bviild it, he cannot bny it, and is usually not at liberty to alter it materially, even had he the motive to do so, being likely to leave it at any time. The frescoed ceiling to which I have referred, as the only example within my experience of any attempt at original decoration, was in a cottage tenement. If the author had any aifection for the work of his hands, he could not take it away with him. He would probaljly not be permitted, Avere he inclined, to carve the door- posts ; and the uncertainty of tenure Avould deter him from yielding to any artistic prompting to do so. It would be disheartening to find one's belongings set into the street, and be obliged to leave one's brave device half finished. A man's happiness, as Avell as his freedom, is a neces- sary condition of his being artistic. Euskin lays it down as a laAv that neither vice nor pain can enter into the entirely highest art. How far art can be at all co- existent with pain, ugliness, gloom, sorrow, slavery, con- cerns very vitally the question of an art of the people. No civilized and happy people has ever been able to express itself without art. The prophet expands his <• All great art is praise " into " The art of man is the expression of his rational and disciplined delight in tlie forms and laws of the creation of which he forms a part." A rational and disciplined delight in the forms and laAvs of the creation of which a denizen of an indus- trial district in one of our great cities forms a conscious part, is inconceivable. Some of the laws which govern its conscious life may be traced in their resultant forms. Its most clearly manifested law is "the iron law of wages." Of the workings and products of this law in 172 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. squalor, deformity, and irrecoverable loss of health, many examples are given in the accompanying article on Child-labor. Of the law of love manifested in the harmonious life of the universe, these little toilers know nothing. Of the laws of healthy growth of mind and body by air, sunlight, and wholesome work, neither they nor their children can knoAV anything. Of the laws of heredity they know bitterly, and of the law of arrested develop- ment. It is needlessly painful to say here in what forms these laws have made themselves known to them, and to all who look upon them. It is equally needless to say that they can have no delight in these forms, no wish to reflect and perpetuate them. Need it be said that they can have no art ? The Greek was compelled by his joy in his own and his brother's beauty and strength to make it abiding, and a joy to all who should look upon it. It was a not unreasonable pride which offered to the gods as a re- ligious act the feats of those strong and perfect bodies ; and Greek sculpture smiles forth the gladness of the Greek heart blithely in its graceful runners and wrest- lers, solemnl}^ in its august deities, whose laws the peo- ple obeyed, and rejoiced in obeying. It may not be quite profitless, though altogether painful, to think sometimes of the weak, small, ugly frames produced by the life we force men and little children to live, and of which we would not dare make an offering to an offended God, whose laws we have neither rejoiced in nor obeyed. Obedience to physical law results always in forms of ART AND LABOR. 173 physical beauty ; love of these forms and happy activ- ity, in artistic expression. From disobedience to law follows physical ugliness, which inspires notliing but apathy or distaste, and results in no artistic utterance. A higher art is born of delight in spiritual beauty, con- sequent upon obedience to law above the physical. It remains to determine how far the disharmony of dis- obedience can have expression through art. Discord has place in music only as a negative, to give accent to the positive good. Variety is good, but the eye and ear crave occasional monotony in art-form to make the good of multiform life keenly felt. Beyond that need monot- ony and discord are both painful. This is the limit of the purely artistic use of these negative values. The expression of the negative in art-form has, how- ever, within limits, another legitimate use, which bears the same relation to art in its strict sense which pam- phleteering bears to literature proper. Against the infliction or willing permission of pain, there is a gospel to be preached ; and for the effectual preaching of this gospel, literature, art, every language in whicli it can be couched, may be j)ressed into service. " We're made so tliat we love First when we see tlieiu painted, things we've passed Perhaps a hundred times nor eared to see; And so tliey are better, i)ainted, — better to us, Which is tlie same thing. Art was given for tliat." So it was, — to make us love the lovabh\ Fmt if we are made so, too, that we hate for the lirst time as it deserves to be hated, and dread as we ought to dread it when we see it painted, the destruction of the lovable 174 nULL-IIOUSE 3IAPS A^^D PAPERS. and the beautiful by the impious hand of man, then art must descend from her altar service to that hard work of discipline. As long as "we inflict or supinely permit the wilful destruction of life by rapid process or slow, we need to be shocked into the realization of our guilt. But we cannot grow by a series of shocks ; and only in so far as we are conceivably responsible for any measure of this woe, and most assuredly only in so far as the sight of it is awful and unbearable to us, can it be anything but harmful to us to see it. So far as it gives any pleasure it blunts or degrades. It is only the faith that God wills that not one of His children should perish, and that Avith Him all things are possible, in His eternity, which makes it endurable to look for one moment upon the starvation and degradation of mind and soul, the defacement of the image of God by man, in Millet's '• Laborer." Strange that we can bear so constantly the sight of the real laborer ; that the back bent, never to stand erect in the true figure of a man, the stolid and vacant face, should be looked upon with such equanimity and apathetic acceptance. The pictures of Jean Francois Millet illustrate well the limit beyond which art cannot go into the realm of gloom and wrong. They are entirely true always. They re- flect perfectly the life and \vork of the people he knew best, and of whose life he was part. They are beautiful and artistic, or painful and inartistic, just in the degree in which naturalness, the joy, the rightness, or the un- naturalness, severity, gloom and slavery of that life predominate. From the child carrying a lamb in her arms, and followed b}- the loving mother and whole ART AND LABOR. 175 docile flock ; the father stretching out his anus to his baby, graceful in his love through the clumsiness of his excessive toil ; all the dreary distance to that heart- breaking image of man's desecration he passes, through every step of increasing backache and stolidity, fear, less and, indeed, helpless. It is the awful record of a soul seeing things as they are, and recording them as he must in his art language, which ceases to be artistic, and becomes ugly, inartistic, inarticulate, and tinally refuses to go farther into the discord of man's desolate, stifled, degraded life. Behind the laborer with the hoe stretch God's earth and sky. '' "With these opeu witnesses, you have done that, man ! "What yoii have done in dark- ness, away from the face of these witnesses, my art cannot say." Xo true art can. Into the prison-houses of earth, its sweat-shops and underground lodging-houses, art cannot follow. "Whatever the inspiring motive of art, though there be in it pain and struggle, the result must be one of triumph, at least of hope. Art can never present humanity as overborne. It cannot let the hostile principle, pain, sor- row, sin, at the last conquer. Just where it begins to smother and snuff out the flame of life, art turns away. "VMien life reaches a point at Avhich it can furnish no more material for art, we cannot look to it for an artistic people. If in all the environment of a man's life, there is nothing which can inspire a true work of art, there is nothing to inspire a true love of it, could it be produced. The love of the beautiful grows by what it feeds on ; and the food must be the common bread of life. That which makes the art-loving people, makes the artist also. Every nation which has left a great art record has lived 17G HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. an artistic life. The artist is not a product of spon- taneous generation. Every Athenian, every Florentine boy, saw daily in the street the expression of the most perfect thought of his people, reflecting their thought of God ; and he saw it, side by side with God's own thought, undefaced and undefiled. He saw column and tower and statue standing against a sky, the pure, serene, tender, infinite mirror of the divine intelligence and love ; and hills, the unswerving image of divine steadfastness. He saw them unpolluted by the smoke, and undistracted by the din of commercial strife. Poor or rich, the best his nation wrought was his. He must be taught his art as a craft, if he were to follow it ; and he did learn it pre- cisely as a craft which must be honestly and industri- ously practised. But first and always he lived it, as a life, in common with the life of his nation. The boy of our great cities, rich or poor (we are so far democratic), has this common inheritance. He sees from his earliest years the mart ; not the mercato vecchto of Florence, where the angel faces of Delia Robbia looked down above the greengrocer's wares in the open booth, from out wreaths of fruit and flowers that vied with those below ; but our mercato nuovo. He sees there walls high and monotonous ; windows all alike (which he who built had no pleasure in) ; piles of merchandise, not devised with curious interest and pleasant exercise of inventive faculty, but with stolid, mechanical indif- ference ; garish wares, and faces too harassed and hur- ried to give back greeting. These belong to rich and poor alike. But here the lots diverge. The poor lad goes, not to his sheep, like Giotto, nor to keeping his feet warm, like Luca, in a basket of shavings, while he AliT Ayi) LABOR. 177 works cheerily at his art and saves fire ; he goes home to the dreary tenement, not fireless, but with closed windows to keep its heat within, dingy plaster, steam of Avashing and odors of cooking, near discordant voices, loneliness of a crowded life without companionship or high ideals ; and for view of hills and sky, the theatre bills on the walls across the street, and factory chim- neys. The son of the rich man goes home to his father's house. Through plate glass and lace curtains he looks across at his neighbor's father's house, Avith its lace cur- tains, — perhaps a little less costly, perhaps a little more. Up and down the street he compares the upholstery, the equipages, the number and formality of the servants be- longing to the establishments which represent his so- cial life. He has flowers in a greenhouse ; he has fine clothes ; he has books ; he has pictures. Does he live an artistic life ? Can we look to him for the great art of the future ? Alas ! " The life of the poor is too painful ; the life of the rich too vulgar." Rather, is not the life of each both painful and vulga'r to a degree which seems almost beyond hope ? '• The haggard de- spair of cotton-factory, coal-mine operatives in these days is painful to behold ; but not so painful, hideous to the inner sense, as that brutish, God-forgetting, Profit- and-loss Philosophy and Life-Theory which we hear jangled on all hands of us, from the throats and pens and thoughts of ail-but all men." ^ Happily, at least for art, there remains that " all-l)ut " modicum, — the tenaciously impractical and unbusiness-like, the incor- rigibly unconvinced as to the supreme importance of 1 Cailyle, Past and Present. 178 nULL-EOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. '•' selling cotton cheaper." Else " vacuum an(J the serene blue " would, indeed, " be much handsomer " than this our civilization. For the children of the " degraded poor," and the degraded rich as Avell, in oi:r present mode of life, there is no artistic hope outside of miracle. There is one hope for us all, — a new life, a freed life. He who hopes to help art survive on earth till the new life dawn, must indeed feed the hungry with good things. This must he do, but not neglect for this the more com- passionate and far-reaching aim, the freeing of the art- power of the whole nation and race by enabling them to work in gladness and not in woe. It is a feeble and narrow imagination which holds out to chained hands fair things which they cannot grasp, — things which they could fashion for themselves were they but free. The soul of man in the commercial and industrial struggle is in a state of siege. He is fighting for his life. It is merciful and necessary to pass in to him the things which sustain his courage and keep him alive, but the effectual thing is to raise the siege. A settlement, if it is true to its ideal, must stand equally for both aims. It must work with all energy and courage toward the rescue of those bound under the slavery of commerce and the wage-law; with all absti- nence it must discountenance wasting human life in the making of valueless things; with all faith it must urge forward the building up of a state in which cruel con- trasts of surfeit and Avant, of idleness and overwork, shall not be found. By holding art and all good fruit of life to be the right of all ; by urging all, because of this their common need, to demand time and means for sup- plying it ; by reasonableness in the doing, with others, AET AXD LABOR. 179 of useful, wholesome, beneticent work, and the enjoy- ment, with others, of rightful and sharable pleasure, a settlement should make toward a social state which shall finally supplant this incredible and impious war- fare of the children of God. "Whatever joy is to us ennobling; whatever things seem to us made for blessing, and not for weariness and woe ; whatever knowledge lifts us out of things paltry and narrowing, and exalts and expands our life ; whatever life itself is real and worthy to endure, as there is measure of faith in us, and hope and love and patience, let us live this life. And let us think on our brothers, that they may live it too; for without them we cannot live it if we would ; and when we and they shall have this joy of life, then we shall speak from within it, and our speech shall be sweet, and men will listen and be glad. "What we do with our hands will be fair, and men shall have pleasure therein. This will be art. Otherwise we cannot all have it ; and until all have it in some measure, none can have it in great measure. And if gladness ceases upon the earth, and we turn the fair earth into a prison-house for men with hard and loveless labor, art will die. X. THE SETTLEMENT AS A FACTOR IN THE LABOR 2I0VEMENT. THE SETTLEMENT AS A FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT. JANE ADDAM8. OxE man or group of men sometimes reveal to their contemporaries a higher conscience by simply incorpo- rating into the deed what has been before but a philo- sophic proposition. By this deed the common code of ethics is stretched to a higher point. Such an act of moral significance, for instance, was John Burns's loyalty to the dockers' strike of East London. ''The injury to one" did at last actually "be- come the concern of all ; " and henceforth the man who does not share that concern drops below the standard ethics of his day. The proposition which Avorkingmen had long quoted was at last incarnated by a mechanic, who took his position so intelligently that he carried with him the best men in England, and set the public conscience. Other men became ashamed of a wrong to which before they had been easily indifferent. When the social conscience, if one may use the ex- pression, has been thus strikingly formulated, it is not so hard for others to follow. They do it weakly and stumblingly perhaps ; but they yet see a glimmer of light of which the first man could not be sure, and they have a code of ethics upon which the first man was vague. They are also conscious of the backing of a large share of the community who before this expres- sion knew not the compunction of their own hearts. A 183 184 nULL-IIOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. settlement accepts the etliics of its contemporaries that the sharing of the life of the poor is essential to the understanding and bettering of that life ; but by its very existence it adopts this modern code somewhat formally. The social injury of the meanest man not only becomes its concern, but by virtue of its very locality it has put itself into a position to see, as no one but a neighbor can see, the stress and need of those Avho bear the brunt of the social injury. A settlement has not only taken a pledge towards those thus injured, but it is placed where the motive-power for the fulfilment of such a pledge is constantly renewed. Propinquity is an un- ceasing factor in its existence. A review of the sewing-trades, as seen from a settle- ment, will be sufficient to illustrate this position. Hull-House is situated in the midst of the sweaters' district of Chicago. The residents came to the district with the general belief that organization for working- people was a necessity. They would doubtless have said that the discovery of the power to combine was the distinguishing discover}- of our time ; that we are using this force somewhat awkwardly, as men use that which is newly discovered. In social and political affairs the power to combine often works harm ; but it is already operating to such an extent in commercial affairs, that the manufacturer who does not combine with others of his branch is in constant danger of failure ; that a rail- road cannot be successfully projected unless the interests of parallel roads are consulted ; and that working-peo- ple likewise cannot be successful until they too, learn, skilfully to avail themselves of this power. This was to the residents, as to many people, an A FACTOIi IX THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 185 accepted proposition, but not a working formula. It had not tlie driving force of a conviction. The resi- dents have lived for five years in a neighborhood largely given over to the sewing-trades, which is an industry totally disorganized. Having observed the workers in this trade as compared to those in organized trades, they have graduall}' discovered that lack of organization in a trade tends to the industrial helplessness of the workers in that trade. If in all departments of social, political, and commercial life, isolation is a blunder, and results in dreariness and apathy, then in industrial af- fairs isolation is a social crime ; for it thex-e tends to extermination. This process of extermination entails starvation and suffering, and the desperate moral disintegration which inevitably follows in their train, until the need of organ- ization in industry gradually assumes a moral aspect. The conviction arrived at entails a social obligation. Xo trades are so overcrowded as the sewing-trades ; for the needle has ever been the refuge of the unskilled woman. The Avages jiaid throughout the manufacture of clothing are less than those in any other trade. In order to meet the requirements of the workers, lack of skill and absence of orderly life, the work has been so subdivided that almost no skill is required after the garment leaves the cutter. It is given practically to the one who is at hand when it is ready, and who does it for the least mone}'. This subdivision and low wage have gone so far, that the woman who does home fin- ishing alone cannot possibly gain by it a living wage. The residents of Hull-House have carefully investigated many cases, and are ready to assert that the Italian 186 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AXD PAPERS. widow who finishes the cheapest goods, although she sews from six in the morning until eleven at night, can only get enough to keep her children clothed and fed ; while for her rent and fuel she must always depend upon charity or the hospitality of her country-men. If the American sewing-woman, supporting herself alone, lives on bread and butter and tea, she finds a Bohemian woman next door whose diet of black bread and coffee enables her to undercut. She competes with a wife who is eager to have home finishing that she may add something to the family comforf ; or with a daughter, who takes it that she may buy a wedding outfit. The Hebrew tailor, the man with a family to support, who. but for this competition of unskilled women and girls, might earn a wage upon which a family could sub- sist, is obliged, in order to support them at all, to put his little children at work as soon as they can sew on buttons. It does not help his industrial situation that the woman and girl who have brought it about have ac- cepted the lower wages in order to buy comforts for an invalid child, or to add to the earnings of an aged father. The mother who sews on a gross of buttons for seven cents, in order to buy a blue ribbon with which to tie up her little daughter's hair, or the mother who finishes a dozen vests for five cents, with which to buy her chil- dren a loaf of bread, commits unwittingly a crime against her fellow-workers, although our hearts may thrill with admiration for her heroism, and ache with pity over her misery. The maternal instinct and family affection is woman's most holy attribute ; but if she enters industrial life, that A FACTOR IN THE LAIlOli MOVEMENT. 187 is not enough. She must supplement lier family con- science by a social and an industrial conscience. She must widen her family affection to embrace the children of the community. She is working havoc in the sewing- trades, because Avith the meagre equipment sufficient for family life she has entered industrial life. Have we any right to place before untrained women the alternative of seeing their little children suffer, or of complicating the industrial condition until all the chil- dren of the community are suffering ? We know of course what their decision would be. But the residents of a settlement are not put to this hard choice, although it is often difficult to urge organization when they are flying to the immediate relief of the underfed children in the neighborhood. If the settlement, then, is convinced that in industrial affairs lack of organization tends to the helplessness of the isolated worker, and is a menace to the entire com- munity, then it is bound to pledge itself to industrial organization, and to look about it for the lines upon which to work. And at this point the settlement enters into what is more technically known as the labor move- ment. The labor movement may be called a concerted effort among the workers in all trades to obtain a more equi- table distribution of the product, and to secure a more orderly existence for the laborers. How may the settle- ment be of value to this effort ? If the design of the settlement is not so much the initiation of new measures, but fraternal co-operation with all good which it finds in its neighborhood, then the most obvious line of action will be organization 188 IIULL-IIOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. through the trades-unions, a movement already well es- tablished. The trades-unions say to each workingman, "Associ- ate yourself with the fellow-workers in your trade. Let your trade organization federate with the allied trades, and the}^, in turn, with the National and International Federation, until working-people become a solid body, ready for concerted action. It is the only possible way to prevent cuts in the rate of wages, and to regulate the hours of work. Capital is organized, and has influence with which to secure legislation in its behalf. We are scattered and feeble because we do not work together." Trades-unionism, in spite of the many pits into which it has fallen, has the ring of altruism about it. It is clearly the duty of the settlement to keep it to its best ideal, and to bring into it something of the spirit which has of late characterized the unions in England. This keeping to the ideal is not so easy as the more practical work of increasing unions, although that is difficult enough. Of the two women's unions organized at Hull- House, and of the four which have regularly held their meetings there, as well as those that come to us during strikes at various times, I should venture to say of only one of them that it is filled with the new spirit, although they all have glimpses of it, and even during times of stress and disturbance strive for it. It was perliaps natural, from the situation, that the unions organized at Hull-House should have been those in the sewing-trades. The shirtmakers were organized in the spring of 1891. The immediate cause was a cut in a large factory from twenty-five cents a dozen for the making of collars and cuffs to twelve cents. The factory A FACTOR IN THE LAI'.OU MOVEMENT. 189 was a model in regard to its sanitary arrangements, and the sole complaint of the girls was of the long hours and low rate of wages. The strike which followed the for- mation of the union was wholly unsuccessful ; but the union formed then has thriven ever since, and has lately grown so strong that it has recently succeeded in secur- ing the adoption of the national labels. The cloakmakers were organized at Hull-House in the spring of 1892. Wages had been steadily falling, and there was great depression among the workers of the trade. The number of employees in the inside shops was being rapidly reduced, and the work of the entire trade handed over to the sweaters. The union among the men numbered two hundred; but the skilled workers were being rapidly supplanted by untrained women, who had no conscience in regard to the wages they accepted. The men had urged organization for several years, but were unable to secui-e it among the women. One apparently insurmountable obstacle had been the impos- sibility of securing any room, save one over a saloon, that was large enough and cheap enough for a general meet- ing. To a saloon hall the women had steadfastly refused to go, save once, when, under the pressure of a strike, the girls in a certain shop had. met with the men from the same shop, over one of the more decent saloons, only to be upbraided by their families upon their return home. They of course refused ever to go again. The first meeting at Hull-House was composed of men and girls, and tAvo or three of the residents. The meeting was a revelation to all present. The men, perhaps forty in number, were Russian-Jewish tailors, many of whom could comnuiiul not even broken English. They were 190 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. ill-dressed and grimy, suspicious that Hull-House was a spy in the service of the capitalists. They were skilled workers, easily superior to the girls when sewing on a cloak, but shamefaced and constrained in meeting with them. The American-Irish girls were well-dressed, and comparatively at ease. They felt chaperoned by the presence of the residents, and talked volubly among themselves. These two sets of people were held to- gether only by the pressure upon their trade. They were separated by strong racial differences, by language, by nationality, by religion, by mode of life, by every possible social distinction. The interpreter stood be- tween the two sides of the room, somewhat helpless. He was clear upon the economic necessity for combina- tion ; he realized the mutual interdependence ; but he was baffled by the social aspect of the situation. The residents felt that between these men and girls was a deeper gulf than the much-talked of " chasm " between the favored and unfavored classes. The working-girls before them, who were being forced to cross such a gulf, had a positive advantage over the cultivated girl who consciously, and sometimes heroically, crosses the "chasm " to join hands with her working sisters. There was much less difference of any sort between the residents and working-girls than between the men and girls of the same trade. It was a spectacle only to be found in an American city, under the latest condi- tions of trade-life. Working-people among themselves are being forced into a social democracy from the pres- sure of the economic situation. It presents an educa- ting and broadening aspect of no small value. The Woman's Cloakmakers' Union has never been A FACTOIi IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 101 large, but it alwaj-s has been characterized by the spirit of generosity which marked its organization. It feels a strong sense of obligation toward the most ill-paid and ignorant of the sweaters' victims, and no working-people of Chicago have done more for abolition of the sweating- system than this handful of women. But the labor movement is by no means so simple as trades-unionism. A settlement finds in the move- ment devoted men who feel keenly the need for better industrial organization, but who insist that industrial organization must be part of the general re-organization of society. The individualists, for instance, insist that we will never secure equal distribution until we have equality of opportunity; that all State and city fran- chises, all privilege of railroad, bank, and corporation, must be removed before competition will be absolutely free, and the man with his labor alone to offer will have a fair chance with the man who offers anything else; that the sole function of the State is to secure the free- dom of each, guarded by the like freedom of all, and that each man free to work for his own existence and advantage will by this formula work out our industrial development. The individualist then works constantly for the recall of franchise and of special privilege, and for the untrammelled play of each man's force. There is much in our inheritance that responds to this, and he has followers among workingmen and among capitalists ; those who fear to weaken the incentive to individual exertion, and those who believe that any interference would work injuriously. The residents of a settlement hear the individualist pleading in many trades assem- blies. Opposite to him, springing up in discussion every 192 UULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. time he speaks, is the socialist in all varieties. The scientific socialist reads his Karl Marx, and sees a grad- ual and inevitable absorption of all the means of pro- duction and of all capital by one entity, called the community. He makes out a strong case because he is usually a German or a Kussian, with a turn for eco- nomic discussion, and widely read. He sees in the pres- ent tendency toAvards the concentration of capital, and in the growth of trusts and monopolies, an inevitable transition to the socialistic state. Every concentration of capital into fewer hands but increases the mass of those whose interests are opposed to the maintenance of its power, and vastly simplifies the final absorption. He contends that we have already had the transforma- tion of scattered private property into capitalistic prop- erty, and that it is inevitable that it should be turned into collective property. In ithe former cases we had the ex-propriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers ; in the latter we have the ex-propriation of a few usurpers by the mass of people. He points with pride to the strong tendency towards State regulation of the means of transportation, and of many industries, and he urges legislative check and control at every point. Between these two divergent points of vicAV we find many shades of opinion and many modifications of phi- losophy ; but i^erhaps a presentation of these two, as heard many times from earnest workingmen, will illus- trate how difficult a settlement finds it to be liberal in tone, and to decide what immediate measures are in the line of advantage to the labor movement and which ones are aL^ainst it. A FACTOR IX THE LABOU MOVEMENT. 103 It has been said tliat the imaginatiou in Ainoiica lias been seized in due tuni by the minister, the soldier, and the lawyer, \\\\o have suce-essivel}- held the political ap- pointments ; but that it is now the turn of the economist ; that the man who woidd secure votes and a leadership in politics is the one who has a line of action to propose which shall bring order out of the present industrial chaos. This may be illustrated by the marvellous growth of the single-tax movement, which offers a definite re- medial measure. Is it not true that our knotty theologi- cal difficidties as matters for prolonged discussion are laid aside ? Is it not true that the interpretation of the Constitution, and tlie standard of action for the law- abiding and upright citizen, are well determined in men's minds ? But that the moral enterprise of each man, not by any means his morality. l)ut his moral enterprise, has to be tested by his attitude toward tlie industrial problem ? The crucial question of the time is, '' In ■what attitude stand ye toward the present industrial system ? Are you content that greed and the seizing upon disadvantage and the pushing of the weaker to the wall shall rule your business life, while in your family and social life you live so differently? Are you content that Christianity shall have no play in trade ? " If these questions press upon all of us, tlien a settlement must surely face the industrial problem as a test of its sincerity, as a test of the unification of its interests with the absorbing interests of its neighbors. Must it, then, accejjt the creeds of one or the other of these schools of social thought, and work for a party ; or is there some underlying principle upon which the settlement can stand, as in its Christianity it 194 EULL-IIOrSE MAPS AND PAPERS. endeavors to stand on something more primitive than either Catholicism or Protestantism ? Can it find the moral question involved ? Is there a line of ethics which its action ought to follow ? Is it possible to make the slow appeal to the nobler fibre in men, and to connect it with that tradition of what is just and right ? A glance at the labor movement shows that the pre- ponderating force has been given to what may be called negative action. Unions use their power to frustrate the designs of the capitalist, to make trouble for corpo- rations and the public, such as is involved, for instance, in a railroad strike. It has often seemed to be the only method of arresting attention to their demands ; but in America, at least, they have come to trust it too far. A movement cannot be carried on by negating other acts; it must have a positive force, a driving and self- sustaining motive-power. A moral revolution cannot be accomplished by men who are held together merely because they are all smarting under a sense of injury and injustice, although it may be begun by them. Men thus animated may organize for resistance, they may struggle bravely together, and may destroy that which is injurious, but they cannot build up, associ- ate, and unite. They have no common, collective faith. The labor movement in America bears this trace of its youth and immaturity. As the first social organizations of men were for purposes of war ; as they combined to defend themselves, or to destroy their enemies, and only later they united for creative purposes and pacific undertakings, so the labor organizations first equip themselves for industrial war, and much later attempt to promote peaceful industrial progress. The older unions A FACTOR IN THE LABOll MOVEMENT. 195 have already reached the higher devtdopment, but the unions among the less intelligent and less skilled work- men are still belligerent and organized on a military b^sis, and unfortunately give color to the entire move- ment. It is doubtless true that men who work excessively certain weeks in the year, and bear enforced idleness, harassed by a fear of starvation, during certain other weeks, as the lumber-shovers and garment-workers do, are too far from that regulated life and sanity of mind in which the quiet inculcation of moral principle is pos- sible. It is also doiibtless true that a more miiform leisure and a calmer temper of mind Avill have to be secured before the sense of injury ceases to be an absorb- ing emotion. The labor movement is bound, therefore, to work for shorter hours and increased wages and regu- larity of work, that education and nnwal reform may come to the individual laborer ; that association may be put upon larger principles, and assume the higher fra- ternal aspect. But it does not Avant to lose sight of the end in securing the lueans, nor assume success, nor even necessarily the beginnings of success, when these first aims are attained. It is easy to make this mistake. The workingman is born and leared in a certain dis- comfort which he is sure the rich man does not share with him. He feels constantly the restriction which comes from untrained power ; he realizes that his best efforts are destined to go round and round in a circle circumscribed by his industrial op])ortunity, and it is inevitable that he should over-estimate the possession of wealth, of leisure, and of education. It is almost impossible for him to keep his sense of proportion. 196 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. The settlement may be of value if it can take a larger and steadier view than is always possible to the workingman, smarting under a sense of wrong; or to the capitalist, seeking only to " quiet down," with- out regard to the historic significance of the case, and insisting upon the inalienable right of '• invested capi- tal," to a return of at least four per cent, ignoring human passion. It is possible to recall them both to a sense of the larger development. A century ago there was an irresistil)le impulse, an upward movement, among the mass of people to have their share in political life, — hitherto the life of the privileged. The universal franchise was demanded, not only as a holy right, but as a means of entrance into the sunshine of liberty and equality. There is a simi- lar demand at the close of this century on the part of working-people, but this time it is for a share in the results of industry. It is an impulse to come out into the sunshine of Prosperity. As the leaders of political democracy over- estimated the possession of the franchise, and believed it would obtain blessings for the Avorking-people which it has not done, so, doubtless, the leaders of the labor movement are overestimating the possession of wealth and leisure. Mazzini was the inspired prophet of the political democracy, preaching duties and responsibili- ties rather than rights and franchises ; and we might call Arnold Toynbee the prophet of the second devel- opment when we contend that the task of the labor movement is the interpretation of democracy into in- dustrial affairs. In that remarkable exposition called " Industry and Democracy," Toynbee sets forth rhe A FACTOR IX THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 107 struggle between the masters and men during the in- dustrial revolution. Two ideals in regard to the rela- tionship between employer and eniplo3-ee were then developed. Carlyle represented one, pleading passion- ately for it. He declared that the rich mill-owner's duty did not end with the '^ cash nexus ; *' that after he had paid his men he should still cherish them in sick- ness, protect them in misfortune, and not dismiss them when trade was bad. In one word, he would have the rich govern and protect the poor. But the workers themselves, the mass of the people, had caught another ideal ; they dreamed of a time when they should have no need of protection, but Avhen each workman should stand by the side of his employer — the free citizen of a free state. Each workingman demanded, not class protection, but political rights. He wished to be a unit ; not that he might be isolated, but that he might unite in a fuller union, first with his fellow-workers, and then with the entire people. Toynbee asks who was right, Carlyle or the people. And replies that the people were right — '-The people who, sick with hunger and de- formed with toil, dreamed that democracy would bring deliverance." And democracy did save industry. It transformed disputes about wages from social feuds into business bargains. It swept away the estranging class elements of suspicion and arrogance. <' It gradually did away with the feudal notion among the masters that they would deal with their men one at a time, denying to them the advantages of association." It is singular that in America, where government is founded upon the principle of representation, the capitalist should have been so slow to accord this right to workingmen ; 198 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. that he should refuse so steadily to treat with a " walk- ing delegate," and so long maintain that no " outsider " could represent the men in his shop. We must learn to trust our democracy, giant-like and threatening as it may appear in its uncouth strength and untried applications. When the English people were demanding the charter, the English nobility pre- dicted that the franchise would be used to inaugurate all sorts of wild measures, to overturn long-established customs, as the capitalist noAV sometimes assumes that higher wages will be spent only in the saloons. In both cases there is a failure to count the sobering effect of responsibility in the education and development Avhich attend the entrance into a wider life. The effort to keep the movement to some conscious- ness of its historic value in the race development is perhaps no more difficult than to keep before its view the larger ethical aims. There is doubtless a tendency among the working men who reac*h leadership in the movement to yield to individual ambition, as there is among capitalists to regard class interests, and yield only that which must be yielded. This tendency on one side to yield to ambition, and on the other to give in to threats, may be further illustrated. The poor man has proverbially been the tyrant of poor men when he has become rich. But while such a man was yet poor, his heart was closed to his fellows, and his eyes Avere blinded to the exploitation of them and himself, because in his heart he hoped one day to be rich, and to do the exploiting ; because he secretl}' approved the action of his master, and said, " I would do the same if I were he." A FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOV KM EST. 199 "WorkiuLjineii say, sometimes, that the, rich will not hear the complaint of the j)oor until it rises into a threat, and carries a suggestion of ruin with it ; that they then throw the laborers a portion of the product, to save the remainder. As the tendency to warfare shows the primitive state of the labor movement, so also this division on class lines reveals its present undeveloped condition. The organi- zation of society into huge battalions with syndicates and corporations on the side of capital, and trades-unions and federations on the side of labor, is to divide the world into two hostile camps, and to turn us back into class warfare and class limitations. All our experience tells us that no question of civilization is so simple as that, nor can we any longer settle our perplexities by mere good fighting. One is reminded of one's childish conception of life — that Right and Wrong were drawn up in battle array into two distinct armies, and that to join the army of Right and fight bravely would be to settle all problems. But life itself teaches us nothing more inevitable than that right and wrong are most confusedly mixed ; that the blackest wrong is by our side and within our own motives ; that right does not dazzle our eyes with its ra- diant shining, but has to be found by exerting patience, discrimination, and impartiality. We cease to listen for the bugle note of victory our childish imagination antici- pated, and learn that our finest victories are attained in the midst of self-distrust, and that the waving banner of triumph is sooner or later trailed to the dust by the weight of self-righteousness. It may be that as the labor movement grows older and riper, it will cease to 200 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. divide all men so sharply into capitalists and proleta- rians, into exploiter and exploited. We may live to remind its leaders in later years, as George Eliot has so skilfully reminded us, that the path we all like Avhen we first set out in our youth is the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm branches grow ; but that later we learn to take the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy honors to be gathered and worn. As the labor movement grows older its leaders may catch the larger ethical view which genuine experience always gives ; they may have a chance to act free from the pressure of threat or ambition. They should have noth- ing to gain or lose, save as they rise or fall with their fellows. In raising the mass, men could have a motive- power as much greater than the motive for individual success, as the force which sends the sun above the horizon is greater than the force engendered by the powder behind the rocket. Is it too much to hope that as the better organized and older trades-unions are fast recognizing a solidarity of labor, and acting upon the literal notion of brotherhood, that they will later perceive the larger solidarity which includes labor and capital, and act upon the notion of universal kinship ? That before this larger vision of life there can be no perception of " sides " and no " battle array " ? In the light of the developed social conscience the "sympathetic strike" may be criticised, not because it is too broad, bvit because it is too narrow, and because the strike is but a wasteful and negative demonstration of ethical fellowship. In the summer of 1894 the Chicago unions of Russian-Jewish cloakmakers, German composi- A FACTOIi I.\ THE LAIKtl! M< >\I:M i:.\T. l!Ol tors, ami Boliemian and rolisli Imti-liors, struck in sym- pathy with the cause of the American Railway Union, wliom they believed to be standing for a principle. Does an event such as this, clumsy and unsatisfactory as its results are, prefigure the time when no factory cliilil in Chicago can be overworked and underpaid without a protest from all good citizens, capitalist and proletarian ? Such a protest would be founded upon an ethical sense so strong that it would easily override business interests and class prejudices. Manifestations of the labor movement are erratic and ill-timed because of the very strength of its motive power. A settlement is not affrighted nor dismayed when it sees in labor-meetings, in caucuses, and turbu lent gatherings, men who are — " Groping for the right, with horny, calloused hands, And staring round for God with bloodshot eyes," although the clumsy hands may upset some heavy pieces of convention, as a strong blindman overturns furniture, and the bloodshot eyes may be wild and fanatical. The settlement is unworthy of its calling if it is too timid or dull to interpret this groping and staring. But the set- tlenient should be affrighted, and bestir itself to action, when the groping is not for the right, but for the mere purpose of overturning ; when the staring is not for God, but for Mammon — and there is a natural temptation to- ward s both. A settlement may well be dismayed when it sees Avorkingmen apathetic to higher motives, and thinking only of stratagems by which to outwit the capitalists ; or when workingmeu justify themselves in the use of 202 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. base measures, saying they Lave learned the lessons from the other side. Such an attitude at once turns the movement from a development into a struggle, and the sole judge left between the adversaries must in the end be force. Class intei-ests become the governing and mo- tive power, and the settlement can logically be of no value to either side. Its sympathies are naturally much entangled in such a struggle, but to be of value it must keep its judgment clear as to the final ethical outcome — and this requires both perceptions and training. fortunately, every action may be analyzed into its permanent and transient aspects. The transient aspect of the strike is the anger and opposition against the employer, and too often the chagrin of failure. The permanent is the binding together of the strikers in the ties of association and brotherhood, and the attain- ment of a more democratic relation to the employer ; and it is becaiise of a growing sense of brotherhood and of democracy in the labor movement that we see in it a growing ethical power. Hence the duty of the settlement in keeping the move- ment fro3n becoming in any sense a class warfare is clear. There is a temperamental bitterness among working- men which is both inherited and fostered by the condi- tions of their life and trade ; but they cannot afford to cherish a class bitterness if the labor movement is to be held to its highest possibilities. A class working for a class, and against another class, implies that within itself there should be ti-ades working for trades, individuals working for individuals. The universal character of the movement is gone from the start, and cannot be caught until an all-embracing ideal is accepted. A FACTOR IX TUK L Alio II MOV KM F.ST. 203 A recent writer luis called attention to the fact tluit the position of the power-lioldint; classes — capitalists, as we call them just now — is being gradually under- mined by the disintegrating influence of the immense fund of altruistic feeling -with which society has become equipjied ; that it is within this fund of altruism that we find the motive force which is slowly enfranchising all classes and gradually insisting upon equality of condi- tion and opportunity. If Ave can accept this explanation of the social and political movements of our time, then it is clear that the labor movement is at the bottom an ethical movement, and a manifestation of the orderly development of the race. The settlement is pledged to insist. upon the unity of life, to gather to itself the sense of righteousness to be found in its neighborhood, and as far as possible in its city ; to work towards the betterment not of oi^f^ kind of people or class of people, but for the cc.nmon good. The settlement believes that just as men deprived of comradeship by circumstances or law go back to the bru- tality from which the}' came, so any class or set of men deprived of the companionship of the whole, become correspondingly decivilized and crippled. No part of society can afford to get along without the others. The settlement, then, urges first, the organization of working people in order that as much leisure and orderly life as possible may be secured to them in which to carry out the higher aims of living ; in the second place, it should make a constant effort to bring to bear upon the labor movement a consciousness of its historic development; and lastly, it accentuates the ultimate ethical aims of the movement. 204 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS. The despair of the labor movement is, as Mazzini said in another cause long ago, that we have torn the great and beautiful ensign of Democracy. Each party has snatched a rag of it, and parades it as proudly as if it were the whole flag, repudiating and not deigning to look at the others. It is this feeling of disdain to any class of men or kind of men in the community which is dangerous to the labor movement, which makes it a class-measure. It attacks its democratic character, and substitutes party enthusiasm for the irresistible force of human progress. The labor movement must include all men in its hopes. It must have the communion of universal fellowship. ^* ny drop of gall within its cup is fatal. Any grudge treir^'ured up against a capitalist, any desire to " get even '■ when the wealth has changed hands, are but the old expediences of human selfishness. All sense of injury must fall aAvay and be absorbed in the conscious- ness of a common brotherhood. If to insist upon the universality of the best is the function of the settle- ment, nowhere is its influence more needed than in the labor movement, where there is constant temptation towards a class warfare. APPENDIX. Outline Sketch descriptive of Hull-House. LIST OF RESIDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN IN RESIDENCE FOR SIX MONTHS OR LONGER. Jane Addams. Ellen G. Starr. Julia C. Lathrop. Florence Kelley. Mary A. Keyzer. Anna M. Farnsworth.' Agnes Sinclair Holbrook. Josephine Milligan, M.D. Wilfreda Brockavay. Rose M. Gyles. Gertrli)e Barnum. Ella Raymond Waite. Annie Fryar. Josefa Humpal Zeman. Margaret M. West. Jeannette C. Welch. 1 ExELLA Benedict. Clifford W. Barnes.^ Alex. A. Bruce.^ Edward L. Burchard.i Henry B. Learned. i Chas. C. Arnold.! John Addams Linn. Edwin A. Waldo. 1 No longer in residence. The settlement, Jan. 1, 1895, numbers twenty, including those who are in residence now, but have not yet resided for six months. f\ HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. The two original residents of Hull-House are enter- ing upon their sixth year of settlement in the nineteenth ward. They publish this outline^ that the questions daily asked by neighbors and visitors may be succinctly an- swered. It necessarily takes somewhat the character of a report, but is much less formal. It aims not so mucli to give an account of what has been accomplished, as to suggest what may be done by and through a neighbor- hood of working-people, when they are touched by a common stimulus, and possess an intellectual and social centre about which they may grofip their various organi- zations and enterprises. This centre or " settlement," to be effective, must contain an element of permanency, so that the neighborhood may feel that the interest and fortunes of the residents are identical with their own. The settlement must have an enthusiasm for the possi- bilities of its locality, and an ability to bring into it and develop from it those lines of thought and action which make for the " higher life." ~ The original residents came to liiill-I louse with a conviction that social intercourse could best express t-he growing sense of the economic unity of society. They wished the social spirit to be the undercurrent of the life of Hull-House, whatever direction the stream ' Tliis outline was originally iHsiiud a.s a ii:iiii|iliK't, Feb. 1, 1893. It is here revised to Jan. 1, 18U5. 207 208 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. might take. All tlie details were left for tlie demands of the neighborhood to determine, and each department has grown from a discovery made throngh natural and reciprocal social relations. THE COLLEGE EXTENSION COURSES grew thus from an informal origin. The first class met as guests of the residents. As the classes became larger and more numerous, and the object of the newcomers more definitely that of acquisition of some special knowl- edge, the informality of the social relation was nec*essa- rily less ; but the prevailing attitude toward the house of the two hundred and fifty students now enrolled is that of guests as well as students. Many new students, attracted and refreshed by the social atmosphere, come into the classes who Avould not be likely to undertake any course of study at an evening high school, or any school within their reach. These students, the larger proportion of whom are young women, represent a great variety of occupations. Among them are teachers in the public schools, employees of factories and shops, typewriters and cashiers. The College Extension Course aims not to duplicate, but to supplement, the advantages offered by evening high schools and business colleges. Hence in these classes the emphasis is laid upon the humanities, and no attempt is made to supply means for earning a livelihood. The most popular and con- tinuous courses have been in literature, languages, music, art, history, mathematics, and drawing. The saving- grace of all good things, and the developing power of the love of them, have been proved to the satisfaction of the residents of Hull-House. A prospectus of the College Extension classes is published at the beginning of each term for ten weeks. APPLWDIA-. 209 The College Extension classes are so called because the instriu'tors are mostly college men and women. These classes were established at Hull-House before the University Extension nujvenuMit began in Chicago, and are not connected with it. The faculty numbers thirty-live, mostly college men and women, sonu^ of whom have taught continuously for three years. Mo charge is made for the teaching, which is gratuitous on the part of the faculty ; but the students })ay fifty cents a course, which covers the printing of the pro- spectuses and other incidental expenses. Any surplus is expended upon lectures and reference books. Three University Extension Courses have been given at the centre formed at Hull-House — two in the drawing- room and one in a neighbcn-ing church. The lecturers were from the Universit}^ Extension Department of the University of Chicago. SU."MMKIt SfHOOL. A helpful supplement of the College Extension Courses has been the summer .school held for three years in the buildings of Kockford College, at Rockford, 111. Half the students were able to attend. The sum of tliree dollars a week paid by each student for board, covered the entire expenses of the school — the use of the build- ings, including gymnasium and laboratories, having been given free of rent. Much time was devoted to out-door work in botany and the study of birds, and the month proved a successful combination of a summer vacation and a continuation of the year's study. The esprit de corps, fostered by the intimacy of the month's sojourn in college quarters, bore its first fruits in a students' association formed at the close of the summer's tciiu. 210 HULL-HOUSE: A tiOCIAL tiLTTLEMEyr. thp: studext.s' associatiox. The Students' Association, now including a good pro- portion of the attendants of the class, is divided into the literary, the dramatic, and the musical sections. The society meets once a month, and each section in turn is responsible for an evening's entertainment. The programme is followed by an informal dance in the gymnasium. Each term's course is opened by a stu- dents' reception given by the residents. RE A D I X G-RO O M. A reading-room in the lower floor of the Hull-House Art Gallery was maintained by the Chicago Public Library Board for three years, with two city librarians in charge. The room was supplied with English and foreign magazines and papers, as well as several hun- dred books. All the books of the Public Library are accessible to the neighborhood through the excellent system of sub-station delivery. This library has now been moved to a neighboring block. EXHIBITIONS OF I'KJTURES. Owing partly to the limited space available for the purpose, the picture exhibits have been necessarily small. An effort has been made to show only pictures which combine, to a considerable degree, an elevated tone with technical excellence ; and at no time can a very large assortment of such pictures be obtained. There is an advantage on the side of a small exhibition carefully selected, especially to an untrained pul)lic. The confu- sion and fatigue of mind which a person of no trained powers of selection suffers in passing his eyes wearily over the assortment of good, bad, and indifferent which A}'pt:xi)ix. 211 the average picture exhibit presents, leave him nothing with which to assimilate the good when he finds it, and his chances of finding it are small. Frequently recur- ring exhibitions of a few very choice pictures might do more toward educating the public taste of the localitj'^ in which they occur than many times the number less severely chosen and less often seen. Hull-House has had two exhibits every year since the gallery was built, which were well attended. They were omitted during the World's Fair, and an effort was made to supply their place by assisting as many people as possible to see the pictures of the fair intelligently. Parties formed for the purpose were conducted regularly by a resident. The first residents of Hull- House held strongl}* to the belief that any compromise in the matter of excellence in art was a mistake. They hung their OAvn walls only with such pictures as they felt were helpful to the life of mind and soul. Very much of the influence of the House they believed to be due to the harmony and reasonableness of the message of its walls. One of the residents has been much interested in pictures in the public schools, and has aroused sufficient interest in the subject to result in providing gootl sets of pictures and casts for several schools in the poorest localities. With the means at her disposal she has been able to jiut a number of good pictures into each room of the school nearest Hull-House, and one or more into five of the public kindergartens. A society has been organized for carrying on the work. WORKIXii-PKOI'LK's CHORUS. The same principles the House is striving to carry into eifect in regard to the music it provides. 212 HULL-HOUSE : A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. The director of the Workl's Fair choruses has under- taken the training of a chorus of five hundred working- people. He believes that working-people especially need the musical form of expression, their lives being shorn on the art side. He further holds that musical people need for their art's sake the sense of brother- hood ; that art is hollow and conventional unless it is the utterance of the common and universal life. SUXDAY CONCERTS. A free concert is given in the gymnasium every Sunday afternoon. The concerts, at first given Avith the motive of entertaining, are now conducted with the development of musical taste and understanding as the object in view. This may be illustrated by selections from the programme. SUISTDAY CONCERTS, .5 P.M. BEETHOVEN CONCERT . . . Miss. H. L. Frank. (Beethoven's Birtlulay.) CHRISTMAS MUSIC. — Songs and carols of Eleanor Smith Reineke, Cornelius, and others. Miss Eleanor Smith axd the Seniok Singing-Class. MUSIC. — From "Wagner's Opera of " Lohengrin," with interpretation . . . Mi;s. James Hunt, (In preparation for the music Miss Stark will read Tennyson's " Holy Grail," at four o'clock.) CONCERT. — Choral . . Led by Mr. W. L. Tomlins. (Solos and choruses from " The Messiah " and " Elijah.") CONCERT. — Organ and String Quartette. To be jriven at the house of .Afrs. .Tohn C. Coonley, 0V!0 Division Street (and Lalce Shore Drive), by Mr. W. Middelschulte and tue Spiering Quartette. APPENDIX 213 The oldest singing-class is now pursuing its third year of study under the instruction of a composer and teacher of vocal music who has never com})roniised her severe musical standards here or elsewhere. The compara- tively small number of students whose intellect and per- severance have survived the test have had the advantage of an unusual training. THE PADEREWSKI CLUB. A club of twenty children, calling themselves the Paderewski Club, has had a year of instruction on the piano, together Avith Sunday afternoon talks by their teacher on the lives of the great musicians. Six of the most proficient have obtained scholarships in the Chicago Conservatory. THE JAN^E CLUB. The Jane Club, a co-operative boarding-club for young working-women, had the advice and assistance of Hull-House in its establishment. The original mem- bers of the club, seven in number, were a group of trades-union girls accustomed to organized and co-opera- tive action. The club has been from the beginning self-governing, Avithout a matron or outside control, the officers being elected by the members from their own number, and serving for six months gratuitously. The two offices of treasurer and steward have required a generous sacrifice of their limited leisure, as well as a good deal of ability from those holding them. Tliis being given, together with a considerable esjtrit de corjts in the increasing number of members, the club has thriven brjth substantially and socialh'. The weekly dues of three dollars, with an occasional small assess- 214 IIULL-UOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. nieiit, have met all current expenses of rent, service, food, heat, and light, after the furnishing and first month's rent was supplied by Hull-House. The club now numbers fifty members, and the one fiat is in- creased to five. The members do such share of the housework as does not interfere with their daily occupa- tions. There are various circles within the club for social and intellectual purposes ; and while the members are glad to procure the comforts of life at a rate Avithin their means, the atmosphere of the club is one of com- radeship rather than thrift. The club holds a monthly reception in the Hull-House gymnasium. THE PHALANX CLUB. A similar co-operative club has been started by nine young men at 245 West Polk Street, most of the mem- bers of which are members of the Typographical Union. The club has made a most promising beginning. THE LABOR MOVEMENT. The connection of the House with the labor move- ment may be said to have begun on the same social basis as its other relations. Of its standing with labor unions, which is now " good and regular," it owes the foundation to personal relations with the organizer of the Bindery Girls' Union, who lived for some months in the House as a guest. It is now generally understood that Hull-House is " on the side of unions." Several of the women's unions have held their regular meetings at the House, two have been organized there, and in four instances men and women on strike against reduction in wau'es met there while the strike lasted. In one case a APPENDIX. 215 strike was successfully arbitrated by the House. It is most interesting to note that a numl)er of small and. feeble unions have, from the very fact of their weakness, V)een compelled to a policy which has been their strength, and has made for the strength of their cause. In this policy it has been the privilege of Hull-House to be of service to them. The stronger unions, such as the car- penters' and bricklayers', trusting in their own strength and the skill of their members, have too often adopted a course of exclusiveness and self-centred effort. The weak ones, as those in the clothing trades, finding it impos- sible to accomplish much alone, betook themselves to the constant urging of concerted action. The most impor- tant illustration of this highly useful policy is in the action of the unions in urging the factory inspection law passed by the Legislature of Illinois during the spring of 1893. The initiative toward the introduction of the measure in the legislature was taken by a resident of Hull-House ; and a Committee of Investigation sent from Springfield to inspect sweat-shops, and decide upon the necessity for legislation, was piloted by her upon its tour. The same resident, who was at that time conduct- ing in Chicago a so-called " slum investigation " for the Department of Labor at Washington, was, after the pas- sage of the law, appointed inspector of factories in the State of Illinois. The work of the inspector and her assistants and deputies can be found iu the annual report of the Illinois State Factorj"^ Inspector, the first of which has alreaxly been issued. Hull-House is situated in the midst of the sweat-shop district of Chicago, and it was natural that the first effort of the House to procure legislation against an industrial evil should have been directed against the sweating-svstem. 216 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. A "^vard book has been kept by the residents for two years in -which have been noted matters of sociological interest found in the ward. Many instances of the sweat- ing-evil and child-labor have been recorded, as well as unsanitary tenements and instances of eviction. EIGHT-HOUR CLUB. After the passage of the factory and workshop bill, which includes a clause limiting women's labor to eight hours a day, the young women employees in a large fac- tory in the near neighborhood of Hull-House formed an eight-hour club for the purpose of encouraging w^omen in factories and workshops to obey the eight-hour law. This club has maintained its position, and done good missionary Avork for the cause. They have developed a strong sense of obligation toward employees in shops where the wages are low, and the employees much less favored than themselves. Their enthusiasm has carried them across a caste line. This club meets at Hull- House, and makes full use of the social factor so essen- tial in fusing heterogeneous elements. THE WORKIXGt— people's SOCIAL SCIENCE CLUB was formed during the first year of residence at Hull- House, and has met weekly ever since, Avith the excep- tion of the two summer months. In the summer of 1893, however, owing to the number of interesting speakers to be secured from the World's Fair Con- gresses, the chib met without interruption. The pur- pose of the club is the discussion of social and economic topics. An opening address of forty-five minutes is fol- lowed by an hour of discussion. The speakers in the ArPKNDIX. 217 latter represent every possible shade of social and economic view. Working men and women are in the majority, although professional and business men are to be found at every meeting. The attendance averages seventy-five; the discussion is always animated and out- spoken. The residents believe that one of the offices of the settlement is to provide that people of various creeds and class traditions should meet under a friendly and non-partisan roof, and discuss differences fairly. Fol- lowing is a list of ten speakers and their subjects, selected from the programme of 1893 : "THE ENGLISH LABOR MOVEMENT." Mr. Wm. Clauke. "WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE." Miss Susax B. Aktiioxy. "THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF INDIA." SWAMI Vl%'EHANANDE. "THE UNEMPLOYED." Dk. Cuarles II. Henderson. "THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL." Mr. Percy Alden. "THE NEW TRADES-UNIONISM." Mrs. Kobt. A. Wood. " CHARITY ORGANIZATION." Dr. Seth Low. "THE NEIGHBORHOOD GUILD." Dr. Stanton Coit. "THE CONSCIENCE OF THE STATE." Dr. B.\.yard Holmes. "THE CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL." Mit. Wm. T. Stead. 218 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. The programme for the fall of 1894 is possibly more typical : — " SOCRATES." Pkof. Charles F. Bkadley, Northwestern University. "EPICTETUS." Dr. Joh:n Dewey, University of Chicago. "MARCUS AURELIUS." Prof. J. H. Tufts, University of Chicago. "ST. FRANCIS." Miss Eliza Allen Star. "SAVONAROLA." Rev. F. W. Gu>.saulus, D.D. " SIR THOMAS MORE." Mr. Charles Zeuijlin, University of Chicago. The Arnold Toynbee Club meets at Hull-House. The objects of the club are : 1. To offer lectures upon economic subjects. 2. To ascertain and make known facts of interest to working-people in the fields of eco- nomics and legislation. 3. To promote legislation for economic and social reform, especially to secure greater public control over natural monopolies. Membership is by invitation. Members of the club offer a list of free lectures on economic and social questions. It is espe- cially desired to aid in the educational work of trades' unions and young people's societies. THE CHICAGO QUESTION CLUB meets in the Hull-House Art Gallery at two o'clock every Sunday afternoon. The club was fully formed be- fore it asked for the hospitality of Hull-House. It .is well organized, and each meeting is opened by presen- tation of two sides of a question. Occasionally the vari- APPEyhix. 210 ous economic clubs meet for a common disciission. One of the most successful was led by Father Huntington, on the subject, " Can a Freethinker believe in Christ ?" An audience of four hundred ])eople followed closely the two hours' discussion, which was closed by Mr. Henry George. THE NINETEENTH WARD IMPROVEMENT CLUB. The Nineteenth "Ward Improvement Club meets at Hull-House the second Saturday evening of each month. The president is the district representative in the Illi- nois State Legislature, and one of the ward aldermen is an active member. The club is pledged to the im- provement of its ward in all directions. It has stand- ing-committees on street-(,'leaning, etc., and was much interested in the efforts of the Municipal Order League to secure public baths. Through the solicitation of the league the City Council in 1892 made an appropria- tion of $12,000 for public baths. Hull-House was able to offer the use of a lot Avhich had been given it by the owner rent free for two years. He transferred the lease to the city, with a satisfactory arrangement for its sale at the expiration of the lease, and a free public bath- house has been erected upon it, which is now in daily use. It contains seventeen shower-baths, a swimming- tank, and a tub. The Nineteenth Ward Improvement Club has formed a co-operative association, the first officers of which are the same as its own. It has opened a co-operative coalyard near Hull-House. The purchaser of a ton of coal becomes a member of the Co-operative Association. At its first meeting the members voted that their dividends be employed in establishing a bushel trade to meet the wants of the 220 nULL-IIOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. pool' people of the neigliborliood. The purchaser of eaeli bushel receives a ticket, six of which entitle him to a rebate in coal. The association hopes in time to deal in other commodities. CIVIC FEDERATIOX WARD COUXCIL. In the fall of 1894 a ward council of the Civic Fede- ration was organized at Hull-House for the nineteenth ward. The active members of the Nineteenth Ward Improvement ("lub are naturally working together under this new name. A full set of committees have been organized — Municipal, Philanthropic, Industrial, Educational, Politi- cal, and Moral. THE HULL-HOUSE WOMEN's CLUB, which now numbers ninety of the most able women in the ward, developed from a social meeting for purposes of tea-drinking and friendly chat. Several members of this club have done good work in street and alley inspecting through the Municipal Order League. The, club has also presented to a public school in the neigh- borhood a fine autotype of Millet's Knitting Shepherd- ess, and hopes to do more in future for the art-in-schools movement. They have been active in the visiting and relief work which has taken so large a share of the en- ergies of the settlement during the hard times. One winter they purchased a ticket to the lectures given to mothers in the Kindergarten College. One member attended each week, and reported to the club. They are in touch with some of the vigorous movements of the city, and have frequent lectures on philanthropic and reform questions. APPENDIX. 221 A UKCKPTION Kt)K (JKKMAXS has been held every Friday evening in Hull-House for four years. Two hours are spent in singing, reading, games, etc., and the habituees have all the comradeship of a club. They give an occasional coffee-drinking and entertainment. They are a good illustration of the social feeling too often wasted in a cramped neighborhood for lack of space and encouragenuMit. During the first two years of Hull-House the r(>si- dents held receptions for Italians each week, which were largely attended. These were for a time discon- tinued, as their success depended mainly upon an Italian philanthropist, who has since started an agricultural col- ony in Alabama. Immigration societies, such as are successfully operated in London, are needed properly to place the Italian immigrants, who might do as much for the development of the Southern States as they have done for South America. Hull-House has not been able to inaugurate such a society, but sincerely hopes that one may be formed, as well as an association for im- proving tenement houses, those occupied by the Italians being overcrowded and unsanitary. CJIILDREN's CLU15S. Since its foundation, Hull-House has had numerous classes and clubs for children. The fortunes and value of the clubs have varied, depending very much upon the spirit of the leaders. An effort has always been made to avoid the school atmosphere. The children are re- ceived and trusted as guests, and the initiative and control have come from them as far as possible. Their favorite occupation is listening to stories. One club has had a consecutive course of legends and tales of chiv- 222 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. airy. There is no doubt that the more imaginative children learn to look upon the house as a gateway into a magic land, and get a genuine taste of the delights of literature. One boy, after a winter of Charlemagne stories, flung himself, half-crying, from the house, and said that " there was no good in coming any more now that Prince Eoland was dead." The boys' clubs meet every Tuesday afternoon at four o'clock, and clubs of little girls come on Friday. The latter are the School- girls' Club and the Pansy Club, the Story-Telling Club and the Kindergarten Club. They sew, paint, or make paper chains during the story-telling, and play games in the gymnasium together before they go home at live o'clock. A club of Bohemian girls, called '' Libuse," meets every Monday, and studies the heroic women in history. The little children meet one afternoon in the Aveek for advanced kindergarten work. There are vari- ous children's classes for gymnastics and dancing ; and two children's choruses, of two hundred and fifty each, meet weekly under the direction of Mr. William Tom- lins. Dinners are served to school-children upon pres- entation of tickets which have been sold to their mothers for five cents each. Those children are first selected whose mothers are necessarily at work during the middle of the day ; and the dinner started with chil- dren formerly in the Hull-House creche. While it is desired to give the children nutritious food, the little diners care much more for the toys and books and the general good time than they do for the dinners. It has been found, too, that the general attractiveness performs the function of the truant-officer in keeping them at school ; for no school implies no dinner. The House has had the sympathetic and enthusiastic co-operation of the principal of the Polk Street public school. APPENDIX. 223 SAVIXGS-BAXK. A branch of the New York Penny Provident Savings- Bank has been sustained for two years. There are six hundred depositors. SEWIXft-.SCIIOOL. One hundred and twenty Italian girls meet every j\[onday afternoon in the gymnasium, directed by a su- perintendent and fifteen teachers. The children make garments, which they may purchase for the price of the material. An effort is made to follow up each new garment with lessons in tidiness. There are smaller classes in darning, knitting, and simple embroidery among the English-speaking little girls. COOKIXG— CLASSES. Three cooking-classes for adidts are held each week. The cooking-class for Italian girls has been very grati- fying in its results. There is also a cooking-class every week for American children, and a nature class, which meets every Saturday morning. The young members are very happy when the weather permits them to go with their teacher to the park in pursuit of their sub- ject. When it does not, they are most content with the simple microscopes at their disposal. SUMMER EXCURSIONS. A systematic effort is made during the summer to have each of the four hundred children connected with the clubs spend at least one day in the countr}^ or parks. Excursions in small groups are more satisfactory than the time-honored picnic method. Each summer from fifty to a hundred children are sent from Hull-House 224 nULL-nOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. to the fresli-air homes and country-houses. The resi- dents Avere able, through the generosity of "World's Fair enthusiasts, to assist fifteen hundred children to see the fair. PLAYGROUXD. During the last ye-dv the use of a piece of ground near ^Hull-House measuring 326 X 119 was given rent free for a year, and in case it should not be sold in the meantime, for a longer period. The owner permitted the houses upon it, which were in bad sanitary condition, to be torn down ; the ground was graded, fenced, provided with swings and other enticing apparatus, an officer Avas supplied from the city force, and a playground was thrown open to the juvenile public. Through the sum- mer evenings many parents came with their children. Several of the residents spent much time there teaching the children games, and regulating the use of the fifty buckets and shovels which were active in the sand-piles. The music furnished by an organ-grinder every after- noon often brought forth an Italian tarantella or an Irish jig with curious spontaneity. FREE KIXDERGARTEX AND DAY NURSERY. From the first month of its existence Hull-House has had a free kindergarten, and for three years a day nursery, where mothers who are obliged to work leave their children for the day, paying five cents for each child. The creche averages in summer fifty children, and in winter between thirty and forty. A friend of the House, who makes herself responsible for the finan- cial support of the creche, gives largely of her time in directing and assisting in the work. This nursery is like others in most respects, differing chiefly, perhaps, APPENDIX. 225 in the attention paid to the matter of pictures and casts. The Madonnas of Raphael, in the best and largest pho- tographs, are hung low, that the children may see them, as well as casts from Donatello and Delia llobbia. The children talk in a familiar Avay to the babies on the wall, and sometimes climb upon the chairs to kiss them. Surel}' nuu'h is gained if one can begin in a very little child to make a truly beautiful thing truly beloved. An experienced kindergartner is in. charge of the nursery. She has the constant assistance of two women. GYMNASIUM. The last building added to the equipment of Hull- House includes a public coffee and lunch room, a New England kitchen, a gymnasium, with shower-baths, and men's club-room, supplied with billiard and card tables. The use of the gymnasium is divided between men and women, girls and boys, at different hours. The evening hours are reserved more especially for men. The gym- nasium, being now the largest room in the possession of the settlement, is necessarily used on certain evenings as an audience room, and as a reception and ball room by the various clul)S. THE HULL-HOUSE MEn's CLUB holds a reception there once a month, and an occasional banquet. This club, which rents a room in the front of the building, is composed of one hundred and iifty of the abler citizens and more enterprising young men of the vicinity. Their constitution commits them, among other things, to the " cultivation of sobriety and good- fellowship."' They are not without political influence in the ward, and are a distinct factor in its social life, as all of their social undertakings have been reinarkably 226 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. spirited and successful. They are in sympathy with the aims of Hull-House, and are prompt to assist and promote any of its undertakings. Business meetings are held on the first and third Friday evenings of each month, and on alternate evenings the Literary and De- bating Sections hold meetings. HULL-HOUSE MANDOLUST CLUB consists of twelve members of the Men's Club, who have successfully sustained an orchestra of mandolin and guitars for a year. They are most generous with their services to the entertainments of the House. YOUNG people's CLUBS. The Lincoln Club is a debating-society of young men, whose occasional public debates are always heard by a large and enthusiastic audience. In their weekly meet- ing they have a carefully prepared debate, usually upon current political events. They meet once a month with the Hull-House Social Club. This is composed of young women of the neighborhood, many of whom have met every week for four years. Their programmes are liter- ary and social. They give an occasional play. The last one presented was the court scene from the " Merchant of Venice." Among the other clubs of young people, the Young Citizens boasts the oldest club-life. Their programmes alternate between discussions and readings. An effort is made in both for civic and municipal education. The Anfreda Club of thirty young girls meets the same evening. After the literary programme is con- cluded, the two clubs have half an hour of dancing or games together before going home. APPEXDIX. 227 Henvy Learned Club, JIull-llouse Glee ("Inl), Jolly Boys' Club, Good-Fellowsliip Club, Lexington Club, Bo- hemian Garnet Club, Longfellow Club, Laurel Club, Harrison Club, and others, are composed of }'oung i)eo- ple from fourteen to twenty-five years of age. Alumni associations of the neighl)oring public schools hold their meetings at the House. An eflort is being made toward school extension. THE HULL-HOUSE COFFEE-HOUSE AND KITCHEN-. The Hull-House coffee-house was opened July 1,1893. The room itself is an attractive copy of an English inn, with low, dark rafters, diamond windows, and large fireplace. It is open every day from six in the morning to ten at night. An effort has been made to combine the convenience of a lunch-room, where well-cooked food can be sold at a reasoiuible rate, Avith cosiness and at- tractiveness. The residents believe that substitution is the only remedy against the evils of the saloon. The large kitchen has been carefully equipped, under the direction of Mrs. Ellen Richards, Avith a New England kitchen outfit, including a number of Aladdin ovens. The foods are carefully prejiared, a"nd are sold by the quart or pound^"to families for home consumption. Cof- fee, soups, and stews are delivered every day at noon to the neighboring factories. By means of an indurated fibre can, it is ])ossible to transport and serve the food hot. The employees purchase a pint of soup or coffee with two rolls for five cents, and the plan of NOON FACTORY ■ DELIVKKV is daily growing in popularity. The kitclien during the winter of 1893-1894 supplied hot lunches at ten cents 228 IIULL-IIOUSE : A SOCIAL SETTLEyiEyT. each to the two hundred women employed in the sewing- room established by the Emergency Committee of the Chicago Women's Club. This room supplied work to unemployed women during the stress of the last winter. Hull-House has also superintended a temporary lodging- house for the use of unemployed women for some months. A physician is in residence at Hull-House, and another who lives near is most constant and generous with her professional services. A nurse of the Visiting Nurses' Association has her headquarters, and receives her orders, at the House. A PUBLIC DISPENSARY was undertaken in 1893. It is open every day from three until four, and every evening from seven to eight o'clock. A small charge is made when possible for drugs. In the same house, 247 Polk Street, is the HULL-HOUSE LABOR BUREAU, necessarily small at present from the extreme difficulty of finding work for men or women. Hull-House has always undertaken a certain amount of relief work, the records of which are kept with those of the Labor Bureau. One of the residents served for a winter as a visitor oil the Cook County staff, all the cases of desti- tution within a certain radius of Hull-House being given to her for investigation. 8he also has established and maintained with all the charitable institutions of the city a cordial and sympathetic relationship, which has been most valuable to the neighborhood. She has more recently been appointed a meml)er of the State Board of API'ESDIX. 220 Charities, The House has been active in the movement to organize the charities of Chicago, and lias recently united its relief office with the ward office established by the new organization. RESIDENTS. No university or college qualification has ever been made for residence, although the majority of residents have been college people. The organization of the set- tlement has been extremely informal ; but an attempt has been made during the last winter to limit the num- ber of residents to twenty. The household, augmented by visitors, has occasionally exceeded that number. Ap- plicants for residence are received for six weeks, during which time they have all privileges, save a vote, at resi- dents' meeting. At the end of that period, if they have proved valuable to the work of the House, they are in- vited to remain, if it is probable that they can be in residence for six months. The expenses of the resi- dents are defrayed by themselves on the plan of a co- operative club under the direction of a house committee. A limited number of fellowships has been established, one of them by the Chicago branch of the Inter-Col- legiate Alumnae Association. All the residents of Hull-House for the first three years were women, though much valuable work has always been done by non-resident men. During the last year men have come into residence in a cottage on Polk Street, dining at Hull-House, and giving such part of their time to the work of the settlement as is consis- tent with their professional or business life. It is estimated that two thousand people come to Hull- House each week, either as members of clubs or organi- 230 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. zations, or as parts of an audience. One hundred of these come as teachers, lecturers, or directors of clubs. The house has always had much valuable assistance from the citizens of Chicago. This voluntary response to its needs perhaps accounts for the fact that it has never found it necessary to form an association with chapters in colleges, as other settlements have done, FIXAXCES. Hull-House and the adjacent lots are given by the owner rent free until 1920. Two buildings have beeu built upon these by friends of the House. Three other buildings are to be erected in 1895. One is an addition to the coffee-house, a second is designed for general class and audience rooms, while the third is to be known as the children's house. The superintendence and teach- ing of the settlement are volunteered by residents and others, and are unpaid. The running expenses of the settlement proper are therefore reduced to a minimum. Large sums are constantly needed, however, for the initiation of new departments and the expenses of those branches, such as the nursery, which can never be self- supporting. These are constantly defrayed by generous friends of the House, many of whom are active in its service. LIBRARY OF ECOiNOAlICS AND POLITICS. EDITED BY RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D. Number Five. CroincU's Hiirarg OF lEconomics anti politics. Vol. I. The Independent Treasury System of the United States $1.50 By DAVID KIN LEY, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois. Vol. II. Repudiation of State Debts in the United States $1.50 By WILLIAM A. SCOTT, Assistant Professor of Po- litical Economy in the University of Wisconsin. Vol. III. Socialisnn and Social Reform . . $1.50 By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Political Economy, and Director of the School of Econonnics, Political Science, and History in the University of Wisconsin. Vol. IV. American Charities. A Study in Philanthro- py and Economics $1.75. By AMOS G. WARNER, Ph.D., Professor of Eco- nonnics and Social Science in the Leiand Stan- ford, Jr., University. Vol. V. Hull-House Maps and Papers. By RESIDENTS OF HULL-HOUSE, Chicago, III. Illustrated with Colored Maps. 8vo . . $2.50 Special Edition with Maps mounted on Cloth. 8vo $3.50